Making Puppies

by Brett Rutherford

Banned from our basement

chemistry lab, we boys

huddled to wait

until whatever it was

going on the dark

was over with.

 

Mrs. Avampato

wants puppies, we are told.

Her dog is in there,

thrust in the dark.

Another dog after,

hurled in, confused

and barking.

 

Wise as we are

beyond our twelve years,

able to make those jars

of rocket fuel, adept

at double decomposition,

stink bombs and smoke,

we have no idea what

is supposed to happen

in the dank dark

beneath our workbench

and its condensers

and retorts. Faust

offers no answer,

nor does my reading

in ancient alchemy.

 

Eight small feet run

this way and that.

There is much barking.

Then, a loud whine.

"Ma! He's hurting her!"

Sonny shouts up

to the women above.

"I'm going in!"

 

"Don't you dare!"

Mrs Avampato calls back.

"No one is allowed

to see! Just mind

your own business!"

 

The whining abates,

then all we hear

is the extended pant

of two canines.

 

Who knew

that if you wanted puppies

two dogs in the dark

would find a way?

 

The Secrets of Life and Death

 by Brett Rutherford

That hothouse summer our science club,
armed with black powder and chemistry sets,
determined to plump the depth of nature.
Our rocket had failed to launch; the pipe
we used to test it turned cannon and blew
a small hole in Caruso’s garage. Some fluid
we made at random promised a Nobel prize
when we found it could eat through concrete,
but we failed to make it a second time.
Heads full of science-fiction visions,
we knew that alien blobs throbbed
and ate flesh, that evil brains from space
could replace those of our parents and teachers,
that tendril and tentacle could spring
out of a test-tube or a cracked meteor.

I had everything at hand. Once I had seen
a clay-man Golem rise out of hillside;
had held in my hand a still-hot meteor
that on my desk, unsplit, promised
something unknown to the Periodic Table;
once a dead cat had tasted lightning,
too soon, too fast, and charred to ash
in our hill-top eyrie laboratory; once I
had read Faust and found a stone,
egg-shaped, and in my hand,
as assured as a magician’s wand,
I felt ready in my eleven years
to master the secrets of life and death.

We came close with the Boron Monster.
We watched in quiet horror as on
the microscope slides the compound
of boric acid and other substances frothed up,
bubbled, and died away, leaving behind
the very image of cell walls. If carbon
was the root of life, then why not Boron?
The slides we took to school sure fooled
the earnest science teachers. “Alive!”
he said, “or recently alive, anyway!”
Some shied away from making more
of the pasty-white Boron blob. “What if
it got inside you?” Dave withered to ask.
“What if it started replacing your parts
with more of itself? What if it wants
to eat everything it comes upon?”

That night the Boron Monster went up
and over the edge of the basement counter.
Its white trail led to the drain-hole.
We watched. We listened. Three boys
all swore they heard it gurgling
between their houses’ drainpipes,
but then it oozed away to nothing,
another rainbow slurry in Jacob’s Creek.
None of us mentioned it again.

And then, one day, I found the Book
as Tim and I explored the unallowed
corners of my parents’ bedroom.
Far back beneath the bed it lay,
with tattered and yellowed edges.
At first glance, nothing. All it said
was “Marriage Manual.” Opened,
it reveal the coiled horrors of anatomy.

Tim recoiled and shut the book.
“Some kind of sick science fiction,”
he hazarded. I grabbed it, opened it again.
The sight of giant penis, cross-sectioned
and labeled like a butcher’s chop-guide,
was bad enough, but there as well,
the stuff inside a woman’s body,
unthinkable! What could it all be for?

Near as I could tell, it had something to do
with babies and where they came from,
a subject I had never given a second thought,
except that, somehow, women became elephant-
sized, gave birth, and then returned
to their normal proportions. As we read,
and studied, and said out loud, the words,
it dawned on us that this was worse
than anything the Boron monster might do.

Somehow these alien beings escaped
from human bodies and fumbled about
in the beddings and on the forest floors
like dark and obscene funguses. Off went
the errant spermatozoa in one direction,
while ovaries unfertilized rolled off another,
like unshelled eggs a chicken had kicked aside.

I shuddered. They could be all around us,
hiding in blankets and dresser drawers,
curled up like spiders in the bath-tub,
waiting to plant themselves in anyone
foolish enough to lie still long enough.

One picture that showed a man
somehow atop a woman
made no sense at all to us.
We slammed the book shut.
I put it between Superman comics
and War of the Worlds for further study.

That night we sat
on DeSantis’s porch, all eyes
again on the Marriage Manual.
Young Albert explained the mechanics
of copulation. “No way!” we screamed,
hands crossed in horror before our eyes.
“That’s horrible,” Dave said.
“I will never do that to a woman.”

On our third perusal
of the forbidden book,
Tim came back in triumph.
“It’s not true! I asked my mother.
Babies are not made that way.
Men want to do all kinds of things
when they get alone with women.
She says she spends half the night
just fighting my father off, and now
she’s more than ready for a divorce.”

“Then where do babies come from?”

“She says when a woman wants a baby,
she goes to the family doctor
and he takes care of it.”

That seemed to settle the matter.
We could sleep soundly knowing
that clay gives rise to Golems,
that Boron monsters slough off
white powder like mummy skin,
and lonely spermatozoa search
for lost eggs in the treetops.

 

The Invisible Man

by Brett Rutherford

On every Wednesday night,
as my father played jazz somewhere
and mother puttered about
on dishes and ironing, I sat
transfixed before Shock Theater,

as on the tiny black-and-white
flicker-and-flash TV, monsters
paraded one after another.
First it was Frankenstein,
Bride of, Son of, Ghost of,
Dracula and his son and daughter,
werewolves of London, wolfman
in the shadowy peaks of Wales,
all mixed and regenerated
by a succession of mad scientists.

I watched. All my friends watched.
We talked of nothing else
in the sunblasted schoolyard
where we hid from the play-ball bullies.

Next up was The Invisible Man,
but something was odd
in the kitchen behind me.
No dishes clanged; no steam
rilled out from the electric iron.
She paced, she paced, she looked
at the clock as though it perched
to fall from its nail to the floor.

For days I had heard
from the cinder-block corner
my mother’s voice, and a man’s.
Son or nephew of the Carusos,
he hung around the garage beneath
our dingy apartment, watched as
my father packed up his clarinet
and drove off to the night clubs
for his dance-band gigs. “Not man
enough for a woman like you,”
the suave Italian told my mother.
“I hate him,” she said — “He don’t
weigh but a hundred pounds I’d guess.”
“You need to find out
     what a real man is like.”

A long pause. No slap, not even
a “no thank you.” “A real shame.
A woman like you needs to know
what it’s like to really live.”
Another silence.
Something touches something,
breath held in. “Tonight,” he said,
“While he’s out playing his stupid clarinet.”

“No Shock Theater tonight!”
Her hand turns off the TV.
“What? But it’s The Invisible Man!”
“It will only upset you. You’re going to bed
early.” So fast my head could spin,
I am whisked to my room and tucked in.

“I am closing this door.
One peep out of you,
     then no more Shock Theater ever.”

Stunned and angry I lay in the dark.
The front door opened and closed.
Just as if The Invisible Man had entered.
Naked, he could be anywhere at all.
My parents’ bedroom door went shut.
Soom something invisible began to shake
the wall and rattle the window glass.

Then, silence. Then slumber.
At school, I sat in silence
as my friends related the marvel
of the Invisible Man’s unraveling
from bandages to naked transparency.

I could have told them
he had been at our house,
and how my mother found out at last
what a real man was like,
even if no one could see him.

 

 

The Jumbo Sandwich

by Brett Rutherford

On Kingview Road in Scottdale,
weeks passed sometimes
in which the only meat
was something called Jumbo Bologna.
The sign lied, since it
was pronounced BALONEY
and no one knew what was in it.

“Eyeballs and guts,” my friends said.
“’Possums and groundhogs maybe.”

Though I was proud to own
my Tom Corbett, Space Cadet lunchpail,
I never let anyone see
that Monday it was Jumbo on Wonder Bread,
and Tuesday, and Wednesday, too.
On the Thursday the credit ran out
at the corner store, and I went forth
with green peppers and margarine
on Wonder Bread. Two bites were all
I could manage before the bitter taste
compelled me to throw the rest away.

On Kingview Road in Scottdale,
dinners comprised
fried Jumbo Bologna on Wonder Bread.
Some nights it was just bread
with gravy poured over it,
gravy from bacon grease.

Pointless to sneak at night
to peek in the icebox: beer, milk,
and eggs and bacon, the wrapped
remnants of bologna for tomorrow’s lunch.

Payday was little better. With luck,
my father would toss
a pack of hot dogs on the table
announcing, “Here’s dinner.”
He gambled every penny
and lost it all.

The meatless meal
of canned peas mushed up
in mashed potatoes —
with luck a smattering of gravy
added — my mother,
who had waitressed once,
called it “schmung.”

Since Father required
his breakfast before
the trek to the glass factory,
eggs, bacon, and Wonder Bread
were always there:
that can be said,
although a doctor looked
at my pencil-thin arms and asked,
“Don’t you ever feed this child?”

Strange it seemed, that others
knew how to eat, no matter
their poverty. Grandparents
decades on welfare had a garden
and when we went there,
we feasted on corn,
and fat tomatoes
green onions and radishes.

Sometimes I visited
a schoolmate’s home.
Italian immigrants,
just scraping by.
Smell the kitchen:
they ate like gods.

On Kingview Road in Scottdale,
the smell of myrtle
must linger still,
(the one fine spice
that made bologna palatable.)

So once a month,
in memory of poverty,
which after all,
is never far away,
I eat a Jumbo sandwich,
scented and sweet
with the poor peoples’
frankincense.

 

 

 

The Consultation

by Brett Rutherford

Miss Schreckengost,
the principal, my parents,
and my small self
stand in the third grade
classroom. What trouble
am I in this time? Did
the comics I draw
and circulate among
the tittering students
offend someone?

“We called you here,”
the principal says,
bass voice held down
to an unfamiliar whisper,
“to talk about your son.
He's too young to take
an IQ test, but he,
I assure you, is way
beyond our teaching.

“He could skip two grades,”
Miss Schreckengost says.

“Or even three,”
the principal asserts.
“He really belongs
in a private school,
a place for young geniuses.”

My parents say nothing.
Then “Private school ...
you have to pay for that.”

“Yes. But for the best.
We don't know what
to do for him, except
to let him roam the stacks
of the town library
and read what he wants.
Do you have books at home?”

“Not really.”

Sliding to save the day,
the principal back-tracks.
“Well, it is said
that jumping ahead
can interfere
with any child's normal
development.”

“Oh, we wouldn't want
that. He should be normal.
Normal is best, isn't it?”

“Very well, then,”
the principal sighs.
“But while you're here
there's one more thing.
We had to move your son
to the third row, right here,
since he can no longer see
the blackboard. Glasses,
eyeglasses he needs.
You must attend to this,
and right away.”

Another silence.
My father assents and asks
the name of an eye doctor.
My mother just says,
“Glasses. My god,
he has to wear glasses.
Going around
with glasses.
I'm so ashamed.”

I stood,
the object talked about
praised and condemned
in short order.

No one asked me
what I thought
or what I wanted.

As we walked home,
beneath my breath, I said —
“The slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune.”

Things We Don't Do

 by Brett Rutherford

Go to church?
We don't do that.
No money to give;
nice clothes, never.
Father an atheist,
Mother afraid
of the taunts
of the church ladies
about her family,
the things they did
in that shack in the woods
when men came calling.

One summer they let

a church put on

some Bible classes

at the schoolhouse.

I was sent. Bright books

of Bible stories laid forth

Old Testament and New.

I asked too many

questions, mostly about

dinosaurs and other planets.

They sent me home,

asked that I not

come back again, ever.

Things we don't do

include bicycles,

new shoes, clothes

from a big store,

and Boy Scouts

because all that

took money.

I found a copy

of the Boy Scout manual.

Cover to cover I studied it,

envied the boys

those tent nights

and knot-tying skills.

Nowhere was where

we went all summer.

Once a museum

glimpsed from the car;

once or twice

a beautiful house

blurred in passing.

Ten aunts and uncles

never visited,

cousins unmet.

I did possess

a chemistry set,

with not much left

of its supplies.

In the dark cellar

I did my best

to create monsters.

At school,

it was assumed,

as I soared in reading,

that I must come

from the finest family,

that wealth surrounded

a seven-year-old

already reading

Faust and Hamlet.

It was my game

to let them think it so.