A man by any other name

Feldman Jack lived out of the back of a moving van that he parked between two elms on a rise that overlooked every house in the new community except Bradley’s. His real name was Jack Feldman, but he changed it legally to Feldman Jack because the government kept listing him that way and he wanted his name to appear correctly in the phone book. His van had the motto “we move shit so you don’t have to,” on the side in stenciled cursive red. Although he owned both a single mattress complete with a box-spring and a three-seat leather couch, he fell asleep in the mouth of the van, one leg and one arm hanging over the edge, his knife and a bar of soap in his lap.

The Chauffeur

The chauffeur arrived first. A melon of a man in a penguin of a suit, that one. All teeth at the face except a mammoth brow. Coat him in bronze and you’d have one shiny pile of metal under a false-bottomed top hat he likes to pull his rabbits from. Given the best weather, he never leaves a dry spot when he sits. In Cleveland, he bit an ex-con’s arm in a fight over a parking space. Fabric tore. Blood was spilled. He left the man two dollars “for the entertainment.” The day his mother broke her hip, he put her in a shopping cart he wrestled from a homeless man and wheeled her to the emergency room, not stopping for the curbs. He was the champion of anything violent, but always burned the letters he wrote for his causes in effigy before anyone ever read them. He had money once, but he ate it with ranch dressing.

Stained Rug

Clemens lived in Liverpool. He believed that he had been hexed by witches. Somewhere there was a book that contained a secret five letter word. The letters of this word, when recited in litany, would be a countdown. Every sixty times, the last letter in the sequence was replaced with a clap. When no letters remained, he would clap five times and the spell would be lifted. He searched for thirty years, never finding what he was looking for, when suddenly he felt it all throughout his being that he had no idea what he sought. Not in life, in anything. He had created a fictitious riddle that had no answer, and he had reveled in it like he was Bacchus. “Voltaire!” He cried as he threw Anna Karenina into the chandelier. “You have betrayed me!” Crystal shattered. Shards fell. A piece left a cut down Clemens’ cheek, and he covered his face in his hands. Drops of blood ran down his wrists and fell to the carpet.

Safety and Accountability

In five years, a man named Quentin that I met briefly in a coffee shop might come to work in a windowless office. His job will be to examine expense receipts in manila envelopes marked “process and file” with a red stamp. He will lick the tip of his pencil before he writes anything. In the bottom right hand drawer of his desk, eighty-seven un-mailed love letters to a woman in Safety and Accountability named Irma Wentshire will lie hidden under boxes of paperclips. Quentin will never know her as more than a page of numbers, but he will fall in love with her expenses. One day, one of his co-workers will go nuts and shoot him in the forehead with an AR-15 assault rifle. The story will run on the evening news, but even though Irma will watch the report while eating dinner, she will never know who Quentin was. The story will say nothing about the letters. Maybe, instead, the story will focus on the killer, on the isolation or childhood trauma that drove him to violence. Irma will think, “What a sad, sad, man. If I had met someone like that, I’d listen and maybe understand just enough to make all the difference in the world.”

The Yeti

In 1847, a mountaineer in Manitoba claimed that he saw The Yeti. Lost in a winter storm on a plateau, he stumbled into a small village named something that can’t be written with the Western Alphabet. The villagers treated him like he was crazy because they could not understand a word he said. They forced him into a cave past the last hut on the southern slope while he pleaded for water and warmth. It was a miracle he survived the night. In the morning, one of the villagers overheard the man praying in English and in French. The Man with Tools spoke French, the villager thought, though he did not know the name of the language. When the Man with Tools translated the mountaineer’s prayers, four of the tribal warriors took up their spears and stabbed the traveler to death. The traveler had no way of knowing that the tribe’s god too was a jealous god.

The Laser Razor

In Quebec, a man named Gene shaved with a razor he designed that cut the hair with lasers. Gene was proud of his laser razor, and he hummed while he uses it because it always gives a perfect shave even if he’s not looking in a mirror.
He daydreamed that a voice called from the bathroom doorway. “Gene? Did you remember to get those reports from Protocol?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Cheyanne stepped out of the bathroom and secured the towel under her arm. Cheyanne supervised that branch of the lab and reported bi-monthly to a liaison from the main facility in Ontario.
“Springfield is coming in from Toronto next week, and I need to have my report together before then.”
“Why are you in a towel?” Gene said. “Are you naked under there?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh.”
But that’s the way Gene was, always spoiling his own fantasies. He wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have his laser razor. He ran a bit of tap water over his face to rinse off the clipped ends, and he slid the razor into its velvet bag. His fingers ran as smoothly over his face as they would over polished ice.

The Wild West

Maybe this all relates back to Fransesco T. Vincent, or Eight Ring Vince as he came to be called. In 1832, he surfaced in New Mexico, a seller of cotton garments turned gun fighter, most notable because he lacked the middle finger of each hand. To hear him tell it, the fingers were shot off during a skirmish in a mining camp at the spur of a mountain in Nevada. However he lost them, his fame was brief as his impairment slowed his perfect draw just enough. A veteran pistolier named Dervis Wertman, a.k.a. the whirling Dervis, put two bullets in his chest on a dusty afternoon outside a dry goods store that August. His mother shipped his body to a cemetery outside New Ipswich and buried him under the epitaph, “Never less the man.”

The Case of Wendell Parks

Wendell lived well before the Beatles, but he appreciated music nonetheless. Particularly viola. His daughter hated him because he forced her to learn the Viola. Violin could lead. Piano could lead. Voice could lead. She would not sit third row in the orchestra, but first so the conductor could talk to her. He was a beautiful man, graceful and lithe in arm, stern in face. A fire burned in her heart every time she played, growing larger and colder with each passing day. Six years later, she achieved first chair in the London Symphony Orchestra. On the night of the concert The Prince attended, she stabbed the first chair violinist in the back and then killed his father as he ran to his son. The audience panicked. A Royal guardsman shot the daughter in the face with a musket. Wendell lived the rest of his life in sadness, naïve that he was to blame.

To Protect and Serve

Kirgo woke up to the buzz of his alarm clock. He picked up the framed picture of the Virgin Mary that stood on his bedside table and kissed her on the forehead. He drew his medal of Saint Christopher out of the drawer by the chain, and before he clasped it around his neck, he kissed that too. Finally, he turned off his alarm, pulled on the pair of sweat pants he set out the night before, and made his bed.

Kirgo’s morning workout consisted of Shouting Practice, followed by Pepper Spray Accuracy, followed by How to Kill a Man.” Shouting Practice entailed standing in front of the mirror and shouting “Stop right there,” “Hold it,” and “If you don’t put that back right now, I’ll have to call the police” until his face and neck flushed red and bulged with veins. Pepper Spray Accuracy meant that he quick-drew the canister from the pouch clipped to the band of his sweat pants while he jumped side to side and shot the rifle-range target he tacked to the wall by the bureau. For How to Kill a Man, Kirgo acted out various scenarios that might arise at work that could necessitate the killing of his opponent. On the mornings he felt particularly confident with shouting, Kirgo merged How to Kill a Man and Shouting Practice into Applied Shouting While Killing.

That morning, Kirgo felt great about shouting practice. He felt so great about it that he added, “Shut the fuck up,” skipped pepper spray aim, and dove straight into Applied Shouting While Killing.

Kirgo slunk down the length of his bed like a SWAT officer, pepper spray held in both hands, aimed up. When he reached the end of the bed, he jumped forward, turning in mid air and extending both arms. “Hold it right there,” he shouted, then added, “Criminal.” The squirt of the pepper spray splattered against the wall, and he pivoted to his right and fired at the target. The red liquid hit low, at neck level, so Kirgo repeated the exercise until he got it right. Scenario two depicted an attempted paper clip theft escalating into an armed robbery. He tackled his coat rack like it was the larcenous gunman, locked his forearm around its throat, and broke the top six inches off.

Feeling slightly over-zealous and drenched with sweat from exertion and tension, Kirgo declared himself fit for action to the mirror and trotted to the shower.