Author Archives: tim

14 Sep

Spoiler Alert: The Beginning

“Spoiler Alert” is a serialized short story, coming in 13 parts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. “The Beginning” is part two. It’s best if you know the end first, so go to part one if you haven’t read it yet.

I met David when I was in prison in El Salvador. What was I doing in prison in El Salvador? Drugs. Not my fault. Some asshat on a bus just outside of Sonsonate stashed an ounce of cocaine in my backpack. I think it was an ounce. Might have been a gram. I don’t know shit about coke.

In fact, I didn’t know shit about why I was in prison until David explained it to me. He said it was a scheme for taking advantage of tourists, especially solo ones — some guy stashes the drugs on you, the police look through your luggage, maybe taking a few choice items, and then they get you to bribe them to let you out of jail.

I asked him how he knew all this.

“By pretending I’m not fluent in Spanish,” he said.

Same thing had happened to him. He kept quiet through the whole ordeal until they finally came to him with the offer. “You give money, you can to leave prison,” they said. He told them to go to hell.

Why? Good question. That’s what I asked David. Here’s where it gets weird.

His answer: “If someone had told you when you were a kid that you’d break out of a Salvadorian prison when you were 50, would you believe them?”

There was a mouse moving across the floor of our prison cell when he asked me this. It came within a few inches of my feet. I remember thinking he had a lot of nerve, that mouse.

Then I noticed David looking at me with his eyebrows raised, like he wanted me to actually answer the question.

“No. I would not believe anyone who told me I’d break out of a Salvadorian prison,” I said. “Are you telling me that I’m going to break out of a Salvodorian prison?”

“Yes. I’m not entirely sure how it happens, but it will.”

I asked him if he knew when it would happen ‘cause Salvadorian prisons aren’t that comfortable. When he said no, I just chuckled and tried to get some sleep.

I think I dreamt of mice running through mazes. It wasn’t a very reassuring dream, but it was better than being in prison with a nutcase. So when David woke me up in the middle of the night, I wasn’t too happy about it.

“I was just getting comfortable,” I told him.

“Now’s our chance.”

11 Sep

Spoiler Alert: The End

(“Spoiler Alert” is a serialized short story, coming in 13 parts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)

Here’s how it ends. I’m on a bus in Guatemala, daydreaming about a woman I’ve never met and feeling slightly guilty that I’m not going to die today.

It’s about 100 degrees, I haven’t showered in at least a week, and everyone else smells as bad as I do. People standing in the aisles have been rubbing up against my shoulder, and the slightly overweight woman next to me has had her leg leaning against mine for the past half an hour.

And then the bus pulls to a stop.

We’re on the highway, for God’s sake. Why the bus is stopping is beyond me.

But five minutes pass, maybe ten, and people start getting off the bus. I figure it can’t be any hotter outside, so I grab my bag and go out.

The pavement is shimmering with heat, and there’s a traffic jam that extends up the road as far as I can see to a bend that sweeps behind a mountain. Somehow, though we’re miles from the nearest village, there’s a guy walking toward us on the road’s shoulder, carrying a cooler full of flavored ice. I flag him down and buy two tubes of the stuff, though by the time I get them open, they’re more like flavored cold water.

Still, they hit the spot. And I’m happy enough that I’m out of El Salvador to care too much about our current predicament. So I tilt my head back to finish off the last of my purple “ice” and relish the short inner chill as the liquid shoots down my esophagus. I’m imagining that it’s a margarita when an explosion reverberates through the mountains.

It’s close. It must be. Because I can feel my chest rattle and I can hear glass breaking. I squint to see beyond the bright reflections emanating from the cars stopped in front of us. In the distance, a cloud of black smoke plumes skyward.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, I’m not. But knowing it would happen doesn’t make it less tragic. In fact, I’m suddenly feeling so sad that my knees buckle a little, like some involuntary part of me knows it’s not worth taking one more step forward. Might as well just fall down right now and die.

I’m not dead, though. And since nobody around me speaks English anyhow, I say it out loud. “I’m not dead.”

I think about how David patted me on the back in Jutiapa just before getting on his bus. “Doubt is a wonderful thing,” he said.

Now, David Schumaker is no more. The plume of smoke rising over the mountain is coming from his bus. I’m sure of it. David’s dead, and there’s nothing he or I could have done about it.

Still, I feel partially responsible.

29 Aug

Wiscostorm Index (late summer edition)

Number of apple varieties I sampled in July and August: 23

Percentage of those varieties I’ve never tried before: 74

Number of new apples that make my top ten list: 1

Number of new apples with “red” in their name: 4

Number whose flavor reminds me of Lik-a-maid dipsticks:1

Number I wouldn’t buy again: 7

Average number I eat per day now that apple season is underway: 4

Number of apple trees I want to plant in my backyard: 6

Pounds of apples I purchased on Saturday: 8.5

Number of apples I got for free since I talk to the vendors: 4

Dreams I’ve had involving apples in the past week: 0

Dreams I’ve had involving school: 5

20 Aug

The Beginning of the End

It starts with the ridiculously early back-to-school sales. I heard reports of some at the beginning of July this year. Three weeks into summer, for God’s sake! Must have been because of the recession. Retail is freaking out, creating sales/hype for whatever reason they can think of. Halloween sales start on Labor Day. Scary ha ha*.

The next phase is the mailing you get from the district. There’s something in there from everyone — the superintendent, the assistant to the superintendent, the principal, the assistant principals, the regional manager, his assistant, and then various committees, like the social committee, who wants you to bring something for the potluck lunch on that first staff-only day.

From there, it’s all downhill. You get more and more emails from staff full of claims that they’re excited about the upcoming year. You run into colleagues at the grocery store, who say, “See you in a couple weeks!” And all the fake cheeriness makes you so self-loathing that you just go ahead and check your class lists online.

And then the dreams come. Oh, the dreams. Your class is huge, completely unmanageable. The room is one you’ve never been in before. You’ve forgotten to bring textbooks or handouts or anything else you should pass out to the students. You’re teaching a subject you haven’t prepped for. You’re late to every class period. You’re not wearing pants. Scary strange*.

*(I’m coining two new phrases. You know how the word funny needs clarification? Funny ha ha or funny strange. Well, I think scary needs a similar distinction. Scary ha ha is the type of scary that deserves derision; scary strange is the kind that sends a chill down your spine.)