Exile on Kalamazoo Street by Michael Loyd Gray

in spaghetti westerns. Just before he shot them.
    â€œMaybe life has a minefield aspect,” he said, the tone of his voice not conceding my point. “Sometimes. I can see that. I can sort of concede that. But faith in something greater than life here. It transforms life here into something wonderful.”
    Yes, I could see the good reverend selling cars.
    â€œIndeed,” I said.
    * * *
    There were fleeting signs of the spring to come, but spring was still lurking behind a distant corner and dragging its feet. There was no more snow falling and none predicted, and only scraps of snow still lingered in places where shade kept the remnants alive. My yard had snowy patches under the bare trees, but the dormant brown-green grass dominated and squirrels dashed busily from tree to tree, leaving tracks only in the white patches.
    The winds arrived from wherever winds live and prosper, and they lingered for several days, vacuuming the landscape and sucking plastic bags from open dumpsters and pummeling them against trees and into branches to twist grotesquely. Black Kitty’s ears would perk up as bursts and shears of wind would rattle up and down the chimney.
    At night it was still cold, but not arctic anymore, and on some days the sun would peek out from behind billowing clouds that somehow did not produce thunderstorms, though those storms were coming. The sun would disappear again, but during the days of false spring the sun beamed without radiating much heat as it tried to marshal strength for days coming.
    There was a day when the sun wanted to reassert itself, batting clouds aside and peeking out here and there. Then, abruptly, wet snowflakes floated down—not many and for only a few minutes. They melted right away and then the sun had better luck as the clouds thinned into puffs of white-gray smoke.
    * * *
    I was napping on the sofa with Joyce’s Dubliners open on my chest and Black Kitty draped across my legs. Several times I woke up, groggy, as wind rattled the roof or tumbled down the chimney, and then slid back into sleep. I dreamed about why Dubliners is so good and readable and Ulysses is genius but unreadable—to me, anyway. I woke up again to a pounding sound. Black Kitty jumped to the floor and ran into the kitchen. The pounding continued and finally I understood it was someone pounding on the front door. I peeked out and saw a former colleague from the college—Paul Herringer, a decent poet and decent friend in those days—as he gazed down the street. I didn’t think he saw me, and I considered just retreating back to the living room and waiting for him to give up and leave, but he knocked again, just as insistently, and so I pulled the curtain aside and smiled as genuinely as I could.
    â€œThe side door, Paul,” I said, motioning in that direction with my hand. “Go to the side door.”
    He smiled and nodded enthusiastically, and by the time I opened the side door he was there, still smiling. He offered a hand and we shook. His grip was firm and I adjusted mine to be firmer. He had grown a beard since I’d last seen him, and it had come out mostly white. Perhaps he’d intended it as a counter-balance to his receding hairline, a function it fulfilled nicely, if my first impression was correct.
    â€œYou look well, Bryce,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
    â€œIt has, it has,” I said, nodding and then glancing down my faded Levi’s at my white-socked feet, unsure of the right answer.
    â€œYour hair has really grown,” he said.
    â€œHas it?” I said absently.
    â€œQuite a bit. Are you auditioning for a rock band?”
    â€œNo, no. Nothing so exotic. Just a new look.”
    We stared uneasily at each other a moment.
    â€œWell, come on in,” I said. “Watch the steps up to the landing.”
    In the kitchen he offered a hand a second time, more awkward than the first.
    â€œI’m going to make tea,