—AC Church

Ed. Note

Once upon a time, AC Church had an Eng­lish class at a small-town North Car­olina com­mu­nity col­lege. Wayne Rob­bins was the teacher. I love to hear the sto­ries about this man, his class­room, and the hand­writ­ten com­ments he re­turned on every as­sign­ment. And how Wayne Rob­bins had tur­tle med­i­cine. He would res­cue them from the road and bring them to class.

AC Church is one of my most im­por­tant and badass teach­ers as a poet, writer, and per­son. In a yoga prac­tice, when­ever I hear the teach­ers thank their lin­eage of teach­ers, I al­ways think of how my lin­eage reaches back to Wayne Rob­bins. I won­der about who his teach­ers were. When we de­cided to in­clude this poem, AC got in touch with Wayne Rob­bins to ask him for per­mis­sion to use his won­der­ful name. He said it was ok, but then we had to email him again for more per­mis­sion to in­clude his email! You’ll see why. This is what he wrote:

From: Wayne Rob­bins

Sub­ject: hiya Wayne it's Amber

To: AC Church

Dear Amber,

Thanks for shar­ing these words with me—It re­ally means a lot.

I tried to be as ob­jec­tive as I can about a poem that has my name as its title.  I tried to pre­tend it was some­one else's name, like Je­remy Smith or Es­mer­alda Sanchez (I made those names up).

That helped.  I like the min­i­mal­is­tic ap­proach—no words are wasted and every line cre­ates a clear and in­ter­est­ing image in the mind.  And I like how it cap­tures the im­por­tance of a men­tor's im­pres­sion on a stu­dent.  And of course I like how the poem it­self has some­how made me write nice things about your paper again many years later.  That's pretty mag­i­cal—

I had for­got­ten about bring­ing that tur­tle to class.  I love tur­tles.

Thanks again for con­tact­ing me— Let's keep in touch!

Wayne

Ed. Note, cont’d:

The lat­est-but-surely-not-last in­stall­ment in the story of Wayne Rob­bins: When I left the front porches of North Car­olina to be a stu­dent of po­etry in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia, AC Church made me a pair of mix­tapes for my drive across the coun­try. Some­where be­fore the Ten­nessee line, I heard Row­boat of Stone. Wayne Rob­bins & the Hell­say­ers make sweet music, which you can find in the usual lo­ca­tions, and Wayne Rob­bins is still a song­writer and poet who teaches in the Car­oli­nas.

—Rachel McLeod Kaminer, Guest Ed­i­tor

You could call this col­lege a com­mu­nity. If com­mu­nity meant that we were all in­fants to­gether, des­per­ately seek­ing a mother’s breast to suck. It was the cheap­est for­mula we could find.

It was a nat­ural fit for me and my sib­lings: we were home schooled from the start. We had sucked the life out of our mother through a cord, lis­ten­ing to her read­ing and swim­ming in her am­ni­otic fluid. We had sucked at her breast while she dreamed up The Great­est Home Ed­u­ca­tion Any­one Has Ever Had, sucked up all she had to teach about proper hand­writ­ing and man­ners and the Great De­pres­sion. We sucked our thumbs vis­it­ing all the major Civil War bat­tle­fields east of the Mis­sis­sippi and south of the Mason-Dixon. Our fa­ther didn’t be­lieve that Mar­tin Luther King Jr. was any­body par­tic­u­larly vir­tu­ous, so we sucked that idea right up, too. I thought the Con­fed­er­ate flag was kind of pretty, and I didn’t un­der­stand why every­one seemed so pissed about it. Now that mother’s milk had run out – she claimed her knowl­edge ended at log­a­rithms – we en­rolled part-time at the col­lege.

You could call it a com­mu­nity. If com­mu­nity meant that we were all peer­ing into the mir­ror in the girls’ bath­room, study­ing the pro­gres­sion of im­ages, search­ing for a rev­e­la­tion about whether our dreams were going to live or die. The dim light of the girls’ bath­room cast our faces in a flu­o­res­cent sui­ci­dal glow. I began to wear makeup to cover up the fa­cial dis­col­oration. I got sev­eral of­fers of ret­ri­bu­tion. Is some­one beat­ing you up? I’ll take him. Just tell me who. The truth was that I didn’t sleep and I was get­ting grey-eyed from my gog­gles. Grey-eyed god­dess my ass. Athena never swam three miles be­fore first pe­riod.

If pre­vi­ously I lived in a spir­i­tual realm, sus­tain­ing my­self largely on books from the li­brary and the liv­ing water they al­ways were talk­ing about at church, I now lurched into a grotesque phys­i­cal one. Cig­a­rette smoke wreathed my face and my body fa­tigued it­self wan­der­ing around, pick­ing my way around the brown­ing de­posits of chew­ing to­bacco. I found lit­tle cor­ners of the cam­pus where stu­dents were for­bid­den to smoke, where I could hide and eat the calo­ries of an ath­lete. It was the boys’ game at lunch, to see what I had brought to eat. The old men study­ing there only said hello, only shook my hand warmly, only helped me with my physics equa­tions. The young ones saw me dif­fer­ently and I hated it. My mother lamented my boy­ish­ness. Why don’t you wear a nice top? She wasn’t the one walk­ing through the halls to the math and sci­ence classes, filled with boys and their wet dreams about being en­gi­neers and buy­ing big trucks. I gladly fled my house for early morn­ing prac­tice. No one in that pool was awake enough to ques­tion my fem­i­nin­ity.

No one ques­tioned much at the col­lege. We were all a bunch of ba­bies and we knew it. Look­ing for mother’s milk, look­ing for a for­mula.  

I found mine one day when I looked up to the board and saw a school of fishy equa­tions swim­ming across the board with sound ef­fects. Swoop wheep hooo, sang the teacher. Chika chicka chic­kee, that’s our as­ymp­tote right there. I stared. This wasn’t math.

Our teacher didn’t have a last name, so we made up ru­mors. We told any­one who would lis­ten that she had got­ten mar­ried so many times that she had fi­nally set­tled on no last name at all. So her name was just Val. Every­thing about her was pleas­antly dis­tract­ing. She looked like Lady Lib­erty, slen­der and grace­ful with a fat dry erase marker held high in her hand. She had the spirit of the Lady, too. I couldn’t un­der­stand a word she said but I wrote them all down. She was going to lift us out of stu­pid­ity, she was going to kill medi­oc­rity dead. We were tired, pim­pled masses yearn­ing to be free, and she was going to teach us cal­cu­lus.

I’ve never had the courage to go back to the small wine-mak­ing town where I spent my most lonely, pe­cu­liar and re­ward­ing year as a Ro­tary Youth Exchange stu­dent 14 years ago.

It’s not be­cause I don’t have fond mem­o­ries of Alzey; I do, es­pe­cially of the big-hearted and pa­tient host fam­i­lies who put up with my id­iocy as I bum­bled my way through the year. It’s more to do with how I re­mem­ber my­self at that time. I was a gi­gan­tic loser, and mem­ory has only sharp­ened this fact. The ten­der age of sev­en­teen is cruel enough in a coun­try where you ac­tu­ally speak the lan­guage and un­der­stand the cul­ture. It just gets worse else­where.

I haven’t for­got­ten the days when I wan­dered around the freez­ing vil­lage alone, killing time until I could go home be­cause I was use­less at school. I had, in total, twelve friends – eight were other ex­change stu­dents who lived in dif­fer­ent cities and the re­main­ing were host-sib­lings who had no choice but to be friends with me. I skipped class like a fiend be­cause I couldn’t un­der­stand any­thing any­ways. To top it off, I got fat be­cause I vis­ited the bak­ery an av­er­age of two times a day, stuff­ing my face with brezeln (pret­zels) and käse lau­gen (cheese buns). Most of this ended up on my face, sadly, giv­ing a look that was akin to Jabba the Hutt.

I was ba­si­cally a tod­dler: clue­less, slightly mute, with my host fam­ily lead­ing me around from place to place with­out hav­ing any idea about what was going on. I reached new heights in the art forms of lone­li­ness and os­tra­ciza­tion, cov­ered up with the ve­neer of pride and stub­born­ness.

I re­mem­ber early on, my first host mother, Ute, ask­ing me why I couldn’t be more like their last ex­change stu­dent, Michelle.

“Michelle was so pas­sion­ate!” she said, ma­neu­ver­ing the grey mini­van in traf­fic on route to school at some in­sane speed. “She would al­ways try so hard. Her Ger­man was much bet­ter than yours.”

I grew to hate Michelle – how out­go­ing she must have been, how she mas­tered Ger­man in mere months whereas I slogged along, sound­ing like a 3-year-old with a ter­ri­ble mem­ory and a speech im­ped­i­ment. Every­thing came eas­ily for Michelle whereas I made every cul­tural mis­step, screw-up and fail­ure in the book.

And yet, so pre­dictably, as it has hap­pened with thou­sands of ex­change stu­dents be­fore, and will hap­pen thou­sands of times again, there was a light at the end of the tun­nel. Many months in, some­thing clicked in my brain. Some­thing changed.

I started writ­ing my diary in Ger­man, adding in the Eng­lish words or phrases I didn’t know, such as the gut-cring­ing phrase, “oh my god, can you say elec­tric eye con­tact” in re­sponse to a boy I had a crush on. I started dream­ing in Ger­man. And yes, while I might have only still had twelve friends, we grew close and con­tinue to be to this day. I still was car­ry­ing an extra 20 pounds but some­times, for just a while,  it’s re­ally fun to eat every­thing you want. And then go back for sec­onds. And thirds. I moved to an­other host fam­ily, one who ac­cepted me for who I was, loser-like be­hav­ior and all, and I still get a bit weepy when I think of how they res­cued me, and with that, my year.

School got bet­ter, too. I switched classes and grades: I at­tended Eng­lish with the grade 13 class, His­tory with the grade 10 class and Ger­man with the grade 5 class across the street, still some­what ad­vanced for me. How they laughed at me in the be­gin­ning. How I laughed with them later.

I stopped sulk­ing and started en­joy­ing life again.

As I left Ger­many a year later, sob­bing and wear­ing a ridicu­lous Ro­tary Club navy blazer cov­ered in thou­sands of pins, the cus­toms of­fi­cer asked me why I was so sad.

“You lived in Alzey? That’s not that great a place,” he said, smil­ing.

I had no words. I couldn’t tell him about how I had gone from feel­ing like the most awful per­son on the face of the planet to feel­ing like I be­longed some­where. I couldn’t put into words just how much I didn’t want to go home. The trans­for­ma­tion from feel­ing so hor­ri­bly sad to feel­ing so in­cred­i­bly con­tent - all in the space of twelve months - is one that is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain to any­one, let alone a cus­toms agent.

Re­flect­ing back on it, it was by far the best year of my life. It was also the worst year of my life. And yes, as far as the clichés go, it changed my life for the bet­ter.

I’ve gone back to Ger­many dozens of times since my ex­change - my best friend now lives there and it’s a fre­quent stopover hub en route to some­where. Yet, every sin­gle time, I al­ways think to my­self, “Should I go back to Alzey? Should I go back to re­mem­ber how I felt back then?”

And some­how, just some­how, I talk my­self out of it.

Charles had been vis­it­ing the Scott County Jail every Sat­ur­day for two years. He taught a va­ri­ety of courses to the in­mates, from el­e­men­tary sci­ence to cre­ative writ­ing and U.S. his­tory. For the last fif­teen years he had spent five days a week teach­ing world his­tory to un­ruly sev­enth and eighth graders, and he some­times won­dered why he chose to spend his Sat­ur­days at the jail. He won­dered when no one showed up, when some­one cursed at him, and when the one in­mate charged at him (fol­low­ing Charles’s sug­ges­tion that the in­mate work on his hand­writ­ing in­stead of play­ing so much hand­ball).

The jail class­room was a mostly peace­ful place, but since the in­ci­dent, the war­den had paired each in­mate with a guard, mak­ing for a new dy­namic in the small room. Sud­denly there were a dozen men in the cramped space, the guards shuf­fling in the nar­row pe­riph­ery be­tween wall and table, un­sure of how to oc­cupy them­selves. They po­litely de­clined Charles’s in­vi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate, in­stead lean­ing against the walls with their arms crossed, lis­ten­ing to class lec­tures and dis­cus­sions, be­com­ing more re­laxed each week.

Of all the courses of­fered, Charles es­pe­cially en­joyed teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing but had no­ticed the ab­sence of one in­mate who at­tended every other class. One Sat­ur­day after a les­son fo­cus­ing on the Civil War he asked Lyle--a po­lite, at­ten­tive young man--if he’d have any in­ter­est in speed read­ing. Lyle looked sur­prised, but said that he’d come if Charles taught the class.

The next Sat­ur­day Lyle walked into the nar­row room and sat across from Charles at the long metal table. Charles had no­ticed the young man when Lyle had first ar­rived at the jail seven or eight months be­fore, had stud­ied the re­laxed pos­ture of his strong, slen­der frame. He looked like some­one who would prob­a­bly al­ways be a great ath­lete, de­spite thin­ning so much dur­ing his sen­tence. His long greasy hair made Charles think that he would have looked like a Jesus-wannabe hip­pie if it weren’t for the or­ange jump­suit. But it was Lyle’s calm ex­pres­sion that struck Charles the most—he looked kind and gen­tle, and there was an open­ness in his eyes, one that Charles felt he didn’t often see, in or out­side of the jail.

A group of four guards soon fol­lowed, walk­ing into the room talk­ing. They didn’t no­tice the un­usual si­lence, Lyle and Charles watch­ing them. They were all abuzz of some ex­cite­ment, and sud­denly stopped all to­gether. One of the guards nod­ded at Lyle and then said to Charles, “Small group. You al­right today?”

“Yes, I think so. Thanks.” And the guards re­sumed their con­ver­sa­tion as they moved out of the room, leav­ing the metal door open be­hind them.

While the guards had been talk­ing, Lyle had set two books on the table: Daniel Silva’s Por­trait of a Spy and a fat physics text.

“One of those speed reads by it­self, you know. The other one—well, I don’t think is meant to be sped through,” Charles said, lean­ing for­ward on the table and clasp­ing his hands.

Lyle sat back, re­laxed into his chair. “I know. I just wanted to show you what I’ve been read­ing.”

“Good. Why two such dif­fer­ent things?”

Lyle looked down at the books as if con­sid­er­ing the dis­tinc­tion, but not too se­ri­ously.

“I just enjoy them both,” he shrugged. “I stud­ied art in col­lege, so I like these mys­ter­ies that in­te­grate art his­tory, but I’ve also al­ways loved math­e­mat­ics and physics. I have a brain for both, I guess.”

Charles sat look­ing at Lyle for a mo­ment. He felt a sur­prise that he hoped wasn’t ap­par­ent on his face. He reached across the table, pushed the fat mys­tery aside and picked up the physics book. Flip­ping through it he caught glimpses of equa­tions on most every page, graphs and ta­bles full of num­bers and sym­bols, and black-and-white pho­tos of ex­per­i­ments from the 1950s.

“This place needs to up­date their li­brary.” He set the book down and pushed it back across the table. “Why are you here Lyle?”

“To learn speed read­ing. I’m so bored here, so it’s just nice to learn some­thing new. And after you men­tioned it, I re­al­ized that I don’t al­ways fully pay at­ten­tion to what I’m read­ing—my mind wan­ders, you know? There are so many dis­trac­tions here—peo­ple yelling, sounds echo­ing every­where, heavy doors slam­ming—but it seems like if I’m speed read­ing my at­ten­tion will be more fo­cused.”

As the teacher of a sub­ject, this was what Charles wanted to hear. But as a man sit­ting across the table this was not the ques­tion he had asked.

Sit­ting back again, Charles crossed his arms, strangely aware of how unan­i­mated Lyle’s con­ver­sa­tion was. The young man was speak­ing gen­tly and de­lib­er­ately, at what struck Charles as the per­fect level for the echoey room.

Charles took a breath and dropped his hands to his lap.

“Well, I think speed read­ing can help with focus, but that’s not what I meant. Why are you in jail? You’re ed­u­cated, po­lite, thought­ful. I usu­ally don’t ask that of my stu­dents, but I’m re­ally cu­ri­ous about you.”

Lyle smiled, and nod­ded. “Yeah, I don’t seem crazy, right? Well, I’m not in here. It’s out there where I have prob­lems. In here I can just read and draw.”

“And not deal with the pres­sures of ‘life be­yond the walls’?” Charles asked, smil­ing and air quot­ing the phrase.

“Ex­actly. They keep telling me I’m an al­co­holic, but I think it’s just that I don’t like it out there.”

Charles was sur­prised at the se­ri­ous tone, and had the thought that he shouldn’t be push­ing his luck, but Lyle seemed per­fectly com­fort­able with the con­ver­sa­tion. Both men were now lean­ing back in their chairs, ap­pear­ing per­fectly re­laxed as if they were sit­ting at a street­side café some morn­ing shar­ing cof­fee and cig­a­rettes.

“But not enough to kill your­self?”

“Well, no. That’s al­ways an op­tion, but it isn’t a very good one.”

“Nei­ther is being in here.”

“I know,” said Lyle. “But I don’t have to worry about much here. No job, no bills, no peo­ple nag­ging you about your prob­lems. Here you’re just sur­rounded by other peo­ple who couldn’t deal with it ei­ther.” Lyle looked around as he said this, as if gaz­ing at the oth­ers he spoke of.

“So, it’s bet­ter in here?”

“Not bet­ter,” said Lyle, “Just eas­ier. Some­days. I’ve been in and out of here four times, same stu­pid crime, which makes you start to feel pretty dumb. And after a few months I’m al­ways eager to get out and start my life over. So that’s where I am now--over the re­gret, but stuck in that place be­tween bore­dom and rest­less­ness.”

“Sounds fair enough,” said Charles. “So why learn speed read­ing?”

“Why did you learn it?”

The ques­tion caught Charles off guard in its sim­plic­ity; but even in his flat tone Lyle sounded cu­ri­ous.

“Be­cause I do a lot of read­ing, and like you I wanted to still ab­sorb as much in­for­ma­tion as I could while speed­ing up the process.”

“Ex­actly,” said Lyle, his voice be­com­ing more ex­cited. “I want to read every book in here dur­ing the next four months. That’s what’ll get me through this. I don’t know if it’ll make me any smarter or any­thing, but it’s a goal to set, and my coun­selor tells me that will help me ‘be­yond the walls’.”

Charles smiled and nod­ded. He leaned down and took a stack of pa­pers and a slim book from his bag, then placed the ma­te­ri­als on the table and looked at Lyle. “So let’s get to it.”

I hadn’t seen Owl’s mouth since the first week out, when Dave from Bak­ers­field clum­sily rolled a boul­der over his foot. Owl howled that time loud enough to shake a rain of pine nee­dles onto our heads. New as we were then, we prob­a­bly laughed at him a lit­tle, and ner­vously watched our bear-like leader for the warn­ing signs of a charge. In­stead his beard closed back around his mouth, we all worked hard until knock­ing off time, and then Owl plonked his steel toe booted foot in the creek until the swelling went down enough for him to take it off. We soaked nearby, qui­etly wish­ing for a beer, for a joint, a mat­tress, a day off, ab­sorb­ing our first les­son with the creek’s icy chill.

That first week some of us had been wiry punks like Jenna from Fresno, dark goths like Trevor from San Jose, or slick drifters like Bob from Long Beach. We were all there, with var­i­ous de­grees of vol­un­tary, to learn how to work hard and live through an en­tire day of so­bri­ety. We had all lived through lesser mea­sures – board­ing school for delin­quents, liv­ing with grandma across the state, day jobs, and strict cur­fews and home drug test kits – but the six month stint of hard labor in the back­coun­try was a step up for all of us.

We’re now five months in, and sit­ting around the camp­fire read­ing our bi-weekly mail de­liver, we all look like Owl. Beards, dirty over­alls, white tshirts now brown with sweat, beat to hell boots, hair wild with camp­fire smoke and creek water and ban­danas, we look like the rough street kids who live in the park in the city, but with­out the dogs. And we smell worse. Five months in, we’re fi­nally start­ing to fig­ure life out. We’re build­ing trail ten times faster now. Our crew hasn’t had a fight in weeks. There’s a kin­ship now. In­stead of plot­ting our in­di­vid­ual es­capes back to the city and a first big score, we’re en­joy­ing our week­ends to­gether hik­ing up into the high coun­try, mov­ing fast with­out our tools. We are ex­cited for each other’s let­ters – we cheer with Jenna over good news about her brother’s new baby, we help Dave get over a breakup let­ter that was for the best.

Owl’s let­ter is from the of­fice and it has a pic­ture with it. His beard parts like two bears un­clasp­ing from a hug. His mouth ap­pears, but this time no howl. No sound at all. We aren’t laugh­ing – it’s us in the pic­ture, cov­ered in blood, fire­light gleam­ing off the bot­tle in Bob’s red hand.

A few months ago, an old guy with a huge pack came hik­ing through around din­ner time. We got to chat­ting with Mor­ton the old Ma­rine and he of­fered to give us a sur­vival skills lec­ture in ex­change for our beans and corn­bread. We were still cyn­i­cal then, but Owl was ex­cited and it sounded bet­ter than lis­ten­ing to his har­mon­ica. That was how we learned to snare a deer and butcher it. We talked about it all that week­end never re­ally be­liev­ing any of us city kids could do it. Mail de­liv­ery came Mon­day on the mule with Linda the camp cook. I had a new pair of boots my cousin sent (to re­place the too cheap, de­stroyed shells dan­gling from my feet.) Also, tucked away in the pack­ag­ing – just as re­quested – a bot­tle of Jager and a dozen joints, which some­how made it past scrutiny into my tent. I thought, this week­end we’re going to party. Four of us headed out Sat­ur­day morn­ing, half jok­ingly laid a few snares around the lake we’d hiked to, laid out our sleep­ing bags and built a fire. There was an ar­gu­ment, but in the end peer pres­sure won out. We got fucked up. It got dark. And then we heard the deer.

I woke up to re­al­ize that

1. it’s noon
2. I’m now sun­burnt
3. I’m hun­gover
4. I have a huge knife in my hand and a bot­tle near my head
5. I’m cov­ered in blood and it’s sticky
6. my three friends are scat­tered around also cov­ered in blood
7. there is a deer’s glossy dead eye star­ing at me

I scream and run into the lake. As every­one else wakes up, I try to dis­guise the bon­fire’s burn holes in my sleep­ing bag with ad­di­tional dirt, re­cover my cam­era from a nearby bush, bury the bot­tle, vomit and bury that too. Then we bury the deer, silently take vows of si­lence, and head back.

We cleaned up our act, worked hard. I even took pic­tures of wild­flow­ers on the week­ends. I had put that night far be­hind me, and sent my film to a dif­fer­ent cousin to get de­vel­oped. It was the sum­mer after Ted Kazin­sky was ar­rested. I men­tioned our hair and dirt, right? So when this acne-scarred six­teen year old work­ing the drug store photo de­vel­oper in Palo Alto sees our group shot from the night of the deer – blood like war paint, bare chests, wild hare, knives, no deer in­sight – he freaks. Calls the cops, who freak and call the Park ser­vice, and so on until the photo shows up here in camp with the let­ter says that Owl has to walk us out of the woods. We’re fired. We’re dis­owned.

Leav­ing wasn’t pretty. The fact that we would be out of the woods soon brought back some of our old selves. Bob from Long Beach got angry, even pulled his knife out. In the end, the re­main­der of our shocked crew helped us pack up and we started the two day walk back to the near­est dirt road. Owl led us out silently, only stop­ping once slowly to shake his beard, and then got on with teach­ing us how to walk back into the world.

Sarah Mad­dux

Life’s but a walk­ing shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing.

If you bourgie hip­ster-yup­pies ever won­dered where we went when you re­placed our aban­doned fac­to­ries and crack houses with brew­pubs and loft apart­ments, then I’ll tell you. We never left the Pearl. Sure, we moved to Parkrose and Cully and Beaver­ton, but we haunt nightly the es­tab­lish­ments that were around be­fore you were here to label them “Pearletariat” and “divey.”

But I didn’t sneak past my par­ents’ bed­room at mid­night to dis­cuss rent con­trol or Free Peo­ple or how farmer’s mar­kets are just so Port­land. What’s done is done. My topic tonight is much older than that or you or even this grand, sop­ping City of Roses. I’m here to find out the an­swer to a ques­tion au­di­ences have been com­ing back after in­ter­mis­sion for since 1600: How does Mac­beth end?

It won’t take long for you to fig­ure this out, so let’s re­move the means that makes us strangers; I’m not an “A” stu­dent. I don’t care what all those but­tons do on my cal­cu­la­tor, and I don’t care what the toes of a frog look like. I cheat and lie my way through high school. What’s fair is foul and what’s foul is fair. And yeah I do the Spar­knote thing. It got me through The Great Gatsby (he dies at the end), The Awak­en­ing (she dies at the end), Of Mice and Men (he dies at the end), and 1984 (didn’t fin­ish the sum­mary, but I’m guess­ing he dies at the end). But, hell, if Mac­beth has sur­vived four cen­turies of war and cen­sor­ship and drama geeks botch­ing the lead, I should at least give Ole Willy two more hours of my time. Which wouldn’t be bad if I could keep my eyes open. Coach has us doing two-a-days, and I need caf­feine and a cast of so­ci­etal mis­fits to keep me awake through the final two acts. So here I am.

Cof­fee Time’s al­ways the same, love­able cir­cus that has served as my mid­night com­mu­nity col­lege study bud­dies since I first started sneak­ing out Sopho­more year: the ma­ni­a­cal barista who won’t take your lip, your spe­cial re­quests, or your credit card (if your pur­chase is under $5); the macho comic book artist who calls the sui­cide hot­line every fif­teen min­utes to ask ques­tions you could eas­ily find the an­swer to on Wikipedia; the comic book artist’s biggest fan, a gos­sipy, chubby Asian woman who nightly tries to win af­fec­tion by clip­ping up mag­a­zines into grotesque col­lages of farm an­i­mals; the mom-jean-wear­ing dancer at the Vegan strip club who rolls her dying pug around in a baby car­riage and feeds it ba­nana bread. The main ac­tiv­ity in the shop comes from the group of chess play­ers that have a tour­na­ment every night from eight until close. This group in­cludes four men all with dag­gers in their smiles. Two are slobs who gave up on the job hunt years ago; then there’s a lawyer – the only other black dude in the shop – and the man they call the King. The lat­ter has Tourettes and a mul­let, wears the same shirt every day (“All three voices in my head think you’re an idiot”), and scares the shit out of the non-reg­u­lars by going on ab­surd bois­ter­ous rants about kitchen ap­pli­ances and pest con­trol. They call him the King be­cause that’s his last name, but also be­cause he takes home the con­struc­tion paper chess-champ crown al­most every night and wears it in the shop the fol­low­ing day. And, yes, like every other piece of paper in the shop, the crown is cov­ered in farm an­i­mal col­lages.

Be­fore you think I’m mak­ing fun of these folks, you should know that I need these night urchins. This group has helped me and my C-minus brain breeze through high school. Their col­lec­tive knowl­edge has an­swered every home­work ques­tion I’ve ever had. When­ever I get stuck, a few times per night usu­ally, I just yell out, “Who the hell knows geom­e­try?” and some­one usu­ally comes and does the prob­lem for me. That’s how I found out the strip­per is His­panic (I passed Span­ish II with­out know­ing a word of Span­ish) and that the col­lage artist can label every coun­try in Eu­rope. Plus, if no one knows the an­swer, then the comic book artist knows a guy on the hot­line he’s happy to ask for me. He’s got him on speed dial.

But tonight he’s not going to make that call, and I’m not going to yell out ask­ing for help. I’ve got two and a half hours be­fore this place closes, and I’m gonna fin­ish by then. So, what hap­pens to Mac­beth?

Let me catch you up. Ba­si­cally there are these three crazy witches that tell Mac­beth he’s going to be king. So Mac­beth tells his wife and they have the king over for din­ner. The wife con­vinces Mac­beth to kill the king, so he does and frames the ser­vants and then kills them. This ef­fec­tively makes him king, but then things start to get weird. He and his wife start see­ing ghosts and hal­lu­ci­nat­ing, and I think peo­ple start to no­tice how crazy they are being be­cause Mac­beth goes back to the crazy witches for some guid­ance. They say some­thing about some no­ble­man called Mac­duff that I didn’t catch but, yeah, that’s about it.

Al­right. Got my cof­fee. Got my seat. It’s the one in the cor­ner, all the char­ac­ters in view. Act 4. Here goes.

First Witch

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.

Sec­ond Witch

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Third Witch

Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

First Witch

Round about the caul­dron go;

In the poi­son'd en­trails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swel­ter'd venom sleep­ing got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

All

Dou­ble, dou­ble toil and trou­ble;

Fire burn, and caul­dron bub­ble.

The sound of shat­ter­ing of glass and the barista yells a string of pro­fan­ity. She scam­pers to the back and re­turns with a broom and dust­pan. The King de­parts the chess table and saun­ters over to the counter.

“Every­thing al­right there, lit­tle lady?”

She stops and stares at him from her crouched po­si­tion. “Don’t call me lit­tle lady. And, yes,” she fires back.

“Just be care­ful there.” His paper crown dips lower on his fore­head as he crouches over her, arms akimbo.

I keep read­ing.

Sec­ond Witch

Fil­let of a fenny snake,

In the caul­dron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,

For a charm of pow­er­ful trou­ble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bub­ble.

All

Dou­ble, dou­ble toil and trou­ble;

Fire burn and caul­dron bub­ble.

An­other curse es­capes the bar­rista. She’s bleed­ing, and looks back up at the King. “You’re going to lose tonight, you know? You can’t win every night.”

He hands her some nap­kins. “What makes you say that?”

She wraps the nap­kins around her fin­ger, and she looks up at him dead in the eyes as she stands up.

“Why are you so sur­prised?” she replies, then turns, and dis­ap­pears in the back.

“Can you be­lieve her?” the King asks the hip­ster in the booth clos­est to the ac­ci­dent.

The hip­ster con­tin­ues typ­ing for a mo­ment, then looks up. “Be­lieve what?” he asks non­cha­lantly.

This hip­ster is re­ally the only reg­u­lar who has never helped me. He shows up each night wrapped in a kef­fiyeh he never takes off, or­ders a tea he never drinks, and works on his lap­top with­out look­ing up. He didn’t even look up the time the junkie stood next to him, stretch­ing his arms up to the bil­lowy ceil­ing, grab­bing for his stash. Even the King watched, but that hip­ster just kept typ­ing away, shift­ing his eyes back and forth across the screen like he was watch­ing a ten­nis match. I wouldn’t mind, ex­cept you know this dude’s a whiz kid and could prob­a­bly do cal­cu­lus blind­folded. He’s an amal­ga­ma­tion of every nerd I’ve ever met or seen in a 1980s chick flick. Skinny and pale with thick glasses and bad al­ler­gies, his head so full of thoughts he can’t hold it up straight. A part of me feels a lit­tle sorry for him. He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t no­tice the pas­sion play of cra­zies sur­round­ing him. You can get wire­less at your house. Why does he even come here?

But, again, I’m not here to find the an­swer to that ques­tion. I’m here to fig­ure out what hap­pens to Mac­beth.

The next hour is a blur, in­ter­rupted only by a cou­ple shouts of “Check­mate!” from the crew of wretched souls win­now­ing their way to the ex­cit­ing con­clu­sion. While this is going on around me, Mac­beth does some se­ri­ously screwed up stuff. He or­ders a bunch of peo­ple to be killed, in­clud­ing Mac­duff’s fam­ily. I think they es­cape, but I’m too tired to reread that sec­tion. I need to re­fuel.

Two a.m. is the witch­ing hour at Cof­fee Time, and each night it is marked by the cheers of the chess play­ers. Tonight the lawyer has de­feated slob num­ber two to take on the King in the final match, which begins promptly at 2:30. The barista kicks us out at eight min­utes ‘til three (the clocks at Cof­fee Time run eight min­utes fast in the evening and twenty-three min­utes slow in the morn­ings), so every­one gets up for their last cup of the night. And since we’re all sleep de­prived and over­caf­feinated to begin with, things re­ally start to get strange. Only the reg­u­lars are left at this point, and, with the ex­cep­tion of the hip­ster, we’re all wait­ing in line for our next cup. The bar­rista is yelling at the ma­chines. The col­lage artist chitchats ner­vously with her love about tonight’s mas­ter­piece, a rooster for her niece. She’s rub­bing the glue from her hands fu­ri­ously. All the while, the comic artist ig­nores her and gazes at the strip­per, who’s feed­ing her pug small bits of ba­nana bread and chat­ting to it as though it were a baby.

I’m just as jit­tery as the rest. I got a dou­ble shot in this one, and I want to yell. I want at­ten­tion. I want to know what hap­pens to Mac­beth.

Doc­tor

I have two nights watched with you, but can per­ceive

no truth in your re­port. When was it she last walked?

Gen­tle­woman

Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen

her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon

her, un­lock her closet, take forth paper, fold it,

write upon't, read it, af­ter­wards seal it, and again

re­turn to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

Doc­tor

A great per­tur­ba­tion in na­ture, to re­ceive at once

the ben­e­fit of sleep, and do the ef­fects of

watch­ing! In this slum­bery ag­i­ta­tion, be­sides her

walk­ing and other ac­tual per­for­mances, what, at any

time, have you heard her say?

In line, the lawyer in­ter­rupts the col­lage artist, “I’m throw­ing my towel in early tonight. Who wants my spot? How about you?” She’s still rub­bing her hands.

“I’m afraid the pieces will stick to my fin­gers.” She laughs and looks at her hands. “Out damned glue! Who would have thought one jar would have so much glue!” She laughs again and looks over at the comic artist, now on the phone, ask­ing the hot­line vol­un­teer where Dun­si­nane Hill is. The lawyer passes him.

Doc­tor

This dis­ease is be­yond my prac­tise: yet I have known

those which have walked in their sleep who have died

ho­lily in their beds.

The lawyer asks the strip­per next. “You want in?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Dun­can wouldn’t have me leave his side, would you, Mr. Dun­can? Would you?” She kneels down and lets the pug lick her face.

Doc­tor

Foul whis­per­ings are abroad: un­nat­ural deeds

Do breed un­nat­ural trou­bles: in­fected minds

To their deaf pil­lows will dis­charge their se­crets:

More needs she the di­vine than the physi­cian.

God, God for­give us all! Look after her;

Re­move from her the means of all an­noy­ance,

And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night:

My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight.

I think, but dare not speak.

The lawyer ap­proaches me, “You want in?”

“I’m try­ing to find out what hap­pens to Mac­beth,” I reply, half hop­ing he’ll give me the an­swer.

“Is that the one with the black man falling for the white chick?”

“I don’t think so – At least, I don’t think he’s black.”

“I don’t re­mem­ber what hap­pened in that one any­way. He prob­a­bly died in the end. They al­ways do.”

Doc­tor

Not so sick, my lord,

As she is trou­bled with thick com­ing fan­cies,

That keep her from her rest.

His last stop is the hip­ster.

“You want in?”

“In?” the hip­ster replies, not look­ing up.

“Do you want to play chess? I’ve gotta take off early tonight.” The hip­ster shifts his eyes to the chess table. Every­one in the line is star­ing at him, an­tic­i­pat­ing a po­lite re­jec­tion from the mil­que­toast.

“Yes.”

Doc­tor

Therein the pa­tient

Must min­is­ter to him­self.

“Are you headed to bed?” the King asks.

“Di­rectly,” replies the lawyer. “I’m sure this young man will fight you bravely.” The lawyer grabs his trench coat and exits.

The hip­ster closes his lap­top and walks to the chair op­po­site the King. He sits, the King stares. They start.

I look down at the pages. “What hap­pens to Mac­beth?” I whis­per.

Mac­beth

I have al­most for­got the taste of fears;

The time has been, my senses would have cool'd

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dis­mal trea­tise rouse and stir

As life were in't: I have supp'd full with hor­rors;

Dire­ness, fa­mil­iar to my slaugh­ter­ous thoughts

Can­not once start me.

A yell from the slobs erupts.

“What hap­pened?” the bar­rista yells from across the room.

“She’s dead. The noob killed the King’s Queen,” says the slob.

She cack­les. “See? What I tell you?”

The col­lage artist gets up to watch. The comic artist fol­lows. I look to the strip­per.

“What hap­pens to Mac­beth?” I ask her. She shrugs and turns to her pet.

“I’ll ask Mr. Dun­can. Do you know what hap­pens to Mac­beth, Mr. Dun­can?”

No an­swer.

Mac­beth

She should have died here­after;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-mor­row, and to-mor­row, and to-mor­row,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syl­la­ble of recorded time,

And all our yes­ter­days have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief can­dle!

I glance at my watch. It’s 2:39, and I have thir­teen min­utes. My legs are shak­ing, my hands are sweat­ing. The hip­ster moves his rook. The col­lage artist rubs her hands. The barista chats with the cap­puc­cino ma­chine that she’s clean­ing. The strip­per and her pug join the chess au­di­ence. The King watches his bishop fall.

“What hap­pens to Mac­beth?” I ask the barista.

She keeps grab­bing at some­thing on the counter, as if try­ing to crush a fly. “It was right in front of me a sec­ond ago.”

“What was?”

“My knife – What was your ques­tion?”

I give her a puz­zled look. Then re­peat my ques­tion.

“He makes Tamara eat her chil­dren. Hell if I care.”

Mac­beth

They have tied me to a stake; I can­not fly,

But, bear-like, I must fight the course. What's he

That was not born of woman? Such a one

Am I to fear, or none.

The strip­per holds her hands to her mouth. Her gasp es­capes with the rest. The King places his op­po­nent’s queen off the bat­tle­field. What’s done can­not be un­done. It’s 2:47.

“You’ve got five min­utes to get the hell out!” screams the barista.

The crowd doesn’t move. I use this as an­other op­por­tu­nity to ask.

“Hey could any of you tell me what hap­pens to Mac­beth?” I’m met with si­lence.

The col­lage artist rubs her hands slowly. The comic squeezes his phone. The King stares at his king. The hip­ster stares at his rook. The only sound is the barista grop­ing around for her knife.

Mac­beth

I will not yield,

To kiss the ground be­fore young Mal­colm's feet,

And to be baited with the rab­ble's curse.

The hip­ster places his fin­gers on the rook.

The strip­per stops pet­ting the pug. The col­lage artist ceases rub­bing her hands. The comic drops his phone. The barista holds the knife up, gaz­ing at her re­flec­tion in the shiny dag­ger. She looks to the clock. She opens her mouth, but I stand up on the table be­fore she can say any­thing. I scream; I scream as loud as I can, “What hap­pens to Mac­beth? WHAT HAP­PENS TO MAC­BETH!”

My face is flushed. A drop of sweat falls from my fever­ish fore­head. The room is still.

The hip­ster moves his rook. He looks at me. The au­di­ence fol­lows his gaze to me. He says, “Mac­beth dies at the end. Mac­duff kills him.” He then turns to the King. “Check­mate.”

The au­di­ence erupts in a vi­o­lent boom.

The night ends like all oth­ers. The barista yells at us until we’re all out, with the col­lage artist being the last one col­lect­ing her scraps. I stuff my book in my back pocket and walk out as the barista places the knife in the drawer.

Mac­beth dies at the end, but so do we in our own way. The dif­fer­ence be­tween us and Mac­beth is that we don’t care about good and evil in Cof­fee Time. Heroin won’t even get the hip­ster to look up from his com­puter, and we laugh at the prank calls to the sui­cide hot­line. We’re just a bunch of soul­less sil­hou­ettes of our day­time selves in there, amoral shells of hu­mans dri­ven by our needs for caf­feine and at­ten­tion and table space. We walk in, play our role, and walk out; no one hears from each other until we sur­face for the next mid­night ses­sion.

The King once told me that every­thing in life hap­pens twice, first as tragedy then as farce. I see the tragedy in life – the ad­dic­tion, the poverty, the ill­ness. But I see the farce, too – the dumb­est of farces – told by who­ever is dumb enough to tell it, whether that may be me or Mr. Dun­can or the green cop­per Port­landia her­self, clutch­ing her tri­dent while stoop­ing down to scoop us up so we too can see the farce, to save us from the tragedy, the sound, the fury, the in­signif­i­cance, the grey and rain.

Across the street, I turn around and stare back at Cof­fee Time as though I’m Mac­beth look­ing Mac­duff in the eye, ready to whis­per the final words. The barista closes the cur­tains, turns off the lights, shuts the door, and turns the key.

Sarah Stephens

Each year a tem­po­rary vil­lage of 15,000 peo­ple springs up out of the for­est over a few weeks time. Saplings and dead­fall are cut to form long coun­ters, kitchens, serv­ing ta­bles. Clay pat­ted by many hands into hearths, around metal drums to form ovens. Slen­der men and women scam­per up trees, tow­ing ropes to the high­est branches, stretch­ing taut tarps that shel­ter a hun­dred from sum­mer rain­storms. Wood is gath­ered.

The kitchens go in first, in choice lo­ca­tions, some near mead­ows, down­hill from water. Grav­ity, and do­nated dol­lars, run the water fil­ters. Camps grow around the kitchens. A place to fire sit, play music, and sing. Where you qui­etly wan­der in the morn­ing, hold­ing your bowl, fill­ing it first with smoky black cof­fee, then oat­meal. Sit­ting around the re­mains of last night’s fire, feed­ing it for the new day.

You wan­der from your home kitchen to an­other, your feet adding to the thou­sands of foot­steps form­ing the net­work of paths be­tween them. The hand-painted map at Cen­tral Sup­ply, near the rap sheets and mes­sage boards, shows the net­work you’re form­ing. Dif­fer­ent each year, for each for­est, each state. Feet on the land, Rain­bow Peo­ple gath­er­ing.

The way to Lovin’ Ovens is easy to find by smell. Dough in the for­est. Rolls for thou­sands at din­ner cir­cle need knead­ing all day. You’ll help for a few hours this morn­ing, cir­cled up to the 8’ x 12’ ply­wood tres­tle table, cov­ered first in plas­tic, then a dust­ing of flour. Three peo­ple grunt as they up-end a 100 gal­lon tup­per­ware of first rise dough.

Dough-cut­ter-wield­ing bak­ers divvy out five pound sec­tions to each bleach-water-clean pair of wait­ing hands. Knead like this: fold in half like a lover, turn a quar­ter turn, re­peat until your thumbprint bounces back just right.

The af­ter­noon is spent ex­plor­ing: a cup of chai and a quiet heart-to-heart with a stranger, sit­ting on cush­ions under ta­pes­tries hang­ing in the pines.

The dis­cov­ery of Ham­mock Vil­lage, where a beau­ti­ful woman rocks in a third story ham­mock, play­ing the ac­cor­dion with her toes and singing with her eyes closed.

In­stant Soup is cook­ing up their tenth caul­dron of the day, and you help peel and chop a mound of gar­lic as big as a baby, des­tined for a pot you could bathe chil­dren in. Just as you fin­ish, forty pounds of pota­toes ar­rive from Cen­tral Sup­ply in a wheel­bar­row with moun­tain bike tires.

Rest­ing in a patch of sun, smelling the gar­lic on your hands, you watch the nud­ist pa­rade pass by on the main trail, bang­ing pots and pans, pick­ing up in num­bers. That the hairy man in the back has a tag of TP stuck to his butt does not deter peo­ple from strip­ping down and join­ing.

You’ve heard that the ket­tle corn kitchen is mak­ing chile-brown-sugar next, and that start­ing at dark thirty, Lovin’ Ovens is mak­ing piz­zas ‘til sun­rise. And a kitchen to the south that sprung up yes­ter­day has spread word that they’ll be mak­ing pan­cakes through the night. It’s some­where down the trail past the place you had a cup of cof­fee strained through a dirty t-shirt while pole dancers per­formed on stripped trees.

You will find it, un­like the wan­der­ing sax­o­phone player who haunts the woods. You’ve been look­ing but you haven’t found him yet on the net­work of trails.

And you still haven’t got­ten the courage to cross the creek via the cat­a­pult bridge, pre­fer­ring in­stead the log bridges near the cir­cus tent Gra­nola Funk, where tal­ent shows and blue­grass hap­pen nightly. It’s a bit of a walk, but you also get to pass by the Shanti Sena medic out­post, C.A.L.M. and the Barter Cir­cle.

There, a novice tarot reader who gives you a read­ing in trade for the eagle feather in your hair, of­fers an ex­cuse to open up. In Tipi Vil­lage a man tells sto­ries from a richly il­lus­trated book. Up­hill, on the out­skirts of the gath­er­ing, Bus Vil­lage is filled with ve­hi­cles right out of Lloyd Kahn’s Tiny Homes – car­a­vans and painted school buses and home welded, half-this-half-that homes.

Walk­ing in a for­est path, head­lamp off so as not to blind those who can­not af­ford head­lamps, you find your way along the now fa­mil­iar trails, feel­ing for roots with your feet and the moon­light. An owl hoots, and then the shad­owy stumps begin wildy danc­ing, erupt­ing with beat­box­ing and strobe head­lamps. A dance am­bush!