FICTION

        I'm asking questions, driving North, on 1-65, doing 85 & almost blinded by the sky. I see a horseman in my mirror, one of four as I conceive him, riding solo in the glare. Death, Disease, Famine, War? I can rule out three. He's not a horseman, really. That's just my name for him, when I ask

         Is my apocalypse upon me?

      The horse is smooth & silver & his image in the mirror is closer than it might appear according to the mirror. & his carriage is a man's.

2.
        He follows me for miles through most of Indiana where a host of corn rows bend not to the wind but our velocity. He stays behind. He's hunkered down. I go 85. He goes 85. 1 go 80. He goes 80. He's weaving in & out, & back & forth. I'd imagine blues riffs, as we move North as the Blues flow toward Chicago, but in the mirror I see a glistening-skinned & machine-like thing sliding side to side, taking the lane, serpentine. & I wonder, Why are you after me? Then snaking his way through traffic & still apocalyptic, he passes me. 1 see his arms as thick as thighs. I see his thighs, thick as my waist, straddling what I call his horse, spurring it on, past questions. A tattooed snake wraps itself around his ami. I can see it, he holds his position that long, he holds it like a snake, passing me.

3.

        My apocalypse is exactly where—or rather when—it should be, which, on this highway, is somewhere before me. I forget original poetry like a breath, but this sort of thing happens naturally. Despite his Kaiser's helmet, despite the rumble of his engine like a Fokker, I exhale the four horses, including War, including Death, this much of my imagination over. Don't get the wrong impression—I'm still impressed. With his Fu Manchu straddling his visage, he gives me an image of what a Mongol may do when the oil finally all runs dry. & the armies of the world feed on grain instead. I feel safe. But he's still apocalyptic to me, on that hog of a machine he rides, up ahead, on that giant steel pig he straddles.

         He's ahead of me now, so I slow down. Comfortable in my 4- door sedan 1 want to see him gone. But when I slow to 80, he goes 80. His horse is still silver. His hog is still loud. I go 75. I go 70. He remains before me. The Indiana corn seems to stand up. Again like a snake he weaves. Our speed enters the high Sixties. Still as the corn he won't leave. He waves his arm before me. He waves his arm with the tattooed snake. He waves his arm like a snake. He is waving me forward, head bowed, as he's riding against the wind. He's hunkered down, but he's not an Ox on a Christmas dawn. He's an Ox, pulling me on. Still afraid, I ask myself,

        Who am I to disagree?

        I follow his arm. I pass him.

        I pass him and take it back up to 80. He takes it back up to 80. He flashes his light, in the day, his machine, his horse, his snake, his pig, his ox, showing its teeth, in a smile, or winking its eye. I figure it out soon enough when I take my speed back up. We take turns taking the risk. We trail each other for mile after mile, at 90, racing, changing places, we're rabbits chasing tail.

        About out of gas I see signs for Gary & gamble. I take an exit thinking he'll follow, he does. The station is right there. It's at the intersection. There isn't any need to go to town. It's just as well. Somehow, he seems safer than it does. I pull up to pump the gas. He pulls in along the side.

        The service station has a water hose he goes to. He fills a canteen. He walks back to his machine. I'm watching him as I fill my tank. He pulls apart an already opened pack, & it's shaking some, & it's attached to the back of his motorcycle seat. The shaking inside of it emerges, & a little black nose becomes a head. That nose & head pop up out of his pack. My apocalyptic rider holds up his canteen. He sees me, watching this. He nods at me. 1 nod back. The dog drinks.

It hung from a hook in the wall next to the medicine cabinet over the sink. It was black, a yard long and two-and-a half inches wide, an eighth of an inch thick. Faded gold indented letters near the tip read, "GENUINE RAWHIDE." At the top a silver clasp, with a hook eye, was bolted onto the leather. Its embossed surface showed a horse's head, nostrils flaring, mane flying, and the words "Stallion Brand."

     When I was four, I'd look up at my father, awed as he latheed up with a brush, raising his head to make his throat accessible and cover the scar that ran from ear to Adam's apple. He was alive only because, after the surgeon had lanced his throat to drain the pus from a strep infection, my father received an experimental drug. Sulfanilamide had cured him and sent him home. 1 was overjoyed to have him back, to watch him again as he shaved.

     My father was a master of the straight-edge razor. He scorned the newly popular safety razor as for sissies and incompetents. He honed his razor daily, placing a drop of lubricating oil on the strop and running the blade over it in various strokesÑup and down and circular. 1 would watch in fascination, inhaling the heady aroma of industrial and equine odors as oil and leather mixed.

     Having sharpened the razor to a keen edge, my father laid it on the side of the sink and took down his shaving mug and brush. He would wet his face and lather up, using a circular motion on the broader surfaces and touching the brush tip to his upper lip and below the sideburn. The lather smelled like castile soap.

     Then the exhilarating moment arrived when my father put razor blade to skin. Arching his head back, he pulled the skin on his neck taut and scraped scraped the blade upward, over the Adam's apple gingerly, then shaved with broader strokes up to the Jaw line. I held my breath. Like a stock- car race, the routine action was underlaid with the anticipation of a bloody accident.

     When my father occasionally nicked himself, a shred of toilet paper on the wound staunched the blood. Finished shaving, he would rinse his face with cold water and remove the tissue. He'd then pat witch hazel, smelling faintly of perfumed alcohol, on his chill skin. If the nick still bled, he'd apply a styptic stick to the spot.

     As he then reached down and lifted me up to his chest to kiss my cheek, I could smell the wondrous mix of shaving lather and witch hazel. More than once he said, "Paul, when you grow up, remember to use a straight edge. None of those safety blades for my boy?" It was among his many commands 1 would not follow.

     At five, when I went to kindergarten, my father changed. Was it his near-death experience from strep, the sulfa drug, his frustration as his real estate business founderedÑor some other, unknown demons or just the high of whiskey that drove him to drink. Any perceived misbehavior—spilling milk, speaking out of turn, failing to listen to his instructions—would drive him into a rage. "You little bastard!" he'd shout, then run into the bathroom and snatch the strop from its hook. He'd return and grab me by the scruff of the neck and force my trousers down, baring my\ buttocks.

     Hiss! Thwock! The strop dropped like the lash on a mutineer and scalded my skin. The sting grew worse with every stroke.

     The first few times, I'd wriggle to avoid a direct blow and, repeatedly de struck, I'd scream and cry, the tears burning my cheeks. My mother to would whimper and say, "That's enough, Kurt. Please stop." After my I father had relented, I'd pull up my pants as I escaped his grasp and run into my but mother's arms. She'd soothe me with soft words, calling me, "Paulie boy," and caress my hair till I calmed down.

     "Don't turn that boy into a sissy. He got what was coming to him. That'll teach him to behave."

      "But he didn't mean to tear his trousers. He was playing ball outside."

      "He should wear his blue jeans. You'll have to patch these. We can't afford a new pair."

      Money, or lack of it, always hung over the household like a rain cloud. By the , time 1 was eight, when sales of houses were slow or nil. my father would spend his afternoons at the local parlor of his investment firm, watching the tickertape, rooting for his latest gamble to rise a point or two. As he sat there, he'd chain smoke and take nips from his flask. The few days he'd score a profit he'd " come home with a happy glow, but most of the time he lost money.

      "Goddamned market," he'd fume. "The whole operation is fixed. Just when I bought Acme Dynamics, their new processor failed and it went in the tank. And I got left holding the bag."

      "Oh, Kurt, maybe you should spend more time on real estate and save the little money we have."

      "What! You stupid bitch! No one's buying houses in our area. If 1 didn't play the market, we'd be in the poorhouse."

      "1 thought you said the market was fixed," I said.

      "What! You little bastard! Don't wise off to your father'"

      "What! You little bastard! Don't wise off to your father'" He didn't waste time going for the strop but unbuckled his belt and whipped it out of its loops. He threw me over the closest chair back, ripped my pants down, doubled the belt, and began to whale me in a frenzy. As bad as it hurt, I gritted my teeth and stifled my voice.

      "Oh, Kurt," my mother screamed, "stop! You'll kill the boy."

      "Shut up, you bitch. He's getting what he deserves. You'll make a momma's - boy out of him." And he broughht the belt down on me harder and harder.

      "Stop!" she screamed and threw herself on him to halt the next blow.

      I heard the back of his hand swat my mother's face, throwing her aside,

      "You bastard!" she said, holding her fingers to her bleeding lip.

      "You bitch!"

      "Bastard!"

      "Bitch!"

      I snatched my pants up, wheeled away from the chair, and ran between my parents and down the stairs. I heard my father yell, "You'd better wise up, Paul!"

     I ran the length of the block, then headed up into Hussey's Woods. Gulping air, I stopped at my beloved giant pine tree to gather my wits. It was cool and dark in the woods, but I could feel my bottom burning and throbbing. No use sitting on the pine needles at the foot of the tree, so 1 stood and leaned against it. Resting there, my pulse rate dropped. 1 heard me twitter of birds gathering in the canopy above as evening fell. 1 longed for that freedom to fly above my troubles and spend the night warmed by feathers and a cloak of wings.

      By nine o'clock I had no other choice but to return to the apartment. Though I'd already begun to doubt the power of God to protect me. I prayed my father would ignore my late return. Luckily, he was engrossed in The Honeymooners and drinking whiskey.

      My mother looked up from her knitting and nodded for me to go to my room.

      After my shower, as I stood drying myself, my eyes fell upon the razor strop, hanging straight and black, nicked along the edges. 1 recalled my loving awe ed half a lifetime ago as 1 watched my father strop his razor, and tears welled up for the first time in years. I pressed the towel into my eyes and took a deep breath, denying myself any further sign of weakness. I longed to be old enough to shave, to wield the strop for myself, to use it, if necessary, to strike back.

      In bed, as I lay on my stomach, the TV murmuring from the living room, my my buttocks aflame, I told my Teddy bear that we would be all right in the morning and fell asleep with my arm around him.