The Artful Trade

When I lived up in East Nashville there was a pack of abandoned dogs that ran that part of town each night. My street dead-ended against the highway and they would gather together and listen to the sound of tires on the asphalt all trying to get someplace else. I worked as a lineman for the electric company, upgrading wires and boxes and repairing down cable when the wind blew hard. That spring the wind kept pulling it all down. I was the kind of guy that did my 8 and 40 and 365, then came home and tried to find some relief in the overtime between shifts. Then each dawn I would climb into my rusty truck and go out trying to repair whatever got torn down in the darkness. That year I met this girl, a kind of stray, and eventually she moved in. I guess I was trying to save her or maybe just myself. I asked her a couple times to marry me. But she always said she needed more time, which is Woman for No. But I didn’t speak Woman, so I never really understood. I guess I thought ...

Blindspot There are two kinds of blindness. The first kind is full of darkness and the things you didn’t see coming. The hurtling cab as you step off the curb, the sudden unexpected pink slip, the wife’s suitcase finally packed and waiting in the front hall. The second is a blinding light. It carries only those things you cannot unsee. The losses that arrive in small black hours. The incandescent regret burned into the dark of your memory. The mistakes you can’t see past. And vision, if it ever comes, is not cheap. You must pay. And sometimes it takes a kind of blindness to finally see. Years ago I lived near a home for the blind in New York City. It was a non-descript building, so plain it was nearly invisible. It had a huge all-seeing eye on a sign and beneath it the words “We Seek Vision.” Some graffiti guy spray painted the eye black that summer. I was living in a rent-controlled apartment on the Lower East side off Delancey. There was an old man who lived next door. ...

Chapter 21 Albuquerque The ships kept coming that September, slipping each night into New York harbor after the 13-day return across the North Atlantic. The world had once again been saved from itself, but war, as its always does, took its price in blood. There was a weariness to the soldiers on the decks but an expectation too. The men who had left as boys stood looking at the lights, trying to remember what home and love felt like, telling themselves that the war was behind them now. But some part in each remained unconvinced, like the past had crossed ahead of them and waited now in the eyes of everyone they ever knew. “Look at that,” a GI from Albuquerque said. “Never seen something piled so high,them buildings.” He tugged at an empty sleeve with his good hand. “Where I’m from things is spread out, farms and fences, not all scraped together like this here.” “Yeah big cities. They sure can pile it up,” another said. “Hey Pasqual you said you’s from here right?...

Inseparable willmaguiretn@mail.com When I was seventeen and living on my own, certain that I knew more about anything than anyone around me, I took a job for a few months as a janitor at an old folks home. My friends called it the Home for the Nearly Dead.It was out at the edge of town far from view, like it was slowly being pushed out there to the very precipice of living. The building was a sad and decrepit little place with peeling paint and linoleum floors and a funeral home next door. The only thing past there was the interstate, the county line and the cemetery. That part of town had its own zip code and some of the townspeople called it the Hereafter. I was poor and dumb and usually hungry and broke so I was always looking for another job. Passing through one day, I saw a Help Wanted sign and answered it. They hired me on the spot. The people there were so old I thought they were another species. Kind of human, but not like me. They weren't racing through the day...

I don’t believe in luck or fate or coincidence. I don’t believe that planes can fly above heartache. And I don’t believe any car is fast enough to ever catch a dream. But I believe in trains. Trains can take you places no car or plane ever could. Trains go beneath the surface, to the heart of things. And I believe in guardian angels. Because one night I took a subway train to Chinatown in New York City, I was saved by one, and somehow that same night, I became one. At 18, I was a naïve, dark-haired college basketball player, certain I was headed for the Hall of Fame. One night, after a game in Madison Square Garden, I got drunk. As drunk as I have ever been. Waiting for the subway, I got separated from my friends. Uptown was home and downtown was lost. I stepped on the express train to lost. At night in Manhattan, roaring through dark tunnels, it’s easy to lose your way. Being lost is a little like being stupid. Usually you don’t know you are. And that night I was both...

  There have always been things in the air that make living and breathing hard. We can’t see them: wind and heartache, ragweed and grief. But they are there just the same. I was seven when I first began to understand that. I woke gasping one morning, and my worried mother hurried me to the doctor. “Very severe,” the doctor said. “Ragweed.” His face fell, certain it was the kind of trouble he couldn’t fix. “Nothing to be done for it,” he whispered. “It’ll be hard on him. Poor little guy.” “What’s ragweed?” I wheezed. He touched my hand. “There are things in the air, son. Things we can’t see.” My mother thanked him, took my hand, and we stepped back out into the world and the air, filled with things that made living and breathing hard.   That year I learned there were other things in the air, too. There were songs that poured from the radio. Every night as they filled the air my sisters danced and dreamed about boys that might love them forever. And later they would listen for t...

The Hard and the Beautiful When I lived in New York I would regularly pass through Times Square.  It always had a few 'end is near' prophets begging the tourists and the strippers, the 3 card Monte dealers and kids that sold a pint of blood for 6 bucks on the 42 St clinic, to repent. When I was broke once I tried. They threw me out. I hadn't eaten in a few days and they said I would pass out down a pint. Too much trouble. I recall passing by them hectoring the sinner...hungry me... with their certainty and their signs. There was one guy that stood at the corner of 42nd and Broadway. But instead of bellowing about righteous punishment and how near judgement was he stood still repeating the same few sentences. "Living is hard. Living is beautiful."  The hard is trying to make you beautiful." Whenever I passed by I would look for him. Once in a downpour I stood next to him waiting for the rain to ease. He repeated his gospel again and again and seeing me near se...

Maybe Even American... excerpt  The Unforgotten Like everyone else in the kitchen, Armando was from Colombia. One of the hotel owners had a coca farm there. And after the original kitchen staff started to make noise about overtime, back pay and unions, he decided to make an offer to some of the Colombian farm workers.  He rounded up a dozen men, some as young as 16, all bachelors, and offered them a chance. A chance to leave their village and go to America.  “You’ll travel the ocean and see a great city,” he said. “You’ll have jobs and a place to stay and the pay will be twice what you make pulling weeds and kneeling in this dirt.” Each young man looked into his father’s tired eyes, then one by one laid down those weary dreams. For something more. For maybe even becoming American. One by one they said, “Yes señor. I will leave all I have known of this life I will go and live among strangers and try to be something greater than a gatherer of coca leaves.” They said goodbye...

Stolen Away When I was a boy I tried to steal forgiveness from the record store in my small town.  It was a single—they called them 45s then. The Hollies. He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother . . . but it wasn’t about the record.  It was about regret.  The owner saw me slip out the door and run away. At ten, I was fast and light and he was slow and heavy and couldn’t catch me. I went back a couple weeks later figuring he would have forgotten such a small thing. He hadn’t. He grabbed me by the arm and called the cops. They came, looked annoyed and then called my father. Together they decided on my punishment. Each day after school I had to sweep Main Street in front of the record store.  But every night the wind would blow and dust would churn. And dirt once more would cover the road way I had tried so hard to clean. Broom in hand, day after day, trying to sweep away my guilt, I slowly began to understand.  Forgiveness cannot be stolen. You have to pay. It always has a...