Category Archives: Stories

Original shorts, fictional and otherwise.

No contest

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

All at once, wholly and decisively, he shook with laughter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been thanked so many times in one day just for doing his job and keeping the peace. The ring of protesters broke into smiles. God is great, someone murmured.

Such a useful slogan, he thought: impossible to disagree with in spite of, or perhaps because of, its utter meaninglessness. What was greatness apart from God? What do we know of God aside from the fact that he exceeds our comprehension? But to say “God is great” is to acknowledge our own powerlessness — and in that acknowledgement, to question the permanence and even the validity of all human institutions. Therein lay its power. This nonviolent army was no less militant than the holy warriors of Saladin.

God is great, they began to chant in unison, and at once felt the warm glow of kinship from their shared smallness. It felt good to relinquish authority to a higher power, and what’s more, their political opponents now risked becoming the opponents of God himself. The policeman had seen all this in a flash, looking into their fervent, self-righteous faces; that’s why he’d laughed. But after days of tension, it was a relief to lay the baton aside, take off his helmet, and tie a green ribbon around his wrist. God is great! said one houri-eyed young woman with a green headscarf. God is great, he agreed. Who could possibly quarrel with eyes like those?

This is the eighth post in an ongoing online game of Consequences. Each successive entry begins with the closing lines of its predecessor. Entries are 250 words long, and are linked thematically. The series started with Hydragenic and was followed by Patteran Pages, Porous Borders, The Middlewesterner, Feathers of Hope (Pica), Blaugustine, and Small Change. [Updated to add:] The series continues at the cassandra pages, 3rd House Journal, mole, Ivy is here, Feathers of Hope again (Numenius), and Velveteen Rabbi. The series concludes where it began, on Hydragenic.

Posted in Personal/Political, Philosophy/Religion, Stories | 13 Comments

Errata

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Page iv, Acknowledgements: For “All the lovely ladies at Square Peg’s Round Hole in Crested Butte, Colorado” read “Carla, without whom none of this would matter”
Page 2, line 34: For “incessant screaming” read “frequent, energetic vocalization”
Page 8, line 3: For “heavily sedated” read “diagnosed with ADHD”
Page 14, line 11: For “Napalm Death” read “Bruce Springsteen”
Page 18, line 56: For “used” read “experimented with”
Page 23, line 5: For “two six-packs and a defective condom” read “a full moon”
Page 27, line 42: For “severe depression” read “the blues”
Page 31, line 10: For “anger management classes” read “continuing education”
Page 34, line 61: For “Harley-Davidson” read “second mortgage”
Page 36, line 4: For “restraining order” read “separation”
Page 36, line 22: For “social services” read “relatives”
Page 42, line 51: For “drug mule” read “adventure tourist”
Page 43, line 14: For “prison” read “group therapy”
Page 49, line 1: For “hair implants” read “Promise Keepers retreat”
Page 51, line 34: For “heart attack” read “wake-up call from Jesus”
Page 55, line 35: For “a lonely female professional with low self-esteem” read “the new love of my life”
Page 57, line 70: For “layoffs” read “voluntary redundancy program”
Page 62, line19: For “harassment” read “witnessing to my faith”
Page 66, line 27: For “stoned” read “self-actualized”
Page 73, line 8: For “relatives” read “elder care facility”
Throughout: Replace dashes with semicolons

Posted in Greatest Hits, Humor, Stories | 8 Comments

Begins with B

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Dave Bonta

I’m lying half-awake, thinking for some reason about the letter D. Does the bulge face right or left? Since it’s the first letter of my own name, you’d think I could remember, but after weighing both options, my sleep-fogged brain decides that a left-facing D looks much more natural. Facing right is what Bs do… right?

*

In video after video I see faces tense with hatred, spitting all the insults that polite society still permits: Socialist. Communist. Terrorist. Muslim. A man going into a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania holds up a monkey doll with an Obama sticker wrapped around its head like a minimal turban. It’s Curious George — a strange mascot for those whose native openness to new and different things was stifled, I imagine, decades before. “Gonna bring Obama in with me today so he can hear some TRUTH,” says the man, his swagger, his accent, and the slightly adenoidal quality of his speech familiar to me since childhood.

*

Big bulge, little bulge. We belly up the bar in real America. What’s on tap? Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Michelob. Is that a can of Guinness down there? I ask. I’ll have that. Conversation falls silent. What’s that taste like, anyway? asks the female bartender, seeing what the men don’t: that I’m perfectly harmless. Well, I don’t know — it tastes like beer, I say, tilting the glass to slow the foaming black waterfall. The way beer was meant to taste, before someone decided it would be cheaper to sell flavored water. Someone says something in a low voice at the end of the bar which provokes a chorus of guffaws. Bitter, I say, as I swagger over to a stool at the other end of the bar. Smooth and bitter.

*

The American people are angry, the candidate says hopefully. And in truth, his opponent’s unflappable demeanor is really beginning to annoy him. The familiar knot forms in his belly and begins to burn. He rolls his eyes and grimaces. People are angry, he says again, his voice trembling with conviction. Well, that’s certainly true of the people he’s been meeting lately, those idiots from small towns who love their guns way too much and pray to a God who looks like an older version of themselves — a Great White Father. His opponent continues to spout his idealistic claptrap in calm, methodical tones. He blinks furiously. The American people are angry, yes, but don’t call them bitter. Bitterness is for losers, for people who have no way to strike back.

*

The campaign worker travels all the way from Texas to volunteer in Western Pennsylvania, where people share her outrage at abortion and the homosexual agenda. Somewhere in downtown Pittsburgh, let’s say, a couple of black teenagers spot the McCain/Palin bumper sticker and begin to point and laugh and make rude comments. Her windows are rolled up and her doors are locked, but she’s pretty sure she hears the word Bitch. At the next light she pulls down the sun visor, flips open the mirror, and can barely recognize her face, pinched, livid. Why are black men always so… angry? She pulls into a parking spot beside an all-night automatic teller. Must… sleep… soon… she thinks. She watches in horrified fascination as the point of a fingernail file approaches her cheek.

Posted in Greatest Hits, Personal/Political, Stories | 12 Comments

Missed

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Dave Bonta

“Are you there? Hello?” The voice breaks a little on the final oh. The sound of a foot scuffing against pavement. “Talk to me!” The distant wail of an ambulance — or is it a coyote? The paper’s been reporting more and more of them in the area, killing housepets and alarming the parents of small children.

“Hello? Hello?” Yellow light and the smell of curry spill from a window over on the far side of the parking lot. The figure at the pay phone is a dim outline in the deepening dusk. It doesn’t sound like any of the neighbors.

“Are you there? Listen, I can’t even tell if that’s your breathing, or just something on the line. Hello?”

A very long silence this time. Then in a low voice: “Just one word, O.K.? One word. It could even be ‘goodbye,’ if you that’s what you’re thinking. Just so I know you’re alive, and I’m not talking to myself.”

A car swings into the parking lot, illuminating for a couple seconds a hunched figure whose elongate shadow tracks across the face of the building like the hand of a backwards clock.

The car door slams, and the footsteps quickly retreat toward the far entrance, followed by several minutes of silence — or what passes for silence around here. It’s not a bad neighborhood. Most of us work long hours, come home, and fall asleep in front of our televisions. Weeks can pass between encounters even with the people across the hall; it can be hard to know whether a given neighbor is still there or not.

“Listen.” The voice finally resumes. “I’m sure I’ve given you plenty of reasons to give me the silent treatment. But this not knowing whether you’re there — it’s hard to take. I don’t know where you moved to. I don’t know…. Oh, hell!” The clink of coins falling into a metal well. “You people are thieves!”

Another long pause, then one final, resigned “Hello?”

The once-familiar sound of a pay phone returning to its cradle seems almost as anachronistic now as the clip-clop of a horse. Who are these people without mobile phones or Blackberries, traveling alone through their lives? “Hello,” you whisper to no one in particular. Such a funny little word! “Hello.”

Posted in Greatest Hits, Stories | 9 Comments

The Animators

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sparked by Natalie’s postcard, “blinding light.”

The first time they outlined their hands with blown pigment, it was a holy thing. With the help of the sacrament they had shifted over, and placing their palms against the stone flank they felt warmth and movement, the charge of spirit. Through this thinnest of membranes they were making contact: the Others’ hands or forepaws were right there. Quick, get the paint!

Each time after that, though, it became a little more routine. The dried prints did not open into new passageways as they’d hoped. They made more prints, but it wasn’t quite the same. The rock began to feel like rock, instead of the living animal they knew it to be. Someone grew violent after ingesting the sacrament and split a boy’s head open before they could subdue him, so they decided to try the ceremony without it.

While most people just sat in the darkness feeling their bladders fill or resisting the urge to scratch certain itches, a couple of men claimed that it was better this way — they had a more direct access now, and if others did not, it must mean that they had violated some previously unknown taboo. Fortunately, their improved access privileged them with detailed knowledge of such things, and they began to speak the beginningless Law.

Now when they outlined a hand, it was to bear witness to one or another revelation. The steadiness of the rock was the whole point. Some things — perhaps most things — eluded contact, except in dreams. Those who knew could teach the rest how to become better dreamers, but it would come at a price, because don’t we have to kill in order to live? The Others were hungry for visions, so it was decided that the acolytes would stay underground and paint the pictures in their heads. They would give up sun- and moonlight for the welfare of the tribe.

The longer they stayed in the bowels of the earth-animal, the better and more vivid their visions became. Children were born down there and grew up by torchlight, clothed in thick pelts from the game they learned to draw without ever seeing it. Their parents marveled at their facility with the increasingly complex tools of animation, but grew alarmed at the obesity brought on by their sedentary habits. Come out into the other chambers, they pleaded. Explore the maze of passageways! That’s what we did when we were your age. But the kids wouldn’t listen.

The old shamans also felt lost. This new generation didn’t sit passively and wait for messages from the other side; they often began by sending messages of their own. The vision room became fully interactive. Those who lived aboveground only visited it four times a year, now, and the cavemen and -women regarded them with a condescension befitting their status as child-like primitives. You are living in a world of dreams, they would intone, eyes bulging, their corpse-white skin bared for effect. Be sure to keep bringing us fruit and game, so we can keep dreaming these dreams for you. A priest would lead them to the frieze of hand prints. Here are the ones who wouldn’t listen. See them reaching. See them trying to be born.

Posted in Art, Greatest Hits, Philosophy/Religion, Stories | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Ridgerunner

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Dave Bonta

I ran into an ape-man crossing the front yard of my parents’ house. He stood over five feet tall, with only the barest slouch — less than my own, really — and was covered with long, coarse hair the color of shadows on snow. We introduced ourselves, but I immediately forgot his name. I’m bad with names.

His voice was, as you might expect, low and growly. What species are you, I asked, and he said, Barbary Ape. Oh — I thought you were extinct, I said. Not yet, he said, with a great big grin. Well, uh… so you’re finding enough to eat here on the mountain? Pfft! he replied, as if that were a stupid question. This ridge could support a dozen apes. Something’s always in season. And I love those mountain rabbits! But you’re all alone, I said. I take it you’ve escaped from captivity? He grinned again. People have been good to me here, he said, I can’t complain. I had been told to expect a lot of rednecks, but really, I’ve hardly seen any. I think they’re dying out. Hmm, I said, not sure how to respond to that.

I’m still heading for Canada, though, he said — more wide-open spaces up there, even if the food supply isn’t as good and the winters last forever. Well, is there anything I can get you? Anything at all? We have a nice guest bedroom… No, thanks. I’ll be all right, he said. He stared at his feet — which, I noticed, were far from small. I’m well used to sleeping on the ground and drinking out of streams, he said. If you ever see a female ape, though… I’ll tell her which way you went, I said. Thanks, he mumbled, shuffling away, his blue fur rippling. Take it easy. Hey, good luck! I called after him, but he was already almost out of sight.

I’d never seen anyone move like that: such a fluid, unhurried gait, fast and silent. Whatever happened to the survival of the fittest? I wondered. How is it that we who are so goddamned unfit and pathetic have conquered the globe? My nostrils prickled. From behind a clump of goldenrod on the far side of the driveway, I caught a sudden whiff of terrified rabbit.

Posted in Dreams, Stories | Tagged | 8 Comments

Consumer

Posted on March 29, 2008 by Dave Bonta

It was my birthday, and I had been given a live shrew in a box — not for a pet, but simply to admire and to photograph. I was a little disappointed at first that I didn’t get any real presents, but the shrew was an admirably fierce little creature who attacked anything thrust in its direction, and I soon appreciated the wisdom of the gesture: loaning me a fully wild creature, something that can never be owned or controlled. The idea that anyone can own anything — it’s such a delusion, isn’t it? But that’s what drives this mania of consumption imperiling the earth.

I’ll have to wait till morning so I can take pictures outside, I said. I’m sure it will be fine in the box overnight.

But it wasn’t fine. At first it circled the box energetically, but after a couple hours it barely moved, even when I nudged it with a pencil. I remembered reading that shrews have lightning-fast metabolisms, and eat three times their body weight every day. I started worrying that it might die if I didn’t feed it. Maybe I could go out and dig up some earthworms, I thought, but then I remembered that the ground was frozen and buried under several feet of snow.

I had meat in the freezer; maybe it would like some ground venison? But that would take at least an hour to thaw in warm water — I don’t own a microwave — and an hour for a shrew must be like a whole day to a human being. I looked down at my hands, and it occurred to me that my fingers were at least superficially similar to worms and millipedes.

I went back over to the box and wiggled my left pinky in front of the ailing shrew. It perked up almost immediately, rushing forward and sinking its teeth into the finger. I jerked my hand away and stared at the toothmarks brimming with blood. That really didn’t hurt at all, I muttered.

But I don’t like messes, so rather than end up with some ugly, mangled stump, I went out to the toolshed and made a clean cut with the radial arm saw right above the second knuckle, then quickly applied a bandage and tourniquet. I thought about cauterizing it with the oxyacetylene torch, but that seemed like overkill.

The shrew was delighted with the severed pinky. It dragged it all around the box a couple of times, then set to work eating the thing. Soon its sharp little snout was dark with blood, and as I watched I got that familiar rush of warmth I always feel when I know I’ve helped somebody. Happy birthday, I whispered. It certainly seemed spry for its age.

Posted in Greatest Hits, Stories | Tagged | 31 Comments

Solidarity

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Dave Bonta

The bus made a mid-day refueling stop somewhere in Wyoming. It was a couple days past New Year’s, the bus was half-full, and we were all going straight through to Chicago: a temporary almost-family, bound together by the driver’s friendliness and his encouragement of collective decision-making about our stops. And bound too, I guess, by the hostile weather outside, wind and snow buffeting the bus as we crossed the roof of the continent.

We smokers already had a camaraderie of our own, hurrying off the bus at every stop and huddling together near the door, helping each other get a light in the high wind. At this particular stop, a white college kid returning to Madison let it be known that he had something more than tobacco to share, so several of us followed him around to the back of the convenience store. It was strong stuff, but the wind gave cover to our coughing and quickly carried away the illicit smoke. Everything slowed. We began to talk — or shout, really — about whatever meant the most to us: music, sex, Jesus, poetry (that was me). The weak sunlight took on an epic cast.

A blast of the horn summoned us back to the bus, but we weren’t quite the last on board. In a pattern that was soon to become familiar, a 30ish African-American woman shepherded five young children back into their block of seats near the front, re-arranging their pillows and blankets, while the rest of us looked on solicitously. Plastic trash bags bulged in the overhead luggage compartments; I remember a small bedside lamp protruding from one of them. Each child clutched a small treat from the store, and solemnly began to eat. “Those are good kids, man,” someone murmured.

Then we were back on the interstate. A card game started up a few seats away, but the level of jollity receded as the miles passed, and the engine’s throb and the roar of the heaters made an auditory cocoon into which many of us withdrew. “Let me know if gets too hot for y’all back there,” the driver said. I shut my eyes, and quickly opened them again: the darkness inside was spinning like a slow whirlpool. I turned and fixed my gaze on the horizon with the devotion of a child hungry for one steady thing.

Posted in Greatest Hits, Stories, Travel | 9 Comments

Storytellers

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Dave Bonta

They are on vacation with their oldest granddaughter, who will turn 12 in a few days. En route to the historic district of one small city, a building collapses half a block ahead. A huge cloud of dust rises up; traffic slows to a crawl. The grandparents take a quick glance and look away, but the girl watches intently as emergency crews pull a body from the wreckage. “He’s still alive,” she announces.

They decide not to take the walking tour after all, and continue driving to the next state park. As soon as they get out of town: “Tell me another story, Grandpa!”

“He makes up these exciting adventure stories, starring boy and girl detectives just about Eva’s age. I don’t know how he does it,” Mom tells me later. “I can’t do that. The only stories I can tell her are things I remember — true stories. I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t make things up the way your Grandpa does.’

“I told her about England — I was just a couple years older than her when our family went over there. She wanted to hear all about it. I told her about the friends I made, and how everyone revered the teachers so much. I explained the way the school system was back then, how kids’ futures would be determined by what kind of high school they attended. She didn’t think that was right.

“And of course I told her stories about the relatives, dwelling on the parts that I thought would interest her. I told her about that time back in Maine, waking up at 4:30 in the morning and telling Bruce, ‘Nanna just died,’ and finding out the next day that she had, at that exact time. And then when we were singing hymns at her funeral, bursting into tears when I got to the third verse of ‘Beneath the Cross of Jesus.’ It turned out that had been Nanna’s favorite verse of any hymn. It is a very pretty tune.” She starts to sing it.

I take, O cross, thy shadow
For my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine than
The sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by,
To know no gain nor loss,
My sinful self my only shame,
My glory all the cross.

The granddaughter’s eyes go wide. She wonders if she will be that clairvoyant herself when the time comes. That night at the motel, she and her Nanna stay up late watching a DVD of the old musical “Oklahoma.” Grandpa watches a little bit of it, then retires to the bedroom. Too much tension and violence, he says. It would disturb his sleep.

Posted in Memoir, Poets and poetry, Stories | 5 Comments

Not altogether Charlie

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Dave Bonta

One day, driving in the hollows above Tyrone, looking for an entrance to the state gamelands, we drove down a rutted, unpaved road and past a rusty trailer whose occupant had come outside to stare at us. The yard was muddy and full of junk — old cars, refrigerators, whatever was too big to fit in the trailer. The man stood next to the road, head cocked to one side, mouth gaped open. “He’s not altogether Charlie,” my Dad remarked. A few hundred yards further, the road dead-ended with no gamelands signs in evidence, so we turned the Scout around and headed back. The man was still there, waiting for us. We stared; he stared; we didn’t stop.

Thirty years later, for no good reason, I think of that incident. The sky is orange with sunrise. I’m standing out by the road, gawking at another “v” of swans heading north.

*

Via Negativa hasn’t been altogether Charlie for the past five days or so, but we hope to have it back in shape in a few hours. After that, it should be faster and more reliable than it was before. I’m grateful to my cousin Matt for trouble-shooting and for continuing to let Via Negativa live rent-free at his place (which is a bit fancier than a trailer). He just replaced the virtual couch, but it may us take a little while to break it in.

Thanks to everyone who wrote to express concern. I really appreciate it.

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Stories | 5 Comments
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