Eddie goes to the barn to prepare their feed. A lump, greenish, clips his arm from behind on the way. Per Dr. Wu’s instructions, and the American Heart Association’s recommendations, each serving of feed includes a measured blend of fruit (primarily citrus), legumes (beans, peas), vegetables (broccoli, zucchini), and whole grains (such as oats), tossed with cod liver oil. The chimeras also graze the field around Eddie’s mother’s house, munching grass and preferring weeds, as all other sheep. The feed Eddie makes is supplemental, for the chimeras’ hearts, which are human.

In the barn is hidden a U-Haul that dominates the space and instills it with a warm metallic odor. Flabby sacks of oats slump under a long workbench. On top of the workbench, a commercial-size container of peanuts is overturned before stacks of the feed’s other ingredients. Peanuts sprinkle the dirt floor. Once again Eddie surveys the barn to see how the chimeras might have gained entry. There are only the doors, which are kept latched, and a row of new freezers blocks the back one. This is not the first incident. It appears the chimeras are breaking into the barn, though Eddie suspects his mother Jan is responsible. Soon after he and the chimeras arrived two weeks ago, he caught Jan concocting them a snack, using incorrect proportions. Jan believes the chimeras get hungry in between feedings. In addition Jan thinks the chimeras may be humans trapped in sheeps’ bodies. This is why she feels sorry for them, this was why she was making them a snack in the first place. Just when Eddie has her convinced that they’re sheep trapped in sheeps’ bodies—except for their hearts—she circles back to the one with the thumb on its forehead.

The thumb, not the hearts, is Jan’s real hang-up.

The thumb is the government’s hang-up, too.

Under Dr. Wu, Eddie works as a research assistant in a University of Nebraska lab that, for years, has developed human hearts in sheep so that one day livestock may act as organ donors. For a heart to grow, a subpopulation of adult human stem cells must be injected in the brain of a sheep fetus during a window halfway through gestation: before the fetus’s immune system learns to detect foreign cells, so it can’t reject them, but after the blueprint for its body forms, so it looks normal. The timing and site of each injection are the variables. These are being perfected. The current chimeras’ hearts are between eighty-nine and ninety-two percent human.

Also there is the one with the thumb, whose heart is more like ninety-seven.

As soon as its head jutted out from its mother, thumb-first, Dr. Wu saw he had injected it too soon. Still the lab managed to hide it, studying it in secret for fifteen months. Then, three weeks ago, Dr. Wu got wind that the University was launching an investigation. Bioethics committees from the Department of Agriculture and the National Academy of Sciences would assist. Both had endorsed the cultivation of internal organs when Dr. Wu proposed the project, but anything visibly human they had advised against. Limbs and dicks, as one ethicist said, were yuck factors.

Dr. Wu decided Eddie should take the chimeras on vacation. He said he would send Eddie a text message when they could return, when he was assured of the project’s future.

But that was three weeks and three states and five dead chimeras ago.

Now Eddie feels like a shepherd with a master’s degree.

Eddie fills the wheelbarrow with its first heap of freshly mixed feed. He glides the load toward the door. In the corner next to the door lie three stray oranges. One of the oranges, as if stirred by observation, rolls several inches toward the wheel then rests again.

Outside, Eddie contemplates checking the chimeras’ breath for a nut or citrus odor. The chimeras gather around the wheelbarrow before Eddie makes it to the boat, gorging and butting. Predominantly the chimeras are Katahdin sheep, a hornless breed with hair instead of wool, selected by Dr. Wu for these reasons. This way the chimeras don’t need shearing, and the scientists don’t need gear to guard against ramming. Also Katahdin sheep possess a natural resistance to internal parasites.

Sometimes Eddie thinks of things like love and devotion as internal parasites.

Abruptly he notices that one of the nine chimeras, the one with a thumb like a horn, is unaccounted for.

Then Jan comes into view walking toward the field, inching bigger and bigger as she closes the distance. The missing chimera grows behind her. Jan is one strange-ass specimen. These are the words she uses to describe herself after she mistakenly dials her own phone number, accidentally throws away cash, or searches for her keys only to find them having been in her hand the whole time. Eddie doesn’t consider his mother that strange, though her hair is longer that that of any female he has seen past puberty. Jan is sixty-two. She wears a voluminous shirt that belonged to one of her three dead husbands; the shirt, unbuttoned, cocoons a white tank top and black leggings. Her body has been whittled thin by a bellydancing class geared toward widows.

Recently, however, Jan has skipped several bellydancing classes to tend to a new hobby: aiding and abetting fugitive animals.

“This one”—she points to the chimera following her—“this one came to the door crying. Crying, Eddie. It knocked.”

The chimera sniffs Jan’s waist. Sure enough the hair under its eyes is matted against its skull, wet. Though pools could just as easily have gathered there from the sweat running from beneath its hood. Jan sewed the hood, which covers it thumb, to render it less conspicuous—and less self-conscious—among the flock.

“It didn’t knock,” he says. “It butted.”

“No, it was gentler than that. More like—it was tapping, Eddie. It must be starving.”

“Tell me the truth,” he snaps, “are you feeding them yourself?”

She looks incredulous. “You told me not to!”

“I’ve been finding things left out,” he tells her for the first time. “Things spilled. Like someone forgot to clean up her mess.”

“It’s not like a sheep to go wandering off by itself. It’s like a human.” She reaches down to rub the chimera’s ears, which protrude through perfect-size holes in the hood. She eyes the barn. “They could lift those latches on those doors with their noses. They get out of that sorry-ass pen the same way.”

He keeps studying her face. “One time, one of the freezers was left open.”

Jan gazes at the field enveloping her house, the subtle hills rippling north. Farther away, a small forest swells west. Her searching eyes are almost hopeful, almost as though they expect something miraculous to emerge any second. “I wasn’t looking at what’s in those freezers.”

Eddie considers the pen he and his mother rigged together. “Maybe we should keep the chimeras in the garage.” Though he thinks the garage is too small. He remembers the U-Haul, in which they traveled. The other five that didn’t survive the trip.

The one with the thumb nibbles the ends of Jan’s hair just above her butt.

May 21st, 2008 @ 7:00PM at Soft Exposure Reading Series held at Infusion Teahouse in College Park

May 24th, 2008 Louisa Horn Farewell Reading @ 8:00PM held at the Kerouac House in College Park

Please sign up for the email list if your would like more information and updates on our upcoming events.

Jack and fantasy baseball:
http://hi-and-low.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/jack.html

A blogger visits the house:
http://tinyurl.com/57kle5

Hand drawn map of Kerouac’s trip on the road:
http://tinyurl.com/2zu5k9

NPR celebrates On The Road:
http://tinyurl.com/4xcme

Look out the glass double doors in the kitchen and you may see one lizard in particular. A small lizard, young I presume, likes to lounge or lay in wait on the screen doors just outside the glass. He strikes poses of elegance, holds them, motionless. One day, his body is hidden by the horizontal wooden strip partway down the screen. Just his tendril of a long tail is visible. It makes a not quite closed P, the end of the tail spiraling inside the half circle of the P. The P is upright, as if drawn in an ornate slender line for a special font. Always, the lizard is striking against the tiny grid of the screen.

Once, I say something to him, and he seems terrified—I can see the rhythmic swelling of his chest as his heart pounds.

I hope to see him on the screen sometime when his feet are not obscured, so I can observe them. They are unlike those of the chameleon (but usually green) lizards back home. His back feet have several thread like long parts that sprawl, like roots growing out of a sprouting potato. Perhaps they are made so that he can cling to anything, even in a hurricane.

One day, he positions himself so that I can better see his limbs. He has five appendages at the end of each leg, as if he has five fingers and toes. His hands are spiky stars, their parts splayed out against the screen. The fourth segment of each foot is much longer than the others. I make a whistly kissy sound and he cranes his neck and body, turning to face me, looking at me. I like the way he seems curious.

Friday, March 28th, be part of the scene at Uptown Altamonte’s Eddie Rose Waterfront Amphitheater at Cranes Roost Park and enjoy a FREE live concert featuring the David Amram Jazz Quartet, 7:00pm until 9:00pm, and special guest Ben Alba, author of Inventing Late Night.

Venue Information:
Eddie Rose Waterfront Amphitheater at Cranes Roost Park
247 Cranes Roost Blvd.
Altamonte Springs, FL 32701

Saturday, March 29th, re-live the NYC of the 1950s with a 12:00, noon, luncheon. Admission cost is $30 which includes lunch and David McElroy’s performance of “An Evening With Kerouac” a One Man Show written by Steve A. Rowell and David A. McElroy. After the play: A performance commemorating the 1st ever Jazz Poetry Concert of 1957 by David Amram and Jack Kerouac - re-created by the David Amram Jazz Quartet. Seating begins at 11:00AM and show begins at noon.

Venue Information:
Holiday Inn Altamonte Springs

For tickets order online at Southern Winds Theatre site:
www.southernwindstheatre.com

For information regarding any of these events contact chaptersbooks@yahoo.com

UCF Events

Monday the 31st - Library room 511, 2:00 PM
Roundtable about Kerouac and the Beats to be hosted by the Library.
David will read from his book on the Beats and discuss the significance
of the 50th anniversary of Dharma Bums.

Tuesday the 1st - Library room 223, 7:00 PM
Screening of Pull My Daisy, the short film narrated by Jack Kerouac and
scored by David Amram with a short presentation about the making of the
film and a Q/A session.

Thursday the 3rd - Reflection Pond, tentatively scheduled for 7:00 PM
An Evening Affair with music…David would like to use this time to
improvise with music students…also plan to ask Sigma Tau Delta if they
want to read selections of Kerouac’s works with David’s accompaniment.

For More Information Click Here

Student Readings 1-2 pm
Local Poets (including Darlyn Finch) 2-3:30 pm
Feature – Billy Collins (2-time US Poet Laureate) – 3:30 pm
Valencia Community College
701 N. Econlockhatchee Trail
Orlando, FL 32825
(407) 299-5000

What You Need to Know:
Saturday, February 16th @ 8pm Erin’s Farewell Reading at the Kerouac House
Food and wine to follow. A five dollar donation is suggested and dearly appreciated.
Click Here For Directions

Erin Brooks Worley was raised in Gainesville, Florida. She earned her MFA from Syracuse University, where she was a creative writing fellow. Her work has appeared in publications such as New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review and Ninth Letter. She lives in San Francisco.

Immerse yourself in the world of one of America’s most original and iconic writers:

• Write in the historic cottage where Jack Kerouac wrote Dharma Bums and learned On the Road would be published
• Stay in an historic art deco, period-furnished hotel
• See the original Dharma Bums manuscript
• Enjoy classic Kerouac spoken-word and jazz recordings
• Participate in a public reading
• Learn about one of the most prolific periods of Kerouac’s life from pop culture historian Bob Kealing, author of Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends.

“Work and learn within the very walls where Jack Kerouac lived hand-to-mouth, plied his trade, and ultimately made literary history.” ~ Bob Kealing

$295 fee includes a 3-day seminar, 2 nights at the Wellborn Hotel, admission to the Orange County History Center, transportation between the hotel and the Kerouac House, and a copy of Kerouac in Florida. Meals are extra, at restaurants that are an easy walk on roads Jack Kerouac traveled. A portion of the proceeds will support the work of the Jack Kerouac Writers In Residence Project of Orlando, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Kerouac’s home and legacy in Orlando. (Cost sans hotel: $145.)

Friday-Sunday
• February 29-March 2, 2008
• May 30-June 1, 2008

For more information, call 407-312-3591 or go to: www.sunscribbles.com
Checks payable to: Scribbles, 3852 Albright Lane, Orlando, FL 32828.