Vistas & Byways Spring 2016

  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Bay Area Stew
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Visual Arts
    • Inside OLLI
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Bay Area Stew
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Visual Arts
    • Inside OLLI
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts

Picture
photo by Jane Bell Goldstein

Bugsy McPhee's Disastrous Sneeze
by Richard Simmonds


​Bugsy McPhee was the runt of the litter,
was the sixth boy of six
the last and the one who killed his mother,
according to his father and older brothers.
He was the one to blame.
He was gangly, the scrawniest,
the ugliest of all the boys.
Not handsome like the rest, but he was clever.
 
From the beginning, he could fix things
and put them to right. By the time
he was six he could fix clocks and toasters.
He collected broken things
from the neighbors’ trash.
He fixed them, cleaned and polished them
and a week or so later, put them
on their front porch wrapped in red ribbon.
 
By the time he was ten,
he had put a sign on their detached garage,
which proclaimed, “Bugsy’s Fix-it Shop.”
He was never encouraged to play sports,
but he could fix a bike
so that it was better than new.
Anything anyone brought him
he made better, always with a new
feature, a new bell or whistle.
 
Every night after dinner,
after he had done the dishes
and cleaned the kitchen,
he got on his bike and went around
the neighborhood looking for parts,
in trash cans and in dumpsters.
The garage, his shop, was full
of boxes of nifty stuff he might need--
bicycle chains, old cords and plugs.
Once he found an old piano, pushed it all night,
and finally got it home in the morning.
 
He was good at math, bad at English,
but he graduated on time. By then
he was fixing motorbikes and cars.
Though his shop was not zoned commercial,
the town’s mayor and commissioners
were his customers. They didn’t bother him.
He had no real friends, but everyone
was a friend when they needed him.
He was fine being a loner.
It gave him space.
And he needed space. His mind
was always busy figuring out
how to fix what was wrong
with the things they brought him.
He loved machines, people not as much.
 
In the shop, hidden behind some tools
was a picture of his mother
whom he worshipped. Every morning
he stared at that photo,
brought a flower or a piece of fruit
telling her he was sorry his birth killed her.
 
His brothers moved on—to college
and their careers—doctor, engineer,
lawyers, a professor. He stayed home
and took care of his feeble father,
who finally moved on in the most final way.
Bugsy sold the house and moved his shop
to a bay downtown. He had an apartment
over the shop. His business prospered,
but his ways didn’t change.
 
One night at twilight, he went out
on his usual trash and dumpster run.
Ready to cross a street in the middle of the block
to get to a dumpster, he stepped out between two cars
when he sneezed hard. The sneeze blinded him
and he tripped out into the front of a huge semi
speeding down the block. He was smashed,
spread out on the grill of the Peterbilt monster.
 
In that moment he saw his mother
running to him. But he went right through her
into a blinding light—as if she were
a thin membrane. Then he was above
the planet looking at the space station,
thinking in that ever-so-brief moment
it might need a tune-up, but he flew on past.
Out there all alone, he felt the radiance
of his mother’s love, and his father’s secret
admiration of him. Then one by one and flying by fast,
everyone he had helped zipped by
with a quick wave. He stretched out to contain
all the love he felt until he became so thin
and diffused, he finally became love itself,
then totally disappeared.

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