The Brown Geyser.

Me, the South Mountains, and a Virus.

As usual when I go hiking on my own, I got a late start. Carole wanted to use my truck to drive to work last night (she works nights in the maternity ward), so I had to wait until she got home at 8:00 am. Even though she got home at eight, sharp, I was still not ready and didn’t get underway until almost 9:00 pm. I had nothing to blame but my own dilapidated sense of punctuality. On the way out the door, she didn’t mention anything more about the nasty stomach virus that was going around at the hospital.

I drove uneventfully to South Mountains State Park, which is one of the closest mountain areas to my house. I was hiking by 11:00 am and had decided to first take the Chestnut Knob Trail to the peak to get some photos. The last time I’d been there it was rainy and I wasn’t able to get any good photographs. The first thing that I noted as I entered the park was that the new visitors center and office was not only completed, but open. So I pulled into the brand new parking lot and went inside where I grabbed a park map and asked a few questions of the ranger behind the big, huge, shiny, new counter. Yes, the new visitors center had been open for over a month. Yes, I could bring my travel trailer to the campground as long as the trailer was less than twenty-six feet in length. Yes, the Sawtooth Trail was closed, but only for those on horseback—hiking on foot was fine.

Sometime around the third question I realized that there was a rumbling deep down in my guts and that it wasn’t hunger and felt that I should visit the restroom facilities. Pretty darned quick.
Yes, the restrooms are open they’re down that hallway on your…I didn’t hear her say “right”, because I was moving pretty briskly down the hallway and the door was closing behind me before she could finish, I’m sure.

With suspicions that I was witnessing the nasty virus that was going around the hospital where my wife works, I evacuated my bowels quite noisily and with not a small amount of fragrance. I wiped and flushed and washed and feeling much better I left to drive to the trailhead for Chestnut Knob.





If you’ve never hiked that trail, it’s moderately steep with a gain in elevation of about 600 or 700 feet in about two miles. Not bad, but I know some people have a tough time with the climb. There’s a nice spot to stop along the way where you have a great view of the Jacob Fork Gorge in which High Shoals Falls is located. Today the sky was mildly overcast and the air was very clear so I had the best views from there that I’d ever seen. Strangely, in spite of the cold weather we’ve enjoyed the past two weeks, today had turned out extremely warm and I soon realized I could have easily worn shorts.

I stopped at the overlook for a while and took some shots. After a couple of photos, my stomach started rumbling again and with no small amount of pain I realized that I would have to once more clear the contents of my gut. I opened my daypack and found a roll of toilet paper (never leave home without backpacking toilet paper!) and cast about for a private spot in the woods where I would be least likely to shock anyone who might happen along.

Walking down slope slightly and behind some low pines, I decided that this was as good a place as any and dropped my trousers. Barely in time.

The bug-infested contents of my bowels exited at pretty much light speed I have to say. The mass hit the forest floor and drilled right through it and into the bedrock beneath and kept going. I’m sure if I check the website for the US Geological Survey, I will see that they recorded a mild tremor centered near Chestnut Knob at about noon on February 21. Roughly as that mass was passing through the molten iron core of the Earth, some neutrinos caught up with it and they all passed through the mantle together and appeared through the crust of the Himalayan plate at roughly the same time. The stuff didn’t quite have enough oomph left to reach escape velocity and fell back, and I suspect a Tibetan monk is now puzzling over the frozen, yellowish-brown mass that plummeted into his village.

Here in North Carolina I cleaned myself up and covered the small hole I’d drilled into Chestnut Knob with some leaves and dirt.

I had expected to encounter some other hikers, but all the day long I seemed to have the park pretty much to myself. After spending a few minutes at the overlook I pushed on to Chestnut Knob. Happily, the weather had completely cleared by the time I reach the Knob, and the views were spectacular. I ended up taking about 100 photos from this spot alone. It was a little after noon by this point and I was feeling much, much better, so I took out a sandwich and some water. After about half the sandwich, I realized Mr. Stomach Virus had not run its course and that I would once more have to find a private spot in which to squat. With great impetus I had to scramble down from the peak, discovering as I did so a great view of the rock tower on which I’d just been standing. This virus was serious business. The runs. The squirts. The brown geyser. I was one sick puppy and found myself merely relieved that no one else seemed to be interested in hiking the South Mountains on this unseasonably warm February weekday. There was that, at least, I pondered as I groaned and smelled up the World.

(If you ever stand at this point, you're on top of my toxic waste.)

Finally, though, I seemed to be rid of whatever it was that was ailing my innards. I’d only had a cup of coffee and two pieces of dry toast for breakfast, which I assumed was what had ended up in Tibet. And the partial sandwich had merely been the boost for this round. Yes, I was certain I was feeling much better and once I’d cleaned up, I went to my pack and drank some bottle water. It stayed inside me.



From there, I decided to take the Sawtooth Trail down to the Little River Trail and catch the Jacob Fork Trail and then the Short Trail back to the parking lot. I was totally unfamiliar with this section of the park so this was all new territory for me. Sadly, most of the terrain I traveled after leaving Chestnut Knob was pretty boring. The trails are mainly the old CCC roads from the 1930s, so they’re very wide and are basically auto roads that are open to horseback, bike, and foot travel. I didn’t see anyone else, though. I did walk through the Sawtooth Campground and it’s pretty much nothing but a wide grassy field with three metal fire pits and fire grates and a privy (which I happily did not have to use, thank Jove).


The trails were turning out to be very boring with the forest cover composed mainly of relatively young scrub oak and pines—not very pretty to look at. Soon after descending several hundred feet I came to a river crossing. Looking to my right, I could see that the stream went down a very long sliding rock. For some reason, the park service has chosen this point in the trail to dump brush and debris, and I had to push through this dried stuff to whack my way down below the sliding rock where I could take a nice photo. Once I’d done that, I made my way back to the trail and continued on.



Soon I was on the Little River Trail. As I was hiking along, I could hear rushing water. Looking to my left I saw a fence with a sign indicating that this was a dangerous spot and to stay on the trail. Of course this is an invitation to explore, and I soon discovered a waterfall that I hadn’t known existed:

Little River Falls.

(Translation: "Come Explore, Little Boy")

I had to very carefully climb down what amounts to a cliff face to get to the base of the waterfall. I used some old logs to maneuver my way down and so spent the next forty-five minutes taking photos of the falls and looking downstream to where there was another two sets of waterfalls that didn’t look to me that they were worth the trouble to photograph. A log had recently lodged itself below Little River Falls and I was able to use it as a kind of brace to take one really nice shot of the waterfall. Most of my other shots contain a lot of debris and vegetation that prevented me from getting a very clear photo of this waterfall. However, that said, it’s not a bad waterfall and I’d recommend finding it if you’re in the park.

After that I went back down to the Jacob Fork Parking lot and sat down at the picnic area and looked at my map. It was getting late—about 4:30 pm, and I decided to head up to High Shoals Falls and get a few photos there before heading back to Charlotte. As I set up my camera tripod for shots, three different groups arrived and left, all of them with dogs. I’m not a fan of taking dogs into our parks, so I’m always nervous when hikers bring their dogs along. These didn’t bother me, except for a moment when I was stuck between a boxer and a German shepherd who looked like they were about to start fighting (with me in between). Ugh.

Leave your dogs at home, people.

Packing up my tripod, I headed back down to my truck, pausing along the way to take a few dozen more photographs. Within two hours I was back home. It was a nice trip, and I really need to take my trailer to the park campground and set up shop for a few days and take my time hiking the few trails there that I haven’t seen.

And, hopefully, next time I’ll arrive at the park without my visitor, Mr. Stomach Virus.

(And, no, before you ask, it was not the pickled green tomatoes.)

Pickled Green Tomatoes!

Pickled green tomatoes!

Oh, hail yes!

My wife has an uncle, an old-timer who grows most of his own vegetables. Every year he has quite a crop of tomatoes, and every year he ends up canning a whole butt-load of green tomatoes.

Now, if you’ve never had any pickled green tomatoes made with good brine and packed with hot, homegrown peppers, then you don’t know what you’re missing. Each season her uncle gifts us with two or three jars of these babies, and I carefully portion them out to myself until the following year. It ain’t easy.

I figure that pickled green tomatoes might actually be an acquired taste. I don’t know. I’ve loved the muthas since the first time I tried them. Now, I have to say that the hot ones are the best. Tomatoes in dill just don’t do it for me. It’s got to be the hot stuff. An amazing jumble of sweet, and tart, and sour, and hot fit for a Mexican table—that’s the way it must be.

(Oooooooooh, BAY-bee!)

Since you guys don’t have an Uncle Joe who knows how to pickle and can his own home-grown ‘maters, then go out to the nearest farmer’s market and try to hustle you up a few jars of these babies.

If you’re a real man, you’ll like ‘em.

(mmmmmm-M!)

If you don’t like ‘em…well to Hell with you, then.

A New Modest Proposal.

A New Modest Proposal.
By
James Robert Smith

Removing roads from some of our Southern wild areas.

Currently, this nation’s conservationists are in a serious struggle to save what remains of our roadless areas from development and exploitation by those who wish to ruin these lands and thus turn a handsome profit from such destruction.

For years, those who wish to protect what remains of our natural heritage have been struggling constantly just to fall back at a slower pace and are generally losing ground at an alarming rate. This constant and unending defensive posture is exhausting and barely profitable for the various and many groups waging the fight.

And it has occurred to me on many occasions that the progressives engaged in this struggle of slow and inexorable defeat are not in the correct type of battle. Instead of this never-ending contrition that results in bite-sized victories underscored by massive losses, they would be far better served to go on the offensive in a big and spectacular way.

As most of us who have followed the history of conservation know, one great story of preservation is that of the example set by Governor Percival Baxter of Maine. Frustrated at every turn, legislatively, to preserve Maine’s greatest peak and the lands around it, he had to wait until he’d retired from politics and slowly begin to buy up the townships of and around Katahdin. Unbelievably, he was able to do this, and donated this fantastic wild land to his native state of Maine.

All of this was done in a time and place wherein a man of some wealth was able to achieve these goals, despite the fact of the enormity of the project. Today, land has reached such a level of monetary value that to repeat this achievement would be pretty much impossible save for a handful of the very wealthiest individuals on Earth. And none of these folk seem to be so inclined.

In the absence of a few foresighted multi-billionaires, the task is left to the coffers of the government of the United States of America. Our government. Of the People, For the People, and By the People. There is no other single entity that can win out in a struggle with the vast corporations who pull the strings and which are so adept in exploiting our natural resources for the benefit of so few and to the sad disadvantage of the majority.

Unfortunately, most folk feel that what is good for those who are raping the Earth is also good for them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and so there is the need for a solid political struggle of education and counter-propaganda against the machinations and lies espoused by corporate America. Additionally, a massive campaign of either electing or turning current legislative bodies has to be pursued and achieved. Votes must be either won or coerced.

Since there is so little remaining of our eastern roadless wildlands, I propose that new roadless areas be created. This should be the first and most powerful thrust of a new movement created to promote and encourage a new modern conservation. There must be a new Restoration.

Looking at a map, there are several obvious areas here in my native South that would benefit from the destruction of some major roads. First and foremost, and serving as an excellent test run, would be the Tran mountain highway connecting Gatlinburg Tennessee to Cherokee North Carolina. The first step in this process would be the removal of the auto road to Clingman’s Dome. At 6,643 feet above sea level, this is both the highest point in the state of Tennessee, and the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Removing the auto road from this extremely beautiful and fragile environment would be a boon to the park and the life that exists on these lands. Because of the elevation and the weather and the vegetation, removing the roadbed and restoring the slopes to the most natural state possible would aid greatly in the learning curve that would hopefully result in the removal of many other great stretches of unneeded roads across the Southeast.

There would be, I predict, great benefit economically to such a massive public works program. Tens of thousands of workers would be needed, perhaps millions. The private sector, in association with a strictly regulated and heavily funded Corps, similar to our old Civilian Conservation Corps, would work in concert to restore our most fragile and ecologically precious areas. As soon as the Clingman’s Dome Auto Road is removed, the next step would be to completely eliminate the highway connecting Cherokee and Gatlinburg.

To be sure, there would be mass opposition from some areas of the private sector against this project. Buying off other wings of the private sector via the enormous government paychecks necessary to achieve this objective should more than offset the voices of opposition. Basically, enable one segment of the very rich to squash another segment of the very rich.

If this particular project seems like too much of a burden to initiate the restoration of these new, vast segments of roadless areas, then the Cherohala Skyway connecting Robbinsville NC and Tellico Plains TN would be a fallback project to get the system under way. This road lies completely on Federal property and has proven to be a massive waste of taxpayer money at the expense of having destroyed what had been a pristine and stunning roadless area in western NC and eastern TN. Removing this road would likely prove to be politically easy and more economically viable, since the Cherohala Skyway has proven to be of almost no benefit to the economies of the two very small villages at either end of this monstrous project. Removing the roadbed and restoring the contours of the peaks and ridges would be a mighty undertaking resulting in the employment of many and the education of countless engineers and ecologists.

After these initial roads were removed from our maps and our ecosystems, we could next tackle two more motor roads that have blighted our Southern highlands for many decades. I propose that the next targets for removal should be the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. Instead a narrow strips of land preserved on either side of a two-lane pavement; Skyline Drive would become a substantial parcel of fragile high country straddling the Blue Ridge escarpment. Nothing but good would come of this, and access to the peaks and coves could still be had via foot and (highly regulated) horseback.

To remove the Blue Ridge Parkway would be to restore the greatest piece of the South’s natural heritage. This awful road tears through the very highest and most scenic lands along its length. Almost any chance of solitude has been lost due to the existence of this long parkway. It should be removed at the earliest opportunity and the peaks and gaps along the length of it allowed to return to their natural state. All access to these high elevation areas should thereafter be only via foot travel and by (heavily regulated) horseback paths.

After these first projects have been achieved, then other such similar areas can be studied and examined for a return to roadless status. There are probably hundreds of likely candidates for roadless restoration. The entire area between Highlands NC and Brevard NC could be made wild and roadless via the use of road removal, dam removal, and the judicious and liberal use of eminent domain and condemnation. A fair market value can be paid for the estates of the elite and removal of structures, power lines, septic tanks, and waste sites. Again, the prospects for employment and the profit by private companies engaged in these projects are enormous. The profits to our water tables, forests, and ecosystems are inestimable. The value of restoring these areas to a wild state and giving back lands in which true isolation can be found and enjoyed are also invaluable.

This is, in total, merely a new modest proposal for our modern times. The sooner we get busy to see it done, the better.

Bagging some peaks in Hickory Nut Gorge.

Hickory Nut Gorge, located in North Carolina just south of the city of Asheville, is a classis southern Appalachian gorge. It’s relatively deep, ranging from just a few hundred to well over one thousand feet in depth, and moderately narrow. It is cut by one major tributary, the Broad River.




The lower section of the gorge was dammed many years ago to form Lake Lure, widely considered to be one of the prettiest man-made lakes in North America. Since the lake is almost cupped by the escarpment walls of solid granite that form the tail of the gorge, it is undeniably a strikingly scenic location. The real estate around the lake is some of the most expensive in the state, and hardly a square foot of it remains undeveloped. Houses stand in close proximity to one another, and there is almost no public access to the lake itself. And no slope, no matter how steep, seems to be free of a house of some type as long as that land is waterfront. It is both a horrifying and humorous sight.

The gorge itself is also heavily developed, with two communities lying deep within it: Lake Lure, and Bat Cave. All along the gorge are inns, shops, two post offices, restaurants, private campgrounds, one amusement park (Chimney Rock Park), and uncounted thousands of vacation homes with accompanying driveways and roads being endlessly cut through the forests and gouged into the slopes of the gorge and onto the ridgelines.

However…all is not lost.

There is something like a wilderness aspect of the land still to be found in a couple of places within Hickory Nut Gorge. With the help of the Nature Conservancy, the State of North Carolina has managed to procure the ownership and/or conservation easements of just under 3,000 acres of land on either side of the gorge just above Lake Lure. Chimney Rock Park has been purchased by the state, and a good portion of both Rumbling Bald Mountain and Shumont Mountain are now in the hands of the state and will all be a part of the new park, due to be open to the public in 2008.

Currently, there are no facilities at all within the lands to be incorporated into the park boundaries, but one is allowed to hike there, and Rumbling Bald has become the single most popular rock climbing location in the entire state (if not the entire Southeast). On any given day of nice weather, be prepared to share the climbing routes on Rumbling Bald with dozens of other rock climbers.

The forests of Hickory Nut Gorge are typical of the southern Appalachians. Mainly cove hardwoods, there are some patches of hemlock groves here and there. None of the trees seem to be of exceptional size, since the forests are almost all second and third growth. I have encountered a few old trees, though.



The gorge is best known outside the area as the location of the last scenes in the popular film, Last of the Mohicans. Most of these scenes were shot within what is now Chimney Rock Park, and which contain the “Chimney Rock” itself, a vast number of high granite walls, and Hickory Nut Falls, one of the tallest in the Southeast (at 404 feet).

Another Crazy Comic Book Artist.

Another Crazy Comic Book Artist

This one’s tougher. You spend a lot of time with a character like this, and there was a time when there was a friendship. Despite the fact that it became obvious at some point that the guy was a real bastard. A truly poisonous figure. So I reckon that there is some character flaw in me that I allowed myself to remain on a friendly relationship with someone who should have been shunned.

When I met him in the mid-80s, he was already a professional comic book artist, having worked for a number of publishers. He was about my age and while I was married and living in my own house, this guy was single and living in his parents’ basement where he had a really neat-o apartment. The place was packed with all kinds of cool shit that appealed to my sense of nostalgia—things he had found and bought at yard sales and flea markets and swap meets—Bettie Page magazines (the genuine 1950s stuff), and Silver Age superhero crap, and monster material from the early to mid 60s Famous Monsters –inspired craze.

He sat in the center of it all, the first person I’d met to whom I would attach the word droll. He was quite amusing, and looking at his work, very talented.

Driving around with him one day, we went to visit his girlfriend. She was quite pretty, and reminded me of the character I’d once seen at a writer’s convention: Poppy Brite. Red hair, pale skin, attractive figure. Her constant allusion to her gay friends put me off my feed, though, describing sitting about at someone’s home watching gay porn. She was just doing it for shock value. Right. Okay.

We sit in the apartment of his girlfriend. A longhaired rocker type, arms festooned with tattoos (he was ahead of the curve!), is there, also. The rocker dude keeps edging closer and closer to my comic artist pal’s girlfriend, until he’s sitting right beside her on the floor, his torso touching her back. Everyone is talking and I (as usual) sit and listen and store it all away so that I can—perhaps—recall it at some later date and use it in a work of fiction.

Rocker dude casually drapes his arm about red-haired-Poppy-Brite-looking-comic-artist-“girlfriend”. My comic artist pal suddenly goes all alpha male. “Hey, man!” He screams. “She’s my girlfriend, man!”

I don’t bloody fucking think so, I recall thinking.

Comic artist slinks off and I follow him (we’re using his car). Rocker dude stays with red-haired friend-of-gays gal. Later that week, they run off together to Texas or somewhere far away and comic artist phones my house to whine about the betrayal and I quickly find a reason to hang up and be somewhere else.

Later, I’m at a comic convention with this guy at which Dave Sim is in attendance (he did a silly little funny animal comic book called Cerebus). Comic artist and Sim talk. Later, after the show, comic artist tells me that he’s going to do a comic with Sim. “We’re going to jam, man.” They never do.

Some time after that, comic artist pal starts up a rock ‘n’ roll band. By this time, his dad has blown his brains out, his mom has sold the house and he no longer has that cool pad in his parents’ basement. For myself, I still have my house and a wife and a son. Comic artist guy is living in a shed in the back yard of his mom’s new place. When I visit him there, I have to go outside in the bushes next to his shed to take a piss. This is where he tells all of his visitors to go to take a piss. I shudder to think what this place must smell like when the heat presses down in the summer.

I go to see him perform in a club with his rock ‘n’ roll band. I wonder if he’ll ever grow the fuck up. At this time he’s drawing lots of comic books for a number of companies. He knocks the stuff out and the lack of effort shows. We all wonder how he keeps finding work. Drinking beer in the bar, I watch as he and his band come up on the makeshift stage and begin to play. They’re not very good. They sing the theme to the Ralph Bakshi Spider-Man TV show. I finish my beer and leave.

Comic book artist lands a gig drawing a major comic book for a major publisher. The money rolls in. He still lives in the shed in his momma’s back yard. But he spends lots of money on prostitutes, and is later shocked when the money runs out and they stop seeing him. I’m so stunned by the fact that this is a revelation to him that I once again find something else to do and somewhere else to be and hang up on his whining voice.

Later, he’s seriously dating a woman who has children (not his). At some point, this woman breaks off the relationship (after he loans her parents money), and around the time another high-paying gig ends and the money dries up. She won’t return his calls. Comic artist pal calls me up to complain about this, expecting me to have some answers. I have none for him. Finally, he says to me:

“I’m going to kill her kid.” (I recall that she has a two-year-old.)

“What?”

“It’s the only way I can think of to get her attention…man.”

I hang up and call long-distance information to get the number of the police in his town. After that, I hang up and look at the number the operator has given me. I’m going to rat his crazy ass out before he can do anything insane.

The phone rings. I pick it up.

“I was just kidding, man,” he says.

“You were?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m just frustrated is all. I wouldn’t do that.”

I hang up. I don’t call the police. Thank the gods, he doesn’t kill her child. Yeah, I should have called the cops anyway, but I didn’t. I didn’t.

Some time after this, comic book artist pal calls to tell me he’s got a new girlfriend. They get married. He moves out of the shed in his momma’s back yard. He and his wife have a kid. Then another. He can’t find work.

“I really need work, man. I don’t have any money coming in. My wife is the only bread-winner.”

“Get a job,” I tell him. “Any job. Loading dock. Warehouse. If you need money, you can always get a job lifting heavy shit.” He’s horrified at the concept of working, of manual labor. He won’t consider it. He slowly sells off the cool stuff that used to adorn his basement pad in his parents’ house. The monster stuff. The Bettie Page stuff. The comic book stuff. The gittar.

“I had to sell my guitar, man!” No. You didn’t. You had to get a job, you lazy bastard.

Over the years, I would occasionally sell a script here and there to some publisher. When they’d ask me about an artist, I would sometimes give them his name and phone number. He needed the money. He’d sometimes get the gig.

One day, toward the end, when his peculiarities had reached the point at which I had to admit that he was insane, I sit in the living room of his apartment. His wife is at work. His kids putter about the place. Somehow he steers the conversation to discussing some aspect of World War II. He knows it’s a passing interest of mine. He also knows that my mom was half-Jewish.

“You know,” he says. “The Germans were justified in exterminating the Jews.”

I look at him. My eyebrow perks up over my one good eye. “How’s that,” I ask. (This is one I have to know.)

“Can you imagine—living in your own country—and you have to go to this…this alien to ask for money.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“German Jews controlled all of the money. Germans had to go groveling to Jews to ask for their own money!” (Yes, this guy had been known to hang out with the other comic artist I wrote about earlier.)

Having been raised in the South, I am vividly aware of the sanctity of another’s man’s home. You don’t challenge a man in his own home. So I get up and leave. I don’t see comic book artist pal for some time. He sends me emails in which he slowly begins to assail my character, my physical appearance, and then my wife.

I attend a comic book convention to help a friend who sells comic books. I am walking down the hall of the convention building. I see comic book artist pal in the wide space with his wife and kids. I head his way and stop him.

“Let’s step outside,” I say to him. (We are not in his house, now.)

“No,” he says.

“Come on you fucking, worthless, crazy, mother-fucking sack of shit. Don’t be a fucking coward. Step outside with me and let’s settle this. You need your fucking ass kicked in the worst fucking way you goddamned worthless piece of shit.”

He calls to his wife, who steps between us to defend him. I recall how he once choked her senseless and an ambulance had to be called to take her to the hospital. I’ve heard about the psychology of women who suffer this kind of abuse, yet remain faithful to the abuser. But I’ve not heard about the psychology of a person like me who knows a guy is insane and yet remain friends with the nut.

With his pitiful wife defending him, I have to let the cowardly racist woman-beater go. He quickly finds a phone and the police come to talk to me. They tell me not to beat him up. I promise them that I won’t do so.

Comic book artist pal is now far away. On the west coast, living not far from where my nephew, a medical doctor, now resides. My nephew keeps inviting me out to stay with him and see the area and climb some mountains.

I may take him up on this.

There’s some unfinished business.

Comic Book Artists I Have Known

Comic Book Artists I Have Known.
First in a series
By
James Robert Smith

Recently, a comic book artist/writer for whom I have much admiration stated that one of the clearest thinkers he knew was another comic book artist/writer I do not admire (to put it lightly). Which just goes to show how one can be totally surprised (even stunned) by the comments of someone whose intellectual capacity was not under any suspicion.

Since I used to work in the comic book industry as a retailer (I once owned several comic book shops), and then, peripherally, as a writer (I managed to sell several stories to several publishers), I came to know quite a number of comic book artists. Most of these folk were pleasant enough, and many of them were rather strange, and some were truly sweet, and some were dazzlingly smart, and some were glib, and some were stupid, and a few of them were actually evil.

Back in the day, when I was roaming around the USA selling collectibles, I used to stop at the home of a well-known comic creator when I was in the city where he lived. He had a great house with an enormous dry basement packed with comic books and all kinds of neat collectible shit that he dealt on the side. I really liked this guy. He had his act down, and he would quote the lines he’d rehearsed that clung to his created persona perfectly. This guy was very pleasant to be around and I always got a kick out of my visits there where I would buy lots of back issues of his comic on my way out the door at a price that enabled me to mark them up and make a decent profit.

During my visits there, we discovered that we shared an interest in WWII history. I especially liked discussing the European Theater of operations, for I’ve always found the personalities at work in that particular part of the war far more interesting than the folk fighting the racist Whites versus Asians battle going on in the Pacific Theater. This artist and I would have a good time talking about the various generals, colonels, captains, lower-grade officers and famous non-coms, and the respective battles that all made them into legends.

The last time I was at this cat’s house, he began to tell me the details of a particular German officer whose history was unknown to me: Joachim Peiper. The stories were rather interesting. And he mentioned to me a quote from Gen. Peiper. After the war, some Allied journalist asked him if he had any regrets. And Peiper’s reply was:

“Only that we lost.”

To which I replied, “Fuck that Nazi son-of-a-bitch.”

I will never forget the expression of utter pain that passed over the face of my comic book artist host. In retrospect, it was almost touching. He had thought, because I had an objective interest in professional soldiers such as Otto Skorzeny that I was sympathetic to the Nazi cause. This artist had no way of knowing that my mom was half-Jewish and that I am an ardent anti-racist. And I had, just previous to this moment, had no inkling that the artist into whose house I sometimes went to visit was, in fact, a closet neo-Nazi who, I later learned, had friends who were active in the neo-Nazi movement. I’d had no suspicion that the Nazi memorabilia in his basement had any significance other than as collectibles to be bought and sold for a profit. In short, I’d had no idea that my sometime host was an actual, honest-to-Goebbels Nazi.

Later, I learned from speaking to a few other comic book artists who lived in his area and who knew him fairly well that he was, in fact, an extreme racist and a virulent Jew-hater. One of his friends had been imprisoned after being convicted of killing a black man just so that he could meet certain criteria for a certain tattoo on his elbow.

“You might not want to go back over there,” one of the comic book artists told me.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Not going to happen.”

I’ve told this story a few times, and I’m always asked who this guy is. Well, frankly, it’s none of anyone’s business who this guy is. My own dad was a radical leftist who thought that he would live to see the violent overthrow of the capitalist system. That was his business, to think what he wanted to think and await a revolution that was never going to come. And it’s no one’s business but his own what this artist thinks. My dad suffered because of what he thought and said, because there was no end to folk who never failed to denounce his beliefs and rat him out to the FBI and the local population who would hound him without mercy. Similarly, this Nazi comic book artist can damned well think and say and believe whatever it is he wishes without having to worry about someone ratting him out for no good reason. His racist ideas are never going to see fruit. His own right wing beliefs will never be made real. Let him think his diseased thoughts in peace as he goes about selling his art to white people and black people and Jews and taking their money and living his life.

Later:

More crazy comic book artists I have known.

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

A Real Pro

A Real Pro
By
James Robert Smith

He went slowly
to the coffee table and began
to carefully lift each bottle of beer.
Goddamn.
Some of them were still half full.
He was going to have to drink a lot of beer before
tossing those bottles.
Fuck.
He hated drinking with people who
weren’t alcoholics.
They wasted too much of
his beer, and it didn’t matter if they’d brought it.
It was his house and they came
to see him, so it was his beer.

Now he was going to have to swill
it all
before he could clear the bottles
out.
Warm beer.
Feh.
He’d have to watch for cigarette butts,
he realized,
raising the first bottle to
his lips.

The Jawbone of an Ass, autobigraphy as fiction.

Some years back, a publisher saw one of my stories in Weird Tales and got in touch with me. He wanted to publish a collection of my short fiction. So Steve Bissette wrote a very nice and flattering introduction and Harry Fassl graciously illustrated the book. But, the publisher turned out to be a flake and the book never appeared.


One of my favorite stories in the stillborn project was an original that was a departure for me. Semi-autobiograpy, with not a hint of the supernatural. It was my first step away from typical horror fiction and I've never gone back to the kind of thing I wrote before I wrote this one.


I won't say where autobiography veers from fiction.

The Jawbone of an Ass

by

James Rorbert Smith

At first glance, Ed Jones looked like 250 pounds of fat. Lots of people made that mistake. But Ed wasn't all fat. He worked out with the weights at the South Georgia Barbell Club, and he could bench-press over 400 pounds. His arms were like steel, his legs like a couple of concrete posts. However, with the baggy shirts he wore, he looked like just a great, big fat guy.


It was well known that he was half-Jew. His dad had been a Jew from New York. Everyone knew it and it followed him around the small Georgia town like a gauzy ghost dogging his ass. "Yeah, my daddy was a Jew," he'd say. He didn't give a damn. His dad had always told him that Ed couldn't be a Jew because your mom has to be a Jew for you to be a Jew. So he wasn't a Jew. But everyone else thought he was. Damn Jew, they'd mutter. How'd a Jew ever get a name like Jones, anyway, they'd ask.


So these two guys, one named Philip Tow and the other named Ricky Webb, were into the Aryan Nation stuff. They'd bought the party line: Jews were evil. They didn't know Ed Jones, but they knew of him, and they knew where he hung out. The pair of Georgia boys decided to go to the bar where Ed liked to drink so that they could kick his ass. It would be fun.


Ed was at a booth waiting for his friends, Batten and Gronroos and Gardner. They all went to the Binnacle off the St. Simons Island Causeway every Wednesday night to throw down a few drinks and shoot the breeze. Ed was always early to grab the booth in the rear and wait for the others, before the place had a chance to get crowded. That's where he was, sitting in the back, when Tow and Webb came in.

The pair of racist shit-kickers saw Jones there, slowly sipping his favorite, a vodka-Collins. He'd nurse one of those for a while, chew the ice, and wait for his pals.


The pair of jeans-clad, flannel-wearing sonso'bitches eased down to the shadowy rear where Jones was sitting ignorant of their intention. They'd planned it out, and they didn't want to take too long. Kick the Jew's ass and get out before John Law came calling.


The bartop ran almost to the very back of the building, where Ed was cloaked in the shadows. Tow was closest to him, Webb just to the right of his neo-Nazi pal. They each put one foot up on the kick rail and turned toward Jones and Tow said, "I think I smell a dirty fucking Jew, Webb. What about you?"


"Yeah," Webb agreed. "I smell the filthy rat-looking piece of shit, too."


Ed just froze and glared at them from where he sat. He didn't really look like much if what you thought you were seeing was just a big, fat guy waiting for his pals. His face was kind of boyish, his hair flat and dark brown, his clothes plain. Yeah, he was as wide as a Mack truck, but most fat-asses were. Tow, a lean and wiry sort of fellow, a natural athlete who had avoided all participatory sports in high school, leaned forward in a rather artful way and spit at Ed. The small gob of mucus arced and landed almost elegantly on the third button of Ed's blue work shirt.

Ed wasn't really what came to the mind of your average South Georgia racist when he thought of a Jew. Well, not unless that particular cracker bought into that jazz about all of those Philistines and the jawbone of an ass. These guys just were not expecting what happened next.


Ed came out of his shadowy booth like a gigantic cannonball. Neither of his targets was able to so much as flinch before he was on them. Tow, of course, was first. Ed's hands were small, and his fingers long and lean, like those of a fine musician rather than those of a fighter. But his right fist cracked against Tow's face, and the noise that shot through and through the bar was the sound of Tow's once solid mandible shattering like a dry twig underfoot. Before he could even react to the excruciating pain that was spasming down his neck and up into his rather pitiful excuse for a brain, Ed had rammed his elbow into Tow's chest, almost breaking him in half. Only the amazing quality of the spine to flex saved him from a severed backbone.

And next there was Ricky Webb. He was able to take half a step away during this blinding display of violence, and so Ed had to reach out and grab at him. Ed missed in his grasp for the back of the white boy's skull and his fingers snapped shut on Webb's left cheek, which then stretched impossibly as Ed pulled Webb's head down and forward, bringing his muscled thigh up, up, up. Pow. Webb's nose exploded in a great, impressive shower of crimson that exited his face in a violent blossom of warm wet.

Unconscious, Webb did not feel his body being lifted, one-handed, and smashed down upon the painfully crawling form of his already shattered buddy. The breath whooshed out of Tow's lungs, and the leader of that particular pack of vermin was not able to scream as Ed danced merrily and quite madly upon the two bodies now staining the wooden, splintery floor of the Binnacle.

Then there was a pause. The air inside the place seemed to hold still, the voice of Waylon Jennings on the jukebox even paused in mid-note. Behind the bar, the 'tender stared back, trying to pierce the dark shadows where he knew the great and powerful Ed was holding a particularly red and violent court. The shadow that was Ed Jones bent over, and in each of his very, very, very strong hands he took a fistful of the hair of those who had thought to bully him. He took those fists filled with their long, well-washed hair and, using his big feet to brace against their skulls, he ripped that hair out by the roots. Webb was awakened by the sheer agony of this act, and his eyes opened to the sight of the Binnacle's floorboards, and he could not quite figure why his head burned as if aflame with the bites of one thousand fire ants.

Ed began to walk out of the Binnacle, with no one there to stop him. Behind, he left Webb and Tow moaning and semi-conscious. In either hand he carried a bit of scalp, each dripping bloodily as he walked.

Just at the door, with the light of the fading sun illuminating his face (but the bartender would claim that he had never seen the person who had so badly beaten Webb and Tow), he turned and addressed the only other man awake in the place.

"Tell Batten and Gronroos and Gardner that I couldn't make it tonight."

"Will do," the bartender said. And he was as good as his word.

Mad Max in the Low Country

I was looking over at E. Campbell's website and saw a photo of this truck:









The truck looks like something out of Mad Max.

And it reminded me of something that happened some years ago in my hometown of Brunswick on the coast of Georgia (the one adjacent to South Carolina, not Russia).


A fellow got locked up in the local jail which had just had an upfit and had an enormous plexiglass front into which you could actually look in and see the jail cells.


Locked-up-fellow's pals decided they needed their buddy with them rather than locked up. So they procured an enormous flatbed truck and went to work on it. Said friends were all handy at metalworking and welding and they built something that did, indeed, look like a contraption from some post-apocalyptic movie. It had a steel cage built over the cab and a gigantic, pointed battering ram over the top that stuck out about three feet beyond the body of the vehicle.


Bright and early one morning they drove their Mad Max monstrosity onto the main drag and to the jailhouse. Getting a good, running start, they floored the thing and rammed it into the new plexiglass window into which you could see all of the cells.

All for naught. The plexiglass was some then-new material. Their battering ram barely scratched the surface, leaving a small cloudy imprint at the point of impact. The truck bounced back and came to a dead stop and refused to start. The pair of morons inside of it leaped groggily from the cab and tried to make their own getaway, but the local cops who had stood in the jailhouse watching this madness through the enormous plexiglass window were on them like dumb on a whiteboy.


They soon joined their pal in the hoosegow.

If I can find a photograph of that contraption, I'll post it. This was in the days shortly before the internet, so it may be difficult to locate.

Strike Me Down, Big Man: A White Trash Vignette

Strike Me Down, Big Man

by

James Robert Smith

There were seven of us: Scot, Robert, Brayboy, Tina; and Brayboy's sister, Reddog. And there was Phil, a garbage scow of a guy we all called Fat Bastard when he wasn't around to hear. At nineteen, I was the oldest, so I had dropped into the liquor store and bought the rum. The rest had brought coke; and me and the other braves were gulping the cheap, shitty rum and chasing it with Coca Cola. It tasted truly awful, but we were feeling good and drunk. I wasn't as high as the rest of the boys, since I weighed in at better than two-fifty, so I held my rum pretty good, and Phil didn't drink (the pussy). But Brayboy weighed one hundred thirty pounds, and even though he was only sixteen years old he was already a boozer who loved the stuff. He was going to make a sloppy drunk. Some of his teeth were rotting from too much booze and not enough food. He was drunk enough that I think he'd forgotten how much bigger I was than he, so I'd already had to tell him to shut up a couple times.
The girls weren't drunk, at all. Maybe a little. They were fifteen year olds, but they had plenty of experience when it came to males chasing after them. They well knew we were hoping to get them drunk enough so that we could talk them into lying down for us. Reddog wasn't a problem. She loved dick and everyone but her brother and me had had a taste, and I really wasn't so sure Brayboy hadn't had a go at her. But I just didn't think she was attractive with that pale skin and all that red hair. No thanks. Tina, though, was another matter. She was short, maybe not even five feet, but she was well built. She had great tits, and her hips flared out from a narrow waist and her legs weren't bad, either. If you bothered to look, she had a cute face framed with short, brown hair. All of us wanted to fuck her.
Earlier that day, I had stopped by the Brayboy house, and Reddog and Tina had been in the back yard. I went back to talk to them, and noticed Brayboy's barbells sitting in the dirt. Sandspurs had started to sprout around the concrete-filled plates; it had been so long since the little guy had used them. I bent down and picked them up, figuring he had about one-twenty on the bar. I was wearing a tank top and began to curl the weight easily, pumping up my biceps.
"My gosh," Reddog said. "Look at his muscles!"
I smiled and curled the bar a few more times, getting the desired result. But Tina looked up for a minute and said nothing. Shit.. I tossed the bar back to the weedy ground.
"How did you get so strong," Reddog asked.
"Heck. I'm not that strong," I lied. I was as strong as a fucking bull. I was so strong that nothing less than a gun scared me. Truly, I loved beating the shit out of other men. I had the lackonooky disease, so I walked around pissed off all the time. Tina was standing there wearing a halter-top and very short cutoffs so my dick was hard just looking at her. I did my best to hide my erection. I’m a gentleman.
"Where's Steve," I said. I rarely called her brother by his first name, but since I was on Brayboy property, I figured I should show some respect. I liked Mr. Brayboy, the father. Too bad his daughter was a slut and his oldest son was a rummy in training. He had four other kids stuffed into that five-room house, but they were all young ones and I didn't even know their names. Didn't give a damn, either.
"Him and Scot are off doing something," Tina said. I knew she really liked Scot. If any of us was going to get any action from Tina, I figured it would be Scot. She seemed to perk up a little at the mention of his name. Damn.
"Well, when they get back, tell them that I want to get up a bunch and go to the cemetery tonight. We can all smoke weed and get drunk and raise hell. You tell em for me, okay?" And I vaulted the chain link and trotted to my pickup.
So. We had all ended up in the Port City Cemetery, right in the middle of it at eleven at night. The rest of the boys were too drunk to notice the mosquitoes eating us alive, and I was too intent on trying to figure out how to get Tina alone and on her back to worry about the little bloodsuckers. We had come to the cemetery in a brand new 1978 Chevy pickup, just purchased by Scot and Robert's dad. It was a beauty: shiny white with four wheel drive and lots of polished chrome. I hadn't asked them how the hell they had talked their dad into letting them drive off with it. He must be out of town, I figured. Right then, it was parked out on Mane's Bluff Road, in a little turnaround area shrouded in by a couple of old live oaks and a line of scrub. The cops hardly ever came down there because the washboard road was hell on your suspension. Cops do love a smooth ride.
"Let's go look at that mausoleum Brad keeps sayin he gonna bust into," Scot said.
"God, that's one crazy fucker."
"He scares me."
"He scares you? You mean you ain't fucked him yet, Red?"
Reddog made a savage grunting sound and clawed at Scot. But he was too quick and danced away from her, bounding lightly over half a dozen graves. I could see his blond hair, even in the dark.
"You shouldn't do that, Scot." It was big, fat Phil. He stood, as usual, behind the group, watching us.
"Shouldn't do what?"
"Walk over the graves like that." Phil pointed, his fat paw kind of pasty looking in the half moonlight.
"Why the fuck not," I asked him.
"You should have more respect for the dead. You should fear God, man."
I laughed. Scot laughed. "Fuck that!" Both of us.
Scot hopped to a granite slab all polished and carved with the names of some family. We couldn't read it in the dark. He began to do a jig. "I'm dancin' man! I'm dancin'." He hopped about while I laughed. No one else was laughing. "Strike me down, Big Man. Strike me down!" Nothing happened, except that Scot and I began to laugh: big belly laughs while we made fun of everyone's religious beliefs.
"Hell," I said, pointing to the starry sky. "He ain't even got a cloud to pop some lightning out of." Scot looked up, thought that was especially funny, and laughed some more.

The Night I Missed Iggy.

Many, many years ago I went to a new club where Iggy Pop was supposed to perform. Brand new club. Not much in there but a make-shift bar with cold brews, a bandstand, and many square feet of space where you could stand and wait for Iggy. An opening act came out--some shitty two-chord punk band out of Atlanta Gee Ay. They sucked ass.

As the club began to fill with cigarette smoke I stood and waited for Iggy. That was why I'd paid the cover charge to get into the goddamned place. The shitty fucking two-chord punk band from Atlanta went through their lousy three or four numbers. They finally stopped (thank the rock gods). The club continued to fill with smoke. As I have never smoked (tobacco), the smoke began to get to me. But I waited.

The shitty punk band from Atlanta stumbled back onto the makeshift bandstand and took up their instruments. Oh, the gods. Please. No.
But, yes, they began to play again. I asked around. Iggy was "delayed". I bought a beer. I drank it. The smoke was now so thick that to see you had to cut a space in it with your hand. My eyes were watering. My lungs hurt.

Finally, I went outside.

The air in the darkened parking lot of the new-ish shopping center was cool and mercifully clear of tobacco smoke. I drank it in and tossed the empty beer can into a trash receptacle. Someone else came out of the club and I asked the guy if he knew what the holdup was all about. Where was Iggy?

"Apparently," the guy told me, "Iggy Pop is in the alley behind the club. He won't come on until the club owner pays him his fee, in full, in cash. If he doesn't get the money, he's not going to play."

"Fuck," I said.

After a while, I went back into the club. By this time, the cigarette smoke was so dense the place looked as if it were on fire. I tried to breathe and could not draw a decent breath into my lungs. "To Hell with this," I said to no one in particular and retreated once more to the parking lot.

Four hours had passed since I'd entered the club. It was midnight. I was finished waiting for Iggy Pop. Not that I blamed him in any way for the delay. I wouldn't work for free, either.

The club owner, however, I'd like to have beaten severely. Instead, though, I strolled to my car, enjoying the cool, smoke-free air. I drove home, got into the shower and scrubbed the hideous stench of the cigarette smoke from my hair and my skin.

The next day, I spoke to someone who knew the club owner and asked him if Iggy had ever entered the building. Apparently, the guy had phoned his rich dad who somehow showed up with the cash in hand and gave it to Iggy Pop, who then went into the club and did his show. It started around 2:00 am or so.

The club never opened again. I never saw the guy who'd instigated the whole mess, and that's all for the best, I reckon.

Would have been nice to have seen Iggy Pop perform, though.

The Disturbing Popularity of Zombie Fiction.

Some time back I began to have some disturbing suspicions about the enormous popularity (albeit a niche market) of zombie fiction/movies/games. I think one thing that widely appeals to the folk who read and watch this stuff (I have to count myself as a fan) is that the heroes get to shoot other people with wild abandon. Think of it. Like a dream come true for the right-wing survivalist inside us all. A lot of the people who are into this material actually like the apocalyptic ideal. They get to gather up guns and blow the brains out of everyone who doesn't look like them, act like them, think like them. In fact, in these zombie-infested fantasies the bad guys aren't even exactly human, so it's okay to blow their brains out. The entire thing is just a kind of racist, xenophobic wet dream.


I've been able to talk to some of the people who write this material, and I don't think these guys are actively considering that they're writing neo-fascist propaganda. But I see a lot of disturbing parallels in the zombie fiction phenomenon and the rantings of the various racist groups who populate the internet and who often poke their heads up into the mainstream media and among the right wing of our current political system (the GOP).


My own attraction to the form has always been my tendency to look upon myself as an outsider. Thus, my sympathies with characters who find themselves isolated and threatened by the mobs of mindless zombies waiting to destroy them. But with the current popularity of the zombie-fiction media, I tried to take another objective look at it. And I don't like what I see. It's not that the fictions aren't well written or well produced. They largely are. And as I said I don't think the folk who are making this stuff are consciously creating neo-fascist dogma. But with the resurgence of Jew-hating, and racism, and the scapegoating of immigrants and non-Christians, I do see a connection.


At any rate, I've decided not to buy any more zombie novels. At least for a while. Until the racist/xenophobic mania that runs through our society abates.


And, dammit, George Romero's directing a new zombie movie that I really wanted to see. A back to basics film where the zombies are all really slow and stupid and totally brainless and waiting to be destroyed.


Bash 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty good.

Corroboration

Corroboration
By
James Robert Smith


My father told me
that our government
had been wrong.
That it has committed
vast crimes:
Murders, genocides,
destruction without
equal.
Men and women and
babies
slaughtered because they
lived here first.
Men and women and
babies
enslaved and tortured
because they were
not white.
Forests cut, leveled,
slashed and burned.
Rivers dammed,
dirtied, polluted to death.
Creatures of wood,
and hill, desert and plain,
laid waste.
All these things he
told me,
while schools
and radio
and television
and comic books
told me America
is good, and great,
and beloved of God.
I grew,
pulled by two
versions of America;
one dark and bloody,
one bright and gaudy.
I grew,
and read,
and watched,
and listened,
and compared.
And I tell you,
you who will
hear:
Mark Smith
was right.
America murdered
men, and women, and babies
because they were here
first.
America enslaved
and tortured
men, and women, and babies
because they were not
white.
America did, indeed, level vast
forests,
polluted great, clear, clean
rivers and lakes;
gutted the forests and plains
and hills of our
wild heritage.
America, listen:
My father,
your son,
knew you well.

CRANK IT UP!!!!

CRANK IT UP!!!!!
By James Robert Smith

I live in what real estate agents like to term “a town home”.

It’s a glorified way of saying I live in a smallish house jammed cheek by jowl with a block of half a dozen other structures sharing walls, all crammed together on postage stamp-sized lots with dozens of other such structures.

Fortunately, my “town home” is not a flat, and is a two-story building and I don’t have to listen to neighbors tramping overhead.

Unfortunately, I am sandwiched between two other such “town home” owners. The neighbor to my right is relatively quiet and I rarely hear anything out of him. The neighbors on my left had some extreme financial problems when the husband got laid off from USAir and then had the misfortune to subsequently get cancer. He lived, but the ensuing financial hardships caused them to lose the “town home”. I miss them. They were sweet people.

For several months, the “town home” that had once been theirs and was now the property of some bank or investor just sat empty. No neighbor is a good neighbor, when it comes to peace and quiet. It was great not to hear anything at all beyond that sheetrock on the other side of my office.

Then, someone bought the “town home” from the bank/investor/lawyers/whomever.

They moved in. Foreigners of some type. I hear them talking to one another sometimes when I get home and they’re in the front yard. They might be speaking Spanish. Or Portuguese. I don’t now. I’m just an American and can only speak English with a strong Southern accent; and a smattering of German and Yiddish. I don’t know what they’re saying.

My office, where I write, where I labor after carrying the mail all day for Uncle Sam is on the second floor. Right next to the room where my new neighbors have decided to place their amusement room. Big screen TV. Stereo system. Son with geetar. Just about the time I want to get cranking on my novel…

The bass comes thumping through the wall. Every time I get ready to type.

The bass comes thumping through the sheetrock. Every time I try to think of the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next phrase, the change in the plot.

The bass comes thumping through the wall.

Fuck.

I’m a patient man. Really I am. But after some hours of this, after wandering off and waiting for

The bass thumping through the wall to stop.

It doesn’t. It goes on for hours.

And, finally, I grow so tired of it that I feel a need to retaliate.

I have several thousand tunes on my computer. Residue from the heydays of Napster. I conjure a play list of rockin’, rollin’, yellin’, loud, shit-kickin’, hell-raisin’ tunes. My wife bought me some new kickass speakers. The nicest sound system I’ve ever owned. And, suddenly, there I am with Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Bad Manners, Madness, drums, geetars, cranked up full blast, so loud that my feet are tingling and the bones in my legs are shivering.

The bass thumping through the wall.

After a couple of hours, I turn off the music.

Ah.

Silence from the other side.

Silence.

I can write.

And you know...I'd almost forgotten what it was like to crank it up to full blast. It was rather nice, actually.

DMZ

DMZ
By
James Robert Smith

Between North and South Korea
tigers and cranes thrive
where everywhere else they are
extinct.

Chernobyl:
There, the moose and boar and brown
bear live in
great numbers
where men no longer
should.

The western warlord stood before
the cameras, commenting on how,
from space,
the absence of nighttime illumination
marks the backward nation as something
dark and evil.

But if there were no lights
scarring the night sky
you could see the stars
as we could
once upon a time.

No lights, at night
is not a bad thing.
It’s good.
And so I implore
Mother Nature:
Turn out the lights
for us all.

The Cat I Never Saw

The Cat I Never Saw
By James Robert Smith

I deliver mail.

When I first started I worked at a station that was in downtown Charlotte. A lot of the neighborhoods in which I worked were in very poor neighborhoods. Lots of run-down houses and clunkers parked in the streets. For whatever reason, there were always empty lots filled with junk and scrap wood and overgrown with weeds and sometimes the rusting hulks of abandoned vehicles. In the summertime the rollout garbage cans would be at the sidewalks where I walked and the stench of maggoty food rotting in the heat would be stupefying in its intensity.

Often, I would have to dodge nipping dogs, or wade through mewling kittens, or keep an eye out for trouble of various types. On three occasions I got caught in the crossfire of angry people shooting at one another with handguns. Sometimes the job was most definitely not much fun.

One day I was delivering mail in Wilmore. I’m not sure how the Wilmore Neighborhood got its name. But it was a lovely place, and you could see the old luster of respectability underneath the flaking paint and weedy yards; and through the screams and the odd gunshots, there was sometimes silence.

On a particularly hot and sticky day, I was hoofing it down what I knew was a very bad street in this very tough neighborhood. About one-fourth of the houses on the street were vacant. They’d been bought by speculators who knew the whole Wilmore area was going to be gentrified soon, and they were banking on making a killing once the white yuppies moved in to replace the poor black and Hispanic inhabitants. In fact, Wilmore was the last such neighborhood in the downtown area that had yet to be so gentrified. Houses that were once practically worthless were selling for high five figures, and sometimes six figures for the more well preserved estates.

I was nearing the end of the street, where it intersected with a major thoroughfare when a very old, very thin black woman came walking toward me from her driveway. It was a concrete driveway, probably poured sometime in the late-40s when the residents there had all been white folk. The drive was still concrete, but now it was cracked like glazed porcelain and broken by the roots of a dozen trees, both living and dead.

“Hey,” she said to me.

“Hello,” I replied.

“Would you like to see the biggest rat I’ve ever seen?”

Now, I had expected her to say something. I had expected her to ask me about the mail, or whether I had a package she’d been expecting, or if I’d take some greeting cards to the post office for her. Something like that. I have to say that to be asked if I’d like to see the biggest rat this very old woman had ever seen was not anywhere on any list of things that I would have suspected would be mentioned by her.

So I thought about it for a second or two. Long enough so that she maybe thought I was going to pass.

“You really should see this rat,” she told me. “It’s enormous.” Her diction was very good, and I suspect that she may have been either a teacher or a secretary in her youth.

“Sure,” I finally said. “I reckon I would like to see the biggest rat you’ve ever seen.”

“It’s over here,” she said. And I followed her up the slight incline of the drive to side of her modest brick house. She pointed.

And there it was. Ratzilla. It was, as she had advertised, the biggest goddamned rat I had ever seen. Thankfully quite stiff and dead, and the biggest she had ever seen, she had said. It was bigger than a large puppy. And, no, it was not a muskrat, which we do have in this area. And it was not nutria, which we do not have in this area. It was just a huge freaking black rat. It must have weighed more than two pounds, easily. It was bigger than my foot, not counting the ugly, gray, naked tail.

After being horribly aware of its enormous size, the next things that I noticed were the wounds on its neck. It had a couple of puncture wounds that appeared to have been formed by something the size of a sixteen-penny nail.

“What did that?” I asked her, pointing at the punctures on the neck.

“Oh. That. My cat did that.””Your cat? I’d have thought a big dog bit it.”

“No, that cat’s huge, too. Biggest cat I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t come inside. But he showed up here last year and I feed him.”

I looked away from the rat and scanned the empty lot next to her house, searching for a sign of a cat that had teeth big enough to make those kinds of wounds. My bare legs suddenly felt really vulnerable.

“Well, ma’am. I don’t know what you’re feeding that cat, but I’d keep it up if I were you.” Then I waved to her and wandered on down the street.

I never did see that cat.

Road Trip!

Not exactly "On the Road", but I'm headed up to Greensboro tomorrow to hook up with Mark Rainey to sign copies of our anthology, Evermore (Arkham House Books).

After we sign the books, we're probably going to hit a restaurant. It's been a long time since I've visited the Raineys. I'll probably post some photographs here tomorrow.

Ray Bradbury Said It.

Ray Bradbury Said It
By
James Robert Smith

Ray Bradbury once said,
“The most horrible thing in the world is
a twelve-year-old boy.”
I don’t agree.
Not quite.
Twelve-year-old boys get
bigger
and stronger
and more clever.
And they learn to shoot guns
and fire missiles
and splash napalm.
And they foul
the water and air,
and despoil the land,
and they kill the animals
for food,
and for fur,
and ivory,
and their blubber,
or just
for fun.
Then they find women
to beat
and children
to abuse,
and sometimes they kill
each other (HAW!).
But they never
grow up.
They’re always
twelve-year-old
boys.Only worse.

Augh. By James Robert Smith.

Work.

Horrid.

Come home exhausted.

Eat.

Sleep.

More work.

Too tired to write

novel.

Sleep.

Thanks the gods

for

poetry.

Sample chapter from Port City, a novel.

This is a chapter from another of my works-in-progress, Port City, a novel.


Ed stood in the dark of the barn and ancient scents of old hay and horses and rich manure long gone floated up in the dust. The Nazi's jeep had come to a halt in the wide door and the lights were still on so that they could all see. Ed pumped the Coleman lantern and the wick began to glow with an almost supernatural incandescence. There was a slight ratcheting of steel as the jeep doors opened up and the pair of racists climbed out, their booted feet settling into the dirty sand, crunching down on the nubs of broken sandspurs and beggars lice and other weeds. Ed's right arm pistoned a time or two more, his great biceps filling with blood, coming to a pump as the muscles had been trained to do through constant, brutal exercise.

"You boys can shut them headlights off, now. We won't be needin em and I don't want nobody noticin us through the woods and comin down to see what we're doin here at night." To prove it, he lifted up the Coleman lantern, its glow dispelling the shadows to vague corners of the old barn. In obedience, the head Nazi reached through the door of the jeep and slammed the light switch down; the jeep ceased to glare at Ed.

"While you're standin over there, go ahead and shut the barn door." Again, in silence, the big Marietta Nazi grasped the old, weathered wood and pulled the heavy door to. Ed figured by then that he followed his orders right well.
The other two came on into the barn, the smaller men as if facing off against Ed. He wondered if they could feel the hate burning off of him; but he doubted it.

"This here's Ed Jones," Tow said.

"Nice to meet you, Ed." The big shot Nazi didn't offer his own name.

"Hello." Ed's face in shadow despite the blazing lantern. His eyes maybe lit from something other than the Coleman.

The Nazi looked around the barn. Most of the contents had been removed before the farm had been abandoned, and thieves and kids had long since ransacked whatever had remained. A disc plow gone almost completely to rust deteriorated at the rear. The horse stalls were stacked with graying lumber of various lengths and dimensions, and straw gone from gold to pale yellow was scattered here and there. The fine dust in the corners was everywhere pocked with the inverted cones of ant lions lying in wait for six-legged meals. Spiders moved and crawled in the joists overhead, in and out of webs.

"Well," the North Georgia racist finally said. "We got some business to conduct here, so let's get to it. My friend, Phillip here, says that you have a large amount of marijuana which you are willing to let go for a bulk price."

"At's right," Ed told him.

"Exactly how much are we talking about here? In kilos."

Ed placed the lantern on the floor of the barn where it settled in an inch or two of powdered filth. "I ain't got the slightest idea how much in kilos we're talkin about here. What I got is an entire bale of weed."

The Nazi smiled. Ed could see his chiseled face wrinkle in the weird light. "And how did someone like you come to be in possession of that much contraband?"

"You want to buy it?"

"Hell, yes, he wants to buy it!" Tow spoke up, sounding more strident than he probably had intended, trying to impress the right-winger.

"Well," Ed crossed his thick arms, the muscles accentuated and exaggerated in the glow of the lamp. "It really ain't no concern of yours how I come by it, so don't ask. I've got it and I want to sell. Never mind where it came from."

The Nazi cleared his throat, but he didn't spit. "We just want to make sure that we're not buying merchandise that might belong to someone who might take offense at our purchasing stolen property."

"You ain't got to worry about that. I got it fair and square, and ain't nobody goin around sayin it's theirs and not mine. So don't worry about it.

"And anyway, what is it that J.C. Steiner wants with a pile of marijuana?"
Marietta man wiped his mouth. Ed could hear his callused hands rasp on stubble.

"Well, I'm on tell you. You want to make a profit, and we want to make a profit. You got to make a livin' and we got niggers to kill. Takes bullets to defend the white race from niggers and Jews."

The Nazi just stood there for a second, and then he asked to see some of the stuff. Ed reached into the deep right pocket of his overalls and drew out a huge five-finger bag of reefer, stems and buds and leaves the color of green-pea soup. The Nazi moved over to where Ed was, the lantern between them glowing like some magic doorway you had to know the secret word to pass through; he peeled the flap of the sandwich bag free and dipped his nose to sniff. Almost as strong as the pungent scent of weed there was.

"Diesel," he said. "You found this shit washed ashore, didn't you? How much you find, son?"

"Plenty."

"A bale, plenty? More? You found yourself a whole bale? Do you know who tossed it overboard? You think they might want to know where it is?"

Ed stood there, blank faced, the color draining from his flesh. In the weird light, the Nazi could not see the warning sign. Ignorant, he continued to talk, now hoping to scare the yokel into giving away the contraband.

"There's suppliers who might not think this is your dope, son. There's boys out there just as soon have this back."

"They threw it overboard when the Coast Guard was chasin em," Ed droned. His voice was starting to go shaky, and the Nazi mistook the warble for fear. "It's mine, now. I found it. I dragged it across the beach. I loaded it up and hid it. Ain't nobody's but mine."

"You know, Ed. You look like a white man. You talk with a fine southern accent and Tow tells me you born and raised in this great state of Georgia. But he also tells me you a nigger lover. Why you want to be a nigger lover?"

Ed's face had gone almost completely to white, nearly no color there at all. In the white glare of the Coleman wick, though, neither the Nazi nor Tow could tell. Ed said nothing, for to speak would have been to act, and to act would have been to kill two men. He swallowed, and then the Nazi put his hand out and patted Ed's gigantic shoulder, all muscle and solid as a grizzly's neck.

"Just jokin son. No call to get choked up. Why don't you just let me see the bale and we can begin to talk some numbers. What say?"

Ed looked across the barn. Tow was still where he had been; only now he was leaning against the barn door. He looked like a guard standing there at the exit.

"Wait here. I got to climb up and haul it down for you fellahs to see."

"Fine. Fine." The Nazi smiled and patted Ed once more, as if feeling to test again this inhuman flesh.

Leaving the lantern, Ed walked across the barn to a shadowed rear corner and put his hand on the dry, flaking wood that made the ladder. He climbed up, his sneakered feet making heavy scraping sounds. Old nails groaned beneath his weight but he paid them no mind. On the floor of the loft, he swatted at trailing webs and seemed not to feel at all the tickle of spiders that dashed along the flesh of his back and exposed shoulders before launching themselves off of the giant.

Below, the Marietta Nazi saw Ed's face appear from the lip of the loft, his face white, white as an avenging ghost. Two lengths of nylon rope, frayed and yellow, drifted down in slow motion. "You and Tow grab holt of these," he said, his voice quaking. "Y'all hold these and we'll ease this son of a bitch down for you to see."

He looked to see that the two did as he requested, both men standing about three feet apart, gripping the tethers. Then he vanished into the dark beyond the edge of the loft.

Beneath his flannel shirt, laid in tight to his ribs, the Nazi felt the holster of his little 9mm Beretta chafe against his cotton tank. He smiled at Tow, and Tow smiled back. Above them, they heard the small grunt that escaped through Ed's clenched teeth, and they barely noticed how the loft groaned above them, nails and old staples doing the suddenly damned difficult job to hold tight.

Up there in the shadows, the figure of pure rage lifted up the bale, hundreds of pounds, a goddamned miracle like some crazed mother levering a mass of steel off of her trapped child. Inside Ed, somewhere in his back, ligaments stretched, muscles painlessly tore, and the bale somehow like one of Hercules' tasks went over his head and he stutter-stepped to the edge of the loft and not really looking down dropped the enormous weight on the two fools who stood holding nautical rope attached to nothing save a heavy beam.

Below, he heard the bale come down with a soft thud, amidst the earthen sound a dry popping. Or two. He went to the edge and looked. A great gout of dust full of fine sand and horse shit gone to powder. As it settled, he saw legs jutting out, the yellow nylon ropes dangling down. The Nazi's fingers were splayed, his right hand, on the far side of the bale. A stream of urine was creeping out first between the Nazi's legs and then Tow's. Ed screamed. "Mother," pause, "FUCKERS!" He leaped down, his two hundred and fifty pounds landing solidly atop the bale, his knees locked even after a plunge of eight feet; he barely felt the sting of impact in his heels. Something beneath popped like a hard, unripe watermelon taken too soon from the vine.

"GotDAMNED shits!" He stomped on Tow's calf jutting out from the diesel-y bale. He did it again, the rage not gone yet, the adrenaline still pouring through his system. His mind was effectively shut down, and everything he saw he saw through a haze of red. The barn was a big red screen upon which were scrawled wooden beams and discarded lumber and old straw and dust floating lazily in the dead air. Ed gritted his teeth, grinding them, his jaw muscles bunching and clenching and he had bitten his tongue and the insides of his mouth so that blood was seeping in through little cuts leaving that coppery taste.

And then he saw what he'd done.

"Oh, god. Shit," he said.

The bale rested atop Tow and the nameless Nazi. Both were dead. A smell of spewed urine was rising up from the bodies, and in the seat of Tow's jeans Ed could see a soft round bulge of feces excreted beneath the weight of baled weed. There was also the stench of human excrement just beginning to pollute the close air of the barn. Ed smelled it through the diesel and the dope. Not far from one corner of the bale, the Coleman lantern burned on, showing the deed. "Shit."

Ed put his hand out, feeling the tight, dry burlap that held his marijuana together. Fifteen grand if he'd sold it by the pound. More if he'd been patient and let it go a quarter of a pound at a pop. Forty thou if he had set up shop somewhere and sold lids and dime bags and reefers to kids and skinflints. He looked around him. In the shadow of one of the old horse stalls he saw the edge of a croaker sack jutting up from a pile of dry-rotted two by fours. He went over and picked it up, felt to see if it retained any strength in its moth-y fibers. It was solid.

He shuffled back to the bale, reached into one deep pocket and drew out his pocketknife, the one his daddy had given him the year before he'd died. "A good pocketknife can be a lifesaver," he'd said. The bale sang a short, ripping song as he plunged the blade home, opening up the burlap skin to expose the leafy flesh beneath. Ed reached deep, jamming his monster arm in, far down where the diesel had not tainted the stuff, and he began to fill the sack. He reached in, drew out the stuff, dropped it in the sack, reached in, drew out, dropped in, reach, draw, drop.

When the sack was full, he went to the barn door, and he peeked out. Nothing moved except for the weeds in the warm breeze. He bunched the mouth of the bag together into a pucker and put it in the front seat of the Nazi's jeep. The keys were still in the ignition. "Thank you, fucker," he said.

Going back into the barn, Ed picked up his lantern and slowly turned the wick down until the light dimmed and dimmed and then was a tiny orange glow that lit nothing and then was gone. He put the lantern down, and in the pitch dark he drew out the book of matches and struck one, sulfur against rough. A tiny stink of what Hell was supposed to smell like and then a quick yellow flash. He waited while the flame ate the matchstick and grew fat. Then he bent carefully at the waist, feeling a twinge in the base of his spine, hardly noticing it, and he placed the plump little orange babe to the bale. The babe grew and made a twin of itself so Ed went to another spot on the bale and touched it again, made a triplet, then down and another sibling appeared and another and another until the family was crackling and popping having a party. Ed backed away, picking up his extinguished lantern, watching as the fire rose up and began reaching for the timbers and he could see Tow's rawhide belt steaming and the Nazi's pants catching fire and the bale was a great big gout of flame hissing out a tale of nastier things to come, arms reaching up and up sending fat yellow sparks to the loft which erupted with a low roar.

Ed went out the door and slammed it shut behind. From out there, you could see the sun inside the barn trying to get out. Thin lines of fire flickered and roared in there, saying that they were about to jump out, to cover the exterior of the barn and give off a show such as this old forgotten farm had never seen.

And when it did, when the barn went up like a ball of Hell, Ed was gone, taking the Nazi's jeep with him, taking it deep into the woods down logging roads thick with sassafras trees and post oaks and slash pines standing up like poles amidst the palmetto. There he left it, the keys hanging from the ignition, waiting for the next driver. An hour later, he was in the front of his pickup, the sack of dope stuffed behind the seat and his lantern on the floorboard.

And then he was home.

The next morning, black children, whose families had seen the orange glow of the burning barn in the night, came through their secret paths and they poked about in the cooling ashes. One of them found a little blob of silver, never knowing that it was silver, or that it had once been a twisted swastika.

Nothing else. There was nothing else except for vague, dark ashes that had ceased to smolder waiting for rain.