Happy Cows -Rough Draft

I let Jack drive us around with a broken arm because of his new car. Though it was
really his fathers, a red vintage 1970’s red convertible Mercedes Benz, he let us drive it around. We couldn’t figure out how to take off the cover, but it was still a smooth feeling riding around in the passenger seat. The car had an antique radio with tuning knobs and the little red arrow that traveled along the stations. The seats were leather, but the springs had weakened so when you sat down you really sank into the chair and it was a chore to get back up, almost as if the car was begging you to sit and stay a while. The car was antique, but it made more sense to Jack and I than its predecessors, with their seat warmers, individual climate control, surround sound, DVD player, and GPS. The little go-carts running off corn juice, humming down the highway. They were all steel cells that might as well have auto pilot, they were nothing you could really drive. But this sleek, red survivor of the wild seventies wasn’t just a ride, it was a real car. Like so few things in rich suburban America, this car had our respect.

Jack was a short guy with a tan, handsome face and quick, witty personality. He was half Argentinean and most women were instantly attracted to him and his goofy sense of humor, although he never seemed to be as interested in them as they were in him. They always felt comfortable around him, as opposed to me, skinny white kid with adolescent peach fuzz on his face and nothing to say. When I made headway with a girl, it was like lightening striking the same place more than once.

Jack and I liked to speed along Highway 280 and watch the beautiful Californian hills open up before us, home to shaggy and dumb looking cows. Often there would be a joint between us. We kept the windows down as to not infuse the interior with the smell of weed. Jack would exhale, hand me the joint and say as we passed herds of cows grazing, “Dude, this is why happy cows are in California.” Then he would laugh and cough simultaneously, smoke trailing out his nostrils.

It was summer and we were both home from college with nothing but three months of sun ahead of us. All our other hometown friends were abroad for summer programs or on extended family vacations to Greece or Italy. We were the only ones home. We both got simple summer jobs. Jack got his old high school job as an Applebee’s waiter. I was always trying to be different, so I got a job working for a psychic. It was a little building on El Camino next to a used car dealership with a neon sign in the window that read Psychic. The proprietor was named Madam Fortuno. She was a middle aged woman with dark hair and heavy mascara. When I went in at the end of May to ask about a job she was sitting at a table reading Cosmo and smoking a cigarette. Her voice was quiet and she spoke with a light Italian accent. We talked for several minutes and I explained what I was looking for. She raised an eyebrow at me. She had probably never had anyone ask her this before. She asked, “You wish to get job here? For all of the summer?” I nodded. She agreed to pay me a reasonable compensation for my assistance through out the summer. I didn’t get to read people’s fortunes or anything, I mostly just made appointments when people called in and managed Madame Fortuno’s taxes. I still had hopes that I would see something that would make the surface of my cramped little reality shatter, or at least ripple.

When I told Jack about it his jaw actually fell open and he asked, “You mean people actually make appointments for those kinds of things? That is so stupid Kevin, like really, that is really stupid. If you want I can get you a job down at Applebees, at least you’d be around normal people.”

I said, “Right, ‘cause fry cooks on meth and stoned ass high school kids are a normal crowd.”

Jack just rolled his eyes at me. He was usually right about how things worked in the real world while I entertained my own impossible fantasies about it. Jack was studying business and I was an English major. Our friendship never made sense to us, but we never questioned it.

At night we would drive the Mercedes up into Portola Valley, a maze of winding streets through dense trees that made me think of the Blair Witch Project. There was an Arbor Nursery nestled into a hillside and we would park halfway up the gravel driveway, hidden in the shadows. While I drove Jack’s beautiful car, he would sit next to me and operate on a swisher, supplanting the tobacco with chronic that he always had an ample supply of. He liked the peach flavored swisher, but I always requested that we get the grape flavor. Jack always laughed and said, “Get you’re black ass out of my car.”

The Arboretum bumped up against the large hillside that was bisected by highway 280, the one roaming with cows. The land was huge and fenced in with barbed wire strung on rotten planks of wood. Jack said that the land was owned by Stanford University, but I was skeptical. I didn’t think that those types of shut in scholars had the necessary skills to own such land. The could hardly through a party, let alone herd cattle.

We parked the car and hiked up through the rows of infantile trees, trying to be as stealthy as possible. We knew there were dogs somewhere among the sleeping barn houses and greenhouses; we had heard their barks before. The rows of trees in the dark scared me; their symmetry was eerie and ominous. Jack loved it. He always saw the good in a situation. Even when he broke his arm skating the first week of summer, he sat up off the asphalt clutching the battered limb and said, “Well, at least I’m setting some kind of record.” He had broken that same arm three times before, doing similar things. Jack and I shared many interests, like skating or snowboarding, but he was much more daring and passionate with them than I. I preferred to encounter danger in books or movies. I had never broken a bone.

Early in the summer on one of our late night hikes up Stanford’s cow hill, we discovered a lake. It was hundreds of feet long and at least three stories deep. Near the right shore there was a cement tower with feet markers along its side. The lowest one read twenty two feet, when the water level was lowest. Jack said Stanford used this lake for scientific research. “What a boring school,” I said, ‘They study water.”

It took us ten minutes to walk around the perimeter of the lake, but it was a beautiful walk. You could see a stretch of highway from the dirt road around the lake, and beyond that the giant Satellite Dishes pointed to unknown destinations in the stars. The lake became our prime smoking spot.

The night before I started work at Madame Fortuno’s, we trekked through the rows and trees, hopped the barbed wire, and made our way up the hill to the lake. Jack cradled the grape blunt he had rolled in his hand as we went. It was a clear night and we could see a shower of stars, too many to try and point out constellations. The hills of Portola Valley opposite us twinkled with the lights of houses embedded in the forest. Jack lit the blunt and I could smell the deep green smell of weed beneath the grape of the paper. He exhaled and passed it to me. He said, “Man, I am really digging this lake right now. I can see every ripple. Fuck, I dig this entire hill.”

I coughed softly and said as I passed the blunt, “I start work tomorrow.”

Jack laughed and said, “You mean your job with that Psychic bitch?”

“She’s pretty nice.”

“Kevin, she scams people out of their money just so she can look at their palms and say ‘I see a bout of feverish masturbation in your future’. She’s not quite mother Teresa.”

I snorted with laughter and my nostrils burned. He was right I knew, but somewhere I hoped that she might some how be the real thing.

Suddenly we heard movement. Twigs snapping and the sound of dry grass being crushed underfoot. Jack’s eyes got wide and I knew we were both thinking dogs. We looked up the bank of the lake and saw several huge, bulky shadows perched at the top. They swayed and jostled the dark, and I guess it was the weed that prompted the idea that they were giant demonic dogs, hounds from hell. I waited for their eyes to glow red and for them to swoop down and carry us off to the realm of Hades. Then one of them let out a low moo. The rest of them followed, mooing down at us. They were cows, the same cows that during the day would have fled from the sight of us.

Jack started whooping with laughter, trying to suppress it with his hands as to not wake the owners of the Arboretum. He grabbed my shoulder and said, “They’re cows man! Fucking cows! They’re god damn happy fucking California cows!”

I didn’t laugh. I still found their dark mooing shadows terrifying. I said, “This is a bad omen.”

Jack hit me on the arm and said, “Shut up man, you don’t start work ‘til tomorrow.”

Work proved to be dull. I sat at a desk in the cramped lobby of the building and greeted people as they came in. I was never needed in the back room, the dimly lit cavern where Madam Fortuno laid out tarot cards or read peoples palms by candlelight. I spent a lot of my day playing solitaire on the computer. The few people that did come in where regulars. They arrived precisely at the same time each week to seek guidance from the other realm. I guess punctuality scored brownie points with the spirits.

On Mondays Fred Turner came in at 3:45 still wearing his short-sleeved oxford shirt and wrinkled tie. He worked as a used car salesman in Mountain View, and he was not a very successful salesman. I guess that’s why he managed to fork out 120 dollars an hour to let Madame Fortuno predict the currents of sales for that week. On Tuesday Sarah Jenkman came in, a house wife from Los Altos who spent her days cleaning and re-cleaning the nice house that her husband had paid for while he worked late into the night at some investment firm. Sarah had no children and I guess the void that most normal neglected house wives would fill by having an affair or starting a bridge club, Sarah filled by consulting the spirits. We chatted when she came in. She would say, peering at me over her large, expensive sun glasses, “Oh I remember my college days, I had such fun. It’s the best time of your life young man, enjoy it while you can.”

I always nodded and said I would, focusing more on that one god damned ace of spades that I couldn’t find to win my game of solitaire.

Thursdays and Fridays were usually pretty empty, but Wednesdays were my favorite days. Wednesdays were Carly Freeman’s day. She was a young woman about my age with shoulder length brown hair that she always let fall where it may around her freckled cheeks. She didn’t come in to see Madam Fortuno herself; she drove her grandmother there every Wednesday around noon.

The first week when she came in she led in the elderly woman with a long dress, holding her arm gently. When she saw me our eyes locked for a split second and I felt my face grow warm. She was beautiful like a freshly painted pastel, she was to be admired but not touched or she would be smudged by the oil and filth of the spectator’s fingers. She was not to be owned. At least not by me.

Then she broke the silence and said, “Umm, we have a 12:00 appointment for Freeman. It’s under Greta Freeman.”

I looked at the calendar and saw the name. I said, “Uh, yes I have you right here. Umm, I guess just sit down while I grab her.” I got up and tripped over the legs of my chair trying to get out from behind the desk.

Way to go, casa nova, I thought to myself.

I walked passed the back room and into Madame Fortuno’s office. I knocked and came in. She was lying on her couch smoking a cigarette with her eyes closed and the blinds shut. She said that working by candle light all day made her eyes hurt and she would have to lie down for several minutes through out the day to keep from getting migraines.

I said, “Excuse me Mrs. Fortuno, but your 12:00 is here. Greta Freeman.”

Madame Fortuno sighed and took another drag from her cigarette. She said, “Tell them I will be out shortly.”

I went back and said, “She will be with you in a moment.”

The young woman nodded and smiled. I managed to smile back. After a few moments she said, “So I haven’t seen you here before. Did you just start?”

I nodded and said, “Yeah, summer job.”

She raised her eyebrow and said, “Kind of an odd place to get a summer job, don’t you think?”

She didn’t seem to find it odd in an unattractive way. She leaned forward, resting her chin in palm, as if she were watching a mildly amusing film. I decided to just go with it. I made a little prayer to the spirits just in case.

“I guess I’m just an odd guy.”

She smiled and asked, “Oh really?”

I shrugged, “It’s what my friends tell me.”

She laughed and brushed a strand of her hair out of her face. It fell right back where it was and I suppressed a grin.

The old woman looked up at me suddenly and said, “Your face is clouded with darkness. How can you possibly see what is to come with such a cloud around your face?”

Her eyes were milky but intense, as if she were looking at me through a thick pane of glass. As if, to her, I was in a glass cage. Carly looked embarrassed and hissed through her teeth, “Gran! Stop that!”

She looked up at me with a pained look and said, “I’m sorry, don’t mind her, she doesn’t mean half the things she says. She’s not all there.”

I shrugged and said, “Don’t worry about it, Madam Fortuno has predicted much worse about before.”

We both let out a forced chuckle. I knew that what the old lady had said was nonsense, but it stuck in my mind like a splinter. It made me unnerved.

Finally Madame Fortuno came in and rescued us from the awkward silence. She led Greta into the backroom. When they were gone I looked back and said, “I’m Kevin by the way.”

She smiled and said, “I’m Carly. It’s nice to meet you Kevin.”

The next week I managed to ask her to lunch after her grandmother went in. She accepted and we went down the street to a small Japanese restaurant. I got the chicken teriyaki and she got fried rice. It became a regular thing, us going to lunch while Madame Fortuno and Greta consulted the spirits together. There was no trace of the awkwardness of our original meeting. Carly was a very pleasant person and easy to talk to. She told me all about herself. She worked at the small bookstore down the street and had a wonderful knowledge of books. We had very similar tastes. The most important thing I learned was that she was single.

After a few weeks I asked about her family. She calmly explained that her parents had died in a car crash when she was young and how her Grandmother, Greta, had raised her.

My jaw dropped and Carly gave me a look and said, “I know I kind of just dropped that on you, but there is no sense in dancing around the truth, it only makes it harder. I own my tragedy, not the other way around.”

I asked how she was dealing with her grandmother. Carly sighed and said, “She started to loose touch when I was about sixteen. It wasn’t anything serious at first. It wasn’t normal dementia; she still knew who I was and where we were and everything. She just started to act funny. She claimed that she could see ghosts and spirits and stuff. She didn’t talk about it much at first, but it gave me the creeps when ever she did. By the time it came time for me to go to college she couldn’t take care of her self, so I stayed home and took care of her. I’m not bitter, I owe her everything. I’m just sad for her because part of me thinks that she’s seeing these things not because of dementia but because she’s getting closer to death.”

I held Carly’s hand and told her she was a good person. I felt stupid because I had nothing else to offer, no other comfort, no gems of advice. We were on two seperate planets with light years of different experiences between us. To me it seemed that her planet was like Jupiter, made of swirling storms and no solid ground to stand on, while mine was more like the pock marked moon, simple and bare. I thought about the large Satellite Dishes across the highway, trying to navigate impossible distances through space, and suddenly felt that it was a miracle that I could reach across the table and hold Carly’s hand.

Jack usually picked me up from work on Fridays in the Mercedes, still wearing his Applebee’s uniform and waving his casted arm through the open window. I got in the car and he asked, “Meet any ghosts today?”

I said, “You have no idea.”

We went and got dinner at some taco joint and then went to a gas station and picked up a grape swisher. I rarely saw my parents because they had given up trying to have me home at a decent hour. Jack’s had never really tried.

We went to the Arboretum and hiked up the shadowy hill to our lake. The cows were waiting nearby and followed us to the edge of the bank, mooing softly. I thought about bringing Carly, but I never did. I somehow saw her as above pot. She had so much to escape from but from what I could tell she led a sober life. It was us who had nothing to run from who decided to escape anyway.

The sky was clear but there was no moon, so everything was darker. The tip of the blunt burned into my retinas, making red and purple spots on the perfect black surface of the lake.

“I met a girl at work.”

Jack coughed and asked, “Is she a psychic?”

“No, she’s a client. Sort of.. We’ve had lunch a couple times.”

Jack had nothing to say and I knew that it was too early for his keen social senses to pick up the scent of this relationship. We smoked the rest of the blunt and wandered off into the night.

The next week of work was pretty uneventful. Fred Turner sauntered in at 3:45 in his short sleeves and khakis, grinning ear to ear. He nodded at me and said, “Good Afternoon sir.”

I raised my eyebrow and asked, “Good day Mr. Turner?”

“I sold five cars today. One was a mini van. Even got the extended warranty on some of them too. Madame Fortuno is always right.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She said that I have a lot of straight lines in my palm which means I have an honest personality. She said that all I had to do was show it to people, and my sales would go up.”

He gave me a grin that showed one of his gold teeth. He had a piece of spinach stuck in-between it. I forced a grin and said, “Way to go.”

Sarah Jenkman came in with hysterics, claiming that she had seen a ghost in the broom closet. As she sat in the waiting room, fanning herself, she said to me, “And you know the funny thing is, it looked just like my mother.”

On Wednesday Carly came in as usual. She bounced up to the my desk with this excited look in her eyes. She looked like someone had changed her battery. She knelt down to look me in the eyes. I tried very hard to not look down the collar of her shirt. She asked, “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Uhh, nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a semblance of something.”

“Do you want to go to a fair with me?”

“What?”

“There is a fair in Half Moon Bay this weekend. You know, they set up rides and games and cancerous foods. “

She put her hand over mine gently.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll buy you a churro.”

“Alright. That sounds great.”

She smiled and said, “Great. Now lets get some lunch. I’m starving.”

I told jack that I would be going to the fair with Carly on Saturday. He shrugged and said, “Cool dude. Have fun.” I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that he would have to smoke alone that night or not. He had the best poker face I knew.

That night I had a nightmare. I was standing by the lake all alone. The moon was full, so full is seemed pregnant with a ghostly light. It spilled out of its pores and illuminated everything. I could hear mooing but I couldn’t see any cows. I saw a figure standing off and I walked towards it. It was hunched over something. I could see the shoulder blades and the sides of the arms moving and working with a terrible insectile detachment, as if every body part were moving of its own accord, like a greasy machine. I got closer and saw that it was digging. I saw bones laid out before it. Suddenly it turned around. It was a horrible creature with clawed hands and grey mottled skin. It had no face, only a discolored skull topped with broken twigs of grey hair. It had no eyes, only eye sockets. It opened its tongueless mouth and Greta Freeman’s voice came out.

“You’ve still got that cloud on your face, boy. Here, let me help you.”

I hear splashing and turned to see herds of cows crawling out of the lake. They were decaying, heaving, horrible creatures that dragged their broken and fetid carcasses up the muddy banks. Their boney jaws clicked at my ankles. I turned back to the monstrous ghost of Greta in time to see a horrible black thundercloud erupt from her mouth like smoky vomit, headed straight for my face.

I didn’t tell anyone about my dream, especially not Carly when I picked her up on Saturday in my less-cooler-than-the-Mercedes Honda civic. She got in and gave me a quick, over the center consol hug and we were off. Her neck smelt sweet when I hugged her, and the smell stayed with me.

The drive to Half Moon Bay was beautiful, winding past redwoods, Seqoia trees, endless fruit fields, and eventually the crashing sea. The fair was set up in the huge parking lot for seasonal pumpkin store, only open in the fall months. The fair had plenty of room to set up its many rides. There was a moderate sized crowd that day, mostly families but a few other people in our age range. It was thankfully devoid of the crowd that wore wife beaters and jeans that hung around their knees, the kinds of people you see regularly at theme parks.

We started by eating a funnel cake between us and drinking two large lemonades.

“It’s protocol,” Carly said, “To eat as much junk food as you can before going on these rides.”

We started with the Ferris wheel because I wanted to get a view of the ocean. I felt like the sun in a purple metal cage, rising up out of and falling back into the grey expanse of ocean. I suddenly thought about the undead cows crawling out of the lake. I scoured the ocean to look for disturbances that might be submerged monsters, but I only saw waves.

Carly poked me playfully in the ribs and asked, “Where’d you go, Frowny Face?”

I laughed and said, “Sorry, I just zoned out for a second.”

Carly smiled, Her free willed hair was blowing in the cool breeze coming off the water, laying gently against her face like thread. Something about the symmetry of her smooth face, neat little teeth and chaotic hair seemed eternal. I was having nostalgia about this day and the way she looked in the little purple cage with me even before it was over.

We went on every ride they had and I spent almost forty bucks on the strong man hammer. Carly kept hitting it higher than me and I kept calling for a rematch. We ate our fill of junk food. She kept eyeing the roller coaster in the center of the fair. It was called the West Coaster and it was constructed out of what looked like shoddy metallic tracks that rose and fell much like the ocean behind it. There was one huge loop rising out of the center where the speeding cars somersaulted above the crowd.

Finally Carly grabbed my hand and began pulling me towards the roller coaster saying, “Lets go ride that, I think we’ve done everything else.”

I let her pull me about halfway before I stopped. She turned to me, smiling with one eye brow raised.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

I kicked at the concrete with the sole of my shoe, scuffing it. I said, “I…uh…don’t think I can ride that.”

“Why not, you have a heart condition or something?”

“No. I’m…just…”

I felt my face reddening. I sighed and said, “I’m afraid of roller coasters.”

I expected Carly to laugh or shrug and go with out me, but instead she just kept looking at me and asked, “Why?”

I didn’t understand. “What do you mean why? I just am.”

“There has to be a reason why.”

The words fell short in my throat. I only shrugged. Carly eyed me and said, “Well that’s a dumb reason.”

She didn’t say the words with any hint of vehemence or mockery, but they still stung. I felt my face grow even redder. I said, “Well you can ride it on your own then.”

I turned and began walking away. I was more embarrassed than I was mad at her. I was also ashamed that I had ruined what might have been a very good date. I felt someone grab my hand and I turned around. Carly was there with her beautiful symmetry and I felt my shame deepen.

She said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I usually don’t think before I speak and it gets me into trouble. I didn’t mean it.”

I sighed. “But your right. It is dumb. I’m scared because I’m petrified of taking risks. I’ve never broken a bone in my body, you know, and I’ve never been on a roller coaster. There are so many times when I just want to dive head long into that ocean over there and let the current take me, but I just can’t. I just don’t have the faith and it terrifies me.”

Carly smiled at me and grabbed my hand. She began pulling me towards the roller coaster. She said, “No time like the present. Trust me.”

And, somehow, I did.



It was dark when I drove Carly back. I followed my headlights over the winding roads out of Half Moon Bay. I parked outside of her house and turned the car off. The windows of her house were dark. I leaned back and said, “I can’t believe I didn’t puke after that ride.”

She laughed and said, “That’s charming Kevin.”

I laughed and turned to her. It was dark in the car and I could only see her silhouette and the splashes of moonlight across her face. I said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For today. For the roller coaster.”

“Oh that was nothing. Tomorrow I’m going to take you base jumping.”


I laughed. A silence fell in the car, and a sense of propelling gravity pulling me toward Carly. In the dark I heard her move towards me in her seat. I reached out and my hand touched her hair. I could smell her sweet perfume again and it almost made me dizzy. I closed my eyes and kissed her. After, she laughed and kissed me on the tip of my nose. I put my hand on her face and she placed hers over mine.

Behind her I saw a light snap on behind one of the windows. She saw it and said, “ Oh shit Gran’s up. I should go. I’ll see you later?”

I nodded. She kissed me on the cheek and was gone.




I was in Jack’s room the next day, laying on his bed. He was playing X-box on his TV, sitting at the foot of the bed. I listened to the sounds of gun fire on the TV. Jack’s room was a small room but nicely furnished, with a large computer and neat desk. He had a drum set in the corner with a pillow in the hollow of the bass drum to muffle to sound. The walls were adorned with posters of bands that he’d seen live, some with me. A black eyed Brad Pitt stared at me from a poster of Fight Club.

I said , “So I went on that date with Carly yesterday.”

“Mother fucker!”

“What?”

“Not you, this Nazi keeps shooting me with a sniper rifle.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so you went on a date with Carly. How was it?”

“It was really good. We went to the fair in Half Moon Bay. I went on my first roller coaster.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Nazis shoot you again?”

“No, you’re a son of a bitch. How many times have I tried to get you to go on a roller coaster with me. Remember that time in eight grade when we all went to Great America we argued with you for over an hour, trying to get you to go on Top Gun with us? And now you finally go because some chick gives you stiff dick syndrome.”

I heard a knock at the door and looked up to see Jack’s dad standing there. He smiled and said, “Whose got a stiff dick?”

Jack’s father was where Jack got his Argentinean tan and cool attitude. He wore a vibrant oxford shirt and khaki shorts. His curly hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail.

Jack said, “Kevin does. He bailed on me the other day to be with some girl from work.”

I sat up and said, “Hello Mr. Alonso.”

He smirked and asked, “Was she at least cute?”

I nodded and said, “Very.”

He laughed and said, “Alright boys, I’ll see you later.”

Jack resumed shooting Nazis and I laid back down. After a moment Jack said, “You son of a bitch. We’ve got to get, like, at least twice as stoned tonight to make up for yesterday.”

I laughed and said, “I believe we do.”

The next Wednesday Greta Freeman came in two hours earlier than usual. And she came in alone. I looked up from the computer to see her stagger in, supported by a black cane I had never seen before. Her bloodshot eyes were locked on me. I stood up and went over to her.

“Mrs. Freeman are you alright? Where’s Carly?”

She recoiled when I reached out to help her. Her eyes were wide and full of a dark energy. She said, “Don’t put your hands on me boy, I know where those hands have been. I know the ways of men in this world, corrupting innocent young girls and filling them with lechery.”

It took me a moment to understand what she was talking about. I said, “No no no, you have it all wrong. I’m not like that. I…Carly and I…I promise you it’s not what you think. Listen, let me call her so she can come get you.”

I tried to reach out to her again but she recoiled and raised the cane like a shield. She hissed, “Don’t lay your hands on me boy! You’re cursed! Something furious and hungry is coming for you. Very soon.”

I managed to get her into a chair and I got out my cell phone to call Carly. It took me several tries to dial her number right because my hands were shaking so bad. She answered the phone in a groggy voice. Wednesday was her day off and she had slept in. I told her about Greta and she cursed and hung up. Thirty minutes later she walked in with her hair in a rats nest and a bewildered look in her eyes. She went over to Greta and said, “Gran! What are you doing! You can’t drive, you know that, you could have killed someone, or hurt yourself.”

Greta just stared forward not responding. Carly fished the keys out of the pockets of her dress. She came over to me and hugged me tightly. She said softly, “Thank you so much. I owe you big time.”

She stepped back and I took her hand in mine. I said, “No you don’t. Do you want me to help you take her home?”

Carly shook her head and said, “No I can do it. I need to call the doctors and have them come take a look at her. She’s going to need more medicine I think. God, I hope the insurance covers this. Did she say anything weird to you?”

I paused. I studied her face and saw lines of worry etched around her mouth. I decided to spare her and told her no. She sighed and nodded her head. I helped her get Greta to the door. Greta didn’t flinch at my touch this time and simply shuffled across the floor outside. Once we got outside Carly said, “Thanks, I got it from here.”

She started to walk down the street with Greta. She paused, let go of Greta’s arm slowly, making sure she was steady. Then she ran back and kissed me quickly on the lips. She thanked me again and quickly ran back to her grandmother. I was thankful she hadn’t seen me blush.

The rest of the day I was distracted and irritable. I couldn’t even play a single game of solitaire. Greta had always made me nervous, but that day she had scared the shit out of me. The words furious and hungry bounced around my skull like thunderclouds. I wasn’t surprised when lunch came along and Carly didn’t show. I wasn’t hungry anyway. I remember hearing about the Furies in a literature class in high school, ancient Greek spirits of vengeance that would descend upon offending characters in Greek mythology. My teacher had described them as horrible, disfigured beasts with oozing sores and black fluid dripping from their fanged mouths. They tore their victims limb from limb. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

By Friday I was feeling better. I had talked to Carly and she said her mother was doing better and that the Doctor only prescribed a stronger dosage of the medicine she was already taking.

Jack sent me text messages all day. The first one said You and I have an appointment with Dr. Blunt tonight do not be late. The second one said we gonna fly like an eagle to the sea. He sent me vague drug references all day that made me snicker to myself until I started to get excited for our trip to the lake. Jack was in one of his wilder moods, which always meant a good time.

When work got out I quickly said goodbye to Madame Fortuno and jogged to my car. I was buckling my seat belt when my phone rang. It was Carly. I answered, “Hey.”

“Hey there. What are you doing?”

“I just got off work and I was going to head home.” I said, trying to avoid telling her that I was running off to smoke weed with Jack.

She said, “Listen, can you come over?”

“Now?”

“Yes. I’m lonely and having a bad day. Can you come over?”

I thought about Greta’s wild eyes. I said, “Is your Grandmother ok? I don’t want to disturb her.”

“She’s fine, her new dosage makes her sleep a lot. She won’t even know you’re here.”

I thought about Jack and said, “Well my parents hate it when I come home late and wake every one up, so I don’t know how long I can stay but I can definitely…”

She cut me off saying, “Oh its fine, you can sleep over.”

I was speechless for a few seconds. Carly asked, “Kevin? You there?”

“Uh, yeah I’m here. Are you sure?”

“Yeah I’m sure.”

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

I hung up and called Jack. I told him the situation. He said, “You mother fucker! I went out and bought an eight just for tonight! You’re going to abandon me now?”

I said, “Sorry man, duty calls.”

“Well I’m going with out you. And I’m going to smoke all of it. All of it, you got it? You’re not getting stoned until I’m not high anymore, and that shouldn’t be for at least a week with the shit I got.”

I laughed and said, “Alright man, you have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah. Have a good night bro.” And he hung up.

Carly let me in the front door wearing pajama bottoms and a Belle and Sebastian t-shirt. I could see the tan band of her midsection and my heart leaped. She hugged me and I could smell her sweet smell. She said, “Thanks for coming. Come on in.”

Most of the lights in her house were out as she led me down a dim hallway. There were pictures on the wall of her and her grandmother where Greta looked happy and sane, with kindness instead of wildness in her eyes. There was a picture of two younger people, a man and woman in wedding clothes.

“Who are they?” I asked, pointing at the picture.

“My parents at their wedding.” She said,. She took me by the hand and led me down the hall to the room at the end where light was seeping under the door. It was her room.

She had a large bookshelf across from her bed that was packed with books. I don’t think I could’ve fit a magazine between them they were so packed together. She had a laptop sitting on the carpeted floor near the outlet playing some soft acoustic song. The whole room smelled like her and it was dizzying. She said, “Take a seat, I’ll be right back.”

I sat on her bed and she slipped back out of the room. There was something about the whole room that seemed soft and inviting. I took off my shoes and socks and felt the carpet with the ball of my feet. The room seemed nude, intimate, like the soft band of flesh exposed by Carly’s shirt. I was very aware of the condom in my back pocket.

Carly came back in and closed the door. She moved with grace. She came over to me and I looked up at her. She leaned down and kissed me. My hands ran up her hips to her ribs, and then around her back. She pulled back and said, “Come sit on the floor with me, I want to do something first.”

We both sat down and I noticed she had something in her hand. I gave her a look and she opened up her hand. It was a small, red pen knife with the swiss army cross on the handle. I raised my eyebrow.

“You’re going to kill me?”

She laughed and said, “Maybe. Depends of whether you trust me or not.”

“I do.”

“Good.”

She opened the small blade and said, “I was thinking about what you said, at the fair. About not having faith. Tonight, I’m going to cure you.”

I said, “Is that right?”

She nodded and said, “Tonight, you and I are going to become blood buddies.”

“How is that going to help me have faith?”

“Because when you become blood buddies with someone, its one of the most intimate things you can do. You saying that you’re willing to take what ever I am into what ever you are, and vice versa, no matter what is inside of you. And you have to have faith because after this I’ll be in you forever. It’s almost more intimate then sex, but not as fun.”

I looked at the blade. It looked small but lethal. And I never liked blood. Carly put her hand on my knee and I looked up. She asked me again, “Do you trust me?”

I took Carly’s hand into mine and said, “I do.”

She smiled and grasped my finger softly. There was a moment of pain, then she made a small incision on her own finger. She held them together inside the palm of her other hand. She leaned over and kissed me while our blood mingled between us. After a minute she let go. I looked at my finger, smeared with blood. I smiled.

Carly went and got band-aids and patched us up. She said, “Just tell people you cut it on a coke can.”

I laughed and said I would.

“What do you want to do now?” I asked

She got up and said, “Well now that we’re blood buddies we don’t need to have sex, so we might as well go to bed.”

I felt my heart drop but tried not to show it. It didn’t work and Carly burst into laughter as she sat on the bed. She said, “I’m kidding! You should have seen the look on your face. Get over here.”

I laughed and went over to her and said, “You’re a terrible liar.”

She said, “You’re worse,” and pulled me down onto the bed.



My phone rang early the next morning and I sat up naked in Carly’s bed. I saw that it was my mother and I answered it, thinking that she was mad because I didn’t come home last night.

I answered saying, “Hey mom, listen I…”

But I didn’t get to finish as my mother burst into tears on the other end. She sobbed, “Oh thank God you’re alright, you alright, your alright! I thought you were with him!”

I tried for several minutes to ask my mom what was going on, but she was unintelligible with weeping. Carly touched my arm, concerned.

“Mom, you’re going to have to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

“Its…It…Oh Kevin, I’m so sorry. It’s Jack.”

“Mom, what’s wrong with Jack? Is he ok?”

“I don’t think so sweetie.”


The details were hazy because it happened late at night. The owner of the Arboretum woke up in the middle of the night because he heard someone scream and kick over a potted tree, shattering the pot. He went outside and saw a young man running through his trees towards the road. He told the police that the kid looked like a bat out of hell, running and yelling. Before the owner could get a shoe on he heard a car ignition and the screeching of wheel on the dirt road. He said that the kid looked scared to death.

The person driving the van that hit the red Mercedes speeding down the road said that they had a yellow light and were rushing to catch it. They caught it and ran head first into the passenger side of the Mercedes, flipping it upside down on the side of the road. It all happened in the blink of an eye, the man said, the Mercedes was just going too fast.

When I got to the hospital Mr. Alonso and Mrs. Alonso were standing outside of the hospital room. Mrs. Alonso was in a night gown and looked as if she had been there all night, and her eyes were swollen and red from crying. Mr. Alonso was holding her around the shoulders. His hair was hanging around his shoulders, gray and wavy. I thought distantly as I approached that I had never seen him with out his trendy pony tail. Now he just looked like a scared old man holding his wife.

When Mrs. Alonso saw me, fresh tears rolled down her face and she hugged me saying, “Oh Kevin dear.”

Mr. Alonso could only grasp my shoulder and clench his jaw to keep from crying. I said that my parents were in the waiting room if they needed anything.

“How is he doing?”

Mr. Alonso spoke. “He stable but unconscious. The doctors aren’t sure…They’re not sure how extensive the damage is.”

His jaw wavered. I suddenly couldn’t stand being with them anymore. I asked if I could see him. They nodded.

When I saw Jack I felt sick to my stomach. He face was black and blue and he had a tube sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Both arms were in casts and he had a brace around his neck. A blanket covered the rest of his body, but I knew it wasn’t any better. Everything felt so fragile, like he was made of glass. I didn’t touch him, not even go near enough to. I sat in the chair next to his bed and listened to the EKG beep. I remember my mother telling me that the Arboretum owner had said that he saw Jack running away from something. I was confused and distressed and couldn’t think of what Jack might have been running from. It couldn’t have been the cows, he thought they were hilarious, and the higher he got the more he would laugh at them. I had no idea.

I suddenly remembered Greta Freeman’s words, Something furious and hungry is coming for you.

In my shock I realized that Greta was right. I was cursed and the Furies had risen from the core of the earth and had been waiting to tear me apart and carry me off last night at the lake. Only I didn’t show up. Jack did.

I rushed into the hospital bathroom and vomited in the toilet till I couldn’t breathe.



The next week went by in a blur. The doctors managed to repair most of the broken bones and they prevented any internal bleeding, but Jack still did not wake up. The knock to his skull had caused a minor fracture and they said all we could do was wait.

I quit my job with Madame Fortuno. I told her what happened and her eyes looked sympathetic. She touched my shoulder and said, “This thing could not have been foreseen.”

I wanted to tell her that it had been and that I was the one who was supposed to be in a hospital bed, or worse. But I just drove home and never saw her again.

Every morning I would drive to Jack’s house and help out his parents with work around the house, to give them some time to rest and pray. I took out the garbage, did the dishes, swept the back porch, and sometimes made them breakfast if it looked like they hadn’t eaten. They didn’t know it but I felt responsible for Jack’s accident, and doing these chores felt like small steps towards penance. There were times that I wanted to confess to them, to drop to my knees before them and say “It was my fault; I was supposed to be with him that night but I left him alone and vulnerable in the dark and what ever came after him was meant for me.”

I began spending every night at Carly’s house. We would lie on the couch and watch a movie or television and she would run her fingers through my hair, trying to soothe me as I lay in her lap. Greta no longer had any outbursts around me, she just shuffled around with a cane, blank eyed and wobbly. Her job was done; she had warned me of my would-have-been fate.

I never told Carly how I was feeling but she could sense it anyway. She said one night, “Kevin, you can’t blame yourself. The only difference it would have made if you had been with him that night is that you would be in the hospital too right now.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t sleep very much at night and my eyes were raw from watching the TV. I turned my face into Carly’s thigh and sighed. She told me to look at her. I looked up. She had tears in her eyes. I was shocked out of my stupor momentarily. I couldn’t believe that someone who had known so much sorrow could manage to feel it again on behalf of someone else. She held up her index finger where a thin red scab ran down the tip. She asked, “Do you trust me.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t let this own you.”

I didn’t say anything. Carly placed a hand on my face. It was cool and felt good against my hot cheeks.

She said, “I love you Kevin.”


Later that night, I rolled over and looked at Carly’s clock. It was almost three in the morning. She was curled up next to me, breathing softly. I resumed staring at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, swirling and grinning wickedly at me. I felt fear slithering somewhere in the pit of my stomach, uninvited and impossible to banish. A voice deep within me asked What if it’s still out there? What if it’s still crawling through the field sniffing the air for your scent, wallowing in the mud stinking and waiting? How long before it comes for you here, right in the bed of your lover? What if you’re not here again?

I sat up and said quietly out loud, “Fuck that.”

I pulled on my clothes and snuck out of Carly’s house and down to my car. The night air was much to cold for the summer, but I didn’t feel it. I was filled with something so strong that my jaw was clenched tight to shatter my teeth. Something inside me was going to rip its way out. I realized that it was anger. No. It was fury.

I drove to the Arboretum, but parked a ways down the street in case the owner was keeping vigil since Jack’s accident. I snuck past the dark buildings and up through the rows of trees. The symmetry that had so entertained Jack and so frightened me now seemed to be peeling outwards before me like Moses and the red sea. It wanted me to enter; it was pulling me in.

I leapt over the barbed wire, but the sleeve of my shirt got caught on a barb and I tore at it feverishly, snarling. My shirt ripped and the barb cut a long incision down my forearm. I didn’t even feel the pain as I ran up the dark hill, panting and grunting like an animal. Blood ran down my arm and stained my clothes and the ground with small droplets.

I reached the top of the slope almost crawling on all fours, slipping down the other side in the dirt. The dark lake was ominously still and opaque. There was no moon out, not even stars. It was a perfect night for predators on the hunt. I ran down to the shore of the lake and fell in the mud. I got up, a hulking stack of blood and filth with wild eyes and glaring teeth. I knew the creature was submerged in the lake, waiting. I screamed and ran into the lake up to my waist, splashing like a mad man. The cows were nowhere to be seen; they smelled the danger in the air.

I began punching the water screaming,

“Come on you mother fucker! You want me, COME AND GET ME!”

I could feel the centuries of being prey, from being hunted by the saber-toothed tiger to being condemned by an invisible God, howling in retaliation from within me. There was no more running.

I stopped my shouting and just stood in the water, chest heaving. The sudden silence was almost too much and I felt dizzy. I felt my arm stinging where the barbed wire had cut it. I could feel something moving behind the silence, something dark and slithering, like claws lightly grazing the thin fabric separating the dark realm they had come from and mine. There was a pressure in the air, my ears rang with it and I braced my self for what was coming. There was a terrible roar all around me and I shut my eyes and screamed my final cry.

There was nothing. I heared a low hissing and felt something light battering my head and shoulders. I opened my eyes. I was still alone, standing in the lake. I looked up.

Rain. It was raining.

It came down in torrents, soaking me to the bones. It washed away all the mud and dried blood and just kept falling. There were no Furies lurking in the water. I was still alive. For the first time in weeks I felt relief. I felt clean.


I got back to Carly’s and quietly snuck into her shower. I left my wet clothes on the tile floor. I had left my cell phone in Carly’s room, but my wallet had been ruined in the lake. I put several bandages on my cut arm.

I slid back into bed and Carly rolled over and placed a hand on my face. She whispered, “Hey.”

“Hey you.”

“You smell like mud and wet leaves. Where did you go?”

I kissed her and said, “It was just something I had to do.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I think so. I really do.”

It is still summer. I haven’t been back to Madame Fortuno’s, but I know that the spirits are taking good care of her and her clientele just fine with out me. I am still with Carly, and every day I spend with her feels like faith. I don’t know what will happen when the summer is over but I have a good feeling about us. Greta Freeman is still alive and well, but she has ceased to talk, she just sits and looks out the window with her cane in her lap. Carly takes this as a good sign as she is no longer having outbursts.

Jack still hasn’t woken up, but the doctors say that things are looking better every day. I’ve begun going to the Alonso’s house less and less because they need me less as the days go on. They spend a lot of time by the phone. We are all waiting for Jack to wake up.

And it could happen any day.