Adam Engel

Kane X. Faucher

Garden Sale Bazaar

Gold Teeth

My grandfather had gold teeth. Two, at least, maybe more. He'd wrestled for money as a young man. Got his teeth knocked out in steerage.

They were going to kill him when the boat stopped in New York. So he jumped ship in Cuba. Learned Spanish. He knew six languages. A bunch of thugs jumped him in a bar. After beating them senseless, he rolled them for enough money to buy a ticket to Florida, then New York. I bore no witness to any of this, obviously; I had to accept his word on faith.

When Grandma died he crumbled like an old barn. After sixty years of marriage he couldn’t even fix himself a sandwich. He lived with us for a while. I caught him trying to make frozen peas. Just dumped the box in a pot of boiling water. By the time he went into the home he thought the KGB was trying to kidnap him to give him a sex-change operation. His four wrist watches all told different times. He tried to escape from the home one night by scaling the fence.

One of the security guards "accidently" shot him, believing him to be an intruder trying to get in rather than an inmate trying to get out. I don't believe that. I think he shot him just for fun, knowing Grampa was probably on his way out soon, anyway—his mind was eating him alive. My mother and her brother got a nice settlement from the home, not that either of them needed the money. I always wondered what happened to the guard. No one had given such a personal gift to my grandfather in years, yet the guard, who was found innocent of wrongdoing, disappeared after the trial, and left no chance for me to thank him. Who knows what heroics went through my grandfather's head, what enemies he was bravely defying, when the bullet struck, granting him some kind of "heroic" exit.

Life of Johnson

After rattling around alone for a year following my mother's death, my father decided to sell the house and move to Florida, not to retire but to start a new business. He’s a restless man. He wanted us to help clean out our old stuff from the house. Me, my sister Deborah, her husband, Seth, and their five-year-old son, Jason. Yard Sale on Sunday. Sell it all by sundown. I'd taken a train in from the City. First time I visited him in a year.

Jason uses his precocious vocabulary to communicate with one personality besides his mother—and her only from necessity. His best, his only friend was Dr. Johnson. He spoke to Dr. Johnson and only Dr. Johnson, a red rubber ball some relative had placed in his crib before he could sit or speak. He expressed his emotions by drawing faces on the ball with a felt tip marker. He'd draw a sad face, a happy face, an angry face, a puzzled one. He wiped away the faces, as his moods and passions changed, with spittle and his tiny thumb.

Jason swam in the pool with my father, keeping Dr. Johnson in a zip-lock sandwich bag, his ersatz scuba gear. He ate a hotdog on the grass and drew desires on the ball, his freaky felt-tip faces, erasing them with spit and his damp little thumb until possession by a new emotion inspired him to draw again.

The rest of the afternoon was spent roaming the house in search of the things we left behind, mementos from our youth that we did not wish to bequeath to the yard sale hordes. I went down to the basement where I used to read and write, alone and in peace, until the wee hours of the morning. I found old paperbacks, and stacks and stacks of magazines, many of which had belonged to my mother. Some of them dated back to when I was Jason's age. I found cassettes and albums of the music of my day. I found half-filled notebooks of my juvenile poetry and prose. More books, magazines, dolls.... Except for the notebooks, which I tore to pieces, I bestowed the fragments and artifacts of my boyhood upon the bargain-hunting crowds.

By the Pool

Night I drank Cognac with my father by the pool, which was lit up at the deep end by a bright light below the waterline and glowing aqua like a patch of Caribbean sea under fat gold moon. Starry night; suburban night sounds—close crickets and distant cars on distant highways; the pool filter's glub, glub, glub.

"So," said my father.

"So," I replied.

"I'm not worried about you," he said. "You were always a hard worker. You have determination. You'll do whatever you want to do and succeed."

"Sure."

"Enjoy what you do. That's all that's important. As long as you enjoy your work. Ahhhhh. Smell that air. So peaceful. Your mother loved this house. We thought that...well, life brings its surprises."

"Life explodes in your face," I said.

My mother woke up and died one morning as my father dressed for work. Poor Dad in his executive black socks and boxer shorts dialed 911 as she turned blue. Helpless, helpless.

"We all loved this house," he said. "You children grew up here. This house holds memories."

"Yes. Memories."

"In any case, I'm selling it all. Pick out what you want to keep and the rest goes to the yard sale. They're crazy these yard sales. You'd be surprised at what people will buy. They come from all around to haggle over your most intimate belongings."

Mom

four in the morning religious infomercial:
god groveled for checks, cash, cards:
Mother entered in her nightgown;
she carried a book of photographs;
her lit cigarette produced no ash.
She sat at the foot of my bed,
laid the book between us.
"Since when do you walk among the living?"
"I'm not walking, I'm sitting."
"What's it like being dead?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
Mother was always a quick wit;
death hadn't dulled her edge.
"I had such faith in you,” she clucked.
"So who told you to drop dead suddenly? So traumatic."
"What's done is done. Don't blame me for your situation. Life goes on."
"I thought you of all people would understand."
"Understand. What should I understand?"
"You know. Material things and worldly success don't matter as long as you're happy blah, blah, blah and all that crap."
"I should understand this? Me of all people?"
"Didn't dropping dead give you some kind of I don’t know cosmic perspective, some kind of deep wisdom or something?"
"I'm your mother for god's sake. Do you think I wanted this for you? "
"What do you want from me?"
"What do I want? Look at this:"
photo album first page, her birth certificate and infant footprints reveal her as an infant, toddler, curly-haired vivacious girl turned pages photographs animate, Mother adolescent clothing of her day her brother parents brand new television sweet sixteen, prom, college days my father’s uniform marriage house babies growing into awkward clothing hairstyles of their day and parties in the yard holidays friends relatives college Seth and Deborah married birth of Jason mother and father alone in the house, vacations, barbecues, pleasures of an aging couple facelift looking ten years younger on a bright fall death certificate stop
"My life. That was my life," she said.
"That's it?"
"Exactly."
long drag off her cigarette
"Don't be stupid" her parting words

Last Call

The driveway disappeared under a Sunday bazaar stampede. Dishes I'd eaten on as a child, kitchen utensils, magazines, books, old clothes, and all sorts of knick-knacks from the house were displayed on tables presided over by my father, Seth, and Deborah. Cars were double parked in the street. Three hundred humans congregated to haggle over the artifacts of my youth.

My father, Seth, and Deborah scurried from table to table, barking, hawking, selling. Strangers walked away with lamps, ashtrays, toys.

I watched from the driveway curb. Goods disappeared; buyers grew more aggressive in their pursuit of stuff. They had traveled from god knows where for stuff, and they weren't going to leave disappointed. The living room television, glass coffee table, my sister's dolls and doll accessories, loose baseball cards I'd "flipped" for as a boy as well as catalogued collections worth, probably, a great deal more than they were sold for—all of it loaded into strange vehicles to begin new time-cycles in strangers' lives.

Jason appeared beside me as if out of air, rubber ball extended. A sad-faced Dr. Johnson shed a single black tear. I held Jason close. His warm, bony body; Dr. Johnson twisted affectionately into my shoulder.

By six o'clock, everything but the money box was gone. They'd even bought the tables. My father drove me to the station.

"It was good to spend the last weekend, just the family," he said.

"The world is too much with us," I said. "Call before you leave."

Too much with us to be replicated on a rubber ball. But the essence, the music of a symphony of knick-knacks, buildings, passing strangers compressed to a simple tune or lullaby. This we could handle. Silent mastery of the language of the rubber ball. Else, who will Jason speak to in thirty years?

Adam Engel is a Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal. Adam has published poetry, fiction, articles, and reviews in several web sites and magazines such as CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Online Journal, Hudson Review, Accent, The Concord Journal, Beacon, Art World, CounterCurrents, LewRockwell.com, Literal Latte, Lummux, POESY, Chronogram, Press Action, and many others. Adam was a featured reader, along with Robert Creeley, Suzanne Pomme Vega, Robert Bly and others at the Woodstock Poetry Festival, August, 2001, where he read from his first book of poetry, Oil & Water. He can be reached via email or at his partially completed (very partially) website: www.adamengel.com.