God's Acre and a Bag of Noise

Other than the freakshow at diPiazzas on Wednesday night, this was a solidly boring week. diPiazzas has what they call “The Writer’s Garage” every Wednesday night, so it’s a place we’ve been known to go for poetry/spoken word and to see a singer songwriter/random band. I like the juxtaposition of “acts” there, and the fact that anything goes—as long as you’re interesting. I plan on performing there at some point this summer, so I hope I’m interesting. Anyhow, the poet of the evening, Chris Davidson, seemed like a great guy and I dug the fact that he was self-deprecating, but his work wasn’t very good—according to me (my opinion is the only one that matters here, so you’ll have to take my word for it).

He was followed by—I kid you not—a rockin’ high school band. Right before they went on, the bar all of a sudden filled with dozens of teenagers—as if letting in a swarm of curious and hapless wasps—making the bar far more interesting and, at the same time, far more frightening. The band was called “Bagg of Noize.” Yes, folks, that’s the spelling. I can’t think of a worse band name at the moment. Wait, how about, “We Need to Practice.” Ouch. That’s not entirely fair. These guys were good for teenagers. Hell, I still can’t play the guitar.

But what I really wanted to talk about was the main guy—we’ll call him Randy. Let me start by saying that Randy is, or will be, dangerous. Randy is all of about 5’9” and 140 pounds soaking wet and holding a hot iron. He went on stage wearing a 1970s red hair ‘fro wig, black sunglasses, black cowboy boots (yes, I said cowboy boots), and a fake leather coat. He had a great voice, but he scared the shit out of me. There was just something about him. Part of it might have been that he already has a little cult following. The main thing, I think, is that I smell sociopath all over this guy. If things ever get weird again (again?), he may very well be the next Charlie Manson—wielding power through mind control, but never technically doing anything. Okay, so that may be a bit of hyperbole, but what can I say? The kid has talent, but he creeps me out. All I’m saying is that his phone calls are probably being tapped in Bush’s illegal and unconstitutional wiretap “program.”

My thoughts for the evening were: “Even I taste better with ranch,” and “Teenagers make me anxious.”

Anyhow, below is the second (short) short story that was published by commonties.com. I hardly ever write short fiction anymore, so it seems strange to have had two (short) short stories published fairly recently. In addition to “Going All the Way” (reprinted in previous post), “God’s Acre” is the only other story I’ve even submitted to any publication over the past several years. As a matter of fact, I can’t remember the last time, nor the last story, that I submitted. Perhaps commonties.com was shooting heroin when they made their decision. Can you believe they pay me for this shit?

God’s Acre

It happened during that brief moment in autumn after the leaves have changed, but before they’ve completely given in to the fall of the season. On Sundays, after church, after everyone left for lunch, we’d play soccer in the old graveyard—what grandma called God’s acre.

It wasn’t really soccer, but that’s the kind of ball we used. The game was simple: Kick the ball at gravestones as hard as you can. Every ricochet was worth one point—unless it hit the stone at the far end of the yard. That one was worth ten points, but it might as well have been a thousand.

We stayed as far away from it as we could. It was an odd stone, so weathered it looked like the first rock on earth. It was shaped like an old arrowhead and had a single word on its face, a name, barely readable: ALLEN.

Some of the people in town were positive it was a first name, while others swore it was a last. One thing was for certain: It was the only grave in the yard that wasn’t recorded in the town’s registry of the dead.

Different stories went around about what lay beneath that stone. Some said it was a slave’s resting place. Others were sure the old bones belonged to an explorer who got stuck in the wilds of winter. Still others insisted it was the remains of a witch. Whoever he or she was, most agreed the stone was haunted.

It’s the sort of thing that happens in the quick conversations of small towns: The unexplained is explained by one of a number of stories passed on from father to son, brother to brother, friend to friend, and so on—the cycle repeating for generations.

Regardless of the various tales surrounding it, everyone believed it was the first grave ever dug in town—that the church and its graveyard grew up around it. In the beginning they used the stone as a kind of marker, burying the dead line by line, vertical and horizontal from it.

For us, the strangest thing about the grave was that it was the first place we’d go looking for Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie was the kind of drunk that takes years to perfect. He was good at it. He’d go to ALLEN late at night, after all of the bars had closed or thrown him out. He’d sit next to that old stone and swallow down whatever was left of his bottle.

When the bottle was empty, Uncle Charlie would howl—a sound that found its pitch in the mangled holler of a man gone wild or the desperate scream of a woman. What didn’t make any sense was that Uncle Charlie never remembered going to that grave. His story was always the same: “When I left the pub, I was headed home.”

After a few years the word got out. They gave him a nickname: “Crazy Old Charlie.” He was still just Uncle Charlie to us. I wasn’t embarrassed. Neither was my brother. If anything, we were proud our uncle had the courage to be alone with ALLEN.

We hadn’t been out to the cemetery for Uncle Charlie in years. He rarely left his house after the stroke. The night it happened we picked up a 12-pack and headed off to our favorite spot to drink: ALLEN. Uncle Charlie, in his own way, had everything to do with that. It just fit. The odor of alcohol lingered there like the smell of perfume cloaking a funeral parlor.

We never got the chance to crack open a single beer that night. We only got as far as the cherry tree. That’s where we found him, flat on his back, arms outstretched. First my brother, then I, leaned over the broken body of the man.

It was nothing like we’d ever seen or even imagined. It was barely real. If it wasn’t for the blood pooled around his neck and that empty stare, I might have believed he was a fallen angel. It struck me that maybe angels lose their way, too, and wind up inexplicably in graveyards.

The man was a stranger to us. We were sure of that. At first we thought it might be Uncle Charlie, that he had made his way to the graveyard to visit and drink with ALLEN one more time before they actually met in what grandma called The Great Beyond.

But it wasn’t him. We knew right away. The man didn’t have a bottle in his hand, he wasn’t wearing suspenders, and he didn’t have the scar Uncle Charlie earned (and proudly displayed) in a bar fight several years before my brother and I were born.

The lifeless body under the cherry tree had a full head of straight blonde hair, and a belly flatter than Uncle Charlie’s ever was—even as a kid. He wore torn jeans and what was once a white T-shirt. A few leaves had fallen and stuck to him.

We stared and said nothing for what seemed like an hour. A cool breeze blew from the west. Thunder cracked and the sky opened. Our gaze was taken by a streak of lightning, and then my brother’s wide eyes found mine. The rain came slowly at first, and then in waves, as we gripped the fat of our hands around his ankles and dragged him to the far edge of God’s acre.

There are 591 days remaining in Bush’s presidency.