When I
was growing up, Spoon River was much
smaller.
My high school class was less than eighty,
and I
think most of us stayed here in the town.
Unlike
the later generations, who left
as soon
as they could. How many of my old
school chums
are here with me now? Life can be long.

All I ever did was study
for the tests at school. I always passed,
always got A’s, but it wasn’t
enough. The tests were weighted and it
was possible to get a grade
that was over one-hundred percent.
So a perfect score was still not
good enough, and they drilled it into
us that our performance on the
exams would determine the rest of
our lives. In one way they were right.
I was so frightened of not being
good enough, all I did was work.
And when the panic attacks started,
I didn’t tell anybody
because it would mean I’d have less time
to study. The day that I was
supposed to take the PSATs,
I had an attack while walking
to school, and fell in front of the bus.

My family owned the
orchard. My father taught
me how to run it, and
do whatever it took
to maximize yield, to
preserve freshness, and to
amplify color. I
gave my children stakes in
the business, and we fought
over the additives
and fertilizers, the
chemical sprays and the
preservatives. They had
this strange idea about
how people wanted less
colorful and shorter-
lasting apples, and that
they would pay more for them.

I kept their organic
crusade at bay until
I passed on. Then they made
their changes anyway.

But maybe they were right.
I’ve been buried here for
years; the worms won’t touch me.

Kevin Winterbaum
was arrested for having drugs,
for vandalism
and mischief, and Judge Bolton let
him join the army
to pay off his debt. But he died.
And nobody knew
that the only reason Kevin
was getting high and
smashing mailboxes that night, was
because he caught me
with Gio Moss, and I screamed at
him that I never
wanted to see his face again.

After he died I
saw it every night of my life.

It was somewhere near
Basra, I think, where I died. Bleeding
into the sand, all
I could think about was how none of
my troublemaking
was worth it, and when they gave me the
choice of jail or the
Marines, I chose wrong. They gave me a
hero’s burial
and everyone was so proud of me.

He spent the
remainder of
my life and his railing
against his
public disgrace.
He thinks the strain killed me.

I couldn’t
tell him the truth.
I thought he was guilty.

A lifetime of service,
helping and healing
families, meant nothing
when I could not save poor
Efa Underwood.
My name and picture on
every newspaper
cover, every
television screen. Charged
with manslaughter. And the
protestors! I went
to medical school with
a good friend of that
Doctor Sleppian,
so how could I take the
threats idly? I could see
vengeful killers in
every crowd. The strain
weighed on my wife, until
the stroke killed her. I
followed her soon after,
never convicted of
any crime, never
found innocent either.

I was finally
able to sober up.

And I got a job
working as a third-shift
janitor at the
big new Galleria.
One Monday morning,
I was working in the
basement and stopped for
a smoke break. When I lit
the match, there was a
giant explosion. I
got second and third
degree burns all over.

It turned out there were
methane leaks all over
the building, and it
was a miracle that
it hadn’t burned while
full of people shopping.

But because I was
smoking where I shouldn’t
have been, workers comp
denied my claim, and I
was forced to sue the
owner of the mall. Which
turned out to be a
company owned by Rod
Deegan. Which meant that
the expired permits
and failed inspections
were covered up. The Judge
in the case, like all
of them, a friend of the
Deegans, allowed the
case to be delayed so
long that there was no
way I could afford all
the medical bills
and legal fees. So when
they offered me a
tiny settlement, I
took it. It wasn’t
nearly enough to pay
for my expenses,
and ran out quickly but
I solved that with a
return to my drinking.

There were Underwoods in this part
of the country when it was still a
colony. But instead of the
legacy of the founders of this
town, all you saw was a sad, poor
laborer carting a case home from
the Cut-Rate. And then my bitch wife
ran off. And then what you all did to
my poor Efa. I was the last
of the Underwoods. There are no more.

I wrote my
little stories, and folks rolled their eyes.
“Who’s ever
gonna read these?” “Nothing happens.” “I
don’t get it.”
I was keener on divining things
unspoken
between people who are all alone,
than simple
turning of a story’s mechanics.

The best place
to observe the animals at play
was always
the bar at the Butcher’s Block. But there
are cruel beasts
out there, who only hear what they say
to themselves.
That’s how I was pinned by the claws of
Dutch Wallis,
who trapped me in the alley behind
Butcher’s, and
savaged me. He broke my bones, knocked out
my teeth, raked
my skin, spilled my blood and left me a
pregnancy.
That he got away with it was just
the first of
many injustices that came next.

I had no
family to support me, mother
long vanished,
father too mired in old ways to
even speak
about it, and no money for an
abortion
I begged Doctor Golden for help. He
delivered
me into the world, and I pleaded
with him to
deliver me again. He agreed
to help me.
But something went wrong and I didn’t
recover.
It took eight horrible weeks for me
to fade and
die, while Doctor Golden was dragged through
the mud and
held responsible. Him, not Wallis.

Seems it was
true. No one understood my stories.