He wound the loose leather of the buggy whip in a series of loops and tied off the coils with a clasp. He eyed the grip a last time. Satisfied with the tackiness of the wrap, he set the whip to lean against the carriage’s goose-necked shifting rail. He relaxed into the cushioned back of the carriage seat, happy with the shade and the gentle afternoon offshores that swirled under the canvas top.
He rubbed an apple on the lapel of his jacket and watched drops of water break apart on his boots propped against the dash rail. His gaze followed the drops up to Clayfellow, already racked atop the carriage but still sweating the day’s surf. Beads of seawater clung to the rails of the board and refracted the sun in urchins of white light. Without taking his eyes from this kaleidoscope, he set the virgin fruit into the tuck ‘n roll and reached below the seat cushion to slide forth his ipad. His fingers deftly cross-stepped apps to finally come upon the desired tool and he did no fewer than nine and six contour studies until he was satisfied he had captured the sight, filing away in his mind colors of note that when matched with the sketches later would form the skeleton of art. He returned the ipad to its recesses and took up the apple and bit into it. He swallowed and whistled for
his dog and Dylan looked up and lingered a moment as if to excuse herself from the children with whom she played in the sand and heeled at a trot to the side of the carriage. She stood with straight legs upon the long-step and met his palm with her forehead. “Where’s monkey?” he asked. Her ears peaked. “Where’s lobster?” Her tail in wider arcs. “Where’s China?” She leapt and spun from the step racing for the water’s edge and tumbled through the sand, digging and throwing great pawfulls behind her. Alright, he thought, and swung out from the cockpit and balanced on the axel nut as he loosed Clayfellow from its braces.
As he paddled he watched the water dangle and drop diamonds from his fingers in their half-work, the prisms viscous and suspended as if extensions of skin, nail. Now make the world of me as I have made a merry manshape of your walking circle, he thought and grinned as he matched the sea, stood, and walked upon it.

t like yellow seafoam up a black-sand beach and the man thought the truck of its heavy inertia downhill may overtake its own light. He downshifted without thinking about it and felt the burden of the flatbed shift and settle into a new shape. The split-pane
windshield plowing the thick summer air was as murderous as he’d seen, and he thought of the truck’s light and that even in its inadequacy, it was yet the brightest piece of the night and life was hurrying to end itself against it. But the man is a father, and as a father he goes into the night. He doesn’t blink at the snap of the tarpaulin catching the wind and ignores the rearview in favor of the glow advancing on blacktop, assured in the security of his load.

as much to her father the night before as he clipped her nails and he said that all children want to be bigger and that’s why they grow. She sat and ate the buttery cheese with crackers and watched the emerald sea rise up in low jade walls and tumble white over itself. She watched the waves and thought of the waves watching her and wondered how old the waves were. She wondered at the age of all the things around her and remembered her parents telling of young people not much older than her who came to this beach without having ever seen it or anyone who lived near it to save it and the people near it from bad people and that many of the young people died before the bad people left. Her parents said to remember these young people for they had died on this beach for this beach and so one day two people from opposite sides of the world could meet and start a family just like theirs and that without the sacrifice of these young people their family would not be and many other things would not be. The girl rocked gently back and forth on her heels and felt the tops of her feet pressing against the dune and watched wave meet beach, wave meet beach.

Grandad stood in the sun, his hand on Water Back’s face and he thought of his youth and the early surfs and barrels he pioneered off the coast, down out of the scrubs and at the end of steep trails that were muddy in the winter months. He thought of his youth before the sea and early and only love and a family sown and lost in the deep gorges outside Pigeon Falls. Water Back whinnied and he boundthe latigo and mounted. He sat the horse and reached without looking to the saddle bag behind him and produced half a bar of wax and rubbed the wax on his calloused palms and the pads of his fingers and returned the wax and rubbed his hands together and breathed deeply into his hands. The oils of his calluses blended in the blueberry scent and the coconut bled over his gnarled fingers. His cloudy eyes glistened pale like the wave crests he imagined and his ears echoed the crashes of whitewater and he looked on as he rode the hills.

Drew pulled him down one day, Nate pulling at his shirtsleeves to leave the old bones be up in the webs and rafters of the shop.
But Drew laid his hand down on his revolver at his belt, and a new life bequeathed Lord Baltimore. In a new shape and resin-pelted spring sheathing Lord Baltimore II is feared, shredding.



“Toobs haven’t been a-makin’ me a man.” The last of his bourbon he arced onto the floor. He spat and scraped the money from the center of the table, taking without hesitation the inked coins that lay in front of his opponent’s vacated post, the man’s leg entwined in his overturned chair, his vest open, hands laid palms praise to the ceiling.
The bartender heard a soft whispering “Hssssssssssss Hsssssssss” and pulled his face from the whiskey and glass and spit and ash that coated the old brown floor behind the bar. His face breached the countertop, the doors of the saloon swinging gently in the night as if a breeze had convinced them that to sway is to shred, the space in between these lesser spoke of by decent men.

He climbed down off his steed, the white mustang sweating under the heavy woolen saddle pad, leather riding harness, nylon track suit. The leather of his belt etched in years worn, “Paolino” scribed along its length to join the twin pistols slung parallel on his hips, holding flush against his thighs with animal sinew. The Decanter he pulled down and held it under his arm feeling the warm wax separate gently in his grip, the hot foil against his body and the shimmer of the rail like a heavenly port waning in the resurrection of a perfect saint’s ascent. Flies around a mule’s eyes collected in a toxic and bustling devilish hoard and sounded a lonely hiss across the silence of the dirt and heat welling up in the noontime. The cracking of a pistol cocked. He turned to address it.
The martini tasted of brine and the smooth sour of the olive, swollen and crisp with cool, fought off the day’s blood already shed by mid-morning. She forgot all of them. The begging, the wet trousers, a taste of liquor. The collection of gin in the corners of her palette, the smell of gunsmoke pouring skyward as the rigor of her aim, an oak branch, never shook in the wake of the blast. The thin and frozen surface of her drink, so delicate like the falling eyes of the doomed before death. After the yelling, the street outside grew quiet and she swallowed the last of her courage in the cool of the bar and set her glass down in the company of her Macbook. Walked the length of the bar, her eyes danced ahead and grinning, two men at the entrance holding their oily hats and thanking her, her hand resting fondly on her pistol that bore the name “STU.”
