Further tests on the Carrolin whales.

31 December, 2010 / Further Tests On The Carrolin Whales / By Jaret Ferratusco.

An ever thickening blanket of rain held our front windows hostage from the night. Almost nothing could be seen beyond the sill, as if a large gray wall of runny wet cement was growing up from the surrounding hedges, and though all the curtains were closed in case the same wasn't so from the outside looking in, it was still painfully obvious that our privacy could not be secured anywhere in the main part of the house. I shut all the lights off behind me to get the glare out, but I could still see nothing out there. Not even as far as the driveway. And with the steady pounding of the rain, I couldn't hear when cars passed by on the street although at times I could make out the watery red of the taillights. Under these circumstances, if a car pulled up to the house we'd never know.

We wouldn't know if someone was on the way up to the house until it was too late and they were in.

So that was that. The main part of the house was just no good tonight.

We moved our meeting to the most private room available on the first floor, the front hall closet. It was never really used unless we had guests over, so even if someone came through the house we'd have time to hear them walking around before anyone found us. Adequate room for our party of four was effected by pulling out the vacuum, some brooms and suitcases and a box of old leather coats. The evidence of this clearing we deposited into the basement stairwell, another safe spot. The basement was not used at night unless to take care of excess loads of laundry, and it being days off from laundry day, we could even stand to let a lot of it sit overnight if we had to.

Underneath the carpet in the closet was a fire safe we installed at the beginning of the summer. Emy alone knew the combination to this lock so she was in charge of keeping all of our more sensitive documents there. When we needed to confer over a certain set of notes, two of us would squeeze out of the way and Dannis would lift the carpet and look in the other direction as Emy spun the dial of the combination lock and let us in and out of the world of private notes. Her secret was our pride, because some of us were bad liars and we didn't want to have to know about things we didn't need to, in case we were to be questioned on the spot at any point. She had the combination written down in the woods and she told us if we ever really needed it when she wasn't around, we would definitely know where to look. All of us kind of did, but we didn't go out there ever, unless we had to.

Now, all together in the closet, we quieted down and listened to Emy talk about the bruises.

Distinct bruises on our two parallel whales was the first topic to be raised during the early stages of the conference, scrutinized under a thin yellow beam emanating from the small flashlight Emy brought with her everywhere. She moved the flashlight over the chart and did most of the talking. As she shifted between the flashlight and her notes, I offered to hold the heaviest item, the chart itself, but she said it wouldn't be necessary. The other two watched intently, listening closely. I found it hard to concentrate. Unless I could be made useful I always found it hard to concentrate, so I asked her again if I could hold the chart. She looked at me impatiently and sighed, “Just listen, okay?”

“Okay, Emy.”

The sketch tracing the histories of the whales from birth to now was scribbled across a dry erase board that I got off the kitchen wall in our neighbor's house. Without the dry erase board we'd have had to use colored chalk for the graphs and write on the white closet wall, and that always leaves stains, so inadvertently I was able to contain myself a little knowing I'd helped Emy with the presentation in this minimal way.

I fidgeted around a lot, but stuffed my hands into my pockets to try to stop. No matter what I did I always thought of myself as the least important out of the four.

I was more used to breaking and entering than anyone else and was actually good at it, so that, at least, was a strong point I could claim. One of my more noted performances had been the snatching of father's heart pills from the dashboard of his car while he was at work and I was supposed to be in school over nine miles away. I'd been able to sneak out of class that day and hire a cab using money lifted from the math teacher's purse. And with an authentic pass to the nurse's office, I used my time wisely getting to and from father's factory job parking lot and back into class with a forged release note from the nurse written up by Dannis, the committee script writer. That night father had to go to the hospital (mother stayed with him) and they were gone for the whole night and next day, giving us plenty of time to move the whales in and make sure the tanks were working before we covered them up with tarps.

I just wish she'd let me hold the damned chart. She's barely able to do it all, she just wants to be controlling.

To be fair, this was her job anyway, the presentations.

Emy would normally have me assist her in most of the presentations, but only really because I pestered her about it so much. And it would sometimes cause Dennis to smirk or make callous accusations. Such things would conceive to undermine the overall idea of our meetings, but I learned to just look past it. Besides, tonight Emy was skittish, and her long red hair repeatedly fell in front of her face as she talked, causing her to stop and push a lock of it here or there, disrupting the presentation. I was for the most part forgotten. After so much of her barely even looking my way I pulled out a hairband. It was green, her favorite color. She said thank you and I held the flashlight for her while she strung up her hair and we continued. I didn't feel so out of place when I was able to help Emy and this break in her presentation might have been a little distracting to the other two, but it made me feel a whole lot less nervous.

Nevertheless Dennis in the back smirked and I shot him a look.

Emy and Dannis sssshhhhhed us both, though it wasn't me who'd said anything.

Resuming her presentation, Emy went over the bruises previously noted on the whales. There were two of them. Freshly captured baby Carrolin whales we stole from the town harbor cages before they could be tagged. We put one of them in the built-in swimming pool, carefully re-filtered with a saline-saltwater oxygenation with ammonia previously tested out on a few manta rays we got from the Marina Library saltwater tanks. The other baby whale we kept in the above-ground pool in Dennis' backyard next door using the same filtration system. Both whales were raised precisely parallel in this way, from feeding and petting to the readings we gave to each, switching off from Emy to Dannis usually, but sometimes to Dennis too, all except for me since I couldn't keep from stumbling over the sentences all the time when reading aloud. In the daytime when we were supposed to be in school, the whales were given similar cycles of swimming to adhere to in tandem, from clockwise to counter-clockwise and then occasionally straight back and forth; we took turns skipping summer school classes to make sure the cycles never lapsed. At dusk small electric shocks were administered. Not heavy enough to electrify the pools or incapacitate the whales but enough to confuse them into temporary stillness. Their levels of stunned perplexity were recorded on line graphs and their progress back into the given swim cycle was noted on the clipboards. We raised or lowered the shock frequencies according to how similar their reactions were.

Over the course of the month different variables were added into the filtering tanks, from chlorine solutions to small amounts of talcum powder or old soot from the fireplace. Their meals were always fish-based, from crab meat to white fish, interspersed with tiny doses of pepper, soil, bleach and expired hamburger meat we left out on the pool decks every few days in clear plastic containers. In the latter experiments, all attempts to introduce food poisoning into the whales' systems failed, after which we concluded that their immune systems were so far advanced as to make our own digestive systems appear amateur on a line graph. After two inconclusive weeks of the spoiled meat we discontinued that portion of the testing and moved on to adding small amounts of confetti paper into their meals. Both whales suffered tremendously and their swim cycles slowed parallel, so the confetti was abruptly pulled and we started tainting the water supply with daily teaspoons of paint thinner.

ABB WHALE in the built-in pool was given a head start in her cycles because the pool was more elongated, so as to match up in a way with BEBB WHALE's larger circular tank. Overall the circumference of the pools differed by two feet only. So with the head start, our charts were fairly accurate.

Towards the end of the summer, troublesome rainstorms not only limited the amount of work we could do outside, but the thunderclaps had begun to scare the whales as well.

They were both running into the sides of the pool. Abb Whale suffered the most, as her walls were made from concrete, while Bebb Whale's pool was lined with sheet metal plating under a thin rubber covering.

The more physical the thunderstorms became, the more panicked the whales grew.

As the flashlight followed the charts of bruise exposure, Emy's voice started to waver. She told us if the whales got any worse they may damage their fins or give themselves concussions and drown.

Her eyes welled with tears, “The bruising is becoming more intrusive,” She said, sniffling. “It's just not getting any better. And it may come to a point where they can no longer be tested.” She trained the beam of her small flashlight down toward Abb Whale's statistics on the line graph, whose harm line went jagged in spiking zig-zags over Bebb Whale's less stressful one. “Whether it's the storms or the head-butting against the pool walls, the end effect and our current reality is that they may both be dying,” she said, pulling the flashlight from the dry erase chart and pointing it up at her face so we could see her talk.

Her haunted black eyes bulged from their wet sockets, twinkling like stars in the sky.

I pushed some more coats up against the inside of the door, both to further insulate the sound of the conference as well as to allow more breathing room for the committee.

Dannis reached over for the chart. “Let me see that for a second.”

Emy handed her the chart.

Dannis frowned deeply. “This is serious. We may have to let the whales go.”

Dennis smirked again, this time more obnoxiously. “We can't let the whales go.”

“But if they get any worse,” Emy stressed, pounding her fist against the closet wall, “there's just no way of saying whether or not they'll start panicking. If they splash under the tarps while other people can see it we'll be found out. Not only are they getting more physical day by day, but we're running out of sedatives anyway. We can't give them any more than they're used to, and clearly they've built up a tolerance. Are you sure you can't get any more?”

This question was directed at Dannis, whose mother was constantly on tranquilizers. Half the sedatives were pulled from the overloaded medicine cabinet.

But according to Dannis, it was getting harder and harder to do this because father was starting to complain about the refills. Mother was always too doped up to confirm her doses, and at one point Dannis had been asked by both if she had been taking the pills without asking. It was hard for Dannis to keep coming up with new ways of denying the fact, and so the pills were being hid around the house in different places. From our surveillance, we'd discovered a few of the more obvious hiding places, but once a hiding place was pilfered it was then left naked and Dannis was more and more becoming a suspect.

“We have to do something different,” she pleaded. “What if mother just plain stops bringing them home? We'll be stuck. We need to figure something else out.”

In her defense Dennis suggested raising the voltage of the electric shocks.

“No good,” Emy said. “They could drown. We already came to that conclusion a long time ago. If even one of the whales drowns we're stuck with a failed study. Worse, the whales are bigger now and they will be harder to get rid of if they die now.”

Me this time, “Yeah, but it'll be hard to do anyway. We can't keep them forever. Sooner or later we're going to have to do something with them. And anyway, we can't keep them unnoticed forever either. Sooner or later someone's going to want to go swimming.”

“Not now that summer's ending and father's still sick from the missing medication.”

“But what if the pools need to be drained for autumn? They'll be discovered.”

“What if they drain the pools without knowing the whales are in there? They'll suffocate.”

“Impossible. You can't drain a pool without lifting the tarp. They'll know.”

“Then we're fucked.”

“We're not fucked if we find a way to complete the study before the whales die.”

“Or before we run out of sedatives.”

“I already said we have to look for another option right now. I might not be able to get any more tranquilizers.”

“Shit,” Emy said.

We were all silent for a little bit. The hall closet started to feel smaller and smaller by the second.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “It's just bruises. Maybe their muscles are weak and their defenses lowered. Can't we just put more protein in their diets? We can double the fish, or . . . wait, we can feed them from Dannis' basement freezer.”

Dannis' whole family were hunters. They had seasonal kill in the basement freezer year round. Some of it from years long passed. Why not?

Emy smiled a little. “Maybe. But we still have to advance the study. It's going too slow. We have to parallel the whales better. Faster. We need to figure out where the bodies are going, what they're doing inside. None of us know how to do a post-mortem so we need to figure it out while they're still alive.”

“We could take Abb Whale out of the deep pool and put it in with Bebb Whale. The above-ground pool has a higher elevation, naturally, so perhaps they just need to breath better.”

“That's stupid. Bebb Whale is dying too.”

“Yeah, that doesn't cut it at all. They're sea creatures. Anything above sea level's probably dangerous. If we're really talking about joining the whales to make breathing easier, we should be thinking about adding Bebb Whale to the tank here.”

“What if they fight?”

“They're not the type. Carrolin whales never fight each other, even in times of starvation or disease. They travel together in packs and are known to carry and protect their dead and bury them in sand banks. They've even developed a sort of ceremony that's not entirely unlike a human funeral procession. Which is all the more reason why we should be thinking about joining them. They might give each other strength and protect one another, or one will help the other somehow, in ways we probably can't even tell. It'll cease the panic attacks if anything can.”

“But then we'd have to alter the purpose of the parallel. If they're both in the same tank we can't compare living conditions or situational growth pattern because there won't be any difference in the conditions.”

“What if we blind one of them?”

“We're trying to get them healthier, not increase stress levels. If one of them is sick and the other is forced to abandon the cycles and play protector there's no project anymore, just a patient and nurse routine.”

Emy's face lit up. “Wait! A relief cut. We could put relief cuts underneath their fins.”

Dennis slapped her on the shoulder, “That's great! Who's the best at cutting?”

Dannis raised her hand. “I help father field-strip deer and dogs every spring. I could probably do the relief cuts in my sleep.”

Emy shrieked with giddiness. “That's the thing! That's just what we need to do!” Then she lunged forward and hugged Dannis. The flashlight fell to the floor and rolled in between our feet, visiting a haunted yellowish scene of our legs moving on the bottom wall of the closet that looked like trees in a forest swaying.

With the matter mostly settled, I took the opportunity to slip out of the closet to make a round of the house. Our tea candles were still lit in every room. Thunder rumbled outside and a few times lighting struck somewhere in the neighborhood. Definitely not good for the whales. I peeled the corner of the picture window curtain but still couldn't make out much further than the line of hedges directly in front of the window. There could be a helicopter landing in the driveway and I would neither hear nor see it doing so.

In the bathroom I washed my face and watched a shadowy reflection of myself flickering in the mirror.

Maybe it was because I was always nervous, but I was never the one who came up with any answers right when we needed them. Sure, the protein supplement could work, but that would take too long. If I ever had any truly useful answers they encompassed the long-run, never the now. Essentially we all had our strengths and weaknesses, and for recognizing these things we were able to function pretty good as a committee. If I could have just a little more out of it, though, I wanted to be more than a set of fast hands sometimes. I was the good thief; it's interesting to a degree but a lonely skill overall because I can't bring it out into the open. It's not a skill that helps in the study, just one that enables it. In the lab setting I basically just make sandwiches and be the look-out.

Or hold the chart.

Emy, Dennis and Dannis would excel in life, I have always felt that. Confidence bleeds from them in determined, white bolts of energy. They could go anywhere, and they undoubtedly would. But me, I could only go somewhere in life too if I followed along after them. I'd never make it on my own without at least one of them. Thankfully we were very close not just as a committee but as friends. The way it looked now I just might always be Emy's go-to—fetching supplies, figuring out how to get past a padlocked yard fence. Sneaking in and out of locked department stores. Getting the best gifts for her on her birthday.

And she'd always be there to protect me when I felt like I wasn't worth anything. Things were about as good as could be expected. But I still wanted to be something a little more than just the thief and the sandwich maker and the chart holder.

Despite my own shortcomings I very much liked the committee. We made fun of each other a lot, but we were really friendly about it.

I walked slowly back down the hall in the flickering candle light and then softly tapped out the secret knock at the very bottom of the closet door. It opened slightly and I slid in. We had about an hour to do something that had to stick; to come to some kind of proper conclusion on how best to go about the future of the study and the fate of the Carrolin whales, and get to work on it tonight. When seven o'clock rolled in we'd have to be on our guard. And probably separated again. Dennis and Dannis at home. Me here. Emy hiding out under my bed, whispering lines to me in case I was questioned about anything on the spot.

Yours,
JARET.

Lori carol.

Lori Carol / a story / 10 October, 2010 - 5:35am

I stared with an emptiness at the work before me. The lifelines in the palms of my hands were both scratched away, and I stared also at this, bewildered but not turned away. The sewer grate's dull round edges took most of the afternoon to grasp any useful hold of. I felt rage not without the bounds of humility. My fingers and hands looked chewed up, by factory machines. They were greasy, smeared with grit from the street, scratched and bleeding from a number of damaged nails and several patches of raw skin. The remaining lines in the palms were filled with dirt.

After too much thought way high up in the clouds and after too much positive attitude cracked apart by the plaintive reality of life being stronger than fate, eventually I worked my way through the lanes of a department store not far from here and came away with a chisel, some hooks and a chain.

I'd washed my hands and put on some band-aids and now I had tools and I would get under the street before twilight descended.

It would take some time yet, but considerably much less of it on account of the hooks and the chain.

And then I'd have the hole chiseled open in the street and I would descend into the part of my life that would consume and eventually defeat me. But I always knew that would have to happen, so I didn't view this as destructive behavior. There was a path set out in life for everyone—from the narrow chasm of the slick widening womb to the dry dust of the narrow ditch and coffin—but just because not everyone sees theirs in a lifetime does not mean it's some difficult or ghostly experience, or some inopportune challenge to discover the right thing to do. Sometimes, when there is nothing to occupy your time, and nobody there to distract you, the path becomes, in fact, almost antagonistic in how clear it is. So, earlier, when I'd spent an hour or whatever it was, scratching at the sewer lid, I wanted to beat my fists against the worn tar street and yell into its vast elongated, gray-black face, and spit and tear at its body until it allowed me to enter. Like, reasoning with it or something. It was only when I'd come to grips with the true physical properties of the matter that I had got up off my knees to secure tools, something which I should have thought of long before coming here.

However, just because I had this idea of how things were going to be, it didn't mean that I had some angelic bright white bulb over my head with the whole thing mapped out and solved.

If I'd had the whole thing solved I wouldn't be so eager right now, sweating, pacing, lost. If anything had been so easy, my shirt would still be tucked in, my hair moderately in place instead of disheveled. I might even have had a flashlight.

But here in the darkness and damp patches of exposed brick and cement and steel bindings, I could see nothing but awkward tunnels leading to indefinite darkness. Two tunnels to one side, stretching off from one another in kind of a similar direction. And then behind me, one larger tunnel, leading . . . behind me.

Three choices. I weighed the matter as if my two simple hands could realistically seize the most of the balance while my mind filled in for the test of the rest of this burden.

Complete silence enveloped the hole. Up above me, the street and a bright eye of sunlight. I wished I had a way of getting that sewer grate back into place up over me without canceling what little light I had left. Even if one of these tunnels went straight into one direction for over a mile I could still look behind me and see the distant little blot of lit cement that would mean the way back to the street, but if I put that sewer grate back into place it would be pure darkness with no direction at all but the feeling of the cement tube wall.

Though if the tunnels turned off after only ten minutes of walking it wouldn't matter anyway.

Already it didn't.

So I left the hole open and ducked into one of the smaller tunnels going off slightly to the left of the other, opposite the larger one behind me. At this point the light then began to recede very rapidly.

I'd counted on my eyes adjusting to the darkness, and that the bulb of sunlight descending from the open manhole in the street behind me would keep with me for at least a little while. But it didn't.

It only took a couple minutes and a few turns and however many steps and I was in darkness as complete as the grave.

Underground. Underneath the street. Chasing a dream.

Yours,
JARET.

Only dust and rain / March 2010.

3:01am.


ONLY DUST AND RAIN
28 b/w portraits by Jaret Ferratusco

Showing March 2010:
- Opens March 4, FIRST THURSDAY. 6pm-10pm.
- Reading from Jaret's new book I Grew Up In Amaltherey Hill @ 9pm
- Special performance by Joey Casio (K Records) @ 9.30pm

Galerie Salome
625 NW Everett St #101
Portland, Or 97209
(Everett Lofts, NW 6th & Everett)

(open FIRST THURSDAYS 6pm-10pm, and SATURDAYS 1pm-5pm)



Yours,
JARET.

I said some nice things.

At a diner somewhere off the highway, the four of us sat around each other in a tiny, stained yellow booth. The few tables surrounding us were empty. I sat facing the bar. A few other customers sat up at the bar, drinking coffee mostly. An old man off to my left ate quietly from his plate of bacon, biscuits and bubbling yellow eggs threatening to burst and flood the table. The light from the bulbs up above us were yellow. Everything around us looked stained and old.

We'd only been on the road a matter of days, but already it had taken its toll on the four of us. The waiting, the driving around and searching.

It was so quiet I could hear the other three breathing. No sounds in the diner but us breathing, and the old guy with the knives and fork scraping mildly against each other. At this time of night, not even other cars were stirring along the interstate.

The girl looked at me and nodded to me, the nod meaning nothing really, but just looking pained. She was just newly pregnant with triplets. There were three tiny little things forming inside here, but they wouldn't be so big right now. When she stood up it was hardly noticeable underneath the layers of shirt, sweater and jacket. With her shirt off, there was only the slight hint of a swell, looking no more than if she'd just been getting a bit heavier for the winter.

We'd been to so many places on this trip that it didn't matter where we were, or why. All we wanted to know was when. One of the other two got up to make sure the restroom was private. When it was, she got up to use the restroom, like always. We watched her until the door closed behind her. The other two looked very grim. Nobody wanted to order anything, but I got a water. The waitress was an old woman with a face like clay. Pocked with dark indentations like she'd been used as an ashtray. She wouldn't let us stay if we didn't order. I said that we were tired. She said she didn't care. So I ordered a few baskets of fries to share, and a bottle of soda.

She said, “Are you all going to share that one soda, you mean?”

I ordered one more bottle. She said okay.

The girl came out of the restroom, her face pale and clammy. When she sat down across from me I knew that something of significance had finally happened. The other two noticed as well, but they put their heads down. The way she took a few moments to raise her head and look at me was enough. I got up and headed to the ladies room.

It was brighter in here, I thought. It always is in ladies rooms. The mens rooms are always, without fail, grimier than anywhere on the planet that's not a restroom, but the ladies rooms are bright and more often that not, mostly clean. I tend to feel both better about myself when I can use one of these without being hassled, and at the same time worthless. I feel worthless knowing that there's one place better in the world than out there, and it's a restroom. Private and horrible, publicly private places.

The triplets were to be put into water immediately upon emerging from the body. We tried doing it near bodies of water, like a river or a lake, but animals could sense her, and they tried to attack the creatures in her womb. The first time we got chased back to the car. The three of us learned our lesson only after the second time, when we had to beat a fox in the head with a tire iron. It had chewed up her leg a little, but nothing we had to admit her into a hospital for. This would all be over soon, and if somebody wanted to get to a hospital when that time came, then they were free to. She wanted this over with as soon as possible.

In public restaurants there would be no wild animals scenting her out, and she would be around people if the creature itself attacked. That was her reasoning, anyway, and who were we to argue? In a public restroom she could flush it if it moved, even. None of us knew what they would do. These triplets.

They were in her body and we had to keep her calm, so this is the way it went. City to city around the whole state in these filthy places on the side of the interstate until they were ready to be still-birthed.

There were three stalls. The one furthest from where I stood, furthest from everything else, the door was closed. But there were no legs underneath. I didn't ask if somebody was in there, I just walked in. The door swung inward.

It was cleaner in here than most of the other places we'd been.

So it was getting better in little ways as it got a little worse in others. What I saw in the clean white bowl was what I expected to see. But not how I expected it to look.



There it was, after all this waiting. All this grim time on the road, and it was finally starting. In the bowl was a child formation, dark purplish skin, bald little head. Curled up, still fetal. It did not float, but rested at the bottom of the bowl. There was nothing in there but water, and the child. I wadded up some tissue paper and covered the child so it would not startle someone into a scream if it was found after we left. I said a few things over the sleeping thing.

I backed up, and the girl was standing behind me, startling me for a moment. I realized I was a bundle of nerves. It was so quiet in the ladies room that I could hear her breathing over my shoulder. When I turned around, she stammered a little, then came closer, still holding her belly. She staggered a little. She looked queasy.

“Are you bleeding?” I asked.

“There was no blood,” she said. “Nothing but that.”

Pointing to the open door of the stall but not close enough to see inside of it, she stopped. “What does it look like,” she asked.

“A normal person. A fetus. Just like in pregnancy diagrams.”

She came a little closer, but stopped again, unable to look inside. “What should we do,” she asked.

“I don't know. I said the words and covered it up. I think we keep moving now. Complete the triangle.”

“Do we...”

“I don't know. Let's just leave. If we have to ask each other about it, it means none of us are capable of making the right decision unless by accident. Do you want to have any accidents?”

“No,” she said, looking downward, patting her strained stomach.

Neither of the other two would be able to answer either. They were along for the ride because they had to be. Because we all had to be where we were, but her and I were the ones making all the decisions. I was a driver, but that's about all, as far as I was concerned. I could get us anywhere because I had a set of keys and because the roads connected to one another. That was how important I was.

We walked out of the ladies room and came up to the table as the lady waitress with the ashtray face slammed down two baskets of fries and the open pop bottles. Both bottles fizzed up and sloshed over with the force of her slamming them down on the table.

She'd watched us both come out of the ladies room together.

“You guys aren't sick, are you?” she asked us.

“No,” I said. “I think we're actually all fine now.” I looked at the other two, who had both raised their heads and were now staring at me questioningly. “Gentlemen, I guess we're on the way now.”

–

The following night, miles away, more north, in the same state but in another city, we stopped off the highway at a small, very cold little diner with only four tables and a walk-up counter. I ordered the same thing, a few baskets of fries and some pop. The other two wanted coffee so they could stay awake. I ordered them coffee.

One of the other two walked over to the ladies room and peeked inside to make sure it was private. The clerk at the counter gave him a look that was not kind.

By the time I was finished ordering and sat down, it was just us three again while the girl was off in the restroom trying to miscarry a second triplet. The restroom. Our legacy is a comprehensive knowledge of ladies rooms. I sat down, sipping from one of the other guys' coffee, feeling tense in my body but pretty clear of mind. They were not shaking, but the other two were not alright. None of us were, but I think me and the girl were able to compose ourselves better than they. Like twins, they'd both stopped tucking their shirts in or combing their hair. This morning at the hotel, I noticed neither of them stopped long enough in the routines of the morning to shower or brush their teeth. I'd done all of those things. I was tired from all the driving we'd been doing, and all the searching, but I still knew to be on my toes.

If the other two were not going to last, we might have to leave them. But only afterward. We need them. If something bad happens. After it was all over, I'd be okay leaving them at some hotel in the middle of nowhere. I could put sleeping aids in their drinks and me and the girl could slip out in the night and never see either of them again. I didn't know if that would screw anything up, but I was willing to take the chance that once this was all done with, there'd be nothing left for us to really take care of. Just a bunch of pawns. A guy with a car, a girl with a womb and two sets of helping hands.

By the time I noticed it, I'd sipped the whole cup of coffee down to the end. The other guy didn't mind much. He seemed to have forgotten about the coffee. The fries came, but nobody was eating but me. The girl was taking longer than the night before. Maybe there was a problem.

I thought we were down to the last three days.

Maybe we would have to drive around more.

Half a basket of fries later, my mouth salty and sick from the grease and the worry and the low grade floor-scooped quality of the fries burning at my stomach, the girl came out. Her face was wet. She'd washed her face. She was holding her stomach, shaking.

As I did the night before, I went to the ladies room, directly to it right in front of the girl at the counter, who gave me the eye. But I didn't have time for the eye, not if the second triplet was out and we needed to be out of here quick. So I walked right into the restroom. This one was a single person room, right next to the counter. I was only in there for about ten seconds when the male cook kicks open the door.

“Find something you need in here?” the male cook asks.

I did. I found what I needed to see in the bowl behind me. So I nodded to the male cook.

He looked like he was about to hit me. “Why don't you and your friends get the fuck out of here,” he said nonchalantly.

I wiped my hands with a paper towel and threw it over the miscarried triplet, said a few things I needed to say, and we left. We left the small, still forming child behind us, purplish and stringy, curled up in the water. It was the size of a softball, this one, with kind of a hunched back. It looked sick and old. But it was new, and in the end it would be strong. When I helped the girl into the car I put my hand on her stomach. Two of the triplets were gone now, but her belly felt larger. She pulled the seat belt strap across her chest, over my hand, looking at me.

One more night, I guessed. The other two were in the back, not saying anything. They wouldn't shower or brush their teeth tonight. They wouldn't change clothes or even bring their bags into the room. I would sleep in the bed with the girl and they would sleep on the floor without blankets or pillows. They didn't care anymore. Just along for the ride now, and then when it was done, if it came to that—which it would—they would be gone, and we would never hear or see of them again.

At the hotel, I put the girl in the tub and helped her wash her hair. Her arms were not strong anymore. Her whole body was weakened with the strain of the triplets. She needed rest, both mentally and physically. I ordered some food from a delivery service. They came about two hours after she'd already been put to bed. I paid for the food and left it for the morning in case anybody was hungry.

Surprisingly enough, the other two got up early and ate all of it. That made me feel a little better. It was getting too grim in the car with them saying and doing nothing. They both took showers, shaved and put on fresh clothes, like wind-up toys suddenly sprung into action. Their clothing packs had not been washed in a week, but the clothes were fresher than the past few days of what they'd been wearing. I felt better about getting into the car.

Tonight would probably be the last night.

At some diner even further north in another city—but in the same state, to make some kind of a triangle within a certain said boundary—we sat around the table in a bigger diner than the past couple of nights. This one was attached to a convenience mart and an auto station. There were lots of people everywhere. She could slip into any one of the many stalls even with people coming and going, and I could even be in there with her probably and nobody would get in our face like the last place with the security guard-ish cook.

The lady needs help, I'd say. Sorry. I have to be in here with her, you're welcome to leave until she's finished...

I bet no one would care, though. Everyone here was either hustling to get done and back on the road toward their destinations, or they were beat and shuffling around aimlessly from snack counter to magazine rack, not giving much of a shit whether the sky were raining frogs or knives.

This was perfect. Surrounded by people who didn't care about anything but themselves and their own long nights was the way to end this. Ghosts in and ghosts out.

But the girl sat in the stall for almost an hour. It became more difficult to remain unnoticed. These things need some alone time to incubate quietly, I think. No kind of fuss needs to be made, especially like last night. But last night went better than this could turn out to be if we stayed here much longer. Of course, I'm only guessing. We really don't know what's supposed to happen. We just are guessing at what will. There's just certain rules we have to follow and it'll all be done with.

Then she came out. I was waiting by the door. I'd been standing there, shifting from foot to foot for a bit before walking off to get a chair to sit in and wait. Countless women had come and gone, a lot of them stopping to glare at me. But nobody asked me questions. I was just a guy sitting in a chair outside of a ladies room.

The girl came out after what felt like half the night.

“Not here,” she said.

I packed her into the car fast, motioned toward the other guys to follow. They didn't need me to say it twice, and we got back onto the highway. When we saw something in the distance I pointed at it and asked her, “Can we go there?”

She shrugged, then nodded.

–

It was a welcoming center, not a diner. The lights were on, but nobody was around. The doors were locked. I looked at the girl and she was sweating, leaning on the car. The other two just stood there. No help offered to the girl. I didn't blame them for not wanting to touch her. She didn't even want to touch herself, but she was in such pain she kept gripping her stomach.

I pulled my sweater off, wrapped up my whole forearm and punched through the glass door of the welcoming center. It went right through, and nothing happened. No alarms. Barely even a ruckus. Just some broken glass, and I reached in, pulled the lock and we all walked in behind the girl, who went straight for the restroom.

I tried to punch through the candy vending machine to get some peanuts, but it wasn't so easy as the front door had been, so I picked up a heavy stapler from the front desk and smashed open the candy machine. Glass and peanuts fell out in equal measure, and I didn't really lose my appetite, but there was nothing I could do about the glass everywhere.

The girl came rushing out of the restroom.

“I didn't make it,” she said.

Great. We would have to keep doing this all night. I don't even know how much longer the other two would be holding up.

But then she filled in a better part of the void. “I didn't make it,” she repeated. “It's on the floor.”

That sounded a lot better. I went to go check on the miscarriage. Probably I could leave it here and I didn't have to check on it, but I needed to see it with my own eyes just to make sure we could really get out of here and never turn back. The other two apparently didn't feel the same way because they didn't wait for me or for her, they just ran for the door, as if on cue.

“Is it in that room?” I asked. “Are you sure!?”

“Yes,” she spat, rushing toward the smashed front door. They all hopped in the car, bleating the horn as I was still on the way to double check the restroom. They were panicked.

“No,” she pleaded from the car. “Let's just get out of here.”

But I had to see it. They would leave me if I didn't go now, but I had to be certain. If we were wrong, this would not be to our benefit to have fled so fast. If it's still inside her, in that car, and if it happens in that car, none of us will ever see the outside of that car again. I couldn't say for sure, but at the same time, I was sure of it. There could be no other outcome. It had to be in this restroom right now, and I would close the door and we would all get the fuck out of here.

I pulled open the door.

“Let's get the fuck out of here already!”

“Come on!”

“Come the fuck on!”

Voices from the car. All mixed up in my ears. When I opened the door it was in the middle of the room, balanced at the middle of a single tile, standing upright on its tiny, shiny little muscle-colored legs. The voices from outside lost all relevance to me. The child was standing in the middle of the floor, a trail of some thick clear fluid following behind it. It stood on both feet, facing me, its arms down.

The size of a coconut. Barely developed. Wet, slightly pulsating.

A little grayish too. In some places white kind of, or pink. If you pulled a snail from its shell and it writhed around in some kind of death throe but then stopped, it would look like this fetus of the child, somehow plucked out of its own skin. But it stood on its two feet, facing me, unfazed. Then its tiny little bulbous eyes opened, black and beady, and looked up at me.

I could never in my life describe a situation like this the way it feels. How does anyone feel in view of a miracle? You have to doubt yourself, and say to yourself, “Is this real? Am I dreaming?” Or am I scared, not processing this the right way. Of course I was scared. But I don't think I could have misrepresented this. I'd already seen the first two. That was clearly enough time to get over it. What does somebody do when faced with a miracle? I can't run. I should, but my body wasn't letting me. What if the things people call demons are just part of nature? Nature can be hideous too. It's not that hard. I had every right to stand here in awe. This thing had made some kind of pilgrimage. From spoken words in a basement, to the womb, through the birth canal, into this welcoming center. What better place?

I said the words. But I said them nicer, somehow, like I was trying to be nice about it.

It took a tiny step forward, seemingly to keep its balance. It didn't blink. Just stared up at me. In its eyes I could see nothing. Just blackness. This child was so much smarter than me, I could tell right off the bat. Even nature can be miraculous, look at the human circulatory system. This thing had purpose. Something I fully could not comprehend, and for that I was glad.

Only I'd had some kind of job to perform. And look. I did it, I was part of something big.

The triangle was complete. We'd done it the right way.

It took another step closer to me. This step seemed more deliberate.

Very quietly, I closed the restroom door, and I took two steps backward, still facing the door in awe. Miracles were happening there, and I had been part of it. Mother nature or whatever, it just gave birth again. New ideas popped into my head. I could comprehend none of them. Time to leave the triangle. Expecting to see the handle on the door moving, I kept my face toward the door, stepping carefully backward so as not to trip over myself. I don't even know if I could still hear the car horn outside. Maybe they'd given up and left. In fear. Fine by me.

I just kept my eyes on the door, fearfully too. Ridiculous. The thing wasn't even tall enough to reach my knees. It couldn't get to the handle of the door. But maybe I wasn't fearful of that, in particular. I had no clue what I was supposed to be scared of, or what was coming. But it was coming through that door, and it would get out. That's why we'd done all this. So they could get out.

I wondered what it would look like when it happened. How it would get out. This triplet.

Maybe it could do anything.

Yours,
JARET.

5:30pm / Christmas day.