Over the clasp of early Spring and the course of many fallow hours, those wherein I began to circle myself in what foremost seemed boredom, but at last became panic, I lost my sense of place. The refreshing air of my small town seemed to have shut off and left me in a stale doldrum whose strength was shatterproof and sapped my bleary will. I began to dislike living. I became a mollusk while in town, inching and sliming about, and my marriage had blunted near to collapse. And then I assaulted a fireman. I was not bored after that. The incarceration that followed my attack was deceptive. I believed myself unwanted, cast to jail (with full prisons and a state crime, I had been sent to the county lock-up for a length of ten months that was estimated to be, and was, in fact, but three), locked up for worry I was not sound, and this jailing was to be a time of regret and reflection. Regret did not find me, I will admit, and I harbored instead a wondrous sensation of importance, of reputation and being regarded. I thrived on this for several weeks. Mattering.

Being locked away meant I had somehow become the sort that might do an unacceptable thing. There was meaning in this, flavor given to the otherwise bland buffet of inconsequence. Then my time of capture was at end and the proper exiting officials ushered me from the jail with my small bag of belongings. The salt was again removed from the table. What had been my sense of jailed importance had waned, and I was free again to meet with the other animals at the water hole, to say hello, and be meaningless again.

The spring had worn my nerves raw. This was the time when the animals reproduced, the months when people became energized and circled one another, approached their more ambitious ideas. Spring was when they worked hardest, trying to make things appear. They humped in the spring against the very nub of civilization. They pulled from that grand cigarette of commerce and stained the filter with excellent prints of red.

I thought of cigarettes often. I had given them up the previous year. Being a non-smoker, my smoking had decreased sharply, and whenever I snuck off for a cigarette (only when I walked my town and only in the late hours), I made sure to wash my hands intemperately so that Truedicia would not detect the odor. I hid the habit from her because I had quit the habit. I was ninety-percent a non-smoker and I told Trudy ninety-five percent of the truth. That was more than most and I considered this husbandly.

When a man is taken away from his tribe, he is exiled, enslaved, destroyed, or placed in a cell. Slavery and exile had somewhat been done away with in America, at least for we smallest fish, and though government sanctioned homicide did exist, it was reserved only for those criminals most heinous to us. Smashing a fireman in the face was minor in scope, and so I soon found myself in a cell.

The cell was designed to be an isolating force, a port of contemplation in which the formation of regret and guilt, or perhaps penance, might come. A locked-up soul was to ruminate on what he had done wrong. His abnormality was to be combed through, and in much detail, for the cell offered so much time. His guilt was to be palpitated. Punishment and a cold study. This was not the case with jails, I discovered. They were places of empowerment. Criminal laylines that surged up through your feet, all the way into the eyes. Had I considered things with less scrutiny before? I had. County jail had made me a bit of a thinker again, an attribute I had to certain degree lost in the previous decade. In a small room with a concrete extrusion serving as my bed, electromagnetically sealed into hours of cool isolation, I looked to the future.

With intermittent ushering into a food hub to eat in the most bored manner ever devised (from portioned trays and cups while mastering the proclivities of the spork), I met others. They were all understandable men, and were kind to me once they discerned my disability. They tended not to think much of the future, however. They understood inevitability, but few had an urge to prepare. They were mulchy from past misfortune and damp in a fog of pessimism.

I wanted the future to involve me more than affect me. The future was everywhere, and everyone created it. The day would die, the night would come. Age alone controlled a portion of this. I was nearing July in the year and July in my life. Yes, the middle age; what my wife's father had so outlandishly tunneled through with an affair. These were the years of my life in which bizarre forces would cull me into submission and wrap themselves in my clothes. The middle age was supposed to function as the most streamlined portion of a person's life, but I didn't even have a career yet. All of my doors were ajar and the draft was unmerciful.

There had been no clocks in jail, no windows. Time ceased to flow. When I was released, time rolled forward again. Summer. I had not been enlightened but I had served the state. These were comparable. I was a good man again, and allowed access to the ever-fragrant public. Summer weeds. July fireworks. Feminine sweat in bright light and the way it governs ones eyes to the young girls. My new jail eyes. Eighty-five percent innocent. I had returned home in a cab because Trudy's work schedule had not coincided with my time of release. I knew what time of day it was, finally. Whether the sun was out or not.

The air of my town had returned to an honest state while I was gone. I sat in my empty home and I breathed and breathed. Trudy's shift ended and she came home. She entered the house and we were ourselves again. After a hug and a few questions regarding whether I was hungry or tired, she exampled her months alone by showing me how clean the house had been kept, the things she had done, and listing those family members that had aided her while I was away. This was quite a show of housewifery. I was confused by this but she seemed pleased with herself, and I chose to go along. She was not that sort of person, however. She was no June Cleaver. I would not have married a June Cleaver. She was pretending to be that sort of person to signal me: My return home was to be the beginning of… something else, I supposed. Some idea of being reformed or good people, or insane. She was no longer to be, it seemed, the woman with the tattoos on her back, the woman who had strayed, the woman with the fiery eyes who had been to more than one coke party in the early portion of our marriage. We were to be normal now, whatever that entailed.

I went through the pile of mail I had missed while a short-term captive in the judicial warren. Events had happened concerning my credit, and Trudy mentioned events that had shaped the town's season, as well. Eugene Lomeli, the mayor, had resigned for some reason. The Coast Guard had rescued two old men from a capsized boat just off the bar, but one of them still passed away before reaching the hospital. Eighty-four issues of the local newspaper had come and gone. Our neighbor, Penny, had a full remission of her cancer. Even the fireman I pummelled had gone on with his life. He had managed to have his nose repaired, and my wife had stopped fucking him. Things had changed and I would now be expected to take part in the more visible portions of society again.

I repaired what little needed work. I pretended there was much to do, reintroducing myself to a regiment I had spent years falling into. Within a few days, I again had a house with strong, fresh color, a superior lawn on which few feet might step, a keenly washed vehicle beside this green, and I entertained some of my older fascinations in the gardening arts. The space between my lawn and Penny's yard was perforated in cockscomb. I was pleased and a little stormed that Truedicia had kept up the flowers for me; her thumb had no green and her hands abhorred soil.

I did look into her eyes once home, because one was supposed to do this. One of you approached the other and there were unspoken things in the air so you made the connection with eyes and there was a moment between two people, some potent time in which a thing might be said, for depth, for witness or clarity. The pause and eye-contact prior to a statement enlightened the scene and gave it importance. Actors knew all about it.

"Te amo, Miguel," she said. I nodded and gave the look she expected. This was a look of reciprocation, though for show. I have one thousand looks because I am aphonic and have no voice. She believed me and added, "Bienvenido a casa." We hugged some more. Congratulations were in order to forty-percent of our marital union for surviving something hideous.

As a final act of homecoming, after her room-by-room demonstration of housekeeping while rattling off various events from the past three months, Trudy had tried to be sexual. Was this tenderness? Was she caring for me? An apology or admission of better days to come? Or was this a simple play on the cliché of an inmate wanting sex the moment his foot touched open soil, and she meant to accommodate? The cliché was somewhat true. It had been on my mind. She was strangely cautious of me in bed, and gauging. We were not awkward, but not ourselves. This was the first time we had engaged in sex since the affair. Three months in jail only added to the prior four months of utter sexlessness in our marriage. Before that, sex had been sparse and near to the month. What I had suspected in previous years was lesser interest on her part had proven to be naivety on mine; she had not gone so without as I. Her sexual interest in the not-to-distant past had simply excluded me. I had discovered this in a roundabout way, which had led me to the fireman. It was done, of course, over, but I would never undiscover her cheating. It would exist in my head forever.

She held me and we curled within the sheets. This was a testing of our ice's temerity over the current. How thin or how salvageable our hearts were to be. I wondered how long that would continue, the caution. We were complex now. In the future. Was I gentle with her still? Connecting? It was hard to tell. My hands told me I was being gentle. Her eyes told me we were connecting. She would never know just how spiteful my thoughts of her had been while in jail, or how angrily I had fucked her in my solitude.

My fantasies had capitalized on her infidelity, of course. In my mind's own lock-up, similar to the county jail my body had been locked in for a time, I had made her a possession, submissive, guessed her with the fireman and allowed these thoughts to ferment into scenes that played out in my mind frequently. Over the months I had let a sexual story of her unfold in my isolated skull wherein she became, as some call it, open-minded. This was my use of euphemism. I might equally have made her slutty. I had reached shameful orgasm more than once while she knelt in my brain before the uncaring fireman.

In time, in my cell, the anger subsided and there was only the recurring sense of what I was supposed to exude: Disgrace. Hostility. Guilt. Or forgiveness. I thought about these things but they were no longer near me. There were lots of ways to look at what had happened, but none jumped out as being correct. They loomed like a toothache just beneath the pain pill's run, but a pill that would not wear off. With regards my sense of marriage, a jealous streak and an urge toward summation had always made me an emotional hornet. Druzz druzz, sting sting. Hello, my name is Miguel. This was no more, however.

Reflexes. That's what I had. Protocol in place of sensation. A sort of marvelous lobotomy. Not empty, just… offline.

&

The cage-fighters had come to town. Four of them. Over the surge of three hours found boring by some and exhilarating to others, the four fighters would pummel each other and generally spend large allotments of time on the ground, holding one another in various forms that forbade much movement. There was enticement and violence at first, swift and containing much energy, then they would find the floor, nestle in atop one another, and do much in the way of grunting through red faces and pursed lips. This latter portion of a fight was as if watching snails fuck. For a night, however, the small crowd would not have to sit in a bar and watch a regulated match on the cheap television. They could see a real fight, a cage match.

The fighters squared off in a makeshift cage that was rickety and not worthy of its name. More like a wrestling match (without the colorful fancy and threats) in a fenced pen. Guttural, yes. Ambitiously waged, no. Two would fight, and when one was declared the victor, the other two fighters prepared, entered the cage, and fought, as well. The two winners of these bouts fought in a third and final match. All four of them traveled together. They had fought one another dozens of times, before small town eyes, to the tune of $15 a spectator. This was a traveling sort of life, and so long as their teeth held out and no injury became permanent, they could continue moving up and down the coast, showing the small town boys how to strike and grab and pummel one another.

There were several fights after the matches, of course. Street fights, in general. Hotheads and pissed off kids trying to seem like a certain sort in front of present women. A traveling amateur fighter could not pummel another in a ring without certain easy-to-rile spectators waging their own bouts out front after the show. Once a man who had wrestled in high school found himself in the particular trouble of having graduated, in a small town, what else was there for him? The skill of forcing submission was publicly, and even privately, unnecessary. Unless he got into a fight. But where might he go to unearth one of these?

There was always a hothead or two that became pumped by the action in the cage matches, and who would then take anything said during this night, especially with a system full of alcohol, as an insult. He would puff up and words would be exchanged. He would pick a fight by convincing himself a fight had been picked with him. The two angry boys (or more) would go out front. Or back. Why? Because they were bored and skilled. Dominance, a remarkable trait not solely human, was accepted in the busiest times of the world, during wars and the hard eras. One soul might prove itself of more power than another, for there was a need. Dominance, however, was refuted most in the slowest times, in isolated places, between people who had so small a connection, and when there was little else to do.

Fight or fuck. This was the way of a certain sort of person in a newer generation of small town young men, a generation isolated by both prospect and geography, and that contained more males than females. That left so little room for a young man to operate without waging himself against others. Aggression came harder with drink, and small towns were full of this activity. The night had occurred with the traveling fighters and these performance punishers, in the nomadic way, soon moved on to the next town. They left quite a bit of fighting behind, however, enough that any young man with a troublesome day might make another to know a more troublesome night. There were always other men, and there was so little room.

&

It was a benefit to young Marshall that Mr. Stromquist would not allow the previous dishwasher, Miguel, to return. Mr. Stromquist's dishes no longer needed Miguel, as the employer had months ago hired a rather wiry, scruffy-headed boy from the high school to fill the position Miguel had left during incarceration. Marshall. There was also the matter of Miguel's sentencing, which had re-cast the employee as a felon. That was a different role and status than what Miguel had previously represented. The word 'felon' was worthy of capitalization. Being one did not bar Miguel from being a dishwasher, but it did with Mr. Stromquist, who was a little obsessed with Christ, yet possessed none of that figure's disposition. Surrounding himself with kind people of the faith made it so that he had to do very little forgiving, which was a mental process, or in stronger cases, an act, one with which he had never had much skill. Forgiving felt like surrendering something. The very word somewhat meant this.

Miguel was a courteous man, but a little troubled. He would find his place eventually, but this would not take place in The Martin Street Grill, nor would Mr. Stromquist offer a favorable reference to Miguel, should he be asked for one in the future. The young, new dishwasher, Marshall, had overheard his employer several times refusing to give good ex-employees anything resembling a reference when contacted over the phone, simply for the fact that leaving his restaurant's fold seemed to the employer a personal treason. It was like converting. Mr. Stromquist had no patience for people that were converting or being converted, no matter how or why, or in what means. Ex-employee somewhat meant excommunicated. Felon meant riddance. Dale Stromquist, despite formulating his views on a foundation utterly personal, did not consider his views to be his own views, but the mere use of certain logic every good person probably had. Probably.

Working in the restaurant, a semi-retro place with pictures of cars and long-dead actors on the walls, had been something arranged by Marshall's parents. Marshall knew very little about his own parents, only that they took care of him, were incredibly quiet, like Marshall had become, and that his mother kept three distinctively sized dildos at the back of her closet, these in an aging gift bag that also contained dollar store batteries and the old digital camera she had replaced several years back. How had he found these? While looking for his video game controller, which had been confiscated by his parents for the abysmal grade he received in algebra. He never found the controller, though they gave it back to him a few weeks later. He did, however, think about going back to the gift bag in the closet, looking through that camera when his parents weren't home. To turn the camera on and see what was there. Not with interest, but horror. Like the need for open caskets. Perhaps seeing the what would help him understand the why.

He had refrained. Why the old camera was kept and stored beside these particular articles was something he didn't want to think about, but invariably did, and this caused a sickening shudder to enter Marshall when his mind drifted to the gift bag. He was sixteen and his thoughts did this often. What was wrong with his parents? Was it something that was wrong with him, as well? He was somewhat like them in the more public ways, but privately, he felt they did not know him. His father had been a member of The Free Sons for many years, a sort of biker royalty in Van Allen Bay, and Marshall was still welcome at the clubhouse, despite that he wanted little to do with them. The fiery, unpredictable drunkard Marshall remembered from his youth, had found God, much like Mr. Stromquist, and this finding had made Marshall's father quieter, more pensive, and finally married to the woman with which Marshall had been created. The biker clan had accepted him still, many being Christians, themselves, though a strange, fringe-lurking, meth-addled sort. Marshall had not experienced a typical upbringing, and with regard anything his parents did or to whom they belonged, Marshall refrained. He was not like them. This was somewhat of a mantra the young man repeated often in his mind.

Mr. Stromquist was from Canada. Marshall had been there once, after taking a cold boat ride with his parents and being detained for several hours. His father's leather and insignias had prompted many questions by officious men in a small room. One of them had a large mole on his eyelid. Marshall had been ten-and-a-half, with a silly haircut. Canada had been fun, after the border agency let them loose to see the place.

Mr. Stromquist often spoke of Canada. The employer was tight-lipped, most of the time, but during those rare spans of few customer orders, he would begin to talk a bit, and had mentioned more than once that he missed his country. He had a son in Canada, one that had recently finished business school and a prolonged courtship. The son now had a degree and wife. He was an attainer. He achieved things. There had been a big wedding. Having missed the son's college graduation ceremony, Mr. Stromquist had made certain to take a full two weeks off to be at the wedding, to visit and re-establish the family vibe, and when he came back, he seemed so proud in his mentions.

Dale Stromquist was not married anymore. He was alone. The kind that other people notice. Marshall was alone, too. He didn't know how to tell people things. He didn't know how to listen to things. Marshall had once told one of the Amandas in his algebra class that he liked her. This was not a sudden approach, as he had talked with her twice in class before. When she did not respond to his admission of attraction, he clarified that he liked her more than a friend and thought she was hot. This should have made his thoughts on the matter quite clear. When she thanked him for considering her hot, he tried to hold her hand. It was soft and his brain felt light. His skinny frame felt stronger than it ever had. Liking the Amanda was more a tactical endeavor, however. In truth, he felt nothing for her beyond what one might feel when choosing lottery numbers: that subjective sense of having chosen something, but with no real meaning beyond projecting oneself on an unimportant thing. Chosen or not, she was not choosing him back. The Amanda withdrew from the conversation quickly, after but seconds, and after pulling her hand from his, had said, "Sorry, it's too weird." He had looked at his hand then. It did not seem abnormal, but it probably was. The more alone you were, the more people thought you should be.

His thoughts were off balance anymore. He thought to like her, and other girls, but he probably did not. Everyone seemed selfish. Marshall was selfish, too. He was bright, but he knew how to create a website more than he knew how to pass a history test. He could wash dishes well enough but had failed horribly at attempting to pole vault. He was also half-aroused without end. He knew what dildos were for. Dildos were devices or objects designed for people to sexually penetrate one another. Some girls penetrated themselves when they were alone. These dildos and objects were soft, and some were electric with little motors, and some were textured while others were not. The one Marshall wanted was made from a high-tech gel and it came in forest green or see-through.

&

"Dude, it's a bunch of guys in expensive pads. They like, crash into each other to get scholarships, but only the genetically gifted assholes can get those, and even then, they have to be handpicked by other assholes," Alex continued.

"But it's still just a game. And for the record, I kinda like throwing a ball around," Jared replied.

"Well yeah, I do, too. But that's the point; it's just a ball. It's just some game. Like extracurricular, which means something you do after all the rest of the shit you're supposed to do. You know, after the curriculum. You get all your shit done, and then if you have time, you can pull a sport, too. But here? In Van Allen Bay? It's totally the opposite. Fuck this place. Football always seems to come first."

"You don't play football, you're not on the team, and you don't like football, so it shouldn't bother you like this. You sound crazy whenever you talk about that shit. Just try to get it out of your mind," Jared said.

"How can I? They cut every art class but the freshman one, which I can't take because I'm not a freshman anymore, and then they shut down the metal shop. Wood shop's next. Those were the only things here I liked. Why would they cut those things at the same time they're building a stadium? Obviously there's money; they built a goddamn stadium. For a redneck high school in the middle of nowhere. You saw those assholes from the Portland news that came down. It's in the top ten best public high school stadiums in the country. The COUNTRY. The fuck do we have a stadium for? Because our football team went to state two years ago? Who gives a shit?"

"I'm tellin' ya, man... don't let it get to you. We graduate this year and then we can kiss this place goodbye. Just ignore it. That's what I do."

"No you don't. You bitch about it every time you run into a jersey acting like a tool and not getting in trouble for it. You bitch about it every time one of the coaches is given the reign on one of your classes, like that asshole Carter. That guy treated you like shit and gave you an F on a fifty-two page paper. Only had to be twenty and you gave him fifty-two goddamn pages."

"It wasn't a very good paper," Jared admitted.

"Would you say it was above average?"

"Well, yeah. And it was. The counselors fixed it."

"Right. Average is a C. Above average is above a C. Obviously the paper was better than an F, or your counselors wouldn't have had to take it from him and grade it themselves to settle the dispute. Fucker gave you an F on a paper that was given a B by your counselors. What if you hadn't complained? You'd have failed U.S. History. That asshole was fucking with your grades. He said you were worthless, remember? Doesn't that piss you off?"

"Of course it did. But he never said 'worthless'. He just said I was 'refusing to meet my potential'."

"Yeah, because he's the football coach and you left the team last year. He fucking admitted it. That was an F for being six-foot-two and not playing on his team."

"You're not telling me anything I don't already know. Man, my dad wants to kill him. He had to go in there and kiss Carter's ass for an hour-and-a-half to get him to accept the new grade. It's the only reason I'm graduating."

"Yeah, and meanwhile, any player on the team gets at least a B in those classes, but they're never there. We've all noticed it. They hardly ever show up in class. The coaches need the athletes to have a team and keep getting paid, so they can't fail the athletes when they don't show up or pass a class. You show up, and you turn in everything and obsess about your grade and the fucker gives you a F. You know how it works. We all do. These aren't teachers that volunteer to coach on the side. That's the norm for other schools. I've looked it up. This place is backwards; these are coaches that are given teaching positions because you can't just be a coach. The hell does Coach Granger know about 'career development'? He doesn't even talk in that class. He just sits there reading the newspaper and checking out all the girls' tits. At least he doesn't make shit up like Carter, though. Fuck with your grade."

"I don't want to talk about Carter anymore. Or Granger. Just let it go. Screw all that. We're almost out of here."

"Why is a football coach teaching history anyway? School couldn't afford enough teachers? Maybe blew their wad on that ridiculous stadium? How many millions upon millions did that cost?"

"It's not football's fault. You're right, it's just a sport. And the stadium was from private funds. A bunch of rich people in town got together and paid for it. But I'll admit I really hate that stadium. I can't stand to look at it."

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