HONORABLE MENTION
DECEMBER 2017
FUTURE
MICHAEL ONOFREY
FUTURE
MICHAEL ONOFREY
– man lives in desert – tree surgeon dumps cuttings off – man separates, sorts, cuts, and etc., and makes a business of it – woman (artist) shows up
– man is long-limbed – woman is slim and beautiful – no, woman is a little pudgy but still beautiful – woman sketches the man, who has veins trellising his forearms – does the man have tattoos – does the woman have tattoos - how old is the man – how old is the woman – why’d she come out there in the first place
Imagine: nothing but desert, call it the Mojave: pebbled, grayish, dull creosote colonies here and there, a mobile home (singlewide), graded dirt road leading to the singlewide – the dumping of trees and bush-cuttings takes place beyond the singlewide – the man has a backhoe for burying what he can’t salvage: leaves, twigs, shrubbery – a shed with a couple of saws to make planks or 2x4s or slats or whatever – naturally sundried wood, not oven-dried, which some people want, lumberyards or carpenters, specialty carpenters who do work in the nearby metropolis: Southern California – there’s also firewood that brings in money – the man knows types of wood, he has a book he employees if need be for identifying wood, the tree surgeon knows flora as well and answers the man’s questions about wood or bushes or trees – the tree surgeon is bilingual, Spanish and English, it’s free dumping for the tree surgeon, sometimes the tree surgeon has a crew of three or four men who speak Spanish and maybe English – the woman has viewed this: the dumping, the men, the comradery – let’s call the woman Sally and the man Hoyt and the tree surgeon Manny – there is never any alcohol because both Hoyt and Manny are involved with AA, Manny more than Hoyt – Manny is married and has kids that he adores – Hoyt relates all this to Sally (i.e. Manny and his love of children) – Hoyt can’t stand kids in any capacity, nor marriage for that matter – rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas, coyotes and etc. OK, but no kids – Sally ventures out to Hoyt’s residence in the desert for the sake of art and other activities
Hoyt owns nothing – the whole deal belongs to a wealthy realtor(s), husband-and-wife team who have a thriving office in the nearby metropolis and who have idle land and who support endeavors of an ecological-slash-environmental nature – solar panels are under consideration and so are Angora goats that would eat the foliage that’s now getting buried – Angora goats produce mohair, desert heat not a problem, naturally colored mohair from goats with such fleeces (black, brown, rust-brown) a niche market, high-end – sometimes people from a university come out to have a look around, an environmental/ecological look around, they always call first, of course, their body-types are either gangly or obese
*
A coffee shop in a strip mall, Sally and her friend, Gale, are at a table next to a plate-glass window. They’re doing lunch: iced tea, Greek salads, and a piece of fish, halibut maybe, cooked with olive oil and rosemary. Sally is saying: “Oh, Gale, it’s sooo . . .” Gale: “Does he send you to the moon and back, Sally?” “Yes, but the thing is, I keep going and going and going, past the moon.” Gale: “That bad, huh. Actually, that good. So what’s next? Where do you and Hoyt go from here?” “I don’t know. Hoyt says there doesn’t have to be something next, except getting old and dying, or maybe dying before getting old.” “He sounds very optimistic.” Sally smiles, teeth well-maintained. “Can you build a future with this man?” “No, I don’t think so.” “So you’re in it for the now, like in wow!” “I guess.” “Well, that seems pretty good.” “Yeah, but there are a few problems.” “Oh?” “We have nothing to talk about, except the desert maybe. He doesn’t have a TV, much less a computer and so forth. He reads books, used paperbacks that Manny drops off. Manny’s the guy who dumps off the debris. And he has a pair of binoculars to look at birds and coyotes.” “Who, Manny or Hoyt?” “Manny or Hoyt, what?” “Who has the binoculars?” “Hoyt of course.” “Things could be worse,” Gale says. “The only place he ever goes is to a gas station and a supermarket and a bank.” “I see.” “When he walks he’s bent forward. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with him, the way he can sit and sit and sit and do nothing but look at the desert. I sketch him when he does that, but still . . . he doesn’t move. He’s like a reptile.” “Really?” “He’s very strong, in all physical aspects. But he’s weak in mental aspects. He’s got a cat, a calico, a female, spayed. But he hasn’t named the cat. He calls the cat, cat.” “Are you going to eat those olives, Sally?” “No, we have tons of olives at Hoyt’s place. Here, you can have them.” Sally holds her plate forth. Gale spoons olives off of Sally’s plate.
*
“I can’t take it anymore, Hoyt. I’m not coming back.”
Hoyt stands, looking at Sally, end of October, weather marvelous. Sally’s just gotten out of the cab of her pickup truck, a Dodge Ram. The driver’s door remains open. Hoyt has come around from in back of his singlewide where he had been loitering on the patio. It’s a windless day. The cat has followed Hoyt. The cat sits its haunches and looks up at Sally. Hoyt blinks his eyes, irises gray. A two-day growth of stubble is on Hoyt’s oblong face, a billed cap atop his head. The angle and positioning of Hoyt’s head vis-à-vis the sun determines shadows that haunts Hoyt’s visage.
“Why?”
“This is going nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. There’s more to life than . . .” Sally waves an arm.
The engine of the Dodge Ram is idling. Sally is poised to get back in her truck. There’s purpose in her visit and it’s obvious she wants to get that purpose and this visit over with as quickly as possible.
Hoyt’s eyes have followed Sally’s hand, which is at the end of Sally’s waving arm, but then the arm and the hand come down to go limp next to Sally’s side.
Hoyt moistens his lips with his tongue and looks around. His lips are chapped.
Sally waits. The cat seems to be waiting too. The cat’s eyes are hazel. From somewhere in that vast sky a raven caws. Such a clear, vivid sound.
Sally climbs onto the driver’s seat, door remaining open. Hoyt and Sally look at each other. A hummingbird comes whizzing by, translucent green and red like a glitzy dart. The bird’s on its way to a feeder that hangs at the end of an eave where the patio’s tin roof leaves off.
“I’ve been coming out here for two and a half years and nothing has changed, except I’m getting older.”
“I don’t doubt it, because I’m the same. But I live here.”
She looks at him anew. He kind of smiles.
“Are you going to miss me?”
“I think so,” he tells her.
“Do you know who I am, Hoyt? Do you know who Sally Fisher is?”
“Well, yeah. You’re Sally Fisher.”
She ejects a sigh. Her hair is cropped short, a bowl-like configuration. Thick and black and glossy. Her eyebrows are very distinct. She’s lost weight.
“Don’t you aspire to be something?”
He kind of grins, crookedly.
The cat has come over and is looking up into the cab of the truck, like maybe it’s thinking of jumping onto the cab’s floor, near Sally’s feet, which are wedged into a pair of new huaraches, toenails fire engine red.
“What is it that you have in mind?” Hoyt asks, voice dry and sandy.
“Some sort of viable career, or just a job, a regular job. Go to work at real place where real paychecks are issued. Maybe get a house, start a family . . . like other people.”
“Domesticity.”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
A wry expression comes to Hoyt’s face. He shifts his weight from foot to foot. He’s wearing khaki shorts that have a lot of pockets. Sally is wearing the same kind of shorts.
“I thought artists were supposed to be bohemian types.”
“That went out with the beatniks, or maybe the hippies. People don’t want to be poor anymore. They want to be rich.”
Hoyt nods slowly, Adam’s apple bulging. On his torso there’s a maroon T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, ends of his shoulders exposed.
A roadrunner, which hangs in the vicinity beyond the patio, has stalled Sally’s glance in that direction. The bird is mischievous. It sometimes taunts the cat. Sally’s eyes and mind return to the subject at hand.
“I’m making money. More decorators are buying my work and I’ve had a couple of shows at galleries. I’m moving in different circles now. I want to get out of my apartment. I’m thinking about a mortgage. I told you all this.”
“Yeah.”
“And what did you do or say?”
“I listened.”
Sally closes the door of her truck. The window is down. The cat walks away in the direction of the singlewide that’s offering shade on its east side.
Sally shifts from park to drive and accelerates slowly and turns around. Hoyt watches and so does the cat while lying on its side in the shade. Sally swings onto the graded dirt road and accelerates with force. A spray of grit at the underside of her vehicle confirms rapid movement. Swirls of gray dust pester the truck’s tailgate. In the distance, on the other side of a knoll at a meager junction where a mailbox dwells, the tires of her pickup truck will encounter a true washboard surface. Two miles on, the Dodge Ram will stop jittering when its tires find purchase on macadam. But for now, Sally glances at a side mirror and sees Hoyt standing. Tears drizzle on Sally’s sun-brown cheeks. Hoyt told her the other day: “Let’s hope this is the future,” and waved an arm.
MICHAEL ONOFREY grew up in Los Angeles, but currently lives in Japan. His stories have appeared in Cottonwood, Evansville Review, Kestrel, Natural Bridge, Oyez Review, Terrain.org, and Weber - The Contemporary West, as well as in other fine places. A novel, Bewilderment, was published in 2017 by Tailwinds Press.
Chila: Tell us how you came up with the idea for this story & its interesting introductory section.
Michael: I have a computer file where I put ideas for stories. These ideas can come up anywhere and at any time, so they usually get jotted down on scraps of paper, from which they go into the computer file. If I want to write a story but don’t have an idea, I look at that file. That’s where “Future” came from. Its first two lines were taken from that file. After that I kept adding ideas, which constitute the first section of the story. As I got more into that first section, a narrative began to develop. The second and third sections of the story pick up that narrative. If I had treated this piece like I do most other pieces, I would have gone back and brought the first section into a more usual narrative form. But I, like a lot of other people who write, like to try new things, which often means taking risks. In looking at that first section, I saw metafiction, reader being made aware of storytelling. Sometimes I like that, usually I don’t. In this case, though, there was something else, and it was seeing how a story develops, and not just on paper but in one’s mind.
Chila: Does living in Japan influence your writing, and if so, how?
Michael: No, I don’t think it influences my writing. Of course there have been stories I’ve set in Japan, but anyone visiting here might very well come up with stories set here.
Chila: What is your next major project?
Michael: “Major,” as in time consuming, is another novel. But “immediate,” as in next project, that’d be short fiction, several short stories. I like to go back and forth between short fiction and long fiction because it breaks things up. Regarding ideas for long or short fiction right now—I don’t have any. I have to consult my “ideas & notes” computer file.
Chila: Tell us how you came up with the idea for this story & its interesting introductory section.
Michael: I have a computer file where I put ideas for stories. These ideas can come up anywhere and at any time, so they usually get jotted down on scraps of paper, from which they go into the computer file. If I want to write a story but don’t have an idea, I look at that file. That’s where “Future” came from. Its first two lines were taken from that file. After that I kept adding ideas, which constitute the first section of the story. As I got more into that first section, a narrative began to develop. The second and third sections of the story pick up that narrative. If I had treated this piece like I do most other pieces, I would have gone back and brought the first section into a more usual narrative form. But I, like a lot of other people who write, like to try new things, which often means taking risks. In looking at that first section, I saw metafiction, reader being made aware of storytelling. Sometimes I like that, usually I don’t. In this case, though, there was something else, and it was seeing how a story develops, and not just on paper but in one’s mind.
Chila: Does living in Japan influence your writing, and if so, how?
Michael: No, I don’t think it influences my writing. Of course there have been stories I’ve set in Japan, but anyone visiting here might very well come up with stories set here.
Chila: What is your next major project?
Michael: “Major,” as in time consuming, is another novel. But “immediate,” as in next project, that’d be short fiction, several short stories. I like to go back and forth between short fiction and long fiction because it breaks things up. Regarding ideas for long or short fiction right now—I don’t have any. I have to consult my “ideas & notes” computer file.