Self-Driven

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

The boss was traveling to Montana to evaluate a potential acquisition. He’d be gone five days, so we worker mice could play while the cat was away.

The boss usually flew, but this time he wanted to use his very comfortable self-driving car.

When he returned, I asked about the trip.

“It was good,” he replied.

I’d never been to Montana, or anywhere in the Mountain West. “How was the drive?”

“Very productive.”

“I mean,” I clarified, “what did you see? Which freeways did you take?”

“I don’t know,” the boss answered, unmoved by my curiosity.

“Montana is a thousand miles away. What was it like?”

“I was able to really concentrate. Getting away, bringing my office with me I got a lot of work done,” he explained.

As I puzzled over how to respond, I recalled an experience from my childhood.

The long family road trip to Maine. The winding backcountry roads, to visit my aunt and uncle and their distant cottage on a lake. Gazing with wonder out the back seat window. The cloud-piercing mountains and mysterious, boundless green forests. How I rolled down my window, just to know the wide, wild world–breathe it all in.

I knew that Montana, with its wide-open spaces, was called Big Sky Country. I’d heard about antelope on the high plains. And prairie dogs, and bald eagles. I’d heard of cattle on sprawling ranches, snow-topped mountain ranges in every direction, legendary truck stops, strange roadside attractions… Didn’t my boss notice anything during his drive? I regarded him with incredulity.

“Did you look out the car window?” I asked.

He stared back at me. “Why?”

“I just thought–“

“Isn’t it time you go back to work?”

The Blue Light

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

In one corner of the hospital parking lot rose a twenty-foot pole. Atop it was mounted a blue light. When an Emergency Assistance button was pressed, an intercom activated and the light flashed.

A falcon liked to perch on the pole.

The falcon used the high place to watch for its prey: pigeons that gathered in the hospital parking lot. Weak or injured birds had little chance.

Every so often hospital visitors or employees crossing the parking lot would look up and notice the falcon. They’d admire its powerful form, and its dark, intense, searching eyes. “What a majestic bird.”

They weren’t wrong. The falcon was majestic. It was well fed and healthy. Its sleek beauty was perfectly suited for survival.

Whenever a pile of feathers appeared near the hospital, people complained, and the Housekeeping Department would quickly go outside to clean up the mess. They wore gloves and were careful to use a biohazard bag.

“Poor bird,” one nurse commented to another nurse, looking down at more torn feathers in the parking lot.

“Looks healthy to me,” replied the second nurse, gazing up at the falcon atop the pole.

Eyes down, stepping carefully to avoid blood, the first nurse sighed.

Practically everyone at the hospital who observed the majestic falcon fell in love with it.

One day, after another bloody mess, Hospital Mainenance brought out a ladder and placed anti-roosting spikes on the blue Emergency Assistance light.

The falcon was not seen again.

New Light

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

The child fingerpainted a sunset. She dipped fingers in a volcano and streaked fire above the horizon.

To cool burnt fingers, she splashed them in the sea. Her wild icy splattering created stars.

To dry a wet finger she touched the canvas. A pale moon appeared.

Damned Funny

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

The old man glared at the ceiling of his tiny apartment. There it was again, in the corner above the kitchenette. Another cobweb.

Fixing breakfast had been tiring. Now he had to find the broom.

The old man took a minute to reach the closet. Grabbing the broom, pausing to catch his breath, he returned to the kitchenette’s stained counter and leaned against it.

He inverted the broom and raised its bristles. His arms began to shake. He reached toward the ceiling to sweep the cobwebs. He enlarged an ugly smudge.

The following morning the man bent aching legs to pull on clean socks. From the edge of his bed he appraised the room. The broom still leaned against the kitchenette counter. Dirty dishes still overtopped the sink. He would have to manage the building’s stairs and cross the parking lot to the dumpster, because the trashcan under the sink was overflowing.

What’s more, he remembered that the refrigerator was almost empty, so that meant walking a block to the convenience store and carrying a bag back. He steeled himself.

Late in the afternoon he returned to his apartment.

Breathing heavily, triumphant, he slowly unloaded a bag of fresh groceries. He bent to shove a clean new plastic bag into the empty trashcan, washed and dried the dishes, making them sparkle, then, light-headed, reached cans up into the cabinet above the sink. With blessed finality, he shut the cabinet door. Then he saw it: another cobweb.

“God damn it.”

He saw the spider on the ceiling where it always seemed to be. “Damn you!”

The spider was motionless.

Angrily the old man grabbed the broom. He turned the broom over. He was determined to use its hard end as a bludgeon. No more ugly smudges. Arms shaking violently, he readied a fatal thrust.

It should be simple to kill a small spider. The thing was inconsequential. A speck of clinging life, there on the ceiling where it always seemed to be, maker of cobwebs, in a shadow.

The old man steadied himself.

He punched a hole in the ceiling.

The spider dashed into it.

The man weakly dropped the broom onto the hard floor and the sudden crash made him jump. Embarrassed, he laughed at himself.

He laughed at the hole he had made.

“Now that was damned funny,” he admitted to himself.

Picture Perfect

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

Jared seldom thought about life. But he did on that gray, overcast day.

As he walked through the neighborhood, wrapped in a thick coat, he thought of how he’d lost his job a month before.

What gives value to life? he wondered.

Happy days? Days when all pain is forgotten?

Or is it actually the pain? The pain that makes you remember the happy times?

Is life truly valued, Jared wondered, when you walk through a gray but momentary place like this–where you can grasp the pain if you’d like, then release it?

The feeling he had now: the impression that he could, in a quiet moment, appreciate the changing weather of life–even the clouds–was that wisdom?

Thoughtfully, he continued down the sidewalk under the threatening sky, back to the place that was his home. To remember the feeling, he took a photo of his house with his phone.

By default the filter on his phone made gray skies blue and dim colors unnaturally bright. Picture perfect.

. . .

Twenty years later Jared looked at his old photographs. He came to one of his house. The sky was blue, the colors were bright. It seemed a happy day. Picture perfect.

He tried to recall something–a feeling, maybe.

He couldn’t.

Above Or Under

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

“Have you considered that trees grow underground?”

“Funny. I saw a documentary about the baobab tree in East Africa–how its trunk and branches resemble roots.”

“Have you considered that clouds are deep springs?”

“I suppose that’s one way to see things.”

“And bridges are in fact narrow tunnels, built to penetrate spaces that are otherwise impassable?”

“Your point?”

“If what I say is true, you and I, where we stand, might be underground.”

“Seriously!”

“Which, of course, explains why the stars are buried beyond our reach. And why the world we inhabit seems unfathomable.”

“You almost convince me.”

Touching a Ghost

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

“Is that a ghost?” a boy asked.

“Keep away from it!” warned his mother.

The ghostly form sat on a bench beside the public walkway. A white sheet completely shrouded head and body, concealing everything. The autumn morning was cold.

“Why is a ghost sitting there?” asked the child as they approached it.

“Maybe it’s tired. Take my hand.”

The form under the sheet didn’t move: an exhausted apparition. Sparrows flitted in dead leaves near the bench.

Hand in hand, the two walkers were nearly up to the ghost. The boy suddenly pulled toward it; his mother held him back. The boy reached out with his free hand.

The ghost’s head moved.

“Don’t touch it!” the boy’s anxious mother whispered, pulling him away from danger.

“I wanted to touch a ghost,” whined the boy.

“People shouldn’t touch ghosts.”

One Penny

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

Another day of work. Another day putting up another wall, wiping away sweat. Rummaging through his toolbox searching for drywall screws, Leo turned up a copper washer.

He regarded the shining thing.

What’s this for? Leo wondered.

The copper suggested plumbing. But he wasn’t sure.

Why had he kept this thing in his toolbox?

Very strangely, the thin washer reminded him of his childhood: the penny placed on railroad tracks that was squashed by a passing train.

Funny that he still remembered.

He had been three or four years old. He had stood near railroad tracks behind his great grandparents’ mountain cabin. Several times a day a huge freight train would rumble past.

Leo couldn’t recall the faces of his great grandparents or the cabin or anything else from that long ago time. All he could remember was the thrill of that moment when, encouraged by his father, he placed an ordinary penny on the rail. Then the sudden mighty roar of the freight train thundering dangerously past.

He remembered leaning over to pick up the transformed coin.

The penny’s one cent value had been obliterated. The copper, squashed paper thin. had become perfectly smooth and shiny. It had turned pure. A child’s penny had become infinitely more valuable.

So many years later, why did Leo still remember that penny and that train?

One was a small thing of little worth. The other, a juggernaut, almost here, quickly gone, was like the swift, inexorable passage of time.

Where was his penny now?

Leo stared at the shining copper washer in his hand.

Chuckling, he dropped it back into his toolbox.

Three Fortunes

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

Three fortune cookies.

Theodore jabbed a fork into a final lump of orange chicken.

Frank removed his fortune cookie from its plastic wrapping and turned it over. “Great gimmick,” he said. “Random clichés that predict your future.”

Ernie looked up. “I heard this guy had a heart attack after reading his fortune cookie. You know what it said? Live Each Day Like It’s Your Last.”

Frank guffawed. “There are a million fortune cookies that say that. And there are a million more that say An Exciting Opportunity Lies Ahead Of You. People are gullible.” Frank broke his cookie in two, jammed both halves into his mouth and crumpled the small strip of paper without reading it. “What’s your destiny? Let’s hear it.”

Ernie pushed his fortune cookie away. “No thank you.”

“Why not?”

“What about that guy who had a heart attack?” Ernie replied. “What if it actually does foretell my future? I don’t want to know.”

Frank rolled his eyes.

Two fortunes, unread.

Smiling at Frank and Ernie, Theodore wiped orange chicken from his lips with the cheap paper napkin. He picked up his fortune cookie. He unwrapped it, cracked it and plucked out the words.

He read Today You Will Have A Good Laugh.

Theodore laughed.

Another Rain

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

It never rains in Southern California?

Not true.

Jesse fought with his umbrella against the wind and rain. He jumped over a flooded gutter as he dashed toward the bus stop.

His shoes were wet, but he knew they would dry a little on the bus. And he did love the smell of rain.

Jesse noticed someone in a poncho walking down the other side of the boulevard and memories flashed to mind.

Twenty years ago, finally out of school and in the great big world on his own, Jesse had considered hiking the Appalachian Trail. The entire long trail: over two thousand miles from Georgia to Maine. He’d read several books. He’d made an exciting decision. He’d bought and organized hiking gear while refining ever more detailed plans. He had trained for weeks on neighborhood hills with a forty pound backpack. He’d booked a flight.

Hiking those first spring days in Georgia and North Carolina had been heaven. Deep green forests and that chill, sweet-smelling mountain air.

Two weeks later, as he neared the Great Smoky Mountains, the rain began.

The first rainy night he camped in mud and discovered his tent wasn’t watertight. He woke with his sleeping bag in a pool of water.

In a downpour the next day his boots became sloshy. The rain wouldn’t end. The contents of his backpack, including every stitch of clothing, became hopelessly soaked.

As he set up his tent for another night he began to shiver violently. He’d read about hypothermia and wondered what might happen. He was alone. He lay in his sleeping bag half the night before he became warm. Why am I doing this? he began to wonder.

For three straight days and nights it rained. Then, in the Great Smoky Mountains, it began to snow.

Freezing, slipping, slimy with mud, streaming with sweat, shivering when not hiking up and down the steep endless mountain ridges, exhausted, lonely, feet blistered, every bone and muscle painful, Jesse succombed to his life’s worst depression. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?

I don’t need this, he finally decided.

After conquering over two hundred miles of trail, Jesse had given up. Dejected, holding back tears, he’d hitched a ride on the highway at Newfound Gap, rode into the nearest town, and fled to sunny Southern California: the place he called home, where it never rained.

Jesse folded his wet umbrella as he stepped into the bus stop shelter. A tree outside the glass shelter had turned bright green. The rain smelled very good.

A man inside the shelter was gazing at passing cars. Suddenly the man turned to speak. “They told me when I moved here it wouldn’t rain. I bought these shoes yesterday and now they’re ruined. God, I hate it here.

“It’s really that bad?” Jesse asked.

The man glared at him miserably.