Napalm in the Morning

The Lie

I scraped soil over the corn seeds, padding it down and moving on. Earth, moist and freshly churned, squeezed between my toes. Mosquitos buzzed my legs and face.

At least it wasn't too hot, yet. We'd started early in the family garden, and it was barely 8:30. I stepped over to cover dirt over the next batch of seeds. Then something snagged me.

I glanced down, and frowned. A small tendril of weed had somehow wrapped around my ankle. Then I noticed the rest of the garden. All across it, ground was churning and bubbling, tiny stems popping out every which way.

"Goblins!" Uncle Ron bellowed. He seized the weed whip that was jabbed into the earth beside him, then began laying about with the blade. "Defend yourself, Luke!"

"Uh . . . right . . . ."

An especially vigorous weed slapped my knee, thorn-scratches crisscrossing the skin. I yelped and squashed it, then began hacking away at the plants.

"It all began fifty years ago, when Grandpa Wildman contrived a plan to make sweet corn grow itself!" Uncle Ron said.

"Is this really the time for a dramatic backstory?"

"Stick to the script! All went well, until one fateful day when the wind picked up just as he was spraying his living corn potion!"

"'Living corn potion?' For reals?"

Uncle Ron whirled and hacked two plants in half as they snuck up behind him. In the air around us, a cloud of dandelion fluff drifted.

"The potion landed on some weeds, which came alive and strangled the corn! And it has been doing such every five years since, and only perilous battle can beat it back again, reclaiming this patch of earth by the sweat of our brows and the blood of our veins!"

"It's only a garden!" I yelled. Then, from somewhere out of sight, there came a drone. "What's that?"

"Air support!" Uncle Ron yelled. "Take cover!"

I looked up just in time to see a crop duster buzzing our heads, Aunt Sharon at the controls. She wore huge goggles and a pilot's jacket, with a scarf flapping in the wind.

"Napalm!" Aunt Sharon screamed. She laughed like a madwoman, then yanked a lever. The plane's bottom opened up; a glinting, churning liquid distorted the sky for a moment. Then it fell.

Uncle Ron grabbed me and dove, clearing the garden just in time. The weeds shriveled and died, curling and burrowing back into the sand. Uncle Ron looked up and chuckled. "Well, that'll beat them back another year! I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"

The Truth

Yes, we gardened this morning. No, the weeds did not turn sentient (though at times it seems that way), and Aunt Sharon did not release scalding napalm upon them. Really, do I actually need to clarify these things? By the way, I can't claim credit for the brilliant last line. You probably know this, but it comes from a well-known Vietnam movie, Apocalypse Now.

Off-Road Grandfather

The Lie

Today I visited my grandparents in their retirement community. It was raining heavily when I got there, and no one was outside except a couple of twenty-something landscapers digging up a latrine. I hurried in, hunched over the box of groceries my Aunt Sharon sent with me.

Grandma, Grandpa and I chatted for a few hours, he in his big armchair next to the window, watching the gray rain that slowly cleared away as the sun peaked through. The sky remained overcast, but the world slowly dried.

Grandpa and I went for a stroll, eventually. More of a roll -- he was in his motorized chair, and I walked alongside. We navigated the air-conditioned corridors, nodding greetings to old friends and eventually coming towards the end of a residential hallway. I expected Grandpa to stop and spin around. I'm telling you, he can turn that chair like a ballerina twirling in place. It's better than an amusement park ride. But instead of using those impressive one-point turn skills, Grandpa leaned the control stick all the way forward and headed straight for the exit, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

We were free.

He took it slow, at first. We cruised at moderate speed in a semi-circle around the building, coming at last to a division in the path -- one sidewalk continued on a nice, even slope, and the other zig-zagged its way down a steep hill, running along the edge of a drop-off. Don't ask me why they have frickin' Rainbow-Road at my grandparents retirement community.

Grandpa, of course, being the mild, sensible old fellow that he is, took the zig-zagging route.

He nudged his chair forward carefully, me chewing my lip and glancing frequently at the perilous plummet to our left. I finally relax when he seemed content to merely amble, and that's when he did it. He floored the wheelchair.

You'd be surprised at how fast those things can go. Not that fast -- I kept up at a jog -- but the fact that I had to jog should tell you something. He gathered speed as we descended, then banked sharply left when we hit bottom. The chair swayed precariously. My grandpa cackled like a speed-demon, kicking it up a gear and pushing it full-throttle, wheels spinning and little engine whirring.

"Grandpa . . . ." I tried, but he wasn't listening.

A huge puddle suddenly spread out before us, flat and glinting, and he charged through it, mud swirling in his wake. Directly ahead were the two latrine-diggers. One of them was just wiping his brow and straightening up -- and that's when he saw the off-road wheelchair bearing down on him, mad-eyed racer at the controls.

They dove out of the way.

We finally pulled back up to the front of the retirement community, and rolled in. Grandma was wiping a cup with a drying towel when we reached the apartment, standing on tiptoe to put it away.

"Did you boys have a nice walk?"

"Well I dunno, Betty," Grandpa said. "I think maybe this guy goes too fast for me."

I swear he winked.

My Grandpa is cooler than your Grandpa

The Truth

Everything is true up till grandpa floored the wheelchair, although he did seem to egg in on at points. It's also true that their retirement community has the Rainbow-Road of all sidewalks.

Nondisclosure Enclosure

The Lie

I finally found a summer job. This morning was orientation, mostly a time to sign some papers and learn about the work I'll be doing. I pulled into the parking lot about 7:50, wheels crunching on gravel, then waited ten minutes and went in. The receptionist called down the hall, and a woman in colorful clothes toddled out, holding a Chinese-style fan. She kept flicking it open and batting it at herself while we walked.

She guided me to a conference room at the end of the hall and told me to take a seat, and to please wait a few minutes while someone else arrived. Then she left. She shut the door behind her.

I looked around. It was a standard workplace meeting room. A kamikaze housefly bopped repeatedly against a fluorescent bulb, the scratched table was empty except for a landline telephone, rigged up for conference calls. It was a large room with two doors: the one I'd entered through and a second one.

The second door opened.

The strangest, most wrinkled little figure I've ever seen scampered in on all fours, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase on the thin carpet. He whimpered -- an oddly high-pitched sound -- and dove under the table. I shoved my chair back, leaning down to stare, but then jerked upright a moment later as the door banged back again against the wall.

Two men rushed in, cursing. They were wearing white hazmat-suits with full plastic visors. One of the men carried what looked like a heavy-duty butterfly net; the other had a kennel-like contraption, and he opened it and set it up in the doorway. Then he took out a retractable cane, like a blind man's cane, and started prodding under the table.

The wrinkled little man -- or whatever he was -- dove straight for my chair. I drew my legs up and hugged my knees. He wrapped his arms around one of the chair legs and curled around it, whimpering something awful.

"Come on, Mowgli," one of the hazmat men said. "You know you have to come back."

The one with the butterfly net unzipped a pocket in the arm of his suit, and held out a handful of food. It looked brown and squishy. I know I recognized the smell, but couldn't quite place it. 'Mowgli' sniffed the air and slowly uncurled from my chair leg, then moved closer to the men, half-circling them. He looked so scared.

Finally, he stuck his nose into the mushy substance in the man's hand, and the man screamed "Gotcha!" and whipped the butterfly net over Mowgli's head. I confess, by this time I was kind of rooting for the poor guy. Mowgli struggled in the net, but the other guy prodded him with the cane, and finally they got him into the kennel and locked it up. Butterfly-hazmat dude gave me a little salute as they carried it out of the room. Mowgli was still whimpering.

A few minutes later, the woman with the Chinese fan returned. She acted like nothing had happened. Did she know?

"Shall we get started?" she asked. "First thing, we have some nondisclosure agreements for you to sign . . . ."

The Truth

Job orientation was today. The business group I'm working for isn't nearly as weird as the company I just lied about, unfortunately.

The only true parts come up until the second door opens. I think I stole part of this idea from a prank show I once saw. A girl had been set up with a fake job as a secretary in a sketchy doctor's office, and an actor came in pretending to be an embittered former patient. He had a large kennel-like box with him. The secretary heard him accusing the doctor of botching a surgery on his brother, then, to get vengeance, he "stabbed" the doctor with a syringe and opened up the box, setting free the dwarf-actor who was playing his brother. The dwarf scampered around the room on all fours, attacking the doctor before rushing at the terrified secretary.

Why does anyone watch those prank shows? Oh, that's why.

Tippecanoe Indeed

The Lie

This summer, I've been staying with my aunt and uncle. It's a gorgeous stone-and-wood house, nestled back in the forest away from the road. The Tippecanoe river flows behind us, gentle and tugging. It was storming outside when I woke this morning, smacking the windowpanes of my bedroom, bending the trees and rippling the surface of the river. Gray rain danced and spat. Later in the day, with the Tippecanoe nice and high, I went kayaking.

I went with my aunt. We paddled our way upstream, past banks hedged with rushes and rotten logs, where mallards hunted for insects. We paddled about an hour, then reached the bridge where the road passes over the river and flipped our noses around to let the current carry us back. I dug an apple from my pocket. We'd both brought chilled Pepsi's, and my aunt hissed hers open while I slipped into the river, resting my stomach on the kayak and paddling gently with my legs, just enough to stay on course. I went slightly ahead, finding it surprisingly easy to navigate by sometimes trailing my body in the water and sometimes swimming alongside. But I glanced back when my aunt made a slightly strangled sound.

Somehow, her kayak had gone sideways and was being pressed against a log by the current, unable to move forward and unable to move over to the side. An easy problem, one that could happen to anyone. Aunt Sharon managed to thrust her kayak away from the log, but it was still sideways, and the river threatened to capsize it. It teetered on its edge for a moment, my aunt leaning desperately back the other way as she clung to her glasses, her oar, and her Pepsi . . . and then the kayak righted. It stabilized in the water for a moment.

Then something grabbed it.

Two arms, looking freakishly like rotten tree limbs, stabbed up through the water and seized my aunt's kayak. She gasped in a dignified manner, and I think I may be guilty of having shrieked like a little ten-year-old. A face and a body followed the arms, bearded in river-weed and garbed in scales of sodden leaves. Mud swirled around him from the torso down.

With his rotten arms, he seemed to be searching for something. He finally located the shining can bobbing upright in the river. Aunt Sharon's Pepsi. Both our eyes widened -- would the Rivergod punish us for dragging human pollution into his sacred domain? -- but he grunted, tilting his head back and pouring a gleaming amber arc down his throat. He wiped a sloppy hand over his lips, and said, "Catch that Pepsi Spirit," voice deep and vibrating like a bullfrog. Then the limbs and river-weed and rotten leaves tumbled apart into the river, all drifting away as separate pieces. Only a single, shining blue can remained, bobbing gently. My aunt and I looked at each other. She fished out the empty can. And we never spoke of it again.

Another lie: this pic is actually from several years ago, but same pic and same kayak.

The Truth

Aunt Sharon and I did go kayaking today. Everything happened up to the point where the kayak righted itself and the Rivergod arose. The kayak actually did flip over, and we spent awhile draining it and getting my aunt situated again. True fact, though: the can really remained upright and bobbing in the water. And unless my research is mistaken, "Catch that Pepsi Spirit" was the company slogan for 1980-1981.

Also, as I finish writing this lie, the sky has just turned an odd shade of orangey-gray and has started to thunder and storm. I rather like it.

Haunted by Memory

The Lie

I sat on the couch in the living room, fingers chattering away on my keyboard. Just half an hour left in my daily writing exercise. I paused, grasping for words, as so often happens. And, in the quiet of the pause -- I heard a voice.

I cocked my head, thinking it was Aunt Sharon. I'd kind of assumed she had lain down for a nap, but . . . no. Definitely not her voice. It was soft, cooing, slightly silly. I stood and walked into the office. No one there.

I could still hear the voice, though, and babyish laughter, like the echoes of a young mother teasing her infant. But I couldn't make out specific words. Then the sounds faded away. Nothing. I rubbed my ears, thoroughly shaken, and returned to my nest on the couch.

Just as I sat, I was jerked to my feet again -- more voices came, now from the kitchen. Although I still couldn't make out words, I knew as I drew closer that it was a young mother talking to her elementary-aged son. But all sounds of mother and son faded as I reached the kitchen, and then more sounds kicked up, calling from the garage.

I went out, looked at the disused skateboards hung on the wall. A barrel of deflated soccer-balls sat underneath them, abandoned for years. This time, in the garage, I heard the sound of a car purring to life, and a mother -- an older version of the same mother, I thought -- saying something about college. She sounded tearful.

I went back to my couch. I started to write. And half an hour later, as my aunt greeted me after her nap, I placed the voice. The voice of a mother with grown children.

The Truth

While I was sitting on the couch today, I really did hear the voices of a young mother and her infant. It was terrifying, especially since I'd thought I was alone in the house. Every time I tried to listen, the voices would fade. But it wasn't any specter of memory waiting for me in the office -- it was my aunt, on facebook, watching videos of a friend playing with her new baby.

But have you ever noticed how a home seems haunted by memories? I think it's more powerful when you return to a place after years away. The bathroom with the red splotch where your brother threw up strawberries on the wall. The hallway where you wrestled with your brother, and he bit you. The closet where you hid for hours to scare your sister.

I find it especially potent when I return to my old home in Nigeria. Any stories or memories that you'd care to share in the comments?

Lies about Lightning

So if I'm really going to do this Daily Lie thing, I guess I'd better get started, huh? Funny how that works.

The Lie

I rubbed my eyes, then continued scrolling on my laptop, perusing a blog post. I was reading The Monday Heritic, specifically a post about espousing opinions nicely. Outside, lighting cracked the gray sky and thunder rattled the windows. Rain drummed fingers on the river flowing beside my aunt and uncle's house.

"Unplug your laptop, Luke." I remembered Mom always saying that during thunderstorms. Of course, that was back home in Africa, with faulty wiring and real storms. The same problem couldn't be here.

BOOM!

My head jerked up, eyes widening, lips pulling into a silent "O. Quicker than an angry opinion, electricity leapt from the electric socket and jittered down my computer chord, winding and interlacing and spinning into my laptop . . . the screen flared . . . a POP, then everything went black!

Aunt Sharon shook me awake.

"Errrmmm. Kardashummum's ish shtupieed!"

"Ron, he's waking up! Luke, what did you say?"

"I don' ker aboud David Letterman'sh finalesh!"

"What say?"

"Ah!" My eyes popped open. Everything was blurry. But more than the returning vision, facts, ideas, and online convo threads churned through my mind. It all came back: a post about opinions, lightning, and now, I had superpowers! I was . . . Opinion Man, Champion of Truth, Battler of Bigots, Right about Everything! At least, it would've been nice, wouldn't it?

The Truth

Obviously, I'm not always right. Most times I eat my words as a side to my humble pie, after I take my foot out of my mouth. You really should read Amy Green's blog post, linked above. Wise words, much more meaningful than a lie about lightning. The truth was that there was a storm outside my aunt and uncle's house, but I actually did unplug my laptop, thanks to memories of mom. A shame. If not, I really might have superpowers!