The Chute When I was a kid, my father built a hole down through the center of the house. It started in the upstairs closet, a black, square mouth like a well with a lid on it, it plummeted down behind the kitchen wall, and the raw pine cloaca tip of it was down in the basement where the twisted wicker basket lay on the cement floor, so when someone dropped in laundry at the top, it would drop with the speed of sheer falling – in the kitchen you’d hear that whisk of pure descent behind the wall. And halfway down there was an electric fixture for the doorbell – that my father would ring and ring years later when he stood at the door with that blood on him, like a newborn’s caul, ringing ringing to enter. But back then he was only halfway down, a wad of sheets stuck in the chute, he could still fix the doorbell when it busted. He’d stand his kids in front of him, three skinny scared braggart kids, and run his gaze over them, a surgeon running his eyes over the tray, and he’d select a kid , and take that kid by the ankles and slowly feed that kid down the chute. First you’d do a handstand on the lip of it and then he’d lower you in, the smell of pine and dirty laundry, his grip on your ankles like the steel he sold, he’d lower you until your whole body was in it and you’d find the little wires, red and blue, like a vein and a nerve, and you’d tape them together. We thought it was such an honor to be chosen, and like all honors it was mostly terror, not only the blood in your head like a sac of worms in wet soil, but how could you believe he would not let go? He would joke about it, standing there, holding his kid like a bottle brush inside a bottle, or the way they drown people, he’d lower us down as if dipping us into the darkness before birth and he’d pretend to let go – he loved to hear passionate screaming in a narrow space – how could you trust him? And then if you were his, half him, your left hand maybe and your left foot dipped in the gleaming murky liquor of his nature, how could you trust yourself? What would it feel like to be on the side of life? How did the good know they were good, could they look at their hand and see, under the skin, the greenish light? We hung there in the dark and yet, you know, he never dropped us or meant to, he only liked to say he would, so although it’s a story with some cruelty in it, finally it’s a story of love and release, the way the father pulls you out of nothing and stands there foolishly grinning. MAIN IDEA: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________