Celeste/Isele by Stephen H. Foreman

 https://iselemagazine.com/november-2023/

Isele Magazine - a classy and elegant bunch - has just published my short story, Celeste. Please access it through the above address. Thank you.

Thoughts on Veteran's Day

I could have been killed and nearly was. Two mornings ago. The day began well, a bit early for me because I needed to drive an hour to a ceremony honoring veterans at Middleburgh Elementary where my good buddies, the twins, James and Michael Clark, aged seven, second grade, asked me to be their honored guest. Could I say no? There were maybe a hundred other vets there from all the branches. This is a world I'm not normally in, so I was surprised to see just how moved I was by the outpouring of pure feeling. James and Michael were thrilled, and so was I. A fine way to start the day.

And then I headed home.

I was not impaired in any way, hadn't even yet taken my normal morning meds, and yet, one moment I was almost home, an instant later flying off the road, into the woods, plowing through thick scrub with a tree coming smack at me. Deep mud - that much maligned substance - slowed me down and saved my life.There was no other car involved, no person, no animal. Just me and what little was left of my Subaru. Tore the front to shreds. No bags deployed. Ribs vaguely bruised but roaring luck intact. 

I could apply street theology to all this. What's the take-away? Had I been saved for some higher purpose? However, that's not my bent. And yet. I had, in a manner of speaking, been saved,even if the agency was thick mud,so what am I gonna do about it? Not much more than I'm doing already. Just keep on truckin'. Workin' on my stuff. Gettin' it out there. Like always. And yet. It seems as if I ought to have some vital take-away from such an experience, some visceral adjustment other than maybe my driving days came to an end against that tree, that maybe I am older than I thought I was when I set out that morning. Maybe it's that simple. "I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." That simple. 

The Next Day

Just a bit ago this evening I was having some fine time with my five year old grandson, Dorian. He's learning to read now, and it's a pleasure to point out a word and have him tell me what it is. Pirate. Penguin. Magnet. Volcano. We also went through a delicious book utilizing sound technology to play Beethoven's 5th and teach about the instruments. He now knows the difference between a cello and a bass, an oboe and a bassoon. So, I got to thinking, completely off tangent, Can you be in a State of Grace if you don't believe in God? Doesn't it depend on how you define it? I tend towards the secular - a feeling of sheer delight in being alive, thrilled to be doing what I'm doing this very moment, a connection to the most modest of inanimate objects. The pen in my hand was once crude oil was once the guts and bones of creatures that lived eons before I ever picked it up, was some sort of vegetation before that. I might be holding Triceratops in my hand right now, or a fern. If you want to connect this to God, go ahead, but I don't wish to complicate matters. It's so simple. I'll take sheer delight. Leave it that way.

So, there is a take-away, although nothing I haven't taken away before. I wish the following words were mine, but Kurt Vonnegut gets the credit. 

"I urge you all to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur at some point, "If this isn't nice, what is?"

Morgan - Ruby Tire

My father died on the night of the first seder, 1963, the second semester of my junior year at Morgan. I'd been a produced playwright for two months, both at home in Baltimore at Morgan and in New York City, a production somehow wangled by Dr. Waters Turpin on stage at Colombia University Teacher's College. He was, my father, I think, a closet comic, who was always impersonating guys like Berle and Gleason and Jackie Leonard. "Son, one of these days you're gonna find yourself, and, when you do, you're gonna be awfully disappointed," was a favorite. Also, "I guess you're not gonna be a bum after all," said in a W.C.Fields accent with his arm around my shoulders back stage opening night. 

Reuben Henry Foreman ran a business called The Ruby Tire Company, or, in Baltimorese, Rooby Tar. He turned threadbare used tires into the semblance of new ones through a process called retreading which evolved out of existence with the advent of a brand new tire cheaper than a used one (which, essentially, a retread was regardless of the way it looked). Ruby Tire was on Fremont Avenue just up from Baltimore Street in southwest Baltimore, the poorest section of the city, all Black, 360 degrees, everywhere you turned except for Ruby Tire, the package goods across the street, and Louis the Greek's restaurant on the corner. Oh, yes, and Jake the Tailor, just the other side of the alley, who sat in the window of his shop Indian fashion while he sewed with needle, thread, and thimble six days 'til closing. Every man who worked for Ruby Tire was Black as well: the Carey brothers, Jimmy and Lou, twins; Vernon Graves; Zebediah Fullwood; Claude Crocket; George Brown; Gainwell Haines aka Sporty...Sporty and I used to go down to the corner grocery and, for a quarter, buy a slug of bologna, a thick slice of onion, and a roll plus a Royal Crown soda. Then we'd sit on the sidewalk outside Ruby Tire, our backs to the wall, and munch away. I first began working for Ruby Tire at the age of eleven until my father died when I was twenty-one, some weeks six days out of six. These men were a part of my upbringing.

Ruby Tire could well be a memoir of its own, so what does it have to do with Morgan? Call it prep school. The difficulty with writing about Morgan, as I've said so many times before, is because the experience seemed so normal. Now, I've come to the conclusion that Morgan seemed so normal because Ruby Tire seemed so normal. I never questioned whether these men were better than me or worse than me or even that different from me. They were just guys who worked for my father like I did. From the point of view of an experienced octogenarian, of course, I now see the difference, but I didn't then. Except for my Marine Corps tour, until my father died, Ruby Tire was an integral part of my life, more days than not. My brother and I fixed flats and stacked rubber like everybody else. But, before my junior year was over, Ruby Tire was at its end.

Two months after my father's death his partner declared bankruptcy throwing the business up for auction. The plan was nefarious. Partner declares bankruptcy. Business goes to auction. Auction goes to rich in-laws who buy it back debt free and unencumbered by a partner's obligations to the surviving family. In other words, our family would be completely cut loose from the business...unless...I...bought...it...back. A beloved uncle said he'd put up the money if I wanted, and went with me to the auction as did two dear friends from Morgan, Jean Wiley and George Barrett, both now dead as is my uncle, of course. 

Auction day was a hot one in mid summer. It was held in the alley bordering the business and attended sparsely. Uncle Milton was to my right. Jean and George to my left. The auctioneer stood on the roof of a car (That's what I remember) and began his spiel. Suddenly, there was a price tag attached. A ridiculously affordable one. A set up. Unless I bought it. The countdown began. "Do I hear..." My uncle said, "Do you want it?" "Do I hear..." "Do you want it?" Did I want it? Steve's Tire Town? "Do I hear..." Did I want... "Do you want it?" Did I want it? No, God damn it, I don't want it. Didn't want it. Let the bastards have it. I don't want to drop out of school. I don't want to drop out of my life. Let the bastards have theirs, and I'll have mine. "Sold," bellowed the auctioneer, and that was that.