Spirit Casing

asing

  By Thomas Michael McDade

  Copyright 2013 Thomas Michael McDade

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  Special thanks to the following publication that previously published this story: The Feathered Flounder.

  Stealthily moving into the morning light, I’m so quiet, so damned silent. I hear my

  echoing footfalls from a lurking side street now. Not company I hope. I’m selfish

  with my nether-day. Let the timid uphold the light. Leave the skunk-laced arena to

  me. This running is good for me, so the therapist says. The parole officer is pleased.

  Gods and Goddesses of folly nurse me through their illusions as well as mine. I wear

  a robin-rust ski mask. It is not cold but I like the practice. The squad cars crawl past

  but not one stops, dark, slim anarchy. As I leap over a dead raccoon, my toe brushes

  it. I wear leg weights. My handicap is not lead. I wear the tools of redemption.

  Prison improved the trade, finished the diamond, a hard-working glazier’s apprentice

  in the supervising light. I should be the teacher. All of the windows shining in the

  street glow I know well: Andersons especially. I can make them slide, lift and fall

  ever so gently, silky and liquid as mindless lives meshing.

  I heal, I renew. I see the blood on shattered panes and I know it is not just want

  of entry, vandalism or anger. If the soul is air and breath, the glass around us carries

  its portrait, its fingerprints. We spring from dust, glass from coarser dirt. Then enter

  the water, ice and man’s most haunting alchemy: the mirror—soul and spirit

  galleried and many a charade well played before them. All is not vanity, drawn to the

  department store window to sneak a glance—it’s the puzzled too, not just the vain. Is

  our hair or our mortality out of place? Any excuse will do to stand before the three-

  way mirror where the spirit is drenched and we fool ourselves like flies, moths and

  dogs.

  There is no hovering or levitation. The road still believes in me. I’m usually

  uplifted by this time. At the next telephone pole, a crane spirit normally hooks me.

  How close to the glass when death sets in? I know I’m still on earth because I feel the

  hill and there’s pain in my chest. I’m courting gentle cardiac arrest. Is pure spirit

  rimmed with salvation? If I go that far, I’ll know what I’m seeking. Maybe then I

  will shed this human curse of deluded immortality and learn to live, jump from that

  travelogue Mexican cliff. See the corpse, touch my corpse, kiss and kick my corpse,

  peek at myself laid out, examine the windows for hints, propelled air, breath kneads

  itself into the nearest window. Oh yes, trite counting of my guests and cars. A soul

  searching for a pane in a windowless room—what then? Where does the spirit find

  repose then? Does it exit in a glassy eye or a mirror in the purse?

  I hate sleep. The Big Sleep once lived on marquees. Answers that easy must be

  false. It might be a dab of spirit but genuine spirit has a shorter leash. Someone

  please mentor my ascent, mark my pulse and breathing! With my heartbeat, goes the

  puzzle. Does Jesus read the Bible on the beach in Malibu or at LaGuardia?

  I close my eyes and hope that divinity will ooh and ah, ring in my ears.

  Operating with peepers closed is good practice for my so-called art. I could end up

  skunking the road. Then I’m giving the predator in the gray sixty-six Thunderbird too

  much slack. He’s tried to run me down before. I called no cop. We have our game. Is

  he a Good Samaritan, wanting to aid me in my spiritual quest? It’s hard to imagine

  how far a body can fly when by vehicle launched: not a circus or carnival cannon.

  Where would the soul go in the case of mid-air death? Would it end up in a glove

  compartment shot glass, pint under the seat or smeared on the windshield, forever

  reminding the driver of crime or pleasure? Some days I don’t wear a reflector vest. T-

  Bird could always say he didn’t see me. Other times he turns off his lights. I have

  seen the street where he furtively departs. The neighborhood looks affluent. He tries

  to steal my life. Should I smear his lodgings with my art?

  I wonder if I’m in sleep danger. I await the clunk, hum and Rorschach of

  meditation. I place meditation somewhere between and sleep and death but maybe it

  doesn’t rank there at all. How hard is it to stick a thought into thoughtlessness? It’s

  so easy to spot an alley in the ink. I stepped so softly into the blind man’s home. I

  thought he might have heard me the way his head moved sharply. His hand went to

  his red-and-white cane but I did not flee. I was beyond fear at age 7. I continued past

  him and he relaxed. So high on my quiet achievement, I became a kind of spirit. My

  sneakers barely touched the rug. The booty was 4 empty bottles, 8 cents after

  returning for deposit. I could have left through another door and avoided him but I

  chose risk. It’s more of a challenge having to silence the bottles. Too easy, I moved

  to sighted folks. Blind in the night but they could wake and their touch of spirit would

  confront my thieving essence.

  One day the spirit mastery deserted and I became clumsy in the night, an

  awkward robot facing coal Orphan Annie shotgun eyes, click but no fire. I needed more running

  and marauding in the dark to sharpen my skill, my forte, my silence.

  Today is disharmonious. I can feel someone near me, a walker. I’m used to an

  occasional car and I know exactly where the T-Bird might attack. I want things well-

  timed on my run. Where is the can man? I started too early or two late! I open my

  eyes and he twirls his stick like a jockey at the end of a race, and stoops to pick up a

  soda can in the gutter like a track loser picking through hope’s discarded leaves. I

  almost run into him.

  “Stay out of my territory run-fuck,” he snarls as I run in place.

  “You only had to wait a second and I’d have been gone,” I say.

  “I saw you kick a can two days ago, run-fuck. Keep your stinking feet off my

  cans.”

  “Sure, I’ll be more careful, Sir Canalot.”

  “Don’t be flippant. You don’t know who I am, do you?”

  “No idea.”

  “I’m descended from Vulcan. I don’t collect these cans for their deposits. I’m a

  sculptor; I also deal in armor. I’ll build a suit to protect you from the chariots.

  Someday there will be a grand aluminum cathedral for Vulcan worship. You are not

  kicking a mere can, run-fucker.”

  Why do I bother listening to a maniac? Does spirituality live in his kind of

  lunacy? Is his insanity the madness of fiction, poetry and sleep or the dud of the

  death asylum? I’m at road level now, sinking in it. I sweat through the coolness, Old

  Spice. The condensation builds on the window. What is the relationship between

  window and screen? Examine the screen for essence. Stare through the veils at a

  million funerals. Was there a man leaning on an obelisk taking notes as they roped

  the casket into the earth? Was his rucksack full of epiphanies or Sn
ickers Bars? When

  he told you of St. Teresa of Avila, did you choose the Little Flower? Don’t wait for a

  shower of roses to supplement your tea! Religion always barges in when I pass the

  Church of St. Teresa. Rucksack Man, do you believe in a heaven too strong for my

  tea? The beatific vision is too facile a cup. I renounce your vision but applaud your

  life. Fragile kite strung out from the spire of St. Jean Baptist. I need more tools than

  just the ones hugging my legs.

  Fasting, I have never tried. I’ll starve for three days and then run. I’ll have the

  visions of the saints. I am running again in the cresting abyss with eyes open. I see

  the cat’s pupils before me. The Egyptians worshipped you because you are spirit.

  That has to be the reason. I have watched you for countless hours. All of your moves

  I’ve memorized. Above sweat, I purr into rippling electricity. My movement is

  effortless. I am on the beach but not touching the incipient glass. My rarified

  substance irks the goats and the poison trees look up from their vials. Lizard-headed felines peek through the bougainvillea. The sea foam mumbles a Narcissus song. A wave grabs a handful of sand and polishes a shell to a glassy luster to hold the souls

  of the sunken and brighten tourist traps. I see some porch lights and it’s not

  Halloween, Houdini is still shaking in his snow globe wearing a fist proof vest. They

  call me, bid me to practice my art. Seaweed congregations sing hymns of breaking

  and entering.

  In my cell, the skeptical