“Roscoe” as featured on Afterimages
J.D. Clapp
Roscoe sat on the edge of his single bed. His pug, Miss Daisy, ran across the cold floor and jumped on his leg. Roscoe patted her head and grinned. He loved the little bitch. His Gambling Anonymous buddy, Andy, gave him the dog years ago after Roscoe flushed his life down the shitter gambling. Andy, God rest his soul, named her Miss Daisy because Roscoe looked like Morgan Freeman and drove a limo at the time, and she was “a yappy bitch like the lady in the movie.” Roscoe hadn’t wanted a dog, but Andy knew he needed something. “Me and Miss Daisy are your family now,” Andy said when he handed him the puppy.
Roscoe opened the blinds to a rainy day. He looked over the tops of the Embarcadero warehouses to the bay. A band of fog hung just over the whitecaps. Ocean view on ghetto prices. He looked at the clock—6:07 AM. I managed to sleep five whole hours.
“Hold on, girl. Let the old man get his legs,” Roscoe said, as he got up.
Roscoe shuffled the handful of steps across his small rent-controlled studio apartment to the kitchen area. He turned on his coffeemaker, then went to the small pantry cupboard and grabbed the bag of dog chow. He filled Miss Daisy’s bowl, returned the bag to the cupboard, picked up the Cheerios box, and shook it before setting it back in its place. It was full, but the box was two years old. Better get a new box soon.
* * *
That night, Roscoe stood just inside the doorway of the men's room at Pete's Chop House, as he had for the past eight years, his attendants' tray of gum, breath mints, cologne, combs, and condoms on a small folding table next to him. His tip jar sat on the counter by the stack of freshly washed terry cloth hand towels. Although his main duties included opening and closing the door and offering hand towels, he dressed like a patron—gray wool flannel trousers, a crisp white dress shirt, a blue silk tie, and a blue herringbone tweed vest. He kept his gray Afro cropped close and his gray beard bushy, but not unruly. He liked looking professional. He took pride in his work.
But at 71 years old, Roscoe yearned to retire, to get the hell off his feet every night, to walk Miss Daisy in the park, sit on a bench, and watch the bay. Even with Social Security and Medicare, he lived on a shoestring—just enough for rent, food, and a bottle of whisky a month. Early on, when he was getting his life back together and working the steps, it helped keep him from hitting the ponies or calling the bookie. Now he needed the damn job.
Roscoe only half-listened to the two drunk men pissing in their respective urinals, a three-foot steel privacy wall between them. Every night he heard the same old shit—juvenile banter about the hostess’s perfect tits, quick negotiations of how to split the dinner bill, debates about the likely outcome of that night’s game, or whether their dates would put out. And he could listen and hear anything, with no fear of being called out for eavesdropping. Ain’t nobody paying attention to an old man selling breath mints? Shit, I might as well be a piece of furniture.
As Roscoe started daydreaming about sleeping in on his day off, his ear caught something. He started listening.
“You took care of it, right?” said the man in the blue suit.
“Yep. Wired half tonight, he’ll get the other half after the TKO,” said the man in the charcoal pinstripe suit.
“I hate to see him do this,” said Mr. Blue Suit.
“It’s good business. It helps the kid—he’s his protégée after all—and Champ’ll get a piece of everything the kid makes moving forward. Plus, no harm to his legacy—it’s an injury, not a knockout. Win-win-win.”
The men finished, zipped up, flushed, and moved to the sink. Roscoe recognized Mr. Blue Suit—Jackson Fletcher, boxing promoter, a modern, corporate version of Don King.
Roscoe stood ready with hand towels, handing each man one as they finished washing. Neither man acknowledged him.
“Fourth round?” Fletcher asked.
“Yeah, fourth. Champ’ll win the first three rounds.”
Fletcher grabbed a mint from Roscoe’s tray, peeled a $5 off from the bottom of his money clip, and stuffed it into the tip cup. Both men headed back into the dining room without muttering a word to Roscoe. Like I ain’t even here…
Roscoe wondered if they were talking about the Hanley/Miller fight or the undercard fight that also featured two former champions. Oh, man…Shit…I better go to a meeting…this is tempting…
Roscoe hadn’t wagered a dime in nine years. Still, he had an addict’s mentality. Not knowing which bout was being thrown by which fighter had Roscoe’s mind churning. If it’s Hanley taking a fall in the fourth, I’d net at least 60 to 1…Shit…Shit…Andy if you up there listenin’ send me a sign, buddy.
As Roscoe pondered his fantasy betting strategy, he handed out towels, sold a couple of spritzes of Polo and Drakkar Noir, and a condom to a guy so drunk he pissed on his own shoes. Eventually, he heard two guys chatting about The Champ, Hanley, partying in the private dining room with his entourage.
Around 10:00 PM The Champ waltzed in, completely blotto, to use the shitter. He nodded at Roscoe, slurred, “How’s it going, pops?” and then staggered into the handicap stall. Roscoe heard a loud thud against the wall of the stall, followed by a groan, and the Champ mumble, “Motherfucker.”
“You okay, Champ?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just struggling to get this fuckin’ jacket off.”
A few minutes later, Roscoe heard the flush and the Champ emerged. He set his suit jacket on the sill, and washed his hands. As Roscoe handed him a towel, the Champ asked for help putting his jacket back on.
“Right side first. That shoulder is trashed…er, I mean sore from training. Yeah, training.”
Roscoe could see the Champ had almost no range of motion in the shoulder.
He finished helping the prizefighter, who thanked him by pulling two Benjamins off his fat cash roll and handing them to Roscoe.
“I appreciate your help, my man,” the Champ said, then patted Roscoe’s shoulder as he walked out.
Better than the two-hundred-dollar tip, Roscoe had his answer.
Champ can’t fight no more…It’s time to sell the watch…Just one more play and I’ll be flush and done.
The night he found it, Roscoe had been working at Pete’s for only a couple of months. After closing each night, Roscoe dumped the dirty terry cloth hand towels from the bathroom collection basket into the laundry bin with the dining room linens. That night, his eye caught something shiny and gold amid the sea of soiled white napkins, tablecloths, and towels. He reached in, grabbed a gold watch, and quickly stuffed it into his pocket with his tips. Roscoe didn’t look at his find until he was safely locked in his apartment. He hid the watch inside a bag of cereal in a Cheerios box.
Roscoe decided he’d return it if it was claimed. He waited two months, and when nobody returned to Pete’s looking for it, he figured it was fake or stolen. Eventually, Roscoe took the watch to a little shop off Union Square. The old horologist looked at the timepiece through a loop. He took the case back off and examined the movement.
“This is an authentic, solid gold, Rolex Day, Date model. Collectors call it the “Presidential.” It’s worth about $8,000. Would you like to sell it?” the jeweler asked. That kind of cash is trouble.
“No, I think I’ll hold on to it.”
Roscoe decided the watch would be his retirement fund and a symbol of his willpower and commitment to recovery. It sat in its hiding place for eight years.
Two weeks after he’d helped the Champ struggle into his suit jacket, Roscoe called off from work. He fed and walked Miss Daisy. He filled her water dish and food dishes.
“See you late tonight, Miss Daisy. You be a good girl and guard the apartment.”
Roscoe headed to SFO with a round-trip ticket to Vegas and $22,000 in his pocket. If the fog didn’t roll in, and nothing went wrong, he’d be home around 1:00 AM with a big check.
After landing, Roscoe moved through from the gate to ground transportation as fast as he could walk. The cling-clang bells and electronic bloops, the flashing lights and shiny machines, and the sounds of gaming beckoned him like some cruel temptress. His stomach churned as the taxi drove past The Strip to the Golden Nugget downtown. I gotta get in and out or this gonna be trouble. He headed straight for the sports book.
“Twenty-two thousand on Miller to win in the fourth. Miller at +800,” the teller said, as she counted out Roscoe’s cash on the counter and handed him a ticket with his bet.
“Yes ma’am!” Roscoe said.
“Good luck!” the teller said.
Roscoe made his way out of the casino. He grabbed a cab and headed to a café off The Strip in a little strip mall near UNLV. He lingered at his table until 1:00 PM then walked across the parking lot to a small bar populated by students. He sat at the bar, nursing whisky and chatting with the bartender until happy hour. Then he headed back to the café for dinner.
All day, as he waited for the fight, he alternated between imagining finally being done with work and a nagging worry the thing might go south. This is a one-and-done bet that became his internal mantra. He felt some guilt, but worse was the anxiety. What if it’s a Pulp Fiction double cross? What if the Champ takes a shot to the shoulder too soon and can’t make it to the fourth? What if…What if…It was a long day of waiting, not gambling.
When the undercard started, Roscoe left the bar and headed back to the Nugget.
Miss Daisy stood on the bed looking out onto the first rays of sun shining through the window. The wind blew big puffy white clouds across the sky above the choppy bay. She cried and pawed at the window. She ran to the door and wagged her tail as Roscoe turned the key.
Roscoe tossed his coat on the bed and lay down. Miss Daisy jumped up and licked his face.
“Easy girl. I need some rest. Then we can take a long walk to the bank. Tomorrow, we gonna spend the whole day at the park just resting on a bench and watching the boats.”
“On a trail” as featured on Afterimages
Swetha Amit
I walk on the lush green trail, watching the pearl white egrets in the water plonk on either side. The gurgling sound of water has a soothing effect on my shoulders, bearing the weight of my backpack and the stress of a fifteen-year-old marriage crumbling like the pebbles on the trail. I balance myself lest I slip, and my feet find their way into the marsh water, where the reflections of white clouds appear like illusionary cushions.
However, this accidental landing in the slush would feel adventurous to my forty-five-year-old self, who has wanted to disappear into the depths of the unknown for a while. I’m hidden behind my large group of hikers, navigating this strip of green until they reach the foothills of a mountain on the other side. I’ve longed for this kind of getaway since I heard about putting up tents and gazing at the night sky’s gems from my friends in college. Life’s responsibilities of being the sole breadwinner after my father’s death got in the way. I now have a receding hairline, grey streaks in my stubble, several years of corporate experience, a ten-year-old girl scared of spiders, and a coder wife uninterested in nature expeditions.
I am on the verge of a separation. My head feels light like the floating reflections of the clouds, and yet my heart feels heavy as though laden with a bag of stones. My phone rings. My wife’s name flashes on the screen. Is it about seeing that marriage counselor again? When she suggested this option, I said I needed time to think. She was baffled about my wanting to quit my corporate career and start a travel company.
“It’s too risky,” she exclaimed.
“I have enough savings to bank on,” I retorted.
Now, I tried to make sense of the snippets of words on the phone call.
“Home…understand…date…” Her voice sounded distant and patchy, and the call was cut.
I put the phone on silent mode and let it cradle inside my pocket. The trail is a sparkling green, freshly washed from the light rain the previous week—the perfect spring flush. There is a mix of smells—the dampness of the mud and the morning dew from the green patch wafting into my nostrils. My skin feels rejuvenated with the brush of the gentle breeze. The humming sound of a bee rings in my ears. I watch it hover around me before it moves away.
My wife wonders why I often feel restless whenever we sit on the couch to stream the latest Netflix series or when she asks me to accompany her to family dinners. She does not understand when I tell her I am tired of conversations revolving around children’s class schedules or the fluctuating temperatures in the Bay Area.
“What’s wrong with such conversations?” she raises her eyebrows incredulously.
“It’s just mundane,” I tell her.
She would curl her long black hair around her fingers with a sulky expression.
“Does this mean you don’t want to watch television anymore?”
“There is a world beyond these superficial talks and redundant, overrated flicks,” I sighed. “Besides, I’d like to know more about people’s experiences and their purpose in life.”
“Those can get intense,” she would say and shrug.
Whenever I suggested nature walks, she complained about her knees being too fragile for such rough landscapes. Neither was she benevolent enough to let me hike alone until now, after a massive showdown that made her burst into tears after I pointed out how our holiday getaways were mostly at exotic resorts, fancy dinners, or mall expeditions.
I take a deep breath and trudge on the trail, where I spot little slabs of rocks on the stream, patches of green, like little islands. At one point, I see the sky and water merged into one. I feel like I am enveloped in a celestial embrace of the cloud-studded sky. This journey has just begun, along with a group of strangers. Soon, we will put up our tents near the foothills, light a bonfire, and maybe hear a coyote’s call. I’ll get to gaze at the night sky, count the stars, and try to spot the constellations.
In the meantime, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I can almost hear my wife’s frantic voice asking me to return. I think of her slamming doors and banging the dishwasher in exasperation while my daughter would play video games in her room with the door shut.
My hiking boots squelch on the mushy trail as I watch one of the egrets flap its wings and fly. Not too far. Just to the other end. Another gust of wind blows. Goosebumps prick my skin. My phone continues to vibrate, and I let it ring. I continue on this trail, hoping to reach a point when I can no longer feel the phone churning in my pocket, and see the sky turn into a glorious shade of orange. I wait for the time when this little world is plunged into darkness when all I can hear is the chirrup of crickets and the coyote’s call piercing into the stillness of the night.
“From Scratch” as featured on Afterimages
Jan Karlo Lopez
Trying to cook by using a family recipe, but there aren’t any. No measurements, only directions. Everything from scratch, from memory. The ingredients don’t change but the quality does. From milking the cow on the rancho at 4 AM to picking up the milk at the tienda on the block, then crossing into America where vending machines sold milk on street corners. A place where milk is right next to almond milk, soy milk, lactose-free milk, skim milk, and milk that doesn’t fit the definition of milk in the nicest grocery store Oak Cliff has to offer, (Tom Thumb) because even though property taxes doubled it’s still not nice enough to get anything better on this side of town.
The Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Central Market sit across town, where the rest of the nice things are. Off US-75 by North Park Mall, it is one of the most visited malls in the country. They advertise an HEB coming to Dallas that lands in Frisco because of course they need more, they always need more, and they always get more. We settle for Wal-Mart but avoid the local one because of the locals. Avoid another that closes early because of the crime. And then there are the Cost-Plus grocery stores that add a surcharge to shop there. Why support local businesses if the local businesses don’t support the locals?
For the most part, the recipe stays the same, the changes over generations are minimal and unnoticeable, like the minimum wage. Fill it up to put it here then in there, a one size fits all measurement. If the bowl is bigger, add more. They always add more, more hours, more interest, more payments, more taxes, doing more, getting less. To leave a third-world country for a developing city. To leave the motherland for the ghetto/barrio/hood. To leave everything known for something unknown. Hope with no promises, but the reward overshadows the risk, and the risk is everything.
Start all over from scratch with whatever can be carried across the river. Over their head, on their back in the desert, pay extra to be smuggled in plain sight over the border, or ride with the rest of the group under the truck, hidden until clearing the checkpoints. Waiting and saving for years to bring family over like pieces of a torn picture, saving up for another, choosing between who to risk bringing and who to risk leaving, saving up for another, then another, only to get raided in the middle of the night and deported. Far from anywhere called home. No pesos. No dollars. Having to start all over from scratch to do it all over again and wait more years to have the picture taped back together, risking missed pieces.
There’s no recipe for the American pie, it’s all from scratch, scratching, and clawing; the blood, sweat, and tears turn the dirt into mud. It is stiff enough to crawl out and start from the bottom. A chance at something stable. Options are limited without proper documentation. Gotta know someone who knows someone who works for someone who will act like they don’t know. They’ll come disguised in the same skin color to soften the blow.
Wake up at the crack of dawn to clean houses, and hotels, clean after kids, then clean up and get ready for bed to do it all over again. Everyone sleeps together on the cold nights and alone on the hot ones, the weather seeping through the warped windows with ease. Landscaping until sundown. Still can’t speak English, so gotta point to the menu to order. Sleep comes abruptly after the sixteen-hour shift, but lightly because they’ve been breaking into cars at the apartments. Can’t risk what little they have. Wake up the kids before the shotgun blasts. Better to expect it because the movies don’t show how it goes mute after gunshots.
Then leap into a house, back to scratch, no more rent, now there’s a mortgage, with high interest, insurance with a high deductible, a sixty-year term contract, where generations benefit from the interest paid so generations later the home can be owned, but property taxes are still due annually. They rise but so does the murder rate. The murder capital of the country, the most dangerous place to drive, but so expensive to live in. Back then they went west looking for gold, now they came here for lower property taxes. Are they too late moving, or am I?
The locals can't afford to live here because the hood is worth the money. There will be ones who will profit from it say it is. They knock it all down to start from scratch. Price out all the local businesses and bring in the small shops, financed by out-of-town money. Slap a modern look that resembles a mom-and-pop look but not like my Ma and Pa. The smoke shop down the street has a stigma, but the CBD store is accepted with open arms. The overpriced grinder and locally made drink both leave a bad taste.
Somehow, some way, the black sheep makes it through the rebellious phase. The yearly one-on-one parent-teacher conferences. The in-school suspensions, the out-of-school suspensions, and the expulsion until the sixty days of alternation school are complete. Where everyone had it for cheap and crossword puzzles were the only assignments given. Came out and got addicted to heroin, switched schools, dropped heroin, got charges pressed, then charges dropped, and graduated in reconnect by doing one class in one day. Not unintelligent, uninterested in the school system, the hierarchy, or the establishment. Graduated and picked up my diploma. Stopped working to go to college, dropped out, and went back to work. Haven’t stopped since. I somehow stacked it up, legally, and got a house, to start all over from scratch.
“Abandoned Pets and Empty Museums” as featured on Afterimages
Jason M. Thornberry
I closed my eyes for weeks—the night a pair of strangers pummeled, kicked, and curb-stomped me. Like an atomic blast, my traumatic brain injury erased me from the world I knew and loved, hurling burning chaos across the landscape of my life. A mushroom cloud obscured my reality—and the subsequent black rain soaked me to the skin. When the nuclear winter of my coma subsided, I returned to the world with so much to learn about my new self.
For a start, my mouth didn’t work. When I opened it, emerging words fought for the front of the line, coalescing in a distorted jumble—a traffic jam encamped along the highway of my helpless tongue. My words swerved violently into one another, edging for clearance, plummeting over the side, and landing at my feet. Their intended recipients—my mother, doctors, therapists—stared, open-faced. They asked me to slow down; they asked me to repeat myself. I learned to pick my words up, dust them off, and use them more carefully.
My left arm didn’t work. Doctors said I developed contracture. I didn’t understand, but I felt this contracture shortening and pulling the muscles and tendons of my arm inward; it curled at the elbow, fist touching chest, wrist bending downward, bringing fingers in contact with the underside of my forearm like a broken wing. As agonizing days drifted, I watched my arm become a grotesque knot, remembering I was left-handed. Lying in bed, I felt tendons contracting beneath the cast covering my arm. I always wanted a cast as a little boy. Getting one meant you did something courageous, like crash your BMX bike. And I loved signing my friend’s casts in elementary school. But now, a plaster sheath remained on my arm less than a week before another took its place. No one bothered signing. With an electric saw, doctors sliced open my casts like warm bread, freeing me momentarily before applying a new one. I wore twenty-three.
My left leg didn’t work. Contracture twisted my hip, contorting the limb into a question mark—the pain a battalion of exclamation points fashioned into spears. In the evening, I rolled in my wheelchair to my mother’s desk, where I typed with my right hand. After an hour or two, I transferred from my chair to the couch, watching TV and playing with my mother’s dog, careful not to bump him with my cast.
For a time, my memory refused to work, details eluding me like bandits. I learned to write everything down in an unreadable right-handed scrawl. I learned to carry a pen and notepad. I learned to become right-handed. With practice, my messy new handwriting matched my messy old handwriting. My memory improved because I wrote constantly—and I learned to write by living in my memories.
I remembered that I used to play the drums—for twelve invigorating years, pursuing a music career. I suspected I might never touch them again because playing hurt too much, physically and emotionally. Coordinated independence, which all musicians develop, allowed me to play distinct rhythms with each limb. After my injury, I could hardly hold my drumsticks. After my injury, I banished my musical equipment to the garage—to the unvisited museum of my former self. Years later, I practically gave it all away: I sold my drums and cymbals, my snare and my chair; I sold my drum cases and the wooden dolly I used to transport them from van to backdoor to stage. I emptied the museum.
After my injury, I lived alone, writing and remembering. As a musician, I kept a sporadic journal. Now, it was a repository for stories, conversations, letters, lists, and linguistic keepsakes. After my injury, memories flickered until I captured them on the page. I described watching purple blood ooze from the staples lining my little brother’s head when, years before, the same thing happened to him: he was assaulted arbitrarily. My brother once called me his hero. Now, I sat helplessly beside his hospital bed, wondering if he’d ever be the same. Later, I wrote about our hometown where he was attacked: a polluted, bankrupt wasteland deteriorating as it sank into hopelessness, its desperate inhabitants wet-mouthed, wide-eyed, and lost, like abandoned pets along the side of the road. Writing about my hometown sharpened my memories. I moved away years ago, but my stepfather told me I was a product of my environment; I would always be a part of that place.
My traumatic brain injury taught me how to live by teaching me how to adapt. To survive. I took a job in a bookstore, eventually meeting and working alongside the woman I fell in love with. The woman I married. The woman I cherish. The woman who encouraged me to play the drums again. We relocated, and I returned to school in my forties.
Today, I teach a class called, “Writing Our Memories.” I show my undergraduate students how writing about your past brings it back into focus. I tell them we learn from our past by studying it and examining it for clues about who we might become. When I lived the life of a struggling musician in the years leading up to my injury, I had no idea my past informed my future. In class, we study personal essays about love and pain, excitement and loss, triumph and disappointment. Together, we write in response to these essays. And I hope that as they learn, I do too. I still wonder if my injury has taught me enough.