AHMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Cyprian stirred, and Petros laid a reassuring hand on his arm.

  "I have a solution,” Milos said. “A nephew—the nephew of a cousin. His father has more sons than land, and I have been considering hiring him to work with me."

  Milos's daughters had married men with land of their own. And while Milos would be happy to share his land with his sons-in-law, the old men all understood his sympathy with the nephew who had no prospects.

  Cyprian stared at the table, at the bottle, at his glass, not wanting to agree to the unspoken proposition. Finally, he reached for his glass. “Does this boy walk upright? Does he have two eyes, two ears, two balls? Will he treat her well?” He drank deeply and the other men all laughed and clapped each other on the back. The nephew could come and Cyprian would take a look.

  And life would go on as it should, in Kina, in the land of the Mani.

  * * * *

  Dmitra's father had not told her Georgos was coming, nor said anything about a possible match. Still, all of Kina knew everything about the young man—whether it was true or not—long before he arrived, and how could she not wonder? Would he be like kind, gentle Milos, handsome despite his years and stooped spine? Or would he be completely unsuitable, barely able to talk to a goat, let alone a pretty girl of seventeen?

  No, she persuaded herself. How could I possibly be happy with a boy who wants to live here?

  And yet, she did love Kina. In the spring, when the olive groves blossomed and the air smelled so sweet, the hillside covered with crocuses and anemone, how could any place be more beautiful?

  After her shift at the taverna, before it was time to make her father's evening meal, Dmitra went to collect the goats. And there, on a terrace not far from the spot where she liked to dream, sat a boy—a young man—of maybe nineteen or twenty. His skin was dark, his hair curly, and even from a distance, she could tell his jaw was strong and his eyes swift.

  Georgos turned in her direction and the quick tilt of his head told her he had seen her. It was the goat's bell that caught his attention, she thought. Not the touch of my gaze.

  He stood, and the gesture told her he knew who she was and liked what he saw.

  Georgos and Dmitra fetched the goats together every evening for the next few weeks. As the young people trailed the small herd toward the terrace behind the tower, Cyprian felt a burden ease. He trundled inside and up to the small chamber he had shared with Sofia.

  Her lace scarf still lay on the bureau, her icon hanging above it. And in a frame he had carved himself, a photo of his bride on their wedding day, so many years ago.

  "You see, I was right,” he told her picture. “We will have a bride again soon. Almost as beautiful as you.” He sat at the foot of the bed, the photo in hand, until darkness fell and the smells of his dinner cooking rose through the tower. Slowly he stood, kissed the photo and replaced it, then kissed the icon.

  When he descended into the main room, he saw his daughter standing in front of the stone sink, back to him, head bowed over her hands.

  "Dmitra,” he began.

  "Papa,” she said, spinning around and shoving something he could not see into her skirt pocket. He could not see, but he could guess.

  He held out his arms, a smile crinkling his leathered face. “You don't need to count your money, girl. You think me a poor man and I am, but I have been planning for this day. Don't you worry. Your old father can afford a pretty wedding for his only daughter."

  "A wed—Papa, no. No, not a wedding.” Her mouth tightened and she closed her eyes. When they opened a moment later, they were damp. “No, Papa, no.” She turned and ran out the tower door.

  Cyprian ate the stew she had left and watered the goats. He sat in front of the tower and waited. The stars rose, the moon rose. He slept in his hard chair and woke and slept again a dozen times.

  Dmitra was gone.

  * * * *

  She sent a message through a neighbor, one whose own children had gone—to Scutari, to Stoupa and Kalamati—and who did not care enough to complain.

  Cyprian complained. He complained to the neighbor, to the walls of the house and the village, to the olive trees and the goats. He complained to Petros and Kostas, and to the keeper of the taverna. He complained to Milos that his nephew was good for nothing, though he had to admit, the young man worked hard, talked easily, and seemed like the right kind of boy.

  After Cyprian had complained long enough and loud enough, he tended the garden and tried to forget the girl.

  But the Mani had lived here nearly eight hundred years, and he could not forget. He tended his goats, he trimmed his vines and plucked his olives. He watched the sea and the stars and every night he spoke to Sofia with sadness in his heart.

  And then, one day, Dmitra returned. He hardly recognized her: her head uncovered, her hair flowing long and loose. She wore a gauzy white blouse, like the gown Sofia had worn on their wedding night, and a dark skirt. At least it was a skirt, not trousers, though it came just to her knees and showed her calves and her trim ankles in their leather sandals. Tiny gold loops pierced her ears. She was lovely, this outsider, his daughter.

  She approached him shyly at first, then rushed forward, throwing her arms around him. He wanted to brush her away, but he could not. Dmitra had come home.

  The young man with her worried him. Andreas, he was called. He spoke only Greek, so Dmitra translated. A fisherman from a village on the island of Hydra, from a family that had always fished. He stared at the stone villages of the Mani as if they were strange.

  They were in love, they said, and intended to make their lives on the island. “Papa, be happy for me,” she pleaded. Cyprian could only nod his head and worry.

  He watched from the tower yard as Dmitra walked Andreas up the hill to the graves of her mother and her brothers, to the stone terrace where she'd sat so many hours, longing for another world. Though he couldn't see the goats, he heard their bells tinkling on the afternoon breeze as they rushed to her, and he heard Dmitra and Andreas laughing.

  It was good to have her home. And yet fear gripped Cyprian's heart.

  At last they returned, Andreas cradling a small kid in his arms.

  "Papa, the kid has an injured foot,” Dmitra said.

  Cyprian grunted. “Goat meat stew tonight."

  "No, sir, please,” Andreas said in Greek that Dmitra translated. “The leg's not fully broken. I can bind the bone with a splint and a cloth, and it will heal."

  "What does a fisherman know?"

  Cyprian's displeasure needed no translation, though the young man's response did. “I've cared for animals all my life, sir. I have an ointment in my pack that will speed the healing."

  "Papa, please,” Dmitra said. “Let him try,” and Cyprian could not say no.

  Dmitra insisted Cyprian go to the taverna for supper with them. The keeper's wife made the most tender lamb, the spiciest eggplant, the sweetest tzatziki. The neighbors in the town greeted her, shared wine, smiled and laughed, approving of the beautiful girl and the young man who spoke politely and could scarcely take his eyes off her.

  And yet, Cyprian could take no pleasure in the food or in the joy of his daughter's return.

  That night, on the front terrace, Andreas brought out a bottle of ouzo, a gift for the old man. They all drank from Sophia's tiny glasses, but Cyprian would not drink a second glass. That would mean he accepted the young man, and his intentions.

  The moon rose. The young people bid him good night and walked up the hillside to say their own good night. Dmitra climbed to her room in the tower, and her young man headed for the goat shed to bed down in the loft.

  On the terrace, in the blue chair with the woven reed seat, Cyprian poured a second glass from the bottle and stared at the sea and the sky.

  The moon, and his heart, told him what he must do.

  The next morning, the girl sat on the stone threshold, her hair uncombed, her blouse untucked. “Papa,” she sobbed, “Andreas is gone."

  Cypria
n's heart lurched at the sound of her tears, the way it lurched at Sofia's tears when Pavlo died. “Hush, girl. He was no good for you."

  When Cyprian returned from the hillside that evening, the pine table held the fresh yellow bread he loved and a bowl of country salad. He smelled the tomatoes and eggplant of moussaka baking and knew he had done the right thing.

  But the table was set for one, and Dmitra did not eat or drink. She dabbed at her face with a crisp white handkerchief of her mother's. “He said he loved me. We planned to be married and love each other like you and Mama."

  A brief stab of regret tore into Cyprian's heart. He tapped a small cask of retsina, his homemade wine, and shoved a glass toward his daughter. “Drink. It will heal your heart."

  But nothing seemed to heal her heart. Georgos came to visit and she sat, silent, showing no interest in his talk of the fields or the animals. After a few visits, he did not return. She spent the days staring at the sea or wandering in the olive grove, watering the trees with tears.

  Then one day, Cyprian returned to the tower with the goats to see that the girl had laid two places on the table. She ate with him that night and every night after. She cooked and cleaned and tended the tower, all as her mother had taught her. She began to work in the taverna again, a few hours a week, though her smile was not so sweet as before and her tips not so generous.

  Cyprian tossed the dark green twelve-gauge shell out to sea and traded the young man's pack and clothing to a neighbor who could be trusted. And at night, while the girl walked the hillside, he sat on his terrace and drank the last of the ouzo, raising his glass to the unconquerable Mani.

  Copyright (c) 2006 Leslie Budewitz

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  Solution to the November UNSOLVED

  Hazel the snitch is the wife of Abe Pitts. They made drug deliveries to the La Paloma Club at 10:00 A.M. on Wednesday.

  * * * *

  DAY: Monday

  HOUR: noon

  HUSBAND: Bart

  WIFE: Eva

  LAST NAME: Laboda

  * * * *

  DAY: Monday

  HOUR: 4:00 P.M.

  HUSBAND: Joe

  WIFE: Flo

  LAST NAME: Rankin

  * * * *

  DAY: Tuesday

  HOUR: 8:00 A.M.

  HUSBAND: Chaz

  WIFE: Dolly

  LAST NAME: Malone

  * * * *

  DAY: Tuesday

  HOUR: 2:00 P.M.

  HUSBAND: Hank

  WIFE: June

  LAST NAME: O'Toole

  * * * *

  DAY: Wednesday

  HOUR: 10:00 A.M.

  HUSBAND: Abe

  WIFE: Hazel

  LAST NAME: Pitts

  * * * *

  DAY: Wednesday

  HOUR: 6:00 P.M.

  HUSBAND: Ike

  WIFE: Celia

  LAST NAME: Scholl

  * * * *

  DAY: Thursday

  HOUR: 9:00 A.M.

  HUSBAND: Eli

  WIFE: Amy

  LAST NAME: Karnak

  * * * *

  DAY: Thursday

  HOUR: 3:00 P.M.

  HUSBAND: Felix

  WIFE: Ida

  LAST NAME: Null

  * * * *

  DAY: Friday

  HOUR: 11:00 A.M.

  HUSBAND: Dan

  WIFE: Ginny

  LAST NAME: Quinn

  * * * *

  DAY: Friday

  HOUR: 5:00 P.M.

  HUSBAND: Gus

  WIFE: Belle

  LAST NAME: Tarloff

  * * * *

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  REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith

  Most TV producers talk about their shows in terms of audience share, target demographics, and perhaps, if prodded, stories and characters. Not David Simon. Ask him about the fourth season of The Wire, the stark crime drama he created for HBO, and he'll give you the nut graf: “This one's about opportunity and the myth thereof."

  For those of you who didn't take any journalism courses in college, a “nut graf” is the part of a feature story that tells the reader exactly what the point of the article is. It can be the opening paragraph, but more often it's further down, after the writer's captured the reader's interest with some sort of scene-setting or writerly slight of hand.

  Take this article, for instance. The “nut” doesn't come until the fifth paragraph.

  In much the same way, each season of The Wire (which returned September 10 after a nearly two-year hiatus) has hooked viewers with gritty, engrossing tales of crime and (occasionally) punishment on the mean streets of Baltimore, while slipping in incisive points about the futility of the “war on drugs,” the decline of the working class, and the human cost of petty politics.

  So it should come as no surprise that the man behind the show is a journalist by training, and very much by inclination as well. Simon sees each new season of his series not as a chance to win bigger ratings, but as an opportunity to explore a different facet of modern urban life.

  * * * *

  The Wire. Photo by Paul Schiraldi, courtesy HBO

  * * * *

  "I feel if someone watches [every episode] of The Wire, they will have seen as accurate a document as television can offer with regard to what the American city was at the millennium,” says Simon, who began his career as a police reporter at the Baltimore Sun. “They'll see why it was what it was—and why we couldn't fix it."

  This year, the series puts the education system under the microscope (while continuing its dissection of police bureaucracy and gang hierarchy). Jermaine Crawford, Maestro Harrell, Tristan Wilds, and Julito McCullum joined the show as middle-school students struggling to stay on the right side of the law, even as temptation and tragedy push them toward crime. And in a development that echoes the real-life career switch of detective-turned-teacher (and now Wire producer) Ed Burns, hotheaded cop Roland Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost) has left the force only to take an equally challenging job: teaching in a struggling inner-city school.

  * * * *

  The Wire's Detective Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost). Photo by Paul Schiraldi, courtesy of HBO

  * * * *

  But perhaps the biggest change of all is the absence of Wood Harris as Avon Barksdale, the cold-blooded gang leader the show's detectives worked so hard to bring down in seasons past. Though Barksdale's gone, it doesn't take long for other wannabe drug lords to take his place—and that's the whole point, according to Simon.

  "In a way, [the school storyline] is a prequel to everything we did with the Barksdale crew,” he says. “The idea that a drug dealer or a gangster is born is farcical. Like every other human being on the planet, they arrive at where they arrive at because they are made."

  Look at Simon himself, for example. Born in 1960, he was hitting puberty just as the Watergate and “Pentagon papers” scandals were making investigative reporters look like crusading (albeit non-caped) superheroes. Stints editing his high-school and college newspapers sealed the deal. Simon was going to be a journalist ... for life.

  "I thought I would end my career the same way I was going to begin it,” he says. “As a newspaperman."

  A newspaperman/author, to be more precise. In the late eighties, Simon took a leave of absence from his crime-beat gig at the Sun to write Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. The nonfiction look inside the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit didn't just earn Simon critical hosannas (and an Edgar Award), it got him a TV deal too—the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street was based on the book.

  And that's how David Simon, journalist, began his transformation into David Simon, TV producer. After penning well-received scripts for Homicide, he was offered a position as a staff writer and eventually producer. He parlayed that experience into an HBO miniseries based on his second book, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (which he cowrote with former Baltimore cop/teacher Burns).
The first season of The Wire followed two years later.

  And the final season of The Wire will start filming on the streets of Baltimore next year, if Simon gets his way. He says he's got one last slice of urban life to look at. And it's one he knows well: the media.

  * * * *

  Wire creator David Simon (right) chats with cast members. Photo by Paul Schiraldi, courtesy HBO

  * * * *

  "It's fascinating for me as a former reporter how our media get poverty, the drug culture, policing, and politics so consistently wrong,” he says. “Having laid the groundwork by depicting these problems for four seasons, I feel like the last piece is explaining how we as a people perceive them, and how that contributes to our inability to solve anything."

  But before Simon can put that last piece of the puzzle in place, he has to get the okay from HBO. And unfortunately, HBO's position remains TBD.

  "They're waiting to see what happens with season four,” Simon explains. “Will our fans be disappointed because the Barksdale story ended? Will the critics say the show has lost a step? It would've been nice if [the network] had said, ‘Yeah, take another season. Don't even worry about it.’ But let's face it, we are going in a different direction from the Barksdale story."

  If HBO cuts The Wire, Simon might head in a really different direction next: south, to New Orleans. He's currently working with former Homicide producer Eric Overmyer to develop a series set in the Big Easy.

  But Simon won't be leaving Baltimore behind, if he can help it. For one thing, he shares a home there with fellow Sun alum (and award-winning mystery novelist) Laura Lippman. And he remains determined to put the final stitches in the vast tapestry he's been weaving with The Wire.

  "The cast, the crew—we all feel the same way,” he says. “We've created something special here, and we want to finish it."

  Copyright (c) 2006 Steve Hockensmith

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