I met Garrison Keillor once, in 1976, in Saigon.  He was wearing a white linen suit and a white fedora eating pho at a small café where he insisted on being called Mr. Andicott.  Between slurps of the fiery broth he entertained local boys, homeless by the looks of them, with sleight-of-hand trickery and the butchering of classic Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes sung in his unique and incessant warbling (he particularly favored “With a Little Bit of Luck” from My Fair Lady).  He saw me sitting there alone, drinking tea, and asked me to join him.

“Do you know me?” he said, looking around as if to keep this secret intact, his lips permanently puckered as if expecting a kiss.

“I believe so, yes,” I replied.

“Good, good. It is nice to be known, wouldn’t you say?”

“I…do not believe I am known, sir. So, I would not know.”

“Ah, well, you should become known. It is quite invigorating.”  He laughed, snorted, and sucked up more broth.  I watched as the neighborhood boys, those riff-raff, watched his every move from afar, scattered along the place like delicate little creatures, entranced by him, fixated on his jowls as they wobbled with his ferocious eating gestures.  He soon sat back in his chair, nestling in place as if it were some throne, and this café—his kingdom.  “There is a certain degree of anonymity here, you know.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant this café or Saigon in general, but I did not ask.  A boy soon approached, much older than the others, but still a boy, wearing only jean shorts, his skin dark and smooth, his face lighting up as if he had a real purpose here.  He approached Garrison, who noticed him out of the corner of his eye, and waved him near.  The boy whispered inaudibly as the man, their king, clicked his tongue while processing what he was being told.  Once the boy had finished, Garrison produced a fistful of coin, handing it over.  The boy smiled and left, taking most of the others with him.

Then, as if remembering I was there with him, privy to his idiosyncrasies, Garrison sat up at the table, forcing a smile through his thin lips. “Would you like to hear a secret?”

“A secret?”

“I know the secrets of the universe,” he giggled.  “Would you like to know them?”

“Sure,” I responded and watched as he sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his great sprawling belly.  He waited a moment then proceeded to sing in his gravelly voice “The Ants Go Marching”, raising his fist during the chorus, spittle foaming at the sides of his mouth during the excitement.  I watched and waited, and after he had finished, he wiped his mouth clean with a handkerchief plucked from his jacket.

“The secret,” he declared like a proud papa, “is there, buried in those verses.”  He laughed and slapped the table, then stood and fixed his suit and pocketed the handkerchief.  He tilted his hat toward me, then to the staff waiting behind the counter, and left the place, his musk trailing behind him. Outside, a rickshaw pulled up as if on cue, and Garrison stepped up, his great weight slugging the thing down.  The driver began to peddle, and before Garrison disappeared from out of sight, he looked back inside the café, meeting my gaze, and smirked as if he already knew how everything would turn out. LS

Gym sucks. I stand between Patrick and Latisha exchanging mortified glances. If I’m the last one standing, I swear brain matter will leak from my ears.

“It’s survival of the fittest, Dude, nothing personal.” Blake shrugs as he chooses the next member of his kickball team.

Team captain number two waves Latisha over. It’s down to me and Patrick. As Blake’s “best” friend I shouldn’t be sweating it. But I can feel the wet circles under my pits already. This is raw humiliation and I’m still feeling it two hours later.

 “You may have a good arm, but when it comes to kicking, you’re no Adam Vinatieri,” he says during lunch.

 Great. Announce it like a radio broadcast to the whole cafeteria. I toss an empty milk carton at his head.

 “Dude, get over it,” he says, like I’m the jerk.

 Who does he think he’s kidding? His best sport is badminton. Pure luck that he was chosen team captain.

By the time gym day rolls around again Blake and I are talking. Barely. But that doesn’t mean that if I had the chance to humiliate him I wouldn’t take it.

 As we enter the gymnasium there’s a substitute teacher in the doorway and a rack of playground balls at center court. She tosses me a ball. “You’re team captain.”

  “Dodgeball!” the sub hollers and blows the whistle.

  I make Latisha and Patrick my first two choices, then start flexing my throwing arm. I love gym.  LS

It was a weak moment that I picked up the magazine.

Glossy, thick as a textbook, the cover model swathed in white taffeta.

It had an almost hypnotic effect on me. I flipped through pages of iridescent confectionary masterpieces, sparkling hands holding fragile lilies and silhouettes wading in in the surf at sunset.

“Excuse me, can I get by?” she asked.

The woman who spoke to me gestured at my shopping cart blocking the aisle. She noticed what I was reading and smirked to herself.

She didn’t congratulate me or ask if I’d set a date. She looked at me, an over thirty Botox aficionado with a naked ring finger and judged for herself.

“Who do you think you’re kidding?” she seemed to be saying. “Women like you die alone.”

I flushed and hastily put it back, as ashamed as if I‘d been caught looking at porn. LS

It was a fine afternoon for murder. The bell rang for dismissal and children poured out of classrooms into corridors, spilt into courtyards, escaped into streets. Within minutes, the campus was almost deserted, as even the adults began to make their less hasty
exits on the last day of term. Into this scene of impending calm strode a group of boys. Coming
down a flight of stairs, they turned and stood around the little pond just beside the stairs, jostling for position around the edge of the pond until they were all leaning over, distorted faces staring up from the rippling water.

In the pond, several tadpoles could be seen harmlessly swimming. The
boys observed the tadpoles for several minutes, completely oblivious
to the growing stillness of their surroundings. One boy produced a
small plastic bag, and with one swift move, scooped up all the
tadpoles. Having tied the bag securely, he and the other boys stepped
away from the pond, grinning gleefully, completely absorbed in their
sport. Holding the bag up high, he was about to turn and walk off,
when he closed his fingers around one of the tadpoles, felt it squirm
through the plastic, and squeezed. Hard. An explosion of murky fluid,
the first of several.

Satisfied for the moment, he chucked the plastic bag into the bin, and
chuckling with his friends, walked out the gates of the school. He
turned left when they turned right. Unlike them, he lived uptown. None
of them clocked the man standing opposite the school beside an idling
car. He might have been a parent, waiting for a tardy son, except for
the gun discreetly tucked into his belt. He watched the boys waving to
each other, waited until the group that had turned right was around
the corner. Then he cocked the gun, got into the car, and drove off
after the one who was left alone. LS