_{I. CATTLE AND CALYPSO}

Not amused, thinks Travis O'Dizzyus. His sons throw fast food burger wrappers, back seat to front to back again. I just want to do my errands and get back home, he thinks.

And by Jove this is the last time I'll buy them Triple-Cattle McWendy's and that sugary SuperSoda. They get so nuts. 

He steers his Ford TriremeXLT 4WD across the Wyandotte C-Store parking lot. Perry's team, the Helottown Spartans, has just defeated their arch-rivals, the Anatoliaburg Trojans, with a classic H-pattern quarterback sneak. Their spirits are high.

 "Coach P never saw it coming!" says Jax.

 "They noticed our boosters packing up the equipment and figured we'd given up!" says Perry.

O'Dizzyus' thoughts are of his wife Penny, and the disturbing warnings he'd received from his youngest boy, Teller.

"There's a spot!"

"Dad, grab it!"

Into the the empty slot he swerves, his boys all shout and brag and prowess as they tumble from the SUV. He puts on the brake, gets out. "Wait! slow down!" he hollers at them. He beeps the car lock. 

"You-hoo, Tra-viiiiss!" Halfway between him and the door, on a little grass island, his neighbor Frank Calypso's wife, Sapphire, taps her high-heeled sandals impatiently. Gold lame toreadors, peasant midi-blouse; she fans her bare shoulders with a new Weekly World News. He is agog at her outfit. She knows it.

"Well hi there, neighbor," she says, flapping her lashes, matching his step. "Slow down! Your boys are getting so big, too. I imagine they won the game, from the way they hoot it up." She bumps him, coy: "Isn't it just too, too hot?"

Burning Sapphire, thinks O'Dizzyus, as he strides the Wyandotte C-Store's endless ocean of autos.

"You know, my Frank is spending way to much time in your garage, while you and I are at work."

Great Caesar's ghost, thinks O'Dizzyus. This is what Teller told him. Does everyone know?

"Um, well..."

She takes his arm, reeking of wine coolers and Salems. "He says your wife complains all the time about the tight little strip between the row of Cypress and the fence. You haven't cut it all summer."

"Well, that's why I'm here, I need to replace a spring, grease it up, so it will handle that hill there..."

"Frank says he'll fix her ride. If you won't," she coos.

He extracts his arm, gently. "Maybe you should tell Frank I can mow my own row."

Pouts: "Well SHE'S the one sitting in that window all day, tappity-tap-tap, weaving her stories all day." She hisses: "And it's not just Frank that wants to tinker in her shed."

O'Dizzyus sighed. Penny is on a yearlong sabbatical, to write. Apparently she spends half the day schmoozing on that Open Sesame writer site, and only half the day working -- and then deleting what she writes every night after dinner, after a few gasses of wine and a rant about "not getting anywhere" and "it's all shit."

And lately his son Teller, hectoring him: Dad's, she lost! You have to spend more time at home! Frank is over here all the time; he even borrowed your boots and helped her pick strawberries. That jerk Eddie Rieu from across the street, over here for brownies, even old man Fagles was here last week offering to edit her manuscript, showing up with a bottle of cheap sherry. They're trying to beat your time with Mom!

Sapphire oozes: "Maybe you should come over later, Tra-vis, and we can commiserate over a bowl of punch." She pulls him to a stop, just outside the  sliding doors, traces a long nail across his flanneled arm.

"Uh, no, no thanks, Sapph, but I have to do these errands, then get my boys home, repair that mower..." 

She drops her hand, huffs, and toddles next door to Sheets N Stuff.

The big glass doors yawn open, and he goes inside.

 _{II. BLINDING THE ONE-EYED OAF}

He hears his boys' raucous yells echo from deep in the cavernous store. Damn: they know where everything is. He could wander for 10 years in this godforsaken pace. He turns right. It's over here, he thinks.

At the end of aisle G he gives up. Windows, siding, shelves, hand trucks, washers, lacquer thinner: the crap is endless. It is a whole world of crap, islands and teeming shores of old and new and endless crap. And every other row has some hospitable glad-hander with an ID tag, red shirt and blue apron. He avoids their welcoming gaze. 

Aisle G has bad lights overhead; the fluorescents are giving out, some flickering, a few have a weak blue electric line thrumming inside. At the end is some tall, monstrously fat fellow in khakis and employee crimson. His broad back ripples with effort at...something.

O'Dizzyus steps up, taps his shoulder; the giant whirls, face red, scowling, his hands wrenching a sheepskin car seat, trying to tear open the stiff plastic package. He has a glass eye, and it veers up and away. His good eye, bloodshot, glares down at O'Dizzyus. "What!" he bellows. 

Inhales, calmer, "Yes?"

"Um, I need a replacement spring, and axle-grease, for a Krater Stag rider mower, model number..."

The big guy suddenly switches gears, tucks the bulky car seat package under his huge arm, beams. "Sorry, sir! I'm Sy, the store manager." Thrusts out his hand, "and you are...?"

O'Dizzyus hates that hail-fellow-well-met shit. He knows it all too well, working in sales. He has wiles, galorum. But on weekends he could indulge his disgust, his repulsion, at "working" and being "worked". Especially by a transparent amateur like this brute. His sweaty bullying, then the clumsy switcheroo to officious, unctuous, overly familiar...ugh.

"I'm...nobody. Just a guy looking for grease."

The oaf grabs his arm and shoulder suddenly, squeezes him like he is looking for stolen goods, and drags him further into the darkness of aisle G.

"Let's get you what you need!" he booms. He stops at the end abruptly, grabs a can. "Here!"

O'Dizzyus takes it. WD40. He offers it back. "No, I mean, I need..."

Sy claps his big paw over O'Dizzyus'. "Thiiiis'll do ya, trust me, I got the Red 'n Black Krater 5000 myself..."

"No, I don't want it..."

"Better 'n grease, trust me!"

They wrestle it back and forth. It goes off, the long thin spear stuck to the top valve squirts a fierce stream, blinding big Sy in his one good eye. The sheepskin falls to the floor.

O'Dizzyus staggers back, drops the can. Sy's screams bring others, peering down from the well-lit entrance to aisle G, concerned. O'Dizzyus picks up the bulky fleece, hiding his face as he slides past the employees and customers who are now trotting into the dark behind him, to Sy. As he rounds the corner, he hears the blinded manager bleat: "It's Nobody, I tell ya!"

_{III. MEN INTO PIGS}

"There you are" he cries to his boys, as they speed ahead of him, round the corner, animated over their cellphones. He catches up with them on aisle I. "Boys, help me, I..."

"Dad, you gotta see this!"

"...a new app! It's so cool!"

"Listen, boys, just tell me where the mower parts are..."

 "Dad, for God's sake, look!"

He peers over their shoulders. Each hold their EyeTalk phones alongside the other; some shared game where scantily-clad girls are being "acquired" by over-muscled avatar "warriors."

"The one in black armor is me!"

"Watch what happens!"

As each warrior snatches up a "maiden", slinging her onto his back, something falls behind him: a sword, ax, some glowing coins. The warriors leap over boulders and chasms, duck under swooping, sharp-clawed harpies, move ever closer to the figure in the center.

"That's the queen! If you return her maidens to the inner circle you get a new life..."

"...but you lose magic shields and tokens and weapons every time you pick one up!"

"...and see the sand is running out!"

Suddenly Perry's humunculoid character glows red, and turns into a squealing pig, runs panic'ed over a nearby cliff.

The boys snort with glee. O'Dizzyus grabs one of the EyeTalks to steady it. He is mesmerized by the woman at the center. She is more realistically drawn, immobile, her large, kohl-rimmed eyes serene. She seems to be staring at him alone.

"Wow," he mumbles. Louder: "Can I get this on my AthenaX...?"

Perry, contemptuous: "Dad. You can't upload 5D apps on that old thing, not without an upgrade. And you have OwlNet, it would take forever. 

Jax shrieks: "Dad. let go, you're gonna make me lose--oh shit!" His avatar is now a noisy, bright pink pig, spinning in terror.

"Jax!"

Perry grabs Jax and drags him quickly away. "C'mon, we have to go to the front tof the store, there's no service here."

"Guys! Come back!" But they are gone. Gone the warriors, the pigs, the circle goddess, all the helpless maidens. O'Dizzyus is alone. 

"Axle grease," he mutters to himself.

 _{IV. THE DEAD}

Still bewitched, he finds himself wandering into the gardening annex, under its glass roof. He pauses by a forlorn, rootballed plant, with a single striped flower. He lifts the tag, reads: "Rose, 'Fingered Dawn'  Variety". 

He passes dead and dying trees, suddenly remembers Penny's perennial complaint to him: that he must replace that withering avocado tree in their bedroom. Once it was robust, way back, when they are young, in Westport. They had started it from a seed. Now it stands by the head of their bed, spindly, scaley, mostly leafless. Slowly dying.

None of these look healthy, either. He leaves the failing plants, strays past the fencing and faux stones and stops: gravestones. "On sale, deep discounts!" He blinks, looks around, aghast. Since when? when did C-Store start selling these? This is a place for the living, the ingredients we purchased to make a life, not a place of death.

This aisle is covered with red corrugated shed roofing, too, giving it a hellish glow. Curious, in spite of his dread, he slowly walks the aisle, reading the sample headstones and markers. "Our Glorious Prince", says one. For a dog? some noisy, smelly dog gets his own stone?

He stops, recalling his last conversation with Aquilo, an old roommate from his college days, dead from clogged arteries. Seems everyone he grew up with is fat and lazy, waiting to die. He patted his pot belly, guilty. If Aquilo could, he would warn him: enough with the Triple-Cattle sandwiches, Travis me boy-o.

Thoughts of his dear, departed mother came to him. He stands, transfixed, recalling their last conversations, her complaints to him about his long sales trips. He suddenly wants, needs, to be home, with Penny. Quietly, he weeps like a boy.

The end of the annex is open to the hot humid air, and a slight, hazy mist is creeping in. Against the thick air of the loading docks beyond he notices a shirtless C-Store employee struggle to roll some huge obelisk up the short ramp. Every time he gets it halfway up the steel incline it rolls back. Pointless, thinks O'Dizzyus. Useless.

He wipes his eyes on his sleeve, backs away, hurries from this place of the false and discounted dead.

 _{V. HE SEES THE SAW SIREN}

There is a smell of roasting flesh up towards the front, where the patio furniture is displayed and walls are left open during store hours: a grilling demonstration. He finds his boys wolfing down bits of burger on toothpicks, slices of lamb chops. Remembering Aquilo, he is slightly nauseated. "Boys..." They turn, grin at him, turn back, grab double handfuls of meat, stuff themselves. They still make those awful pig grunts, from that game, cracking each other up. 

"Boys, please, you had lunch already..." -- but he is suddenly distracted by a sound, a sound he cannot resist, the noise of the one home activity that fulfills him, the one house-care chore he truly loves. It beckons to him. He turns and peers down the aisle behind him, then trots to the next, then the next, until he comes to the furthest aisle of the annex, where the sound is loud and constant and ripping through his skull, irresistible and insistent.

It is the siren call of a HuuskerDoozy 12 HP chainsaw, chawing thru a stump.

He walks slowly closer, elbowing through the crowd. He wraps his arm around a nearby post, and stares, transfixed.

He doesn't know how long he stands, hypnotized, watching sawdust and wood chips rise and pile in drifts around the grinning sales rep. Wearing safety glasses and gloves, he screams over the noise about rip-back guards and shock absorbing foam handles and self-sharpening laser-guided built-in razor filers. O'Dizzyus drools at one point.

But, slowly, he remembers Penny. The ache to return, to prove himself, to rev that mower engine and clean the line between him and Frank; hell, mow the whole damn yard, around all the fences, to make a moat of close-cropped green. I need to control the boundaries--and this thought suddenly burns in him.

He tears himself away from buzz and zzzhranngg! and stumbles through the annex. The boys appear on either side. His ears are still ringing; they say something: their homie has texted them, they are getting a ride to Aggie and Cassandra's for pizza, then they'll go see some 3D movie.

"You OK, pop?"

He nods.

"You boys find your way home soon. Don't eat too much."

"Right!" and "See ya!" and they are gone, sprinting past the pool supplies.

 _{VI. SCYLLA AND CHARY•B DIESEL}

O'Dizzyus watches them go. Axle grease, he thinks. Springs. 

In the next aisle he sees tillers, and far beyond, mowers. He breathes deep, lets it out slowly. Soon he will be home. The aisle is crowded with palettes and supplies, waiting to be stocked. As he works his way around them he hears a sliding, grinding noise on his left. Someone with a fork lift in the next aisle has over-thrusted, pushing an un-boxed Scylla DeLuxe LawnFork out of place and careening toward him from its shadowy shelf, the six rotating scythes falling inexorably towards his head. He leaps back, knocking the tall display of Chary•B diesel-powered rock sanders, the topmost of which leans ominously from its perch.

Having no other choice, he squeezes his eyes tight and dives into a half empty palette of enormous Poseidon Springs cooler bottles, narrowly averting death from both sides, protected in a singular and narrow place between sparkling blue walls of water.

"Uh, Mr. O'Dizzyus? Are you OK?"

Opening his eyes, he rises to his elbows to see Nautica Johnson, the girl from the cul-de-sac at the end of his street, in tennis clothes. The rest of her varsity team peer wide-eyed from behind her.

He rises up on one knee, shaking, carefully pushes aside the sander and grass fork that form a frightening X over the water bottles above his head. He is drenched; the fork's blades have penetrated two of them. "Yeah.. I think so.. yeah. Yes." 

"Wow, that was like, close." She steps toward him. "Are you here with Perry and Jax? I guess they wiped out the Trojans today."

"Yes...yes, they did. And no, they left me here, for...pizza." She reaches out; he takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet and off the palette. The girls behind her whisper together, giggle. "Thank you, Nautica."

"Sure thing." She is such a nice girl. Her father organizes games for the neighborhood kids every year on the Fourth. He wonders why the boys weren't invited last year. He realizes suddenly, looking into her clear eyes and sweet smile: they aren't "good boys" anymore. Wild, rude, obsessed with PiBox games, stuffing themselves. Cursing fools. He blushes, feels ashamed.

"Come on, Nautica!" one of the girls behind her says. "We have to go."

But Nautica lingers. "What are you shopping for? I have a store map."

"I think I found it. It's behind you: some mower things, a spring..."

"Oh, my dad had to replace his, those are heavy; here, take my basket." She takes the rechargable batteries out of the black, boat-shaped, two-handled basket and gives it to him.

"No.."

"S'OK. Hey I gotta go, but tell Perry I said congratulations!" With a light step she joins her girlfriends and they leave. At the end of the aisle she turns and waves. He waves back; embarrassed, sad, grateful.

 _{VII. HOME ALONE}

The haze is worse now, outside. He has to wait at every intersection while waves of cars move thru the lot lanes. People curse and honk, a few rows over someone is fighting about a stolen space.

Only as he fishes for his keys does he realize he still has the sheepskin under his arm. Through it all he has clutched it, carried it, possessed it. The clerk must have thought it was mine, I gripped it so tight. I am a thief. 

He opens the back hatch tosses it in, and hefts the bag with the spring on grease beside it. She was right: the spring he needed was heavy. Penny, he thinks, as he eases behind the wheel, and his heart aches. He feels empty and alone. I want to go home, he thinks.

About three blocks from home the big TriremeXLT dies. He stares at the E on the fuel gauge, not comprehending for long moments. He fishes in the seat box for his phone, finds something--a new phone--wrapped in a sheet of note paper. He unfolds it and reads: "Trav: I took your phone and updated it, switched numbers. I like the AthenaX better and OwlNet lets me post to my Open Sesame page directly. Now you have an EyeTalk like the boys. They set it up for you. Teller took gramps and his day nurse to the medical supply store and I decided to do the WriteOn workshop today so no one will be home. Frank was kind enough to give me a ride. I'll probably be back for dinner. Ciao."

He slips the phone into his shirt pocket, gets out and walks home. The house appears like a ghost out of the thick fog as he wearily ascends the drive.

He pulls open the garage door. His work boots are gone. He opens up the mower hood so he can reach the grease cup, and releases the brake so he can turn the wheels. After, he heaves it up on its side, and unbends the spring lock. It takes all of his strength, but with bitter anger he gets it on the first try, and replaces the spring. He drops the mower back on all four wheels with a satisfying bounce, and rolls it out the wide back door. 

He starts it up, and like a shot arrow shaves the grass straight along the fence in one fine, fast pass.

He turns off the mower and leaves it there, walks back to the house. He washes his face, and climbs the stairs to his bedroom.

_{VIII. CIRCE WINS}

O'Dizzyus looks at the dying avocado tree. He pulls the phone from his pocket, clicks on "Circe", and after it loads he is gazing into the motionless, penetrating eyes of the trickster goddess, surrounded by her twitching maidens.

And endless snorting pigs, stumbling, fearful; forever unable to retrieve their fallen arms and magic shields.

~|~ 

_{IMAGE: from the cover of the Penquin Classics translation by E.V. Rieu
Bronze relief of Oddyseus, Department of Antiquities, Berlin}