The Emergency Almanac

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Drawings by Timothy Hull 

Tut Necklace

  

Inside the Egyptian Museum 

      

Colossus 

    

All works gel pen on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches, 2007 

 

This fall, the Emergency Press will publish Touched By Lightning by Ernest Loesser, the second-place winner of our recent book contest. In accordance with the contest rules, we are going forward with this manuscript as the publication of the winning book has been delayed indefinitely.  Here are a few selections: 

 

Our Community Laments the Recently Departed

 

Jean Dobrer, former high school principal and calendar girl, Miss June 1965. Lucy Altman, a dedicated wife and the proud mother of three Ivy League graduates. Russell Brunner, married into wealth. Dorothea Fisk, member of the horticultural club who had prize-winning orchids. Sgt. Esteban J. Ramirez, soldier in the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry Regiment, First Cavalry Division, killed in action. Richard Bonanno, proprietor of Calabretta’s Pizzeria for 63 years. Carmine Christo, director of the Twin Rivers Country Club and ping-pong champion. Danielle Chisholm, a maverick who never married but was never lonely. Anthony Baldwin, sang Otis Redding to his baby daughter. Father Bishop Joseph Crisfasi, was lucid on his deathbed when he uttered, Totus tuus, a Latin motto for “completely yours”. Naftali Gibson, doubted her parents’ religion. Helen Kingsley, a community board member and a real good one. Mary J. Sage, valedictorian, law firm partner, who had many enemies. David Weber, struck dead while riding his bicycle home from elementary school. Sylvia Cutler, beloved mother and swim instructor who meditated on fidelity. Ritchie Lono, was a career penitentiary guard who was taken hostage during a three-day prison riot. David Newman, an auto mechanic who painted watercolors for 40 years and no one ever knew. Charles Palms, father of eight, a former district president with the Black Panther Party and a talented gunsmith. Bert Reinhold, threw parties every Friday and his friends are bored now. BJ Turner, had a rags to riches story. Eleanor Stevens, knitted 37 sweaters and 16 quilts, her favorite season was autumn.

 

 

Forgotten Daughter Dies at Boarding House

 

Claire Clayton, 86, who was involuntarily held at a Nevada mental institution for 51 years, died yesterday in a Reno boarding house. A city medical examiner recorded the case as dysentery. Ms. Clayton was committed to a state hospital on April 28, 1934. Her parents were strict Baptists and disapproved of the youthful liberties their eldest daughter requested and exercised. Claire’s parents forced her to participate in a church exorcism after discovering their daughter’s hidden collection of make-up and fashion magazines. After the exorcism, Claire ransacked the family’s home and attacked her mother. At the Sunny Peaks Hospital Ms. Clayton was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but in a review after her release in 1985 it was determined her original symptoms displayed psychotic depression and hospital records revealed the symptoms quickly subsided. For each Christmas Claire received a toy doll provided by the Salvation Army. As a result of her extended period confined within a hospital, Ms. Clayton was afflicted with an “institutional syndrome” that left her withdrawn and incapable of showing emotion. Ms. Clayton received no education during her period under supervision or any reparations afterwards. Her parents died in a car accident in 1942, but no extended family members contacted the hospital. Her eventual release came when state auditors determined it would be fiscally and ethically responsible to release patients that displayed no threat to society. Clair Clayton, whose mental development progressed little beyond that of an adolescent was buried with her collection of dolls.

 

 

Air Force Veteran, 85, Falls at Daughter’s Home

 

“Think of geese honking and coughing, flying in low off the lake,” is how Captain Clifford Chance described to his youngest grandson, the sound of the B-17 he piloted during the European Theater. Captain Chance flew Detroit’s Diamond for six months and was among the first American bombers to complete 25 missions without losing one man. “She was a ten gun, four engine bird, with a buxom lass brandishing a big old gem on her finger painted right up on the nose of the ship,” said Morgan Cash, Detroit’s Diamond’s surviving tail gunner. Some military historians dispute that Detroit’s Diamond was the first aircraft to complete 25 missions. “She was in nothing but a skimpy bathing suit,” recalled Cash. “Who could have missed that?” The legacy of Detroit’s Diamond and her crew were spun off into comic books, a TV mini-series, and eventually a Hollywood feature. After returning home, Captain Chance never accepted an endorsement or appeared on the popular radio programs of the time. “Stick with me Cliff and you’ll be a star,” his wife Nancy told him. “We had 24 air shows booked this year alone.” In the 37 years that Captain Chance was employed with the Michelin Tire Company he never took one sick day. Captain Clifford Chance died after breaking his neck in a fall at his daughter’s home outside of Detroit.

 

Project for a Fourth Avenue Kiosk  
(Stuart Davis Version)

by Scott Zieher  

Dumplings avail as well as a cornucopia
Of comic vessels from periodicals to literature’s
Edges. A short pink and powder-baby-bottom
Blue-eggshell neon sign spins in veritable
Anamorphoses, hidden to all without mirrors
(Ideal spot- next to a shop that sells mirrors).
Postcards avail, as well as newspapers, envelopes.
Short films of Nijinsky, Chaney and Kid Chocolate.
Soda jerk for your convenience, all flavors, flâneurs.
Three stools. Tiny stage behind a spinning display
Of antique tablets for penmanship and cartes
De visite, manifestoes, hotel billhead, pennants
Celebrating the epoch of the golden wolf.
Sunshine avail in excelsis during daytime. Stools
Added under umbrellas at crepuscular clemencies.
Steins of local beer avail. Guitar performances 
Nightly and twice on Sunday (Matinee at Noon). 
 

 

The Winter Lamb  

   

 

Holiday Inn   

 

 

Piano

 

 

 Fingers

 

 

Chicken a la Swing     

    

 

 

The Shakespeare of Dogs   

 

 

All pieces by Scott Zieher.  Mixed Media. 14 x 11 inches each. 

Flag 

by Jayson Iwen 

Thirty six stars and four stripes left, it hangs like a dishrag in the wet grey sky. Now a sudden wind lifts it an inch or two, as if to inspect its underside, and, finding nothing, drops it again. How else could such a hyperactivity of symbolism come to an end, unendingly.

During the siege of Stalingrad, the German soldiers were terrified of the female militias they encountered. Whenever the women caught a German, they’d cut off anything that seemed remotely phallic. Anything that protrudes into the world. Genitalia first. Then noses and tongues. Then fingers and toes and ears. Then the men were sent back to where they would beg their comrades, as best they could without fingers or tongues, for death.

Then the Germans captured some of the Russians. They drove long Russian bayonets into their birth canals and out their backs, then nailed them to the floorboards of a Russian truck and drove it back into Russian territory. Anything inward that requires pinning down.

In such symbols they spoke to one another. And in such symbolism they understood one another, for, after that, they returned to the civility of simply killing each other again.

Beyond words lurks a fear too great for words. It hides in the blinding light of the obvious. Just now it hangs like something gutted, from the top of a flag pole before the VFW hall.

This Week in the News, April 8–15, 2007  

by joesmith   

A corpse in a cowboy hat spews bile at the mic. 
This time, he says he’s an idiot.   

A drove of men crowd around a bombed car in Karballah. 
All look excited. None sad. 
14 take pictures with their cell phones. The rest want a camera. 

What does the Titanic have to do with Jesus? 

You’re a screen upon which all else is projected. 
You wear your image of an image that looks almost like you. 
Everybody watches. Nobody watches. You squint in such light. 

Let the dead stay dead. Allow rumors of resurrection. 

This method will back up all of your profile data for each profile in the profile data location, as well as the registry.dat or profiles.ini file that records the profile location. All profile data will be backed up at once, together.  

James Cameron. Hubris. Noun. 

You won’t speak to one of the several hundred of faces you glimpse every day.
See, they’re pictures. 

“The schizophrenic is not, as generally claimed, characterized by his loss of touch with reality, but by the obscene proximity to and total instantaneous with things, this overexposure to the transparency of the world.” 

Don Ho dies at 76. Hawaii will never be the same. 

You see more of them if you don’t leave the house. 

The body of Christ is a thin thin wafer. Stamped into a perfect circle. 

1 in 4 Americans have a mental disease. 
The other 3 are sick from thought. 
1 in 2 have a broken part of some sort. 

Baker of Jesus crackers. There’s a job. 

Jackie Robinson. Somebody to believe in. 

A woman in Idaho has had convulsive hiccups for 8 months. “I do believe in the power of Christ,” she says. “I’ve seen miracles. Mrah-rhhrrpp. Happen.” 

C’mon, plaster Jesus, jump off that cross against the castle, snatch the only man who gets to talk, shake him around in one hand, scare us. 

“In spite of himself the schizophrenic is open to everything….” 

The total value of player salaries who wore number 42 was 147 million. 

Or twitch a foot. 

“He is the obscene victim of the world’s obscenity.” 

A state trooper in Kentucky was driving in a rainstorm when he hit a horse and rider on an unlighted rural highway. 

Tell us a parable. 

The rider was charged with DUI of a non-motorized vehicle. 

Tell us you meant something else. 

The horse was euthanized at the scene. 

C’mon, you can do it. You’re 9 feet tall.

Horological Correspondence:

The Mission Missive from Count Eduardo

 

by Jason Gitlin

 

 

If your New Haven Mission clock

strikes outta whack/your skinny

surgeon-fingered Father beneath

the dial with a gigantic rubber

band/held the suspension spring 

angled/not my hands/we will fix

the strike/Meshugina/but I sent

& restored an Ingraham movement

good time keeper/my last minute

decision overcome by generosity

the case could use some clarity 

uncompleted/spray satin lacquer

90 lbs/rub it/quadruple “aught”

steel wool between applications

Look how I handled the Ingraham 

suspension spring/the Dentist’s 

finesse/I cannot write what you 

ought know about clock handling 

cut rubber bands & remove tacks  

gimme a break/the King of Spain  

without a worthy collection/you

Hamtramck King/realize/truly am

I Eduardo Zaz/The Count of West 

Bloomfield/The Certified Master

Clock Maker/I wrote this letter

without cuss words SHITSHITSHIT

 

 

–Count Down to September 25th 2007 

10 months 19 days

 

Revolution–A Play in One Act

 

 by Bryan Tomasovich

 

 

 

CHARACTERS

 

TAMMY STANG. Mother. 39.

 

TIM BADMAN. Father. 39.

 

ENCORE. Son of Tim and Tammy. 9. Alleged perpetrator of an attack on the nation, but heard only off-stage.

 

 

 

(The morning after an attack on the nation. Sparse living room with a window/curtain. The telephone is off the hook. Tammy is soaking in a birth tub, ready to give birth to their second child. A table with a large jig-saw puzzle sits next to the tub. Tim paces in a panic in her vicinity.)

 

TAMMY

(Kneeling, peeking out a window.)

I’m his mother. You think, Tim, I’m going to takes sides? Yours?

 

TIM

Even after something like this? It’s been a damn long time. That I’ve been waiting. To be on your side again, Tammy.

 

TAMMY

Something like this, Tim?

 

TIM

Yeah. You can honestly tell me that this isn’t enough? Even for you? How could he do this to us?

 

TAMMY

You’re a surprise a fuckin’ minute, you know that? He didn’t do anything to you, Tim. It’s way bigger than you.

(Looks out window again.)

God, every station is the world is here. Look, I saw that new girl last night on 13.

 

TIM

13? That’s my— Didn’t we agree to stop watching the goddamn thing Tammy?

 

TAMMY

I know, but after the police came—

 

TIM

That tiny, shitty bit of evidence?

 

TAMMY

They rummaged around in his room all afternoon, Tim. We answered their questions. THAT is news.

 

TIM

There IS no evidence. The kid lived in his head.

 

TAMMY

LIVES. He’s still alive. They could find him. No matter what he’s done, he’s only 9.

 

TIM

They do, they won’t find that kid’s mind. Evidently we never did.

 

TAMMY

Why don’t you just go make a drink? And leave me alone. You know you want to.

 

TIM

Am I drinking right now? I don’t see a drink. Where’s my drink?

 

TAMMY

It’s on your mind. Or in your eyes, at least.

 

TIM

If I went into the station…they’d kill me. People who work for me. Just for being his dad. I mean, I can understand being pissed off, and wanting to prove your point—

 

TAMMY

It’s the way you’ve always handled anything.

 

TIM

And this from the person who says she’s always getting blamed for everything?

 

TAMMY

Feel good? Every since he was a baby, every time something didn’t go your way—

 

TIM

I’m not going to let you pull this crap on me again, Tammy. People react like this where you grew up, but know what? Time’s come to learn a few things from this country.

 

TAMMY

What? I got to get more violent? What more do I need to learn?

 

TIM

Hope, to start with.

 

(TAMMY shifts to the other side of the birth tub to the table. Rummages through small cardboard pieces.)

 

TIM

What are you doing now?

 

TAMMY

My puzzle. I’m trying…

 

TIM

To do what? Of what?

 

TAMMY

The Plasticorp Building.

 

TIM

Jesus Christ Almighty. Where did THAT come from Tammy?

 

TAMMY

I found it. Wrapped. Under my teapot.

 

TIM

That’s…calculating. That’s…that little shit.

(beat)

People died in that building, Tammy. Thousands of them. I just heard one guy was ripped apart from the sharpnel of an exploding toilet, for christ’s sake.

 

TAMMY

Heard? You’ve been on your ham radio?

 

(Caught out, TIM walks to the phone whistling an approximation of the Star Spangled Banner. He puts it back on the hook.)

 

(TIM and TAMMY look at it, waiting for it to ring).

 

TIM

I’m going to go wash my hands.

 

(TIM exits. TAMMY starts a mild contraction. TIM rushes back in, breathes with her a couple times, but gets distracted by the puzzle, then pushes a couple pieces around.)

 

TIM

(As TAMMY is completing the contraction.)

TAMMY. Your puzzle. Get over here and look at this.

 

TAMMY

Tim, why would you even fuck with my puzzle? Now? When all you’ve ever done is tell me it’s a waste of time.

 

TIM

Tammy, the puzzle. He’s changed all these tiny pieces so it—

 

TAMMY

Who’s HE?

 

TIM

Encore, Tammy. Who else?

 

TAMMY

Tim. Listen to me. Leave the puzzle alone. And stop staring at me. I might be naked—

 

TIM

(Exiting)

I’m going to look in his room again for a clue. Get to work on the puzzle, Tammy.

 

(TIM exits.)

 

TAMMY

(Screaming beyond the walls.)

Get to work?

(beat)

I’m sorry I ever had a child with you.

 

(TAMMY checks the floating thermometer that measures the temperature of the water. )

 

TAMMY

98?! This thing is colder than a human body, Tim.

 

(TAMMY whips the thermometer. After a moment, she reaches for a towel at the side of the tub, wraps it around herself, then sits on the rim of the tub, staring at the puzzle.)

 

(TIM enters whistling an approximation of the Star Spangled Banner.)

 

TIM

Wait. That towel. You can’t wear that.

 

TAMMY

It’s all I’ve got of him. I found it—

 

TIM

Wrapped?

 

TAMMY

Yes. Yeah, I did. Under my hairbrush, Tim.

 

TIM

Teapots. Hairbrushes. Knows you backwards and forwards, that kid. Come on, Tammy, that towel. It’s hideous. A souvenir towel from the Plasticorp Building? The very same building—

 

TAMMY

It’s all I’ve got. Of him. For now.

 

TIM

And this puzzle. Look. Take your magnifying glass and look at the 98^th floor. I’ve only found three pieces, but you can already make out. “Tammy.”

 

TAMMY

(Eye to the magnifying glass.)

Yeah. Yeah. It’s there. How?

 

TIM

“I don’t know.”

 

TAMMY

That’s all you can… Oh, wait. THAT I don’t know.

 

TIM

Exactly. For the last year, we kept asking that kid what he was making.

 

TAMMY

It’s not been a year.

 

TIM

Since?

 

TAMMY

I’ve been pregnant.

 

TIM

Or showing. And the only thing he’d mumble was something about “I don’t know.” Well, now—

 

TAMMY

I know. He’s totally re-done a whole row of these pieces to…to…show us—

 

TIM

No more stuttering, Tammy. First, you let the kid call you by your first name, now this. Build the puzzle. And quick.

 

TAMMY

I KNOW quick.

 

TIM

You don’t know how quick. Channel 13 called when you went through that big contraction. They’ve requested a live broadcast from our living room, Tammy. At midnight. AKA any minute now.

 

TAMMY

Your own station? You let them?

 

TIM

It’s Tammy Stang and Tim Badman against America, the networks, and satellite TV here. What do you want me to do to keep them away? Arm-wrestle them on the steps?

 

TAMMY

Tim, I need protecting. I need to protect YOU. I’m about ready to give birth to our child if you’d fucking notice. The cops and TV cameras? They can’t treat people like gumballs, Tim. We need more time.

 

TIM

I said that. Not the stuff about gumballs, but…time. They said it’s been ALL day.

 

(A two-tone doorbell rings in unison with TAMMY.)

 

TAMMY

All day? All day?

 

TIM

Shit. The puzzle. We’ll be dead too.

 

(TIM goes to crumple it all up.)

 

TAMMY

(Stopping him.)

TIM. If you say anything…

 

TIM

Don’t worry, Tammy. THEN I’d have to apologize to you. And I’m done with that.

 

(Blackout, except for spotlight at puzzle table. TAMMY takes off her towel, quickly spreads it across puzzle. One second, two, then she dips back into the tub.)

 

TIM

(Starts to exit)

I’ll go out and buy some time.

 

TAMMY

Buy?

 

TIM

You’re right. I’m going out to demand a price.

 

(TAMMY returns to the puzzle.)

 

TIM

(Entering.)

What the fuck? My own assistant director just called me a drunk.

 

TAMMY

So then what?

 

TIM

Not just a drunk, Tammy. She said that I was such a drunk I ought to get out of the way and go use my litter box.

 

TAMMY

You’re not that bad, Tim.

 

TIM

There are cops out there, with them. The idiot said that in front of the cops.

 

TAMMY

Oh, well, what an emergency. What do you think, Tim? Think you better call Ninny-One-One?

 

TIM

Ninny. All I’ve been through, now I’m a ninny?

 

(TIM pulls TAMMY up out of the tub so she’s seated on the rim of the tub, nude, to work on the puzzle. TIM starts to massage TAMMY’S shoulders like she’s a star athlete. He whistles an approximation of the Star Spangled Banner over the sound of the incessant doorbell.]

 

TIM

(Reading the puzzle over her shoulder.)

“Tammy. Tammy. Tammy.”

(Deepens the massage.)

How long can this go on?

 

TAMMY

(Poking at the puzzle.)

He was born in ’98. You know how he always makes a lot of that number.

 

TIM

Just keep working on that floor.

 

(TIM begins to fall asleep on TAMMY’S shoulders. TAMMY pokes at the puzzle. The doorbell persists.)

 

TAMMY

Oh my god.

 

(TIM is jolted awake.)

 

TIM

(Digging out a watch from his pocket.)

Another contraction? Now?

 

TAMMY

THE BASEMENT.

 

TIM

What?

 

TAMMY

He’s…down there.

 

TIM

Hiding?

 

TAMMY

That, and living…you can do both…at the same time. Hiding’s a kind of…subset of living, right?

 

(TIM stamps on the floor with his foot in a special way, like a coded message. We hear the small voice of ENCORE whistle an exact and clear Star Spangled Banner.)

 

(The police and TV crews enter. The police appear as shadows on the walls. The TV crews are flashes on the walls. Sometimes, the shadows are erased by flashes. TIM squats next to TAMMY, still soaking in the birth tub. They squish their faces together to fit into millions of TV screens.)

 

TIM

(To the TV people and police.)

Hey, we realize that. Believe me, we KNOW it’s been the whole day. And we’re sorry. Speaking as someone in the business, I know what it would have meant to you to get a live broadcast this morning. But we can make it up to you now. For free.

 

TAMMY

CONTRACTION.

 

(A flash juts up the wall. TAMMY is mid-contraction.)

 

TIM

Well, it’s like this. It’s simply hindsight. You know how the moon looks on the horizon when it first comes up? Big, warm, wobbly? And then later in the night, when it’s high above? And it’s all small and pale? Now that a whole day has gone by. Nearly. He’s like that for us. Always looming over my head. But smaller now, and cold.

 

TAMMY

Tim, these people haven’t even thought of the moon since 1969.

 

TIM

You’re right. She’s right. It’s more like he’s just in the basement playing video games.

 

TAMMY

TIM. Tim.

 

TIM

Or like those kids who drop out of college and move back in with their parents. They half-remodel the basement, and paint it black. Anyway…you keep calling for him to come up. But he doesn’t. You make things up to lure him. Maybe you lie and tell him dinner is ready. Or that the garbage needs taking out. But he never comes.

 

TAMMY

Except just one thing. That there’s no dinner is the truth. Tim tried to make some. Looked like a litter box. I made him throw it in the garbage, instead.

 

(Many flashes on the wall. This is newsworthy. A shadow gets wider and taller at the same time.)

 

TIM

Then, officer, you find yourself LOOKING into the garbage a lot, too. It turned dark tonight while I was looking into the garbage.

 

TAMMY

Fact.

 

TIM

After a while, the sight of it can do weird things to you. The garbage starts looking like things. All the bits gnarled and slopped together. Like a heart. Like my wife’s heart.

 

(Many flashes on the wall.)

 

TAMMY

Don’t listen to him. He’s just tired. Here, me, don’t point your camera at him. Me.

(Looking into as many cameras as she can at once.)

It makes him miss our son, this staring into the garbage. Tim used to go through the garbage can in Encore’s room any chance he got. For years. Way before the bombing.

 

TIM

I thought I’d find something. If not a reason, then a message…about why he had—

 

TAMMY

Something that would point to where he’d gone to, or with who. Even if it was just packaging.