Christian Chaos Theory and Other Collected Stories

Christian Chaos Theory

and Other Collected Stories

Raun Griffin

Christian Chaos Theory and Other Collected Stories

Raun Griffin

Copyright © 2016

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, electronic or mechanical methods, or any other without prior permission of the author.

ISBN 978-0-9970980-0-6

ISBN 978-0-9970980-1-3

eISBN 978-0-9970980-2-0

Table of Contents

Prologue

Sirena

Danforth Boulevard

Jinghao Zhou

Lavender Meld

The Four Fathers of Manifest Destiny

Bela

Christian Chaos Theory

The Santa Elena Canyon Trail

A Deep-Seated Resentment

The Mango Tree

Young Love

Shadows

Outside of the Box

Terminal A

Ponderings

A Belated Introspection

Fading

A Quiescent Karma

Nia

Dust of a West Texas Dusk

Paige’s Last Goodbye

Passions of the Professor

Teenage Mutant Ninja Tear Towels

The Unrideable Steed

The Blue Water Hunter

Blotches of Yellow and Red

Arbor Man

Prologue

Autumn amber, springtime brume, palimpsest.

Flowing like clear water in a brook—steady, innocuous, yet swift—moments arise out of future’s hollow, filter through present’s surreal, and then disappear into the void of the past. Some of these moments are remembered, and others forgotten. Often these memories merely represent fragmented parts of an event—like slivers of dreams that can be recalled, but can’t quite be placed into context. Intuitively it’s understood they’re part of a collective whole, but the overall tapestry is never conspicuous.

Sirena

Smiling faces, conviviality, and wariness.

A mere blur, she hits the ground a split second before me. Her forehead flattens as it meets the concrete. Blood and fragments of bone explode from the side of her face—blackness.

Manuel, she would always say, you bore me. My story, like so many others, begins with the phrase: there was this girl. I can’t recall exactly why I had decided to venture into Molly’s Pub that fateful day long ago. Just bored, I guess. But I could never forget the first time I heard her gentle singing voice—subtle, and serene, soft like a lullaby, but luring and erotic, the sound washed over me like a cool summer’s breeze. I stopped, closed my eyes, and basked in its hypnotic resonance. I could think of nothing but being with her. The more I heard the more I yearned to get to her, to embrace her, to pull her tightly against me until both she and her song were one with me. In a dark corner of the tavern sat the source of this euphony—and, my destiny.

She wore a pink tee shirt that day, one that read: ‘I lost my virginity, but I still have the box it came in’. Laughing, I knew, right then and there, that I just had to get to know this girl. And get to know her I did. She didn’t like Tex-Mex, she liked to eat authentic Mexican food, often at two in the morning after leaving a nightclub. She was determined to sample every single Mexican food truck and restaurant in the city. I told her this was Houston and that could take awhile. Mary, a petite, nineteen-year-old, fair-skinned, blue-eyed blond, not only liked to sing, but talk, too. We spent the rest of that first afternoon in Molly’s just talking—well, I mostly just listened. After that she’d call me randomly and we’d spend three days together doing all kinds of stuff. She wanted to live life to the fullest. Let’s live fast and die young, she’d say. She’d do a little Blow to kick off our three day hiatus and it was non-stop, day and night, till I couldn’t go anymore, and then she’d disappear again.

I tug on the rope, but it comes loose. Huhmp! The icy air burns in my lungs. I slam face first onto the ledge, clutching at it, but I slide over the side. Mary, help! The rope flutters in my peripheral vision before dangling from my waist. A vicious gust of wind whips about us, blowing her hair out in front of her face. Pull me up! Closing her eyes, she puts her hands together near her chin. Noooo! And dives off of the ledge.

Manuel, she would always say, don’t think just because we talk, that we’re friends. Don’t think just because we have sex, that I care about you. This year the Bayou City Arts Festival was held at the Woodlands Mall. She didn’t want to go at first, she didn’t feel like doing a lot of walking, but I talked her into going and she picked me up in her car. It was a beautiful spring day with the sun high in the sky, and her dainty ankle strap sandals clapped against the bottom of her feet. Giant rimmed sunglasses were perched on the top of her head, and the tiny black Louis Vuitton bag flopping from her shoulder extended down further than the hemline of the black skirt she wore. Her red summer tank blouse left one shoulder exposed, and dangling next to her face was the black feather she always had clipped into her hair just above the ear.

Rows and rows of display booths lined both sides of the walkway—plaster sculptures, ceramics and pottery, glass works, wood carvings, metal works, fabric and leather works, and exotic musical instruments. Groups of dancers performed for the crowds while craftsmen and artists worked on individual pieces out in front of their respective booths. Mary yawned as we meandered along the edge of the maze-like walkway.

Giggling children with painted faces slurped on snow cones and ran ahead of their parents. One little girl, with long brown hair and wearing a teal and white summer dress, chased after a boy, following him everywhere he went. Twice he screamed at her to stop before then knocking her down, causing her to skin her knee. He ran away as she sat on the ground crying. Life, Mary said, is a proverbial meat grinder for little girls.

When Mary was thirteen, she placed a can of gasoline in the refrigerator, leaving it there for half the day. She drugged her step-father with her mother’s prescription sleeping pills and tied him up with her mother’s nylons. He abruptly woke when she doused him with the gasoline. She lit and smoked one of his cigarettes while he screamed at her. He struggled to free himself, threatened her, kicked at her, and finally pleaded with her. It was at that moment she flicked the lit cigarette at him and he burst into flames.

Shortly after meeting her step-father, Mary’s mother had become addicted to Meth. A year later she died from what was ruled an accidental prescription pain pill overdose. Mary was left in the care of her step-father, and no further investigation into the death of her mother was performed. Not two-weeks after the death of her mother, Mary’s step-father allowed another woman, one already addicted to Meth, to move in. This woman lay asleep in the bed next to Mary’s step-father as Mary poured gasoline all over him, but she ran out of the room after Mary set him on fire. Mary stayed and watched her stepfather burn. He died a few months later after contracting a staff infection. Mary said that sometimes, though, when she lays down to sleep, she can still hear the sound of his screams as his flesh bubbled and popped in the flames.

When she was questioned why she did it, she never said a word—not one. Because she wouldn’t say anything, and that she didn’t try to run away or cover it up, the two court appointed psychiatrists charged with the investigation speculated that she had been sexually, emotionally, and mentally abused by the step-father. She spent sixteen months in Juvy before being released and her records sealed by the court. After that, the next couple of years found her in and out of foster care. She confided in me that her step-father had never abused her. In fact, he had basically just ignored her, like she wasn’t even there. But she hated him, with the deepest of loathing, blaming him for facilitating the downward spiral and eventual demise of the one and only person who, she said, ever truly loved her. When I asked about her real father, whom she dubbed ‘the sperm donor’, she said she never knew him.

I tried to make small talk as we made our way along the walkway, but when I looked around she was no longer behind me. I backtracked and found her in front of a booth staring at a painting. I asked if she wanted to buy it, but she didn’t reply. The vendor came out and told us about the piece, saying she could give us a good deal. But again, Mary didn’t say anything. After a few moments, the vendor retook her seat back in the booth.

The painting was huge, about the size of a bay window. It portrayed a thin young woman sitting on the edge of a bed. She was embracing the knee she had pulled up to her chin. Her head tilted forward and her cropped white hair fell about the knee she embraced. She seemed sad; no, more lonely than anything else. She wore only a pair of black panties, tall high-heeled black boots that laced on the side and came up to her knees, long white gloves that covered her arms halfway between her elbow and shoulder, and several long strings of white pearls which dangled onto her lap from around her neck. The colors of the painting were dull, including her pale white skin, and left me with a feeling of trapped hopelessness. I wouldn’t want that hanging on the wall in my apartment, but I didn’t tell Mary that. And she didn’t say anything at all. She just kept staring at the painting and a crowd started to gather. They buzzed about and bombarded her with short abrupt questions, demanding to know why she found the painting so intriguing. But again, Mary remained silent. They gathered around her, speculating amongst themselves, and their back and forth anxious pontification went across her as if she were a statue. Mary frowned. I asked if she was okay, but she turned and walked away.

No one, she says, is truly at peace inside. Mary doesn’t believe people struggle to live; instead, people live to struggle. She believes that even when times are good, we wage war, or invent games or sports to struggle against. It’s as if our lives aren’t right unless we’re struggling, a rite of passage, so to speak. Even when we attain what we’re struggling for, we’re never satisfied and continue to invent more struggles. Our lives are defined by our struggles, and we’re constantly looking for increasingly more challenging personal tests and remonstrances. No one is content just being still, breathing—just being. Mary believes if someone were to ever achieve the retirement on a beach somewhere tropical and quiet, they’d quickly grow too restless to stay. They could never content themselves with the achievement of their goals that alleviate struggle, even though that is what they think they actually want. Barring monks who lock themselves away from the world, and the jury’s still out on them, she says, no one ever has true peace in their lives.

One of the things she and I always do, whenever she calls me out of the blue, is go up to the top of Chase Tower. At seventy-five stories, it’s the tallest building in downtown. The first time we went to the rooftop, she sang while prancing and dancing precariously along the ledge—no fear, whatsoever. After that, I always brought a rope and tied one end to a pipe while fastening the other around both of our waists. She didn’t like this, though. How dare you insinuate I can’t fly, she’d say. We were allowed on the building’s rooftop because she’d let the tall skinny security guard stimulate his anal sex fetish with her in a dimly lit corner of the parking garage. She always did this in front of me, telling me later that it hurt, and she always bled. But she would spit at me, while spewing vile corrupt insults, whenever I tried to intervene. We can’t take power for ourselves, she would always say, so the only power we as women have is what men allow us to have. After the guard was finished with her, she and I would make our way up to the top of the building via one of the service elevators.

The guard told us he used to be a college basketball player, and that his team was chasing a spot in the sweet sixteen when he blew out his knee. He lost his scholarship and was kicked out of school because of bad grades. They stopped providing him with tutoring help when he was no longer able to play basketball for the university. He said he used to have dozens of little blue-eyed snow bunnies like Mary do whatever he wanted. But after he blew out his knee, no one cared about him anymore. Not just women, but the teammates and classmates that he thought were his friends no longer came around. They even stopped taking his calls. And now, with no degree and a gimpy knee, he said he couldn’t find a good job. He told Mary that the next time she wanted to go up to the top of his building she needed to also bring him some good weed. Mary protested, saying that wasn’t their original deal, but he laughed, and said he was changing the deal. Mary frowned, but shook her head in agreement.

We heard music from a live band playing in a bar not far from the arts festival. I motioned with my head in that direction, and she nodded. The bar was crowded and full of smoke. The band played a couple of grunge hits from the early nineties, and then took a break. Mary sipped her Long Island Iced Tea and, for the moment, seemed content. The crowd thinned. She left our small table in the corner of the bar and spoke with the band as they retook the stage. The lead singer nodded, and the band opened the next session with ‘The Wind Cries Mary’, by Jimi Hendrix. Mary danced seductively in front of the stage, and the bar started to get crowded again. It’s my favorite song, she later said, it was written specifically for me. She loved it because of the way it beautifully flowed. She said the lyrics encapsulate her life, and all life, in a poetic, yet tragic way.

The song came to an end, and the bar was quiet and calm. Mary grinned, and performed her curtsey in front of the stage. But the lead singer mumbled unintelligibly and then barked obscenities into the microphone as the speakers roared to life once again. Mary fell back as if she had been struck by a bus. I jumped to my feet, rushed to her, scooped her up off of the floor, and we scurried out of the bar.

Mary hates profanity because of its abrupt, invasive crudeness. She believes it’s just a part of the corruption that feeds a societal system of control. A system that, she says, perpetuates the exploitation of women. She hates everything she perceives to be exploiting of women. She seduced a priest once, and several married men just out of contempt for these institutions that she believes manipulate women and hold them down.

After leaving the bar, Mary suggested we go skinny dipping in the Woodlands Waterway out in front of the mall. The water flowed in front of the mall like a small river. I knew it was futile to protest, so I just said I was afraid of getting arrested. She laughed. Peeling off layers of clothing, she moved to the water’s edge. Wearing only a smile and her patented black feather, she dove in. Huge crowds of onlookers gathered and cheered. Many women in the crowd scoffed, some even used their purses to whack their boyfriends. Next to me, a mother covered the eyes of her two children, proclaiming it was an education for which they weren’t yet ready. Never have I seen Mary so comfortable, and seemingly at home, as she was while completely naked and swimming. She couldn’t have cared any less about how the women in the crowd felt about her.

Mary hates all women anyway, including herself. She believes it’s in a woman’s nature to compromise herself, even though she knows better, for a man—all because of a deep desire to be genuinely loved by him. But she believes men only love themselves, and she hate’s them for exploiting this ‘weakness’ in women. She doesn’t hold out any hope for true love because she believes it’s in a man’s nature to exploit and a woman’s nature to be vulnerable to this exploitation. She hates it when broken-hearted women become vengeful, though, believing it to be petty and beneath them.

She believes men instinctively solve problems by imposing themselves upon it, a square peg in a round hole never deterred a man, he knows it’ll fit, just have to hit it hard enough. This, in turn, has caused women, who don’t possess an imposing nature, to lose hope of ever having their deep-seated desire to be truly loved met and fulfilled by the men in their lives. And she hates men for this. But she especially hates arrogant old rich men.

Mary likes to hang out in the upscale downtown cocktail bars and arrogant old rich men hit on her all the time. She says it’s always the same. They hear her soft singing and approach with the same distinct and familiar air of arrogance and sense of entitlement, flashing their expense accounts, designer suits and exotic European sports cars. She always gives them a chance to walk away unharmed by initially telling them she’s not interested, but they never listen. So, she allows them to buy her drinks, and although she drinks all of the time and has an extremely high tolerance for alcohol, she lets them believe she’s inebriated enough to be taken advantage of and staggers along beside them to their car. She then pretends to pass out while in their car.

They hock up her skirt, rip off her panties, and violently have their way with her. It’s always the same, she says. But unbeknownst to them, she’s put in place a petite anus plug with a tiny razor-studded handle. One she designed herself, carefully crafting it to be nearly impossible to detect in low lighting. The men practically castrate themselves without ever realizing it. She says these types are always a little high and a little drunk, and so geared up in raping her that they never notice the pain until after they’re finished. With each violent thrust they slice themselves a little deeper. It’s always the same, she says. They don’t really know what’s happened to them, only that they’re seriously injured, and they panic, and call 911. When the police and paramedics arrive, they find Mary still passed out in the guy’s car with her panties ripped off and her skirt hocked up. Also, the men are so preoccupied with getting medical attention, that they always unwittingly tell the police that Mary had been passed out the whole time. The paramedics find the anus plug, with its tiny pointed razors, but the police never charge her because it isn’t actually against the law to have a razor-studded anus plug. But it is against the law to take advantage of someone who’s passed out in your car.

She’s never truly passed out, although they always believe her to be because when the paramedics test her blood alcohol level they find that it registers more than twice the legal limit for impaired driving. She says that the hardest part about the whole ordeal is not laughing or smiling whenever the guy realizes he’s nearly castrated himself. Sometimes she would even moan, and she says that this always intensifies their violation of her. She would often have an orgasm simply because she knew how much damage these men were doing to themselves while raping her. She even confided in me that, except for when she’s with me, she’s never been able to have an orgasm outside of that situation. She laughs about how they bleed all over the upholstery of their McLaren’s, Lamborghini’s, Ferrari’s, and Bugatti’s. They always make a significant cash settlement with her in order to keep it all hush, hush—don’t want the wife, board members, or shareholders to know—and that is how she funds her reckless lifestyle.

She says these men don’t care when they find out she’s also done this to other men. In fact, she believes that they somehow feel better, or justified, that they weren’t the only ones who fell victim to her. These men also pay to have the story kept out of the press, enabling her to repeat it over and over again. She’s done it a dozen times, and you’d think someone, a paramedic, police officer, lawyer, judge—someone—would’ve said something to try to stop it, but no one ever does.

The police arrived at the Waterway and demanded that Mary get out of the water. They snarled at her through a megaphone, saying they wouldn’t charge her if she came out right then. But Mary ignored them, and continued her water dance as if she were a synchronized swimmer competing in the Olympics. The boisterous crowd grew larger. More police arrived, and they dispatched a boat to intercept Mary. She was taken into custody, wrapped in a blanket, and whisked away in the back of a patrol car.

I claw at the side of the building—bloody pulp-like nubs are left at the ends of my wrists.

Manuel, she would always say, there’s nothing new under the sun. I posted Mary’s bail, and then picked her up. I brought her clothes with me from the waterway and she changed in the car. Since we were already downtown, we decided to head straight to Chase Tower. What’s wrong with a little freedom of expression nudity, she protested, going on and on about living in a police state because they had said it was a matter of public safety. Like a frog that’s slowly cooked to death in an open pot, she believes they’ve been warming us up to the idea of their ‘unfortunate but necessary’ security for liberty agenda; getting us accustomed to their increasingly invasive Gestapo-like tactics, all under the guise of keeping us safe. If a terrorist smuggled nuclear device ever goes off within the borders of the United States, she says, the Constitution will then be completely shelved, relegated to a no longer relevant historical document from a distant, innocent past.

She doesn’t believe we can reconcile our ever increasing technological advances, which, she says, are outpacing our political, moral, and social ineptitude at an exponential rate, with the rights guaranteed to us under the Constitution, anyway. It’s just not possible. And even if, on the remote chance, we don’t destroy ourselves through said technological advances, those increasingly invasive Gestapo-like tactics imposed on us by a government trying to maintain some semblance of control while also keeping us ‘safe’ will render life intolerable to the point that it won’t even be worth living. It doesn’t matter, she says, because at this point, they’ve pretty much already put the Constitution on a shelf, declaring it valid only when it’s convenient for them and their agenda. They circumvent its intent by skirting the fringes with a lawyer’s dodge, never acknowledging that liberty has side effects, and living in a free society is inherently dangerous and may sometimes offend those with delicate sensibilities. And geez, can she go on and on about every variation of the whole delicate sensibilities thing, too.

Mary is very mindful of her intuitive misgivings. Her mother used to say that you can never deny a woman’s intuition. That it’s a safety net put in place by God to help protect her. It may not always be understood, but it’s never ever wrong. And based on her intuitive gut feeling, Mary believes humankind is on its last leg, so to speak. We’re getting what we deserve, she’s fond of saying, as a nation of sheep begets a government of wolves. Instead of strengthening the checks and balances in government, they’ve been constantly scaled back. And in conjunction with our technological advances, it won’t be long now before two world leaders, probably two arrogant old rich male sociopaths, she says, who’ve shrewdly made their way to the top of the political ladder, after getting their delicate sensibilities injured, will get into a schoolyard bully-like standoff while each wielding a weapon so powerful that it’s capable of destroying the whole world in a single blow. And good riddance, she says, as she would like nothing more than to see the whole thing just burn to the ground, anyway.

We passed a young high school student standing on the sidewalk with her mother in front of a glass storefront. They were admiring the various prom dresses that were displayed behind the glass. Mary scoffed. While in high school Mary was a straight A student, on track for national merit scholar, when she was kicked out for seducing not one, but two of her teachers, a male and a female. Reckless behavior, she says, is the only thing she’s found that gives her rage an outlet. Her last boyfriend lost a leg above the knee and an arm below the elbow while the two of them were out late one night dancing with a train. I may not always agree with her, but I respect her genuine zest, zeal, passion, and rage against the machine. True freedom and liberation, she says, comes only after one relinquishes all hope that this world will ever change for the better.

Mary once confided in me, saying I was the only one she’d ever told, that her mother had named her after Mary Magdalene. Mary loved the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. She was impressed with how Jesus accepted and loved Mary despite the mistakes she had made in her past. That kind of un-hypocritical, non-judgmental, forgiving, tolerating acceptance and love, she said, is what’s missing in our modern narcissistic society. She went on and on about how she would give anything for genuine love like that. I told her that I loved her, but she laughed. I was too young, she said, barely old enough to buy alcohol, and didn’t really know what true love was. She dubbed me ‘a rescue stray’s type of guy’.

According to her I get involved with women whose lives are a wreck emotionally, mentally, physically, and financially. I somehow think I can swoop in and rescue them like a knight in shining armor, fixing all that’s wrong with their lives. I recompense myself with the notion that I’m doing a good and noble thing. She laughs, saying the women I try to help are messed up for a reason and that they need to take responsibility for themselves and fix their own lives. Until then, women like her, she says, will continue to use me, until I’m completely used up. Then they’ll just move on to the next rescue guy. But she’s wrong about one thing. I do love her, more than she’ll ever know. When we’re apart I miss her terribly, but when we’re together I feel happy, and alive.

The security guard at Chase Tower told her to pull off her panties, bend over, and put her hands against the wall. Flicking on his lighter, he motioned towards the wall. I’m gonna take a few tokes on this here joint, he said, and then tap that little behind again. He moved the flame to the end of the cigarette, took a long, deep drag, coughed once, staggered towards a concrete pillar and slumped against it. He slid down the side of the pillar and came to rest at its base. His eyes were open, but apart from the smoke eking out of his creased mouth he lay motionless.

Mary told me she’d had the cigarette laced with cyanide. I laughed. She told me about how she had met and seduced an organic chemistry grad student, whom she dubbed ‘a nerd’s nerd’, and had him mix up a batch to lace the pot with. I laughed louder. She had informed the grad student that she’d make all of his wildest sexual fantasies come true if he’d mix up the lethal batch. She thought, by his excited banter, that she’d have to do some wild and crazy dominatrix type of stuff, but instead, he had a foot fetish and simply just covered her head and face with a towel and masturbated onto her feet. I laughed so hard my side hurt, and we made our way to the service elevator.

Even now, after everything, I’m still so taken with her—arms stretched out wide like a crane, hair whipping in the wind, eyes closed with the soft contours of her face coalescing in high cheek bones. The effervescent lines of her delicate neck and shoulders spanning her thin physique, down to her tiny toes pointed towards a sky she so longs to embrace. She’s content, in her elegant swan-dive, and defiant till the end, never once doubting she could fly.

Danforth Boulevard

Vapid contemporary ontologies, neo banality.

Beatrice, a short thin woman with her hair tied up in a bun, made the lengthy drive south along interstate forty-five from Houston, where she lived and worked, to Texas City, the small town where she grew up. Her father had had a stroke and was in the ICU. An unwed professional in her late thirties, she had to endure her parents’ constant chastisement over taking a job as a personal assistant to an energy corporation CEO that often kept her away on business. Her parents complained that this left her little time to settle down, get married, and start a family of her own.

Before taking this job, her parents had always been supportive as she pursued her goals, making her way through college, majoring in economics and finance, ultimately receiving a MBA, and being heavily recruited out of grad school by several of Houston’s local energy conglomerates. But these days, now in their late sixties, her parents just missed her. And missed her terribly—never once missing an opportunity to tell her so. Each and every time they did so with an increasingly melodramatic scathing indictment type of appeal to the conscience of the one and only child they had left. An unfruitful tactic, but they knew of no other way and, as of late, had also become increasingly desperate in their efforts. Now, the guilt she had so successfully dodged in the past seemed to converge upon her all at once, flanking her on all sides like rising flood waters. Clutching the steering wheel, and barreling down the freeway, she sighed.

Beatrice took the exit for Texas City. Surprised by the numerous construction projects that seemed to be all over the place, ill-conceived, and basically just out of control, she proceeded with caution. Along Main Street a series of giant, dingy yellow, scuffed, old and worn out heavy equipment machines bearing the name ‘Caterpillar’ were busy tearing up the ground and knocking down old buildings on nearly every other street corner. Two dump trucks, not hauling loads at the moment, raced by, disappearing down a small side street. Beatrice turned onto the tiny road looping in front of the hospital, but several sections had been cordoned off due to construction. She came to a complete stop in the middle of the road behind a concrete mixing truck. The slow churning drum mounted on the back of the truck blocked her view, but a rapid-fire pounding noise loudly emanated from a jackhammer on the street directly in front of the truck and was accompanied by a huge plume of dust. She and the concrete truck driver waited for a flagman wearing a neon orange reflective vest and hardhat, and holding up a stop sign, to wave them into the oncoming traffic lane once it had cleared.

The flagman lowered the stop sign and waved for them to proceed, but as the concrete truck crept around the flagman a huge dump truck zoomed past it on the shoulder of the road. The dump truck raced over sections of the road that had been torn up, with jagged chunks of concrete everywhere. These sections would’ve severely damaged Beatrice’s sprightly two-seater convertible sports car, but presented little more than a minor inconvenience to the giant wheels of the dump truck as it bounced and bumbled along. The concrete truck driver slammed on his brakes. He shook his fist out of the window, hollering at the passing dump truck driver, but the truck rumbled by without slowing. A steady stream of gravel, sand, small pebbles, and sediment poured from the rear of the dump truck’s loaded lift bed, and, like the arcing weather pattern jet streams of spring, bringing with them hailstorms and rain, the wave of slag washed over Beatrice’s car, pinging and clanking against everything in its path.

Beatrice walked into the ICU, escorted by a nurse, and embraced her mother, Josephine, a short plump woman with cropped gray hair and a frilly pink shawl draped over her shoulders. Hospital traffic flowed around them, and the pleasant voice of the switchboard operator came over the intercom informing a physician he had a call holding on line number four.

This is my daughter, Beatrice, said Josephine to the treating physician, a tall man in his early seventies with broad shoulders and silver hair.

Betty, said Beatrice, and shook the hand the doctor had extended to her. Pleased to meet you.

The doctor introduced her to the others standing around her father’s ICU bed.

Initially, said the doctor, your father wasn’t doing very well. We do, however, have a new thrombolytic class drug therapy we thought your father might respond to in a positive way, but it’s not covered under insurance because it’s still in the experimental stages, and it’s very expensive, he glanced at both the specialist and administrative assistant, and then frowned.

Your father was the perfect candidate, said the specialist, a tall lanky man in his mid-forties with salt and pepper gray hair and a distinct bald spot. Your mother signed off on it and we began treatment right away. It’s only been a couple of days, but your father’s already doing much better. We’re cautiously optimistic, but I would say he’ll be out of the ICU and into his own private room in no time.

Beatrice nodded.

After that, the specialist nodded, he may even make a full recovery. That’s what we’re hoping for, anyways.

There sure is a lot of construction, said Beatrice. I almost got hit by a dump truck while trying to make my way into the parking lot. There isn’t much room in the parking lot either.

They’re going to address that, said the administrative assistant, a woman in her late thirties and dressed, much like Beatrice, in heels and a business suit. A brand new multi-level parking garage is in the works. Danforth is under renovation and construction to become an expanded full-fledged level one trauma center just like the hospitals in Galveston and Houston. It’s going to be the main hospital that’ll serve the quickly expanding five surrounding communities of Texas City, La Marque, Dickinson, Santa Fe, and Hitchcock.

Beatrice, without expression, glanced at her mother.

I heard they’re going all out with the renovation on Danforth Drive, too, said the intern, a tall, clean-cut handsome man in his late twenties, even putting an esplanade between the lanes. Supposedly there’ll be a grassy knoll complete with mature oak trees to enhance the aesthetics in front of the hospital.

"Really? said the short plump nurse, the eyebrows on her pudgy round face migrating together. It’s just a tiny road that loops off Palmer and then back onto Main Street. Only services the hospital. How can they do all that with such a little street?"

I don’t know, he said, shrugging his shoulders. But if they do, then it’ll henceforth have to be known as Danforth Boulevard.

No, no, no, the administrative assistant shook her head, "it’ll always be Danforth