DAVID LEE HOLCOMB

Category: Who I am

  • Rusty

    Rusty

    A photo of a gray striped tabby cat sleeping in a saxophone case lined with purple velvet.

    As I get up from the desk I pause to make sure she’s not behind me; I mustn’t roll my chair over her feet. You’d think she’d learn not to hang around back there, but no.

    Her food dish is right there, over there, Next to the freezer. See it? I need to check how much she’s eaten today. For the fifth time since breakfast, excuse me while I check. I worry whether she’s eating enough, because that’s what I do. That’s how we roll, she and I.

    I sweep the floor again, because of course there’s litter strewn everywhere. She’s been throwing the litter around for the last twenty years. Why should she stop now? I’ll sweep again later, just in case I missed some.

    I have her brush right here, on my desk. She’ll be in soon wanting to be brushed. She likes to be brushed. She pretends she’s letting me do it as a favor to me, but I see right through her.

    I’m sorry. That’s all a lie.

    She won’t be behind my desk.
    She won’t be eating her food.
    She won’t be throwing around the litter.
    She won’t be wanting to be brushed.

    One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
    Nine lives.
    All done, today.

  • Fiction: “Pirates”

    Fiction: “Pirates”

    The visitor wore cargo shorts two sizes too big, a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt, grimy canvas deck shoes, and a blond ponytail.

    “No, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t have a library card. I’m a pirate.”

    Kellie Lovell didn’t bat an eyelash. Situations like this came with her job.

    “In that case, you won’t be able to take any materials out of the building.”

    The man smiled. He was missing a tooth on the left side, lower jaw.

    “Yes, ma’am. I understand. Where I’m staying, I don’t have much room for books.”

    The librarian nodded. She assumed that the visitor was living in one of two nearby facilities, a homeless shelter and an assisted-living center, which together provided a number of unusual library visitors every week.

    “Tell me again the name of the ship?”

    “It’s the Bountiful Bess,” the visitor said. “She was the Battling Bess, but me and my friends, we changed the name. We didn’t want to give the wrong impression.”

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  • Fiction: “Volcano”

    Fiction: “Volcano”

    In the westernmost part of the African nation of Cameroon lies Lake Nyos.

    As lakes go, Nyos is not all that large, a bit less than four hundred acres. It is an expanse of still water surrounded by fertile green hills, occupying a crater on the side of an inactive—mostly inactive—volcano, the water held in place by a natural dam of old lava. To all appearances, this is a peaceful, green place.

    Far beneath Nyos, however, lies another lake, this one of molten rock, a survivor of the days when volcanoes reared fiery heads, and the region was racked by earthquakes and eruptions. Gases rising from that crucible gradually work their way up through fifty miles of solid rock to the surface, where they escape one prison only to be trapped again, this time by the weight of the lake on top of them. The carbon dioxide escaping from the magma below has accumulated for eons, with hundreds of thousands of tons of gas slowly becoming trapped in the cold waters of the deep lake bottom.

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  • Fiction: “The Late Blonde”

    Fiction: “The Late Blonde”

    The dead blonde in the babydoll nightie was fast becoming a nuisance.

    Danny Zickell struggled to keep his mind on his playing, watching the apparition sashay among the tables. She was mouthing the lyrics to “I Surrender Dear,” her eyes half closed in what she undoubtedly believed was an expression of soulful concentration, while the ostrich-feather trim of her outfit swayed gently in counterpoint to the music.

    Under any other circumstances, Danny would have been happy to look at Emily DuCaine all night long: she was five-five, curvy and blonde, with the kind of big, blue eyes that made you feel like you were the only man in the world. Silky Maloney had undoubtedly thought he was the only man in Emily’s world right up until he caught her sharing a sweet little love nest with a trombone player on the fourth floor of the Olympia Hotel.

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  • Fiction: “Rimbaud”

    Fiction: “Rimbaud”

    During the years I’ve lived in this city, the hotel at the corner of Centennial and Eleventh Avenue has been a Hyatt, a Marriott, and before both of those, something called the University Suites. Tonight, it is a Hilton. By Christmas, it will be a Best Western.

    Someday, they’ll throw in the towel and tear the place down, but not until long after I’ve moved on. The old girl still has a couple of dances left in her; La Quinta and Holiday Inn have yet to take her out onto the floor.

    It’s not a bad hotel, and its location is supremely visible, on one of the busiest intersections at that end of town, within walking distance of two hospitals. That said, it’s noisy, and the parking deck is impossible to get in and out of during rush hour.

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  • Prisoners in the museum

    Prisoners in the museum

    Classical Greek statuary

    The classical Greek conception of the afterlife was not a particularly attractive one.

    In Homer’s universe, the vast majority of the dead — those not singled out by the gods for special treatment — did not wake up in some bright city of jasper and chalcedony. There were no beautiful houris, no songs, no drinking with old comrades, no dancing in fields of asphodel. Death meant a transition from the daylight world to a gray twilight, a cavern of ashes and dust, populated by muttering shadows. The Homeric dead retained their identities only through the living, sustained in the memories of those left behind. As those memories faded, or the people who had known them in life themselves died off, the dead reflected that loss, becoming more and more vague, insubstantial, losing all individual selfhood. The one thing that could provide a moment’s respite in this slide into oblivion was blood. The blood of the living, freely given, would restore a shade’s identity and memory, at least for a short time.

    Pretty grim, right? We are talking about death, after all, the big D, the final darkness, the end of life, so to expect sunshine and roses and platoons of beautiful virgins does seem a bit naive.

    If you’re one of those folks who believes that you will, upon the death of your body, rise up to enjoy dancing and singing and partying for all eternity with your ancestors back to Adam and Eve, I’m not here to rain on your parade. We all look for consolation where we can. What I really want you to think about, looking out at those gray multitudes in the Greek afterlife vibrating to the last fading echoes of selfhood, is the concept of identity.

    * * *

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  • In the Mood

    In the Mood

    Masks of tragedy and comedy

    Way back during my turbulent twenties – about the time Nancy Reagan was tossing out Rosalynn’s White House china, and Mount St Helens was tossing its summit into low earth orbit – I had a friend.

    We’re going to call this friend “Carl,” mainly because that’s his name, and when I try to use pseudonyms I lose track of who’s who from one paragraph to the next. Carl was a director of theatrical productions, and possessed a wealth of interesting – if occasionally impenetrable – epigrams with which he informed and edified his actors. In the course of a friendship that lasted many years (and continues to this day, thanks to the internet) I managed to retain two important and enduring lessons from Carl’s store of wisdom:

    A) that cultural sophistication is something you evolve over time, not something you can pick up by watching a lot of public television, and

    B) that “mood” spelled backwards is “doom”.

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  • Tire Tracks on the Putting Green

    Tire Tracks on the Putting Green

    Fancy table setting, with four forks, two spoons, four wineglasses, etc.

    I’m not what you would call a fan of Donald Trump.

    To be honest, I doubt if I would waste a good cup of coffee to extinguish a brushfire in his comb-over. At the same time, watching the video clips of our President lurching along in front of the 92-year-old Queen Elizabeth II at the inspection of the Queen’s Guard during his recent visit to the UK, my principal response was not disgust, or embarrassment, or outrage, or any of the other sentiments that seemed appropriate, but — strangely enough — sympathy.

    Wait! Don’t hit me again: I can explain.

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  • Paddling Point Nemo

    Paddling Point Nemo

    Point Nemo

    I like to think that I’m a pretty easy-going sort of person.

    I have strong opinions about a lot of things, but they don’t get in the way of my being able to talk to just about anybody, about just about anything, and I try to be courteous to, and considerate of, the people I deal with in my day-to-day life – regardless of who they are, and who I am. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but I think it’s important to give it my best shot.

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  • Really and truly.

    Really and truly.

    Man sniffing a plate of food.

    Many years ago, during a visit to my family in my hometown of Boaz, Alabama, I got the notion to prepare a really fabulous meal for everybody.

    On the face of it, this would seem like a nice gesture, but don’t fool yourself. I was thirty years old, and my snobbery knew no limits. I was from Boaz, but not of Boaz; I had gone away and become part of a wider world, and a fancy meal was just another way to prove my superiority. (I suppose all escapees from small towns go through that phase somewhere down the line. We’re Truman Capote or Andy Warhol: We go away for a few years, then come back to visit, proudly bearing suitcases full of Robert Rauschenberg and Igor Stravinsky and W. H. Auden and chicken recipes in Italian.)

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