Anti-pastorals

by Robert Wooten

Biography:

Spor Virus is a nihilist with a conscience that currently resides in San Francisco after spending much of his life in the Deep South. His works are often 'urban ketches' based on real-life sitings of aimless, maniacal human behavior in the inner cities of both his past and present. The only redemption is saying 'I'm sorry' on one's deathbed. He writes best when hungover.

 

There was a basement underneath the apartment,

and there was a girl—beside the basement door

or where the door would be. Raymond approached them

and looked into the basement

and, with the shaft of light that entered it,

saw that there was a flat surface and a sofa.

He asked the girl if she wanted to play in there

with him, and she said, “Okay”—and followed him.

“Do you want to take off your clothes?” Raymond asked.

“No, do you?” She asked.

“Not if you don’t,” he said.

“Do you want to play house?” She asked.

“Okay,” said Raymond. “How?”

“First, lay down on this couch,” she said.

“Okay,” said Raymond,

but when he did it she ran away.

*

There was a sinkhole with a sidewalk over it

that had cracked in half over the hole.

Where someone had taken the broken half away,

the sidewalk had been repaired with new concrete.

When Raymond had come to this, thinking

that it was a great place to build a cave,

she approached him on the sidewalk,

bringing her mother’s hammer to him.

She said, “Here, you can use this.”

Then, with one strike of the hammer

against concrete, he broke it—the hammer,

and she was going away to tell her mother—

but Raymond ran away.

*

“My name is Melon,” she said. “I am a diabetic.

That’s why I have to eat my strawberries with sugar.”

“But if you’re diabetic, you can’t have sugar,” Raymond said.

“No,” she said. “It’s just the opposite.

Because I’m diabetic, I have to eat a lot of sugar.

See?” She held up a spoon-

ful of strawberries and sugar and cream;

and then she put the whole spoon in her mouth.

“Mmmmm,” she said, rolling her eyes,

after withdrawing the silver spoon. “This is good.”

“Can I have some?” Raymond asked.

“No,” she said. “I have to eat a lot of strawberries

because I’m diabetic.”

“Oh,” said Raymond, looking on.

“Can’t I have one taste?” he said. “Just a touch?”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said and went home.

*

One day, when Raymond was roving the neighborhood,

and as he crossed the street to go to Melon’s home,

her door opened and a man pulled her

kicking and screaming from her home.

He put her in the trunk of the car

and drove past Raymond

with her arm hanging out.

That was the last that Raymond ever saw of her,

but although he never saw her again,

he did see her arm. It was hanging out of the trunk

of that car—the one with the boy driver

who was taking her arm for a spin,

wearing shades—that kept passing Raymond

on certain days when he was roving the neighborhood.

*

Her family had moved,

but Raymond had knocked on Melon’s door a hundred times,

as if the next renters would tell him where.

Finally, a young old lady answered the door and said,

“Nobody by the name of Melon lives here.

I’m sorry. Would you like to come in?”