DEAR JOHN WHEELER

A STORY BY RIVKAH KHANIN

Listen,

this is nuts. Meshugach*! You expect me to believe that if I am not observing something, it doesn’t exist? Some physicist moron is calling my $315.28 Giorgio Armani black-frame eyeglasses some kind of miracle devices?

*Crazy (Yiddish)

Let me tell you about this cloud I saw today with my expensive glasses. It was enormous. And plump, like my wife. A real zaftig*. This was a war-hero cloud; it was the brightest inthe sky, with great variation in tone because of its thickness. The other ones were thin and grey; you know, little puny ones, simply the background. It had chutzpah*, this cloud, and it wasn’t changing quickly.

*Deliciously plump, or carrying your extra weight very well. Usually about a woman (Yiddish)

*Audacity (Yiddish)

Everybody knows I am a great admirer of clouds. You meanto tell me that if I wouldn’t be paying attention to them they wouldn’t exist? This is a tragedy! A crime! What is a world without such glorious things as masses of water that shade the planet and provide rain? You are placing a lot of responsibility on me, Mr. Wheeler; my glasses can only take in so much at a time.

I can understand this explanation applied to things like electrons, their location is impossible to mark because of their speed, but clouds? Most of them are lazier than myself on a Monday morning.

ONLY SAN FRANCISCO BASTARD

CLOUDS ARE ALWAYS RUNNING

OFF SOMEWHERE, TO WHERE?

I DON’T KNOW.

WHAT BUSINESS THEY HAVE IN THE

PACIFIC OCEAN IS BEYOND ME.

Ach! I have an idea! In this case what if no one ever observes the plastic island again and then it will stop existing? This environmentalist mumbo jumbo, bam! Gone! The wart on my knee? Goodbye! My wife’s idea of a soup?…This is starting to sound very good. I’m not sure if I want to part with my glasses though, to be less perceptive. In my age they are one of the things that keep me looking sharp for the ladies, you know, I can’t get by on my exceedingly witty remarks and boyish but wise charm anymore.

Does this mean I, I can in theory create a better world through what I observe? I’m not sure I am the best person for this job, my friend, Earth would just turn into a tiki party in the Bahamas, repeatedly interrupted by various dramatic thunderstorms. You know, so everyone could value the former good weather and appreciate the clouds properly too.

Maybe they are transporting that marijuana smoke to console those unfortunate sea creatures in the plastic island.

ALL OF MY CHILDREN,

THEY’VE COME OUT FROM ME,

AND I CAME FROM

MY MOTHER.

WE WORK AND SLEEP,

IN THE HOME THAT WE KEEP,

WE’VE FOUND OURSELVES IN

EACH OTHER.

FOR MANY YEARS,

WE’VE WORKED IN THE FIELD,

ON LAND MADE RICH

BY THE WATER.

A RIVER THAT SHAKES,

KNOWS NOT WHAT IT TAKES,

A HOME, A SON

OR A DAUGHTER.

IT COMES AND IT GOES,

AND IN US IT FLOWS,

HOLDING THE TIDES OF

OUR SORROW.

IT COMES AND IT GOES,

AND NONE OF US KNOW,

WHEN IT TAKES BACK

WHAT WE BORROW.

In the field, she pulls everything around her tight in her stomach and lungs. Her face looks like a wooden mask carved out by the moonlight.

Her stomach contracts and the fog pours up from her lungs and out through her mouth, running like a river over the ground. A ring of flesh in her throat is shaken by the turbulence, and the vibration spreads throughout her body.

A sound like a stomp is sharp and quick; when it moves through things, they are active in succession. When mom sings, she is shaken and everything moves with her.

The clouds fall from the sky and stick to the Mississippi as it falls down to the sea. The river saturates the land and the clouds saturate the air; everything is wet and it’s all alive. At night the clouds gather in the fields, and mom sits in her chair breathing them in. Her skin is like the water and it moves outward with the same lightness. She’s sitting suspended in the dense swampy air, singing to the crops. Her legs hold her up and the soil holds them up as the immensity of the moon deforms the earth. As a rock it’s lumpy and oddly shaped, hurtling around the earth, but from the field it’s just a small circle of light.

It moves silently over the fields, and the ground beneath it reaches up like plants reach for the sun. When it comes to the the space above my mother’s head, it tugs at the ground beneath her feet and she is strung up close to it. Her back straight as a tall pine and her head resting above it: For a moment her vertebrae separate and a small space opens up in-between each of them.

A thin road sits atop a levee beside the field that looks like a wall in the night. It’s easy to leave the river if you’re a woman. The people on the road are lonely, and the fog hovers in a sheet above the pavement. The cars cut into it when they drive by and it muffles their headlights.

MISSOURI, 1945

A STORY BY RYAN HAMMOND