Be Careful at the Pool This Summer

I rarely pass along anything anyone in the entire world sends me via email, but I got a pretty good chuckle out of this.

Enjoy.

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Tiny Shifts (Part IV)

--- Continuing From Here ---

“It’s midnight,” Tiny said, “We are leaving. The time shift is at hand.”

The air around Paul’s head vibrated, producing an actual hum. From the dark hallway, a series of eerie sounds erupted that he was certain were made by living beings, although they were unlike any sounds he’d ever heard before. Moans and grunts mixed with slurping, clicking, and barking. It was a raucous celebration by the damned creatures that boarded at Tiny’s and never left.

They were moving on to another place and another time and the celebration was beginning.

Maybe Paul had called Tiny’s here, and maybe Tiny’s had called him on this night, but it was a mistake. He didn’t want to stay with these things for the rest of his life. And Dana was innocent. She didn’t deserve to be here at all.

The whole building felt as though it was rising into the air and turning. Paul didn’t have much time. Still holding Dana’s hand, he pulled her along.

As quick and as agile as Tiny had proven himself to be, Paul slipped past the fat man with Dana in tow. The others seemed not to notice. They were too caught up in the time shift phenomenon. The front door was the only way he knew to get out. There might be a back exit, but that meant going down the dark hallway, past the creatures whose celebration was now at a fever pitch. Paul made for the front door.

Tiny turned and chased after them. Dana turned over some tables, slowing Tiny’s pursuit, but he was faster than they were. As they reached the poolroom, he was almost close enough to grab her.

Paul pulled Dana in front to get her out of Tiny’s reach. The maneuver saved Dana from the plump, greasy paws of the mutant. But they weren’t safe yet.

The cacophony of the time shift was deafening, and the effect on the bar was like that of an earthquake. Things shook and fell to the floor. The other patrons continued rejoicing.

How much time did they have left? Did they have any time left?

Dana was in great physical condition and she was a fine runner, so Paul didn’t have to urge her to hurry to the door. He matched her step for step, but he was concerned that Tiny was also matching them step for step, if not better.

He turned to see how close their pursuer was. When he did, he saw the big man launch himself into the air. Tiny flew in a calm arch amid the din of the shift and the creatures’ merriment. Paul instinctively put his hands on Dana’s shoulders to brace himself against the impact of the large man.

The whole of Tiny’s weight slammed into him, crushing him to the floor. With his last bit of balance before the fat man smothered him on the warped planks, Paul pushed Dana away to keep her from being taken under. Before Tiny’s rolls of blubber lapped over him, Paul saw Dana lose her balance also, and go stumbling through the clouded glass of the window next to the door.

Shards blew in, as the turmoil outside the bar was as pervasive as it was inside.

Dana went tumbling down the steps out front, then Paul was covered by Tiny’s girth, and he could see nothing else.

Everything fell calm. Tiny’s had shifted.

***

“Left hard!” Dana screamed, and the rafters on the left side responded with a flurry of paddling. The boat turned hard right, as Dana wanted it to.

She had seen the hydraulic to the left, and knew that it was a section of the river they should avoid. Anyone caught in the hydraulic would be flipped over, sucked down, and held there by the rushing water. They were death traps, and this one had only recently developed. It could have taken even the most experienced rafter by surprise.

“Let’s get to the bank,” she told her team, and she steered the raft over to the calm eddies near shore.

The second boat came around the bend at Murton’s point a few seconds later. From her position in the calm water, Dana yelled back to the raft as it approached the section where the dangerous hydraulic waited. “Keep it right! Keep it to the right!”

She got a thumbs up from the boat, and watched as the second raft negotiated the hydraulic, a bit too close for her comfort, but it made it past with only some minor rough spots.

“All right, let’s get back out,” she said to her team, and they paddled back into the fast water.
The second boat came up even with hers, the rafters high-fiving and laughing at the rush of coming so close to the dangerous hydraulic.

“Wow. I’ve never seen it that strong there before,” Tony said from the second boat.

“Yeah, some big rocks must have shifted underneath,” Dana said in agreement.

“That’s the spot Paul always took us over,” Tony said, wiping the spray from his face.

“I know,” Dana said.

And they drifted down the river.

Tiny Shifts (Part III)

--- Continuing From Here ---

Dana sat down heavily on one of the barstools, and Paul thought it was a good thing she did, because he felt his own legs go rubbery at the sight of Tiny. For a moment, Paul thought he might just faint dead away like Dana had earlier.

A dozen or so braids of bright red hair stemmed from Tiny’s fat, platter-sized head, cascading around his porcine features, reaching nearly to the floor. His legs were the size of tree trunks. Their fleshy white skin shook and jiggled with each step, like globs of dough on a bread truck. The skin of his bare feet spread out with the burden of supporting his weight and his step was wide to keep his thighs from rubbing together. A belly the size and lumpiness of the thing they’d called Relic, and a color to match that of his legs, led him along, shoving things aside without discretion. Resting atop the mammoth stomach were breasts that looked like pasty, white windsocks on a runway, tipped with bright red nipples the size of dinner plates. A plump, purple stem of a penis and two purple bulbs hid below the rolls of his belly, peaking out intermittently as the blubber shifted from side to side as he walked.

“Jesus,” Paul said in Dana’s ear. “How can this guy carry himself around?”

“He freaking naked,” was her response.

“I am very strong and agile for a man my size,” Tiny said from several feet away, surprising Paul.

The big man crouched a little, and then sprang up with amazing alacrity, turned a back flip, and landed square on his feet. The entire floor shook with the sudden shift of such a payload, and Paul’s mind shook at what he’d just witnessed. Jesus Christ in a fucking cereal box!!, he thought.

“This is my place, and I do not wish to wear clothes, young lady. Besides, some garments can be so restraining.” Snot and spit were smeared around his mouth, leaving the dots of cold sores on his lower lip slick and shiny.

Dana looked at Paul, her expression of shock matching his.

“So you know there is no need to whisper, for I hear all,” Tiny said, his voice many octaves below Paul’s and lyrical with a covert British/French accent. “But let us get to the matter at hand.”

Tiny thundered up to them, looked at the near-empty beer bottles in front of them on the bar.

“Steve,” he said to the bartender. Steve set two more beers down.

“Thank you very much,” Paul said. “But that’s not necessary. We were just on our way out.”

Tiny’s eyes roamed all over both of them, first looking Paul up and down, then checking Dana out with the same vigor. “Why are you here?” he said finally.

“We . . . Just to have a drink,” Dana said.

“I mean why are you here?” Tiny said, but this time emphasized the word ‘you.’

Paul and Dana looked at each other.

“We don’t understand what you mean,” Paul said. “You see, we were driving home, and we saw your sign through the trees. We thought it would be fun to stop and see what Tiny’s was like.”

“Fisk?” Tiny boomed.

“Not sure,” Mr. Fisk said. “I can’t figure it out. Nothing I can see tells me they should be here.”

Tiny went back to his intense inspection. The others began to murmur with speculative nods at each other.

“Paul and Dana,” Tiny said, still regarding them thoroughly. “What is it like out there?”

“Out there?” Dana asked. “What’s it like out where?”

“It’s clear and warm,” Paul offered.

“You really don’t know where you are, do you?” Tiny laughed. “What is it like out there? In your time?”

“In our time?” Paul said

“Yes. By the way you are dressed, I would say it is 1995, 1998 out there tonight.”

“It’s actually 2008,” Paul said, and with a bit of hastiness, “and we should be getting back to it. So, let me pay for these beers, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Could it be that you’ve arrived by accident?” Tiny was blocking their path to the door with his mass. “Fisk, that would certainly be a first.”

“Yes it would,” Mr. Fisk agreed.

Steve slid a Frisbee-sized steak and a platter full of fried potatoes in front of Tiny, along with several mugs of dark beer.

“Such a shame,” Tiny said, nibbling on a fry. “If you two don’t belong here that is. But rules are rules.”

Tiny picked up the steak with his bare hand, stuffed a third of it in his mouth, and ripped it away from the rest. He tossed the remaining hunk of meat back onto the plate and wiped his greasy hand on the side of his belly. The meat in his mouth he chewed only twice and swallowed, chasing it with an entire mug of the dark beer.

“Look,” Paul said, trying to remain nonchalant. “You say we’re not supposed to be here, so we’ll leave. We didn’t mean any harm by coming.”

“That would not be following the rules.” Tiny finished off another huge bite of the steak and two handfuls of fries in the same gluttonous manner.

“What are the rules?” Dana asked.

Tiny chugged another beer, letting a good portion of the mug’s contents spill over his girth. After a vibrating, wet belch, he said, “The rules are simple. Either you stay here or you die.”

“Stay here or die?” Dana repeated as though not sure she’d heard correctly.

“How long do we have to stay here?” Paul asked, thinking they could put up with the strangeness for a while, and then get the hell out of there. His question unexpectedly brought gales of laughter from the crowd.

Tiny had been eating the rest of the steak, and he coughed it back up laughing. The partially chewed meat landed on the bar. He pushed a few stray red braids back over his chunky shoulders. “You either stay here or you die.”

“After midnight, Tiny’s won’t be here anymore,” Mr. Fisk explained.

Paul checked his watch. It was eleven forty already.

“Are you closing down?” Dana asked. She was not looking well. Paul was beginning to regret bringing her here.

“No,” Mr. Fisk responded. “Tiny’s won’t be here anymore.”

“What will happen to it?” Paul asked, trying to sound interested. Maybe he could sway the unusual and dangerous talk to something more mundane.

“It will do what it does,” Tiny responded cryptically, starting in on another handful of fries and a beer. “But we should get back to you.” He indicated Paul and Dana. “Why are you here?”

“By accident,” Paul offered. “Just like you said.”

The patrons mumbled secret conversations around the room, their gestures appearing as though several small arguments had erupted.

“You shouldn’t take my banter with Fisk to heart. There are no accidents,” Tiny said, bringing an end to the muffled debates.

“What do you mean by that?” Dana asked.

“Where Tiny’s is concerned there are no accidents. People don’t arrive here by accident.” He gnawed at the piece of steak he’d coughed up laughing earlier. “Look at us,” he said with a mouthful of meat. “It is plainly evident why some of us are here. Fisk, Relic, One-armed Sandy, Old Blue and I are just some of the folks here that seem out of the ordinary to you, am I right?”

“Well, I suppose you are an unusual collection of people,” Paul agreed, deploying his best air of diplomacy.

“There are others like us here, only you haven’t seen them yet,” Tiny said, jerking his head back toward the dark hallway. “You may not be ready to see them so soon. They are more . . . . . . severe than you could handle at this point.”

“So are you saying this is a place where unusual people can congregate to be with others like themselves?” Paul asked, not wanting to think about what creatures might exist down the dark hallway. If they were more ‘severe’ than Tiny or Relic, he’d rather not meet them.

“That’s part of it,” the fat man said. “But you’ll notice that some of us are like you.”

Paul looked around the room. Steve, the bartender, the cowboy that had been dancing with One-armed Sandy, the man in the yellow suit that had been videotaping them, the whaler playing pool with Old Blue, and even the butch woman in fatigues, Lizzy, were all fairly normal-looking in the scheme of things. And there were others looking on at the tables around the bar that Paul thought he wouldn’t think twice about if he saw them on the street.

“What’s their story?” Dana asked timidly.

“As I said, no one comes here by accident,” Tiny continued. “The folks you see here were either denigrated, ridiculed, and cast out by their respective communities and they’ve come here for protection and camaraderie, or they were destined to endanger the lives of many people on the outside, and they’ve been called here to keep innocent people from being harmed.”

“When you say, ‘called here,’ what do you mean?” Paul was intrigued.

“Something draws them here. We are not long at any one point, so conditions must be right, but something draws those folks here, those that are otherwise good people, but who would be a great detriment to their fellow man if they didn’t come.”
“What kind of detriment?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Tiny said. “Steve here is a great bartender, but he had a habit of serving folks even after they’d had too much. It’s possible one of his customers might have been hurt driving home, but it’s more likely that one of them would have hurt many people after leaving Steve’s bar. So he was called here one night in the early nineteen seventies. No one leaves Tiny’s, so no one will ever be hurt by his inability to stop serving a drunk. The others have similar reasons for being called, as I assume you two have.”

Paul and Dana exchanged a look of understanding. He could see that she was thinking the same thing he was. They had been discussing it earlier, just before turning off the highway. Paul’s aggressiveness on the river had always had their friends on the edge of danger and that day had tossed their good friend, Tony, into the water and he’d injured his knee.

Had Tiny’s called Paul there to keep him from causing real harm to others?

Paul had been the one that saw the sign. He had been the one that suggested they come in for a drink. He had been the one who’d seen the cars, the horses, and the patrons, not Dana.

Maybe Paul had been called here, but something struck him as obvious and it carried with it a great measure of guilt. Dana had not been called here. Tiny was wrong. Some people did come here by accident. And Dana was proof of that. He had to get them out. He had to get her out.

“We’ve got to go,” he said, grabbing Dana by the hand. He started to walk, but Tiny moved in front of them.

“You can’t leave,” he said. “In a few minutes we will no longer be in this place. You must stay with us.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Paul said. “But we’re leaving.”

“Don’t you get it? We have people with us from just about every time period throughout history. Why, Fisk here was born four hundred years before you. Tiny’s only stays in one period of time for one night. It is now almost midnight and we will move to another point in time. You see, tomorrow, this place won’t be here. It will be in another time. And not a time of my choosing.”

“What? Just some random time?”

“No. I told you that people with the potential to cause others harm are called here, but actually it is a two-way street. People also call Tiny’s.”

“What are you saying?” Paul asked, still holding tight to Dana’s hand.

“You two called Tiny’s to this time,” the fat man said. “You brought us here, and you were brought to us.”

“No, that’s a load of bullshit,” Paul insisted. “We’re going home.”

He took one step toward Tiny and the floor began to rumble and vibrate. A cheer went up from the patrons in the bar. Mr. Fisk sat down on one of the barstools, and Tiny smiled at Paul.

--- To Be Continued ---

Tiny Shifts (Part II)

--- Continuing From Here ---

An ancient Wurlitzer stood against the wall directly in front of them providing a song Paul had never heard before. The wall was festooned with animal heads, beer signs, and old playbills. A pool table with stained green felt silently begged someone to try their luck at its banks and holes, and a pinball machine that appeared to pre-date electricity slept in the corner. Beyond the poolroom was a hallway that emptied menacingly into darkness. To the right, the place opened into a larger room with half-lights and candlelit tables surrounding a large circular, mahogany bar.

The door closed behind them, and they stepped slowly across the warped hardwood floor.

“Where is everyone?” Dana said, looking around.

“They’re right there,” Paul answered, pointing to the dozen or so dimly lit faces seated at the tables and on barstools.

A little whimpering noise escaped Dana, and her knees buckled and she fell to the floor.

Some of the patrons heard the thump as her body crumpled to the hardwood, and they quickly looked to another one of the patrons. A man that had been sitting with his back to them at the end of the bar rose to his feet and walked toward them.

“Dana,” Paul said, kneeling. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a little dizzy. Help me up,” she said, and she looked a little embarrassed for fainting.

Paul grasped her hands and pulled her to her feet as the man from the end of the bar reached them. He was tall and thin, his limbs like those of a spider, and his features looked as though someone had grabbed his chin and his forehead and stretched his face out. A crop of coarse-looking hair bristled atop his head, a tiny iron gray pasture. His clothes hung on him, the plain white, button-up shirt like a bed sheet, the brown trousers like a tent.

“Paul, they weren’t there,” Dana said, ignoring the man, but Paul couldn’t take his eyes off him. “Just like the cars. I don’t feel good. Let’s get out of here.”

The thin man cocked his head at Dana, and Paul noticed something else strange about him. His ears flopped over as though he were using them to wave at her. They were large, floppy pieces of skin. And the man’s nose was extremely long. When he turned his head to look at Dana, it swung loosely in front of his mouth. To Paul, the man looked like a skinny, emaciated elephant!

Dana apparently noticed the man’s abnormalities, too, as she looked at him with curiosity and disgust.

“Can’t go just yet,” the man said, still looking at Dana. His voice was deep and nasal. “You folks come in and make yourselves at home.” He pointed back at the bar, and the length of his arm was extraordinary.

When he walked back toward his barstool, his hands reached easily down to his knees. And Paul saw that the man wore no shoes, revealing feet the length of a baguette and toes as long as a man’s fingers. Someone has crossed a man, an elephant, and a spider, Paul thought.

The song that had been playing ended.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dana said again, and the other patrons exchanged a looked that to Paul seemed conspiratorial.

“Said you can’t just yet,” the thin man repeated, not turning back to face them. “Come have a drink.”

Paul started to follow.

“Paul?”

“He wants us to have a drink with him. I’m just being polite,” he said, and walked to the bar. Dana walked beside him.

“What’ll it be?” asked the thin man when they reached him.

“Beer.”

He motioned for the bartender. “Two beers for these folks.”

The bartender looked normal enough. He was height and weight proportionate. He had a flat but nice face, and he was dressed in jeans, a collared shirt, and sneakers. “Two beers.” He set them in front of Paul and Dana.

Paul took a sip of the cold beer, and watched as a woman with a flattop rose from her table and went to the jukebox. She wore army fatigue trousers, boots, and a green tank top with a full patch of hair peaking out from under each arm.

“This is an unusual place,” Paul said to the thin man. “We didn’t even know it was here until tonight.”

“Everyone says that,” the man replied.

“Are you the owner?” Dana asked. If she was feeling timid, she had stuffed the feeling away for the moment.

“Tiny’s the owner. My name is Mr. Fisk.”

“Where’s Tiny?”

“He’ll be around,” Mr. Fisk said.

“Does he own all those cars out front?” Paul asked.

Mr. Fisk turned to face him. His gray eyes appeared steady within a crimson-threaded field of white. “In a way he does,” he said. “But in a way, they’re ours.”

“What does that mean?” Dana asked, her earlier apprehension becoming even more invisible.

“We all arrived here somehow, didn’t we?” Mr. Fisk responded with a chuckle.

Paul looked around at the rest of the cast in the bar. The lights were low, so he couldn’t see them all very well, but something told him they were all watching and listening.

A song erupted from the Wurlitzer, and a group of people jumped up and sauntered into the poolroom to dance. A man wearing a cowboy hat, denim trousers, boots, and a face like leather danced with a stocky one-armed woman in a flannel shirt, shorts, and hiking boots. Another member of their group, a man in a loose-fitting yellow suit and a matching yellow fedora, produced a video camera and began experimenting with angles as the couple danced a decrepit version of a tango.

The videographer finally found his angle and began to tape the dancers.

Before long a man wearing the heavy wool coat and full beard of a whaler approached the pool table, setting the balls in the rack for a game. His opponent joined him, and the light in the game room revealed another grotesque figure.

The man set to play pool against the whaler was bare-chested and, like Mr. Fisk, wore no shoes. He was angular, with actual lines and points where his joints transitioned into other body parts. The straight lines of his shoulders shot at a right angle from his neck and gave way harshly to the descension of his arms. His elbows and forearms were similarly squared off. The exposed skin of his chest and head was a light blue color and appeared to reflect the dim light, like the scales of a fish. His head was as devoid of hair as the rest of his torso, and his eyes and mouth were set at eerily beautiful, upward angles. Two vertical slit that spread and contracted with each breath comprised his nose.

Selecting a cue stick, the whaler broke the rack of pool balls to begin the game.

The woman in army fatigues that had played the music came over and sat on the barstool next to Dana. She looked Dana up and down, then called the bartender over and ordered a drink. The bartender delivered her drink, and the woman spun around on the stool to face the crowd.

“Relic. Come over here,” she barked.

A dark lump appeared from one of the tables in the corner and waddled toward them. When it got closer, Paul thought Dana was going to scream. The thing was a little taller than the barstools, and had a head like a toad. Its skin was the texture of a pineapple, and appeared to be bathed in mucus or an oil of some kind. It had stumpy little arms and legs with folds of skin at the knees and elbows, and it squished each time it took a step.

Dana was frozen in place, and Paul wasn’t sure of what he was seeing either.

“What do you think?” the woman in fatigues asked it, indicating Dana.

“Tasty,” it said, its fat gray tongue lolling over its meaty, wet lips.

This response brought gales of cackling laughter from the woman in fatigues, and it instilled further paralysis in Dana. Paul put his arm around her, ready to defend her if it came to that. But Mr. Fisk stepped in like a teacher breaking up a fight.

“Cut the crap, Lizzy,” he said to the woman in fatigues. Then to the lumpy creature, “Hungry, Relic?”

“Yes. Hungry,” it grunted, bouncing and squishing up and down.

Mr. Fisk tossed it some peanuts with his snake-like arm. It swallowed the treat, shells and all. After another handful of peanuts, it waddled off down the dark hallway.

“What the hell was that?” Dana said, finding her tongue.

“Just another fugitive,” Mr. Fisk said. “Same as the rest of us.”

“Mr. Fisk,” Paul said. “I think we’re going to be on our way. How much do I owe for the beers?”

Suddenly the dancers stopped dancing and the videographer stopped taping. The men playing pool stopped their game abruptly, sliding the cues onto the stained green felt. They all scattered back to where they had been sitting. The music on the jukebox stopped. Lizzy jumped up from the barstool, and rejoined some other patrons at a table.

“Not just yet,” Mr. Fisk said. “Looks like Tiny wants to see you.”

Out of the darkened hallway where Relic had just disappeared came Tiny. Walking past the dead pinball machine, he entered the bar area where the others all waited amid a cloud of murmurs.

--- To Be Continued ---

Tiny Shifts (Part I)

The headlights cut a bright swath through the blanket of darkness that covered the landscape. In the dim starlight, the hills loomed on all sides, like the twisted spinal column of some giant, malevolent beast. Paul drove the Cherokee indifferent to the night, thinking of the mistakes he’d made on the river that day. Dana sat next to him humming softly in time with a Credence Clearwater Revival tune issuing from the radio.

“I should have followed your route through that class five at Murton’s Point,” Paul said, drawing Dana’s attention from the middle of the chorus.

“I’d say you did all right,” she responded after a moment of reflection. She tilted her head slightly toward him, giving merit to her assessment.

Paul kept his eye on the road, but he knew the expression on her face. Dana had a way of showing concern without losing her underlying humor, a furtive quality of hers that he loved to evoke when he had the opportunity. She could display it for anyone, not just Paul, but he believed he was the only person that could really appreciate it.

“Tony went into the water and banged his knee hard on that rock,” Paul said, not ready to cease the critique of his performance.

“That’s a tough set you’re talking about.”

“I know, but your entire boat made it through. You didn’t lose anyone.”

“I took a conservative route.” She fiddled with the radio knob. A Country station came in. “You always go for a more aggressive run. That’s why those boys like riding in your boat.”

“I guess so,” he said reluctantly. “What was wrong with CCR?”

“You guess so? You know so. And I like this song.”

“Yeah. But I still don’t like to lose anyone. I mean, what if Tony had hit his head instead of his knee?"

“Don’t beat yourself up with ‘what-ifs’ like that,” she put her hand on his knee. “Those guys are experienced rafters, same as you and me. They know there are risks each time they get in the water. And they know that the risk is part of the excitement.”

Paul covered her hand with his. She was slender and beautiful, and all the athletic activity she participated in had given her a deceptive strength. But her hand was soft and feminine, and her touch sexually charged.

“How much do I owe you?” Paul asked after a moment of silence.

“What do you mean? Owe me for what?”

“Making me feel better.”

She laughed. “As usual, it’s on the house.”

They drove on through the night with the twangy Country song playing low. It would take less than an hour to get out of the hill country and back to flat land where the river ran slow.

In addition to the weekend that was just ending, Paul and Dana had spent countless days on the portion of the river where it flowed down through the rocky hills creating some of the states best rapids. And they’d made the drive along the winding state highway so many times that each of them could navigate the curves and steep grades with little effort. So Paul was more than a little surprised when he thought he saw a neon sign shining behind some trees a few yards off the road.

“What the hell was that?” Paul said, checking the rearview mirror to get another glimpse of the colorful light.

“I don’t know,” Dana conceded.

“You saw it, too?”

“If you’re talking about that neon sign back there, yes, I saw it, too.” She rubbed at her temples.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Somebody’s house?” Dana asked, but never looked back down the road to the location.

“Could be,” Paul said. “But I didn’t think anyone lived in this area except Vaco, and we past his place about five miles back.” Dana was shaking her head as though something was in her hair. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Turn around,” Dana said with a trace of something in her voice that Paul took as excitement. “Let’s go see what it is.”

Paul applied the brakes and swung the Cherokee around.

Approaching the spot where the light was shining through the trees, he spotted a dirt road.

“Hmm. I’ve never seen that before.”

“I don’t think I have either,” Dana agreed. She looked from the dirt road to the highway and back to Paul. “I didn’t see that . . .”

“What?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

“Nothing. I . . . I was going to say, it looks like that road leads to where the sign is.”

He turned slowly onto the dirt road, ignoring her odd behavior. The branches were hanging low, but didn’t compromise the Jeep’s paint job or the raft strapped to the roof. They wove through a substantial sconce of trees before they came to a clearing and could read the neon sign.

“I’ll be damned,” Paul said, bringing the Cherokee to a stop. “All the years we’ve been coming here, and we never saw this place before?”

The red shine of the neon sprayed across the branches of the trees, spelling out the name of the establishment. Tiny’s, it said, and below that in smaller letters, Pastimes & Secrets.

“What is it?” Dana asked, peering out of the windshield as though searching for something.

“I think it’s an icehouse. A bar.”

“A bar? Way out here?” Her voice trembled.

“Yes. You’ve seen bars before. Let’s go check it out,” Paul said, inspecting Dana to see if her face reflected the trembling. She stared hard at the shack, but otherwise looked normal. “Come on, I’ll buy the first round since your boat finished ahead of mine today.”

“Okay. But I don’t want to stay too long. We’ve got an expensive raft strapped to the top of this truck. I don’t want to leave it out here unattended. Remember that time someone cut a hole in the roof of my car outside of Lovenuts?”

“The boat’ll be all right. Let’s just go have a beer, and see what Tiny’s is like.”

As they stepped out of the car, the muffled beat of some indistinguishable music drifted from inside the building. The wooden planks that composed the walls seemed to warp the sound into an odd mix, like guitars and industrial noise.

“Sounds peculiar, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Probably just punk rock,” Dana quipped with a nervous laugh.

“Holy shit. Look at that,” Paul said. “It’s a vintage car show.”

Parked in front of the shack were half dozen cars of various models, all of which were made before 1960. There was a Model A Ford, a Buick Roadster, a 1938 Alfa Romeo, a Porsche Spyder, a 1949Cadillac Coup D’Ville, and a 1958 Chevrolet Impala convertible.

“Did you notice these cars when we pulled up?” Paul asked.

“I didn’t notice them until you said something,” Dana said sternly and grabbed his hand, stopping him before he could take another step.

“What is it?” he said, divining a deeper uneasiness in her. “You all right?”

“Paul, I didn’t see the shack. I saw the woods and nothing more, until you said it was a bar. Then there it was. It just popped into my vision.”

“What do you mean? You weren’t looking at the right spot?”

“I didn’t notice the music either,” she continued, ignoring his question. She looked worried.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t see the bar. I saw nothing until you did. When we got out of the car, I didn’t hear anything. I mean, aside from the car door slamming and some cicadas, it was silent. Then you said, ‘Sounds peculiar doesn’t it?’ and suddenly I could hear the music.”

“You probably weren’t paying attention until I said something,” he said, trying to ease her worry.

“That’s what I thought at first, too, but when you said to look at the cars, and I hadn’t seen them before, it made me think that I’d been paying attention all along and the shack and the music just weren’t there.”

“What are you saying?”

Dana looked at the cars and the shack. The music thrumming through the walls was undeniable, and so was the confusion on her face. “I don’t want to go in there,” she said. “Something’s not right.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be silly.”

“I’m serious. How could I not see six cars — six vintage cars— that are now right in front of me?”

“Well, it’s dark out here. Maybe—"

“—I didn’t see the sign either when we drove by.”

“You said you did.”

“I know. I said I did, because I didn’t want to tell you how I knew what you were talking about. When you asked me if I saw ‘that’ without specifying what ‘that’ was, the thought of a red neon sign just popped into my head. I never saw it. I just thought it. And the road you pointed out that lead us here . . .”

“You didn’t see that either?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not until you mentioned it.”

“Well, this is ridiculous,” Paul said. Dana possessed a fabulous sense of humor, but her bent was to be clever and witty. She had never found practical jokes or praying on someone’s trust amusing. So he had no reason to think she was putting him on now. Still, he wasn’t sure he believed her. “You just need a cold beer. Let’s go in.”

Dana exuded apprehension, causing her steps to appear forced, but she walked along with him anyway. She was an adventurous woman, and Paul knew that even if her fear were legitimate, it wouldn’t stop her. Besides, once she got inside and saw that Tiny’s was just a harmless little icehouse, she’d be her old self again.

As they approached the step that lead up to the front door, Paul noticed something else that had eluded him earlier. On the far side of the entrance, there was a hitching post. That wasn’t so unusual. What was unusual was that there were two saddled horses tied to the post, each standing quietly, their black-marble eyes watching the new arrivals.

Who, in their right mind would be riding horses this late, he thought? Then another thought struck him. Dana loved horses, and he knew she would never stand for someone keeping their animals saddled and out this late, nor would she approve of anyone riding them home after drinking.

He watched Dana’s face as they walked up the step next to the hitching post about five yards from the horses. She looked around, apparently taking in as much of the scene as she could as they walked. Paul expected a mild tirade when she noticed the horses. But they reached the door, and she still had not given any indication she had seen them.

“What do you think?” he said.

“About what?”

He decided not to mention the horses. She had seen them. Of course she had. He motioned to the door with his head. Next to it, on either side, was a window that stood the same height as the door. Dana tried to look through the one nearest her, but the glass was smoked and she gave up. Turning back to him, she nodded.

Paul pulled open the door, and the music hit them full force. With it came a smell that danced across his nose for an instant, a smell of mildew and rot. It was gone so fast and replaced by used cigar and cigarette smoke, he wasn’t sure he’d smelled it all.

---To Be Continued---

When Crazy White People Attack!

The Texas State Board of Education, which is made up of at least seven members (there are 15 total) claiming creationist beliefs, has been the architect of some very suspect actions over the years, and the last few months have only added to its unsteady history.

Let me bring you up to speed, first on a story you may have read about that really heated up toward the end of 2007, and then on a couple more developments involving the Texas board.

In July, 2007, Texas Governor Rick (The Hair) Perry appointed self-professed creationist, Don McLeroy, to head the Texas State Board of Education. Despite the fact that McLeroy is open with his fundamentalist leanings, everyone assumed the appointment was going to be a non-issue. We were not too far removed from the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, so it seemed naming McLeroy to head the state board in Texas was at worst just another stupid decision by Gov. Perry. No one thought it was going to lead to another Kitzmiller scenario.

Well, it quickly became clear that the science education of the children of Texas was indeed in danger of being co-opted by a set of backward thinkers whose ideas would fit better in the Dark Ages than in the proud, progressive state that Texas is and should be. There was a real possibility that the fundamentalists on the board would try to devalue the concepts of biological evolution by including Intelligent Design in the science curriculum. They seemed poised to try to do what the federal court said the Dover, Pennsylvania school board could not.

You see, shortly after McLeroy was appointed, things took a turn for the idiotic. No surprise, considering the kind of ass backward thinking Perry, McLeroy, and others demonstrate without fail. For example, according to the Austin American Statesman:

In 2001, McLeroy and a majority of the board rejected the only Advanced Placement textbook for high school environmental science because its views on global warming and other events didn’t comport with the beliefs of the board majority. The book wasn’t factual and was anti-American and anti-Christian, the majority claimed. Meanwhile, dozens of colleges and universities were using the textbook, including Baylor University, the nation’s largest Baptist college.

In 2003, McLeroy voted against approving biology textbooks that included a full-scale scientific account of evolutionary theory.

At any rate, a staunchly religious, creationist governor had appointed a hardline, fundamentalist to head the State Board of Education. And then in November 2007, Chris Comer, the Texas Education Agency’s Director of Science Curriculum was forced to resign by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for sending out an email announcing a talk by anti-creationism advocate Barbara Forrest.

Suspicious, huh?

Even more so when you find out why Comer was let go. Again from the Austin American Statesman:

[Texas Education] Agency officials cited the e-mail in a memo recommending her termination. They said forwarding the e-mail not only violated a directive for her not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency regarding an upcoming science curriculum review, “it directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science.” The memo adds, “Ms. Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”

My thought at the time was: The Texas Education Agency is required to remain neutral when it comes to science versus antiscience?!?!?!? Shouldn't one of the TEA’s (particularly the Director of Science Curriculum) main purposes be to promote science over antiscience, and to actually teach children the difference between reality and fantasy? My god, if its goals do not include making a stand against detractors of quality education as well as against pseudoscience, antiscience, trash science, codswallop, claptrap, and quackery, what exactly are its goals? On what issues is the TEA allowed to take a side?

Of course Ms. Comer claimed that her forced resignation was political in nature, and that she was being railroaded. And given what we know about the case, her claim appeared to have quite a bit of merit.

The state education standards were scheduled to be reviewed early in 2008, and one could indeed make the case that Comer was forced to resign because the top TEA administrators and some board members wanted her out of the way before the state science standards were examined, revised, and rewritten. In fact, it was widely reported that plans were underway by some state board members and TEA administrators to diminish the requirement to teach evolutionary biology as part of the state's standardized curriculum and to require instead that biology instructors “Teach the Controversy” about the “weaknesses” of evolution. If that were indeed the case, it would only make sense for the board to quiet any strong detracting voices, if it could.

Noted anti-creationist Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) commented at the time:

This just underscores the politicization of science education in Texas. In most states, the department of education takes a leadership role in fostering sound science education. Apparently TEA employees are supposed to be kept in the closet and only let out to do the bidding of the board.

Fortunately, Comer's dismissal, and the surrounding circumstances, garnered a lot of publicity, causing Perry, McLeroy, and the rest to scramble, like roaches exposed to the light. So early in 2008 when the science curriculum came up for review, they were under a microscope, and perhaps because of good judgement or perhaps simply because of the pressure, made no major changes to the Texas science curriculum standards.

The bad news is, even though the science standards were not overhauled, McLeroy and other board members still want the "weaknesses" of evolution taught. Their religious viewpoint is what influences their politics most.

And their political reach stretches further than just education about evolution. It now seems the conservative board has had a negative impact on sex education in Texas as well.

Take a look at this video from a recent news broadcast in Houston.

Apparently, McLeroy and the conservative members have used their positions to reduce the amount of sex education information available to junior high and high school students. As McLeroy himself says in the news video, the prevailing view among the board is that sex and discussions about sex should be mostly relegated to the confines of marriage — a perfectly fine point of view for an individual. But this bit of moralistic residue derived from a staunchly religious viewpoint simply has no value in terms of educating young people, and may very well be dangerous. It's an antiquated idea, and one must wonder about the intelligence level of anyone promoting it as a general education standard.

Fortunately, this issue is being used strongly as a campaign point for a woman running against one of the conservative board members. What voters do with it is up to them, but at least the public is getting information about this issue before they go to the polls.

And finally, in addition to evolution and sex, the Texas State Board of Education has been meddling with yet another subject close to my heart. The board members are now also backing a new curriculum that increases the focus on English basics, including grammar.

Initially, I thought this was a good idea, considering scores for Texas students on language-related material have been dismal for a long time now. Plus, as someone who has been paid to write for some 20 odd years, these failures were unacceptable. Admittedly, I personally was somewhat embarrassed by the results. I thought going back to the basics just might be the path to take to get the kids up to where they should be.

However, the article I linked to above points out that standardized tests like TAKS and the SAT — the measuring sticks for students' language skills nationwide — don't examine grammar skills in isolation. They test comprehension, and opponents of the state board's stance on the issue insist this area is where the focus should be placed, not on grammar basics. They also say the standards proposed by the board ignore at least 50 years of research on grammar instruction.

Kylene Beers of The Woodlands, Texas, president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English and a senior reading adviser to secondary schools in the Reading Writing Project at Teachers College at Columbia University says:

People who yearn for a return to the basics usually attended school in the 1950s, and by the end of that decade only 20 percent of the best paying jobs required at least some college, in contrast to today's figure of 56 percent.

When we talk about getting back to the basics in literacy education, the first thing that smart people have to do is to realize that literacy demands have shifted. What's basic now isn't the same as what was basic when middle-aged adults of today were in school.

Well, I think Beers has accurately described many of the state board members with that comment. Maybe there is something to the idea of focusing more on language as a whole these days. I mean, isn't it just as important for communicating effectively in the modern world to know how the Internet and pop-culture work as it is to know the difference between an adjective and an adverb?

The point of all this is, I don't begrudge anyone their political views — whether conservative or liberal. But nothing from either side (or from the middle of the road for that matter) should be brought into public discourse if founded upon outmoded thinking, or mystical philosophies, or mythology. And on these three issues, that's precisely what the State Board of Education has done.

Whenever we come across a public official who has allowed his or her religious beliefs to taint the mission of his or her office, we should speak up, speak out, and vote out, if necessary.

And then maybe we can let Texas politics get back to being the larger-than-life circus sideshow it's always been.

Update

Sorry for being away for so long, but I've had some FTP issues with my site hosting provider, and was unable to add any new content to this blog.

It looks as though things have been resolved, as this update post will verify.

I will resume posting at my normal, laziest blogger in the world pace as soon as something worth writing about occurs to me. In the meantime, my Houston Rockets are facing elimination tonight against the Utah Jazz.

Stay tuned for new content, and GO ROCKETS!!