Double Exposures

Double Exposures

by Dennis Vickers

Published by Sunny Waters Books

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright © 2015 Dennis Vickers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Illustrations by Dennis Vickers

Cover by Rebecca Vickers

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.―Leonardo da Vinci

For Mahrie whose eyes still shine

Table of Contents

The Resurrection of St. Ivan

How Carmen Maria Became Two Women

Sam Spark’s Salvation

How Carmen Milagros Found Compassion

Deep Freeze Louise

How Maria Caridad Found Passion

That Also Shall He Reap

The Tingling in José Ortega’s Hands

The Paine Street Branch Bank Massacre

How Miguel Emiliano Became a Legend

Hot Cross Buns

The Hand in Julio Salazar’s Taberna

Preface

There is a world behind the world we experience, behind the world science considers. This back-stage reality is responsible for much of what we encounter and for all of the meaning we discover. Perhaps Plato was right. Perhaps this world is more real than material reality. The truths there persist while the truths of the material world are fleeting. The elements there remain what they are while the material world is a seething, churning, cauldron of short-lived things doing what they do for a short time.

I’m fascinated with how similar are the processes of painting pictures and writing stories. Both look into the world behind the scenes, the reality where meaning is rooted. Both attempt to reflect something there with what is ultimately an imitation of an imitation. Storytelling uses words and sentences for this purpose; painting uses colors and two-dimensional shapes. Plato would judge the result a reflection of a reflection, the shadow of an imitation projected onto the cave wall. Yet, if the story or illustration succeeds in revealing something of the world behind, if it taps the meaning there and draws its blood onto the page, we circumvent the everyday world and kiss the eternal. This is the storyteller or artist’s aspiration.

Versions of some of these stories have appeared before, in magazines or as parts of novels (hence the title, Double Exposures) but most are published here for the first time. The word clouds at the beginning of each story are a product of www.wordle.net. Each includes all of the words in the story that follows, excluding the trivial. Thus, these are alternative presentations of each story, with the size of words reflecting frequency.

Dennis Vickers, January 2014

The Resurrection of St. Ivan

No one knew for sure how Ivan Lowe became homeless. Some said he was second-generation homeless, son of a homeless couple, born in a dumpster. Others said he was a real estate agent gone broke paying for his wife’s cancer and he’d sold his clothes at Chaney’s One-More-Time to pay for her funeral. Whatever. All we know is one day he appeared in the neighborhood dressed in a Voodoo Lounge sweatshirt, oversized painter pants, Yankees ball cap, with overgrown crab-grass hair and a matted beard, carrying a cardboard placard and passing out a sheath of windshield flyers. Don’t waste time with money, his placard read. His flyers began with a Biblical passage:

Luke 18:22-25 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.

And went on as you’d expect:

Wealth is a rock tied to your foot. You wouldn’t sell your heart–why sell your time?

And so on.

Ivan had an occasional job sweeping up at Copies-4-U – that’s where he got the flyers – and he gave the money he earned to the food pantry, every penny. He signed the back of his checks and left them in the donations box. That’s where he ate. No one knows where he slept, the park probably. Every morning he plodded east up Enterprise blinking away the sunlight and scratching his belly.

He hung out in the parking lot at Guido’s Tuscany Supper Club, sometimes other places – Spencer’s Department store in the mall, Goldfarb’s jewelry downtown, the high-end grocery on Horace – but Guido’s was his favorite, his home base. He slapped a flyer on every car parked there and called out to each person who came by. Guido’s was upscale-Tuscan. Guido splashed Italian across the menu and décor like a Florentine just off the boat and adopted an accent though he grew up in Joliet. He hung old photographs of Italian families around the dining room; most of them he picked up at yard sales. The one next to the cash register showed a dark-haired, plump-cheeked boy awash in smiling relatives, his arm around an enormous woman wearing a shawl over her head. The caption read, The owner’s family gathers for his confirmation dinner. Ask your waiter for the menu. In truth, Guido’s mother was a slight woman who left him in the doorway of a Catholic orphanage when he was two-years old. She retrieved him twelve years later, like a sweater she’d forgotten at the dry cleaners, when she reconciled with his father. By that time, she had two more children by another man.

Most of Guido’s customers came from an urban professional party mix and many were regulars. The lot was full of their Beamers, Mercy-Benzes, Jags. Ivan’s wealth-is-dragging-you-to-hell message didn’t play well with them.

One evening Guido’s daughter Ursula, who was Maître-de at the supper club, overheard two customers, one a steely-haired, tight-skinned woman in snug fitting designer jeans, the other a rosy-cheeked, pouty-lipped, aging ingénue. Where does he get off with that Richianity’s replacing Christianity crap? Designer-jeans said as she slipped into her chair.

We always gave to charity, Ingénue responded, opening her menu. Every Christmas.

I got problems enough without some homeless half-ass flapping his skinny lips at me in the parking lot. I get on the scale this morning and I’m 10 pounds up after living on cottage cheese all week. Don’t tell me about going to hell! Designer-Jeans confided.

I want hell I turn on Sunday morning TV.

I came for lunch, not salvation. Makes me want to go somewhere else.

The last point especially got Ursula’s attention.

He’s driving customers away, she told Guido in the kitchen.

Call the cops. He threw his apron on the bread table and headed for the back door.

Outside Ivan stood near the back of the lot, sign held high. This day it read Holy Spirit or 401K – Which Way?

Guido grabbed a flyer off a Hummer windshield (Luke 12:21 He that layeth up treasure for himself is not rich toward God) and crumbled it as he stormed toward Ivan. Get off my parking lot! he shouted as he threw the flyer in Ivan’s face.

Don’t mean to offend, Ivan said. He laid his placard down and folded his arms across his chest. Wispy hair blew across his bony face and his brown eyes blinked contrition.

Maybe you don’t hear me; I said get the hell off my property! Guido leaned in close and shook his fist over Ivan’s head.

A small crowd gathered. A police car rolled into the back of the parking lot and Officer Ben Drury jumped out. What’s going on here? he shouted as he hurried through the parked cars holding his hat on his head with one hand and his holster down with the other. Sweat made wet circles under his arms and beads on his forehead.

Goddamned trespassing, that’s what is going on, Guido shouted. Against the law, isn’t it? He was sweating too. His flopping belly had worked his shirttails out of his pants when he charged across the lot.

Yeah, trespassing, someone from the crowd agreed.

Here? Officer Ben meant the parking lot.

It’s my lot. If I say he can’t be here, he can’t be here. Tell him.

What’s your name? Officer Ben took out a pocket notebook and held a pencil over it.

Parducci – Guido.

You’re the owner?

Guido pinched his lips and drew a slow breath. Read the sign. Yeah I’m the owner. Do your job.

Ivan waited in silence.

Is this a public establishment, Mr. Parducci?

What do you mean?

You serve the public here?

Of course we serve the public here. It’s a restaurant!

Officer Ben wrote in his little book.

But he’s not the public; he’s a homeless deadbeat.

Officer Ben smiled, lips tight. Public restaurant, public parking lot. You may own everything but when you open for public business you incur some limitations.

What limitations?

You can’t deny someone service because of race, for example.

What’s that got to do with it?

Or religion.

Guido sneered. He’s driving my customers away. He can preach his poverty-is-virtue crap or whatever but not in my parking lot. He shook his fist in Ivan’s direction once for each of his last three words.

Officer Ben stepped closer to Ivan to get a good sniff, see what he was dealing with. What’s your name? he asked.

Ivan Lowe.

Have some identification, Mr. Lowe?

Afraid not. Lost everything.

Driver’s license?

Don’t drive.

Someone who can verify you are who you say you are? He looked over the gathered crowd.

Afraid not.

You can apply to the state for an identification card even if you don’t drive. I recommend you take care of that. Sometimes it’s important to be able to prove you are who you say you are.

Ivan nodded.

Clearly the owner here, – he looked at his notebook – "Mr. Parducci, doesn’t want you here. Isn’t there