And now, kiddies, I'd like to share with you what was my very first published short story, which appeared originally in the Autumn, 1992 edition of South Dakota Review. It may seem a tad dated, but I am still quite fond of it, and since it's never appeared online before...

SHOOTING STAR

Lisa's face is buried in the thin material of the blouse she is pulling up over her head. Her words come out muffled. "Thanks for picking me up back there. I hope you don't mind if I change. Had this thing on two days straight."

Peter looks over at her, catching a glimpse of her breasts before they disappear under the fresh cotton replacement. He flashes back to his youth, when girls he hardly knew would sometimes change clothes in front of him. Not in a provocative way. More like he wasn't there. He always felt caught in the middle. Make a move or play it cool? Lisa is young enough to be his daughter. Play it cool. "You should be a little more careful around strangers. You never know who you're getting in with."

"I know," she says, oblivious to his meaning. "The guy I was just riding with was drunk. I told him I had to pee, so when he stopped I said there wasn't no way I was getting back in that car. You came along about five minutes later." She peers out the window of Peter's Buick sedan, as the cacti and late spring wildflowers claiming squatters rights to scattered patches of desert whiz by. A highway sign says US 93. Another one states Kingman is 85 miles ahead. "So you said you're a writer," she says. "The way you look, I'd have said you're a businessman. Salesman or something. What do you write about, anyway?"

"Magazine articles mostly. Factual stuff. Right now I'm working on a computer book."

"Oh," she says, mildly disappointed. "I like fiction."

They approach a yellow Volkswagen sitting on the shoulder of the road, nearly in the ditch. Its occupant is slumped over the wheel, passed out or dead--Peter can't tell which.

"It's him," Lisa says. "That's Hans."

Peter reduces his speed. "Shouldn't we check on him?"

"Hell no. He'll be all right after he sleeps it off. Besides, that guy's too weird for me."

Peter shrugs, steps on the gas, and they are once again racing the desert sun toward the horizon.

"So what waits for you in Vegas?" she asks. "A handle with your name on it?"

"I'm not much of a gambler. I drive up sometimes just to get away from Tucson for a while. Change of atmosphere seems to clear my head." He steals furtive glances at her long, pale-gold hair, which he thinks of as a waterfall spilling over her shoulders, cascading freely down to the small of her back.

"I got godawful bored with school in Louisiana last year. Since then I've been doing me some traveling." Her eyes sparkle. "I'm gonna be the next singing sensation on The Strip. Either that or get a waitress job, whichever comes first." She retrieves her guitar from its dusty black case perched on the back seat, tunes it, and breaks into an old Tammy Wynette song called "D-I-V-O-R-C-E." Her voice resonating sweet and clear, she is a veritable chanteuse with a country twang.

There is something very familiar about her, Peter now realizes. Familiar, yet elusive. Like a small, annoying gnat that repeatedly alights on one's face, the thought begins to nag at him until, like the persistent insect, he brushes it aside.

*****

Approaching the turnoff to Burro Creek, the late afternoon sky is a Neapolitan ice cream swirl of color. "We're not in any hurry are we?" she says. "Let's chill out here for a while and catch the sunset."

He is game. This trip would have been predictable without her, like so much of life now. And so what if he is beginning to feel like her chauffeur?

As they pull into the campground, she says, "Jesus, this place is nearly deserted."

"I've been here before," he says. "Not many people choose to stay overnight when it gets close to summer. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, and they're anxious to get where they're going."

Peter spreads a blanket on the ground and they wolf sandwiches and beer they've picked up along the way. The shrinking daylight fades to black.

"So, don't you ever write any stories? she asks.

"Nope. No stories. The money's in nonfiction these days." Somewhere in the distance a donkey brays forlornly. Peter opens another beer, and the sound the pop-top makes seems to reverberate all through the steep walls of Burro Canyon.

"This is incredible," she says, gazing up at the celestial display. "I've never seen so many stars at one time in my entire life. They look like tiny lanterns lighting the heavens.'

Suddenly, a meteor dashes across the sky, its fiery silver trail already a memory by the time she turns to him and whispers, "Did you make a wish?"

"Whoa, it's only been a second" he says. Then, as though he'd nearly considered the unforgivable, adds, "Besides, that's for dreamers. And people who write stories.'

"Hey, man, you grew up in the sixties, right?"

"Guess you've got me pegged."

"So what happened to you? I thought the sixties was a time of wild imagination, a time of-"

"Sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Peace and love." He takes a swig from his beer. "The sixties are dead," he says with finality. "They're like this place...beautiful, but a long ways from anywhere."

"I've always wished I could have lived back then," she says in a near whisper. "To have that kind of freedom..." She is on her feet, eyes closed, swaying to a rhythm only she can hear. She twirls, tresses streaming into a weightless orbit around her face. "Sometimes I feel like I could soar--I want to dance through graveyards, hug strangers on the street, run naked in the rain!" She crash-lands next to him on the blanket. She says, "Somebody once called me an anak...anakra-"

"Anachronism. It means you should have been born in another time."

"Yeah, that's it. What was it like, growing up back then?"

All at once Peter feels an ache rising from somewhere deep inside, and he wants this night to never end. He envisions driving right through Vegas--saying to hell with it, the two of them on the road to nowhere and anywhere, as Lisa slinks in and out of her clothes in the car. Would she think of him as a father figure and nothing more? He looks at the ground. "I don't like dredging up the past. Anyway, your life has probably been more interesting than mine."

"Come on, man."

"No, really. Tell me about your family back in Louisiana."

"I don't have a family." She squints, peering into the small opening of her empty beer can as though it were a portal through which see could see into another world. She clears her throat.

"One night when I was ten years old I woke up and heard my parents fighting downstairs. My dad used to beat my mother up a lot. When they fought, it tore me up inside. I sneaked downstairs just as he started hitting her. Most of the time he's just smack her around, but this time he was drunk and he used fists. He struck her in the face and she went sprawling across the room. She was lying on the floor, crying, as he stood over her, yelling and threatening to give her more of 'what she deserved.' I can't tell you for sure what happened at that moment, except something inside me snapped. I knew where my father kept his gun hidden because I'd seen him get it once when he thought somebody was prowling around the back yard. I ran and grabbed it...then went into the living room where he stood over my mother and screamed, 'Stop it daddy, stop it right now!' He called me a little bitch and lunged toward me. There was only a second to decide--about the time it takes to wish on a falling star." She pauses, searching Peter's eyes. "I pulled the trigger and shot him once in the stomach.'

"Jesus," Peter says softly.

"They didn't really do anything to me. I spent the next few years in a foster home. My father, the bastard, recovered. My mother divorced him shortly after that. Two years later, he wrapped his car around a tree and was killed instantly. He was drunk again, of course."

"Listen, kid, I'm sorry. That's a terrible thing for a child-"

"Don't worry about it," she says dispassionately. "I made it up.'

"The hell you did."

"Maybe I did...maybe I didn't."

"Goddamn."

"What's the matter? Were you getting caught up in th-"

A flashlight beam stabs through the darkness, momentarily blinding them. They hadn't noticed the yellow Volkswagen pull in at the other end of the campground. The inebriated voice behind the light grunts, "We're all of to see the wizard. Can you spare a fellow traveler a drink?"

"It's that A-hole, Hans," Lisa whispers. "How'd he find us here?"

"I'll give him a beer and send him on his way," says Peter.

Hans kills the light and lurches over to their spot, easing his body down next to Lisa on the blanket. He smells of liquor and sweat. "Lisa and me are ol' buddies," he says, belching loudly. "Only she ain't too crazy about my driving." He emits a shrill, staccato laugh.

In the darkness, Peter can discern only the interloper's thin build and nearly bald shaved head. He appears to be close to Lisa's age. He hands him a beer.

Hans says, "Don' lemme interrupt you guys, go on with your conservation...uh, conversation."

Lisa is silent, looking straight ahead, inching closer to Peter.

Peter says, "We were just discussing history."

Hans sends him a long, glazed stare and finally says, "Hey, man, were you in the war?"

"No, I wasn't in the war. Not exactly."

Hans tilts his head back, surveying the speckled void. His fingers drum out a slow, deliberate beat on the top of the can he holds between his legs. "I can hear the drums now," he says, sounding more lucid than before. "There's another war coming...this one will be fought in the streets."

Lisa turns as if to ask him a question, but it is too late--Hans has rolled over onto his side, fast asleep. She looks at Peter, and with that earnest expression serious performers get on their faces, begins singing a few bars of an old Patsy Cline tune called "Crazy." She say, "Let's get out of here before he wakes up."

*****

It is past midnight on Las Vegas Boulevard. Lisa says, "You can drop me off anywhere along here."

"Do you have a place to stay?" Peter asks.

"I have a girlfriend from school who lives around here. I'm going to look her up."

He feels awkward. Caught in the middle. "Listen, I'll be staying at The Dunes for the rest of the week...if you need anything."

"Hey, well, you never know."

He pulls onto a side street and stops the car. Lisa straps on her backpack and slides the guitar case out of the back seat. She walks around to the driver's window and gives him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks a lot for the ride, man." She waits a moment for the reply that doesn't come. She turns and walks back toward the Strip. His eyes follow her.

Suddenly, it is 1968 and she is Anna, the girl he knew in college. The girl who marched by his side in righteous indignation through the streets of Chicago. The girl who lay by his side through endless. dreamlike nights of passion in Haight-Ashbury--nights he thought would last forever. The girl with hair like a waterfall. He calls out, "Anna!" but she has turned the corner and disappeared into the crowd. The water wells up in his eyes, and through his tears the lights of Las Vegas look like thousands of shifting, shimmering stars.

THE BRASS RING

Well, another year shot down the sewer. Time to make some changes. Yessir, 2010 will be different--now let me see, what should I put on that list of New Year's resolutions?

Hold on there, Wild Bill ! What say we put the new year on hold for a moment. That's it...relax. Let's talk about something directly related to those resolutions, and that's the subject of happiness. If people were really happy with themselves, they wouldn't feel the need to make all those changes, right?

Funny thing, this happiness stuff. The more you chase after it, the more it eludes you. There must be a trick to it somewhere. Now we're getting warmer ! The trick to realizing happiness is to first understand that there IS a trick, and that the trick is on us.

Let's face it, we humans are never satisfied--it's either a thing or a person we don't feel complete without, or some circumstance of our lives that we would change if we could. The culprit is desire--it's what chains us to this world. Only by recognizing that to some degree we will ALWAYS be in this state of unfulfilled desire (until we've evolved enough to master desire) are we likely to amiably accept life on its own terms. This is the irony. The cosmic joke.

Now, just in case I lost you back there, what follows is a mini-play about two friends: Fred, who lives in the moment, and Arnie, who...well, lives lots of other places.

THE BRASS RING

Scene: A New Year's Eve party.

FRED: Hey Arnie, you don't look so happy--what's the matter, itchy underwear?

ARNIE: Naw, I asked my boss for a raise and he muttered something about hell freezing over.

FRED: Wow, too bad...I see you've still got that black eye from when your girlfriend punched your lights out.

ARNIE: Yeah, I need a new job and a kinder, gentler relationship.

FRED: Think that will make you happy?

ARNIE: Damn right.

FRED: Maybe, but can you think of a time when there wasn't something you wanted to change about your life, even if only a little?

ARNIE: Well...no, I guess not.

FRED: And as you went through the days and month and years wanting something to be different, what time was it?

ARNIE: Oh, I see what you're getting at--it was always NOW.

FRED: Right, so if you can't be happy NOW, when WILL you be happy?

ARNIE: Maybe tomorrow?

FRED: Today is the tomorrow you dreamed about yesterday.

ARNIE: 1995...now THAT was the year I had it all !

FRED: The past is overrated. It only looks good to us through hindsight...come to think of it, that's the only way we can look at it. But if I know you, your head was stuck in the past and the future then too, living every moment but the one you're living.

ARNIE: So how does one live in the moment?

FRED: When I was a kid, and the carnival came to town, I would ride the merry-g0 round, There was a brass ring you had to try to grab as you circled around--whoever got it would win this giant stuffed panda bear--but the ring was always just out of reach. I'd get on and off those pretty horses, time after time, intent on spearing that ring...but I never got it. I never saw anyone else who did either.After a while it dawned on me that the ring was there just to keep me on the merry-go-round.

ARNIE: [guzzles his drink] Hee hee hee ha ha ha hoo hoo...hack...cough...choke...N ow I see it! Everybody's running around searching for something outside of themselves-

FRED: Like the other day when you turned the house upside down looking for your car keys, only to find them half an hour later in your pocket.

ARNIE: So, if I'm not happy with things the way they are--right this minute--then I'll NEVER be happy, because it's always now, and even though things change, things are always going to be the way that they are.

FRED: Go to the head of the class.

ARNIE: [frowns] But what about dreams...shouldn't I follow my dreams?

FRED: Of course--dreams are what life is about ! It's just that most people have trouble reconciling the dream the way it appears in their imaginations with the dream the way it turns up in what we call reality--they're never exactly the same, you know.

ARNIE: I THINK I get all of that...but my head is spinning.

FRED: So is the world.

ARNIE: I'm getting dizzy.

FRED: Not as dizzy as you're going to be--here comes another round of champagne.

ARNIE: It's almost midnight. Happy New Year, Fred !

FRED: Happy NOW Year, Arnie.

[Festoons, fireworks, dogs howling]

Fred and Arnie turn to look at a television in the corner of the room. As millions watch across the nation, the giant glowing ball in Times Square drops squarely onto Dick Clark's head, knocking him unconscious. A minute later he jump up, grabs the microphone and says, "Hell, that didn't faze me folks--I'm ninety-seven years old and still feel like a kid! [Leans into the camera] THE SECRET IS TO KEEP ON DANCIN ! "

-Finis

THE BEST OF WHAT WE ARE (a Christmas tale for kids of all ages)

Jeremy realized that the bear who was blowing bubbles at him was speaking perfect English as well. At first he thought the voice was coming from someplace else--some hidden speaker maybe--but speakers don't carry on conversations with people.

The boy had sneaked away while his mom shopped for presents. He had already made the rounds of the big department stores in the mall, drawn to the lights and the glitter of each Christmas display like a heat-seeking missile. There was so much to see--the English winter displays with their miniature pubs, storefronts, and tiny skaters that seemed to move under their own power, and the electric tree ornaments that whirred and hummed and clickety-clacked as they came alive to enact some charming holiday scene. Yes, it DID seem like everything was alive, and though a mechanical bear sitting in a Christmas tree blowing bubbles into the air was certainly unique, it was still within the realm of possibility...but a bubble blowing bear that could TALK was something else again.

"I was beginning to wonder," said the bear, though its lips did not move.

Jeremy's eyes made a sweep of the store to see if anyone was near--someone who might be playing a trick on him, but the other shoppers were too far away. "Wonder about what?" he finally replied.

"If you'd ever arrive!" The bear kept dipping the tiny plastic wand attached to its paw into this little bowl, then lifting the device to its face to whoosh the bubbles into the air.

"Why were you waiting for me?" Jeremy said.

"I guess I should say, more accurately, someone LIKE you--a person who comes alive at Christmas time...just like me."

"Yeah, but I feel all alone...I wish that people-"

"Most people don't get it, my boy. They've 'grown up' and gotten so far away from the original pure state--which is nothing more than the ability to see through the eyes of a child--they don't know who they are anymore."

Jeremy thought: What are the shoppers going to think when they hear me talking to a bear? No sooner had the question popped into his head than it was answered.

"Ours in a mind to mind communication, Jeremy, and in case you haven't noticed, your lips are not moving either. We can do that because we are so perfectly tuned in to each other--on the same wavelength so to speak...by the way, you can call me Thaddeus."

The boy began to think about the people who go through the motions during the holidays, then revert back to their old cynical ways the rest of the year. "If people really cared," he said, "the Christmas spirit would last all year round."

Just then a SUPER-big bubble alighted onto the tip of his nose and Jeremy looked at it cross-eyed for a moment before it popped and disappeared into thin air.

"I hate to burst your-ah- what I mean is, that's a mistake in thinking a lot of people make. Everything in the universe exists because it has a counterpart...good implies evil, happy implies sad--we could no more have Christmas all year round than you could eat banana creme pie every meal for the rest of your life and still love it as you do!"

Jeremy thought it was pretty cool that even though Thaddeus used some big words, he somehow understood everything that was being said...and the bear even knew what his favorite dessert was! "I guess that's what makes the holidays so special then," he said.

"Not everyone is like you and me. Still, it's the time of year when the best of what we are shines through. Remember that...THE BEST OF WHAT WE ARE. Would you believe that even the scrooges forget themselves when they see me? They do--if only for a moment--but in that one instant when they're scratching their heads and trying to figure out how I do it, they've regained their childish sense of wonder and delight...is there more that any of us can do than to try to provide such moments for those around us?"

"Uh, Thaddeus...just how DO you do it? Blow the bubbles I mean."

"Hey kid, there are some things that even I can't tell you. Trade secret, ya know."

Jeremy glanced at a nearby clock. "Oh no," he cried. "My mom's gonna be worried. Wait--please wait Thaddeus--I'm going to get her and bring her back to meet you!"

"Just a moment, Jeremy--you must consider-"

But the boy was already gone, plunging through the holiday shoppers, giddy with excitement and chanting over and over to himself: THE BEST OF WHAT WE ARE! THE BEST OF WHAT WE ARE!

His mother--who had essentially been dragged up a flight of stairs and half the length of the mall--now stood in front of the tree where Thaddeus was perched, spouting bubbles into the air in darling mechanical bear fashion.

"Here she is--go ahead and say something," Jeremy urged with his mind.

But there was only silence, and the boy's heart sank.

Then the woman's mouth curved into a wide grin and her eyes began to sparkle like twin stars on a crisp and clear December night. "Well, isn't that just the cleverest idea you've ever seen," she said. "Next thing you know the darn thing will start talking too."

Then she gave her son an odd look. "What's that, Jeremy?"

"I didn't say nothing, mom."

"That's funny...for a moment I thought I heard someone whisper, 'Merry Christmas.'"

TIGER'S WANT AD

Desperately seeking

someone to love

someone to hate

a reason to humiliate

Desperately seeking

to find some direction

to make a connection

to feel your rejection

Desperately seeking

a little hope

some way to cope

the noose of a rope

Desperately seeking

A Ginsu knife

the meaning of life

somebody's wife

Desperately seeking

my moment of fame

where to lay the blame

an end to this shame

Desperately seeking

another shot at the top

some wings when I drop

back into the slop

Desperately seeking

Susan

Fernando

Willy

and Betty Jean

a place to lie down

and a chance to come clean

Desperately seeking

to find a new game

like ants at a picnic

where nobody came

ALMOST EXTINCT TIGER

You worshiped him

Not because of who he was inside--

you never KNEW who he was...

You worshiped him because he could knock

A little white ball

Around a glorified cow pasture.

Not a skill that contributes a lot to the world.

But YOU worshiped him.

He had the pulpit

And could have weighed in

On the state of the world--

Could have STOOD for something.

But he always played it close to the vest.

Don't want no controversy HERE.

Now we know why...

He preferred the HORIZONTAL position.

SO WHAT?

You never cared about who he was--

Now you're acting disillusioned.

Go back to worshiping people

For some meaningless skill they possess...

Or maybe the size of their fake boobs...

And shut your IDIOTIC pie hole.

THIS IS YOUR CARD, SO READ IT

This may be the only holiday card you're getting from me this year--that's because there wasn't room enough to write everything I wanted to say on one of those Hallmark jobbies. It also means I had to leave out the fifty dollar bill I was planning to tuck inside the card. Sorry.

I'm going to tell you about the meaning of Christmas--but it's not what you might expect. There are folks who like to haul out the annual guilt trip, reminding you of the "true" significance of the holiday--usually when they catch you having too much fun. I don't buy into that, nor do I subscribe to the popular notion that Christmas is over-commercialized.

Some interpret the Nativity as myth, others accept it as gospel, but it ain't anyone else's business to tell you and me which it should be. Secondly, in the U.S. we live in a capitalist society. Like it or not, the selling of goods and services is what our battered economy depends on. Yet some of us get all huffy during the holidays when business people do what comes naturally, which is to capitalize on the opportunity.

Lighten up already.

Christmas is perfect just the way it is. Everyone gets exactly what he or she wants from it. The retailer brings in the major chunk of his yearly revenue. The homeless person gets a free feast.

Grandma gets to see the kids and grand kids who don't come around the rest of the year. And people everywhere, in spite of themselves, warm to one another. What could be more perfect than that?

There is a young boy who sneaks off to the mall in the latter part of September, because he knows that's when some of the stores begin erecting their Christmas displays. He knows which stores to check because he has done this before. He's got it down to a science. He finds the section that has been cleared of summer merchandise and now is littered with boxes. A few ornaments have been hung on their racks with care, and an employee is crouched on the floor, struggling to wrap the first string of lights around that first fake tree. An adult couple walks by, issuing a pronouncement about it being too early in the season, for Christ's sake, to be putting up all this crap. The boy feels sorry for the employee...she's only doing her job. He knows the store management is trying to hasten the buying season, but he doesn't care. For him, the holidays are glitter, warmth, and fuzziness--and something magical happens when those lights flicker on. While all about him the desert dwellers curse the heat, the boy exults in his moment of discovery. He understands that December 25th is anticlimactic, and that the heart and soul of Christmas lies in the slowly building momentum...the wide-eyed anticipation on the faces of kids from one to ninety-two.

Jump cut to late November. The broken cookies and fruitcakes are heading your way in the mail. The dumb commercials for Chia Pet and The Clapper are back on TV. The Budweiser Clydesdales are clip-clopping across your screen. And some jerk at the office party will dance around with a lamp shade on his head and end up decked in the hall. Soon, someone will step into a red suit and glue on a white beard and BECOME Santa Claus. Carolers will sing in the distance, and the winter night will no longer feel cold.

It's all a hoot.

So that's my fa la la la blah blah. Oh yeah, before I ride out of sight, there's a confession I have to make concerning the aforementioned young boy.

Yes, Virginia, that little kid is me.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HANUKKAH !