I SHOULD LOVE YOU
©2026 by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
We are all planted like the trees
On this rolling chip of water and rock
Precariously suspended
Dressed in costumes of choice or assignment
In skins of no-fault origin and accident
Drowning in murky oceans of difference
Our feet slipping in blood
Our eyes no longer focused
Our heads no longer raised
To stargaze at the wonder
To absorb the miracles of being
Our arms no longer reaching
To hold on to each other
To keep from floating away
We avoid the profound and unshakeable truth
That we are fitfully and purposely connected
Even in our separate nights
And as we sleep beneath the same moon
Even in our divided mornings
As we awake under the same sun
Whispering the dream in their glow
You should love me
I should love you
THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM “THE BURDEN KEEPER’S REPORTS” A SPECULATIVE FICTION NOVELLA ©2025 BY SHERYL J. BIZE-BOUTTE
THE BRIDGE
© 2025 BY SHERYL J. BIZE-BOUTTE
He lowered himself slowly into one of the old wooden rocking chairs on the porch. It was one of two identical chairs put in place several years ago back when there was something to look at out there. Now, it sat idle and still, caked with dust and the remains of the occasional dead insect.
He rocked himself slowly so he wouldn’t feel his lightness of being, his drained and feathery non-man body, the emptiness of his core. Yesterday he had rocked himself a bit too hard and thought he felt his empty stomach touch his spine.
He almost ended it right then and there.
No telling what he would look like when they eventually found him if he gave in to that. Still prideful, he was not about to leave an unsightly and unattractive mess for all to see.
After all, he reasoned with himself, if he still had enough strength left to rock himself gently, he was not quite done. And if he was not quite done, he would just be damned if he would lower himself to ask for another piece of low-paid work, a chunk of bread for lunch, or an onion for the now gourmet one-potato soup. He would just be damned.
Two and a half long years into the Great Depression and he had had it with the begging. He was a man after all, a strapping, strong provider, not a hand-out man, not a mislaid flop of skin.
He’d run the tobacco and sugar cane farm the same as his father and his father before him. Until now. Now it was all windborne dusty brown earth and weeds, with the occasional mass of hot dung dropped by his only remaining cow. He couldn’t decide whether to slaughter the cow for the meat or keep her for the milk, although at this point the milk was scarce, and the body was mostly bone. Even so, Vandelay was like family. He just couldn’t kill her. Not yet.
He, his wife and his young son were already on the brink of starvation before he sent the two of them to live with her mother in another state. At least she had chickens and small stream on her land full of catfish. It had been for the best. Especially after he had caught his wife levelling his shotgun at Vandelay. So, he sent them away. It had been a year, and he hadn’t heard anything from them, so he supposed they were still surviving. At least if things went wrong where they were now and they died hungry he wouldn’t have to watch it. The state he had been in for the last few years had made him ok with them not being alive as long as he didn’t have to be there when it happened. That way, whatever happened to them wasn’t on him.
The banging on the frail wooden front door startled him. And then the yelling of his name, “Henry, Henry! Open up, Henry!”
He recognized the voice right away. It was his closest neighbor down the road, Eisel. They had bonded over their poverty and stark desperation and kept each other afloat sharing whatever they had or managed to get. He sure hoped Eisel wasn’t there to borrow anything. Today, he had nothing but well water and a bit of sugar.
“Open up, Henry!” Eisel continued to yell.
“What Eisel, what?” Henry asked as he opened the door.
Eisel held out a piece of winkled paper. A flyer of some kind.
“Read this Henry!’ Eisel exclaimed. “Read this and let’s go!”
It was only then that Henry looked down at the rotting word porch and saw Eisel’s small suitcase.
“Read it, man!” Eisel insisted. “Then grab whatever you want to remember from this barren pile of rocks and dirt, stuff it in my suitcase if you want, and let’s go!”
“Go where?” Henry asked with a slight chuckle.
“Read the damn paper, Henry!” said a now testy Eisel.
“Ok, Ok!” Henry replied as he held the paper in front of his face.
LOOKING FOR STEADY EMPLOYMENT? GOOD WAGES? LEARNING NEW SKILLS?
COME AND JOIN US IN BUILDING THE WATER BRIDGE!
ASSEMBLE AT:
THE UNION HALL
123 TOMMY PLACE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
IRON WORKERS
CARPENTERS
GENERAL TRADES
TRAINING AVAILABLE
All he had to do was look out of one of his dust-covered windows at the barren expanse it displayed to know there was nothing to think about or consider. This was the lifeline he needed.
“Just one problem, Eisel. How will we eat and how will we get there?”
“I got that all figured out, Henry. I do have a car after all, my good man. We can do odd jobs along the way. We know how to do a lot of things. We can work for food, we can work for shelter, we can work for money. When we run out of gas, we will hitch a ride. But Henry, we have got to go!”
Henry gathered his meager belongings and ignoring Eisel’s suitcase offer, placed them in a paper sack. He grabbed the shotgun as he walked out of the front door. He dropped the sack on the ground, pointed the shotgun at Vandelay and fired. To his relief, she dropped with a noiseless grace.
At least she wouldn’t be alone he thought.
He put the shotgun on the backseat floor and his sack of belongings on the rear seat. Then he climbed into the passenger seat of Eisel’s now rusting 1921 Ford Model T, bought when he was in his heyday supplying sugar cane produced moonshine and raking in vast profits. Eisel hadn’t saved a damn dime and now that he really needed it, had little but that car to show for all the money he had made.
“Wait a minute, Eisel. I forgot something,” Henry said before Eisel drove off.
Henry ran from the car and back into the house. Shortly, he reappeared. As he walked toward the car, Eisel saw he had a mason jar with the lid screwed on tightly to avoid spillage of the precious
liquid inside.
Well water with sugar.
Who knows how they did it, but they did. Along the way, most people were polite and generous with what little they had, sometimes almost eager to share as if it would bring them more or at least the comfort that they were not alone. Henry and Eisel slept in the car until the engine caught fire a third of the way to California in a little town in Oklahoma. From there they hitched rides in cars, on the backs of trucks, wagons and the occasional baggage car, but mostly they
walked. The routes they travelled were always dictated by the conveyance they could find going westward.
They slept in parks and one time the woods. Sometimes homeowners would wake up to find them sleeping on their porches and shoo them away, but they learned quickly that if they stuck to
porches of elderly folks, there was always a chore or two that could be exchanged for a hot meal.
One arthritic couple simply could no longer reach the cans of beans, preserves and flour they had stored on a high shelf and credited Eisel and Henry with saving their lives, along with a feast of biscuits, plum preserves and meatless chili. Sometimes a bath was offered and one time they were invited into a crumbling mansion and got to sleep in real beds.
They never had enough money for a hotel. Lucked up in Carson City and did three days’ worth of clean-up work for a used-to be rich furniture store owner who was trying to save his business after a severe rainstorm and a leaky roof. That payment allowed them to eat fairly well for the rest of the trip. Not one ounce of real trouble. There were so many like them at the time it was a normal thing to see people out of place.
After three weeks of slow travel, they found themselves at the door of 123 Tommy Place.
They were both hired right away as general laborers, Henry signing up to be trained as an iron worker, Eisel, a carpenter.
At the job site, the men were leaving for the day. Wives and children were waiting for them at the base of the elaborate expanse of scaffolding that seemed to float above the bay waters.
Neither Henry nor Eisel could figure out how this bridge over all this water could be built, but it was happening, and they would be a part of history.
Still in awe of it all, Henry’s attention was broken when among the families beginning their walks to the cars and buses that would take them home, he thought he heard a familiar voice.
He turned in time to see young iron worker bend to kiss his wife and hug his young son in a way that seemed as natural for them as it was familiar to him.
He briefly thought this could have been his life if he had been put in another place at another time, but he quickly dismissed the notion as a wasteful musing.
That night, as he and Eisel settled into the boarding house provided by the union, he couldn’t stop thinking about them.
It would turn out that he would see them often, almost every day at quitting time when the wife and son would show up to greet the young man named Vincent, a journeyman ironworker.
Vincent was experienced enough to have his own section of the bridge near the top of the scaffold away from other workers. Henry worked closely with Vincent during his first six months of training and Vincent was generous in showing him all the basic skills and nuances of the trade as well as how to safely climb and descend the scaffolding which had already taken several lives.
From the beginning of the project, workers would slip and fall through the scaffold gaps or lose balance from high places and plummet to the bay waters below. There was only one who survived the fall and did not drown, but he eventually died in hospital of his many injuries.
Henry became obsessed with Vincent and his family, asking many questions which the proud family man Vincent was always willing to answer.
Henry came to know that Vincent had met his then wife-to-be and her boy on a train from Utah to California. It was love at first sight for all three of them he bragged joyfully. Said her ex-husband had been a cruel and evil man who loved his cow more than he loved his family and had died a few years back.
Henry knew then who the woman was.
Who the boy was.
At least in his mind, he did. It all fit, so it had to be.
Henry could not let it be.
As Vincent stood to stretch, Henry pushed him off the scaffolding. He pushed him so hard that Vincent was propelled several feet beyond the edges of the scaffolding and appeared to try to flap his arms and fly before he hit the waters below.
Although it happened quickly, Henry took it all in as an amused observer, laughing at Vincent’s hopeless attempts to save himself.
“Well, you may be a wife stealing son of a bitch, but you ain’t no bird!” Henry yelled as Vincent continued to flail.
Before Henry could yell for help and act as though another accidental tragedy had occurred, he felt a strong pull on his legs and arms. His limbs were being wrenched from his body. There was no blood, only a smattering of dust and dried remnants of what had been left of him so many years before. Then followed the rest as it was absorbed and disappeared into the keep.
Kament then completed the rest of his process. Destruction.
As Kament stood at a narrow corner of the now completed bridge, preparing to move on to his next, he looked up to see a glistening array of human forms floating upward from the bay. One by one, all of those lost to the building of the bridge were being rescued and rising to stardust.
He recognized Vincent right away and wondered why since recognition was not one of the things he was supposed to be able to do. His fading was beginning to become more pronounced.
But none of this up floating was his doing. He was not assigned to and had not prompted this rescue and knew it signaled a major shift in purpose and report.
He was weary. Weary enough to linger.
Transfixed and immobile he continued to gaze at the elegant rising forms. His shutdown was suddenly interrupted by a line of bright light appearing just below what they called their horizon, calling his name, calling him home.
