Two-Minute Legend

Once we had docked our whole unit got excited. We hadn’t been on American soil in eight months. Stopped at a few ports in Europe and some island hopping in the Caribbean to refuel. It was electric to be one stop away from home. Not having to do extra thinking in memorizing critical phrases for food and entertainment. From the expression on the people we asked, they must of thought we were morons. Especially Jarvis. Let me tell ya, guy was a fucking idiot. His international symbol for women—shaping the curves of a woman in midair and then slapping the ass of his imaginary lady—did not get us friendly nods by the local men and he always managed to ask the biggest, most violent guys too. Of course we had to back him up when he put his foot in his mouth, which seemed like every other step he took was straight in there. Being in the Navy opened the world to meeting and seeing different cultures. Seeing the world right? But guys like Jarvis never seemed to leave their little shit hole of hometown thinking, instead carrying it like some white trash pack rat.

Now, the Navy didn’t have the cleanest record and recently had a fresh black eye from an incident in Japan. A sailor got drunk out of control and ended up getting arrested by the local police. The media likes to jump on those. So, sometimes they make it a requirement that four guys stick together and one unlucky bastard isn’t allowed to drink. Isn’t it a kick in the pants when you’re getting ready to enjoy your night and you can’t leave the damn ship without your liberty buddy? There’s something that wasn’t in the brochure. When you leave the ship you have to sign-off with your liberty buddy and you gotta return back to the ship together. The Navy doesn’t trust us, and it sucks, but I suppose there’s reason for it too. Kind of like the D.D. It’s to make sure that every sailor makes it back to the ship safely. At least that’s what they want you to believe. I suppose it’s possible one guy could be dying in some ditch somewhere and you wouldn’t even know it if his buddy got separated.

Chock it up to new administration or new Commander-in-Chief whatever, but it had trickled down, and emphasis was on behaving ourselves. Saying we had to be more “friendly to our foreign neighbors.” It was also sort of encouraged to try and speak the home language when docking in another country but most of the guys didn’t bother. Jarvis and a couple of guys rolled their eyes at that, explaining that we were Americans and they should know English anyway. “Where is your toilet? TOY-let? The can?” He resorted to charades, making the motion of squatting, before giving up and finding the nearest alley.

Well, Jarvis had a way of getting out of being the guy that would lay off the alcohol. Me, Pellatt, and Jones would be playing pool or talking to locals in a bar when Jarvis would reappear by our sides with a pint of beer in his hand. We’d all yell at him, “Jarvis what the hell are ya doing?” He’d come up with some lame excuse like, the guy at the bar said it was on the house and that he would be disrespecting him, personally, if he didn’t drink.

“I didn’t want to get you guys in trouble,” he’d say taking a big gulp of beer, “like last time.”

But he would keep on drinking. Usually me, Jones or Pellatt would draw straws and see who would give up their buzz, sober up, and make sure our group made it back alright. For some reason, people thought he was a cool guy, Jarvis, at least Jones always vouched for him. He’s an all right sailor, but I hated getting stuck with him as a liberty buddy sometimes.

Anyways, so we’re some island, I can’t remember now, but it’s so close we can see Florida or something. Everyone finished up their tasks for the day, like beavers, all the guys getting dolled up in their uniform just waiting to taste the beers and unwrap some sweet eye candy. Then we gotta buddy-it up. It doesn’t make sense to anybody, but even the higher-ranking officers gotta do it. Everyone holds in their groans. I had been looking forward to a quieter night away from Jarvis, but I wasn’t gonna sacrifice my night and stay in either. After all the time abroad, everyone’s liberty buddies were set.

Anyways, I wanted to teach that son of a bitch a lesson. On paper, I made sure Pellatt was my buddy, and that Jones and Jarvis paired up. We went bar hopping. By the third bar of the night Jarvis was feeling it, slurring his insults, joking around with Jones. I tell Jarvis that this girl is eying him from across the room and point to a red headed vixen. I nudge him and tell him to go for it. Me, Jones, and Pellatt watch as he walks over and talks to the red head, we raise our glasses to him and continue drinking. An hour passes and Jarvis comes gallivanting recklessly through the crowd, a giggling fool, twirling the ends of a black boa wrapped around his neck.

“Hey, Jones guess what I got?”

“What’dya get Jarvis, you old dog, huh?” Jones started laughing like a moose. A second later, he went slack next to me. Me and Pellatt looked at each other and knew we had to drag their drunk asses back.

The next morning when we lined up for inspection, Jarvis got it! Oh man! The Sarge let him have it. He yelled at him in front of our unit.

“Private! What the HELL in God’s name is that on your neck?” The Sarge pointed with his entire face.

“What Sergeant?”

“Well, since you can’t see it—Jones! Inform Jarvis!”

Jones was struggling and looking at Jarvis up and down. Then it came into direct focus.

“A hickey sir.” Jones said as he snapped back into atten-hut.

“Do you need to go back to basic training Private Jarvis?!”

“No, sir.”

So the Sarge starts going at him talking about how “the dress and appearance of a seaman in uniform is to be kept in a clean, professional military image,” lecturing everyone for ten minutes about how your appearance should be spotless. I kept a straight face throughout. Ha ha. After they were both written up, half months pay taken, and forty-five day no Liberty—forty-five days of NO JARVIS. It was great. Jones didn’t defend Jarvis so much after that. Word got around about Jarvis and everyone started calling him, Speck. The name just stuck. He couldn’t get rid of it. Even now, when I talk to some of the old boys about Jarvis, I have to correct myself, “Oh, you know, Speck.”

What Mamá Said

This is what mamá would say
Once a man tastes
Blood, it thirsts for more
This is what mamá would say

This is what mamá was saying
When Cristal got in trouble
This is what she said while
She beat her. Electric chord
Screaming, cowering, hands trying
To protect. It gave way, but
Mamá not done with her,
Gotta make it stick, a stick

A switch, is what mamá's ma used
On her. Back up, to the old
Country, sixteen years then,
Three borders away. She
The first to fall, the originator

Couldn't help it, Cristal not in
Mamá's narrow scope, making
Ends and seams meet each week.
Food on the table, and a place to
Keep said table

Reaching for something else
Numb, swollen carpals, grabbed for--
Fell short--a clothes hanger
Cracked on first crack, mamá
Backed away, furious crying, she
Couldn't help it

Untitled

A man carrying two heavy loads of garbage, unknowingly kicked a Goya frijoles de ceda can as he went. On the second kick it spun a while longer as it might never stop. The rat keeping an eye on it from under a rumpled Time magazine waited patiently. On one of the revolutions, he caught a glimpse of some remaining morsel. He could never understand why humans had leftovers. But then again, he didn't really mind, he could take care of that.

The man dumped the two bags in the huge heap of discarded mountain and walked away back to his office. The rat heard the door slam, and then boldly scurried across an ocean of debris. He arrived at the entrance of the can and peered inside to find half of a moldy bean. Probably only a month old. He crawled in and nabbed it with his mouth and as he crawled backwards, he heard the buzzing. Annoyed by her presence, the fly landed on the edge of the rim of the sharp can. The rat hated the omnipresence her wings and her multi-vision gave her. But he had beaten her once again. The rat briskly sprinted away through the crowds of plastic bottles and shards of glass that seemed to extend into infinity in their miniscule molecules sparkling throughout the garbage dump floor.

Everyday and every hour the shape of the valleys of miscellaneous goo changed. Things that once were shiny and new had quickly reached its potential and now found themselves with the other one-time use items of society, the condoms, Christmas trees, diapers, wrappers, and bestsellers of six months ago. The rapid disintegration and cancer-like growth of the Pangaea heap that began every week was unwrapped and twisted, separated and rebuilt to change the landscape. The terrain of garbage regulars grew and dwindled changing and moving as to seem almost liquid, moving like waves as they crashed against its weak yet effective boundary. The fence was pretty shabby, but it was reinforced by a peculiar looking ivy that grew all around it. Seeing that it worked to their advantage, the dump management tried to keep the ivy at bay by shearing it at least every two days. Contained, it helped, but if it wasn't it could have very unproductive effects. In a way, it seemed to feed off the moisture of the garbage, the alcohol that spilled from brown and amber bottles and the fermented drops of orange juice and milk leaking from the bottom of their squashed containers.

The fly flew a few feet up, startled from the rat's sudden exit, and then lowered back down on the same can. Her kaleidoscopic view saw the rat's hindquarters and scaly tale whip back and forth flagellaicly as he wriggled inside the heap. The fly hovered for a bit, deciding if she should follow or not. Just then she saw something moving near a puddle the color of kids dirty water coloring water with glistening presence of swirls of oil on the East side of the dump near the fence. Landing on a hairless handle of a mop, she sat and observed. For a second she thought that her sight had deceived her but she was patient. She stared intently at the area near the small black lake. In a game of "what doesn't belong," she recognized the slimy shimmery trail and followed it to find the banana slug, momentarily camouflaged on a neon yellow 1980s jacket. For a slug, it contracted and stretched pretty quickly for a slug. Such an animal, although usually thought of as filthy, would be right at home. But banana slugs preferred a less man-made mess and more of a dewy floor of a forest with shading from the sun. The fly had no schedules or time to keep up with and could potentially sit there and watch this bright visitor but she preferred to haunt the rat. As she took to the sky, she noticed the land of incoming trash being molded into and bull dozed into submission. Reverse beeping, and loud plume-smoke of strength from the machines sculpting a newly formed mountain. From this she deduced that the rat would have moved south, toward the spider like, leggy, kiosk.

The rat was so predictable. It was done with the moldy bean and had snagged a delectable looking moldy peach. It was nibbling on it furiously. Violently tearing at the bruised purple meat, not caring if his whiskers were dirtied...