[click to embiggen]1459 c/o Aiden Clarkson
Tresham's Pipe
It is 2008, 1459, and 1940 -
All on top of each other, mixed, simultaneous - like the scents of sesame oil, ginger and searing beef,
rising up in steam from a cast iron wok.
-
They are sat upstairs in Noodle Bar, a modest oriental restaurant on the square at the bottom of Hertford Street in Coventry. They have checked their swords at the door. They are ignoring the mean constraints of the British Ministry of Food’s rationing legislation. They have no ration stamps about their persons. They have small sterling-silver coins bearing archaic stamps. They had used them to pay the Taxi driver.
They are eating spicy, salty food from deep bowls. Char Sui. Belly Pork. King Prawns. Fat Udon, skinny Egg and Rice Noodles. They are drinking Tsing Tao and Tiger.
Thomas Tresham is smoking a pale clay pipe with pursed lips. He holds it in his mouth, and uses the fingernails of the heavily ringed digits of his left hand to scratch his right wrist. He wonders about possibilities. He wonders about the possibility of sourcing some of the guns that he’s heard Chamberlain’s soldiers have taken with them to the continent. But he reconsiders. He decides that that would be deemed at best unsporting and at worst barbaric by all involved in the conflict between York and Lancaster. And he says to himself,
-‘We have a more modest war.’
He speaks not in the Old English you would expect if you judged him solely on his appearance. He is understandable, he speaks 20th century English. But his voice and the voices of his companions are still not modern voices, not 2008 voices.
They have clipped diction and sternly correct grammar; the accent of Received Pronunciation. They talk like characters in black-and-white War Films. Films in which the Bosch are trampled with efficiency and honour, and no-one mentions Dresden.
His companions are talking too loudly for the sentence that slipped around the stem of his pipe and out of his mouth to be audible to any of them. Or by the petite young waitress who has appeared at his elbow.
She is the daughter of Korean immigrants who arrived in Cov 10 years ago, in 1998. Her accent is a surprisingly melodious mixture of that of her parents and that of those children of Coventry whom she went to school and college with. She speaks English at work and mostly everywhere, but at home she spices it sometimes with her remembered vocabulary of words from the Korea of her childhood.
Shyly, politely, she speaks.
- ‘Would you mind keeping the noise down? This is only a small room, and you’re being quite loud…’
She does not mention or seem to have noticed Tresham’s smouldering pipe. Her enquiry is met with bullish laughter that drives her away, blushing. Tresham has to disguise a cringe.
-
The waitress, whose name is Cho (which means beautiful in Korean), is pretty but not quite beautiful. She returns to the bar. She meddles with the optics for twenty seconds or so, not doing anything at all, not tightening anything or checking anything, but looking as if she is.
Then she sends her chubby boyfriend a text about arsehole northern customers with out-of-date attitudes that grate on people working in the modern service industry. She keeps the phone down at hip height so neither her manager nor Tresham and his table can see it. It is an angry text, but it ends with three big X’s because Cho and her chubby boyfriend are in love very much.
-
Tresham has pushed his food away from him, delicious but half eaten.
In twelve years time the political tides will have turned, did turn, and are in the process of turning. And he, Thomas Tresham, will be, was, is, executed by lethal injection. In his undershirt, barefoot, weeping, on a rough wooden platform behind a Burger King.
Videos of it will spread across the internet.
But for now he is in charge, has limited access to the power of life and death, and understands the weight of this duty. And so he smokes his thin stinking pipe instead of eating.
-
So, in Noodle Bar, we have the group known in history textbooks as - the group who will become known as - The Parliament of Devils. They are loyalist Lancastrians, supporters of Henry VI. They are an impressive assemblage, dressed all in historical finery. They are arranged around a circular table stained with Hoi-sin and chilli oil and soy and sweet and sour and blackbean and oyster sauce.
They are acting for all the world like drunk businessmen cutting loose on a Friday night. They are reading slightly racist, mostly sexist jokes aloud from the text message inboxes on their mobile phones. They are discussing football matches and extreme pornography which they have seen recently, using similar terms to describe both, eliciting and displaying similar reactions to both – shock, jeers, boorish masculine triumphalism, mock dismay.
-
To one side of the group of Loyalist Nobles, sat at the next table to the right, is a quartet of young women. They are prepared for a night of painting the streets credit-card-coloured. They will be doing serious drinking.
Drinking with young spivvy WWII soldiers yet to ship out to foxholes where they’ll crouch as artillery booms,
Drinking with men wearing FCUK shirts and clouds of aftershave who work at the same offices as them,
Drinking with dirty and footsore Loyalist soldiers, who will have to check their swords at the doors of the clubs, and who will pay for drinks with small silver coins.
The women are wearing their end-of-the-working-week best. They are wearing outfits that have turned them into a pubescent boy’s painting of how women should look, all black and gold material, and flesh, and gold jewellery. When they talk, they talk in the Old English that Tresham and his friends should be using. They do not smoke because in 2008 the restaurant is non-smoking.
-
To the other side, eating alone, one gaunt young man. Who limped when he got up to use the toilet, and seemed to have tuned out The Parliament’s noise entirely. He is wearing the simple, hardwearing garments available to him. His hair is short, his skin is pale, and he was wounded at Dunkirk. When he ordered his drink, he ordered it in flawless modern vernacular and idiom, but with a feminine lilt that momentarily foxed Cho. As he eats, he has a Players cigarette rested, lit, in a glass ashtray on the table next to his bowl of rice and chicken. Its smoke mixes with the tang of lemongrass and coriander coming up out of the bowl.
-
Our Parliament of Devils, from 1459 and enjoying our beer and food. They have been, (…are, were, and will be…) slipped,
like a piece of paper,
or a ribbon turned edgeways,
or a bayonet blade,
between one unlucky and yet incredibly lucky young man from 1940, and one group of professional young women from modern day Coventry.
All are waited upon by harried but professional Cho.
-
And now since Cho has been ignored and has given up, the Parliament are free to continue their too-loud talking. Their foul language is turning the air a shade of blue that clashes arrogantly with the restrained décor of the restaurant. They are relaxing before the real talk begins. They could be any group of men in any Chinese restaurant in any ring-road girdled city in England.
Except they are wearing 15th century clothes and have 15th century bad teeth and body odour. And Tresham is smoking his pipe.
They are working themselves up to beginning a discussion of Bills of Attainder. Writs of High Treason. Death Sentences. Tonight they will decide the terms and targets of the punishments to be meted out later upon leading Yorkists.
They distract themselves with discussion about this (second, no less) ‘World War’ that is running concurrently with the war that they are lead players in. Despite the German bombing raids on London, they are really nothing more than impartial spectators.
The conversation meanders. Someone mentions the Italian invasion of Egypt, which seems to have stalled near Sidi Barini, the advance coming to an almost complete stop. Someone else mentions the announcement of peacetime conscription in America, and wonders aloud if this means the Yanks will soon be entering the fray. They get bored, dismiss it as something of no real import, and can’t help but move swiftly on to discussions of their own, smaller, simpler conflict.
Talk turns to The Battle of Ludford Bridge. They crow over the pillaging of Ludlow. They discuss Trollope’s defection. They mock York, Salisbury and Warwick’s hasty retreat into exile.
But one of them is obviously more interested in this other parallel war then the rest of them are. He swallows Chow Mein and posits an interesting hypothetical:
If they had to identify themselves with one side of this contrapuntal war taking place in Europe and Africa, which would it be? Would they, the Lancastrians, be the Axis or the Allies?
-
One of the nobles, fat, sweating, slightly drunker than the others, bangs his fist on the table in outrage, and roars,
-‘We’d be the bloody British of course! The bloody brave bloody British! Even if it means slumming it with the slithering French!’
His outburst meets with a jingoistic approval from all but Tresham, who allows his peers around the table a few moments of joviality before puncturing it with a thick smoker’s cough.
He leans forward in his seat. He scans the faces around the table, moving clockwise from one to the next, until they are ready to hear him.
-‘I would prefer to identify us with whoever WINS…
And we won’t know that for a while, will we?’
The group look rebuked, but take it with grace, nodding, agreeing with the wisdom of what he has said. He is about to begin the real business of the meeting, has his slender pipe raised in hand to clank against his water glass and so call them to order, when he is interrupted by the reedy voice of another of the nobles, this one thin faced and pockfaced.
-‘Just a thought…’
Begins this new speaker, hesitantly,
‘My phone…it’s got free internet on it…I could go online and try and find out who wins? Who wins between the Allies and the Axis? So we could settle the discussion?
So we could decide who we’re most like?’
He has his phone in his hand. Tresham rises slowly from his seat, shaking his head as he does so. He takes the phone from the man’s unresisting hand. He drops the phone in a pint of Tsing Tao. Bubbles rise from the phone.
-‘Let’s stop playing silly buggers, shall we?’
Says Tresham quietly, in headmaster tones that would be funny if he didn’t hold so much authority, and wasn’t so obviously troubled by the weight of it.
‘Besides, if we can find out who wins their war, what’s to stop us finding out who wins our war? It doesn’t bear thinking of. If we find out we lose – not that I think we will, but still – we’ll all be hopelessly disheartened. And if we find out we win, we risk becoming lax and slapdash. I won’t have the idea of such inquiry even entertained.’
-
The group is silenced by his statement. The mood has changed- they look sobered, ready to begin the real discussion of which of their enemies, their one-time acquaintances, should be snuffed out with state sanction. Tresham, still standing, pulls a dirty piece of highweight, good quality printer-paper from his pocket.
He unfolds it.
On it, written in a fine, looping, calligraphic hand, replete with long S’s that to us would read as F’s, is a list of who is going to die.
He is halfway through the first name when the air raid siren sounds. Its bellow drowns out the easily ignored traditional-Chinese-instrument version of Moonlight Sonata being played through hidden speakers.
Above Coventry the first wave in a detachment of 515 of the Luftwaffe’s Stukas and medium bombers have begun to release their cargos. There is a long moment while the nobles are frozen in silence, Tresham with his list still in hand, before the first bombs punch into the ground, huge stones thrown into a lake of orange electrical light, each kicking up a splash of fire and brick and glass.
Then a quick smoking silence.
Then the petrol and magnesium incendiaries plummet down,
and Tresham and his nobles are dead,
dying,
and about to die, and with their business unresolved.
-
Although afterwards they resolve it, surviving being dead, remaining dead but being alive. Because it was resolved, it must be resolved, because it was resolved.
-
Coventry burns. Cho clears tables. The four young women who had sat on the right of the nobles have fine nights out, have ecstatic fun amongst the men of their time, the men of 1940, the men of 1459, and Coventry burns, and all of the four young women have children later in life, and were children early in life, and are born and die and give birth and die and are born, and Coventry burns, and Noodle Bar is destroyed totally and is still there open for business and the young man is wounded again in Dunkirk again and has never been wounded, and lives with the wound up until only twenty years short of catching up with himself in Noodle Bar beside the nobles, and is born and dies and has ecstatic fun and is born and Coventry burns and videos of it are spread on the internet, and we check our swords at the door and die and Cho clears tables, pretty but not beautiful, and we are born and Tresham’s pipe goes out and continues burning.
1458 c/o Crispin Best
The Art of Dying Well
Chapter IX
Some suggestions:
Some suggestions:
- You could be deposed by your little brother. He will order your death by strangling. You will wonder if you'll make a fat ghost.
- The date and place of your death could be recorded, but not the cause: February 20, 1458, 'At the circus'.
- You could die in some abbey somewhere. Nobody will be sure if you were poisoned by a monk or had a stroke or what.
- It could be decided by the Italians that since you are Catalan you are 'worth killing'. You could make it to a port and then die. Your Catalan friends could sail off, leaving you, your bewildered face, your bewildered dead body.
- You could get a posthumous pardon for your daughter and then die, not burning, unlike her, but not hopeful, unlike her.
- You could die shortly after your wife, but before you are able to name your disgraced illegitimate son as your true heir. Your illegimate son would stay disgraced and win a large amount of money one afternoon gambling on pigs.
- You could put a stone roof on the cathedral to keep out the rain. You could pave the floor of the cathedral with stone and then die.
- You could die in your hometown, in a small room in the college you founded, a book over your face because of what the smell means or just to block out the light, who knows.
- You could die and be remembered for the poetic form you invented, of which your poems are the only example.
- You could be said by all to be unattractive. You could have delicate health. You could fail to produce children and die.
- You could die and be buried and someone could erect an alabaster monument to you and then someone else could come along and kick it down as a joke.
1457 c/o Matt DeBenedictis
The Multitasking Life of the Pope
The Pope hears God.
God’s voice sounds nothing like the Pope’s. The Pope’s voice is rather high with raspy drops and curves for words to split up and get lost in the middle of certain sentences. Often times God’s voice rushes into the bedroom of The Pope…unannounced and uninvited. Two different times The Pope has tried to imitate the voice he hears for others. Both times The Pope’s voice went away upon even attempting such a reenactment. His voice did not return for three days, both times. The second time a part of The Pope’s tour got cancelled as a result. A rescheduled date still hangs, unannounced, so T-shirt printers wait, ink ready, with anticipation lingering over their screens.
The Pope is going to die.
The Pope moves for God.
The popes that came before This Pope would wave a pen over virgin pages with violent and jerking movements. No ink would touch the paper and no movements of the pen resembled any construction of words, but still words ended up on the pages—indented and punctuated. This pope, our pope, The Pope, does not use the pen like the ones before him; he just dictates words and others write the messages of God down. No glitz and glamour for this pope, he’s got souls in the wait.
The odds The Pope will die are one out of one.
The Pope has an army.
The Pope is the commander of God’s army. The army protects The Pope as if he was actually God through air strikes, political deals, bullets, and bulletproof shields. No one else receives this honor of devotion and fortified action, unless they are The Pope. The army moves and spreads as he commands. In The Pope’s office is a modified map of the world; it’s flat and has colors representing the devotion each country holds to. The other day The Pope moved more of the army pieces into Alabama, USA. The army is on the move.
The Pope will have a funeral one day.
The Pope is much more than a man.
The Pope is a man, but much more. The Pope is a CEO but incapable of error, but he will apologize for previous popes. The Pope eats sandwiches, almost everyday—like most people, but The Pope’s sandwiches are better than any of us have ever had. At night The Pope lies down on his bed with sheets of the highest thread count in the entire world. The softness of this bed is much like God’s voice, unexplainable. The Pope likes to tell a joke to his assistant that God’s voice likes to take a nap on his bed because it’s more heaven-like than heaven.
The Pope will die in a bed like most others do.
The Pope is God’s action figure.
The Pope has the praying, waving action grips; the kneeling, kicking, and posable knees. God has him move through crowds as an encapsulated collectable. The reverence for The Pope is God’s daydream about Himself. Sadly one day the voice, the control, the power, the great cooking, and not worrying about paying bills will catch up to The Pope and he will die—slightly mad. His final days are unknown to our eyes and silent to our ears, but behind large doors and while laid upon his bed of unimaginable comfort his madness is the sign that God’s touch is one man cannot contain.
Final words from notable popes:
Pope#3
“The fish were the first to sin. We caught sin from them.”
Pope #42
“When I fade the mountains will praise me and damn you in the same breath.”
Pope#78
“Dryness”
Pope#100
“A wall will be my heart”
Pope#105
“I could see the words before you.”
Pope#186
“The sky is not black, we are just beginning to die.”
Pope#204
“From the East we will be consumed, like wine, like tender bread. No one will remember us.”
Pope#214
“I crave.”
Pope#245
“Rain is where the devil hides his weapons.”
1456 c/o Jason Lee Norman
When an Indian woman has her baby they hand it to the father and he takes it out of the birthing tent to show the rest of the tribe. My mother told me that the first thing the father saw once he left the tent would be what he would name his child. That is why Indians have names like Sitting Bull and Running Coyote. Another version of this lie would have something to do with a dream or 'vision' that the father would have prior to the child being born. My poor father was in love with these legends and believed them until the end of his life.
When I was born my father was literally at a loss for words. He was full of feelings but he had no words to express them. I was named after an emotion that could not and had not yet been put into words. I was named for the feeling of satisfaction my father felt after having eaten turkey. I was named after the feeling that you get when you rub your two hands together that have spent an enormous amount of time in the bath. I was named for the peculiar and inviting smell of a burning fork.
When I was born there was this hurricane and the sound of flies.
1454 c/o Aiden Clarkson
Margret Tells Us About
The Important Wet Dead Man
On the beach, in the town, in a green dress and a grey fleece, suffering under The King, going through the rubbish, by a campfire, putting lipstick on my nipples, eating fish and chips and EVERYWHERE I am Margret.
The important wet drying dead body of an important wet dead man was on the beach. Up about a mile along from where the older-than-us wall eventually peters out, down maybe thirty foot from the end of the grasses and little scrub plants sat upon by butterflies. The butterflies would sit on the flowers I would take up and sever and slot in my thick hair. And the butterflies would follow me and get on me when I stood still, and would only fly off when I started shouting at the sea, or at the public toilet block. I loved to walk to the public toilet block and shout at it.
The body, important, wet, was alone by itself on the sand. There was nothing around it but tiny thousands of constant-movement sand-fleas. And occasional pebbles that looked, from above - gull’s-eye – like they’d been orbiting it, but had found their movement arrested.
The body, headless, in a blue tracksuit, white trainers, rotting stink, was stationary, amongst pebbles still, sand-fleas moving miniature. The important wet drying blue tracksuit grey skin dead body of an important wet dead man. On the beach about a mile along.
My littlest sister told me about the six men and The King. She had been down at the beach when they found it. She had been getting all the plastic off the beach. For which the family received money. I used to be the little girl who got the plastic. My little sister with dark hair in a red jacket, waterproof but not windproof, wind-chilled, picking up plastic with blue-cold hands, a tiny red thing in front of great grey sea.
She saw six men stood around the important dead body. In the same colour and design tracksuits, same colour and design shoes, but with their heads attached. She kept her distance, as she had been taught, until was beckoned with a stern gesture, and then the promise of money, as she had been taught, and even when beckoned was reticent, as she had been taught, and was finally persuaded to walk the two miles into town to tell The King.
We’d known the important dead body was there wet for three days. And we had decided better off out of. We’d visited him on the first night and jumped on his chest. Bearing in mind I was trying to distract myself.
The King was sane one year off and one year on. He was the one policeman, banker and voice of god in the whole country, which is a big responsibility.
I loved him, he was very nice to me all the time when I had to be made to leave shops, or when I strayed on to the Campsite and he had to come and drag me away by my neck, or when I went on my knees behind the hotel and he shoved it in between my lips to the furthest back gagging part of my mouth.
The King, tin crown on his head, wearing official black dressing gown, tramped down the beach towards where the body was laying at the centre of its little arrangement of objects - pebbles, fleas, six men, littlest sister - with a frown so deep and a face set so angry that you could almost forget, says littlest sister, that this year wasn’t one of his sane ones.
The King had a plastic bag in his hand with a head in it. It can only be assumed that the head had been found earlier, somewhere else on the beach. I wish The King had my head in a bag.
He got the head out of the bag without so much as hello to the six men stood around the wet important body, and with the head in one hand he picked the body up by the front of its clothes and he jammed the head on the neck stump to see if it fitted. The six men all took a synchronised step back and gave gasps. All of the six men said
It’s Him, Definitely, That Is His Head On His Body.
The King said
THAT IS FOR OUR SCIENTISTS TO DECIDE.
The six men picked the heavy important wet body up and carried it back to town. The King walked after them with the head under his arm with his crown on it, and the bag he had carried the head in pulled down over his own head, stumbling a little over rocks and singing our national anthem very loudly.
My littlest sister said she would’ve followed further but The King’s singing had set her off as well and she had to find something to shout at, and had settled on the ploughed up and disturbed sand where the important dead wet body had been. She stayed there staring at that space and shouting. She said
…Margret You Understand That, You Have To Do It Too, You Have To Shout…
And I do, and did, and could, but I hit her anyway, once, across the legs, acting regal and Kingish.
1453 c/o Crispin Best
Volcano
Volcano was lonely. He wanted to feel strong.
Volcano was bored and lonely and wanted to do something.
Volcano erupted. He tried to dance but felt self-conscious. He spat ash into the sky. The earth shook. Volcano erupted and his island split in two. Things happened.
Volcano gargled lava and tried to sing. He thought volcanoes should feel very good and alive when they erupt, but Volcano felt bad. He tried to think of funny ways to describe the eruption but realised he had no-one to tell. He spat lava and ash and smoke up into the sky. He tried to smile. He was erupting and he knew he was erupting. He thought he should feel sexy or something. He felt alone. Soon the sky was full of black ash and Volcano couldn’t see anything.
Volcano sat in the darkness. He said ‘hello?’ to nobody. He sat there for a long time. He said ‘hello?‘ again. He started to cry. He was done erupting.
Later, Volcano woke up and looked at the dark around him. Things were still happening. Smoke and ash got blown about by wind. Lava hit the water and the ocean boiled. Cooked fish floated to the surface. Over-eager seabirds burnt their beaks.
Gradually wind moved ash higher and somewhere else. The upper atmosphere got fuller until the sun couldn’t get through. People on beaches started to boo. They blew into their hands. Volcano listened and felt nervous.
The world went cold. Volcano didn’t understand. The whole world. All that fire he had made and the world had gotten colder. There had been a mistake maybe. Volcano couldn’t believe it. But there was nobody to ask. Volcano felt shame.
The world went cold. The sun couldn’t get through all the ash. For a whole year, no corn grew in Europe. Volcano heard this and felt awful. Volcano thought that breakfast would probably change forever. Cinemas would have to rethink their finances. It was all Volcano’s fault. He felt just terrible.
The two halves of Volcano’s island missed each other. They shouted sad messages across the giant crater that Volcano had opened up. They cried and sang and Volcano listened and knew all the words and felt terrible.
There was a corn shortage in Italy. How would the Italians survive without their daily polenta? Volcano sat and imagined their suffering. No polenta!
Wheat crops suffered too. Four feet of snow fell on parts of China. The Yangtze River froze. The Yellow Sea froze. Two hundred thousand people froze and died. Two hundred thousand. And still there was a noodle shortage.
Constantinople fell. Hailstones rained on celebrations. People went out into their gardens to sit and try to feel alive. They looked at their gardens and their gardens were ugly and dead. They felt awful and went back indoors. They shouted at their spouses. They did the washing up noisily.
Whole street parties were washed away by rain. Houses, hotels and shelters flooded. Thousands more died. There was one loaf of bread for the whole of Cyprus. A meeting was called.
Fog crashed ships into cliffs. Sunsets looked like the city was on fire. There was an eclipse that had nothing to do with him but Volcano saw it and he screamed. Halley’s Comet came, bright gold with a rusty tail. Volcano looked at it and he screamed.
Everything was wrong. Volcano wanted to apologise. He wanted to do something. He was a volcano. He couldn’t move. He sat and looked up at the sky and tried to think. He looked at the sky and felt terrible. He felt sick. He started to sink into the sea. He noticed what was happening and he thought it was OK and he sank down and went underwater. Volcano cried. He reached the ocean floor and he cried. He cried and yellow bubbles rose and hit the surface and then popped, like bubbles do. He cried and bubbles of hydrogen rose to the surface of the water slowly.
1452 c/o Laura Webb
Discovering Corvo Island
There are no trees on the island, no leaves to drop onto the ground into which no roots are gripping. This is his first observation, the first one, anyway, that he will tell anybody, our Diogo, who has found, like a complete impossibility, his island; who, having always wondered what it would look like, now rehearses telling it, holding the words in his mouth a moment before letting them slip: A risen rock, all green, below a green sky. And treeless. Not a single branch.
Now, Diogo is the island and the island is Diogo. He has forgotten everything about the place he came from, it is stuff and nonsense in letters rolled inside of maps, letters which have curled the same way as his maps, so that he must pin them down at the corners with candlesticks and flasks, before losing heart, as he always must, our Diogo, and raising his eyes to the window, the small window of the boat he sleeps in, to monitor his island, for fear it should slide away into the night.
His island has a volcano, it is the widest and greyest thing he has ever seen. He suspects it is dormant, but still imagines it erupting should he ever leave, dissolving his island into lava and ocean floor like the sugar cubes in boiling water he is taking for the fever that came on him his second night. He will not leave its side, his island, the smallest on the archipelago, the most north-western. He is waiting for other boats, other men, to catch him up. His brow sweats, his belly swells. The moon is a dark thing in a darker sky.
Now, Diogo is the island and the island is Diogo. He has forgotten everything about the place he came from, it is stuff and nonsense in letters rolled inside of maps, letters which have curled the same way as his maps, so that he must pin them down at the corners with candlesticks and flasks, before losing heart, as he always must, our Diogo, and raising his eyes to the window, the small window of the boat he sleeps in, to monitor his island, for fear it should slide away into the night.
His island has a volcano, it is the widest and greyest thing he has ever seen. He suspects it is dormant, but still imagines it erupting should he ever leave, dissolving his island into lava and ocean floor like the sugar cubes in boiling water he is taking for the fever that came on him his second night. He will not leave its side, his island, the smallest on the archipelago, the most north-western. He is waiting for other boats, other men, to catch him up. His brow sweats, his belly swells. The moon is a dark thing in a darker sky.
1451 c/o Crispin Best
The Man in the Vest
Action is happening on the TV screen. The Man in the Vest opens a can of beer and drinks one quarter of the can in quick gulps. The Man in the Vest stands up and slams the can down on the coffee table and beer foam sprays up out of the top.
The Man in the Vest looks at the TV and pushes the TV off the TV stand. The TV lands on the ground and there is a spark and little flames start burning. The Man in the Vest pours the rest of his beer onto the flaming TV set and there is another sound and a spark. There are tiny flames in the TV screen still and the TV screen burns.
The Man in the Vest crushes the beer can and throws it out of his open window. He slams his front door behind him as he leaves his house and a mirror in a house across the street breaks. The Man in the Vest shouts,
- Shut UP!
A man wearing a sombrero looks up from his fire hydrant and squints and starts running towards The Man in the Vest. The Man in the Sombrero is screaming and waving his arms as he runs. The Man in the Vest looks at The Man in the Sombrero and smiles. The Man in the Sombrero is shouting,
- Where are my glasses?! What have you done with my spectacles?!?
The Man in the Vest looks down at the beer can on his front lawn and slowly pulls a revolver out of overcoat and points it at The Man in the Sombrero. The Man in the Sombrero slows down and The Man in the Vest shouts,
- Don't make me do it, Joe!
The Man in the Sombrero stops and spits and looks at The Man in the Vest and says,
- Where… are my glasses?
The Man in the Vest uncocks his revolver and puts it back in his overcoat and nods and spits. He opens up his overcoat and stands there and looks at The Man in the Sombrero and shouts,
- I have lots of glasses! Which ones were yours?! How am I supposed to remember which ones were yours?!
Beneath his overcoat, The Man in the Vest is naked apart from his vest and his penis sniffs the air. There are nineteen pairs of glasses hanging from loops stitched into the lining of The Man in the Vest’s overcoat and The Man with the Sombrero shouts,
- Why do you have so many pairs of glasses?!
The Man in the Vest shouts back,
- I don’t care!
The Man with the Sombrero looks at the glasses and points at one of the pairs and seems calmer and nods his head and says,
- Those ones are mine, the Buddy Holly ones. Thank you.
The Man in the Vest takes the Buddy Holly glasses out from their loop and says,
- These ones?
The Man in the Sombrero nods and The Man in the Vest drops the glasses on the ground. The Man in the Sombrero makes a quiet sound and reaches a hand out and The Man in the Vest stamps on the glasses and there is a crunching sound. The Man in the Vest pulls his overcoat closed and does the buttons back up and shouts,
- Happy now?!
The Man in the Sombrero clenches his jaw and shakes his head. He takes a step towards The Man in the Vest but The Man in the Vest pulls out the revolver again and shouts,
- I don’t care about your glasses, Joe! Remember what happened last time?!
The Man in the Sombrero bends down and massages his knee and looks at The Man in the Vest and makes a small sound.
The Man in the Vest kicks what’s left of the Buddy Holly glasses towards The Man in the Sombrero and shouts,
- I… don’t… care.
The Man in the Sombrero goes to pick up his glasses but just kneels there and cries for a little while and a hot air balloon goes in front of the sun. The Man in the Sombrero picks up the glasses and puts them on his face and they are bent and don’t fit properly and he can’t see anything and he cries there in the huge shadow.
The Man in the Vest watches him for a second and snorts and then turns and starts to run down the street. He is pointing the revolver at people as he runs past and he hears them scream and he shoots a bullet into the air. The bullet goes very high into the air and then comes back down and lands and makes a small impression in the Earth.
The Man in the Vest shoots a bullet at a bird’s nest and kills two baby birds. The Man in the Vest runs across a street when there is a red light and two cars swerve to avoid him and crash into each other and both the drivers suffer severe spinal injuries. The Man in the Vest punches a baby in a pram and makes a zipping motion across his mouth with his fingers and points at the woman pushing the pram. The Man in the Vest runs past a beggar and he kicks the beggar’s hat and coins fly everywhere and the beggar puts his hands over his ears and tears roll down his cheeks.
The Man in the Vest laughs. The Man in the Vest laughs very loudly and his body shakes and people push their bodies against walls as he runs past them laughing. A child buries its face in its mother's crotch and feels interested and the mother strokes the child's head.
The Man in the Vest starts to slow down because he is near to where he is going. The Man in the Vest goes up the steps of a building and into the front door of the building. The Man in the Vest says hello to people in the building and smiles. The building is where he works. The building is the police station! The vest was a bullet proof vest!! He is a police officer!!!
