If All Else Fails

If All Else Fails by Craig Strete Read Free Book Online

Book: If All Else Fails by Craig Strete Read Free Book Online
Authors: Craig Strete
do it?" He could care less.
    "I opened the lid,
I peered into the pot of my life, and the menu flew up my nose. I saw all the places where I ate
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My life had been a varicose-veined waitress who worked too hard for
her money. Life had shown me, ultimately, only the space between my legs."
    "Oh, Jesus!" said
the cop. "They always come out on my shift! If that's a reason, then I'm a ..."
    "But it is. Because
you taught me to, taught me it was the only thing I could do."
    "Huh?" muttered the
cop, shaking his head. "Lady, I didn't
teach you nothing! I don't even know ya, fa chris-sakes!"
    "I know you didn't.
You never did but I only very re­cently learned that."
    "Now the other
hand," said the cop, trying to look any­where in the room where she wasn't.
    "Ask me why I took
my clothes off in public," she said. "Ask me why I got tired of becoming the smallest thing in
the known universe."
    "The other hand,"
repeated the cop.
    "I'll tell you
why," said the piano bird. "It's because I'm in love, in love with all the faces in the dark I
never knew. Maybe even with you."
    "Jesus!" said the
cop, looking around to see if anybody overheard her.
    "But I wore these
feathers because I wanted everyone to know that no one is going to have me again. No one is going
to own me because I am giving myself to the wind."
    They put her in a
featureless room. They stripped her of her feathers. They locked the feathers up in a locker with
the clothes she discarded back at the nightclub. They left her sitting on a bench,
naked.
    Then a police
matron with cold hands came into the room and frisked her.
     

To See The City Sitting On Its Buildings
    He was one of the
last old people of summer and he came out on a hill, maybe the only one left. They were gathered
there. The old, the young, and the no longer restless, all gathered. And he sat by the cold fires
and, not knowing or caring if any listened, he said, '1 will go do what I have to do." The trees
and birds listened. The people listened. It was a time when all things listened, for there were
soon to be none left to speak.
    The people looked
at him like birds seeing torn feathers. They said, "The world ends tonight. You cannot leave your
song here and go. Do not leave your song here. It will warm itself by the fire. It will wait for
you by the fire. But not for long." All this was said with turned-away faces and
silence.
    They said, "Do not
go. Your song will go outside to wait for you when you do not return. It will set away from the
fire. It will get cold." This was said with busy motions and precious moments. That is what they
said.
    "Tomorrow is cold
for all songs," he said and they knew he was right. They knew he was right.
    "I will go," he
said.
    "How will you go?"
they asked.
    "I will go as an
owl. I will go see the city sitting on its buildings." And quietly like a hawk coming without
claws, he went away over the soft ground.
    And the people
shook their heads as he went. And the old ones, thinking of him, could not see his face in their minds. He was an owl and owls,
when the world ends, say, "Don't look at me with your eyes."
    There was a place
he went to first. It was above the city. It was a high place built of concrete and steel on
ground where once a hill stood. It was built there so that one could take pictures of the city to
send home. He was not there to send pictures home.
    He who had lived
his life in a long shadow of a city now felt the first moment of going from a darkened room out
into the light. Somewhere down there in the shadow of the city, the sky was hidden. He knew his
strength by the distance he could see, and down there in the city, he would be blind and bent in
shadows. But he had to go down there. And the world was ending and all of the city was ending. In
his heart he knew it was ending, knew that the gray place that did not live was ending but his
heart knew it was not enough.
    He drew his arm

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