JULES DELORME

bacon pete sits up on the old rock on top of big stink hill and argues with the sky.  -what the fuck? bacon pete asks the emptiness -what exactly what fuckin exactly was i supposed to say? huh? in that situation? in that particular fuckin situation? the sky just stares back at pete. not a real big talker, the sky. -there I am. bacon pete goes on -there I am and that shit comes down comes down like wham. what exactly did they expect me to do? that's what I'd like to know. bacon pete gets up off the rock and walks around a bit. stops. sits back down. looks back up at the sky. -am I wrong? he asks the passing cloud -is that what it is? is there something wrong with me? with the way I'm lookin at this? pete looks down at the houses below. quiet now. not much moving around cept for some skinny old dogs searching through the garbage dump. -i could be a whole lotta things. bacon pete says to the quiet -i coulda ended up a whole lotta bad ways. been a drunk or a junk...

Chapter 14 How Crow Made Human Beings This is a story about Crow. This is a story about Tsó:ka’we . She’s never up to no good that Crow. Always stealing things. Sitting up in a tree laughing at people and all the other animals that can’t fly. She might sneak right out of this story and make trouble when you’re not looking.  She might sneak right out of this story and steal your socks or your watch or your favourite pen. She’s sneaky that Crow. She’s what you call a Trickster. You gotta keep your eyes open and count all your fingers and toes when that Tsó:ka’we ’s around and especially when she’s being talked about because that opens a door or a window for her to sneak in and peck away at you. It was Crow that made human beings. Mostly because she was bored and when Tsó:ka’we gets bored that’s when she makes the worst kind of trouble. And that Crow never made worse trouble than human beings. She’s still laughing about that one. That one might be the b...

Chapter 13 - Gun In all the years I’ve been wearing this uniform I’ve never once pointed a gun at another human being. That’s a cliché I know. The cop who never pulled his gun before. But even when I was in country with my military unit I never once had to fire off a round at another human being or even take aim at another human being. I never even liked hunting. I just went along to be one of the boys, but I never really wanted to kill anything when I could just go buy meat at the grocery store. Part of it was me avoiding action and, more importantly, danger, whenever I could. But part of it too was just that I never ended up in a situation where any of that was required of me. I walked away with a Distinguished Service medal and the word veteran on my license plate, but I never once pointed a gun with live ammunition at another human being before that moment. This time I came close to pulling the trigger.  This time I came way too close to pulling the trigger and...

Chapter 12 truth Some stories are more true than the truth. Maybe all stories are more true than the truth. We list off facts and call it the truth. But those are just facts. The truth is so much larger than facts. Stories are dreams put into words. And dreams are more true than we can ever put into words. We spend a third of our lives dreaming. How can a third of our lives not be true? We tell stories to share that truth which goes beyond words. We have forgotten how to hear the truths that go beyond words, the truths that fill our stories and our dreams. We have forgotten that there even are truths that can only live in stories and dreams, truths that live in the spaces between words and well beyond the reach of things we can measure or hold in our hands. Maybe all stories are truer than the truth. We tell stories to explore the mysteries of life, to explore the great mystery of life. We tell stories to move just a little bit closer to that thing that some of ...

Chapter 11 the man i saw the cop and the woman screaming and i saw him draw his gun and i fell to my knees and laced my hands behind my head. all i could think about was that i was thirstier than i had ever been in my entire life and i didn’t want to die thirsty.  i never cared much about living.  i just didn’t want to die thirsty.  not that thirsty. the cop yelled at me to lie down on the ground and i did that. the woman kept on screaming.  as far as i knew i didn’t do nothing wrong but that never stopped anyone before and i didn’t think for a minute that it was going to stop him from killing me. i locked my fingers behind my head and waited for the bullet.  i thought about what it would feel like. been stabbed. been punched and kicked and none of it ever felt like your thought they should. sometimes no pain at all. sometimes just some kind of dull thud and ache inside or this feeling like you’re feeling pain from somebody else’s body....