Apocalypse Cow -- Todd Heldt

Everything seemed possible that summer Jeff and I stole the cow. We were living in a tiny rental house near the outskirts of Denton, and because it was summer, we had both had our hours drastically cut at the opinion research place where we acted as telemarketers. I had been placed on probation because I kept introducing myself to the female head of household age 28-37 as "The Telemarketer Formerly Known as Prince." It usually got a laugh, but it was apparently not professional enough. Jeff was not a discipline case, but there was less demand for our services, no matter how professional, in the summer. We had trouble making rent, affording groceries, and keeping the lawn trimmed to the landlord’s specification. One evening Jeff was driving us to the Drink and Dunk Free-Throw Basketball Bar when we saw the cow contentedly munching the grass at the edge of the field close to highway 380. Though I am not sure which one of us spoke first, it had to have dawned on us at the same time. A voice—either his or mine—said, "We’re gonna have to take that cow."

Cows are immutable by nature, so it was no easy feat coaxing her into the back of the truck. It is hard to persuade a cow, but left to their own ingenuity, two college juniors will eventually figure something out. Riding in the back of a truck was always something I thought was sort of fun, but riding in the back of a truck with a stolen cow was even more fun because of the added danger. I had been looking forward to drinking beer, missing the backboard entirely, blaming it all on the booze, and trying once again to flirt with Molly the barkeep. But all my life I had been prone to let the world lead me where it may, and that summer was especially so. This cow was the most exciting thing to happen in a while. I decided to name her Apocalypse.

We led her into the backyard and shut the gate. One of the advantages of the house was the tall, wooden privacy fence. Our cow would be safe from the target practice of passing rednecks, and we would be safe from discovery. No one would ever suspect that we had stolen a cow. Absent visual suspicion, how would it ever even come up in conversation? As long as we could hide her from the landlord, we’d only have to mow the front yard, we would get free milk and butter, and we could sell the leftovers to the neighbors. "We could even call it organic," drawled Jeff. "We ain’t got no chemicals back here."

The next day we wondered what to do with all the cow shit. I shoveled two still-moist pies into a Piggly Wiggly shopping bag and hurled it into the trash in the alley across the street. The bottom of the bag ripped out as I swung it around, and cow manure sprayed the front of the dumpster. This was going to require much more delicacy than I had anticipated.

I was always kind of a loser when it came to ladies. Mostly I wanted the ones I couldn’t have, and the ones who wanted me I hadn’t enough sense to recognize. Molly at the Drink and Drunk seemed to go for the boys who were better at basketball than I was, but I thought the cow might give me an opening. I approached her and ordered a Shiner Bock, and as I waited for her to draw it, I asked, "Did you ever play basketball on a team, Molly?"

"I did," she said, looking up from the tap. "I was a Lady Eagle until I tore my knee up."

"Sorry to hear that," I said.

"That’ okay. I don’t miss it too much." She handed me my beer and I took a drink, a thought welling up slowly in my mind.

"Say, Molly, why do you suppose they always call the women’s basketball team the Lady Mascots? Why weren’t you just an Eagle?"

"I guess it’s so people don’t get confused."

"I could never confuse you for a man," I offered. She smiled. I tried to think of a sports name that was inherently male and would actually need a feminine designation. "The Lady He-Men!" I said after a moment.

"The Lady Macbeths," she countered.

"The Lady Lions."

"The Lady Firemen."

We were bored by the game. I said, "Molly, I have a cow named Apocalypse. Do you like organic milk?" It turned out that she did, and our first date was to meet the cow. Apocalypse seemed sad. I stroked her back and patted her head. "Something's wrong with the cow," I said to Jeff.

Jeff's knowledge had always been bent more toward common sense than book learning. He didn't wonder about how the cow felt about her new home. He simply said, "I bet she's thirsty."

"Damn, I'm dumb", I said. I set a bowl of water down in front of her. She sniffed and licked at it. Her bovine tongue was far too clumsy a tool for the job. The water spilled into the grass. "We need a bigger bowl," opined Jeff.

We found a suitable kiddie pool at the 7th resale shop we went to. It was blue and had pictures of smiling squids and starfish. At a buck twenty-five, we could recoup our costs in no time. A cow is a fine commodity.

We had gotten pretty good at milking her, disposing of poop, and once we had practiced with the churn a few times, making butter. When Molly came by to meet Apocalypse, we had fresh milk, cream, and unsalted butter. Molly was much obliged, and she even gave me a peck on the lips. Things were looking up, but I could tell something was troubling her. "What’s wrong?" I asked.

"Shouldn’t a cow be a little freer to roam?" she asked. "Apocalypse seems awfully confined back here." I had to admit I hadn’t thought of it before.

As soon as Molly left, I approached Jeff in the kitchen. "Does this taste good?" He shoved a spoonful of something fatty and over-sweetened into my mouth.

"No, "I said. "It is too sweet."

"Damn," he said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Organic ice cream," he said with a huff, recognizing that his experiment had failed.

"Maybe next time," I consoled. "Say, Molly says that Apocalypse needs more exercise. Should we start taking her for walks?"

"What if she gets off the leash and bites someone?"

"Hmmm," I considered the possibility aloud. "We’ll have to walk her late at night."

"That's cool," said Jeff. "Oh, and Molly is a vegetarian. Under no circumstances can we ever eat this cow."

"We could always say she ran away or got run over."

"No." It was decided that between the hours of midnight and two AM one of us would walk Apocalypse around the block each night. I took the belt out of an old bathrobe and tied it around her neck with gentle precision. I found that she allowed herself to be led quite easily. I said to the cow, "I think Molly likes me, and I owe it all to you." The cow said nothing, so we walked in silence. Half-way around the block, she had a body function, and I shoveled it into a storm drain.

Life seemed like it could go on forever. The next day we hid Apocalypse in Jeff’s bedroom while the landlord surveyed our lawn. "The backyard ain’t even," he said.

"Well, sir, no one can see it with the privacy fence, so I guess I was sort of haphazard about cutting it," I said.

"You need to do a better job," he said. "I don’t want the neighbors to think I rent to trash."

"No sir," said Jeff. "Would you like some ice cream?"

"Don’t give him that stuff," I said.

"No, it’s a new recipe. I got everything figured out," Jeff said.

The old man passed on the ice cream, and we let Apocalypse out of the house. I led her over to a patch of tall grass and tried to persuade her to eat. She looked at me mutely with sad, liquid eyes. I gave her a hug. She began to pee.

"Did you house train her?" asked Jeff.

The ice cream was much better, and when we went to the farmers’ market with our weekly load of milk, whipping cream, and butter, we brought along a carton of it to spoon out for samples. "I like it best with fresh, organic peaches," I would say to people, who invariably wanted to know when we would be selling it. When we got home, Jeff kicked it into high gear. He milked and milked until finally Apocalypse mooed plaintively every time he touched an udder.

"Dude," I said. "Lay off the milking."

"Think of the money we could be making," he said.

"It isn’t about the money. It’s about the cow. We got everything we wanted out of Apocalypse, and if we get greedy it will ruin everything." After a few minutes of quiet rumination Jeff agreed. "Maybe we can steal another cow," he said. "What if we had two cows?"

"We don’t have room for another cow. Besides, when classes start up in the fall, we’ll have less time. Apocalypse is enough."

Molly and I were in full-swing by then, and she made sure I was thoroughly acquainted with all her favorite parts. Often we would hole up in my bedroom and make love again and again. She had a long, lean body that could only be compared to a tire-swing. I could climb all over her, up or down, back or forth. I could swing us to new heights and spin us dizzily around or we could suspend ourselves together almost motionless, in a slow, lackadaisical twirl. "This is perfect," I said to her one night, though I was pretty sure she was asleep. She didn't answer me, and I sneaked out to walk the cow. Molly was beautiful, and I was pretty sure I loved her. I didn't even mind that she didn't shave her underarms.

Milk, butter, and ice cream production were giving us extra money, we had a foolproof system for hiding Apocalypse when the landlord came by to get rent and check on the grounds, and Apocalypse was getting plenty of sleep, food, water and exercise. You have never seen a more radiant cow. Some moments I would look up and see the sunlight laced through the trees and think that the world could drift peacefully from day to day for all eternity.

Still, I knew it couldn’t last. The approach of September caused a dull ache in the back of my mind. We would be working more and taking classes again. The influx of students would
give Molly more choices, and she would eventually leave me. That was the way of the world, and it seemed like I was helpless to stop it.Jeff and I played baseball on his Nintendo. He struck me out, and my players took the field.

"The more I try to hold onto the world, the more it seems to escape me," I said.

He nodded solemnly. "The more I have, the more I am afraid of losing it," he said. He pop-flied an out. "What if I quit school and become a farmer," he said.

"Is that what you want?"

"I always thought I wanted to go into criminal justice, but I don’t know. Everything turns into work."

"I can’t picture you as a farmer."

"What do you think is going to happen with you and Molly?" My players were up to bat. We were way too good at pitching on this game. The game was always decided by one run in extra innings. "She is too pretty for me," I said.

"You want someone ugly?"

"No, I want someone pretty, but I am not sure I deserve someone pretty. I’m just kind of me, and I think once people start coming back into town, it will look funny for the two of us to be together. Everyone will wonder, ‘Why is she with that guy?’ She’ll break up with me by October." My third batter was up, and Jeff tried to sneak a low curve ball past me. The very end of my bat caught the ball, and I launched it high into left-center field. "It’s outta there," said Jeff. But then it fell short, and his center fielder caught it at the wall. My players headed to the field.

"So it goes," I said.

"It was a good run. Molly is very pretty," opined Jeff. "Crunchy," he added for clarification.

"I was lucky to have her as long as I did."

"She hasn’t left you yet."

"I know, but sometimes the world seems too good. We should take Apocalypse back to her rightful owner and get back to our lives."

Jeff knocked the first pitch over the wall. "That’ll do it."

"That’ll do it," I said.

In August we came home from the farmer’s market with enough ice cream money to equal our summertime telemarketer checks. Jeff was trying convince me to start a vegetable garden when we turned the corner and saw the landlord parked in front of the house. Not only had he found Apocalypse, he had stepped in a cow pie. He gave us an ultimatum: Apocalypse or us. We had two days to get rid of her.

I retired to my room to ponder my next move when Molly called me over for a talk. I already knew what it was going to be about, so I told her to have the talk without me. We hung up, and I gave Apocalypse one last hug. I said, "Well, cow, I think the summer of love has come to an end." I swatted her backside and she mooed without comprehension. She stared at me with her big, black eyes, and I led her through the gate. She followed me without a leash, and I walked her down the farm road, toward town. I stopped at an old farmhouse and knocked, wondering what I would say. I heard old feet shuffling behind the door, and I cleared my throat. The door opened and I felt my eyes start to water. The old man stared me hard in the face.

I said, "Did you ever lose a cow?"

---

Painting for The Front View by Lori Andrews

About The Author:
Todd Heldt has published poetry and prose in dozens of journals, including Birmingham Poetry Review, Borderlands, Chattahoochee Review, Sycamore Review, and Laurel Review. In recent years, he won 2nd place in the 8th Annual Poetry Superhighway Poetry Contest, was a nominee for a Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist in the Cleveland State University first book competition.
His first novel, "Before You Were a Prophet," was serialized at The Hiss Quarterly and is now available through Lulu, Inc. It’s a humorous tale about death, guilt, god, rednecks, kleptomania, and William Carlos Williams scholars. In October of 2009, Ghost Road Press will publish Todd's full-length collection of poetry, "Card Tricks for the Starving."
When he's not feeding alligators at the Lincoln Park Zoo he's probably hanging out with his wife, Kelly, and flying kites.

Something Must Be Burning -- Suvi Mahonen

Earlier this morning I’d agreed that we didn’t need to leave. Now that a second helicopter has arrived I have changed my mind.

‘Brendan, we can’t stay,’ I say. ‘We need to pack the car.’

We are standing outside on the second-level balcony with the doors closed behind us to stop the smoke from going inside. My nose blocks with the acrid odour of ash and burning gum leaves. We have come out here to try and see how close the fire has gotten. But all we can see is a thick haze of murk drifting between the trees.

The air pulses with the constant beating of the helicopter blades advancing and receding as they fill up at the dam. It’s not even eleven o’clock and the temperature has already reached thirty-eight degrees. The wind that blows brings discomfort not relief. I have wet my T-shirt but it doesn’t help.

‘We’ll be okay,’ Brendan says. ‘We don’t need to evacuate.’

He is scanning the forest beyond our neighbours’ house across the road. He leans forward and actually seems to be enjoying the scare. I can’t believe he is being so blasé.

‘We do,’ I say, though I hope he’s right.

‘We need to stay and guard the house,’ he says. ‘There are floating embers. They can set the house on fire if we’re not here to put them out.’

‘What’s the use of guarding the house if we die?’ I say. ‘This isn’t a game. You’re not trained to fight fires.’

My husband is a doer who thinks he can handle any problem. Like that time he’d tried to relocate a set of pipes for our new washing machine. Nine hours later he was still ankle-deep in water and would not leave the laundry, even when I called the plumber against his protestations.

But I cannot call anyone if I’m on fire. He doesn’t seem to realise that it’s okay to be afraid.
I can hear a fresh siren wailing up the mountain road. They have played a steady mournful melody throughout the morning as reinforcements are being sent in from all over. It has become the lead item on the hourly radio news now that the bushfire has dissolved seven homes.
But instead of listening to the updates we should be getting out of here.

‘What’s more important,’ I say. ‘Our baby or the house?’

I can still see the mountain on the other side of the valley glowing orange across the dark horizon. Fragments of soot floated in the air and the house smelled of a winter’s day when my father tried to burn green wood in the coonara. The conduit of forest linking the towns east of Melbourne was ablaze. It was 1983 and they couldn’t stop the spread of Ash Wednesday.
The roof-rack of the Commodore was piled high and there was just enough space left in the back seat for me and my brother to squeeze in, the dog would have to sit on my lap. I was only allowed to bring what would fit in my school bag: my diary, my favourite watercolour kit, and a stuffed teddy named Bo.

My parents were out on the front porch, I could hear my mother coughing. My brother and I were meant to be sleeping on the fold-out couch in the lounge but we kept getting up to look. It was like a volcano had appeared on the hillside opposite with a great flow of lava creeping its way across to us. My brother kept telling me what happened to people when they burned alive, how they screamed as their skin blistered and their eyeballs boiled. I said I’d tell Mum.
She shook us awake before I had a chance. It was still dark outside except for that glow. The fire was getting closer and we had to get in the car. We couldn’t find the dog at first. Dad threatened to leave without him but we found him under the house.

We drove away from the front along a windy unsealed road that traversed the side of Mount Donna Buang. The dog was asleep on my lap and I began to drift off too until the car skidded to a dusty halt and my father began to swear. A fallen tree was blocking our way. He got out of the car to see if he could shift it but it was too big to move.
I began to cry.
I knew that we were trapped and we would all be burned alive.

‘What will we do if our house burns?’ I say, scratching my wrist. ‘I couldn’t stand it. Where would we live?’

‘That’s why we should have stayed,’ Brendan says. ‘Everything is so dry. I could have put out any burning embers that landed in our yard.’

He is disgruntled I made us leave. I turn to look behind but the view is blocked by our bags.
Two fire-trucks, their strobe lights flashing, drive past us in the opposite direction, the sound of their sirens lingering after they are gone. We have joined a line of cars that is coiling its way down the mountain, a train of refugees. In front of us is a yellow station wagon with two collies in the back, tails wagging merrily as they frequently switch sides. Its brake lights come on.
As we slow we see an SES truck parked in a widening on the gravel shoulder, and a man setting up a portable barricade in the opposite lane.

‘They’re closing the road,’ Brendan says. ‘We won’t be allowed to go back home until the fire’s under control.’

He nods to the man as we drive past.

‘The poor bloke,’ I say. ‘He must be so hot in those coveralls.’

I pull at my undies which have migrated into the crack of my bum and redirect the air-conditioning vent so it blows on my legs.

‘Are you sure we should go to your parents?’ I say. ‘I’d rather stay at a hotel.’

‘It’s only for one night,’ Brendan says. ‘Hopefully.’

I consider arguing about the issue but I can’t be bothered. We pass the Norway nursery on the left, the plants looking limp behind the fence. I think of our house burning. Everything we’d lose.
Last September snow was falling when we drove past here.

The sky was a dull brooding grey and Brendan had the headlights on in the middle of the afternoon. We’d gone to Ellen’s Organics in Ferny Creek to buy ginger tea for my nausea. Brendan said morning sickness shouldn’t be coming on this early, but he also said I wasn’t supposed to get PMS on the pill.

I redirected the heating vent so it blew on my legs and burrowed my hands into the opposite sleeves of my red fleece. Brendan kept adjusting the windscreen wipers to clear the splotches of snow. Even going thirty the tyres would still have brief spasms of slushy spin.
‘So much for global warming,’ he said.

‘Global warming means the weather is more extreme,’ I said. ‘Not necessarily hotter.’
I looked out the misting window at the ghost gums, at their white covered limbs, at the ground’s new layer hiding its ugly patches of mud. We passed an A-frame house with its lights on, smoke rising from the chimney. I thought of our future winters, how cosy it would be at home, Brendan, the baby and me.

‘Brendan,’ I said.

‘What?’

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say.

I rested my hand on his knee.

Brendan’s mother opens the front screen door and waves as we pull into the driveway. She comes over and gives Brendan a hug when he gets out of the car. Then it’s my turn. I always feel a bit awkward whenever I get one from her. We’re not what you’d call close. I think it’s because she’s never quite got me, though now that I am carrying her grandchild we finally have something to share.

Brendan opens the boot and pulls out a suitcase.

I go to help, but all I can do is stand here mulling over what to bring in. The fear for our home has left me fatigued.

Brendan’s mother also takes a case. It is hard to remain in a stupor when everyone around you is functioning so I pull out the bag in which I think I have packed our toiletries. Unzip. Check. Yep. Closing the boot I follow Brendan and his mother up the front steps into the cool house.
Brendan’s father is lying on the couch with the cricket on. He looks up between the overs and asks me if I need a hand. He is a pharmacist who runs his own small franchise—a Chemmart down the road. I think he works hard at it. But at home it’s a different matter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him pick up a tea towel, let alone wash a dish. I tell him I’ll be all right.

Brendan is in the kitchen with his mother so I go past them down the hall into his old bedroom, where I know we’ll be sleeping. I start to hang a few things up. Looking around I see the cheap paperbacks standing haphazardly in the bookshelf and his maps bluetacked to the walls. His ratty green blanket still lies on the bed. Dusty atlas on the desk. How little this room has changed, even though it’s been over ten years since he lived here.

After a long afternoon we sit in front of the television watching the six o’clock news while we eat our tea—cold roast chicken with potato salad and bread. The fire is the lead item. The police suspect arson. Eight more houses have been burnt.

I feel homesick as we sit here, chewing through our food.

It’s after eleven pm and I can’t get to sleep. The still air is too hot but that’s not why. I think of our un-cleared gutters. It hasn’t rained for weeks and even the weeds growing in them have died. Our cedar-shingled roof would make an excellent fuel if an ember came to rest. I can already see it, the pile of blackened ruins where our house used to be.

Reflux simmers in my chest and I feel the beginnings of needing to pee. I turn onto my left side and look at the silhouette of my husband. He is lying on the air mattress on the floor with only his underpants on. I can tell from his arrhythmic breathing that he is in the middle of a dream. I don’t have anything in my throat but I clear it anyway. He remains asleep.

I try again. Then give up.

‘Are you sure it’s safe to go home?’ I say. It is ten-thirty in the morning and we are driving back to the hills. ‘I know they issued an all clear. But still.’

‘It’s under control,’ Brendan says.

‘But look at all that smoke. Something must be burning. What if it’s our house? What will we do? I don’t want to have to live with your parents.’

‘We won’t have to live with my parents,’ he says. ‘I’m sure our house is okay.’

‘But they said nine houses were burnt in Olinda! Why wouldn’t one of them be ours?’

‘Look Joni,’ he says. ‘Don’t work yourself up. We’ll see soon enough.’

We come to the roundabout at the base of the hills and turn left, driving up past the bottle shop and the Montrose butchery. Ahead two policemen are stopping cars. They ask to see Brendan’s licence when he winds the window down. They are only letting residents through to reduce the risk of looting and to stop people from going up just to gawk at the damage. They wish us good luck as we leave.

We curve up the hillside where the trees begin to thicken. Smoke lurks between the trunks in clouds of grotty blue and conceals the floor of the valley below. The air smells of drizzle and damp ash. Overnight a cool change has come bringing scattered showers that have slowed the fire. The tall gums we pass at first are undamaged, but as we ascend the road along a running slope of forest we enter patches where the flames have been and gone. Darkened pillars of eucalypts stand sparse on the barren floor, their cracked, charred limbs bald of foliage and bark. Between them soggy ash greys the blackened, shrivelled ferns and the wasted, stony ground. Small wisps of white rise in places where the coals are still alive. I think of all the birds, and the wombats that have lost their homes.

I look at Brendan. ‘Maybe we should turn around and go back. Let’s wait until it’s totally safe until we check. I’m sure your parents wouldn’t mind if we stayed another night.’

Brendan drives on.
We pass a house that’s burnt.
It’s the A-frame I love. A portion of blackened wall remains upright with its doorframe gaping open. The roof is gone; its exposed beams sticking out like the charcoaled remnants from a campfire. Sheets of corrugated iron lie curled against piles of rubble. Amongst the gutted ruins two people are standing in a room that is just a floor, sifting through their wreckage, trying to salvage whatever they can. I pray we’re not like them.

The road passes through a stretch that is still green. Then another burnt pocket. Beyond its damaged margins we drive until we get to the intersection and swing right, slowing for the potholes.

‘Here goes,’ Brendan says.

We turn onto our dirt road.

I look through my dust-streaked window at the front yards of our neighbours. Their driveways are vacant, houses’ curtains closed. We seem to be the first to return. Even the goat usually chained outside number twelve is gone.

Things at this end seem okay, but maybe it is giving me false hope. Our street is long and goes over a hill. What if on the other side everything is destroyed?

I grasp Brendan’s arm.
His eyes flick to mine.
We reach the road’s crest then descend.
Something must be burning.

---

Photo Credit: CruachanX at Flickr

About The Author: Suvi Mahonen is studying for her MA (Writing and Literature) at Deakin University in Australia. Her fiction has been published in various literary magazines and online in Australia, the UK (including on East of the Web), and the United States, and she has worked as a journalist both in Australia and Canada. She lives with her best friend and husband Luke Waldrip in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne where they spend time together writing and gardening.

The Storm - - George Polley

This is Eric Lindahl's story, and I'll let him tell it like he told it to me a few days before he left for Des Moines, Iowa. I didn't experience the storm, because Lisa and I were in Cuernevaca visiting her family, but I heard about it in the news, and read about it in Excelsior, el Universal and The Herald, so I knew a lot about it before we returned to Mexico City about two weeks after it hit.

The storm was unexpected, and did tremendous damage in a wide swath across the city. It even surprised the weather forecasters, who didn't see it coming. Some people said it was the old Aztec god Tlaloc, and that he was cranky about something. Just what it could have been is anyone's guess, and I haven't seen my old friend Gerardo Pulido to ask him. I'm not sure he was in Mexico City anyway, as Lisa was sure she'd seen him in Cuernevaca down by the Cortez Palace, but didn't get a good look at him, because when he saw her looking toward him, he ducked behind a tree.

Eric told me this version of what happened when we got together for coffee at Sanborn's on the Paseo, which was badly damaged, but was cleaned up pretty well by the time Lisa and I returned from Cuernevaca. What follows is just as Eric told it because I recorded it with his permission, of course.

~~~

It happened the day I got fired from my job teaching English at the Instituto Idioma y Cultura de Durango, the day Iglesia Rosario, aka “Pope” Rosario, walked into my class and caught me reading from The Herald instead of following her sacred approved system, which she views as scripture. She stood there in the doorway, arms folded sternly over her breasts, and asked me what I thought I was doing. “Teaching English,” I replied as innocently as I could manage, knowing that I had been caught with my pants down, metaphorically speaking. “Come to my office!” she ordered, which I meekly did. She fired me on the spot, aiming a long finger at the door and handing me my day's pay in its little brown envelope, the same one she gives the guy from the Department of Education his “mordida” in. She didn't utter a word; just glared at me like I was a cockroach, followed me to the front door to make sure I left and didn't try to sneak back in to say goodbye to my students, then shut the door behind me and made sure it was tightly closed and stood there until I was out of sight.

I decided to walk over to Chapultepec Park and spend the day at the Museum of Anthropology and History, a welcome relief from señora Rosario's prison. I got some small comfort from knowing that I was the fourth teacher in the past two months to be fired, “excommunicated” is the way one of them put it, a fifth had to be hauled away to a psychiatric ward, driven mad by those three students of mine, whom I'd won over through bribes, reading English language publications like The Herald and tossing Pope Rosario's sacred text into the ashcan where it belonged. A long walk through history, I told myself as I headed for Reforma, is just what I need. I can reconnoiter and come up with another plan later; jobs teaching English can't be that hard to find. The one thing I'll miss are those three goof-ball students of mine, sent by their employer, Kimberly-Clark S.A., to bedevil Sra. Rosario's fabulous institution. Gonzalo Rivera, Manuel Juárez and Eustacio Moctezuma. what a trio! The Three Musketeers! Always thinking of something, hatching some devious plot against the sanctity of Pope Rosario's Holy Fortress of Learning. What a crew!

When I got to the park, I stopped for a moment near the giant ancient ahuehuete tree, the one that I call “the-tree-that-looks-like-a-mountain” because it reminds me of a mountain in an old Chinese painting. It is ancient and gnarled, has a gigantic trunk that dwarfs people sitting around it, and huge lumbering main branches and hundreds of small and middle-sized branches that go up vertically like trees. It goes back before Moctezuma's time, maybe a thousand years. I gave its trunk a friendly tap as I walked by, then crossed the street and walked slowly up the hill toward Maximilian's castle, having decided to take a small detour through its history before visiting the Museum of Anthropology and History.

The hill gave off an odor of dry grass and smog. The park was filling up with people arriving for their midday siesta and picnics on the grass. On the small lake, lovers were already launching out in rowboats, rowing slowly. The big grey pelican, a fixture in the park, was busy pestering people for handouts as he waddled from one to another, clattering his beak. As I went up the hill past the Museum of History, a place full of horrific scenes of killing from Mexico's violent past, a place that sends chills chasing all over my body whenever I walk past it, a car bearing Guatemalan plates passed me going up, and a jeep load of soldiers passed me going down, rifles at their sides, swirls of dust curling up from the wheels.

Getting to the top, I went over to the brow of the hill, leaned against the balustrade, and looked out across the smog-blanketed city, trying to pick out Sra. Rosario's citadel down on Durango, but I couldn't pick it out, the air was just too thick with smog. Looking across the valley toward the mountains I noticed, totally out of character for this time of the year, a swelling, boiling mass of angry black clouds beginning to gather and swell. Then I was aware of the total absence of bird sounds and a general stilling of the air, as if the world was holding its breath, had sucked it up and held it in, expectantly, like an animal will do when it senses danger. Then from way off, the bank of clouds began moving rapidly toward the city, casting a black shadow beneath it as it sped across the valley, spitting lightning and rattling and rumbling as it flew, a swelling, malignant mass that gained momentum, a runaway train, a devil of a thing, charging right at us.

One of the young museum guards stepped out of the nearby guard box, stared off into the distance and motioned to his companions to come have a look. The four of them shook their heads and muttered, telling each other that things like this do not happen at this time of the year in the Valle de México, but, amigo, then how do you explain those clouds that are marching madly toward us, rattling and billowing like all Hell,? The five of us decided there were better places to be than standing on the crown of Grasshopper Hill waiting for the storm to swoop down on us. They headed for the castle door, while I, for reasons which I still don't understand, hightailed it down the road to the body of the park, hoping, I guess, to take shelter in the Museum of Anthropology and History before the storm hit, cursing myself for not having followed the example of those guys and run into the castle and slammed the door behind me.

From the other side of the hill came the loud rumbling of thunder, and then the first black thunderheads spilled over the hill and the castle, and a monstrous black avalanche of clouds that belched fire and torrents of rain and pushed a cyclone of wind ahead of and beneath it, swooshed down the hill and sent leaves and branches flying. It sounded like the end of the world! I turned on my heel and ran for the nearest substantial cover I could think of, whipped by gusts of wind and sheets of water and pelted by debris, pell-mell toward the Paseo. I got only as far as the colossus of Tlaloc when the storm hit full-force, threw me over the edge of the reflecting pool at the deity's feet, face down in the wet and the mire. I dragged myself to my feet and took shelter between the god's massive legs, thinking that it was as safe a place as any.

The rain was so dense that it blurred everything, like a river descending from the sky. Trees bent double until they broke, snapping with loud cracks! Branches and hats and people flew about like birds, flotsam carried by the wind; cars skidded into one another, floated down the Paseo like boats, three VW Beetle minicabs went by with their windows tight shut and steamed over. And overhead, well, overhead Tlaloc himself — that god of the storms, fury, and impatience — looked down, growled, and hurled another thunderbolt. I clung to one of the colossus's massive legs and prayed. Never, never in my life, I swear it, have I prayed so long or so fervently: “Lord, get me out of here, and I'll do whatever You want!” It's amazing what a man will say at times like that. And Tlaloc, hearing, swung a long arm of wind around, spun it around the Museum of Anthropology, the dirty sneak, so he could hurl it at the rear of his likeness and hit me square in the back with a curtain of wind and water that sent me sprawling on my face again in the pool. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the storm disappeared over the Museum and vanished, trailing black tatters and rumbling murderously in the distance.

When I picked myself up out of the pool and looked around, the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. Water ran in rivulets down the colossus' massive legs, ran in rivulets down me, poured over the edge of the pool onto the grass, and ran in a broad river down the Paseo. I lifted one foot out of the water, looked at it and shook my head: another pair of shoes for the trashcan! Steam began to rise from the ground, and out of the steam people dragged themselves, groping about, bewildered, looking for friends, relatives and pets, finding some lying dead under some snapped-in-two tree, others lying dazed but alive in puddles of water which were everywhere, like minor lakes; others wandered about like people raised from the dead, lost and in a daze. It was like every blade of grass and every particle in the roadway had become a steam vent, the steam quavering, drifting, hanging about, surreal, like a hallucination. I sat down on the edge of the pool and dangled my feet over the edge and just stared. Wreckage was everywhere. In the distance, I could hear the rising and falling wail of sirens as they converged on the park. I stood up, looked up into the colossus' great stone face, which seemed to be smiling maliciously over everything. I began walking home, amidst swirling clouds of steam.

Evidence of the storm's passing was everywhere between the park and my apartment on Ejercicio Nacional: there were broken trees, shattered windows, smashed cars, cars washed up onto sidewalks, wrenched and ripped awnings, junk. And everywhere, that shimmering, moving bed of steam. Oddly enough, monuments like the statue of Diana and of el Angel stood unscathed, except that Tlaloc, in his passing, had taken an awning from somewhere and draped it over Diana's nakedness, giving her a garish kind of modesty in green and white striped canvas. Turning up Tiber, I began to wonder what kind of horrors might have happened in the apartment I shared with two acquaintances who were both sticklers for cleanliness and neatness and had some very nice things. I wondered if María Antonia's shack had washed off the roof. María Antonia was their long-suffering maid, who lived with her son Eusebio, her teenage daughter Anita, and their dog Perro. I never knew why they didn't give him a more dignified name, but never asked. Maybe it was because he wasn't a very dignified sort of dog, but only a small, tan-colored nondescript little mutt who barked at everything and seemed scared of his own shadow. María Antonia was a jewel. It was a wonder to me how she managed to keep everything and everyone in balance.

Getting to Ejercicio Nacional and seeing the flotsam and jetsam scattered about, the crowds of people dragging their soaked belongings into the sun to dry, sweeping this way and that with long brooms, some simply sitting on the curb staring disconsolately at their feet, I knew I'd better shake a leg and find out what had happened back home. Passing the bakery, I saw the baker wandering around inside among mounds of soggy bread and pastry; further down the street was the lonely figure of Gustavo Heinz, our orange juice vendor, emptying glass after glass of water into the gutter, doing it very carefully, as if he didn't want to get any of it on the sidewalk. Like everything else, he was giving off clouds of steam.

“At least you didn't get washed away,” I told him, trying to put the best face on things.

“As far as that goes, I might as well have,” he replied, pouring another glass of water carefully into the street. “The damned storm washed all my oranges and all my money down the sewer! The old woman will never believe me!” He gave a shudder, catching a glimpse of his wife, the estimable señora Heinz, the shrew, shaking her broom at him and shrieking: “How dare you come back home without any money, you worm! I know what you did with it, bum, cockroach! You spent it on booze in that cantina where you like to hang out, don't tell me about any storm, liar!” He shook his head. “I've never heard of such a thing happening at this time of the year señor Eric, never! And this is twice this winter we've had a storm like this. Only this one was worse, it didn't just flush some bad cop down the sewer, it tore the Hell out of everything!” His face wrinkled up as if he were going to cry.

“Maybe it'll be the last one, Gustavo,” I said, trying my best to cheer him up.

“Por diós, I hope so! Another day like this one, and I'm finished!” The man went on to describe what had happened, he, going on about his daily duties, standing there squeezing juice for a customer when all of a sudden, WHAM! the storm hit like Hell had come, shrieking down the street and leaping over buildings roaring like a harpy from hades. The wind took every window of the supermarket out and left the inside of the store a wreckage of smashed and sodden debris. “I hid in the doorway,” he said, “and watched the wind take my oranges and dump them in the street and wash them away! I'm damned, señor, but it was just like someone was standing there dumping those things in the street, like a living being, if I believed in such things. And then the money, which like an idiot, I left in a box under the counter, the wind went in and took it all, opened the box and spilled all my cash right down the sewer after the oranges! Holy shit, señor Eric, it might as well have dumped me down there after it, the old woman will never believe a word of it, so help me God!” And he burst into tears, bawling like a baby.

I couldn't think of a single helpful thing to say, so I said nothing, kept my mouth shut, and listened. When he finished, I patted him on the shoulder and crossed the street to the apartment. As I was letting myself in, Gustavo called out:

“And the damned thing didn't break a single glass! Not one of them! How do you figure that out, señor, I ask you? I mean, whoever heard of such a thing? Who? That's why my wife will never believe me!” And he went on crying and pouring glass after glass of water into the street.

~~~

The apartment was a disaster. The storm had dumped gallons of water on the flat roof, and it all cascaded down the stairs and flooded everything, ruining the new oriental rug that my roommate had bought just the week before, the one he paid so much for because it's Persian, soaking it with sodden ashes from the fireplace. María Antonia was pushing water around with a broom and shaking her head. When she looked up and saw me, she wiped her forehead with the back of a hand and said: “Por diós, señor Eric, but the sky has fallen! Señor Justo will be beside himself! The rug is ruined! Everything is ruined! I don't know what to do!”

“I'll help you,” I told her. I looked down at the carpet, which did look like a total loss. “You're right about the carpet; there's probably nothing that can be done for it. But we can at least hang it on the line. By the way, is your room still up there?”

“Sí, señor, it is; but poor Perro shit everywhere from fright, and everything, like here, is a terrible mess!” She leaned on her broom and shook her head. “I don't know where to begin.”

It was true. Looking around, it was hard to decide what to do first, but I said “we might as well begin with the carpet.” So that's what we did. The oddest thing was that my room had been totally spared, as if Tlaloc, in a fit of compassion or a sense of irony had decided that one thorough dousing was enough. I mean, it was completely dry! I closed the door right away so María Antonia wouldn't see it, and we rolled Justo's Persian carpet up and carried it, corpse-like, up the stairs to the roof, where we slung it over the clothes line to dry. As for Anita and Eusebio, she didn't know where they were, which started her crying.

Perro, having strewn shit everywhere, was huddled next to María Antonia's shack, whimpering and quaking with fright. I went over and patted his poor head, and then we went back downstairs and began bailing water out of the rooms, pushing it down the stairs into the patio and tossing buckets full out the windows. It took us over two hours. Then we went back upstairs and began cleaning up the roof and María Antonia's two-room shack, which was a sopping, shit-covered mess with gaping holes in the roof where that howling wind had torn pieces off and sent them sailing throughout the neighborhood. We went to work with scrub brushes, soap, hammer and nails. I managed to find a few pieces of her roof in the street below, where Gustavo Heinz was still gazing disconsolately at the sewer opening, and I nailed them back into place. We could still hear the sound of sirens wailing as rescue trucks, fire engines and police cars criss-crossed the city. From up there on top of her shack, the wreckage on the tops of nearby buildings was clear to see: blown-down TV antennae, chunks of roofing, and other dogs like Perro, pooping in pools of water. And everywhere, people wandered about like lost souls. From down below, María Antonia leaned out of Justo's bedroom widow and waved to a neighbor woman across the street who was holding onto a long broom and staring off into space as if she half expected Tlaloc to come raging back again, appearing first as a small black speck in the sky, then swelling and billowing and filling the sky with howling wind, shattering bolts of lightning, and oceans of water.

“Soledad!” María Antonia shrieked; “Hey! Amiga! Comadre! Are you alright? Hey!”

“God has punished us for our sins!” Soledad replied, looking around and shrugging. “You should have been over here. My God, what a mess!”

“Ay, por diós! What could we have done to deserve such terrible punishment, comadre? You should see the mess over here!”

“Ay, diós mío, María Antonia; everything is covered with water. The señor will be furious!”

“Ay, Soledad, and so will señor Justo! You should see his carpet!” pointing with a finger and shouting in a dead-raising voice. “It is probably ruined, and he paid a fortune for it!”

“And señor Inocencio's library was washed down the stairs!” Soledad replied, leaning on her broom and shaking her head. “It came too fast, whoosh! down the stairs like a river into his library and through it. Everything is destroyed! One minute peace; the next,” snapping her fingers, “disaster!”

“Maybe it was Satan!” María Antonia shouted back.

“Yes, it's probably true, what with all the sin going on in this place,” Soledad replied; “But why would God punish us?” clearly meaning herself and her good comadre from across the street.

“For our sins, ninny,” María Antonia retorted at the top of her voice; “It could have been either one of them.” Since her meaning was ambiguous, the conclusion was left hanging in the air.

“The results are all the same, comadre, whichever it was,” Soledad responded, resolving the theological problem.

“It won't make any difference to my wife,” Gustavo Heinz shouted up from the street.

“Ay, pobrecito!” Soledad called down; “What are we going to do?”

“Clean everything up, comadre; it's all we can do.”

“And pray to God it doesn't happen again.”

“Yes, and pray to God it doesn't happen again!”

And far off in the mountains, lurking in a deep valley amidst a drenched pine forest, Tlaloc muttered to himself: “It wasn't either God or the Devil, you dummies; it was me!”

When I finished nailing María Antonia's roof back in place, and she finished cleaning up the mess inside her shack, we left Perro whining and shaking and peering anxiously up at the sky and went back downstairs. As she walked by the line where Justo's Persian carpet hung, its colors probably indelibly imbedded with fireplace ash and dogshit, María Antonia crossed herself and shook her head. Justo's anger would be boundless. All that money, down the drain! She couldn't help giggling, and by the time we were downstairs, the apartment smelling of mildew, she was laughing outright, wheezing and dancing this way and that in a fit of hysterics that left her rocking back and forth and holding her sides. When we went into the kitchen and found a salamander in the sink, she laughed so hard she had to sit down. Tlaloc, the old trickster, had left his final calling card. I scooped up the salamander and tossed it out the window into the patio.

~~~

The storm entered the city between Colonia Presidentes de México and Colonia Lomas San Lorenzo and swept north, leaving a corridor of destruction before vanishing into the mountains. The rest of the city was left unscathed. At least a dozen people drowned, three were blown off rooftops, two were squashed by falling trees, and one was washed down a storm drain. Scores of shops were flooded, causing no end of consternation (a baker was seen chasing a pan of pastries down Ayuntamiento, galloping like a horse and giving out hoarse shouts) hundreds of trees were toppled, some of them very old; a small fleet of yellow VW Beetle taxicabs sailed away down the Paseo like boats putting out to sea; and one food vendor in Chapultepec Park ended up in the central courtyard of the Museum of Anthropology and History, stall and all, and was found wandering around in a catatonic trance, muttering in Nahuatl about Hiutzilopochtli. And downtown, in the Zócalo, from whose ashes Mexico City had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of Tenochtitlán, the storm took the speaker's stand and all the bleachers, set up for an Independence Day speech by the President, and left them in a pile of twisted steel and splintered wood, over which the body of a soldier was draped.

The pictures in the papers the next day, not to mention the rumors that flew about, were unbelievable. The damages climbed into the tens of millions of dollars, plus uncounted costs in personal tragedy and loss. Whole colonias laid low, whole families, innocents, dogs and cats, merchants destroyed, washed away just because (to hear our neighbor Gilberta Madrazo talk) someone ticked the gods off, not knowing just how accurate she was, or which god had done the dirty deed.

María Antonia and I had opened all the windows in the apartment to air it out, and were sitting in a couple of dining room chairs resting and having a cup of coffee, when we heard the front door open and footsteps climb the stairs. I looked at my watch: it was six o'clock in the evening. We had been hard at work for six hours. In a moment, Justo's head appeared at the top of the stairs and looked around.

That evening, after Justo had looked around and surveyed all the damage, including his Persian carpet, which, having dried in the sun, looked more salvageable than it had when María Antonia and I dragged it up to the roof and hung it over the clothesline, I went out for cakes from a bakery down the street that had somehow escaped unscathed. María Antonia fixed a pot of coffee, and the three of us sat around the kitchen table by candlelight and talked about the events of the day. Justo's office was in an area of the city the storm had missed, so seeing the reality in his neighborhood was quite a shock. The next day, he sent the carpet out to be cleaned.

I finally took my flashlight and went to bed at around eleven and dreamed about poor trembling Perro, salamanders and angry Aztec gods. It had been an eventful day, filled with shocks and surprises.

The first thing the next morning, I got dressed and went out before anyone else was up and went down Tiber toward the Paseo, where I ran into my three students from Pope Rosario's language institute at Sanborn's on the Paseo. They were surprised to see me looking so good, and asked me what had happened to me the day before when the storm hit. It was pretty unbelievable to them, as they live in a part of the city that escaped the storm. They told me they quit Pope Rosario's school and found a new school on Masaryk; I think it's called "Madeleine O'Hara's Instituto Masaryk", but I'm not sure. They said she had an opening for a teacher, and they recommended me, but I told them I wasn't interested because I'd decided to go back to Des Moines. Seeing them was a good start to a doubtful day. Things around the neighborhood began to look normal with the supermarket repaired and roofs getting patched up, and even Gustavo Heinz was back making orange juice looking none the worse for wear. That big ahuehuete tree in Chapultepec Park? Lost a few branches, that's all. Tough old tree. Perro? Oh, he's still scared shitless, which is literally true. Clear your throat and he drops a load wherever he happens to be. We hope he'll get over it eventually, but knowing Perro, I'm not making any bets. And Anita and her brother? They showed up a few hours later. Seems they missed the storm altogether, and most of the work cleaning things up.

I'm leaving for Des Moines in a couple days or so. I've contacted the Psychology Department at Iowa State University, in Ames, about finishing my Ph.D. in counseling psychology. I have a few things I still have to do and people to see here. I'll give you a call as soon as I have my tickets in hand. Then we can say our goodbyes.

~~~

That was the last I saw of him until he dropped by my apartment the day he left for Des Moines. From what I've heard from mutual friends, he's completing work on his degree and plans to start a private practice in Cedar Rapids.

---

Photo Credit: rawheadrex on Flickr

About The Author:
Mr. Polley has been publishing short stories and poetry since the 1970s. A poetry collection, Seeing: Collected Poems, 1973-1999 was published by Tortoise & Hare (Seattle) in 2000. A short story collection, Fernandez' Tale and Other Stories was published by Tortoise & Hare in 1999. Earlier works were published in the South Dakota Review, Crow's Nest, North Country Anvil, Wine Rings, North American Mentor Magazine and Community Mental Health Journal. His blog "Tostada Speaks" can be visited at: www.tostadaspeaks.blogspot.com