Free Love and Will by Stephen Dixon

where that woman usually sits and see her leaning outside at me and shaking her head. I’m driven down the block. I see that black man or black woman made up to look like a white woman peering into the ambulance as we go through the red light. I hear the street band play. I pass out. I wake up. I’m in a hospital. I’m in a hospital bed. A tube’s in my arm. Another tube takes my pee. Several machines and monitors are at the foot of my bed. One doctor says to another that I’ve third degree burns over fifty percent of my body and I’m not expected to live. A hospital aide says “Someone by the name of Grace called.” A nurse says “You really in great pain?” She gives me something to sleep. I fall asleep. I dream of my parents and my dog Red. My mother says “Red’s been taken away.” I say “Where away?” My father says “No use lying to you. Big Red’s been run over.” I say “Where over?” My mother says “She was run over by a steamroller and won’t be coming back.” I cry. The dream ends. I wake up. That incident never happened in real life. I once did have a dog named Red. She got old and bit me in the face. They had to kill her. I remember when they took her away. They came to our house and put her in a cage. I remember hoping Red would bite them. There was something about her viciousness so late in life that I really liked. But Red was put away. “Where away?” I said. “You still don’t know what we mean when we say she’s been put away?” my mother said. “No,” I said. “Not in a trunk or chest of drawers,” my father said. I cried then. I’m lying on my back now in the hospital bed. The food and antibiotic tube’s been taken out of my left arm and put in my right. The catheter’s still taking my pee. With all the painkillers the nurse says they’re giving me, I’m still in great pain. The doctor says “You’re improving.” The aide says “That person named Grace called just before. What message you want me to give should she call again?” But I can see by their faces that it’s hopeless and I fall asleep.

The Village
    The man crashed through the second-story window and landed on the sidewalk. He was lucky he wasn’t impaled on the iron gate spikes in front of the building. I was tying my shoes at the time. Squatting near the curb and watching my hands deal with the laces, when I heard the crash and glanced up to see the man and glass. I covered my head thinking they were going to hit me. The glass did. I actually thought that about the man and glass. Things happened so fast. My thought processes, man and glass, screams from the street, screeching car tires whose driver didn’t see the glass but thought the man was going to land on his roof. The glass riddled his hood and doors. Some glass landed on my head and clothes. One piece slit my cheek but didn’t stay in it, and later a policeman said I should have the cut stitched, but I didn’t think it was that bad. He said it’ll make a scar if I don’t get it stitched, and I said I don’t think so and if it’s stitched they’ll be little scar holes where the needle went in with the thread. I held a handkerchief to my cheek till it was soaked and then someone else’s handkerchief till the bleeding stopped. The driver’s handkerchief. I offered to give it back or pay for it, but he said it only cost fifty-nine cents plus tax. Then a policeman told him to get his car out of the middle of the street, and I never saw the driver again. The policeman was right. There is a scar. Not one I mind, though. People say it gives me character on what they don’t say is a rather bland face. Maybe three people have said it since I got the scar a year ago. One person said “You originally German?” “No.” “Not educated there at least?”