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Joseph E Bird

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Heather Girl (from an alternate universe)

Heather Roth has little to look forward to.

The alien overlords have enslaved Earth’s population.  Her two sons are working for the cyborg underground and her brother is the head of the Benevolent Alien Reconciliation Federation (BARF), which seeks to create a more peaceful world through mind control.  On top of all of this, Heather has a really nasty cold that just won’t go away.

And then she learns that her father is being paroled from the penal colony on Jupiter’s moon, Europa.  Which, as it turns out, is really not a big deal because he’s being assigned to work as a cook on the aircraft carrier Nimitz, which has been repurposed as a floating sheep farm.

Then Heather finds an old guitar, learns three chords and leads a musical revolution based on Nickleback songs.  The aliens leave.

A story of mathematics and free verse, Heather Girl takes the reader on the ultimate emotional journey, culminating in a long nap.

1

Heather Girl

How much can one woman take?

Heather Roth has little to look forward to. Her two sons, who have occupied most of her adult life, have grown and left her alone in the house in which she grew up.  Her ex-husband, for whom she still has feelings despite his abusive nature, lives hundreds of miles away.  And she’s being treated for Huntington’s, a disease that ravaged her mother, and for which she knows there is no cure.

Then the news she wasn’t expecting. Her father is being paroled from prison in Texas where he has been serving a sentence for the murder of his wife, Heather’s mother.

She’ll do anything to keep him out of her life, but when she is forced to take him into her home, she learns that the lives of her family weren’t what they seemed to be.  A story of heartbreak and hope, Heather Girl, delivers compassion and love, even in the darkest hours.

11

i have to go

“I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.”

He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. She pulled away.

“I need to go.”

“Can’t you stay a little longer?”

There was no guile in his expression. His eyes had turned soft and pleading, his smile gentle and nervous. He was seventeen again, unsure of himself, captivated by the girl with the flaming red hair who could persuade him to do her bidding with her own teasing, alluring smile. He looked at her, a strand of his brown hair in front of his eyes, enticing her to brush it away, to touch his face, to feel his shoulders through his white t-shirt, tempting her to stay, to finish dinner, to find the bottle he had hidden behind the cereal in the cabinet above the refrigerator, to sip and smell the sweet liquor on his breath, and let the evening take them back in time to their wonderful and terrible lives of so many years ago, that would delight the flesh, break the heart, and leave them in ruin.

“I have to go.”

He stayed at the table as she got up and walked out. As she opened the front door, she heard him from the kitchen.

“Heather.”

She closed the door behind her.

Copyright 2018, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl.

4

into the night

When the last lingering light of day had finally disappeared, she waited another twenty minutes. Then she walked through the automatic doors of the ER, completely unnoticed, into the night.

She headed east, toward the homeless shelters. She had driven through that neighborhood many times during the day, where ragged men with shopping carts gather under the interstate bridge, where young kids, barely in their teens, mingle with older addicts on the steps of the treatment center, where the women who would later stroll the streets sat on the curb smoking cigarettes outside their run-down apartment buildings. In the light of day, they were there, but the street belonged to those whose lives were comfortably insulated from the stench of unwashed clothes and grimy hands with broken fingernails and shattered liquor bottles and needles in the gutter and the ever-present hint of mind-altering chemicals breezing through the air. It belonged to those who shopped at the open-air market and dined at the sidewalk cafes and visited the plush offices of medical specialists that appeared like satellites around the hospital, not far from the free clinic or the street doctors who offered their own cures for those who had no other choice. In the daytime, they were all there together, some living, others waiting.

She walked the first block away from the hospital as she always walked, quickly and with purpose. She crossed the street and onto the sidewalk that fronted a medical office building. She began to slow, not completely sure of her destination. At the other end of the block, behind the office building, the parking lot was almost completely vacant. In the next block, where houses once stood, was another parking lot, this one unpaved and ungated, sometimes attended by a man in small hut, but now the hut was empty. Across the way near the opposite corner two men stood smoking cigarettes.

She kept walking, her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets.

Another block.

A man pulling a hand cart, slight of build with long, stringy hair passed by her without even looking up.

In the next block, a woman stood near the corner, another in the middle of the block on the other side of the street. Heather crossed the street at the corner, avoiding the first woman. The second woman at the middle of the block stepped back, giving her room to pass. They made brief eye contact, each sizing the other up. After she had passed, Heather slowed and finally stopped. She turned back to the woman. She stared back at Heather.

“Yeah?”

Heather took a step toward her. The woman didn’t move. Heather took another step and saw that the woman was too young to be on the street.  A runaway, no doubt. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week. Her eyes were wide, accentuated with heavy eyeliner and too much blue eye shadow. She shifted from one foot to another and kept her arms crossed, a habit Heather surmised was developed to hide the needle tracks.

“What do you want?”

“I’m…uh…looking…”

“Get it out lady. What are you looking for?”

“Hydrocodone.”

“You a cop?”

“No. I’ve got a serious health condition. It affects my nerves. I’m just looking for some relief.”

“Right. Can’t help you lady.”

Heather could see that she didn’t trust her. Not that getting busted by an undercover cop would ruin her life. More like an inconvenience.

Heather glanced around and then pulled a bill from her jacket pocket. She made sure the woman saw that it was a hundred, then folded it and tucked into the woman’s hand which was still gripping her arm. The woman didn’t hesitate. She took the bill and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans.

“You too stupid to be a cop. Hang on.”

She pulled a phone from her front pocket and made a call.

“Hey, Bobcat. I got a woman here looking for tabs. Can you set her up? She’s legit. She’s too scared to be a cop.”

She turned to Heather.

“How much you need?”

That’s something Heather hadn’t considered. She had no idea.

“Twenty?”

The woman spoke to Bobcat, then back to Heather.

“Two hundred bills. You got that?”

Heather nodded.

The woman stuck the phone back in her pocket.

“Two blocks down, take a right. Bobcat’ll be on the front porch.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Curse me.”

copyright 2018, joseph e bird
from the novel, Heather Girl

0

Camaraderie of the broken.

She stood for a moment, taking it in, but her father brushed beside her, flipped on the light, and went over to the workbench where all of his tools used to be, where the greasy parts would sit for weeks at a time until the project was finished or until he would finally toss them into one of the wooden bins under the bench, even the parts that were no good, because you never knew when you might need to scavenge a part from a part, or look at the old part to see how the new part is supposed to go together, or, more likely closer to the truth, the parts had become too personal, had served so long and so well, that they deserved a fate more fitting than a trip to the dump in a trash truck with the rotting lettuce and soiled diapers, and so they were dropped into the wooden bin with a dull clunk, where they would be with their own kind, a camaraderie of the tough, the loyal, and the broken down, who, by the weight of their own existence in the hand of a knowing mechanic, would still have value in some as yet unknown way.

copyright 2017, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl.

5

Darnell, aka Booger

From my novel in progress, Heather Girl.  You’ve read part of this before, but I kind of like this guy, Booger.  I hadn’t met him before he showed up at the funeral home. He wasn’t planned; he wasn’t in the story outline. Of course I didn’t really know much about Heather’s father, George.  He had been in prison for ten years for the murder of his wife, Heather’s mother. I’m friends with Heather, but she never went to see her father in prison, so she was just as surprised as I was to see Booger show up at her brother’s funeral. And there he was, this fast-talking, not-so-bright Texan, telling Heather things she didn’t really want to hear. She had already made her mind up about her murderous father. She has no use for the other side of the story.

There was little to talk about. All had been said in the days before, so they sat quietly and waited. Heather closed her eyes.

The double doors to the large room were in the back and had been propped open, so there was no tell-tale squeak that she might have otherwise heard.  The carpet muffled the footsteps that on hardwood or tile would have given notice as his worn cowboy boots clopped down the aisle. But as it was, she had no clue that anyone had entered the room, much less that he had managed to position himself just a few feet away, until she heard her father speak.

“Booger.”

She thought it was just an expression of frustration of some minor annoyance that had caught his attention. Maybe a button was loose on his suit jacket. Maybe one of the lights in the ceiling of the funeral home was burned out. Maybe he was just bored. She didn’t even open her eyes. Then the voice she didn’t know.

“Hey, Pops.”

He spoke in an energetic clip, combining the two words into one. By the time she opened her eyes he had slapped her father on the shoulder and was in the midst of a frenetic monologue that didn’t require any acknowledgement from George to keep going.

“You doing ok? Look at you in a suit. Beats that orange all to hell, don’t it. Me, I’m more country and western. Check this out.” He stuck his thumb in the gap of his shirt where the buttons usually are and pushed it toward George. “See them snaps? Mother of Pearl. Pretty slick, huh. That’s as bout as fancy as I’m going to get. Anyways, I got out a few days after you did and once I got settled down a bit, I wanted to look you up, make sure you was doing ok and all. I got a hold of your PO and she told me you was up here in Virginia and she told me all that happened and I came up here to tell you how sorry I was bout your boy. You was real good to me in lockup, Pops. Helped me keep my head on straight.”

“West Virginia.” She had been watching him, this ex-con, who was holding a new, stiff cowboy hat in his right hand and waving it as he spoke, as if he were trying to swat a fly. He seemed a little daft, this long-haired middle-aged man who hadn’t bothered to shave in at least a week, and she quickly surmised that he was very likely to return to lockup for getting in a bar fight or smoking weed on a street corner. Just didn’t seem all that bright. She looked back at the coffin in front of her.

“Beg pardon, ma’am?

“West Virginia, not Virginia.’

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I never was very good with geography.”

“Hey, Booger, you going to preaching today?”

Booger turned back to her father.

“No, Pops. Ain’t no preaching today. It’s Tuesday.” Then to Heather, “He never could keep his days straight. Course that ain’t unusual in lockup. You tend to lose perspective, you know.”

“I suppose.”

“I’m Darnell, ma’am.” She had no choice but to shake his hand and was surprised by his delicate, almost feminine touch. Prison tattoos, letters that looked like they were scrawled with a felt-tip pen spelled GOD on the first three fingers on his right hand, followed by an exclamation mark on his little finger. She tried to steal a look at his other hand but couldn’t see what she was sure would be the first half of the message.

“Heather.”

“You his daughter?”

She nodded.

“Never knowed Pops had a daughter. Course he couldn’t much remember his boy, either. Pops was real good to me. You have a fine father, ma’am.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How was he good to you?”

He studied on the question and she could tell she wasn’t going to get much of an answer.

“It’s a bit of a story, ma’am.”

“We have time.”

“Ok. Well let’s see, then.”

There was a chair between Heather and Micah, and Darnell sat in it without asking.  He reeked of cologne.

“These must be your boys.” He turned and shook their hands. “Call me Booger. I been called that since I was a kid. You can probably figure out why. Bad nickname but it stuck.”

The boys forced a smile but didn’t offer anything to the conversation besides their names. Booger leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.

“Anyways, let me tell you about Pops.  I got into a little bit of trouble.”  He stopped and laughed.  “I guess that’s how all prison stories start, don’t they.”

Booger was the only one who found that amusing.

“So yeah.  I ain’t never been in trouble like that before, but I got into some drugs and got busted a few times but I kept going back for more. And them drugs, Lordy, they get hold of you and won’t let go. You do anything to keep that feeling going. That’s where I was, just staying high all the time. Course them drugs, they ain’t free and even if I could have held down a job it wouldn’t had paid enough for what I needed, so I took to stealing. I just took stuff that people didn’t need anyways, least that’s what I told myself. Leaf blowers and trimmers and things like that. I was out one night, just coming down off a high and running around a neighborhood seeing what I might could take, and this feller comes up on me. Scared me. I had a shovel in my hands. Never could remember why I had a shovel. I couldn’t sell a shovel for nothing. Just never made no sense. But he scared me so bad I swung around and whacked him in the head. I didn’t ever want to hurt nobody and had he not snuck up on me I probably would have just run off. I wish I had.”

He stopped talking and Heather looked at him, then her father, who had fallen asleep with his chin on his chest. Darnell closed his eyes and bit his lip, and sniffed a little before he opened his eyes and continued.

“I didn’t kill him. Might have been better if I had. Messed up his brain real bad. That poor man ain’t worth nothing no more. If I’d killed him, maybe his family could get some insurance, and maybe they’d just put me on death row and I’d be dead by now, living with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, praise God.”

He looked toward her father and saw that he was asleep.

“He does that a lot. Anyways, they sent me up and I knowed I was going to have a tough time. I mean I was scared like I never been scared before.  I ain’t no criminal and don’t know how to fight so I figured I’d just be somebody’s girlfriend, if you know what I mean. I don’t think I could of took that. So when I get there, I see old Pops, sitting by himself in the mess and I went over and sat with him. Best thing I ever done.”

“Why is that?”

“I didn’t know it at the time, but Pops was protected.”

“Protected?”

“Yes, ma’am. Both ways. He paid the hacks and they passed some down to the cons and rounders. Pops was the gravy train, yes, ma’am, he was. Only I didn’t know it. I just sat down with Pops cause I didn’t think he would shank me right off.”

“Hacks?”

“The guards, ma’am.”

“He paid the guards money?”

“Well, yes ma’am, in a indirect way, I guess you could say. It was arranged on the outside.”

She shook her head. “McGhee.”

“Beg pardon?”

“George’s attorney. His trustee. McGhee. He’s the one on the outside that sent the money.”

copyright 2017, joseph e bird

0

Overtime

“Although I have no way to tell what time it is, I know that my torment will start soon.

I face east. And the long shadow projecting before me and down the length of this ragged basketball court tells me that the sun behind me is at its lowest ebb. The shadow itself, although exaggerated by the distance and the long-angled sunlight, is, like always, definite and unmistakable; it is of the concrete bench where I am seated, beneath the western goal. The shadow is all of straight lines and square corners. There is no human shape; no profile of me. Though I have experienced the same thing a hundred times or more and by now I should know that the laws of physics no longer apply to me, the old neural pathways are too well established. I cannot escape the register of shock. I still cannot avoid the unconscious and automatic processing of all my sensory data the feel of the hard concrete bench beneath me, my view of this familiar court, my certainty of the identity of the shadow, and my absence from it – against that certain knowledge of light and shade, cause and effect that my 52 years on the earth burned into me.

I am not there. How can that be? And then, of course, the deeper question, the one that still frightens me and the one that I am no nearer to answering even after these long months of invisibility and immobility, why am I here?”

— Overtime: A Basketball Parable, by Larry Ellis

How can you not be intrigued by that first sentence? His torment is about to begin, though he has no way of knowing time.

He must be a prisoner.

But no. He’s outside, sitting on a bench. As the sun sets, he sees the shadow of the bench, but not his own shadow.

Oh, yeah?

And it happens to him all the time.

Hmmm.  What’s going on here?

He says he’s not there. After clearly stating that he’s sitting on the bench, yet he’s not there?

He says he’s immobile. He says he’s invisible.

He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know why.

The why is the deeper question he needs to have answered.

That’s enough for me to keep reading. A great beginning that promises a different kind of mystery and a different kind of story.

If you want to know more about this prisoner of time, you can find Ellis’s book here.

 

 

3

coming home

washington avenue sunset

She turned right onto Virginia Street. As a child, in the back seat with Wayne, coming back from the family vacation or a visit to Grandma’s or a Friday night out to eat, turning onto Virginia Street had meant they were home. The street, where they rode their bikes and played kickball and walked to their friends without worry or fear of anything other than staying too late, was as much their home as the big brick house, where on cold winter nights they sat on the worn out couch in the living room and watched television on the boxy console, where they did homework on the dining room table next to the folded dish towels and rolled up socks, and where she had dreamed of places faraway in a bedroom covered with posters of rock bands and pop stars. And though it had only been two weeks since she had left for Texas, she felt her body relax, and the tension that she didn’t know she had been carrying, slipped away.

copyright 2017, joseph e bird

2

Heather’s Father

A few days ago, my faithful friend and reader Lee Anne, commented that I hadn’t mentioned Heather lately, Heather being the main character of my novel in progress.

For those who may be new to the story, Heather has traveled to Houston, where her father, George, has been paroled. At this point in the story it has been revealed that her father murdered her mother. Heather hasn’t seen him or talked to him in the ten years since. Her sole reason for even going to Houston is to make sure her brother is prepared to take care of their father and that there is no chance that he will try to come to her home.

In this scene, Heather sees her father for the first time since his conviction. She and her brother are outside of an old school that has been converted into a community center. Inside, a group of parolees are finishing up a mandatory counseling session.

HEATHER HAD PAID NO ATTENTION to the empty classrooms as they had walked, but ahead, light shining through a long bank of windows spilled onto the sidewalk. As they approached, Wayne put out his arm and stopped her.

“They can’t really see because it’s dark outside.”

He took a couple steps forward. Heather followed. Inside, they sat in a semi-circle. A young man who look more like a boy, sat in front, notebook in hand. The counselor. She went down the line of old men. She couldn’t pick him out.

“Which one is he?”

“On the end on the right.”

“That’s not him. It can’t be.”

Wayne nodded. “That’s our dad.”

His shoulders slumped, his chin rested on his chest. His hair was totally white and stood from his head on weightless wisps. It was hard to tell as he sat on the metal chair, but he looked thinner. Not the stoic figure who had stood in front of the judge ten years ago and received his sentence. Not the man of confidence who had built his small engineering practice into a regional design firm. Not the imposing father she had looked up to when they worked together in the garage. This was an old man. A frail old man.

“I knew he would be older.” It wasn’t necessary to finish the thought and she let the sentence trail off. “He’s only seventy-three.” Then it occurred to her that maybe she had done the math wrong. Maybe skipped ten years. She looked at Wayne. “That’s right, isn’t it? Seventy-three?”

“Yeah. Chronologically. But biologically, it’s more like he’s ninety-three.”

She scanned the others in the class room. A few seemed more alert, but not by much.

“Is that what prison does?”

“I don’t know. All those guys, Dad included, are out because they’re either in their last months, or they aren’t who they were when they went it. Some don’t even know who they are.”

“You said Dad was sick. Is he terminal?”

“Not in the sense that you’re talking about. No cancer or congestive heart failure or anything like that.”

She thought about the alternative.

“Dementia?”

“Alzheimer’s.”

“How far along?”

Wayne shrugged. “You’ll see.”

The young man in the front closed his notebook and straightened in his chair. He looked at the old men, as if waiting for questions or comments. No sign of life from any of them. It seemed to Heather that as counseling sessions go, this had to be the least rewarding for the counselor. He forced a smile and then stood. Some of the men pushed themselves up and started shuffling toward the door. Most stayed seated, including their father.

Wayne and Heather walked around the building and by the time they got to the door, the lady who had smiled at Wayne earlier ignored him as she pushed her father out in his wheelchair. The young counselor was guiding their father by the elbow. He looked up at Wayne, then leaned in close to their father’s ear.

“I’ll see you next week, Mr. Roth.” He spoke more loudly than was necessary.

Their father reacted with a sharp turn of his head toward the counselor. “Geez oh wiz, why the hell are you yelling at me?”

It was the first time she had heard his voice in more than ten years and it was the one thing that hadn’t changed. A deep baritone. A little gravelly. Unmistakable George P. Roth.

She traded a look with Wayne. Both had been on the receiving end of his brusque reprimands many times, especially during their rebellious years. As he had aged, he had either mellowed by choice or contrition and he reserved his worst outbursts for politicians and TV preachers.

She wondered if Wayne had had the same flashback, but she dared not ask in front of him.

Wayne stepped forward and put one arm around his father’s shoulder and steadied him by the forearm. “Ready to go home?”

His father looked at his face, studied, then muttered something under his breath. Wayne gave Heather a quizzical look, Heather shrugged in return. As they stood side by side, she saw how much shorter he was than Wayne. He had always been taller. At least six-two. But now he was bent over and his legs never straightened.

They were still several feet from the door where Heather was standing, but everyone else had left. Even the counselor had gone back into the classroom. Her father glanced up to chart his course, but didn’t acknowledge her presence. He took a step.

It was then that she noticed her pounding heart. Her breaths became short and choppy. Though she had envisioned the conversation that she needed to have, the things she needed to say, she had given little thought to first words. In one imaginary scenario, he would see her for the first time, there would be a long pause, and he would begin with an apology. He would explain that he never meant to hurt her. That he understands why she hates him and understands if she never wanted anything to do with him again. Then she would tell him everything. How he had no right to do what he did. That he was selfish, thinking only of himself. That he robbed her of the chance to be with her mother when she needed her the most. No, she would say. I don’t want to see you again.

She took a deep breath, trying to regulate her breathing and slow her heart rate. It only made it worse.

He took another step. Then another. He saw her out of the corner of his eye. He glanced up, an annoyed look, as if he were irritated that she was in his way. She stepped back and held open the door. He shuffled through. He didn’t know her.

copyright 2017, joseph e bird

4

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