BRAD ROSE
Poetry and Fiction
God and Auto Parts
Honey Gets Her Wish
Like electrons darting stochastically about an atom’s nucleus, the flies circle the victim’s dead body---a noisy hum against the murder scene’s otherwise grim silence. I hate this part of the job, but I steel myself, reach into the dead man’s sharkskin suit-coat pocket, and remove his cell phone. Checking the phone’s call history, I hit redial, and wait as the phone dials the last number the dead man called, only an hour earlier. A number accompanied solely by the name “Honey.” Three rings, and a woman’s furious voice commands, “Don’t you ever, ever, call me again.” The phone goes dead.
Glenda believed she was serving God. That’s what she intended, anyway. Working at G&C Auto Parts may not look like serving the almighty, but she knew that God appreciated the work of all those who served Him, no matter where that work occurred. She paused for a moment to take one last drag on her diminishing Marlboro before the next caller would phone to ask if she had in stock a split rear exhaust system, or a replacement windshield-wiper motor, or a serpentine belt (she loved the Satan-vanquishing image of the latter as this formed a colorful biblical scene in her mind’s eye). Maybe, Glenda dreamily imagined, the next caller would be from El Monte or Paramount, or some other gritty town, where, despite being an otherwise indistinguishable suburb of a sprawling Los Angles, the primary language was now Spanish, not English. Glenda especially loved calls from men named Jesus.
It wasn’t summer, it was heaven. I’d always wondered if death and life were the same? Wondered if angels got exhausted from flapping their wings?
Sis said it wasn’t true that Eve was made of earth and water and the salty backwater of the south Mississippi. I told her Adam loved Eve, the way Pa loved Ma. She asked me if that was before or after they were cast out of the garden? I said “both.”
The smooth warm ooze of the Mississippi, God in that sunlight.
Pa, lost in last Spring's flood.
With a look of disgust, Lisa, our whiny instructor, scolded, “It’s not really Yoga unless at least one of your feet is touching the ground.
Hector, the brashest of the quintuplets, said, “Jeeez, I’m quittin’ this damn excuse for calisthenics, right this second. Besides, I can’t find men’s yoga pants at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, OR Penny’s. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick and tired of wearing my PJ’s to this freakin’ class, anyway.”
Naked to the Waist
