Dark Voice

Beverly Jose Sacoman

When I was thirteen my mother put me on a Greyhound bus bound for Oklahoma City.  It was a long, long ride that began in the afternoon from Santa Fe and ended the next day around noon.  It was mid-September and still fairly warm but I knew Oklahoma was going to be hot.

     I don’t remember much about our circumstances, I mean the why of my mother shipping me off alone to my uncle’s family so far away.  I suppose she just couldn’t manage (financially or psychologically) a budding teenager.  She probably thought I would do better in a different school, different surroundings.   And besides, my baby brother had just been born a week and a half before.

     Well, once I got myself settled on the bus, in a seat to myself, my stiff upper lip began to slowly relax as I watched the day and the scenery pass into dark.  But once the dark settled in I began to get colder and colder.  By midnight or thereabouts I was freezing.  I kept turning this way and that in a futile effort to warm myself between my arms and the cold seat back.  I was absolutely miserable and disheartened in my thin cotton blouse with the short, short sleeves.  But then, out of the dark behind me came a woman’s voice,  “It gets so cold at night on these busses.  You really should have brought a jacket.  Here, cover yourself with these newspapers.”  Over the seat she handed several sheets of much read newspaper and I said a thank you back into the dark.  I then wrapped myself up as best I could in the Santa Fe New Mexican feeling extremely grateful and blessed and  (surprisingly) a lot warmer.  I slept pretty comfortably in my cocoon all the way to dawn and the outskirts of Oklahoma City.

by Amy Cordova

Many years ago, when my sons were young, we planned a camping trip for our summer vacation. As I was loading the car, I realized that my library books were overdue. So, on the way out of town, I stopped at the library to drop them off and pick up something to read on our trip. At the time, my marriage was on the rocky road, and I was overcome by deep sadness and anxiety. The Library was located in downtown St. Paul, Mn and was one of my most comforting places on Earth.
It is huge , several stories high and of magnificent late 1800′s-early 1900′s architecture.
The Art section was on the third level, so I pressed the button for the elevator. My young boys ran to the children’s section.
Just as I pushed the button, I noticed a scraggly, homeless man approaching the elevator. He carried a pasteboard suitcase that was tattered and taped. No one else was in sight. He was staring and smiling at me…. and I felt uneasy.
As we entered the elevator, he struck up a conversation. I was growing more uncomfortable by the moment.
He said, ” I am a Viet Nam Vet and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I found you. I have your gift.”
At this point, my breath strained and the interior of the elevator closed in on me, feeling like a prison cell.

And then, as he spoke, he opened his suitcase and there, inside , lay thousands of fragrant, red rose petals !
I was dumbfounded by the contents and dizzied by the scent. “These are magical!”, he whispered.
He invited me to scoop up as many as I wanted. I scooped a handful and clutched them to my heart.
His expression, so angelic, and filled with such loving kindness, caused me to wipe the tears that streamed down my cheeks. As the elevator door opened, he turned, nodded, and walked back down the stairs.
I kept those rose petals for years, until they turned to dust. But, I will never lose the memory of my “angel unaware”.

The Goat Man
Diane Styma

It was hot that day, and I still owned a car. I was rushing off towards the JFK airport in that triangle of highways including the Van Wyck, the Cross Island and the 678 where I often get lost and end up going to another borough. As a former California nut, I did not have money on me, and I did not have working air conditioning so my windows were open to let the humidity cool me. I was sweating more because I was about to run out of gas and since I had done this three or more times before, I knew that if I kept moving, I could glide on fumes, but if I stopped and stopped and then accelerated, I ran a great chance of coming up empty in a bad part of town. Of course, this was a day when I either forgot my cel phone or did not have minutes left on mine. When the surface street traffic got incredibly slow, as if in New York City there is a thing as slower, I saw the gathering of water-sellers and pan-handlers taking advantage of us car people sliding by them.Nervously, I glanced down at my gas gauge wiggling below the red E-line. My eyes slowly panned up to see legs of man but they were backwards, as if the knees articulated like a satyr. It was then that a man clearly disabled but strong, tan and aggressive approached my window. My friends had instructed me to roll up windows and lock doors in this situation, but instead I saw humanity and an opportunity to talk to this stranger. He said: “Do you have money?” At that moment, I transformed from meek me to an assertive character I barely recognized. I said, “No, do you?” The stranger with odd legs looked at me funny. I would imagine this was a first. In that pause of his begging and usual denial, he was stunned so I snuck in another sentence: “I need $5 for gas. Would you give ME some money?”

And he did.

He reached into his sweaty dirty pocket and pulled out lots of greens and peeled off money for me to buy gas. Of course, I said I would come back and repay him. And of course, I forgot, or never meant what words came out of my mouth.