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Second Chance
Waking to Music
The Grand Experiment
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Second Chance
by Judith Avila
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I am home now, but it still feels all wrong.
My thoughts, scattered like dry leaves, swirl and skid out of reach. A glimmer, the burnished silver under-foliage of a poplar in a rainstorm, appears and disappears, refusing to be grasped. I can construct no logical whole. Instead, the cactus plants lining my driveway snag my attention: the many-branched cholla, the flat-lobed prickly pear, the bayonet-like yucca. I know their names. Why don't I know my own?
I squint out the kitchen window, the early day already baked dry by relentless sunlight. A breeze kicks up twin dust devils in the street. Powdered pale earth swirls like smoke then settles onto the narrow leaves of the Russian olive tree, a tree that casts almost no shadow.
My eyes, watching the outdoor scene, lack the perspective of history. I have no yesterday. And life without history poses dangers. There is no repeating past successes or avoiding past mistakes.
Grit fine as chalk wafts through the window screen. I run my tongue across dry lips and wonder what possessed me to live here. Everything is hard and sharp, hard like my dirt-packed yard, and sharp like the spines of the cactus.
Next door, a pickup hauling a load of two by fours pulls into the yard. Yesterday I waved at the old man, my neighbor, and he seemed to fold inside himself, his eyes downcast, hands tucked quickly into his pockets. He disappeared behind the thick adobe walls that hide his home. My back yard, too, has walls growing like a challenge out of the earth. Everything here is protected - against the heat, against invaders. In this small New Mexico town even the most modest houses are lone medieval fortresses.
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Waking to Music
by Judith Avila
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I often wake to music, so tonight is no surprise. It's not the concert of Nature here in the Albuquerque foothills - the sharp conversations of birds or the eerie keening of coyotes. What cuts through my sleep like a surgeon's knife is a manmade sound, the visceral keening of rock'n'roll. The house vibrates with the deep primal timbre of the bass, the sharp staccato and heavy kick of the drum, the light fluid arpeggio of the keyboards, and the treble insistence of the electric guitar. Thomas's band. I sigh and squint at the clock. It's one a.m. Jeez! They don't usually practice this late.
I pull a pillow over my head, but it does no good. Now that I'm awake, I can't keep from listening. They play Another Brick in the Wall, and my foot twitches in rhythm. When my fingers start to snap, soft pops muffled by the heavy quilt, I know it's hopeless. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and pull my slippers off the top of the bookcase. Maybe I'll get a glass of ice water in the kitchen. Moose groans, scratches his ear with a back paw, and heaves his black torso off the bed. He pads behind me, his nails clicking on the hardwood floors.
When I snap on the kitchen light, potato chip crumbs and empty beer bottles greet me. Not unexpected. Then I see it. A bottle of red wine lies on its side on the counter, the last drops splashed across the ceramic floor tiles. Damn! He's drinking! My husband, Thomas, is the only one of the band members who prefers wine to beer. And he is Native American - which means his body doesn't metabolize the alcohol the way a Caucasian's body does. In short, trouble.
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THE GRAND EXPERIMENT
by Judith Avila
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My brother, Aden, works at the wrong job. I see this as clearly as I see his kind gray eyes, their reddish eyebrows perpetually knotted. But he seems blind to it.
I watch his hands - gentle, with long fingers. They prepare a hypodermic needle, siphoning clear, liquid anesthetic from a vial. There is a faint squishy sound when a tiny bit of liquid squirts from the tip. I know he's making sure there are no air bubbles.
When he lifts the first rat from its cage, the creature hangs limp and trusting from Aden's fingers. It doesn't seem to feel the injection. He puts it back and selects another from the stacked wire enclosures. This one struggles briefly, then relaxes.
In less time than it takes me to brush my teeth, all five rats have been dosed with anesthetic. Rat number five twists in Aden's grip. My brother's fingers stroke his white, furry back. I think of the way our aunt strokes lobsters, lulling them to sleep so they won't feel the boiling water. Aden's fingers move slowly over the rat, and the animal's body stops moving.
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