Issue 11.2 Spring 2016

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About the Author

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over a thousand of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and Queen's Ferry Press's Best Small Fictions for work published in 2011 through 2015. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.

 

 

 

Dachshund

 

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

 

 

1.
I once had a friend who was a chunk of granite from the Granite State. She was grey and speckled and very heavy. I loaded her into my trunk with some of her brothers and sisters and cousins. I was going to plant them in my garden. I lived far from the Granite State and didn’t know if I would ever get back there, so I filled my trunk.


As I was leaving the quarry, my rear axle broke. I was wondering if something like that might happen. I’d put my trust in God, but God was not worthy of my trust.


It was an old car. It was an old God. This God had a lot of staying power. He was the foundation stone for a world of stupidity. Obviously, my car didn’t have staying power. It was what used to be called a “jalopy.” The Kelly Blue Book said it was worth 99 cents, the same value as the autobiography I’d placed on Amazon.com.


I abandoned my car. Luckily I hadn’t filled the tank for my return trip. It had maybe 99 cents worth of gas in it. I took a torn sweater out of the back seat and headed down the dirt road which led away from the quarry.

 

 

2.
I once had a friend who was a microwave oven. She heated up quickly, but had a cold heart. I went to high school with her.  We kept in touch over the years.


She married a man because she believed that as he aged, he would grow more and more to resemble his father, whom she greatly admired. But as he aged, he became the antithesis of his father. It made her bitter. Her glass door became greasy. You could no longer see what was inside her.


I talked to her on the phone. I was thinking about all the appliances that I’ve owned and that have broken down and I’ve thrown away.


My friend was a microwave oven. As she aged, the hinges on her door weakened and she began to release dangerous radiation. At night I would imagine myself spinning on her carousel and would get excited and couldn’t sleep.


I had a friend who was a vacuum cleaner. I had a friend who was a dishwasher. I had a friend who was a ceiling fan. My wife told me that all my friends are marginal, which is the way she reminded me of how marginal I am.

 

 

3.
I worked hard under a tin roof. Smoke from stripped bark and other smoldering tree trash blew in and charred my lungs. My Korean coworker brought me medicinal pickled cabbage that he’d buried in his back yard and redeemed one jar at a time.


My wife forbade me to eat his kim chee in the house. The smell nauseated her, so I had to eat it outside. I also had to smoke outside. I did those things out in the damp weather while my wife watched television.

 

 

4.
After we divorced, I started out with a two-hundred dollar Studebaker, but later in life, I was reduced to a dog cart. I started with a big dog but ended with a dachshund, and a dachshund can’t pull even a short man like me. I went to Mexico and had my stomach stapled, but the dachshund still looked at me with disgust. Like all dachshunds, he was bitter and stupid. In fact, his IQ test had shown that he was in the lower quartile for dachshunds. I’d paid a psychologist ten dollars to administer the test, money I really couldn’t afford.


Then true misfortune befell me. They wouldn’t let me back in the USA, even if I promised to leave the dachshund behind, even if I abandoned my cart, even if I left my battered saxophone, even if I stripped down to my grey underwear and hobbled into the homeland over sharp gravel.


What part of no don’t you understand, asked the immigration official.


They confiscated my passport. The underling said: Go be a prostitute and earn the money to hire some bandito to guide you across the desert to the border.


But I decided I would stay in Mexico, become a Mexican, and use the money to buy another Studebaker, one that shuddered even when the engine wasn’t turned on.

 

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