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December, 1919 – Chapter 6

March 4, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

Welcome to chapter six of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday. Links to all published chapters can be found here.

Chapter 6

My days in the newsroom drag. The constant ringing of telephones and smacking of typewriters used to annoy me, but now they act like a journalistic lullaby. If not for some particularly potent coffee from Marco’s down on Market street, I’d probably be waking up with indentations of keys and fresh ink on my face.

The echo of Virginia’s gunshot keeps me awake. As I heard it crack all the bones of that quiet night three days ago, back turned, unsure who fired or from where, I imagined it zipping straight for me, like father, like son, fates cruelly twisted together like some defective DNA. Even though it hadn’t hit me, or anyone for that matter, it still played tricks on my subconscious, and as I lay in bed, watching the moon’s silvery fingers through the windows, all I could hear was the explosion of powder and my heart beating.

I had since avoided the brewery, hiding beneath piles of notes that needed transcription, occupying my mind with the minutiae of McGuire’s notes, hoping to find some new information about the murder. The police hadn’t changed their story, but McGuire was certain that the details had been washed, dried, and folded within the walls of the precinct before ever being made public. That was the game I played of late; burrow as deep down into the prosaic as possible to shelter myself from the bomb blast of reality that had scorched my earth near clean.

Virgnia’s gun and George’s fist weigh heavy, but not heaviest. It had been two weeks since my father had slipped from this life to the next, but I hadn’t really mourned. There had been no time. At least I tricked and then convinced myself that there had been no time; I’d actively thrown myself into anything and every activity I could find – financial paperwork, business plans, supply orders – bent on filling his shoes without taking the time to fully realize that he wasn’t there to wear them anymore. Besides, it seemed like mother was doing enough mourning for two. She wouldn’t eat much and slept as much as the cat, curled up on the chaise in the front room, endlessly staring out the window like his salt and pepper stubble might come up the front steps any minute now. Andy the little silver tabby, had rekindled his love affair with her lap, and I could pretty much always find them, an unaffected pair, dodging waking life by not participating in it.

I’d only seen Ginnie from a distance. I could see the purple on her cheek, the limp in her left leg, but she was alive, and had somehow placated her father’s wrath. Her body looked pained, but her eyes and spirit seemed as determined as ever.

“Are you almost done?” The voice broke my concentration, and I realized I had been staring blankly at nothing, fingers not moving on the keys. Nate stood in front my my desk, shoulders slumped in disappointment. “I know you’ve got a lot in your head, Jack,” he said, trying to inject some wisdom, “but we can’t fall behind here. I don’t want to have to hire someone else.You’re too good to easily replace.”

“I’m sorry, Nate,” I said, “I did finish Thompson’s and Pine’s notes though.” I handed him a dense pile of crisp sheets still stinking of the iron and carbon of fresh ink.

“And those?” He nodded to the even bigger pile to the left of my elbow.

“Not yet.” I said. “McGuire’s is still in here, before you ask, plus a few things Anderson asked me to transcribe for the story they’re running tomorrow.”

Nate’s face contorted in a mixture of panic and pain, like a dog who had just bitten down on a bumble bee. “You haven’t type up that story yet?” His raised voice cut through the din of the newsroom; a sour note so out of time with the majors and minors of business as usual. Voices dropped, eyed turned. “They gave that to you days ago! It should already be blocked by now!”

“No one asked me about it. I’ll do it right now if it’s so important.” I said. “Give me an hour.”

“An hour! Well don’t let anything distract you. I don’t want to have to fire you, but not even McGuire can stay my hand if you end up delaying the entire press.” His last puff signaled the end of his huff, and the switchboard operators stuck their heads out of their stained wooden doorways to see him march down to his office, still raving to himself about topics unintelligible.

I began to type, slowly at first, mopping the emotional clutter from my brain. The metal letters crashed through the silk ribbon, one heavy clank and thud at a time. “M-a-y-o-r J H-a-m-p-t-o-n M-o-o-r-e t-o S-h-u-t-t-e-r A-l-c-o-h-o-l E-s-t-a-b-l-i-s-h-m-e-n-t-s P-e-r-s-o-n-a-l-l-y.” I slung the ribbon back across to the other side with a satisfying ching. “J-a-n-u-a-r-y T-h-i-r-d 1-9-2-0.”

As I energetically hammered the return key to begin the body of the release, my phone blared a hello, nearly shaking its own hook. “This is Jack,” I answered.

“Mr. Cooper?” A bright female voice on the other end said. “There is someone here to see you. Can you please come down to reception immediately?”

I assumed it was Ginnie, or mother, or possibly even Elmer, who’d been hounding me about a signature for days. “I’m very sorry, but I cannot spare even a minute now. Can you tell the caller to try me again later, or leave me a message?”

“Erm, Mr. Cooper, I don’t think that will work. You should probably just come down here.” Her voice trembled ever so slightly.

I could picture Nate’s face, near exploding, red, contorted, if he came back to find my chair empty. “Well I’m sorry, it’s just not a good time.” I could hear someone in the background, a low voice bearing the rasp of a smoker. The receptionist’s voice faded, and I could hear a slight “oh!” as someone took the receiver from her hand.

“Jack Cooper?”

“Yes, sir?” I said.

“This is detective Keith Berman, Philadelphia Police. I am here with Mayor Moore. You have two minutes to get down here, or I’ll send two uniforms up there to escort you down less than amiably.”

The phone clicked, and went dead.

To be continued…

Brew Fiction: Twice A Maharaja

April 25, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

He knew it was a bad idea to split his soul again, but with the curved blade inching nearer to his heart and the garlicky, bearded breath of his murderer beating down on his face, there weren’t many other options.

He closed his eyes, whispered in a language long forgotten by man, and felt lightning blast through his veins. For an uncountable flash he was a bolt, pure power, a god incarnate.

When he opened them again, he was looking down at his old body; feeble, mangled, gasping through the blood and tears of a life about to end. He locked eyes with the white and hazel that had been his for 70 some years, watching the confusion unfold as the assassin tried to understand that he had, thanks to the Maharaja’s hidden talents, just murdered himself.

A copper pan fell and clattered on the floor, and the king leapt back, bloody kukri held out in front of him, still dripping lethal red warning. This body wasn’t as young as he’d hoped his next would be, but it was lithe and flexible, built to run and climb and kill. He lowered the blade and slipped behind a nearby pillar of ornately carved sandstone, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unlucky voyeur.

Silhouette sprawled across the bedroom floor in furniture and curtain shaped cut-outs of pale, lunar glow. The moon was full and fierce but half the room remained pitch and hidden, plenty of space for another assailant to hide. He eyed the corners behind the massive royal bed warily, for any slight sign of unwelcome movement.

Shiny fur, more obsidian than matte, slinked through the night, weaving in and out of shadow like it was made from, or part of, the darkness. Two jaundiced eyes ruined the perfected camouflage. The cat silently jumped onto the king’s table, disrupting the maps and military figures he’d been obsessing over only a few hours earlier.

“Oh, it’s just you?” He reached out and let the cat sniff his fingers. The digits were knobby extensions of an ugly hand, hairy, scarred, betraying a life of poverty and thuggish petulance. It had been so long since he inhabited another, that the sudden unfamiliarity of his limbs made him feel dizzy, and he grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling.

The sudden movement scared the cat, who darted to safety under the bed. The king knew he needed to eat and rest, but the scene in the bedroom had to be cleaned up before the servants came to preen and dress their lord for his morning rituals. He grabbed a earthenware pitcher from the table and swallowed greedily. Where he had expect water he got beer, malty and warm, left out of cold storage for too long. It felt good to have something in his stomach, and the alcohol ever so delicately shaved the edges off the pain still echoing in his brain.

Even though the body was no longer his, the memory of the blade’s bite remained, sending phantom messages to his nerves and flesh, who sung dissonant songs of pain in return. He had long ago mastered a way to keep physically young, but his mind was layered with a millennium of memories, a hundred different lives, some rich, some poor, some blissful, some agony. He wondered, wiping the beery froth from his coarse unkempt beard, what this new body, this next life, would teach him about the world.

A far curtain rustled, and the king turned to see what the cat was up to now. But instead of finding more feline antics, he found three men who had presumably entered through the window, all wrapped in faded gray linens, brandishing knives just like his. The biggest of the three looked down at the pile of bloody regal robes, then back up at the king’s new body. He opened his mouth and sounds came out, but the Maharaja did not recognize them as words.

“व्हत् हप्पेनेद?” The assassin used the tip of his knife to point at the corpse. “तेल्ल् मे व्हत् हप्पेनेद!”

He poured through his history, through all the books he’d read, all the places he’d lived, trying to decode the message coming from this gruff intruder. To buy time, he grunted, feigned exhaustion, even knelt in faux-fealty, hoping, assuming, that this man was his superior in whatever gang they represented.

Unsatisfied, the three moved towards the king, silky hisses of sharpened steel being drawn from leather following close behind. The Maharaja panicked for the first time in a century, unsure he had the energy to stop all three men, given how recently he’d changed corporeal residence. He held the kurki forward, but his arms were weak. The first parry knocked him back into the table, soaking the maps in the remainder of the beer.

Just before he was stabbed for a second time that same night, just before giving the man a chance to imprint another painful puncture, just before the world turn blindingly white, he closed his eyes and whispered those ancient words.

This time the lightning was more like fire, his soul an insatiable inferno moving between realms.

When he opened them again, he could see the hunched backs of the three men, bent over the space he’d so temporarily rented. The room seemed much brighter than before, but the colors were muted, as if some were missing. This body felt good; springy, agile, seductively sneaky.

The men seemed happy with their work, and went to rifling drawers for royal secrets and treasures. The Maharaja watched them closely, perched atop a bookshelf, his two yellow eyes the only sign he was there at all.

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”
― John Milton

Brew Fiction: Elysian Dragonstooth Stout

July 19, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Three boys, all dark haired and light hearted, sat cross legged in front of a dwindling fire. Their eyes reflected the glow of the embers like little paper lanterns twice tethered to the earthen floor of the cottage by their still growing bodies. On the stool, a pile of robes and wrinkles and wisdom hunched, shoulders rolled forward, leaning on a piece of gnarled ash as if trying to keep his body from tumbling into the flames.

“Kawakuchi-sensei, tell us another one! Tell us about the dragon!” The smallest boy fidgeted as the other two took turns teasing each other and trying to resurrect the fire.

With much effort, Kawakuchi no Ichiro sat up, coaxing the years out of his spine with several impressive cracks. He tapped his staff on the ground twice. The universal call for silence.

“Many years before you three were born, a dragon lived in the mountains above our village. Naka was his name. He was a runt, some say, an unwanted son of the great seadragon Watatsumi. He was reclusive and few ever saw him, to the point where most locals thought him a myth. He hid in the caves and behind the waterfalls, always fleeing deep into the serpentine caverns of the undermountain when anyone came too near.”

The little lanterns faced forward, wide open, fixated on the storyteller.

“Despite his lack of size he was kind and bold, and wanted nothing more than to make his father proud. He’d watched the great dragon, a torrent of watery power, put out massive forest fires with a flick of his tail, or change the course of rivers to save crops from withering droughts. Naka knew there was greatness in him, and he traveled the land looking to help man like his father before him. But whenever Naka saw a chance to help, witnessed the sad plight of the struggling mortals in the towns and villages, he caused more harm than good.”

Ichiro passed the staff to his other hand and leaned in closer.

“Most men began to fear Naka. He’d accidentally set houses ablaze when trying to help a blacksmith light his forge, or uproot field after field of newly sprouted rice as he beat his scaly wings trying to cool off farmers toiling in the summer sun. His shadow on the ground became a herald for destruction.”

“Eventually he just gave up. Stopped trying to help. Stopped trying to be a dragon who could bring pride to the family. He retreated to the northern mountains and most thought he had died there, forever lost to the snowcaps and drifting mists.”

With both hands on the staff, the old storyteller sighed and sagged, as if the weight of the dragon’s shame was his own.

“Many years passed and Naka faded into legend. The dragons all but disappeared from the land; their majesty forced out by metal and machines, man-made modernity. Men became drunk on their inventions, swollen with hubris, thinking they were better than nature, stronger than the land that had nourished them since the first sunrise.”

“Naka watched from his solitude, watched as the men built and bent the world to their will. A town had grown like a mushroom at the doorstep of his home, and just beyond that a great dam, a wall of stone and wood and steel, stood in the path of the river like a shield in the path of an arrow. It turned the river into a sea; a sea perched atop of mountain.”

The six lanterns bobbed up and down in agreement.

“But one day, Naka noticed commotion in his village. The men ran about and the women cried, holding their babies and praying aloud. Water had begun to spout from the river-wall, and the town was slowly filling like a freshly overturned hourglass. The sea-atop-the-mountain had sat serene long enough; it wanted to be a river again and nothing would stop it, not even the destruction of the town and death of many people.”

“Naka watched as the hole in the grey stone grew bigger. Without thinking of his past, he flew down to the dam, forcing his claws against the hole. The water rushed past his thin fingers. His feet were no better. His flames turned to mist as he tried to seal the hole with heat, drowning the valley in a dense fog.”

The lanterns were now fully alight, flames flickering, betraying their excitement.

“The water would not stop. Out of frustration, refusing to fail again, thinking of his father, Naka sunk his teeth deep into the dam. One tooth, a large curved thing much bigger than a man, slid into the hole. A perfect fit. The mountain-sea stopped its surge and was quiet again.”

“Naka could hear the people cheering below, the reverberations of their shouts an echo of his father’s spirit in the valley. But Naka could not go celebrate with the people. If he removed his tooth, the water would flow again.”

The old story teller trailed off slowly rolling his neck upwards to look at the ceiling. The lanterns blinked and turned to each other. “What happened to Naka?”

“No one really knows. Some say he stayed there, tooth stuck in the dam, until nothing was left but bones. Some say his father saw his sacrifice and turned him into the biggest mountain in the range, a testament to his bravery. Some even say that, with much effort and a roar that could be heard the world over, he sheared the tooth from his mouth and disappeared into the mountains once more.”

The lanterns dimmed, squinting looks of disbelief falling onto the old man. “Well what do you think?”

“We’ll never know.”

He smiled a perfect smile at the boys. Perfect but for the one black spot. A missing tooth.

Brew Fiction: Firestone Walker Double Jack

July 2, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The flames speak.

Each crack a noun, each snap a verb, each sizzling hiss an adjective. All part of a language no person can comprehend, part of an infinite chain of echoes that has been flaring and dying since that first bolt of lightning kissed the trees in the Earth’s infant years.

Interconnected, but not a hive-mind. Sentient, but not sentimental. Alive, but not quite living.

The flames sing.

They repeat every story ever told to them, mimicking the words and waves that thump out a beat for their endless dance. They absorb and become those stories, fueled by the tales and their troubadours, perpetuating the oral tradition with burning lips.

Every campfire a ghost story. Every grease fire a spitting satire. Every bonfire a Homeric odyssey.

The flames rage.

They’ve seen it all, those eyes in the inferno; the wars of steel, the wars of hearts, the wars of gold and greed. They know our history as it is their own, and lash with red-hot whips against the conflagration of our culture.

Unable to stop us. Unable to tell us. Unable to do anything but burn us if we get too close.

The flames die.

Their energy dissipates, leaving only the light of elder embers and the chants of a slow dirge. The heat leaks, and with it the story, warming the air and ground and soul of the planet, sprouting into new fledgling flames somewhere in the unseen distance.

In every flick then lick of fire or flame a word and idea. In every human eye a reflection of the glow. In us all a burning need to tell.

Brew Fiction: Southern Tier 422 Pale Wheat Ale

June 17, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The waves never relent. A group of Sanderlings, all grey and brown and white like they are made from the same sand they run on, chase the ebb and flee the flow. Two boys, lathered with lotion and stung with sun, fight over the height of their tiny Tintagel. The high tide washes over my feet, baptizing them in the name of this unchanging summer ritual.

It’s impossible not to notice the surfers, the dots of purple and blue and orange on the horizon appearing and disappearing behind troughs and crests. I watch their practiced patterns: wait, paddle, stand, ride. I admire how they jump up from their knees to their feet, like proud warriors against the waves. I cringe as they fall, face first, into the greenish brine. From the dry safety of my chair I’m with them, balanced as precariously between awake and asleep as they are between surfing and swimming.

As a black wet suit and orange board peaks at the top of a foaming surge, another surfer slides by, thrashing wildly on the stubby East Coast wake, like a shark caught in waters too shallow for comfort. He turns hard, spraying water behind him, before the energy of the wave is spent, and his ride unceremoniously ends. Slapping the water out of frustration, he pulls himself back up onto his board.

I’m sure out there -weightless, bobbing, free – we sand-slugs look silly hunching under umbrellas, sprawling on towels like jerky left to dry in the sun. Out there, in the endless tides, where a dolphin is more than just a fin in the distance, a man can be calm. Out there, where the only focus is feet and wax and waves and wonder.

Out there.

I swear to myself I’ll ride one of these days, feel the spray of salt on my face. I swear I’ll know the freedom and fun of a day on a longboard. I tell myself to just stay positive, to work hard, to take it one day at a time. I tell myself that practice makes perfect and without pain there is no gain.

I call to my assistant. The thin wheels of my chair are stuck in the wet sand. This happens every summer, when I demand time at the beach, and then demand I wheel myself to a ramp, off the boardwalk, into the sand, down to the water.

I tell myself that soon I’ll be unstuck. I won’t need an assistant to wheel me back to the van. Soon I’ll be able to feel that water washing over my feet, feel the sand burn my soles. Soon I’ll have an orange board and a black wet suit of my own. Soon it will be the power of the wave carrying me forward, not the power of my arms.

Soon I’ll be out there.

Beer Review: Dogfish Head Noble Rot

April 19, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The Earth’s breath swept through the stones as long interred guests howled in disapproval of our gathering. It was a late winter 8 A.M., everything floating in lifeless grey, nothing bragging about the joy of life except for a few bouquets of violet anemones that were propped up next to a sign that read, plainly, “Matthew Leonard Cole.” Leafless skeletal hands reached into the ashen cloud-cover, like some mischievous undertaker had come in the night and flipped all the trees upside down.

Roots above, blossoms below.

The priest, a stranger to us but not this town, stood stoically in his freshly dry-cleaned robes, performing his never ending duty with that bible like Sisyphus with that rock. A red silk bookmark hung from the pages of the holy text, tongue wagging in the winter wind, holding a place of reminder, of memory, of last rites.

Well practiced but unfamiliar, the priest stumbled through an exaltation of Matthew’s life: his myriad but inconsistent successes, his tragically short but intense relationships, the nothing and something and everything he left behind. He did the best he could, having received the scribbled pages of notes from friends and family only hours before, to make Matthew seem like a person who would be missed after this small crowd dispersed.

The priest read and read – those canon phrases buried in Pslam; valleys and walking and shadows and death – monotone to match the grey, somber to match the cold.

My mind wandered, drunk on loss and beer from the night before, and I had a hard time understanding the religion that filled my ears. His words seemed familiar, like I’d heard them before, like I knew their shape and structure, but it felt like I was listening to someone try to explain a complex idea in a language I didn’t know. Or at the very least couldn’t remember.

The few people who had shown I knew through Matt or Matt knew through me – a conclave of our combined social lives. Some had come far unexpectedly, others had come short, full well expecting. They hunched, coats like clerical robes covering sadness, the morning mist gathering on then rolling off waterproof fabric like tears. I counted nine. Nine to remember twenty seven. One for every three years.

Finally, the priest stopped communing and looked at me.

“I believe Katherine has a few words to say.”

I had hoped he’d forgotten, that the idea of this eulogy had slipped away in the midst of the verses, had been carried off by the holy spirit. I fumbled in my pocket for a square of white, my memories of Matt condensed into eight point five by eleven. I unfolded it carefully, reminding myself that he would be doing this for me were roles opposite; were I horizontal and he vertical.

I stared down at the crease in the sheet, one line a little longer than the other, meeting perfectly in the middle.

“Matt asked me to speak for him, but I’m worried that I can’t. I only knew him as a sister and a poor one at that. Many of you – his friends, cell-mates, fellow-trouble makers – might have known him better. But because I share blood, the responsibility falls to me to remember how he was and who he was, when he was.”

The Times New Roman on the paper blurred, deformed and refracted through the water in my eyes. I said I wouldn’t. Didn’t think I could. I folded the paper along the cross and put it away.

“I had prepared something, but it won’t do. It’s too sterile, too formal. Matt isn’t an anecdote, isn’t a punch line to some bad gallows humor. Well he wasn’t, at least.”

Several that had been staring down at the coffin looked up to me now.

“Death baffles me. What does it mean to go away? To disappear from the places you used to be? To leave a house, a car, a life that is full of your things but is empty of you? If our words still appear on paper, if our voices still echo in memory, do we ever really leave? I think Matt is still with me, still in the spaces around me, in all that air that we think is nothing, in the poems and photographs, still lingering like an eternal radio transmission.”

The wind threw a left hook, a massive gust that toppled the sign with Matt’s name, blew the purple blossoms across the graveyard’s tombstone teeth. A few errant strands of blond whipped across and stung my face, self-flagellation for a sister who’d in recent years misplaced her piety.

“And when we go, does our dignity flee? Does it run from this life, this planet, like a scared child in the face of a pillaging army? Or does it persist, angry that it has been dethroned by something as inevitable as death? The Egyptians buried their dead with gold and jewels and all those beautiful things that defined worth and value. I’d like to think we bury Matt today with all the love and spirit he brought to the world. I’d like to think we bury him beautifully, bury him with all kinds of otherworldly riches…

…but I wonder. Death equalizes and strips. The body decays even when encased in gold. Is it possible for a corpse to be regal? Is it possible to nobly rot?”

“Western funerals: black hearses, and black horses, and fast-fading flowers. Why should black be the colour of death? Why not the colours of a sunset?”
― Daniele Varè

Beer Review: Sam Adam Blueberry Hill Lager

April 12, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

“Have I ever told you about Blueberry Hill?”

Edgar sat as Edgar liked to sit, in the almond slices of afternoon that came through his window like a star forced through the slats of a wooden park bench. The light caught him, processed him, and charged him. The verdict: guilty of age. It glanced off his head, peeked through his little white hairs, those few near-translucent hangers-on, stubborn and unwilling to finally just give up, poking up from his saggy head-skin like defiant sign-waving protesters.

His eyes fixed on the sterile room’s only window, he went on, his voice an anachronistic skip like the hand of a record player stuck in the same groove, repeating the same sounds, desperately needing to be reset.

“Sheila always reminds me of the hill. She comes to my house to get me, loitering at the end of my drive. From my front door she looks like a tiny flower dancing on the wind. My dedicated daffodil.”

Despite the medication and the careful care from his well-trained and well-meaning attendants, earthquakes still raged through his nerves, the epicenter his cracked and faulted brain. As his hands involuntarily rattled against the wheels of his chair, his eyes remained still but squinted, shielding themselves from the barrage of rays.

“She sure is something. Those sun dresses she wears…” he closed his eyes, savoring the memory, chocolate on the tongue of his mind, “…the wind catches the fabric and her hair and blows them all around, and she giggles. She likes to wrap as much of her hand around mine as she can, and then we walk towards the hill, just the two of us in love, not a care in the world. Yes sir, she sure is something.”

A cloud passed between man and sun and the stream of light flickered like a memory captured on film, replayed so many times that the vivid colors of youth faded to grainy black and white. The cloud lingered a moment longer and the room showed itself true: not haven or refuge or sanctuary, but a grey and gruesome headstone. It was not here that he lived, anyway. Edgar resided in a Massachusetts that no longer existed, a home remade perfect and pristine by those few fleeting snapshots that still remained intact. It was a place of another time, one he could always, and never, return to.

“You know why they call it blueberry hill? ” A few-toothed smile climbed up onto his face. “The blueberries bushes! Dozens of them, randomly growing on the side of the hill. In summer, they’re packed with so many of those juicy little things. They look so nice, sometimes I feel bad about eating them and ruining the perfect scene. Everyone always says that wild blueberries are too sour to eat but, oh, not these. These are perfect. Just like my Sheila.”

Leaning forward in his chair, trying not to let the wheels slip out of his achy grasp, straining against the ichor in his bones, Edgar longed to see a little further out the window.

“That hill, let me tell you, it isn’t just a hill. That place is love incarnate. I stole my first kiss there, a few years back, but Sheila didn’t mind. I was lying next to her, laughing that we forgot a blanket again, and as she smiled, staring up at all that blue and white, I rolled over and kissed her cheek. She didn’t pull away, didn’t laugh, just turned and looked at me with those eyes and I knew. That grass and those bushes. That’s the place.”

The hill. Sheila. April blueberries. Teenage love on a spring day. The world he saw out that window was an invisible paradise.

“Can I go outside? It’s such a beautiful day, I’m sure Sheila’s already waiting on me.”

It was an involved process to get him ready; his lungs couldn’t muster any defense from the onslaught of pollen and pollutants, and he could barely move under the weight of the oxygen tank and UV blanket. He was proud, but in his protective suit, looked more machine than man, more artificial than real.

He blinked, staring out over the poorly kept courtyard, staring at the lone gnarled stick that masqueraded as a tree and the dozen bluebells that struggled up through the sun-scorched ground. After surveying the landscape, his shoulders sagged and he rolled his head back slightly, blue-green eyes looking into mine past the molded clear breathing mask of the respirator. Those eyes, with longing spilling out as tears, flashed for a moment, his computer rebooting as if it had hit some unrecoverable error upon seeing this ruin of nature.

“Have I ever told you about Blueberry Hill?”

Beer Review: Evolution No. 3 IPA

March 29, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The memories are inconsistent, jumbles of pictures and sounds but nothing concrete. A fall. A cut. Bleeding. Healing. I recognize these wet, fallen leaves, but not this naked skin or the blood on my hands.

“I have the schedule. We’re going to review batches one through eight from Sample Block E.” The lab coat, animated by some pale ghoul wearing glasses, spoke with authority. “We purged blocks A and B earlier this week. Only one batch had a slight improvement over earlier iterations. Strains were isolated and taken for further study.”

I hear water. Somewhere off to my left, the trickle of a stream. I try to move towards it, but my muscles ache from the gnashing cold. My bones feel like iron being dissolved by acid. The branches from these fallen trees jab my bare feet, poking and stabbing and torturing with every step. I can see my breath.

“I was disappointed with the results from number one. Do you concur?” One lab coat shuffled awkwardly next to another, hazy outlines of men washed out by glaring overheard lights. “Number two shows a lot of potential, but it’ll never work with those defects. We’ll extract the sequences and move on.”

The sun is dropping in perfect time with the temperature. As the shadows grow longer, my aches burrow deeper. I’m not sure I can outlast this day, not without finding some kind of haven. The water soothes my cracked throat. My teeth chatter.

“Ah, three-ee. Three-bee showed great improvement, but we had to remove it due to a psychological abnormality.” One lab coat marked something on a clipboard, pen skittering across the paper like a spider across a web. “I think this one is the first passable example we’ve seen. Except…”

The sun is gone. I don’t know if I’ll see it come up again. I can see a light in the distance, up high, casting a yellow glow over the clearing. My legs feel too sore to run, but I move towards the light. Towards the light. The warm, seductive beams of light.

“No, no. This won’t do. The project parameters specifically set the tolerances of variation. If we accept this batch, we’d be undoing years of meticulous splicing.” Lab coat one turned and whispered something to lab coat two. “No. I said no! Flush the chamber.”

The light is affixed to a wall of stone. Several more throw flat light in all directions. The wall is smooth and cold, but I can feel a hum coming from the other side. The leaves and sticks have been cleared here. Familiar.

“I don’t care if you think the progress is too slow. Natural evolution takes hundreds, thousands of years. We can speed it up, but these changes are subtle, gradual.” Several other lab coats had gathered, all of them moving away from Block E, ghosts moving from one life to the next. “We’re scheduled to review Blocks C and D tomorrow. There’s still hope our engineering will have the desired effect.”

I pass several large, round openings, most dripping water into shallow pools. Tracks, deep grooves in the mud, move off in every direction. I can finally see a door, brown and thick and metal. I run my hands along the concrete for guidance and support. I move slowly. I see a sign.

“Good, good. Three-cee appears to be within limits. Inform the director. We’re ready to move to live trials.”

The metal is cold, etched. Words. A language. Words I know: united, lab, genetics, states. My fingers are numb. I try to remember, but the memories are inconsistent, a jumble. I slump against the wall. I rub my hands across my chest, trying to keep warm. I find something. Raised skin, painful lumps. A three. A bee. I close my eyes.

“Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.” -Barbara Ehrenreich

Review: Flying Dog Lucky SOB Irish Red

March 15, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

When he had finally mustered enough courage, he looked up.

He stood in front of the ruin and took a moment to remember it. The dirty, butt-stained sidewalk that had hosted dozens of drunk denizens who smoked their cigarettes in the Boston air, the flower boxes that had sheltered and nurtured his mother’s favorite purple butterworts, the green and red sign that had proudly cast the name “Flaherty’s” over the tiny side street now burnt and crumbling and black, everything ruined by smoke and flame and the power of unattended random chance.

If he hadn’t been late that morning, if he hadn’t been so slow to rise with head fogged by one too many late night whiskeys, if he hadn’t needed drink after drink to quiet his guilty conscience, if he wasn’t a coward and an idler, James thought, maybe, just then maybe when the over due bills in piles in the unkempt backroom caught those fledgling flames from that gas oven that should have long been replaced, he might have stopped it; not had to watch his father’s dream, an Irish life reborn and infused with American pride, billow and ascend, smoke colored black by all that carbon and shame.

The claims adjuster was late. James kicked at some fallen wood near the door, careful not to venture too far inside the building, worried that it was still in the middle of its death throes, still capable of collapsing a little bit more at any minute. The morning air gusted, picked up the scent of charred memories, kegs and coat racks and day-old beer. Inside the doorway he could feel the warmth still radiating off of the remains of the tall tables and long bar, all the stored energy seeping out of the wood like it was bleeding.

James lost focus at the sound of car clumsily hopping up the curb while trying to park. A young, fat man, maybe 29, 30, struggled to lift himself out of the driver’s seat. His pants were an inch or two too short, his tie was a hideous spotted yellow, and his receding hair line was barely visible in the stubble of his closely trimmed blonde hair. James could smell his Old Spice, old school, from 50 yards away. “James? James Flaggerty?”

“Flair-tee.” The mispronunciation of his name, his father’s name, at this moment, in this place, felt like a poorly timed punch to the gut.

“Oh, sorry.” The adjuster pulled out some papers, shuffled them trying to find a specific line on a legal-sized form, then looked up. “Oh man. You’re lucky this fire didn’t jump to these neighboring buildings. That would have been an insurance nightmare.”

James kicked another beam of wood, uncovering a half-burned coaster. A tiny shamrock, the only Irish cliche next to Guinness that his father perpetuated, was still clearly green and alive on the bottom corner of the cardboard.

“Heh. Lucky.”

It felt wrong to sit in another bar, drink, even kind of enjoy himself. But the whiskey burned nice and the ice melted slow, and the homemade Irish red ale was just as his father would have liked it: overly malty, crisp, sneaking hints of Irish moss that lingered on his tongue. It was from his father he learned to drink, so it was to his father he drank the next one.

And the next one.

James didn’t stumble home, his careening so practiced that it was almost just one long graceful fall from bar stool to pillow. The whiskey normally stifled his dreams, but tonight they flared and seared, father and fire and failure all whirling together in an inferno of nightmarish scenes. He woke up, head pounding, throat dry, vomit lurching in his stomach, to remember that both his father and the bar were, in the waking tangible sunlight of reality, gone.

He looked at the clock: 10:49. His phone buzzed. For a moment, he thought about letting his head slam back down onto the pillow. The number was familiar, but not one that he’d stored in his phone. He waited for the third buzz, sighed, and answered.

“Mr. Flaggerty?”

The already horrible headache intensified. “Flair-tee. What can I do for you?”

The claims adjuster sounded even more nasal over the phone. “I just got the report from the fire marshal. I’ve got the final coverage numbers, but the inspection found something I think you should see.”

The pub looked less dejected now that the fire had completely gone out of her, the shiny black of the beams reflected the midday sun almost defiantly. Most of the debris had been cleared from the entrance and the street. She looked scarred and damaged but respectful.

“Mr. Flag…Flaherty. Thanks for showing up so last minute. Most of the worst of the mess has been cleaned up, so if you’ll just step inside for a moment, I’ll show you what I was referencing earlier.” The claims adjuster did his best to gracefully move through the rubble, trying to avoid getting his ill fitting khakis stained by any soot, leading James near the back of the pub where they’d taken keg and food deliveries. They passed the slumping, massive piece of oak that had been the bar; two tarnished tap stems, standing proud, the only things that seemed relatively undamaged by the fire.

Near a large hole in the floor was a walrus of a man, a man whose stature and uniform said authority but whose huge white mustache and kind eyes said grandpa. He looked at James then back down at the hole. “Did you know this room was here?”

Confused, only remembering the back of the bar as a place of refuge from the commotion of the patrons and the trajectory of drunkenly tossed darts, James didn’t know what this man was talking about. He inched closer, pushing past the combined girth of both inspectors, trying to look down between the broken floor boards. A few boxes, an old filing cabinet, nothing really shocking, except for the fact that this pub, a place he’d literally and figuratively grown up in, been reared and scolded and taught to drink, had a hidden secret.

“I’m going to try and climb down there.” The fire marshal huffed and recommended otherwise. Ignoring the man, who probably wouldn’t have even fit down the hole had he wanted to explore it, James threw his legs over the edge and slowly lowered himself into the room below.

The room was small, but not tiny, stinking of mildew and oldness, the kind of place you’d expect a pub manager to turn into an office if a pub even needs something as official and business-like as an office. James used his cell phone as an impromptu flash light, shining it over the boxes – no crates – that we stacked neatly along one back wall. Clear glass necks poked out the top in rows of 6, columns of 4, case after case of the stuff, hundreds of bottles of whiskey left sleeping for decades.

He grabbed a bottle and brushed away the dust and blackness. Eyes wide, he read the years on the bottles: 70, 73, 85 years old, some even more ancient. All intact. Perfect, pristine. An army of golden soldiers in glass armor.

James moved to the filing cabinet. Years of rust and dust had seized the runners, but with a little force and a lot of curiosity, he forced the middle drawer open. He thumbed through the yellowing paper, tilting the phone to get a better look at the faded writing on each page. The first folder housed records, names and bills and income for years well before James was alive. The second folder was empty, short of an old, wooden handled bottle opener. The third, packed nearly to the point of bursting, fell from his hands as he lifted it from the cabinet and spilled all over the floor.

At the sound of this, the fire marshal called to him, shining his flashlight down to see if James was OK. This beam of light caught the papers on the floor just long enough for James to read the titles: Flaherty’s Oatmeal Stout, Flaherty’s Pale Ale, Flaherty’s Irish Red Ale. Next to each recipe was a hand drawn little green shamrock, perfect mimicry of the one his father had so insistently included on anything associated with the bar.

The claims adjuster’s head appeared, upside down, from the hole above. “Are you OK? Looks pretty messy down here. You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.”

James smiled. “Yea. Lucky.”

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
― Cormac McCarthy

Review: Fordham Copperhead

March 1, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It was in that pub, appropriately old and charismatic, that they decided to meet, meet and rekindle a friendship that had long ago been extinguished by the complication and tribulation of growing to adult from child. For years he’d held an image of her in his head: eighteen, dirty-blonde hair tangled in the sea breeze, a simple smile against the backdrop of summer sand, a swirl of love and lust.

He’d held onto this perfect version of her for so long that the twenty-five years between memory and present seemed inconsequential. To think she had remained a pristine object of juvenile attraction was ridiculous, as he saw in himself almost no resemblance to the teenager he had been. He no longer chased an idealistic boyhood dream, but instead settled into the comfort of events expected. He’d made his career accidentally, falling from one unplanned, unwanted success to another, until he had reached a position too deeply buried in the expectations of those around him to ever pull himself free.

He arrived early, emotions flaring in his stomach, nervous in a way he hadn’t known since first held-hands, first tongue-kisses, and first pseudo-romance. His work had instilled in him an almost necessary fearlessness, but this was no corporate merger or board meeting or greedy executive to be manipulated. For once, he did not have the upper hand. For once, he would be on the defensive.

He ordered a beer.

Stealing furtive glances at the door did not help calm his mind. He agonized over what he’d say, how he’d sound, how his hair looked. Their fates had slipped apart long ago, each taking a path completely unlike the other, each eventually finding happiness in a world where those hushed promises, whispers in the backseat of an old truck, were nothing but fragments of another forgotten reality.

As the halfs lurched into hours, his nervousness dissolved into disappointment. The bottom of his glass felt like the bottom of his heart, nearly empty, the fizz of excitement all but spent and released into the nothingness of the night. He checked to make sure he hadn’t come to the wrong place or come on the wrong day. He checked for missed calls or an overlooked text. He checked to make sure he hadn’t missed her sitting at the bar nursing a glass of chardonnay, waiting on him like he was waiting on her.

He ordered another beer.

For weeks he’d known this was a bad idea, a stupid flailing grasp to reclaim some part of his youth in the same way some men buy sports cars or divorce a perfectly amazing woman to marry an amazingly imperfect one. But he’d agreed and she’d agreed and he’d convinced himself a shared drink and a few hours wouldn’t tear open the wound he’d spent decades stitching back together.

The abandonment reared, hissing forked tongue insults of I-told-you-so. Loneliness, a pit viper hidden behind blue eyes, sunk its teeth into his heart, replacing the pumping red of life with corroded copper acid. He had lived with so much regret over her that it seemed fitting to leave with a little bit more.

As he swung his jacket around his shoulders and downed the rest of his orange painkiller, he turned to pay his tab. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something: forty-three, dirty-blonde streaked with subtle grey, a simple smile against the backdrop of barren bar, a swirl of longing and lament.

“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.”

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