Week 12 Part 2

It was going to be the job of his dreams. After finding his own name on the termination list he executed himself at his last employment as corporate hatchet-man. In short time he landed as Chief Planner in Charge of Marketing at Mauer Associates, the sole owner of rights to the Three Stooges legacy.

In fifth grade he ran home every day through suburb streets nearby Lansing, Michigan to see the boys bonking, hammering, and poking each other. Later in life he was frustrated every time the rumors of a feature length film or a television series proved wrong. Sure, he could always find a tee shirt, a bottle opener that made Curly noises, or DVD of the old shorts at Blockbuster. But what he wanted was an hour and a half of full color mayhem in full feature presentation.

He had an epiphany on the way home after terminating himself. Stopping for a paper he saw in the bargain bin next to the magazines there was a DVD of the entire Three Stooges cartoon series for $7.99. He thumbed it back and forth in the bin lamenting the trash that emerged from the Stooges camp since he saw Larry as an old man on afternoon television talk in the seventies.

He could be the one to come up with a decent concept to revive the boys and bring the new Stooges in living color to the forefront of American pop culture. He took out his Blackberry and found the Stooges production company and made his flight reservations for Los Angeles the following day. On the flight he researched the devolution of Stooges marketing over his lifetime. He found a Los Angeles Times Sunday feature from the late eighties that fingered Moe’s son as the controlling heir who could not bring himself to sully the image of his Dad by allowing copy-cat images on the screen.

So he hatched his plan, to pitch himself truthfully as a forever fan spawned during the re-runs of the shorts every afternoon during the sixties and seventies. He would hide his ambition to see a new incarnation of the boys up on the screen but would pull every trick known once inside the organization.

It took a week for Moe’s son to spot him as a chiseler. The hand motioning up and down in his face should have warned him of the two-to-the eyes that was coming but he was blinded. Next thing he felt a boot to the pant seat and he was out the back door onto a sunny California street rubbing his eyes and wondering how it all went so wrong.

Week 12 Part One

This was not the kind of day he envisioned when he agreed to take on the position of Vice-President in charge of Planning and Executive Development. The title sounded innocuous, even friendly in a corporate world peppered with personal attacks from ever-grasping underlings. Quickly came the sandbag slung directly to the head and neck at his first board meeting. He walked from that meeting dizzy, staring at shoes, somehow arriving at his office. Sitting carefully into his chair sweaty shirt coolly clinging to the leather back he let the weight settle. He fingered the sheaf topmost titled “Systematic Executive Dismissal Planning & Execution”. Even the acronym repeated in the meeting sounded friendly, SEDPE, they pronounced it like “Said Pea”.

Then they made it into a verb saying “Jones will have to be Said Pea-ed”. Then they laughed and morphed it into “Reverez will have to Centipeded”. Then they dubbed him the “Centipede”. A harmless arthropod not, but a crawling, living under-rock, devoid of humanity, grasping-pulling-down-under creepy thing. Was it a siren from the street way below through the glass office wall? No it was the phone, three rings, and four.

He mechanically brought the receiver to his ear hearing his wife, “Can you pick up Jonny after soccer at the Y and bring him to band practice at the gym?” Tiny bits of sweat emerged across his lip as the mouthpiece brushed his cheek. His silence prompted another noise from the phone as he flipped to the first page of SEDPE.

“Honey, are you there?”

He read the names, Jones, Reverez, Hunsell, and on down the page each one with a day and time to be ushered into his office for the termination talk.

“Honey, are you listening?”

“Yes, what time. What time at the Y?”

“Four, look I got to go Sally’s waiting. We’re all meeting for coffee. See you, love you bye.”

“Bye,” he repeated and cradled the receiver in one hand held off the table by his elbow letting his forehead rest one the other palm pushing that elbow into the desk blotter. The names and dates blurred as he closed his eyes and sighed. Eyes still closed he let the receiver set into its cradle and opened his eyes to see a red-eyed housefly walking across the names on the page.

“Hail fellow arthropod.” He raised the phone hand high and in a ceremonious swing he smashed fly guts and blood into the paper. He turned over his hand to see the remains on his skin and the smeared over a few names. “Relative or not you’re dead”.

Theme Week 11

Beginning to breathe Ray took in moisture steaming off blueberry bushes carpeting the ground from his shoes to the highway. The sun rising over hills opposite lit glistening water on a million leaves. It is steamy today. It will be better to get the bees moved before the sun gets too high. The move is only a mile, and better done at night, but it was early enough so the foragers were still in the hives.

Seven-year-old Dawson came running far down the barren toward his father, thick blond hair glinting.

Ray yelled, “Megan, I’m moving the bees. Can you kindly get our son back in the house?”

Dawson ran closer, his sandals spraying dew with every stride until his foot found a pothole, he fell, and his head planted firmly into the next hummock.

“Megan,” Ray urgently repeated.

The first rays of sun lit Megan’s blond curls as she looked out the window to where Dawson lay. Fear gripped her throat, breath halted. Hadn’t she thrown the deadbolt on the back door knowing Ray was disturbing bees? Instantly she grabbed the Epi-pen in the fanny pack by the front door, kicked onto the front porch, and pumped her long limbs. As she ran toward Dawson fear tightened, moving across her chest and into her stomach. She ran with abandon suddenly at her boy’s side pulling the Epi-pen out of its tube, the needle end unsheathed. She rolled him over.

Now remembering the first time he was stung, only two-years-old, when Ray was moving a hive up to the neighbor’s field. Dawson was playing in the sandbox; she could watch through the kitchen window while doing chores. Scraping baked-on eggs from the quiche pan she looked out, noticed Dawson swatting all around his head, then down his body, furiously sweeping with the back of his hands.

Now tears welled up in her eyes as she held the adrenaline bearing tube above her seven-year old son’s leg. All she could see in her mind’s eye was his puffy body lying still in the sand when she stared unbelieving, panting over the sand box. Now kneeling in the cool green leaves looking at his bear leg, was it all puffed up like in the sandbox or was it normal? The words of Dr. Miller echoed in her head. “It can’t hurt him to get a shot of adrenaline, but waiting too long to administer can be fatal”

She plunged the tube at his right thigh sinking the needle a quarter inch into his flesh. He bolted upright, wide-eyed yelling, “Bad Mom! You said I get jabbed when I had the hives all over me. Where are the hives, I don’t see any hives, I don’t have itchies,” Dawson screamed, tears now pouring down his face. She went to hug him but he pushed her away. She noticed that his face was normal now. Had the shot worked that fast?

In the sandbox, it was nearly ten minutes before the ambulance arrived and the EMT gave the shot. She noticed, swaying along in the ambulance, that she couldn’t see any of his freckles. The paternal, balding EMT kept asking “How long ago did he get bit? How long has he been unconscious? Is he allergic to any medications?” While the younger, intense black-haired EMT bent down over Dawson sticking an IV needle in his arm, talking over a headset to the emergency room.

She had not noticed any relief in the swelling until in the emergency room. There his color got better. She remembered when Ray finally came and he said that the boy looked blue; within a few minutes Ray said the boy’s color got better.

Dawson’s cries and blows brought her back into the present moment as she tried to hug him. Her boy never left the now. She gazed again across her boy’s face, down his arms, and over his bear legs. Every freckle was visible, skin pale except for the red puffy spot where the needle pricked his thigh. He was rubbing it now. Megan got her arms around him. She realized with a rush of relief that she had imagined the swelling, panic had raced her heart into that past place, sure her baby was suffocating. Tears streamed down her cheeks, she felt her face light up and flush with relief and joy.

Theme Week 10

I always wanted to be the leader of the pack, leather jacket, wind in my slicked back hair, Camel in the corner of my mouth, loud pipes announcing to the world, “Here comes Trouble.” Well not all always. That phase hit in the early teens but before that the pack I was in was a Cub Scout pack. Imagine the scouts selling at a roadside lemonade stand, the sign reading “Profits To Benefit Widows and Orphans”. Pipes roar to a halt at the stand bringing the alert den mother to the fore.

“Peroni’s Bar and Grill is another mile that way,” she says pointing.

Behind her a half dozen scouts stand wide eyed while one scout on the end sneaks forward for a closer look at a lagging gang member just stopping. Dust settles on his greasy hair as he notices the kid’s curiosity.

“What’s your name kid?”

I look back at the den mother who is engaged in animated discussions with the gang leader. “Stevens,” I say and venture a question, “How fast can you go?”.

“That all depends on who’s chasing me Mr. Stevens.” He said shaking an unfiltered cigarette from a pack inside his leather jacket and lighting it with a shiny sliver Zippo. “They call me Snake.” My eyes gave away my fascination with the lighter and he held it out to me. “Betcha you could light some campfires with this baby, no more rubbing sticks together.”

I took it in hand and felt its warmth and weight. I tried to spin the coarse wheel and hold it with one hand. When that did not work I tried with two hands but still found it unwieldy.
I felt Snake’s calloused hand like the wheel on the lighter as he grabbed it back saying, “Like this kid, watch”. He quickly held it in one hand and clanged the top open with the heel of the other and in the same motion sparks flew as he wheeled the flint along the thigh of his denim pants. He held the lit wick up to his wide smile showing a gold front tooth. I stood staring at the flame half fascinated, half terrified. Snakes display began to attract attention from a couple of his compatriots.

“Stevens get back from those hooligans right now,” shouted the den mother.

I awoke from my trance but the spell was cast. I guess that spell was not as strong as the ones put upon me by the scouts. Today I am preparing for my son’s Cub Scout meeting in our garage and there is plenty of room in there since there is no motorcycle to get in the way.