OUT THE BACK WINDOW I SEE A DOG
by Ronald Baatz

walk across the bridge with an overcoat on.
at first i am a bit shocked but then i figure
i shouldn't be since it is extremely cold out.
and this dog seems to be so deliberate
in its walk. i swear it looks as though
it is on its way somewhere, on some
mission or involved in some chore that
has to be done, or maybe it is on its way
to work, to a job, usually i don't see
people walking with such deliberation
across that bridge, after all, this is
a quiet little nowhere mountain town
and not much goes on here.
actually, i don't know what
i find to be more curious: the fact
that the dog has an overcoat on or
the fact that it walks the way it does.
i guess in the end it's a combination
of both that attracts my attention.
i almost feel like throwing my own
coat on and following this dog to
see where exactly it is rushing off to.
it could be that it truly is on its way
to a job, perhaps it is a watchdog
at one of the wealthier big homes.
more than likely that is the case.
so, that dog lives in town here
and every day it goes back and
forth to its job at a big home?
how did this ever escape me before?
yes, the lucky stiff. it probably
works in very nice surroundings
and gets paid well too
for doing next to nothing,
but i shouldn't be jealous, a dog
has to live too. i just wish
it didn't walk with such deliberation.
it makes me feel guilty, standing
here in underpants at the back
window of my dump, eating
a peanut butter sandwich on
the worst kind of white bread.

THE DATA BEGGAR
by Michael Fowler

"Excuse me, sir," I'm on a street corner downtown, accosting a man attired for business as he hurries along at noontime. "Do you know the French expression for 'undercooked sole'?"

It isn't a lot to ask, I figure, even of a harried attorney or accountant, and I have high hopes of a response, even a wrong one. "Sorry" is the brush-off I get, almost as if I don't exist. There's a way of saying no to a beggar that doesn't demean or show anger. This guy doesn't know it or doesn't care. One of thousands like that, I might add.

Perhaps no one will answer that one today. Two ladies are coming by now, still licking the grease from lunch off their lips. I mosey up to them in my least alarming way. "Pardon, ma'ams, I haven't had any fresh information all day, and I'm about ready to fall on my face. Would you know of what material the Mayans composed their bricks?"

"No I don't," one of them shoots back, real snotty. They disappear around the corner, lost in talk, not giving me a second look. I don't go fathoms deep into myself looking to explain my rejection rate. It is high. I'm not dressed poorly or nattily either, but as a sort of everyman with inexpensive comfy shoes, unpressed cords, a well-worn shirt with no serious holes. I shower, my beard isn't more than a day or two's growth, what's left of my hair stands up kind of funny but doesn't smack of mental illness or mites unless other clues are added. I'm polite in my requests. So I don't know why people shrink from me and don't answer. I think it's just that most don't have time to bother with strangers. Or they think what I'm really after is their money.

On the contrary, it's their minds I value.

"Say, brother, would you happen to know the number of volumes in the Religion and Philosophy section at the public library? I could really use an answer." This to a student-type shuffling along reading a newspaper with a book satchel slung over his shoulder. He just shakes his head and keeps on reading, keeps on walking.

"But, brother man, no one else will even spare me an estimate." Nothing doing, and I have to be careful not to cross over to harassment. They can arrest me for that, and have. It's a disgrace, the draconian laws in this democracy.

Still it's hard to leave off. It gripes me too when I know a stranger knows something but won't tell it. Like this student. He's headed right for the library, I've seen him in there numerous times. It's my favorite downtown spot, and I recognize a lot of regulars. He surely has some idea of the number of volumes in the Philosophy and Religion section, and it would be useful to compare it to the number I have. But for a guy to have that knowledge and not share it, well it's to be expected but my god. What we need on this planet is more information sharing. And it's just piddling stuff I'm asking too, the number of books. It isn't as if I'm demanding to know the key to the universe. I would never ask anybody that question, it would be presumptuous and rude.

"I'm sorry, but do you have any idea what I can substitute for rum in mixing a zombie?" Now I address a man who's unloading a truck of bread and buns right by the corner I've adopted for the day. I watched him back his truck into a spot on the street with the warning beeper blasting, stared at him as he jumped out and flung open the panels, and now I'm breathing down his neck as he gets ready to move his wares into Carol's restaurant right beside us. He shakes his head, not listening to me and probably assuming that I'm trying to get "change" out of him or a handout of loaves to sell on the street.

"I work too, you know," I say to encourage him, but it's nothing doing. I do work, when I have too. I have a love-hate relationship with employment. I love it when I don't have it, hate it when I do. My problem on any job is that the information comes to me too fast. Show me a computer key to hit, and I like to mull it over, see how it fits into my world. I hate to just dive into whole systems and subsystems where I soon flounder and get lost. I need time, time the boss doesn't have time to give me. So I work usually at temp jobs, Joe's Quick Job, Moe's Temp Service, Mike's Split Second Helpers, Tony's Flash Employment, Nancy's Jiffy Careers. I do a day or two, very poor performance, then I'm out, with low pay. But enough for my pup tent-sized apartment, utilities included.

"How 'bout this?" I'm back in my bread-man's face again. Sometimes persistence pays off, if you're careful. "If you're befuddled by the possible ingredients of a zombie, and you're by no means alone there, then maybe you can tell me something else. Is ice always 32 degrees, or can it be colder?"

He looks at me. "32 degrees," he says. Then he piles plastic trays of bread on a dolly for transport to Carol's.

He's helped. He may not know it, but he's helped.

"Hey thanks," I tell him. "I really appreciate it. But can't you do better? Can't you also tell me how many children the composer Wagner was stepfather to? If I find that out, maybe I can get some rest." He ignores me, doesn't even ask why I want to know any of this. Most don't. He pulls the fully loaded dolly down an alley beside Carol's to the delivery door. But he's looking back at me to see if I'm going to make a move on his bread, so I wave to him and back off. We lose sight of each other, at least I lose sight of him, but I don't doubt he's still got the truck in view. I rest against the façade of the establishment next to Carol's, a Hustler store that doesn't do much trade, and think.

His input is useful to me, even if his understanding of ice is wrong, as I suspect it is. I come now to the grand scheme behind my begging. You see I'm building a web of knowledge for myself, a foundation for my life.

Everyone does that, to a greater or lesser extent, but I'm an independent minded cuss who wants a web tailored just for me. If some of the threads in my web aren't the same as those in yours, I don't mind. I've done some serious weaving, or perhaps I should say casting, for some years now, in a variety of fields. My web is tight here, loose there. And of course it has holes. It is the very nature of a web to have holes, so mine doesn't snare every tidbit of truth any better than another's. Certain facts, unimportant or even inimical to my web, will slip through it even where it is most secure. Still the web does its job. It holds the big fish.

I should say that, when speaking of my web, I use such words as tight and loose, and speak of threads and holes, and employ other expressions as well. But I don't know if these are the right expressions. I don't even know if "web" is right. It turns out I know very little about it.

"Pardon me, ma'am," I say to a mid-aged bag lady well known to me. She appears to be of native Indian descent, very lean with long gray braids and brown skin, and bright blue eyes. I see her downtown all the time, usually in the dark of early morning. To myself I call her American Woman, because for some reason whenever I see her, including the very first time, that pop song plays in my brain. I have a lot of data from her already, much of it invaluable. She's fishing through a trashcan as if curious about its contents. "Do you have any idea if living near a radio transmitter will affect my health?"

"No, no," she says, and skitters off. Ambiguity I love.

A lot of her answers are that way. Once I asked her, "What's your favorite season?" She replied, "I fall a lot." I thought about that a long time.

American Woman may have more knowledge than I, and consequently a more elaborate and extensive web. So far so good. I wouldn't be surprised, since she's always out there hustling for information and maybe asks a lot of tough questions. I'm sure they're better questions than mine, anyway, since I never know if I'm asking the right ones. They're OK, I guess, but hers may prompt much more interesting responses, spin filaments for a web of much finer and stronger mesh than mine. Getting carried away now. Unlike me, she doesn't use the library, which I find isn't enough. She may be illiterate, certain signs make me think so, but she uses that to her advantage.

The plain fact is that, although my web is quite broad and fairly secure by now, it's still nothing that anyone else would covet, and certainly not American Woman, who's been playing this game better and probably also longer than I have. No one envies me my great fund of wisdom or folklore or prophecies. Certainly no government agent is going to show up on my doorstep to inquire about my secret research for which there may be a military or political application. Simple observation of others has taught me that my web is one of the flimsiest going, and that compared to others I'm playing a laggard's game of catch-up. I think I always will be.

"If you'll excuse me, sir, but is a pink shirt ever worn with charcoal slacks?" This I fire at a male jogger in running outfit as he goes by.

"You bet," he shoots over his shoulder, trotting off.

"Wonderful," I say. When I get a direct response like that, so generous and so selfless, I hold it to my heart. I feel its correctness burn into me as if someone told me the sun rose and set, or that the ground won't recede when I walk on it. It finds its place in the web at once, and I feel a bit more secure.

"Ma'am, can a crow count?" The lady, short, round, and in the uniform of a fast-food place, actually stops to consider. She fans her face with a five-spot, and is clearly running on her break into the drugstore down from Carol's, probably for cigarettes. She hasn't much time to get back to the counter, and I'm eating into it.

She says something, I don't know what, and vanishes.

"Thank!"

The web grows day by day.