LORIAN HEMINGWAY SHORT STORY COMPETITION

De Nada: by Vicki Riley: 2011 Honorable Mention

2012-01-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

Thoughts and dreams of Marissa have plagued me since I was nine. In elementary grades we took turns beating each other up in the coral rock playground with palm trees, and in middle school we continued the ritual. But for me, by then, it was a cover up. I didn’t want anyone to know I liked her. Sometimes someone else would beat her up, and I wanted to save her. That’s what I really longed to do, but Sam Walters just wasn’t brave enough back then.

Things changed in ninth grade when she showed up the first day of school in my all male auto-mechanics class.

At Key West High in 1964, girls studied Home Economics. Learned how to sew and cook. They didn’t enroll in shop class. She took the leers and jock jokes in stride, mostly ignoring them.

Then one day, one of the guys took apart and put back together a 1955 Chevy Bel Air engine, but couldn’t get it started. The teacher was in the hall talking to a coach as we witnessed Marissa lift up the hood, and make adjustments. She slammed the hood, and slid into the front seat behind the steering wheel. The engine backfired a billowing black exhaust, then roared to resurrection. United, we stood, awed.
After that, I started following her home after school. I just waited by the flagpole with other kids until I saw her heading home. We lived walking distance to school and across from each other on Staples Avenue so it was easy to lag behind, far enough she didn’t notice me, close enough to check her out. Black waves in a high pony tail swung shoulder to shoulder in rhythm with her hips. Occasionally, she paused and shifted the weight of her books and notebook to the opposite arm. With each pause, my heart throttled with fear she’d turn around. She never did though.
Watching her at night was easier. Our second-story bedrooms faced the street lamps and she never drew the curtains even to sleep. If her room was lighted, I shrouded my face in the heavy folds of drawn drapery to spy through an opening large enough only for my eyes. Hours passed. In the mornings, my body ached, stiff from standing in that position so long.

Mornings, days, months passed this way into December. Everyone at school was looking forward to Christmas break. Excitement stung the cool air that blushed our cheeks and sped up our expectation of life without classes. On the last day of school, as I waited by the flag pole, Marissa, instead of heading home, locked eyes with mine like a nautical captain sure of the right course into the horizon and headed straight for me.

“Sam,” she said, her mouth flashing uniform, pure white teeth.
I hugged the flagpole like a ship’s mast, my heart its sails. The sand under my sneakers started to sink. Does she know? Is she mad? Is she going to slap me?

“Will you walk me home?”

I was still trying to read her.

Then she laughed - plaintive organ notes resonating through the air between us. My heart lifted. I thought of World Literature class – Odysseus, sirens – and knew I was lost.

“You’d think I asked you to walk me to Miami. We do walk the same way, you know.” Her eyes, dark sapphires, revealed nothing, but the eyebrows above them, arched with knowledge. Here it comes I thought.

Then she handed me her books and I fell into step beside her, literally. I walked right out of one of my sneakers. We both laughed, and then she bent down on one knee to tie the sneaker lace. Other students stared - girls with raised brows, pursed mouths, and guys smirking macho-stud approval. Shame and exhilaration coursed through me. I felt like a child with my mother and a man with a lover all at the same time. Marissa rose from the ground toward me, brushing her hands together.

“Thank you,” I stammered with the urge to kiss her.

“De nada.” She smiled at me.

“What?”

“Spanish. For, it’s nothing.”

As the school grew smaller behind us, the sun sank larger ahead of us. It didn’t feel like nothing to me. We walked. I listened. She talked. Every once in a while, she swung her head sideways, looked up at me and asked, “What did I just say?” Most of the time I could tell her, but sometimes she caught me and must have known I was just a happy fish netted in the sound of her voice.

“You want to come in?” she asked as we stopped in front of her house.

“Is that Jeff under the car hood?” I motioned to the side yard where underneath the Chevy’s chassis appeared two legs in dark trousers.

“Yep, that’s my brother.” She started up the steps. “Taught me everything I know about cars.”

The inside was an architectural mirror of my house and others along the street. I felt at home and disoriented at the same time. Both our houses had dark wood floors, but everything was reversed with different furnishings and wall colors. The light was brighter, the colors bolder there.

In the white kitchen, her mother beat ingredients into a pie mold. “This is Sam, Mama. From across the street. Sam – you can call her Mama Dolores. I’m her tiger cub.” Marissa motioned me to a stool and then leaned across me, grazing my face with her hair and my arm with a breast. The gesture was noted by Mama Dalores who nodded at me and handed the bowl to her daughter.

“For you and your friend, Sam.”

Marissa pushed the bowl in front of me, then plopped onto my lap to feed me.

“Careful young lady, someone might get the wrong idea.” Embarrassed, I laughed, hoping Mama Dolores would see my respect for her daughter.

Mama Dolores looked at me strangely. “Don’t you worry none bout Missy Mae. She’s fifteen last week. I’ve schooled her. Ain’t no double standard for her. She can take what she wants. Be anything she wants. Same as any man can.”

I glanced surreptitiously at the mother in between the spoon dripping lemon-coconut I dutifully swallowed like a chick in a nest, except the school yard conflict of mother-lover was back, but this time hardened uncomfortably between my legs. I excused myself to the toilet and applied a solution to the problem. When I came out I spied a tale-tell wet spot. I was too embarrassed to go back into the kitchen, so I yelled through the hall that I had to leave - my mother’s expecting me. Mama Dolores padded patiently down the hall.

“Missy Mae’s in her room. Upstairs. Go on up. She’s expectin you.”

“I can’t. Could you just tell her I said goodbye?”

Her eyes found the wet spot then shot back up at me. “I’ll tell her.”

I rushed through chores and supper to get back to Marissa. In the bathroom upstairs I shaved what few blond whiskers had sprouted since the last mow and slathered my dad’s Old Spice across my neck and shoulders. I ran to my room and changed the guilty pants to clean ones. I raised my hand to catch the fan light string and glanced out my window. My body froze. All the hair on my arms and back tingled, rose. I jerked the string down; blackness flooded the room until there was no doubt of what I saw. Someone stood just beyond Marissa’s bedroom window, back arched, pulling her against him. Her hands embraced his face, then her fingers raked through his hair as his mouth covered hers, her pelvis thrust forward until she bent gracefully back like a vine. I was fluid. Sweat crept across and down my body. Water pooled in my eyes – a blessed blur. When it cleared, I refocused and saw her bedroom curtains closed for the first time.

I tried not to watch for the closing of those curtains during the rest of Christmas break. I failed. They closed with alarming regularity that bounced me back and forth between despair, jealousy and rage. In January, when we returned to school I switched from auto mechanics to shop class and avoided any hall, locker, or cafeteria area where I might run into her. On a few occasions, a glimpse of her – head back in laughter, shy promising smile offered to anyone but me - invaded my walled vision, but I quickly averted my eyes, moved out of view, a breathless swimmer fighting deep, swift currents of memory.

In the spring, I tried out for Junior Varsity football and made the team. The rest of the year was a jock dream that kept me from thinking too much about her. At least until summer practice. Coach worked us so hard we started turning on each other like snakes, spitting our venom for him upon each other.

I guess what happened was inevitable, perhaps even odd it didn’t happen sooner. During summer, to save money, the school turned off the hot water heater for locker room showers. The water whipped our bodies, a cold burn, ice sticking to skin. We howled the injustice. One lone howl shifted to a moan followed by a second answering moan, mimicking a girl’s orgasm. One after another, the remaining howls patterned into a group chant.

“Missy Mae. Missy Mae, Missy Mae…”

The concrete maze of showers concealed identities, but I knew my team mates’ voices. Primal instinct fulminated in four words.

“Stop, god damn it!” I slammed my faucet shut.

All sound trailed to silence interspersed with faucet drip. Whispers. Ghosts. Advance to low voices. I opened my faucet, plunged my head and mind into the ice flow.

“Jesus, Walters. What the fuck’s up with you?”

I kept my head up, eyes closed, bracing the cold stream off my chin.

“She’s not like that,” I said.

Tim Albury laughed. “Get yer head out of the ice, Walters. We don’t usually call her Missy Mae, cuz we know damn well she will.” Laughter ricocheted around me. In seconds, I was on top of him, slamming his head against the concrete floor. Jagged nails clawed my skin, hundreds of fingers shuffled across my body, gripped, pushed, pulled me from him. To help even the score, they let him have one punch at me.

The ring of confederate jasmine flowers in her hair wilted by the time I found her sitting on my front porch floor. Wisps wafted amidst long twirls of dark hair. A white peasant top draped toast-colored skin, and dangled bare her shoulder serving as head rest. Tiers of sky-blue Batik circled then flowed along the curve of her knees hiked above bare feet, red toenails. Her eyes, like the ocean, revealed only a surface of the world within. I was grateful to smell Jasmine along with the blood crusted in my nose.

“Why?” was all she asked.

I just looked at her and blinked back the boy in me.

She took my hand and led me across the street, onto her porch, through the screen door, up the stairs, into her bedroom that was like mine, yet hers. She motioned me to sit on the bed, then stepped back out and shut the door. Not much differed from the nocturnal spy view from my bedroom window.

Except for a vanity with three mirrors and upturned feet. It flanked her window so I’d never seen it. Curiosity pulled me to it. My eyes, hands embraced every object – silvered comb, brush, hand-mirror, glass-stopper bottles filled with gold or white liquid (each one a scent of her remembered from auto mechanics), two books – Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a book of poems by Adrienne Rich - and a school library copy of Atlantic Monthly. When I picked up the magazine it opened to a dog-eared page titled, “Whatever Happened to Women’s Rights?” I closed it to replace it in the exact spot, then paused at what rested there, unlocked, waiting, a red velvet diary.

I heard a toilet flush somewhere and pipes rumbled, whistled me to hurry. Nausea roller coasted my belly as my fingers shook through pages of guys’ names and notes. A floor board groaned outside – my insides pounded like the Tell-Tale Heart - the doorknob turned. Football practice paid off. I tackled the bed from ten feet. Poking his head and an outstretched hand through the door was Jeff.

“Missy Mae asked me to give you this.”

“Thanks.” Shaking, I took two white aspirin from his hand. He opened the door wider and with his other hand offered a glass of water.

I took it, swallowed the pills, drained the glass, and gave it back to him.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, well, it should help the soreness.” He shrugged and looked down at the floor.

“How’re you doing?” I asked.

He looked up then, grinned at me, saying, “Better than you probably.”

When he’d closed the door, I turned to make sure the diary and magazine were in their place, but the room played tricks. The sun was setting, casting rays of gauzy, iridescent light into the room, perfume bottles became prisms and when the door opened again, I looked up, and all of the light stored up in the room flew toward her.

I gaped as she came toward me, light shimmering against her white satin kimono, its sleeves wide and long on her arms stretched out to me, sapphire eyes both a plea and a promise. But then she turned to the window, raised both arms toward the sky and closed the ivory curtains.

They came together like the pages in her diary flooding the room and my heart with darkness. All those names.

By the time her body lay next to mine, I was shaking uncontrollably. Her voice and hands tried to soothe me.

“It’s okay. I know how you feel. I’ve always known.”

“You’ve always known?” I asked. Her nose and mouth nuzzled into my neck. My body and mind raged against each other.

“How you felt about me. It’s why I picked you.”

“Picked me?” In a flash, I knew I could forgive her. Forget. Put all those names behind us. My shaking stopped and I stroked her face, her hair. I drew the glossy, perfumed length of curls across my face, then gathered the ends like a bouquet and kissed it with the greatest tenderness I’d ever known.

“To be the first,” she whispered.

I lifted my head, foggy with desire.

“You should have been the first,” she cooed.

“First” plunged me back into the ice flow of water in the locker room today.

“Why not the only?” I asked. “From here on out.”

Her giggle reminded me of the guys’ laughter in the locker room. Only I felt much more foolish now. Angrier.

“Like you would be with only me forever? Sam, we’re so young. We’ve got our whole lives in front of us.”

Suddenly I realized that I could never be more than a name on her list. That some unknown man in the distant future would marry the only girl I’ve ever loved. I hated him. And I hated her for using me until he comes along.

I pushed her away and stood up. “I can’t do this, be this…nothing to you.”
I crossed to the door as she sat up, her mouth open as if to say something, her eyes large, but not with surprise.

“I thought my whole life was in front of me, with you.” I opened the door slowly, wishing she would stop me. Say I was her whole life too. But then I finally had to close the door.

***

In truth, after all these years, I was curious. Curious about Marissa and the man she finally married.

Recently widowed, I’d returned home, hoping to find Marissa at our class reunion. She wasn’t there. That’s why I said yes to my mother’s invitation to come for lunch with Dolores.

Some months ago, while I browsed the book shelves of a used book store in the theatre district, I discovered a copy of Rich's Diamond Cutters and Other Poems. When I opened it, I was stunned to read Marissa’s name on the inside cover. Then I remembered it as one of the items I’d seen on her vanity. I leafed through it, then scanned the table of contents. One poem’s title struck a chord of memory with me. “Aunt Jennifer's Tigers.” I remembered Marissa saying she was her mother’s tiger. The last stanza jumped out at me because of the ink pen marks. I wondered at its meaning for Marissa if she was the one who had circled and underlined the lines.

“When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud, and unafraid.”

I wondered if the Aunt represented Marissa’s mom. If Marissa, by being her mom’s tiger, was supposed to live life prancing, proud, and unafraid, whatever that meant. I also wondered at how this book had traveled all the way from Key West to a used book store in New York, to me. Of course, I bought the book that day, then brought it back with me this summer to Key West.

The book was in my hand, a gift for Mama Dolores. I thought a memento from the past might be meaningful for her. She had stopped driving after the doctor diagnosed her with a touch of dementia. Since then, her son, Jeff, and my mom have taken turns looking in on her every day. Jeff’s wife does Dolores’s shopping and cleaning while Jeff, a shrimp boat captain, gives my mom fresh seafood for cooking Dolores’s meals and cleaning up afterwards.

I arrived early. My three light knocks bounced the unlocked screen door. It whined slightly as I opened it, but the parlor appeared empty. I paused in the hall before walking inside, all the while listening to kitchen sounds of lids clanged back on pots and pans, water running and the opening and closing of a refrigerator, all the while searching, hoping to find something. I didn’t know what. Pictures maybe. I knew Marissa had no children, but she’d married a Brazilian poet and they lived in Rio de Janeiro. The bold colors had faded or peeled and the brightness was defeated by dark green pull down window shades. Mold and dust reigned. From a dark corner of the room a rocker creaked.

Her voice hissed low and pierced the air causing me to flinch. “I know you.” Dolores teetered toward me. “I know who you are – you and my momma. I remember. She said an American sailor would love me special cause I was a virgin. But you didn’t. You ran around with every girl in Havana, then promised me a different life in Key West. But you got tired of coming home to babies, so you left. You used me up and went on your merry way. You get on outta here. Get!” She shook her cane at me.
Within moments, a sliding glass door of memory exchanged thresholds of time in her eyes. Their gloss hardened to disinterest.

“I tole you no double standards for Missy Mae. Didn’t I?”

Gooseflesh quivered across my chest, arms and belly. Heat flushed my torso and face.

“She got the same right as any man. Her own power. Same as you. Now go on.”

I dropped the book and gasped for air in a space that suddenly seemed a sealed vault of time. I fled. I left my mother there without saying goodbye or why I was leaving. How could I explain? How could anyone explain my discovery of such bitter understanding of Marissa in Dolores’s confusion of me with her ex-husband? I bolted back through the screen door, from damp darkness into a sauna of sun. My lungs ballooned. My sprint slowed to a brisk walk.

A red convertible whizzed past. Sandy dust whirled an image in front of me on the sidewalk. Black waves of a high pony tail swinging shoulder to shoulder in rhythm with her hips. She paused and shifted her red diary to the opposite arm. My body seemed to lift from the ground, reaching, stretching, straining to catch up. To convince her that not all men break vows. To give me the chance to prove it to her. I remembered the velvet cadence of her voice – its promise, the silk of her hair teasing my skin, her eyes fluttering wide with acceptance. And then she disappeared. A statue, I stared in disbelief at my outstretched hands, cupped as in prayer, spilling over with nothing.

Retired high school teacher, Vicki Riley is working on a collection of short stories and a screenplay set in Key West.

Vicki lives with her husband and Yorkie, Garbo (for Greta Garbo) in St Cloud and Cape Malabar, Florida embracing small town life that resembles what she remembers of her youth.

“Writers are a blend of loves. Vocabulary, sentences, maybe grammar, the written word always, but then personality shapes our writing subjects: politics to gardening. My personality gravitates to the heart, to people and to Key West where I lived thirty years and which remains the haunting “home” of my soul. Much of what I write is somehow embedded with a tribute to the past and hope for the future. Minority or women’s struggles ride the arcs of my stories. Characters abound in Key West, so mine reflect that unconventional, singular spirit of the island.”

2011 Honorable Mention: "Anomaly" by Fran Haley

2011-10-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

There’s too much whiteness in this room.

A white linen tablecloth shrouds the table. Two white tapers stand guard; in the candlelight Mother’s treasured Lenox china reflects a maddeningly holy glow. Forks are laid with precision on the left, glasses exactly above the tips of knives on the right. I thought I could catch a few precious minutes of hush in here while David and his brood are in the kitchen, oohing, aahing, sampling and plattering the usual traditional fare. I can’t take their bustling or the loud clinking of dishes. No sanctuary for me, not here, not anywhere. Even my knuckles are white from gripping the back of the chair. Muscles contract,my head throbs, I can barely breathe, yet the serene candle flames don’t even flicker.

Curious.

“Daniel! Here you are.” It’s Mother, coming through the doorway with a tea pitcher in one hand and an ice bucket in the other. Act normal! I take the ice and fill the glasses so she can pour the tea.

Might as well be liquid sugar. Dad couldn’t get enough of it. I recall Thurber’s Princess Lenore, who fell ill from a surfeit of raspberry tarts; it’s a wonder we all haven’t died of sugar surfeit.

In come my nieces, Caitlin and Gracie, with sweet potato and green bean casseroles. Little Nate, age five, is right behind them with the plate of devilled eggs. One is missing. Nate’s cheeks are bulging, his mouth too full to chew; it’s like I’m seeing his father at that age again:

Do you think it’ll snow so we can play on the sled, Daniel?

No, silly, it never snows at Thanksgiving. You gotta wait ‘til after Christmastime for that. Are you still eating? What’s in your mouth?

Debbled egg. I got another one in my pocket for you—here!

The memory is almost warming but evaporates as David, paunchy and balding, strolls in with the enormous browned bird. How many of us does Mother think she’s feeding? We’re three down from previous years.

We go through the motions. We sit, and I feel five pairs of eyes on me. Expectant. It’s time to return thanks and, being the firstborn, the intended bearer of my father’s legacy, I’m normally the one to offer it at our gatherings.

There’s nothing normal about me now.

I feel hands reaching for mine, Nate’s little pudgy ones and David’s too-soft ones which make my insides writhe like spirochetes. How could you, Sabrina? I flinch at my brother’s touch but I manage to sit rock-still even though I want to fling him away and shout God, David, be a man!

They’re waiting. I’m supposed to pray, God’s supposed to hear. Once I was sure he did.

I bow, my eyes not fully closed—I can still see Mother’s Opal Innocence gleaming up at me in derision:

For each new morning with its light,
for rest and shelter of the night,
for health and food,
for love and friends,
for everything Thy goodness sends,
Amen.

“Amen,” chorus three little voices. Mother smiles at me, misty-eyed. David’s eyebrows are raised. He recognizes Emerson, of course, literary expert that he is. If he’s such a phenomenal professor, why can’t he find another job?

Who am I to talk?

David stands to carve the hulking bird carcass. The senselessness of it all makes me want to hurl my plate Frisbee-fashion through the bay window, but I can’t in front of the kids so I sit and make a conscious effort to unclench my jaw. I stare at the dismemberment of the creature, feeling a kinship with the hollowed-out dead thing at the end of the line, where scavengers await to pick the last of flesh from the bones in this oh-so-civilized setting. I must endure this thlipsis of meaninglessness just a little longer. Survival of the fittest, wouldn’t you say, kindred turkey? Maybe you never had a chance to fly away, you Frankenstein fowl, but I, the true modern Prometheus, do, and it’s all that buoys my soul.

My soul. I suppress a wild urge to laugh. David hacks away at the bird; suddenly, I know why the candle flames don’t flicker when I walk in or out of a room:

I’m already dead.

Will my image soon vanish from the photos Caitlin took with her digital camera?

I pass the potatoes, the cranberry sauce. I chew, swallow. Conversation drifts around me. As long as there are no jarring sounds, I know what they’re saying without really hearing them. White noise..

Jen would still be here, if not for me. Sabrina would be gone with or without me—do American transplants celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia? Do they put kookaburras on spits? Dad’s the only one who earned the right to be gone and he didn’t choose it. I have a choice; unlike Sabrina and Jen, I’m not running from anybody, least of all myself.

I make my own appointments.

Not even the chains I’ve forged can hold me.

“Uncle Dan?” A voice jolts me back. Gracie, standing at my elbow. Little Sabrina. “Are you ready for dessert, Uncle Dan? We made your favorite!”

“Of course, honey,” I hear myself answer. I fake a smile.

Mother is visibly pleased. She’s too thin. She worries too much. She still emanates elegance, although her regal posture is considerably stooped now. She’s the Opal Innocence plate with the fine cracks running through it, the one she sets at her own place so no one else will have to have it.

Why do these things matter?

Gracie goes to the kitchen and promptly returns with a slice of triple chocolate bundt the size of my head. I say, “That’s too big a piece for me, Young Grasshopper.”

The children giggle.

It’s Gracie’s voice but Sabrina’s wide, entreating eyes: “Pleeeease?”

“All right! I give up. You win.”

This cake is too rich; the only saving grace is that the dark chocolate chips cut the overpowering sweetness with a needed shard of bitter.

“So, Daniel,” says my brother, leaning toward me while his offspring help Mother clear the table, “what are your plans?”

I freeze.

“My plans for …?”

“Filing your papers. The sooner you get it done, the quicker you can put it all behind you. It’s the inevitable, you know.”

I relax.

“I’ve taken care of it.”

He’s surprised. “When did you see your attorney? Does Mother know? She hasn’t mentioned it.”

They think I can’t think for myself any more. I ran my own multimillion-dollar business from the time I was twenty-six without their help and I don’t need their help now that it’s gone.

“I went last week and started the process. The office will call when the papers are ready to sign.”

He regards me somewhat dubiously but I continue savoring my cake, stretching it out, making it last.

Endure. Transcend. It won’t be long now.

“Which process, exactly?” he probes.

I take my time chewing, swallowing, chasing the cake with a swig of tea, not nearly so sweet after such decadence.

“Here’s the thing: It’s kind of hard to serve separation papers on a woman when you don’t know where she is. She doesn’t stay in one place very long.”

“How can you file for bankruptcy without her?”

I let a long, heavy pause hang there before I look straight into his eyes. “What about you? Divorce final yet?”

And a Happy Thanksgiving to all.

“Dan.” I can hardly bear the gentleness in his voice, so Motheresque. I’d rather he punched me in the face—hard. C’mon David—let me have it—

I throw a sucker punch: “Any new job prospects?”

“Actually, yes, a couple.…”

Something about going overseas, he’s in demand by Japan, China, and the Arab Emirates. He could teach for a year, leaving the kids with Mother until he gets on his feet and the universities here start hiring again. I could interrupt and ask him—again—why tenure didn’t save him except that I don’t want to hear him drone on, when he stops and sighs:

“I can’t go through with it, though.”

“Go through with what?”

“I can’t leave the kids. No matter how I explain all the reasons I need to do this, it just comes down to my leaving them like Sabrina did. I won’t put them through that.”

“What are you going to do, then?

“I don’t have much choice. The unemployment helps but I have to sell the house. Mother wants us to stay here until something opens up.”

I can’t control myself any longer; I burst out laughing.

David coming to live here.

Poetic justice.

He doesn’t know how to react to my laughter but then again, no one knows how to take me these days.

I wipe my eyes. “Yeah, well, it’s a good thing I added that extra bedroom when I built this place, huh? Mother and Dad said one guest room would be enough but remember how Sabrina said there should be two, for when Jen and I have kids and all the grandchildren want to stay at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house at the same time?”

“Dan…”

“No worries, baby brother. Even if bankrupt builders don’t get unemployment like terminated teachers do, I can take care of myself.”

I neglect to say that, until the 5,000 square foot monster beach home I shared with Jen sells—if and when it ever does in this economy—I have eighty-six dollars to my name.

More than what I need to close this last deal.

* * *

FINALLY.

Gluttony and tryptophan do me a favor; everyone goes to bed early. When I’m sure they’re all asleep, I slip on my coat with Dad’s keys and a flashlight in the pockets.

I put his old F-150 in gear and push until it’s far enough away to crank.

His shotgun’s in some blankets under the seat.

I drive through the darkness, past streetlights, neighborhoods, on to the highway. What are you driving now that the Range Rover has been repossessed, Jen? You can’t live on your credit cards much longer. Nothing’s left to pay them with. The bills are still coming; for a while I tracked your movements that way..

Go after her, Daniel. She’s in so much pain.

What’s the point, Mother? I’m the one she’s running from.

The last time I headed to Dad’s old cabin at Serendipity Lake, I’d just met you, Jen. Dad took me fishing in an effort to help me gain clarity about the future. He knew I was struggling with my calling in life. Out in the rowboat on the placid water, I asked him: How do I know I’m meant for the ministry, Dad? How did you know?

He thought a minute before answering. I just knew, like I know my own name. I couldn’t do anything else, Daniel— it was meant to be. You have so many gifts, Son— you can do anything you want. As much as I’d like to see you at seminary and ordained, I can’t tell you what to do. That’s between you and God.

That’s what I wanted, Dad. I wanted to be complete like that, like you.

You know I came away determined to follow your pastoral footsteps. That was before the
church told you, after twenty-three years, that they no longer needed your services, that they were ready for a younger man with “more creative ideas.” You stepped down far more graciously than I ever could.

And where were you, DAVID, brother mine, when Dad had his first heart attack the following month? Finishing that almighty doctorate Sabrina was determined you should have. Getting her pregnant. The rest of us weren’t a blip on your radar, were we? My quitting seminary for a full-time job in construction was supposed to be temporary:

Mom says you’ve got your hands full but we could use your help, Dave. I’m slapping beams twenty-four/seven. With Dad’s hospital bills, it’s still tight.

No worries, Dan. I’m going to do my part as soon as I finish this dissertation….

We need your help now, man.

If were you, Danny Boy, I would have started my own company by now.

This from a man who’s never done a day’s manual labor.

Pure spite led me to create my company; the contracts flooded in for several years before the industry tanked and it all dried up overnight.

My personal monsoon.

It wasn’t really the money that mattered. The solitary thing I’m proud of is building that house for Mother and Dad. He lived there a year before his heart gave up.

I haven’t been able to stomach a churchyard since the day we buried him.

It’s uncommonly cold tonight. I’m dimly aware of some advisory on the radio. I reach to turn up the volume when something large darts in front of the truck. I slam on brakes, screeching tires and swerving. A deer, of course; I should have been watching.

Between the moon and the flashlight I find the cabin easily. I carry the blankets and Dad’s shotgun with me. I find the key on his key ring and the old door scrapes open.

A powerful mustiness welcomes me. The flashlight reveals some firewood by the hearth, right where Dad left it on his last visit. The wood is dry; it’ll still burn. In a little bit my fire is crackling and popping sparks up the chimney.

I watch the jumping flames. I know how this will play out. David will swear he saw it coming. Sabrina will think it’s because of some secret torch I carry. Jen, wherever you are, you’ll believe it’s because I lost the business and the money, being convinced that’s where my heart lies. Anything and everything will catch the blame, except the truth:

I’m choosing this because I can.

Mother, you’re the hardest. Don’t blame yourself. You can’t fix this. Focus on David and the kids. I’m trusting you’ll find the path to peace; you always do. I’ve made sure you’re taken care of and when you’re gone, leave the house to David; he’ll be taken care of, too.

What a neat package for you, Dave, as usual. Consider it my atonement.

There’s no atoning for the rest of it.

When can we have a baby, Daniel?

Soon, Jen, soon … I promise.

My sweet, loving girl, if you would listen: You’re right, I’m not the man you married. I didn’t understand until last week, when I was showing the house to the one potential buyer so far. I opened the closet in the bedroom you wanted for a nursery and found it crammed, top to bottom, with new baby things. Little clothes hanging from the racks, price tags still attached. I put you off because, to me, bringing a child into this world is—well, inconceivable. And the helplessness of infants terrifies me. How can I admit that to any sensible person? You’d be an amazing mother. I thought the cars, clothes, the big
house would compensate. I thought you’d eventually give up on the baby—not on me.

I’m so sorry, Jen.

And you don’t know about Sabrina, my Pandora.

She walked out on David right after you left, Jen. Found an apartment and called me to come see her; said we needed to talk.

I never should have gone.

Why hide it now? She was a fire in me from the day David brought her home from college. When she married him, I tried to hate them both. You were the only thing that helped, Jen. You and David never knew how she showed up at my sites, how I had to avoid her.

It only happened that one time, after you were gone.

I was weak. She wasn’t. She meant to have her way.

Daniel, my not loving him isn’t your fault.

You loved him once.

I thought I did, in the beginning. It’s been you for years. Jen’s not coming back, Sugar; you just made me yours, at last.

Are you some kind of spider that devours its own? Jen would’ve thought of the children. Caitlin, Gracie, and Nate deserve better. I’m not serving them up on a platter just to satisfy my pheromones. Understand, Sabrina: This isn’t about David. I don’t love you. I’m already on my own road trip to hell; you just bought your own ticket, honey.

This is why I laughed so hysterically when you said she’d flown one-way to the Land Down Under, Dave.

My brother’s wife. What would my father say?

I can’t tell you what to do. That’s between you and God.

Well, Dad, I think this one’s up to me. If God’s really there, he hasn’t intervened so far; why would he bother now?

The fire is dying and I don’t add wood, because the room is becoming gray with the first traces of dawn.

It’s time.

I take the shotgun and go outside—I’m not going to ruin the cabin. I need to be in the lake so that when I fall, the water will close over me, absolve me, dissolve me. I shall feed the fish for a long, long time, if they don’t die of me first.

The air is biting cold and if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was about to snow.

Do you think it’ll snow so we can play on the sled, Daniel?

No, silly, it never snows at Thanksgiving. You gotta wait ‘til after Christmastime for that.

I walk the old path until the trees thin and water spreads out before me. Serendipity Lake is as smooth and clear as a mirror, reflecting the gray morning. The silence is so deep. What profound stillness; Nature’s holding her breath before the world wakes up.

An unexpected pang: Dad, I miss you desperately.

Something brushes my cheek and I wipe it away. The leaves are not as vivid as I thought they’d be. The colors are muted, darker than I remember. I’d imagined a brilliant blue sky for the occasion, not this milky cloud cover. Something touches my other cheek—a snowflake?

There’s a sound in the distance, faint but familiar.

I listen.

It grows a bit louder.

Dogs. They’re on the trail of a deer, no doubt. Someone got an early start this morning. I expect the sound to fade momentarily, but it grows louder still. The blood’s pounding in my veins — do it, DO IT! — but I won’t have a bunch of well-meaning Good Samaritans finding me and trying to bring me back.

I’ll have to wait until they pass. I’ve waited this long; I can manage a few more minutes.

I don’t want to be seen. I make for the cabin; as I move through the woods, the baying grows closer.

I rest the gun against the wall on the cabin’s front stoop. It’s hard to tell, but I think the dogs are getting nearer; it sounds as if they are headed this way.

In fact, one of them is barreling out of the woods right now.

It’s a small, odd-looking dog. Wait … that’s not a dog; I cannot believe what I’m seeing ….

A bit of a blur, but I think it’s a fawn. At the completely wrong time of year for fawns. I’ve never heard of one being born this late—that’s the point of hunting season; mothers aren’t taking care of their young anymore. But it’s definitely a fawn, terrified, running for its life. It tries to cut away to the right but the dogs are closing in from all sides—I can’t see them yet, but they can’t be very far behind.

The fawn arcs back to the left and streaks straight for the cabin.

It’s going to be trapped.

Without thinking, I step forward. The creature comes skidding to a halt five feet in front of me, realizing that a man and a house are in its way and it can go no further.

It screams, the horrible cry of an animal that knows it’s at the end of the line. It looks at me, quivering violently, and I see the veins throbbing in its neck. A very young fawn; I can see its spots through the snow—snow!—now pouring down like a benediction.

None of this is supposed to be happening.

I have the power to make my own choices; this little deer can’t. It’s deer season, this fawn’s too young, the dogs are too close—it doesn’t have a chance.

It takes a faltering step toward me and I’m frozen, in awe, as the dogs come into the clearing with deafening bays, closing in on the prey.

A kinship and a fury suddenly flood me—who dares destroy this helpless anomaly?

But there’s no more time to think as the fawn crouches and springs, with the last burst of its strength, through the swirling whiteness and into the sanctuary of my open arms.

*************************************************************************************

Fran Haley is an educator with a lifelong passion for reading and writing. She loves symbolism and experimenting with different genres and voice. Her stories are typically born from a single image and fleshed out from there. Fran believes that the experiences of ordinary people make the most extraordinary stories; for example, the first house she remembers living in was a morgue. As for her current home, Fran’s husband and two sons keep it overflowing with laughter. She would like readers to know that her eastern North Carolina roots run deep and that there’s nothing in the world that compares to the taste of a scuppernong grape.

2011 Third-Place Winner: Soul Kisses by John T. Biggs

2011-08-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Soul Kisses

Reality starts like the migraines Jeorgia used to have before the accident. A little throb behind her left eye, a hint of nausea, visual distortions; one second Jeorgia’s gone, and the next she’s here. This time she’s sitting on a man’s lap. Someone she doesn’t remember, but a kiss will change all that. Jeorgia’s body never forgets even though her brain is broken.

Jack Winston.

Bits and pieces fit together, but not enough to understand what she’s doing on Jack Winston’s lap. She never really knew him. Never really liked him much, even though he’s tall and strong and kind of cute. She remembers speaking to him once, a two-word conversation at her senior prom.

“Okay Jack,” she told him, when he asked her to dance. But that dance never happened because someone better came along and drove Jeorgia away in his BMW 328i sedan.

Zachary Anderson, quarterback, homecoming king—may he rest in peace—took Jeorgia to a place with lots of trees and privacy, and promised to change her life forever. Which he did, right after she lost her virginity and a pair of garnet earrings in the back seat of his Beemer. The sex was over just when things were looking up.
She told Zack, “I don’t think we did it right.”

He said, “Maybe next time,” and gave her what he must have thought was a dramatic look—the kind James Dean used in East of Eden, just before he said: “Only the gentle are ever really strong.”

Or maybe that was Rebel Without a Cause. Or maybe something else, because those old black and white movies all run together in Jeorgia’s mind. So does all the time that passed since Zack crossed the centerline into a pair of headlights that were too far apart to belong to a car.

Zack said, “Shit,” right before the crash. Maybe that was his last word ever. Jeorgia can’t be sure, but “Shit,” is a better thing to say than, “Okay Jack,” which was mainly what Jeorgia had been saying ever since the accident.

She’d tried to say other things, but they all came out, “Okay Jack,” until recently. Now that she thought of it she’d been talking quite a bit lately, and even though she made no sense, anything was better than, “Okay Jack.”

“Shit!” Maybe swearing was a sign of things to come. Better things. Although from the look on Jack Winston’s face, it definitely killed the mood.

“Shit!” She said again, exactly the way Zachary had. A touch of surprise, a touch of fear, the touch of airbags swelling out of hidden compartments.

Jeorgia hops off Jack Winston’s lap and he doesn’t try to stop her because he’s so shocked to see her acting like a real live girl instead of an animated sex toy—a Stepford wife. Jeorgia saw that movie on the Sci-Fi Channel once, but never thought she’d be one.

Right after the accident she was a Stepford daughter, then her parents handed her off to Jack Winston, who knows a lot more about sex than Zachary did.

Jack knows how to move and how to talk and how to make sure Jeorgia finds her way to “orgasm land,” even in her mixed up state of mind. He’s really good at it because that’s all they have between them and because Jeorgia won’t judge him. Because Jeorgia’s brain won’t do judgments anymore.

Jack Winston is gentle, even if he isn’t really in love. A man can’t love a girl without a brain. Can he?

“Only the gentle are ever really strong.” There’s nothing left for her to say.
Jack looks nervous, the way he did in high school, so Jeorgia climbs onto his lap again and puts her lips onto his.

Her tongue finds Jack’s doubts, and steals them one by one, like a clever pickpocket. Kissing leads to other things, and Jack is just as good at other things as Jeorgia remembers. But she doesn’t remember very long. Fog settles in, and everything she says comes out, “Okay Jack,” no matter how hard she tries. It will stay that way until she has another headache.

***
Being out of it is like watching a giant flat screen TV while someone else has the remote control and insists on running through all seven hundred channels. The battery must be running down, because Jeorgia feels a familiar little pain behind her left eye, and the channels fly by slower and slower until she’s in a room where she’s been a few times before.

It’s a small concrete room without windows. There’s a metal table in the center, and the smell of men who don’t shower very often. One of those men is sitting at the metal table talking to Jack. He has crude tattoos all over his hands, and probably on his arms too, but those are covered by a blue jump suit that has Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections stenciled across the front. The man has chains around his wrists that attach to a metal loop on his side of the table.

“Sure is a pretty girl.” He’s talking about Jeorgia because she is the only girl in the room.

“How’d you get a girl like that, Jack?” The man drums his fingers on the metal table; the chain noise doesn’t bother him.

“Brain damaged,” Jack tells the man, as if Jeorgia isn’t there.

Because usually I’m not. So Jack doesn’t know how cruel it is to talk about her that way.

“She’ll be there when you kill me?” The man runs the tip of his tongue over his lips, tasting molecules of Jeorgia like a snake.

“Always bring her to the executions,” Jack says. He stands several feet away because the man looks too dangerous for his chains. “Got nowhere to leave her.”

“Pretty, pretty, pretty.” The man drums his fingers again.

“Never had me a girl as pretty as that,” he says. “Would have killed her if I did.”

Jeorgia turns away but she can still feel the chained man’s eyes—clear and cold, like little vials of refrigerated poison. She doesn’t mind when the cosmic channel surfer starts up again and takes her out of this little room.

Going.

Going.

Gone.

***

The little pain behind Jeorgia’s left eye moves back like the ocean at low tide and leaves her in another ugly room with fluorescent lights that won’t stop flashing. She stands behind a gray concrete wall with a one-way mirror at eye level that gives her a perfect view of the dead man on the gurney.

Three sides of the execution chamber are walls of Plexiglas. Jeorgia can see the witnesses in the double row of cinema style chairs watching the man be dead.
Jack pushes a button and black curtains slide into place. The show is over. Nothing left to see.

“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” Jack says to no one in particular.

He always says that. Every time he kills a man. Four times now. Jeorgia looks into his eyes to see if it bothers him.

No one home in there.

“Medical Examiner will take it from here,” Jack says. “Shouldn’t be too hard to determine cause of death. You think?”

He’s trying to be funny. Telling execution jokes to his brain-damaged wife. It doesn’t matter what he says, because Jeorgia’s sense of humor went down a neurosurgeon’s suction along with the piano lessons, and the names of all fifty states.

For the moment, she remembers everything in crisp detail, like a fresh ice sculpture. Her perfectly balanced state of mind won’t last long, but while it’s here she’s angry. Because Jack Winston made her kiss a condemned man goodbye, just before the curtains opened so the witnesses could watch him die.

The taste of the man’s last meal lingers on her tongue. A foot-long chilidog with sides of potato salad and onion rings. Robert David VanGorder ate his final meal in three minutes flat. Like a hungry dog. Like a man who couldn’t wait to kiss the prettiest girl he’d ever seen right before he died.

Why do they all eat chilidogs? There had been three of them before, and Jeorgia kissed them all.

“Soul kisses,” she tells Jack. “Their souls all taste like Wolf Brand Chili.”

Jack says nothing.

After every goodbye kiss, Jeorgia comes back to life a little more—a few new words, a bit more coordination. Memories of things that might have happened to her, or someone else, because when a mind returns from nowhere, nothing is for sure.

What had she given the condemned men? What had she taken from them in return? Was it a fair exchange? She puts her arms around Jack Winston and pulls him toward her. She puts her lips over his, and pushes her tongue into his mouth.

Cilantro and onion from the luncheon special at Adelitas Cafe—and something sweet and satisfying that Jeorgia can draw out with the slightest effort. But she lets it go, because Jack meant no harm when he brought her to his executions and let her kiss the men he was hired to kill.

Jack is sweet and gentle in his ignorance, and Jeorgia loves him just a little, the way she loves the headaches that bring her out of nowhere.

***

Jeorgia’s mother doesn’t come around much any more.

“Too hard,” Mom says. “Too painful. Too many memories.” She drags the back of her right hand across her forehead to show how broken up she is about having a brain-damaged daughter married to an executioner.“How are you sweetheart? How is my little girl?”

Mom brings nutritional supplements and best wishes from her prayer group that is keeping God abreast of all the Jeorgia news. She talks about Jeorgia’s high school friends, who wonder how she’s doing, and her old male admirers, who are all a lot more successful than Jack. She talks about her husband the judge, and being president of the Junior League, and the famous relatives she’s found on the Internet since her last visit.

Jeorgia looks her mother in the eyes until Mom stops talking.

The quiet helps Jeorgia cope with the world, which is spinning too fast to sort her thoughts. Her heart rate increases slightly as interesting new mother-thoughts take shape inside her patchwork mind. Her salivary glands go on high alert, like they used to do when she opened a box of See’s Chocolates.

Not quite hunger, but close.

Jeorgia doesn’t know exactly what comes next, but she can hardly wait.

“Louise.” She’s never said her mother’s name before, not in Mom’s presence. The word hangs in the room like a bad odor.

“Louise.” Jeorgia smiles, like a child who’s uttered an obscenity.

“Call me Mom, sweetheart.”

Jeorgia says, “Louise,” again—the goofy sounding name that belongs to the president of the Junior League, the wife of a prominent seventh district judge, the mother of a daughter who used to be something special but now is special needs.

“Sometimes she gets like this,” Jack tells his mother-in-law. “I think it’s a sign she’s coming back.”

Coming back from where? Jeorgia doesn’t know, because a girl who comes back from where she’s been doesn’t bring memories. When she’s there, she can’t remember here. When she’s here, she can’t remember there.

Jeorgia adjusts the angelic expression she’s practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. Some angels are good and some are not so good, but they all have the same face.

“You’re very pretty,” she tells her mother, without adding, “for a woman your age,” as people sometimes do.

Mom smiles at the compliment, but keeps it insincere, in case her brain-damaged daughter has remembered how to make cruel jokes.

Jeorgia brushes a hand through her mother’s hair, artificially colored blond to match her senior high school picture. The same style too, stiff with spray, shaped by a stylist from Dallas who charges five hundred dollars for the effort. He’s muscled Mom’s hair into a shape that’s shiny and stiff and completely out of place, like the chrome bulldog on the hood of a Mac truck.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” Jeorgia tells Mom as she leads her to the sofa in front of the entertainment center. Louise hasn’t been called pretty for a while, so she sits besides her daughter and listens while Jeorgia tells her: “Never had me a girl as pretty as that.”

Jack starts to say something to Jeorgia’s mom. Tell her where Jeorgia heard those words. Tell her to get up and walk away. But he can’t think how to put it without sounding crazy.

Jeorgia places her lips over Mom’s and doesn’t stop when Mom tries to pull back. And she tries to pull back pretty hard, because kissing Jeorgia like this is way too weird for the president of the Junior League. But what is a mother to do when her addled daughter tries to kiss her on the lips and includes tongue in the bargain?

Jeorgia has a memory that might have once belonged to a serial murderer, who liked his girlfriends dead.

When you’re making women do what they don’t want:

Keep them guessing . . .

About your plans . . .

Until it’s much too late . . .

Mother Louise’s soul doesn’t taste like chilidogs, but Jeorgia finds other flavors:
From Mom’s college years—the eighteen-year-old scotch and the twenty-year-old boy, and the abortion no one knows about.

The pool man last week who was Hispanic and illegal. Here today and gone tomorrow, so it wasn’t really cheating.

Mom’s secrets taste like Citrus Altoids—sour and curiously strong.

There aren’t many left when Jeorgia pulls away.

Jack shakes his mother-in-law’s arm gently and asks, “Are you all right?”

When mother Louise doesn’t answer, Jack asks Jeorgia: “Is she all right.”

“She’ll come out of it in a little while.” Jeorgia savors her newly acquired Junior League vocabulary. She kisses Jack on the cheek; pleased to see he doesn’t pull away.

“I saved plenty of room for desert.”

"Soul Kisses" will be published in the autumn edition of Storyteller Magazine. We thank Regina Williams for her kind permission to publish Mr. Biggs' winning story.

2011 WINNERS AND HONORABLE MENTIONS

2011-08-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition 2011 Winners and Honorable Mentions

1,289 Entries

FIRST PLACE: $1,500 and publication in Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts
Darci Bysouth
Edinburgh, Scotland
“Hold”

SECOND PLACE: $500
Jennifer R. Adams
Birchrunville, PA
“Girl on a Balcony”

THIRD PLACE: $500
John T. Biggs
Okalahoma City, OK
“Soul Kisses”

HONORABLE MENTIONS (in no particular order):

1) Megan Doyle Corcoran
Wellington, New Zealand
“Only the Scars Are Right”

2) Fran Haley
Zebulon, N.C.
“Anomaly”

3) Karen Turner
Mornington, Australia
“Crazy Cat Lady”

4) Vicki Riley
St. Cloud, FL
“De Nada”

5) Elaine Murphy
Vancouver, B.C.
“November 25th”

6) Douglas Bruton
Scotland
“Godforsaken Stone Gilbert”

7) Kari Baumbach
Edina, MN
“Lepidoptery”

8) Tom Deegan
Tipperary, Ireland
“Magpies”

9) Leah Kaminsky
Austin, TX
“And How the Algae Twines”

10) Megan Ainsworth
Florence, MS
“Lucky’s”

11) Mahalia Solanges
Lauderhill, FL
“Vague in Conversation”

12) Matthew Merkl, M.D.
Holmdel, N.J.
“CLAY”

13) Kay Cruse
Menomonie, WI
“The Bunker”

14) Waimea Williams
Kaneohe, Hawaii
“What You Find and What You Keep”

15) Jeffrey L. Schneider
Ellenville, N.Y.
“A Pair of Soup”

16) Todd Flynn
Ainsworth, Nebraska
“The Roofer Marking Time”

17) Paul Michel
Seattle, WA
“Big Night”

18) Olesya O. Maximenko
Moscow, Russia
“Purple”

19) Ames John Gigounas
Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Water”

20) Hal Ackerman
Los Angeles, CA
“Leash”

21) Alex Carrick
Toronto Ontario, Canada
“Caboose Follies”

22) Ladee Hubbard
New Orleans, Louisiana
“There He Go”

23) Dana Fitz Gale
Missoula, MT
“Schooling”

24) Athena Abrams
Boulder, CO
“The Thirteen-Lined Ground Squirrel”

25) Ayodi Chrispinus Handa
Goodnews Mission, Nairobi, Kenya
“The Blind Love”

26) Kate Zahnleiter
Queensland, Australia
“Lullaby for the Living”

27) Abdul Adan
St. Louis, MO
“SAMAN”

28)Eileen Sutton
New York, N.Y.
“Dear Mr. Doctorow”

29) Dwaine Rieves
Washington, D.C.
“The Eager Eagle”

30) Sarah Bowman
Port Townsend, WA
“The Lords of Life”

31) Lesley Truffle
Victoria, Australia
“The Secret Game”

32) Steve Fayer
Boston, MA
“The Diver’s Game”

33) Margaret Lawrence
Culpepper, VA
“But Not to the Swift”

34) Douglas Bruton
Scotland
“The Bed Lucy Made, and She Lies in It”

35) Rachel S. Thomas-Medwid
Georgetown, MA
“Snip It”

36) David E. Lee
Jacksonville, FL
“Dreams Come True”

37) Vickie Weaver
Haverstown, IN
“The Shootist”

38) Benjamin Doty
St. Paul, MN
"Trains"

39) Kyria Amtsfeld
Berlin, Germany
"Ra's ahl gul"

40) Jordan E. Rosenfeld
Morgan Hill, CA
"Final Billing"

41) David Holloway
St. Louis, MO
"A Head in My Garden"

42) Adam Stanley
Rome, GA
“Eucharist”

43) Laura Borden
Merseyside, UK
“Ðogwood”

44) John-Paul Cirelli
New Port Richey, FL
"Pasteboard Masks"

45) Helen Sedwick
Santa Rosa, CA
"Bourbon and Pipesmoke"

1

SOUP: by Natalia Sarkissian: 2010 Honorable Mention

2011-02-17T22:14:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Croftway stood at the sink, peeling potatoes for supper; Vichyssoise was the verdict. But without cream. No chicken stock. No leeks either. Just pepper and the half cube of bouillon left over from yesterday. Mel always fussed over the lack of ingredients, craving comfort. But that was the problem, wasn't it? That's how they had ended up here, in this crummy trailer park. She, peeling, boiling, mashing, liquefying; devising undeserved rewards for his crooked handiwork. Mel thinking up new names for the thin white liquid that resulted and cooking up illicit get-rich-quick schemes that flopped.

The wind blew garbage around. Wild dogs had been out last night and had ripped through black plastic garbage sacks. Sand hissed and she imagined it flying through the cracks in the double-wide where the silicon had dried and shrunk and no longer kept the outside completely out. Little mounds of sand would be piled on the linoleum when the wind stopped.

She would sweep it. Tidy, she was. She wished she could sweep up the shards of broken dreams. Pick'em up. Glue'em together. Start over again.
Mrs. Croftway sighed and pushed a faded lock of brown hair out of her eyes. The curl stuck to her forehead. The air conditioning had died. No money to fix it. The lights sputtered dimly—low wattage bulbs—and she had trouble seeing. No money to pay for electricity or repairs either.

She laughed—a mirthless sound.

Mel was up the road seeing about a job that involved driving a truck-load of hot cars over the border. Luxury cars for South America.
“No risk,” said Mel in the phone to someone the other night, “this new technique makes it easy to substitute registration numbers with ones that are impossible to trace.”

Mrs. Croftway, eavesdropping, wasn't sure. With Mel everything tanked. This illegal car deal would fizzle, backfire, blow up, like everything else. But, what if it didn't?

Well, she'd have to make sure.

She’d loved him but he used love up.

Some years earlier, a muscular man with blond hair and green eyes walked into the diner in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where she waited on customers at the counter. She noticed him, right when he came in. His white shirt stretched so tight across his strapping chest she couldn’t help but wonder why the buttons up the front stayed buttoned.

When he chose an emptied stool in her station, her ears turned red. He studied the menu she gave him, then a short while later, wagged a stubby finger with a too short fingernail.

“The special,” he said.

“Yessir,” she said. “Rare or medium?”

“Honey, I like my meat tender.” His lips opened and a set of perfect teeth—a set she wouldn’t mind having herself—grinned up at her. “Nothing stringy, nothing chewy, nothing tough. No ma'am,” he said.

“Rare, then,” said Mrs. Croftway, scribbling, setting her lips down so he couldn’t see how her incisors stuck out in front.

“You're blushing,” he noted.

“Am not,” she said, shaking her head, fanning her ears. “It's the weather.”

“Sure, doll. By the way, Mel Burrow’s the name.” He reached, took her hand, managed to rub a surprisingly soft thumb over it before she jerked free.

Drinking cups of coffee, ordering extra dessert, he lingered. Then at ten, when she pulled a gray sweater over her avocado uniform, grabbed her purse, and left, he followed a hundred feet back, whistling. Down Main, past Roosevelt, by the park and then left on Hoover. She walked at a brisk pace. She knew she ought to take a detour, go to the drugstore on Lincoln and call a cab so he wouldn't see where she lived. Instead, she kept on, opened the gate at 236 Hoover, walked up the sidewalk and, under the safety of the porch light, watched him stroll by.

“Night,” he smiled, tipping his crew cut as he passed.“Hope I didn’t scare you. Just wanted to see you home, safe.”

But safe she wasn't. When she got the door unlocked Richard stood on the other side.

“Who the hell was that?” he asked, grabbing her hair and yanking her in.

“Stop it,” she cried, her arms flailing, “you're hurting me.”

He twisted her arm and breathed all beery on the back of her neck.“Who was that?”

“No one!” she cried. She rubbed her wrist when he released her.

Upstairs, while water filled the stained tub, she studied herself in the misting mirror. Only twenty eight yet her long black hair was graying and violet smudges circled her eyes.

The next night, when she showed up for her shift, Mrs. Croftway found Mel already there, reading the menu at the same spot along the counter.

“I'll have the special but with some juicy tomatoes.” He grinned, slapping the red menu on the speckled formica in front.

“Don’t think we got any of those,” she said, swallowing.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said when she brought cutlery and a napkin. “Waiting on dirty old men.” He waved at the singles strung along the counter.

On her way home, she heard him behind her again. But this time, when she turned left onto Hoover, she ran. Down the street, through the gate, up the steps. Lungs heaving, she found Richard snoring on the sofa. Up in the bathroom she chewed on her fingernails while hot water ran into the tub.

“I'm going places,” Mel promised two nights later. “I want you with me.”

“You're crazy,” she shook her head. “You don't know me. And I’m married.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding at her name tag, “Mrs. L. Croftway. But you're not happy hon, are you?”

She flittered about, serving coffee and cutting pie. This cocky stranger with the good smile tempted her. Things in her seven-year marriage to Richard had crumbled beyond a simple fix. She’d stuck by because she’d thought she could cure his drinking. Habit entered into her commitment. Guilt too. And she thought a hunk of love was left. Richard had saved her when self-doubt brought her close to doing something stupid. He’d happened across her car in the woods—the motor running—rapped on her window, rousing her, and insisted on taking her to the emergency room. After, he’d stuck around and a year later, married her, buck teeth, gangly arms, broad shoulders and all. But that had been years ago.

When she got home after her shift, Richard hit her.

“I saw you,” he slurred, standing over her where she lay stunned on the living room rug. “I came for some of that beef soup I like. What did I see through the window? My wife shaking her ass at a stranger.”

Habit. Guilt. Love. It all flew out the window with the molar he dislodged. She ran out and found Mel loitering; Mel grabbed her and they left.

They flew to Houston and moved into a small apartment. Mel started bringing in the cash and Mrs. Croftway had her molar replaced. She bought some clothes. Nice shoes. A red leather purse. Soon they moved to a bigger apartment and Mel got her a gold-plated Seiko followed by a fancy ring with a real zircon. He wanted to get married then, but she’d never got around to divorcing Richard. Once burned, twice shy, she figured, when she thought about it.

After two years, Mel got busted over a real estate swindle near Galveston. Mrs. Croftway was shocked. Imagine thinking Mel's business legitimate. She set her lips back down over her teeth. She might now wear better clothes and fancier jewelry, but she was still the same dumb, gangly, big-shouldered, buck-toothed girl she’d ever been.

Mel did several years while she found a kitchen job at Pine Creek Country club, scrubbing carrots, peeling potatoes, chopping onions. He loved that she worked at the club and told her so when she visited him in jail.

“Sling that hash, but keep your eyes open. Get addresses. Make contacts. Watch'em. See who's sleeping and fucking around. Who they're doing it with. Get a camera. Take pictures. Opportunity will strike. Information,” he grinned, “can make folks rich. This is the Information Age. So, baby, let’s cash in.”

“You crazy? Isn't this being recorded?”

Mel looked up at the camera and winked. “Kidding,” he said, leaning into the mike.
Mrs. Croftway frowned and nibbled a cuticle. She wasn’t cashing in. She liked reading cookbooks, pouring over fancy food magazines and then improvising, her heaven-sent gift, as it turned out.

At first, the assistant chefs laughed at the tall, awkward, thirty-two-year old novice with the too-short sleeves, Louisiana twang and serious demeanor. She never talked, never smiled, always kept her mouth shut. But when she whipped up a creamy Béarnaise sauce without a recipe and a buoyant artichoke-scampi soufflé of her own devising, both within her first month, they stopped heckling. Promoted Assistant to an Under Chef in record time, she perfected her knowledge of the arts of vegetables. Soon after, she moved up another notch and crafted soup, then mastered fish and finally moved on to pastry.

How she loved that white kitchen in the oasis of primordial green in humid Houston! Why, she could escape to mysterious India at lunch on the pungent wings of dal and curry and lentils, and then at dinner, turn around and swim to sunny Sicily, the island’s exuberance captured with a medley of silver anchovies, glossy eggplant, salty capers and homemade pasta. She could pare pumpkin and flay ginger, sauté them, purée them with a dollop of cream, garnish with a fried scallop, creating a soup that reminded her she could travel through old American terrain—pumpkin and ginger—but always fashion something new. Likewise, she could knead golden butter with powdery flour, spin gossamer sheets of dough, wrap each around single ripe peaches sprinkled with pine nuts and amaretto cookie crumbs, and thus venture beyond the confines of traditional pie to create marvelous new forms and heavenly new tastes. She took to humming as she worked, happy at the pleasure she dished and served up, happy at the smiles of content, happy at these simple yet ample rewards for her honest labor.

Glowing, she started to dread visits to the man who would ruin her education. She visited less and cooked more. Gradually, the idea of opening a restaurant took root. She scrimped, bought a used Chevrolet, a third-hand trailer and braces for her teeth. She saved the rest of her money, stashing it between the bedroom wall and insulation of the trailer and later, under the back seat of the car, making a mental note to take time to open a bank account in her own name.

Mel, when he saw her at the visitor’s table, blanched pure white. It was his birthday and some vestigial sense of duty charged her with making the trip to jail. She went reluctantly after a four-month absence, a cookbook about soups from all nations a gift under her arm.

“How long you got them wires on your teeth for? Make sure they’re gone when I get out,” he said after a while.

With a hello like that, she should have known he was in a fine ornery fix. But she told him about her dreams anyway. And Mel hated the idea of the restaurant business.
“Sugar, don't want to struggle to get by,” he drawled into the intercom. “We'll be rich soon, doll, soon's I get out. Then someone else'll be making the grub and getting greasy. Not my baby.” He pushed the cookbook around in front of him. “Why'd you bring me a cookbook about soup?”

“I don't get greasy,” she replied, picking at her white cotton sleeves, wishing they hid her knobby wrists, “and it's not just grub.” She tried to tell him with the book—about making something good from next to nothing, about hard work and just rewards—but he wouldn't understand.

Sometime later, Mel got out. Stupid, but she let him move in. When she thought about it, she decided it must have been the force of habit and guilt, like before, with Richard. She didn't love him anymore. At least not in that trusting way like back when she thought he was going to solve her problems. While he was locked up she’d started learning she could fix things herself.

A series of ridiculous schemes, each more risky than the one previous, ended Mel back in jail, convicted of larceny. Outwardly, in the courtroom, Mrs. Croftway shook her head and mourned the lengthy sentence but inside, she was relieved. When she heard that a restaurant near the corner of 6th and Congress in Austin needed a chef, she sent an application. She was hired right away; a Pine Creek patron recommended her.

Although she hated leaving Houston, she loved putting serious geography between her and Mel. Soon the Austin restaurant was doing big business. A food editor visited and Mrs. Croftway's picture appeared in The Statesman with the caption, “Up and Coming Chef Wows Politicos.”

She hadn't told Mel where she'd gone, but afterwards a letter arrived.

“I'm proud of you,” he wrote. “You did good. They write you got talent. Wow! I got to hand it to you, you’re smarter than me. I miss you. Come see me? Love, Mel. PS: Your picture was beautiful. You got some smile there, doll.”

It was surprising, but as she read his letter, a pain in her ribs choked the air right out of her. She figured it was loneliness, all the long hours with no time and no inclination to build a social life. Her father told her she’d never get a good man unless she was soft and alluring and how could someone with her body ever be soft and alluring?

Putting the letter on her bureau, she meditated. Prison had changed Mel for the better. He'd admitted she was right. He said she’d got talent. He’d called her beautiful. Yes, she thought, inhaling. She missed him too.

A week or two later, she took a day off and drove to Houston. She hadn't seen him in months and months and was unprepared. Muscle had expanded to a coat of fat, the thatch of gold had receded to two pale patches surrounded by shiny baldness, he'd lost half an incisor. His eyes sparkled though; he was glad to see her.

“Well, aren't you pretty,” he said.

She blushed.

“Ain't you sweet?” His eyes danced like they had the first night she’d met him all those years before. “You look like that little girl from Lake Charles when you blush.”

When he said that her big body melted and somehow she almost felt dainty again. It had been some time since she’d let herself feel dainty.

Over the next few years, she made frequent trips, sometimes bringing him marshmallow bars or brownies although once she got special permission to bring him a thermos of lobster vichyssoise, a recipe she’d devised for a state senator.

“You cooking for senators?” asked Mel, opening and sniffing the steam that curled out. He took a sip. “This stuff’s got sherry innit, don’t it? Been a long time since I had any sherry.”

As he went on, smirking and slurping, mumbling about sherry and senators and her living the good life, she realized she’d made a mistake. With Mel, you stuck to basics. Now there was something magnifying the greedy folds on either side of his mouth, turning his face sour.

Like before, when he got released, Mel moved in; for the first time in decades she went to Mass and lit a candle, asking for things to work out.
Two days later she had no job.

She was certain he was the one who'd made that anonymous call. The one that turned her boss squeamish. The call where her ties to the criminal world —to Mel— were exposed.

The caller claimed she eavesdropped and passed on information.

“It's not true,” she told her boss, “I just want to cook.”

“I've got important clientele,” the boss said. “They'd stop coming in a second if they knew about your boyfriend. We'll pay you two month's salary. By the way, yesterday was your last day.”

Mel denied it, naturally.

“Gee, doll,” he murmured, “I’m broken up. Who would do such a thing? I done my time, no sense making you do some too.” He smiled. His half tooth glinted.
She could see that the thief hadn’t stopped stealing.

No help for it. No moaning and whining. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Even though she gave herself these little pep talks, she couldn’t seem to get out of bed in the morning. So when he suggested El Paso, she said yes. They parked the trailer north of town and she got a job at a lackluster diner where she figured she wouldn't outshine him.

“Until you get back on your feet,” she wheedled, hoping Mel wouldn't ruin this for her too. She whispered a little prayer. “God, please help me,” she said.
The diner did brisk business once she started.

She couldn't help concocting dishes with wondrous names to treat the tired truckers on the route. Soon they came flocking. Word of mouth, buzz, chatter, and the ladies came too. She worried she was playing with fire, still she couldn't stop pouring her heart into food. She hoped that luck—not something about which she knew much—would help. She prayed word wouldn't reach Mel. “God, please?” she said.

“Tagliatelle, boys, Tallya-tell-ay! Homemade-pasta-with-sautéed-mushrooms-and-venison, from Italy,” she sang one night, carrying platters to three enthusiastic truckers heading to Mexico. “Weiner Schnitzel and Canederli from majestic Bavaria, ladies,” she cried one lunch to plump, happy members of Mossyknoll Baptist, “are fancy names for chicken-fried-steak and cinnamon dumplings.”
And then a masterpiece, her chocolate-almond Charlotte.

“French-food-meets-American-genius,” she laughed, giddy, when serving the steamy chocolate mound to the owner. She hovered, an anxious butterfly, watching him chew and swallow, deriving immense pleasure from his small smiles and quiet moans.
Mel walked in while she fluttered around the boss. Shoulders tight, head low, Mel slurped at the spicy shrimp bisque she handed him but didn’t empty his bowl. Throwing a twenty on the counter, he left. Mrs. Croftway watched him through the circular window in the kitchen door, her bony hands bunching the plaid apron around her neck.

When she got off, he was waiting in the parking lot inside the Chevy. A stack of cash sat beside him. He'd found it; the back seat was propped open.

“Louise,” he reprimanded in a scary voice.

“I was saving it for us,” she lied, crying.

“Where's the rest?”

“Rest?”

“You don’t expect me to believe this measly-assed chunk of change is all there is, do you? I'll find the rest if I have to tear car and trailer apart. So you'd best tell me. And tomorrow. No more cooking for other men. You hear me, Louise Ann Croftway?”

When they got home she showed him where the second bag of money was, hidden in the wall below wiring and insulation. The next day she quit the diner. Looking up at the cloudy sky, she asked, “Why? Why couldn’t I just say no?”

Months went by. Her restaurant money was spent. She peeled potatoes for soup. He christened it with names from the soup cookbook, making small amends for broken dreams.

Like tonight. Vichyssoise. But with no leeks, nor cream, nor chicken stock.
The wind howled, the garbage blew. A gaunt face with long stringy hair stared up from the depths of the pot while she stirred it. You got a gift, its eyes said. Your life’s your own.

A dog barked and Mrs. Croftway jumped.

“Damn!” she cried. “You’re right! Louise Ann Croftway gets off for good behavior,” she banged her fist on the table. “This Vichyssoise sentence is hereby commuted!” Her voice echoed inside her tin box home.

She knew what to do. Reporting him, she’d be free.

She untied her apron and drove into town to find an unvandalized phone booth. Sitting in the Chevy, waiting for a man ahead of her to finish talking, she planned her call to 911 to report stolen cars carted off to Mexico by a fat bald man. Chuckling, she envisioned Mel's face when he opened the note (no return address) she would send him after he was locked up:

Sugar, I am broken up. Someone nasty fingered you. Who would do that to such a sweetie? Enjoy the soup you get in prison. And know that out here I'm loving mine. Mine has real cream in it. Because I still got some of the cash I worked hard for to pay for the pleasure.

“Lady?” A gaunt man with stringy hair had hung up the phone, stepped out of the booth and knocked on her window. “You’re free to go,” he said, nodding at the dirty glass cubicle.

Mrs. Croftway jumped again. The face she’d seen in her soup, now leaning at her window. Bunching her coat in her hands, she watched him limp off.

Yes, she decided after the night swallowed him. Free to go. She was free. Always had been. She’d just lacked the nerve.

Stretching her arms in front of her, she studied the wrists and hands that protruded. Large and bumpy, yes. But Strong. Capable. No longer awkward. Hadn’t been awkward for years. So why the hell had it taken her years to find out?

Shifting the Chevy into reverse, she felt light.

Someone Else would take care of Mel. She knew that now. She had a gift; no sense spoiling it with revenge.

Turning around, she considered. She didn’t need anything at the trailer. Not her cookbooks, nor her fancy food magazines, not even her favorite whisk with which she’d whipped life and air into even the thinnest of soups. No. What she needed she already had in her head and her arms and her hands.

Merging onto the highway, then passing a slow-moving truck, she laughed. Sewed into the lining in her purse: the key to the safety deposit box in Austin where she’d deposited a bunch of the money she’d made as a high-flying chef. The previous two stashes—the ones that had satisfied Mel—decoys. She’d been stupid and slow—about Richard, about Mel, about what she thought was love, even about her own body and self—but with food and money? In those two departments no one could call her dumb.
Stepping on the gas, Mrs. Croftway headed southeast toward far-off lights, still laughing, her pretty new teeth shining in the moonlight, her broad hands with their prominent knuckles and wrists firmly planted on the steering wheel.

Natalia (Natasha) Sarkissian was born in Michigan and grew up in California, West Virginia, Portugal, and New York. She holds a BA and MA in art history, an MBA in international finance and an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has worked as a curatorial assistant, a management consultant, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, and always, as a writer. She received Honorable Mentions in both the 2009 and 2010 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competitions and won The Huffington Post Election Day Story Contest (2008). Several essays appear in Numero Cinq, an online literary magazine where she has been named a Contributing Editor. Her articles and essays on art and finance have been published in the US and Italy by the University of Texas Press and IPSOA publishers. She reads for Hunger Mountain, the Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal of the Arts. Currently finishing her novel (A Visitor’s Guide to Titti’s Men) and working on a book of interlinked short stories (Riviera Red), she divides her time between Italy—where she lives with her husband and two teenage sons—and the United States

This is an expanded version of Natalia Sarkissian's 2010 Honorable Mention, SOUP

"Namesake" by Amy Hillgren Peterson: 2010 Honorable Mention

2010-12-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

Gemma Galgani moved.

Sunset made the peace yellow walls blush pink with what seemed to be anticipation. They were beginning domestic relations with the four Galgani-Pierces. Mason threw cans of Schlitz to Ned, Kelly, Bruce, and Will. He'd seduced them with promises of beer and ribs in exchange for their bodies' exertion.

The point, Gemma concluded as she hammered brads into the drywall, was that she could move a dozen neighborhoods away from 7720 Knollwood Lane, but the tender beauty of her lost loved ones' eyes would follow her as long as she framed them in, slipped them under glass, and lived with them. She also realized, sick of smelling her own sweat, that the blessing would follow her, too.

"Mom," Henry breathed. "Mom, who's that?”

He picked up Aurelia in his brown-red hands, and the sweaty slickness of them couldn't hold the frame, and with a lunge and slide, Gemma rescued her mother in time.

"Henry, you know who this is. It's your grandmother."

"She doesn't look like a grandmother."

"She was young."

"Was she being your mother then?"

"She never stopped."

"Even though she died?"

"That's right."

"She'll always be with us?"

"Henry, you know this."

"It's hard having only one live grandmother."

"We survive."

"I'm going back outside."

Aurelia, forever thirty-six, said nothing. She insisted, her smile capturing the photographer's imagination, that life, however troubled, and death, had a joyful marriage and an unforgettable new beginning. She already looked content on the west wall. Gemma knew she'd be looking for Genevieve to the east.

Genevieve would wait. Charles insisted on the space above the buffet on the northeast. In gray scale his hair and eyes created caverns of black on the photograph. He didn't wear tribal costume in the candid shot, but grinned with irony in front of a local museum display of an immaculate, bleach-white tepee and wax figures of relaxed, unblemished Santee who could never have hunted anything, not even the bison standing still through the magic of taxidermy.

Life is dirty, Charles told Gemma and Genevieve inside the tepee. "If you haven't been covered in it by the end, you've wasted the gift, and it disappears into the wind, hoping your descendants will have more honor."

Gemma's memory soared through a wind tunnel, careening past the tepee to Genevieve's hand reaching for hers, the two of them on the front seat of the Malibu, of Charles driving into the sangria sunset, in laughter never seeing the edge of asphalt and the oak standing in a carpet of Jerusalem artichokes.

Instantly, Charles was gone.

Genevieve persevered for four months. "I'm ready," she said, and before Gemma could object, she closed her eyes, one blue and one brown, slowly, and whispered, "Forever."

Then,as Gemma cried, "No!", Genevieve told her, "Stars."

The night five years after Genevieve's funeral, Gemma woke with a gasping scream and saw the night sky's stars through her hand. Not through the spaces between her fingers, but through a window that didn't belong. Then a drip landed on her chest. Clammy.

Scream.

"What is it?" Mason clapped on the lamp.

"My hand," Gemma whispered.

"What did you do?" Mason asked, “What did you do?” He repeated three times with a burgeoning anxiety.

"Nothing. I didn't do anything." Blood made a splashing pattern on the white sheet. "It just happened."

"It's like...that thing. The blood. Of Christ. The cross."

"Stigmata." Gemma was calmer.

"But we're Lutheran."

"I don't know why it would happen to me."

Mason picked up his i-Pad and typed furiously. Back in his element, he applied logic like gauze to the bewildering wound.

Three-ten a.m. The single conclusion: it's apparently a blessing to be a victim soul. And the wound would probably go away. Something about the Pope.

Sleep.

Gemma stood inside the newest house. She sought to light it before everyone started bumping into each other, and the dog.

She found a switch for the dining room that provided enough light to set Genevieve on the east. Aurelia was radiant, beaming at her daughter with sparkling, heavily made up eyes, pouty lips and impossibly youthful skin.

The commute from the new house was forty minutes longer, even on a clear day. The hospital pharmacy rushed.

"Glad you're here," Dylan, the lanky pharm tech greeted her. "We were about to go under."

Jane, the head pharmacist, silently loaded an I.V. drip.

"Where can I jump in?" Gemma asked.

Jane handed her a pile of paper prescriptions. "You can enter these."

The white slips of paper soaked crimson and Gemma sank to the floor.

"Gemma!" Dylan yelled. "What happened?"

"What is that? Paper cut gone wild?" Jane was gifted at turning Gemma's work issues into a joke.

"It's stigmata." Gemma panted as she held her wounded hand against her chest where blood gurgled over her black sweater and grey lab coat.

The phone shrieked. Dylan beat on the computer that had locked up and Jane frantically wiped at the saturated prescription slips. Dylan buzzed in Dr. Kotor, who rushed to Gemma's side. The pain retreated, blood slowed, and before Dr. Kotor's astonished eyes, the wound disappeared.

"What was that?" Dylan asked.

"I read about this during my sub-i," Dr. Kotor said.

"You're a dermatologist," Jane pointed out.

"This is a break in the skin, is it not? Dr. Kotor said.

"Yeah!" Dylan said. "What causes it?"

"There are some things," Dr. Kotor replied, "and as a scientist, I used to reject this, but there are some things that science and reason fail to explain."

"Epic fail," Dylan said.

Gemma's head spun, separate pinwheels dizzying each quadrant of her brain.

"I'll drive you home," Dr. Kotor said.

"I live out in Hamish now."

"You moved again?" Dylan looked astonished.

Jane was silent.

Gemma woke up in her bed. Dr. Kotor must have carried her there because the last thing she remembered from the front seat of the apple green Prius was Dr. Kotor saying, "Some things are too mighty for science and reason. You can keep your mind clear and still open your imagination to wonder."

Mason came home, saw Gemma, and left her in bed. He made spaghetti and meatballs for the boys. He brought her a plate. She picked at it, looking vacantly out the window. "Now everyone knows," she said to Mason.

The phone rang.

There was a knock at the door.

Gemma's i-Phone chimed in with a text.

Henry answered the phone downstairs.

Gemma opened her text. It was from Dylan.

"Channel 7. Now!" It said.

Gemma grabbed the remote and switched on the TV. She heard Mason saying, "No, no. We don't want any interviews," just as she saw her own face in her hospital staff picture on the screen.

"A pharmacist at the hospital, Galgani experienced what officials are calling a stigmata at work this afternoon."

Henry climbed up on the bed. "What's a stigmata?"

"It's..." Gemma had no words.

"Does it hurt?" Henry asked.

"Sometimes."

"Why do you have it?"

"I don't know."

"Are you a freak?"

"No."

"Then why is it on TV?"

"I guess," Gemma sighed. "I guess people are curious because it's different. It doesn't happen every day."

"Can a doctor fix it?"

"I don't think so."

"Can I be on TV?"

"Probably not."

Mason came in. "You go to bed," he said to Henry.

"I won't be able to sleep. There's reporters all over."

"They're going away."

"Is this why we move all the time?" Henry asked.

"It's part of it," Gemma admitted.

"That's stupid."

"Why?" Gemma asked.

"Because you can't run away from yourself." Henry leaped off the bed, nearly knocking Gemma and Mason's wedding picture off the wall. He scrambled out the door, across the hall, and slammed the door to his room, closing it behind the wise dreams he was about to dream.

"Do I need to call the real estate office in the morning?" Mason asked.

"No. We're staying."

Amy Hillgren Peterson is a writer in the Lakes area of Iowa. In addition to short fiction, she writes theatrical plays and essays. To make a living she writes PR documents, grant proposals and collaborates on memoirs and other books. She's been married to Ed for 18 years and is the mother of two sons and a daughter. Her websites: http://themoreyoushowme.com/ and http://amyhillgrenpeterson.webs.com/

"Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces" by Kimila Bowling: 2010 Honorable Mention

2010-10-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

Fate penciled me in that afternoon. I merely showed up, and the ability to differentiate reality from fantasy revealed itself. At seven I didn’t understand this developmental leap, nor was I conscious a cognitive enlightenment had occurred. I simply knew special wasn’t special anymore.

My final day of blessed ignorance to the actualities of life began in our nook and cranny kitchen on the east side of Scobey, Mississippi. I sat at the dinette in the nook eating a peanut butter-plastered pancake. I’d yet to dress for the day.

A bad case of the “Arthur” had Granny Tulley stoved-up. She’d called earlier in the morning to relay this information and report cheese and crackers had sustained her for the past two days. Although everyone knew a woman of Granny’s proportion could never be satisfied with meager morsels of Ritz and cheddar, Momma succumbed to the woman who described childbirth as a near-death experience and went to her mother’s aid; thus, keeping a daughter’s conscious clear.

Dad entered the cranny portion of the kitchen scuffing his bare feet across the linoleum.

“We’re on our own, kid.”

He scratched the back of his head and shuffled a tight one-eighty to keep his rhythm.

“Get dressed. I need to go to Jax’s.”

On his way out, he slid the newspaper off the counter and poked it under one arm.
I abandoned my breakfast and high-kneed a skip to my room.

By the time we pulled in front of Jax’s, which by the way took up space in downtown Scobey, the sun could see its reflection on the side of the water tower, and it looked as if we had arrived too late. For what, I didn’t know. But the line at the movie house stretched half a block, and the Assembly’s bake sale had dwindled to a few pies.

When Dad’s soles hit the graveled and tarred surface, he squinted and butted the side of his hand along the top of his eyebrows. He let his eyes bounce along the sidewalks where they eventually settled on Laura Jean Dell.

“How’d you like to see a movie?” he asked, dragging me to the freckled-faced teen.

He handed me two dollars after promising Laura Jean five if she’d see me to The Fontaine Theater. She agreed, liberating Dad and sentencing me to a double matinee featuring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Three hours passed before I saw daylight again.

Upon leaving The Fontaine, Laura Jean took me aside then bent over until our eyes met.

“Go get your Dad. He promised me five dollars.”

I could smell the teenage girl’s cinnamon clove gum as I watched her jaw slid to one side every time she squashed it between her teeth. While balancing on my right leg, I scratched the back of its calf with the top of my left sandal.

“Can’t you come with me? He’s just over there.” I pointed across the street to Jax’s.

“I’ll walk you across the street but I can’t go in. My mom says I’ll get a bad reputation if I’m seen going in there.”

I thought about what she’d said then asked, “What about mine?”

“You’re not old enough to get one,” she said.

My elder’s logic made sense. So I skipped across the street.

Inside Jax’s, cirrus layers of lingering tobacco smoke obscured the already insufficient lighting. Pool balls clacking against one another and the random launching of cuss words created momentary breaks in the chatter and laughter. I kept one hand on the door, self-appointing it home as one would in a game of hide and seek, until I found Dad. He was leaning on a pool stick, holding a bottle between his thumb and forefinger. I went to him.

“Dad,” I said tugging on his britches leg, looking in the vicinity his eyes would be if he were to look at me.

“Hey, kid. Movie over?” he asked. He checked the time before finding my gaze.

“Yeah, and Laura Jean wants her money.”

He handed off the pool stick then took my hand. As we walked to the door, he guzzled the last drink from his bottle before leaving it on the bar. After Dad paid Laura Jean, we crossed the street and ventured into Pryce’s Grocery and Dry Goods. By now, movement on main street had become sporadic, and old men had begun trickling into the store as slowly as leaves falling from a border oak in mid-September. Their seats, stacked wooden crates, formed the customary circle for their afternoon gathering. Some packed a jaw with tobacco while others rolled a smoke. Success of the American Legion team started the powwow early.

Lunch had come and gone, and neither Dad nor I had eaten anything, at least nothing worth mentioning. Dad asked Mr. Pryce to fix him a bologna and hot pepper cheese sandwich, and after several minutes of deliberation, I settled on pickle loaf with mustard, voicing a preference to having the condiment spread on both slices of bread. Mr. Pryce took note. Dad then chose an RC. I favored a grape Nehi.

I didn’t remember Dad saying go. I didn’t know we were racing, but as Mr. Pryce handed me my sandwich, Dad poked his last bite into his mouth. He chased it with a drink and was looking in one of the glass cases which lined both sides of the register before swallowing either.

Mr. Pryce left his domain behind the meat counter to join him. On his way, he lifted his apron with one hand then individually twisted each finger of the opposite hand into the stained fabric. He continued the process as he stood across the glass case from Dad.

After a few bites of pickle loaf and a bottle of Nehi, I felt full. As I wiped mustard off my chin, I decided to linger at the front of the store. Items in the glass case held Dad’s interest, and the old men, who once looked harmless, had traded baseball and a friendly slap on the back for the rising cost of seed and keeping one’s hands to oneself.

At its brightest, the sun spotlighted the best Pryce’s had to offer. Now, its diminishing rays had to stretch to reach the display window, resulting in a partially drawn curtain of darkness. Offstage, a pair of watches – one for a lady, the other a man – passed their time on a piece of black velveteen. Still on stage, a headless mannequin modeled a lace-collared blouse with a floral print skirt. In a sunlit corner, a six-tier pyramid of Libby’s canned vegetables displayed a sign naming it the special of the week. But center stage. Center stage held the answer to coping with the rise in seed prices, Annette’s answer to persuading Frankie to take her to the beach party, and Momma’s answer to squashing Granny Tulley’s power of conviction. The main attraction was a pair of tan shoes, size eleven. A bargain at $7.50. Especially, since they came with pink shoelaces.

Dad had remained focused on the trinkets in the case. As I closed the distance between us, he made his decision and indicated so by pointing. Mr. Pryce retrieved the item, placed it in a small box, then they slid in unison to the register.

“Dad,” I said as I bounced on my tiptoes. “The shoes.”

I tried to take his hand, but he lifted it out of my reach. My fingers found his back pocket where I tugged each syllable.

“Pleeease, Dad-dy. The shoes in the win-dow. They’re just my size.”

Mr. Pryce’s hand hung by its fingertips on the register’s handle as he looked toward me, then at Dad, and repeat the process several times. His pause compelled me to clasp my hands under my chin and look up. As Dad smiled at the man behind the counter, he shook his head. When I heard the register’s drawer open, I realize my shameless display of desperation had gone unheeded.

Outside, Dad opened the driver’s side door of the truck and waited. Unwanted tears came but I didn’t swipe. My hands stayed prisoners in my pockets until I crawled in the truck.

We didn’t turn toward home but continued down the street passed Jax’s and The Fontaine.

“This isn’t the way home,” I said before sitting on my knees, choosing to watch where we’d been instead of where we were going.

Dad pulled his visor down then opened his window. My hair twirled around my face as a willow in a windstorm. I tucked it behind my ears; however, more strands than not continued to wave.

“I need to take care of something. You don’t mind do you?”

My shoulders said they didn’t care before I rested my chin on the back of the seat. From the corner of my eye, I watched him take a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He shook up a Benson and Hedges, threw the pack on the dash, then pushed in the lighter. As he waited for it to pop, he asked, “How about some music?” He smiled and beckoned me to his side with a head gesture.

The lighter clicked before I could answer, and within seconds, I could see smoke swirling above his head. When I turned and sat close to him, he took this for a yes and turn the radio on.

The Beatles and Dylan took us as far as the first left, directly passed the mill. Patty Page sang until we reached the fork in the road, then Neil Diamond ushered us to the Charlton’s mailbox and up their driveway.

The paint on the house reminded me of a half-scaled crappie, and the one dangling shutter of a hook in its bottom lip. No automobile sat beside the house. No one played in the yard. No dog lay on the porch and no one came to the door. The only declarations of occupancy were the open front door and the laundry hanging from the clothesline alongside the house.

Before Dad went to the door, he placed a kiss on my cheek. I found it odd he entered without knocking. More so when he let the screen door slap against the wooden frame.

I spent time watching the breeze swing the clothes on the line. One of the unmentionables conveyed the owner’s shared liking for my favorite color, red, indicating her appreciation for the unorthodox. She would surely sympathize with me on my recent disappointment in Dad for denying me the last pair of shoes I would ever ask for.

Time had passed since I’d enjoyed the grape Nehi, and last year when Granny Tulley started blaming her occasional accidents on a stretched bladder, I no longer waited until squirming or crossing my legs became necessary. A refusal to risk a regression to where I wet myself had become the rule.

Honeysuckle blossomed a few feet beyond the row of laundry. I pushed open the truck’s door and slid from the seat. After confident the foliage provided ample coverage, I prepared myself and squatted. My eyes watered as relief came to my bladder, and I assured myself serious expansion had been averted.

When I started back to the truck, the colorful undergarment waved, proudly displaying itself, imitating a flag flying high, nobly symbolizing what it represented. I thought they came in one color--white, the color of Momma’s. Wary, nevertheless intrigued, I reached to touch it, but Dad’s voice passing through an opened window pulled my attention toward him.

“Come on,” he said. “give me more time.”

A woman answered. “I’m tired of waiting.”

“Here sweetheart,” Dad again. “I bought you something.”

The woman squealed then thanked Dad with the recognizable slurps and smacks dads and mommas were suppose to share.

“A little more time?” Dad said.

Enough had been heard. Too many things had been exposed. I retreated but in my haste, a pair of woman’s slacks levitated in front of me. Tangled in britches and stumbling, I groped the air for something, anything, to keep me upright, but all my outstretched fingers snagged was one of the red bra’s shoulder straps. I then heard the wooden clothespins give to the added weight and snap from the line. Closing my eyes, I braced for the fall.

Dad must have heard the commotion because when I opened my eyes, he was looking down at me.

“What are you doing?” He took his hands off his hips and extended one to me.

Ignoring his offer, I got to my feet and brushed passed him. “I had to pee.”

He stayed on my heels until we neared the truck where he double-timed his pace and opened his door for me.

Side-stepping the usual routine, I marched to my side and climbed in. He kept silent as he sat behind the wheel and turned the key. After backing out of the yard, he proceeded down the driveway. This time turning toward home.

With the sun now to our backs, he slapped up his visor then cranked his window, leaving a smoker’s crack. I sat close to my door letting the space between us provided an invisible barrier. A barrier a single word could crumble. An emotional safeguard I knew wouldn’t last.

“Are you all right?” he asked before searching the dash for his pack of cigarettes. After finding them, he lit one and returned the pack to his shirt pocket.

“Fine,” I said. But I wasn’t.

The radio crackled between bouts of music. Instead of tuning in on a station, he clicked it off. While holding the wheel and cigarette in one hand, he reached over and skimmed his fingertips down my hair. I kept my eyes on the road and pulled away. An unspoken answer to his unspoken question.

He switched his driving hand and drew a long pull off his cigarette, but before the cherry dimmed, he snapped his back straight and gripped the wheel at ten and two.

“Hey,” he said, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “How about we stop at Pryce’s and get you those shoes?” He shook his head in an effort to convince us both he’d found the answer.

“Yep. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go back. We’ll go back and get those shoes.”

He turned to watch the road before he accelerated, unaware I no longer shared his newly found optimism of the shoe’s powers or his desire for something new and unique. I now craved pancakes, peanut butter, and a pretense of reality as I fostered a hatred for those shoes and the type of girl who would wear them.

By the time we passed the city limit’s sign, the vining morning glories twisting around its wooden post had lost their day’s blooms. The vapor lights lining the streets had completed their evening ritual of flickering on and off; a momentary period of indecision usually resulting in illumination and a lulling hum.

I looked at him because as yet, he hadn’t turned on the headlights. However, I found myself unable to turn away as he maintained a position so close to the wheel he could’ve used it for a chin rest. Further inspection brought me to a pulsing ball of jaw muscle and a perpetual trail of sweat running along the front of his ear. I then noticed his stare which never wavered from the road. I saw a man determined to change the course of a storm, and his refusal to accept the finality of time. I, on the other hand, had resentfully accepted both.

Kimila Bowling - Biography

My father had a Kraco eight-track in his grasshopper- green Ford pickup. When I would go with him, he’d play my favorite song, “Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces,” and I did want a pair of those shoes.
As time passed, I grew up and realized tan was sort of bland and pink clashed with my skin tone. I also discovered you’re supposed to duck while riding in a grasshopper- green truck.
Trying to move forward with my life, I attended a program to become a court stenographer, but I found the dialogue between the attorney and witness boring. It was a constant struggle not to embellish testimony during transcription. I then went through a delusional phase and attended cosmetology and manicurist school. I can’t do hair. I can’t do nails, but I can buy hair products wholesale.
I did, however, work in the insurance industry for fifteen years but kept my storytelling alive while tracking wanted clients for a bail bondsman.

Catch A Tiger by the Toe: 2010 Honorable Mention by Marie Hermet

2010-10-11T19:44:00.000-07:00

1. Mitzi

Maybe nothing would ever have happened but for the Christmas stockings. Hand sewn in red and green felt, they were the saddest things I had seen in a long time. As soon as I noticed them, hanging gloomily from every doorknob, I knew that I wanted to marry him.

It was my first visit to Paul’s home, on Whitsun Sunday. His house near Paris was covered with vine and wisteria spilled over the garden walls. From his bedroom window, we had a view on the shimmering skyline along the Seine, but this dusty red stocking was dangling from the handle and there were foil paper angels fluttering in the draughts. In the kitchen, a flashing garland screeched Jingle Bells when you flicked the switch. Over the cooking range someone had tacked a child’s drawing of a house. It was dedicated in large clumsy letters « To the Best Mom in the World ».
The best mom in the world had walked out the summer before to start a new life in Gopherville, Arkansas, with a nightclub owner who specialized in Country music and sex scandals involving underage performers. Dolly had simply vanished from the lives of her husband and daughter, leaving one in care of the other.

Once they got over the first shock, Paul and Lena enjoyed living by themselves. Paul managed to cut his working hours and came back early every night to mess about in the kitchen with his daughter. They invented zany recipes and grew carnivorous plants, secretly watching each other for signs of loneliness. For Christmas, they decided that it would be the just the two of them. Lena cut snowflakes out of white paper and worked hard on her father’s present: a box decorated with tiny shells from last summer’s holidays. Slightly tipsy from the champagne, half buried under layers of torn gift wrappings, she swore that this was her best Christmas ever. She was about to turn eleven.

In January Paul hired a private investigator to locate his wife and start divorce proceedings. Dolly readily agreed to everything; the one thing she asked was permission to visit her daughter in Paris for the winter holidays. She flew back to France, dropped her suitcases in the guest room and opened her arms for Lena to fall into as if nothing had ever happened. Lena started working out schemes to make her mother stay, but Paul, who was quietly putting away the whisky glasses Dolly forgot in her wake, knew that they were doomed. This time, he didn’t even try to search out for the bottles Dolly was hoarding like mice hoard cotton wool for winter.
On the last day before Dolly’s flight home was due, Paul came back after work and found the house empty.

Mother and child had vanished. The car was not in the garage. They could not have gone to the movies and taken the hall carpet with them, could they? It had been torn away from its nails; tufts of wool remained stuck on the bare wood floor. Pictures were missing too, leaving pale squares on the wall. Paul dragged himself through one room after another, counting his losses, looking for clues. The child’s bedroom was a war zone: clothes, toys, stuffed animals, torn cardboard boxes and ripped open suitcases had been hurled across the room. Burdened with the all the luggage she intended to take with her, Dolly had left her daughter’s treasures behind. Paul did not walk in; he just clicked the door shut. On the landing he found one pink plastic thong, size 4, with a torn strap. Clutching it to his chest, he started sobbing at last.

After a while, he gave a few phone calls and found out that his daughter was already flying over Knoxville with her mother. There was nothing he could do. The child’s passport was valid and Dolly was entitled to take her anywhere she pleased. She had chosen the small town she had been raised in.

Ironically, the nearest city was called Hope.

I had met him through friends. With his sad smile and shock of hair touched with gray, Paul looked like a boy grown too fast, weighted down by some secret sorrow. We talked until dawn, then he walked me home and kissed me goodnight at my door. We didn’t feel like rushing; we thought we might have a whole lifetime before us. When Lena disappeared, things changed. Paul’s usually dazed look grew into something darker. He started wandering about in his own private nightmare, misplacing his glasses, his keys, his pocketbook, his telephone – he went nowhere without it for fear of missing a call from Dolly, which never came – even his car. He forgot to eat. He was so distracted that I was afraid he would forget to breathe. By then I was so much in love that I would have moved mountains to see him smile. I could not bear to see him heartbroken. One year later we were married.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas, Dolly had given birth to a new daughter, Claire. Lena missed her father. It proved easy enough to convince Dolly to send her eldest child back to us, and this is when the real trouble started.

2. Lena

I thrashed Bitchy all right tonight. It was brilliant.
Her real name is Mitzi– how ridiculous is that? But I call her Bitchy. Actually, my mom suggested it, but then it suits her perfectly. Of course Bitchy doesn’t have a clue. I have to confess that I hide a few things from Mom too: for example, I haven’t told her yet that sometimes I call Bitchy Mommy. She would hate it, obviously. Poor Mom. It’s hard for her to be so far from me, even though she was the one who left. She calls me every day, and when I am not home, she calls again to leave desperate messages. She keeps asking why I chose to live with my father, and I don’t know what I can say to that. As soon as she starts speaking I know exactly how many drinks she’s had. She is louder after four or five, from six onwards she moans that I abandoned her, and often she ends up sobbing or screaming at me, when it is late at home in Arkansas and she’s had way too many.

So why would I call Bitchy Mommy? Because it pleases them all so much. Not Bitchy, exactly: it unsettles her rather than making her happy, which is fun too. But Grandma loves it. She probably believes that all is well that ends well. And Dad is so glad to see that I adopted his new wife… He thanked me for it the other day. I am his perfect little girl, the jewel of his crown, and ours is the perfect new family. If he only knew! It’s a good thing that no one hears us talking on the phone, Mom and I.

So, tonight, Grandma and Granddad were coming over for dinner. Bitchy spent the whole day running around like a panic-stricken bat. She fumbled about in the kitchen for hours, polishing the silver – which I wouldn’t mind nicking, then burnt her fingers on the oven while trying out fancy recipes. I asked her if she wanted some help, but she brushed me off: she didn’t want me under her feet. I got my revenge when I pinched the foie gras and took it up to my room for a taste. I love foie gras. When I returned it, minus several fat slices, she was livid, but what could she say? And then she asked me to help set the table, but I told her I had homework to do. Who did she think I was? Her household slave?
So we were gathered around the table, all on our best behavior, and I was bored to death. I was sitting next to Dad, as usual. I waited for a lull in the conversation and then I cleared my voice and dropped my bomb:

– Dad?
– Yes, dear?
– Is Mitzi older than you are?

By then, I had everyone’s attention.

Dad mumbled something like:

– Eh? …. Ah… Well, maybe a teeny bit, but why?

Grandpa chose precisely this moment to ask Bitchy whether she could recommend a good film, but they all heard my answer anyway.

– Because it shows.

I saw her flinch and turn scarlet. I looked down at my plate, but our eyes had met. At first she got that incredulous, too stunned to react look… but then I saw outrage and fury. It was as if she was split open and I could see the gears. I had to bite my cheeks hard not to burst out laughing. Thankfully, I could hide behind my hair… I ate off everything in my plate without raising my head, feeling on top of the world. From time to time, I stole a glimpse from under my bangs. She was happily chatting away, but her smile was a shade too bright. After a while, she excused herself and went to the bathroom. She stayed there for quite a long time. I could practically see her checking out every single inch of skin in the mirror, looking out for creases and wrinkles…

I have always heard Grandma say that of the mouths of babes comes forth truth.

3. Mitzi

Lena has been playing truant all year; not a week went by without phone calls from the school, asking what she was up to. Yesterday I had to drive over to pick her up: she was sick. When I arrived at the infirmary, for half a second I did not see Lena, but a strange girl whom I did not immediately recognize. A girl I did not like, slouching aslant in a chair, with hair in her face and legs wide apart. Her piercing was showing in a fold of white belly fat. The eyes she raised towards me registered absolutely nothing, not a flicker of recognition. They were big cat’s eyes, black with silent rage. Her stare chilled me. Usually she never really looks at me; when she needs to say something, she addresses the wall behind me, or the radiator, or the third button of my shirt. She’s been smoking pot again, of course, or worse. I am ashamed of her.

Paul says that it is only teen crisis. He doesn’t know yet that as a gesture of ultimate rebellion, she just had 666 tattooed on the inside of her left arm. Her favorite bands sport names like Aborted, Hatebreed or Suicide Silence. She stocks their collectibles and posts their messages on her walls, along with pictures of her father. He gave her a shoe box full of family photos, and now he is everywhere, in whole series of photo booth portraits, in his passport photos from the time he was three, in holiday snapshots, Paul skiing, Paul on the beach with a ring of girls around him, Paul playing Hendrix on air guitar, Paul with a tie on, probably on Graduation day, Paul with bell-bottoms, Paul thoughtful, holding a book, Paul cute and sexy…

Paul at the age Lena is today.

She has no friends that I know of. The only types she hangs around with are the Goth and Emo kids, loners like herself. They share dark secrets and apocalyptic dreams. When she is home, I feel her hate throbbing in the rooms like a pulse. She has taken this weird habit of hiding in inconspicuous corners, behind doors or curtains, and then materializing when we least expect it. I have an impression of being spied on all the time– or is it that I am going mad? And there are things missing from my desk or closet. When the pen Paul gave me for my birthday disappeared, I asked her for an explanation. She called her mother and told her that she wanted to go back to Arkansas, that she would not live in a house where she was treated like a thief and a liar… There was nothing I could do to plead my case. She knows that her father’s worst nightmare is to see her go, and she plays on that with uncanny virtuosity. Every whim of hers must be fulfilled immediately, or else. Her new fancy is to play drums; she also wants a ferret. Apparently, all her friends have pet ferrets. I should insist that it will be the ferret or me, but I am afraid Paul would choose the ferret.

We’ve been married two years and seven months and I don’t even recognize the man I loved. Last weekend, we had another row. Paul blames me for his daughter’s grades. I was mad with rage at the unfairness of it all, and still crying when he finally came to bed. He switched off the light without a word, turned his back to me, and two minutes later he started snoring. I got up without waking him, took the car keys and went out. I started to drive with no idea of where to go. I only wanted to get away as far as I could. I drove all night. When I finally came back, chilled to the bones, he was still storing. I went to sleep on the couch in the living room. It is an old battered shapeless thing, a makeshift raft in the wreck of our marriage. Watching the day rise between the shutters, I felt like a tramp waiting for dawn in a railway station. I could hear the rumble of the refrigerator. It was not a pleasant noise, but it kept me company.

4. Lena

Grown-ups have funny ideas about us children. They always imagine that we don’t have a clue, as if we were deaf and blind and unable to see what’s going on. They are totally convinced that they are “protecting” us… Not! Protecting us from what, when they don’t even have what it takes to stick together as a family long enough to raise their own kids? I know everything about my father and Bitchy. I know them even better than they know themselves. I love snooping. It’s super easy: when I’m home alone, I search their room, I read every letter I can lay my hands on, I poke through drawers and dressers. There are quite a few interesting items lying around in pockets and handbags as well. Dad leaves just about everything in his coat pockets, even big bucks, and afterwards he keeps looking for them. He never dared to ask me, but he had a row with Bitchy the other day because she had stuffed his jeans in the washing machine with three twenty-euro bills in the rear pocket… or so he thought. The funniest thing of all is that she started arguing, then things got ugly and she ended up crying! I told Mom the whole story and she laughed so hard she nearly split her sides.

Bitchy’s been crying a lot lately, anyway. Things are going downhill fast in this house. They can spend whole days without saying a word to one another. Often at dinner, Dad ignores her completely and speaks only to me. I tell him stories from school, things I make up, anything to hold his attention. She gets up to bring things from the kitchen and clear away, dour-faced and silent as a fish. Pathetic. You can see that she’s dreaming of being someplace else. Well, go, why don’t you? Get a life! While she plays around with her food without actually eating anything, I take second and third helpings, particularly at dessert. I just love eating.
I found a juicy letter that she wrote to Dad, complaining because he doesn’t even look at her anymore… It took him so long to get tired of her, almost three years, but I knew it was going to happen in the end. It was only a matter of time and patience.

“You come home at night, you pour a glass of wine for both of us and you lock yourself up in your study with your glass. You only get out for dinner. Dinner is chaos, impossible to share a few words without being interrupted.”
Yeah, I guess that’s true. I have things to say too.
“After dinner, you go directly back to your study, leaving me to clear the table. Later, often very late, you go to bed. I have been waiting for you. Bedtime: you slip under the covers, you rewind your alarm, and you switch off the light without a word. You fuck me in thirty seconds, hands off, or not at all. And that is the one variation in your routine.”

Not bad so far, is it? But my favorite part is the conclusion:

“ Am I so uninteresting that you don’t even feel like spending a few minutes of your time in my company?”

Well… thank you for pointing out the obvious, Mommy dear.

Marie Hermet
Biography

Marie Hermet wanted to be a hippie when she grew up. As it is, she studied Art in Paris, had a stint as a costume designer for the cinema, then finally graduated in English Literature. Currently living in Paris and working as a reader and translator for French publishers, it is her ambition to complete her PhD (about European exiles in Hollywood in the 1940s) before her granddaughter, aged two, finishes high school. Her short stories published in French include L’Oiseleur (awarded the Prix Pégase 2010) and La Reine des Neiges (prix du Musée des Lettres 2009). She believes, as Colum McCann puts it, that you write best not about what you know, but about what you want to know.

"ENDLESS VACATION" by Paul D. Marks: 2010 Honorable Mention

2010-09-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

I used to dream I could fly.

And I'm not really afraid of dying. Not in the normal sense. That sense of the unknown. Heaven. Hell. Maggot food. One's as good as the other.

I had a girlfriend once who slept through a terrorist bomb attack, of course one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. But I don't think she cared about that. And I don't know if her thinking in that moment got as far as heaven-hell-maggot food. I'm sure she was just trying to get the hell out of Dodge before Chrysler imploded.
* * *
I used to want to be a hero.

Doesn't everyone at one time or another? A hero in the movie of your life.
Sometimes a hero in the movie of someone else's life.

It's not like I just got off the bus at the Hollywood Greyhound station like those kids over there. Did they come here to get away from their parents? To become movie stars? Both? Don't they know that the same tether that ties them to home will sink them in this town?

"I'm cold," she says.

I slide a filthy blanket over her. She shivers, pulling it tight around her neck. She leans against the cold stone. A chill shakes her from head to toe. A quivering hand grasps a shock of stringy blonde hair, wraps it over her face; anything to keep the raw wind at bay. Blue veins criss-cross the top of her hand, so many blue highways to the backroads of her soul. But her eyes, windows to that soul, are empty. Devoid of feeling. Devoid of fear. Well, maybe not, but at least that's all hidden behind a wall of street-girl bravado.

"I had to come here," she says.

I'm not sure which here she's referring to. Here, as in here and now, leaning against this cold stone. Or here, as in coming to Hollywood eighteen months ago with stars in her eyes. One of a million, thinking she could be one in a million. A trite, clichéd story to be sure. Unless she's your daughter. Your sister. Your girlfriend.

What is she to me? She's not really any of those things. I'm old enough to be her father, but I'm not. She's not my sister or my girlfriend, though we've had sex on several occasions. She calls it "making love." I call it recreational sex, friends with benefits, but not to her face. Every time we finish she says, "I love you." I mumble something which I assume she takes to be the same. We never talk about it. We often hit Oki Dog afterwards. She cadges money, though she claims never to have turned a trick. I always manage to have a few bucks. Between us we eat okay. Though she spends most of her coin on other things.

"I didn't come here looking for the streets to be paved with gold," she says, her eyelids fluttering. I know she didn't because she'd never heard that expression till I told it to her. But she knew there were palm trees and sunshine, movie stars and Hollywood. And that's where we were now, right in the heart of Hollywood, Paramount Studios only a few yards away.

She may not have known that the streets were supposedly paved with gold; she did know that she might be able to get a job in the movies. Or at least on television. I knew that too, when I came out more than a decade before her. When I came out I was as naïve as her, as everyone else who comes with high hopes and great expectations. I had a script under my arm, a smile on my face and confidence busting out all over. I thought that's all it would take. I won't bore you with how wrong I was. But I did take a meeting with Steven Spielberg once. A friend of a friend knew his assistant and set it up. The meeting–

"They're moving," she giggles.

"What? What's moving?"

"The vampire bites. They're crawling up my arm."

I look at the trail of splotchy welts on her thin arm. "Yeah, they're doing a jig."
"A jig? What's that?"

"A dance."

"Yeah, they're dancing. You're so funny. You always make me laugh."

I make her laugh and she makes me cry. A tear nearly escapes the corner of my eye. I stifle it with a finger that hasn't hit a keyboard in two years. Or is it four?

Her head flops back against the stone. She's okay. I lean back against the hard leg of the bench I'm using as a back support. I watch the vampire bites creep up her arm.

"I could've gone to New York, you know."

I know. I've heard the story a thousand times, but I don't really mind hearing it again. You know how when you know someone well, when you're a good fit, they – and you – start repeating the same stories over and over again as if you've never heard them. When I'm doing it I always wonder if the person remembers the story or are they hearing it yet again for the first time? When I tell them what the first record I bought was. The first movie I saw in a theatre. The first time I ditched school. The first girl I kissed. The lore that makes up our lives. So I knew she could have gone to New York. And I knew why she didn't.

"It was either New York or Hollywood," she says. "The Big Apple or the Big Orange. I like oranges better. Someday I want to hit New York – CBGB's."

"It's not there anymore," I say.

"I know." She stretches out 'know' as if it has three syllables, like a little girl might. "It's a gallery or something now."

"Right."

I never wanted to rain on her parade of vampire bites, but someone had to tell her that CBGB's, the renowned club where punk rock is said to have started in the 70s with Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell, the Talking Heads and the Ramones, ain't what it used to be, so to speak. Not to burst her bubble, but so she wouldn't make a wasted trip to NYC like the one to LA. CB's is no more. What good does it do to live in the past?

When she came out here she was wafer thin, or is it waif thin? Same difference. Pale white skin, skinny arms, skinny all over and that long, lank blonde hair that, at least then, all of a year and a half ago, looked natural. These days it comes out of a bottle, but she does a good job and you can hardly tell. Back then, what do they say, back in the day – I hate that fucking expression – she affected that heroin chic look, though she'd never done heroin. Today she lives it. I can see it on her face – the tombstones in her eyes. I can see it on her arms, the tracks running up and down – vampire bites she calls them.

She wants to make a pilgrimage to CB's, but there ain't no CB's anymore and even if there was that whole scene was before she was born. Before she was that gleam in her papa's eye, that bulge in her mommy's tummy. That scene was dead long ago. She wants to go back to something she's nostalgic for – something that barely existed in her lifetime.

Who the hell am I to talk? I came to LA looking for a Hollywood that died before I was born. A glamorous town of movie stars and studios and backlots. A studio system that nurtured talent, whatever you say about how it also might have stifled it with the other hand. A town that made movies in black and white but whose streets were, indeed, paved with gold. Yeah, I bought it – hook, line and clapboard.

And so we met, a scared and lonely girl and a tired and lonely man verging on middle age. Oh hell, middle aged – but that, of course, depends on when you start the clock on that one. I'm not ready for AARP, not for a while anyway.

Two dreamers whose dreams went bust on the prickly pyre of reality. So we have each other and we give each other warmth and someone to talk to on the endless days of our endless vacation. Someone to share dreams with. Someone to share food and shelter with. And watch TV with – we always manage be in front of a TV to watch The Amazing Race. To watch other people living life even as we don't live ours. Someone to share needles and H with and know – with fairly good certainty – that you aren't going to get Hepatitis or Aids from. Now that's reality.

She slides down Dee Dee Ramone's unyielding tombstone, here in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. If she can't make it to CB's she can at least come to where Dee Dee's buried – burned by a heroin overdose. Yards away is a statue of Johnny Ramone. Founders of the Ramones, godfathers of punk. Who gives a damn? She does.

"Dee Dee wrote a song about skag," she says, slurring her words. "Chinese Rock."

Yeah, I know. It's one of those things we talk about over and over, like a broken record. I wonder if she knows that expression.

–My meeting with Spielberg went fine. He loved the pitch. "Leave me pages," he said. I left pages. Never heard back. Called a week later. Too soon. Three weeks later. "He's in pre-production." Eight weeks later. "He's in production." Twenty weeks later – who are you and what do you want? My flirtation with fame and fortune.

I sold my Gibson Les Paul Goldtop a couple weeks ago, the only hold out from my former life. Got pretty good money for it too. We've been staying in a cheap motel, eating pretty well and buying decent dope. Life is good.

I hear voices. For real? In my head? Look down the lane – people stream in.

"Hey, it's Saturday night," I say.

"I forgot."

"They show movies here on Saturdays – against the mausoleum wall."

It's true. Where else but in Hollywood – right here in the heart of Hollywood – would people come to watch movies on a big silver screen – the mausoleum wall – sitting on graves, munching on picnic dinners with their expensive wines and waters, only a few yards from the back of Paramount Studios?

"Do you want to go see the movie?"

She shakes her head. "I like it here."

She slides farther down Dee Dee's stone.

"But I'm cold."

I wrap the blanket tighter around her.

Sometimes-sometimes when we're doing it – having sex – I hope she'll get pregnant. I want to leave something behind. I wanted to leave behind the Great American Screenplay, but that ain't gonna happen. So maybe a kid. But that wouldn't be fair to the kid. Of course, if we have one, maybe I'll straighten up, get a job – yeah. Get an apartment. Call my folks. All that good stuff. Maybe. We don't use protection and we don't get pregnant, so it's a big maybe.

I'm afraid of leaving nothing behind. I'll be gone and no one will even know I was here. I don't live on MySpace or Facebook or Twitter or any of those. I don't exist. No checking account. No driver's license. Hell, no ATM card. No one knows where to find me. No one who knows me knows who I am. Sometimes I barely remember.

Where did I come from? I know. I could tell you, but what's the point? It was another world. Another life. Another me.

I watch her face go calm and peaceful. Slack. Her whole body goes limp.

I want to do something.

I try. But can't.

There's nothing worse than watching someone OD in front of you. You watch them die. You want to help, to call the cops, an ambulance – do something – but you can't because you're smacked out too.

She gave herself a hotshot. Making it in LA wasn't just harder than she expected. It was impossible. When she got off that bus she thought she was tough – she wasn't as tough as she thought. She doesn't care if anyone remembers her. She just wants peace.

Yeah, I used to want to be a hero. And maybe I've even done some heroic things. But no one remembers. No one cares that I chased a city bus for two blocks because the driver wouldn't wait for an old man to get to the stop. I felt like a hero then. But I wanted to save a girl and I couldn't or didn't or maybe even wouldn't. I don't know. Hell, I can't even save myself.

I used to have dreams. I used to dream I could fly.

Paul D. Marks is a former "script doctor," who's now focusing
on fiction, both short and long. His story "Netiquette" won first
place in the Futures Short Story Contest. "Poison Heart" was a
finalist in the Deadly Ink short story competition. "Dem Bones"
was a finalist in the Southern Writers Association contest. His
novel White Heat took second place in the mystery-thriller category
of the South West Writers contest. His story "Terminal Island" appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Weber: The Contemporary West. He has
also published non-fiction articles in various newspapers and magazines
and has lectured on writing at UCLA, Cal State San Bernardino, Learning
Tree, as well as writers' organizations. He is currently working on a
novel set on the L.A. homefront during World War II and a satirical novel
about the joyous and joyful Hollywood experience.

“Me, Myself, Still Un-cool” by M. Esther Sherman

2010-08-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

M. Esther Sherman received an Honorable Mention in our 2010 competition

I’m a poetic soul and always have been, against my better judgment and the beatings of my classmates. My seventeen years of upper middle class life have caused me to be precisely as tough as paper mache and as daring as a monk on sedatives. I have no curfew because even my parents want me to get a life. I drive a 1996 Mustang Cobra, which is still cool because it’s 1997, but I’m afraid of ruining it so I put a cover over it every time I stop somewhere, which is apparently incredibly un-cool. I don’t play sports because they don’t let you carry a copy of Pride and Prejudice beneath your football jersey.

Yes, I am a man and yes, I love Jane Austen.

Most days, and nights, I sit around doing exactly what I am doing right now. I sit on the floor of my bedroom, perfectly decorated with original Star Wars posters, and debate the meaning of life with my witless best friend, Brian Aliander. Oh, and I believe remaking Star Wars will go down as being the only attempt at meaningful contribution for this generation, which since it was a photo copy of a masterpiece will also define us as the stupid little pot-smokers we really are.

It’s the last night before senior year and I am, rather obviously, a virgin…and a band geek who fiddles with the violin.

“Thoughts are fluid and stormy,” I begin with sincere emotion and depth. “They drift between the crevices of our minds as if to suggest there must be something more than this, but what if there isn’t? What if the thoughts we hold and the dreams we cling to are nothing more than the anxious fears of a hopeless heart? Maybe the brokenness, the agony, the hate this world produces in mass is all there really is. Maybe the blood, bruises, and scars we bear are the only truths we will ever find. Thoughts are worthless without the elements that have the potential to make them true. There is a distinct possibility there is nothing more than this.”

I stop and allow my profoundly brilliant realization to be absorbed into the air. Brian’s pudgy form looks back at me with utter amazement. I know I have reached him on a personal level. He swallows his last bite of pizza and chases it with a swig of soda. I sit, in complete anticipation of the affirmation sure to be thrown my way, as he draws in a deep breath before speaking.

“Dude, that’s f’d up,” he finally says, takes another gulp of soda and belches loudly. “You need to sort out your shit or stuff like that’s going to keep coming out of your mouth and you’re going to get the crap beat out of you.”

I shake my head in complete disbelief, which turns out to not be enough to keep him from continuing his unwanted response.

“Not to mention,” Brian continues. “You’re never going to get laid with a mouth that has more practice at quoting dead chicks than with making out with live ones.”

“But I…” I stammer in disbelief.

“I know,” he says after finishing off his drink and tossing the can to the side. “This is our tradition and it’s what we’ve always done. You sit there and say something brilliant and I sit here and applaud you for it. I just can’t do it anymore. I think I finally grew a pair and you should probably do the same.”

With that, and nothing else, my best friend of eleven years gets up, walks out, and disappears from my life.

“How f’d up is that?” I ask my stuffed bear, resting against the bed where he’s been listening to the entire thing. He too looks appalled, though I am uncertain whether Brian or I put that look there.

I know Brian is right. I have reached the point in my life where all my philosophical studies, my nights of lengthy reviews of the newest enlightened compilation of thoughts, and my tiresome habit of thinking before acting mean only one thing: I am un-cool.

The next two weeks prove to be nothing more than the endless cycle guilt accomplishes on every soul stupid enough to listen. One day, I am convinced everything is my fault and I must apologize to Brian. By the next day, I’m convinced I don’t deserve his friendship and he’s better off without me. I’m pretty much a woman like that. I go back and forth until I give up and wait for him to come to me, something I know full well a dimwit like Brian is never going to do because he doesn’t know what he had. The thought alone solidifies the fact I am totally a chick.

I step into Mr. Winter’s advanced calculus class and pull an oversized textbook from my bag before sitting down next to Margerie Swangster, the most beautiful girl on the face of the earth. I could spend days on end, without food or water, completely satisfied just staring at her perfect smile and bouncing blonde hair. If I were slightly cooler, not much but enough, I would comment on her gorgeous rack and hips that move with a mind of their own. I don’t possess the amount of cool necessary to think such things without blushing enough to send me into fever.

“Can I borrow a pencil for the quiz?” Margerie’s angelic voice slips into the air like vapor and vanishes in an instant.

I stare at her dumbly and wonder what a pencil is. I don’t blink.

“Danny?” her voice again.

Danny? That’s my name. Somewhere inside of me I know she is talking to me. The incredible, brilliantly beautiful, sensuously delicate Margerie is talking to me. I can’t breathe and my face begins to pulse red from thinking the word “sensuously”. Alex Bernstein, built like a bear, reaches across my desk to hand her one of my pencils.

“Thank you, Alex,” she hums softly, almost a purr. “You’re a life saver.”

Damn it. Damn it all to hell, me and my inability to function around anything in a skirt. Not that woman have to wear skirts, it’s not the fifties and I’m not that guy. Damn it. I must look angry. I must look angry enough to kill someone because when I regain composure, everyone is looking at me.

“Danny?”

This time it is Mr. Winters’ voice punching me in the face.

“Yes, sir.”

I wanted it to sound calm but I know it didn’t.

“You all right, son?”

I burst into flames, metaphorically speaking. It is this moment, the one in which I realize I am no longer un-cool but am now officially a loser, when I start thinking about everything else in the world; beer, belly dancers, bratwurst, caramel apples, catapults, crash scenes. Even my rebellious thoughts appear in alphabetical order.

This was my entire high school experience. I could go on about my freshman year when I showed up to the prom in a bright blue suit because I thought, when this lovely senior girl leaned within inches of me and asked if I’d go with her, she was talking to me and not the senior football star sitting at the desk to my left.

I could tell you about my sophomore year when I thought I made the football team only to realize they thought I was a girl and they were being accommodating in order to not get sued by an irate father who wanted his daughter to play football with the boys.

I could tell you about my junior year when I set the curve on the senior English final and the entire class beat my ass after school. I could tell you a lot of things that have already been summarized by my one minute too long of staring at Margerie Swangster.

I now, two years later and none the wiser, attend a prestigious university, drive a slightly beaten up 1996 Mustang Cobra, and am still a Star Wars loving virgin who plays the violin. My psychology book is cracked open on my desk and my eyes are endlessly searching for answers I can’t find. Professor Grubik’s classes are notorious for answers you can’t find because no one is certain what the question is. I rub my eyes and hear the shower turn off. I hadn’t realized the shower was running.

It is only two a.m. and my roommate, Kevin, usually doesn’t venture in until the sun rises and another day begins. I think that’s actually his motto. He’s one of those guys who are popular enough to have their own motto.

I had stepped out for a minute or two earlier to ask a classmate a question but I hadn’t seen Kevin. It doesn’t matter. I shake my head and convince myself it doesn’t matter, even though what it means is that he is going to step into the main room, brag about his conquests, and remind me of exactly why he’s him and I’m me. Now, I really have no idea where to find the answers and I slam the book shut. The door to the bathroom slides open slowly, not in Kevin’s normally boisterous style, and I turn to comment on exactly that.

There, in my room, completely naked and dripping wet is Margerie Swangster. She’s immediately angry, in the quiet way a girl gets angry even when it’s her fault, and I can’t stop staring. Her body is more perfect than I ever imagined and I certainly did spend many days and nights imagining. She has marble skin, smooth as water and curving perfectly to cover her sensuous hips that still move as if they have a mind of their own. Her immediate anger moves into a smiling state of intrigue as she realizes how much pleasure I’m getting from this. I’m not subtle and I can’t stop staring.

She fixates on my eyes as I settle on her breasts, circling around her nipples until I unconsciously lick my lips with the feel of her skin against them. She stands still but I still feel every inch of her. I throb and I burn with a passion I am unable to satisfy. I take her with a strong but firm hand and she removes my shirt and begins to unbutton my pants. I lay her down on Kevin’s bed and begin to move over her, my tongue pleasing her flesh. She moans and I feel the satisfaction as she grows louder and I dig deeper within her. My fingers are inside of her and my lips taste every inch of her hips as she squirms in ecstasy beneath my strength.

She laughs.

I’m still staring.

Damn it.

“You have a towel, Danny?”

Her voice is precisely as delicious as I remember but I have changed enough to move when she asks. I toss her a towel hanging over my bed and she wraps it around herself. It doesn’t remove the images. I can shake my head a thousand times but it won’t remove the images.

“Thanks,” she says.

I have changed in the last two years. I realize I have changed enough to do something. She pulls one of Kevin’s shirts over her head and as her head reappears, I am there. I touch her hips gently and the towel falls. I’m against her, my hands touching her bare flesh and I kiss her.

The kiss is timid at first, then lingering as an act of rebellion. I allow my lips to part more deeply and she presses herself against me. I don’t know why she’s kissing me back. Maybe she’s curious or maybe she is the sort who gives to charity in more ways than soup kitchens and fundraisers. Her lips are sweet and her skin is warm, the feeling will never leave me. The door opens, of course, and Kevin appears in a sudden movement of panic and disbelief.

“Margie,” he half yells.

She pulls away from me with a giggle and I know she’s smooth enough to live through this.

“Hi, sweetie,” she wraps the towel around her waist, leaving her breasts bouncing beneath his shirt to distract him, and moves toward him, kissing his cheek. “You were late so I thought I’d have a bit of fun with your roommate.”

Her smile melts him, toward her anyway. He turns to me and I make a mistake. Every once in a while, my obscenely high I.Q. gets me into trees I can’t climb out of.

“I thought she needed a little passion in her life,” I smile sharply, like a man who can fly until he’s thrown out a window. “You know, someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Turns out, that was the last thing I would say for over a month since he broke my jaw and I spent twelve hours in a coma. Twelve hours in a coma for kissing Margerie Swangster. Well worth it if you ask me.

That is the basic summary of my college experience. I graduated top of my class, teacher’s favorite, and still a virgin, though I did see a girl naked, rarely picked up a violin, and only put up two Star Wars posters in four years.

Two years after the perfect kiss, I stand in front of the entire university in my long black gown, waiting to give a speech of some limited significance. I have it all written out, all the things I know I should say. Things like “the world is ours” and “these lessons will carry you through the rest of your life”. I know exactly what should come out but when I stand up to the podium, the words disappear. I stand up, in front of everyone and say absolutely nothing. I say nothing because this is exactly what I want to say…

“I am incredibly un-cool and always have been but I know what happens next,” I want to say. “In three years, I will have been working for one of the highest rated companies in the world when I decide to quit in favor of starting my own Internet Company and making several million dollars a month doing almost no actual work whatsoever. I will be on my way to a conference in San Francisco, teaching young kids how to be as amazing as me, when I run into Margerie Swangster who decides it is high time we catch up. I’ll take her back to my penthouse suite, lay her down in all the ways a man does a woman, and realize she was never really that good.

“I will get to wake up the next morning and move on with my life without the fantasy no one can live up to and let her return to her passionless life with some hack she married for money while I realize it was Kevin I always had a thing for,” at this point, if I was speaking, I could watch Kevin squirm. “Turns out his violent overreaction in college was nothing more than a mask to hide his secret love for all things Jane Austen and his dark fetish for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the homosexual movie theatre on Fifth and Elm. I’ll look him up in the Pink Pages and take him out to a nice meal and an Elvis wedding. We will buy a house by the bay, adopt one of the Jolie-Pitt children as soon as the divorce is finalized, and settle into a comfortable routine consisting of Star Wars novels and violin lessons. I’ll be happy and I will still be un-cool because about twenty years from now, I’m going to realize un-cool is the new cool and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I stare out at the audience staring back at me and my eyes fall heaviest on Kevin, sitting sternly in the third row from the back. We lock eyes for a moment and I realize it doesn’t matter what I say. I regain my composure and say exactly what I should say, all the clichés that rest on the page in front of me. The crowd applauds politely and I take my seat behind the podium, staring at Kevin’s firm features, content with the fact I already know how it ends.

M. Esther Sherman is the product of Newberg, Oregon, currently resides in SoCal, has the gift of sarcasm, a need to write, is the mother of the most amazing kid on the planet, and still can’t believe Jake was dumb enough to choose Vienna over Tenley (who’s also from Newberg, fyi). She graduated top of her class with a degree in sociology in ’06 and uses her knowledge of human behavior and social norms to craft characters with internal and external controversy with a splash of political animosity. Esther loves to write novels, screenplays, short stories, poetry, and the occasional thank you note and would love nothing more than to have a long happy career in fiction. Some have already said she is, “sure to be one of the most dynamic and masterfully original authors of our time. The witty complexities of her humor and the manner in which she brings her characters to life are nothing short of genius.” Of course, so far, the only people to say those things have also been fictional.

The Cloud Creature by Kate Zahnleiter

2010-08-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

The Cloud Creature by Kate Zahnleiter: 2010 Second-Place Winner

I like to walk to clear my head, when it gets heavy and full, and so I slip out the front door while he's in the shower. I should leave a note to save him from worry and rage, but I doubt I'll be gone long and either way I cannot bring myself to go back into the house. Henry has made an appointment for Thursday, 11.30. He has printed off an information sheet, complete with carpark diagram, and left a pre-procedure checklist on top of the kitchen bench. I learn something new each time I pass. No food or drink for two hours prior to the scheduled time. Patients will be given medication for the pain. Should infection occur, a course of antibiotics will be prescribed and all discomfort should be cleared within a few days. Bold type at the bottom of the page tells me I will not be permitted to leave the clinic unless accompanied by a family member or friend, but Henry hasn't offered to come with me. He hasn't offered anything other than the money, but then I don't really have any of my own.

I push my way up the hill, enjoying the way my muscles tighten and release, trying to trust the soundness of them and believe that they will not give way and leave me the victim of gravity and the ground below. Lately, I have been thinking often of my body. As a constant. As something other than a vessel which carries me from place to place, a vessel from which I can disembark at any moment. I suppose I have you to thank for that. You've been focusing on your own body, I know. First with the rapid division of cells and now, millimetre by millimetre, every day you are growing yourself. I push my way up the hill and try to ignore the sharp pain in my side which could be your handiwork or could be Henry's, or could simply be a symptom of my general lack of fitness. Exercise is good for foetal development, I know, though I suppose that won't make much difference.

'Get rid of it,' Henry had said, and he had pushed his fingers into my stomach so hard I thought you'd be able to feel them, so hard I thought he was trying to rip you out of there himself. Get rid of it, he'd said, as if he was referring to a stain on a bed sheet or some sort of blood-sucking parasite. He'd spoken that way about a couple of church group leaders, once. They had climbed our front steps and asked if I wanted to be saved, and I did, oh God I did, but he slammed the door in their faces and slid the lock into place.

Get rid of it, he'd said of you, even though I hadn't breathed a word. I hadn't even thought about you while in his presence, just in case he had broken through the final barrier and had learnt to read my mind. I had been careful not to let my hand rest on my stomach more than usual. I had been careful not to let my eyes glaze over when he spoke, since Henry liked to clear my head by cracking it against the nearest hard surface. Instead, I kept you buried until the private daylight hours, until I heard the front door click shut and felt the house clear of him. Then I would sit at our kitchen table in silence and let my mind grow fat with thoughts of you, while I stared at the clock and tracked its movements. I'd heard that time slows down that way, and I wanted to savour each solitary tick. Thursday, 11.30. That's a little over 24 hours, and I wonder if my legs could hold out for that long and keep my head clear. I doubt it, since already I need a rest.

The door to the coffee shop chimes happily as I enter, the bell's enthusiasm not matched by that of the waitress, who sighs when she sees me. I pick a corner booth next to the window, and slide across the seat so I am huddled against the wall. The air conditioning has been turned up too high, and my flesh rises in tiny bumps as it often does when I need an extra layer of insulation, when I need to seem intimidating and larger to my enemy. I rub my body to warm it, careful of all the tender places. There are four fading purple circles on my forearm and I try to line my fingers up with them, the same way I have seen people try to fit their palms into other people's handprints hardened into concrete. Mine aren't a match, though that's no surprise; if my body could be dusted and lighted forensically, every inch would glow with Henry's arches, loops and whorls. I have read that by the seventh week of gestation a foetus has already developed an individual set of fingerprints. You are already unique.

'Can I help you?'

Oh please, yes, could you?

'I'll have a camomile tea, thanks.'

Research shows that light to moderate caffeine consumption is safe during pregnancy, but I'm unclear on the widely accepted definition of 'moderate' and know a lot of the data comes from studies involving pregnant rats. The process differs from creature to creature. From rat to human, from human to human, the process is different for everyone. I think that animal testing is cruel, on a whole, but an argument could be made that there are some things people need to know. For the greater good.

Growing up, I knew two things about my mother. The first was that she had long black hair, like mine. The second was that I had killed her. There was no information at all about my father, and my Child Safety Officer told me not to think on any of these things too much. Unfortunately, there was little else I wanted to think on, between the endless rotation of foster families and government homes and faces, large and twisted, familiar and unfamiliar at once. When I was eight I asked Mrs McTeague, the school librarian at the time, if she knew how to find out more. She had always been so supportive with class projects.

'I can't help you, Cal,' she had said, ducking her head so I couldn't see her eyes. She gave me a book on African wildlife instead and let me sit in her office while I read it. She knew I hated the communal reading room, with the low murmuring of other children and the erratic flipping of pages. She knew even such small sounds bothered me when I was trying to concentrate. She knew how I needed my solitude.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like in there for you, in your own little world. No day or night. No hot or cold. No food or water or air, other than that which I pass on. The ultrasound gave nothing away but a strange rushing, pulsing noise that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. I hope it doesn't overwhelm and confuse you, in there. I hope you don't get lonely. Sometimes I try to remember what it was like for me, when I was in your position, but it does no good. The human brain and memory can only stretch so far; some things need to be pushed out to make room for others.

Towards the end of my schooling I stayed with a family called the Clarksons. They had three children of their own and the eldest, Miranda, taught me to revise for exams by standing in front of a mirror and saying facts aloud until they stuck in my head. I liked the Clarksons, and I would have liked to have stayed with them for longer than the six months, had Mrs Clarkson not developed multiple sclerosis.

During this time, I met my grandmother. She was much younger than I imagined grandmothers to be, with a raspy voice and a smell of stale scotch and talc. We caught the train to Pelican Bay so she could show me where my mother had grown up. We climbed to the top of Break-Neck Cliff and sat with our legs dangling over the edge. I sucked in sea air and she sucked in nicotine while she spoke, carefully, about my mother.

'She liked to swim to clear her head. She loved the sea. She named you for it.'

I trembled with the effort of restraining myself and tried not to rush her for more. I could already see myself saying these facts aloud to the mirror. I could already see myself moving to Pelican Bay and settling down with my grandmother, with the memory of my mother. I could already see my life changing.

'She never went anywhere else. This was where we laid her to rest. She's still down there, you know. She's still swimming.'

I trembled again, but this time mostly in fear. I imagined my mother as some sort of interminable sea monster; her tired body wrapped in seaweed, her long black hair threaded with salt. I imagined her climbing out of the whitewash and up the side of the cliff towards us, her aching arms outstretched to claim me, to pull me down with her.

'If things had been different...' my grandmother said, but she let the rest of her words fall over the edge of the cliff, so I wasn’t sure what would happen if things had been different.

I sat by the phone for three weeks before I realised she wasn't going to call. I knew I should have spoken more, tried to appear more interesting. I shouldn't have complained when I stumbled and cut my leg as I tried to keep up with her, her footing as steady and sure as a mountain goat's. I shouldn't have told her I didn't know how to swim. I thought about catching the train to Pelican Bay by myself to surprise her, but instead Miranda and I rode into town and I looked up my name in the encyclopaedia. Calypso was a sea goddess. Her mother covered the world while her father was a giant who held the whole thing up. She kept a man prisoner for seven years. She wouldn't let him free.

My tea arrives; tiny flowers floating in hot water.

'Don't burn yourself,' the waitress says, but she doesn't sound as if she cares one way or the other. She looks worn out, and I wonder if she spends her whole day praying not to hear that door chime.

I stare into the pot and try to see shapes in the bobbing yellow clumps. When I was 18, I met a young man with green eyes and a slow, deliberate smile. He could find pictures in the clouds; a swan, a boat, two lovers in the grass. He could put words to the pictures as well, plucking stories from the heavens with such skill that by the end of the day those stories were more real than we were. He told me he saw me playing the piano. He told me he saw me learning to paint. He told me these things while he held my hand gently, stroking the back of it with his thumb. I try to read my tea, now, but it is only the past I see.

'I want to marry you, Cal,' he said to me once, and my heart had beaten right out of my chest and landed in the sky, where it became white and fluffy and read as a single, simple Yes.

Three weeks later, he rolled his car while telling me the story of a cloud creature that grew so large it became everything. I was trapped inside with his lifeless body for two hours, but he didn't suffer. Not as I did. They cut me out and told me I was lucky. They told me I would lose my limp, over time. I still had it when I met Henry, though that didn’t seem to bother him. I still have a scar down the left side of my face, too, which I don't want to lose. That seems to bother him a little.

I told Henry I wanted to study, and to work with victims of trauma and sufferers of chronic pain. I told him I wanted to teach them to play the piano. I told him I wanted to teach them to paint. He nodded, he encouraged me, until one day he changed his mind and broke each of my fingers. But he was sorry for it.

'I just want you here with me, Cal. I just want to take care of you.’

I had considered telling him I could take care of myself, but the truth was I wasn't so sure of it.

'I just love you so much. See?'

His eyes had been full and wet, his intact fingers vice-like on my waist, and I thought that I could see. If I looked at it a certain way. If I tilted my head and squinted.

I didn't want to see you, at first. The nurse offered to hold my hand but I gripped the sheets instead until my knuckles turned white, begging for a misunderstanding, hoping that you had disappeared through my silence and neglect. I didn't want you. You wouldn't want me, with my sallow skin and lank hair, with my swollen gums and concave chest. When I break and bruise I am slow to heal. These are all signs of malnourishment.

The doctor had pointed to a beautiful, floating blur, and I had tried to make a picture out of you. I had tried to build you a story, but I had no talent for it. Practice makes perfect, though, and the doctor had printed out a copy for me to carry home in my back pocket. In my head, I carried home memorised paragraphs from the waiting room brochures. Pregnancy should be a special time. There are many factors to consider when making a decision. A woman has a right to control her body. A woman has a right to choose. Say those lines in front of a mirror and repeat them until they stick. I would say them now, in front of the reflective coffee shop window, but the glass is dusty and streaked with grease, and my likeness is mottled and unformed. I don't think she'd understand. She rarely does.

'Do you know what you've done?' Henry had said. 'Do you know what will happen?'

I knew I had created life out of chaos. I can’t know the future, but I'd done some research. I'd read about crack babies that come out screaming for their next fix. I'd read about foetuses choking themselves before they are even fully grown. I'd read about young eating each other inside the womb. Intra-uterine cannibalism, they call it. Though that article had been about grey nurse sharks.

'Is the thing even mine?'

His voice had been harsh, and I had closed my eyes against it in case he could see how strongly I prayed. For an immaculate conception. For a severe case of sleepwalking. For a gestation period that would break the records. At altitudes of 1,400 to 1,700 metres, the pregnancy of an Alpine Salamander can last for up to three years, though the process differs from creature to creature. I am still not entirely sure what sort of creature I am. Part human, part titan, part sea. I'm still not sure what sort you are, either.

If things had been different. If I could build you a story.

It takes two hours to get to Pelican Bay by train. It takes 20 minutes to walk to the train station from the coffee shop. I could go there now. I could buy a ticket and board the train, take a seat next to a nice elderly woman and her knitting or else across from a couple of teenagers with their headphone speakers turned up too loud. I could find a house with a room to rent. I could find a job. In high school I could type 52 words per minute, and I wouldn't mind scrubbing toilets. I could let my belly grow fat with love of you. I could already see my life changing.

My bag sits open on the seat beside me and I try not to tremble as I rifle through it, try to keep my breathing even so you don't have to fend for yourself. In its depths I find travel tissues, a pen, a packet of gum with three pieces missing. I find my phone with the crack down the middle; a crack along its face which tells me I have five missed calls, though I don't know how I could have missed the shrill, shrieking sound of them. I continue to rake my hands through the debris at the bottom of the bag, even though I know, in my stomach, that I have left my wallet at home. I can see it on the kitchen bench, right next to that appointment slip. I can't even pay for the tea.

I like to walk to clear my head, when it gets heavy and full, but now I don't trust my shaking legs to hold me up. Instead, I fold my arms into a pillow on the tabletop and let them take the weight of it, though I do my best avoid the tender places. I press my ear into the cavern created between the old wood and my body. It echoes, there; a strange rushing, pulsing noise that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. It confuses and overwhelms me. It sounds like the sea.

Kate Zahnleiter was born and raised in South East Queensland, Australia. In 2005 she graduated with a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours), and has since been involved in community care and rehabilitation, working with individuals with mental illness and victims of violence and abuse. Her current goal is to make writing a larger part of her life, and to travel the world as widely as she can for inspiration.

LONELY by Joanne Bentley

2009-06-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

It was a cold November day the first time she saw him.

Snow had fallen the night before, covering the arbutus and oaks in strange but beautiful Christmas-like attire. Having grown up near the Rockies, she hadn’t expected this rare and lovely visitation of white on an Island of constant rain, nor the pang – the memory of snow – skies heavy with the smell of it; the bite of Northern wind. Swans in pairs often drifted into the little cove in springtime, but this one, swimming apart from a paddling of pintails, was alone. Somehow she knew – sensed – something was not right.

‘Where is your mate?’ she’d wondered…

~

The courtship that spring had been a thing of magic, their dark bills dipping together into the welcoming waters of the marshes under the pale, quiet light of a gibbous moon. Had any been near to witness their dance, it would have seemed she had been cast of pink pearls, and he of quicksilver. Soon, in the nest they’d rebuilt from the previous year, its moat plucked clean to ensure no danger would take them unaware, she laid five perfect eggs, and under his careful vigilance, set herself down to keep them warm.

Dew shone upon the reeds the morning he and his mate heard the frail piping of their young through the shells of their eggs. In a turning of daylight, perhaps two, the little ones would slip with them into the warming waters of the nearby marsh and feast upon the bounty of small crustaceans and water beetles waiting there to give them nourishment.

Anticipation brought him nearer the nest, and she had dipped her head at his approach.

Both had piped gentle encouragement at the still intact shells.

Days passed. All but one of their clutch hatched, and when after several more days it became clear the last one would not, she gently rolled it into the water, watching with liquid eyes as it softly bobbed and bumped away in the retreating tide.

Their young were hale and full of life. Between the lush reeds and bulrushes, and along the branches of the lazy river the two led them, sometimes joining up loosely with other families, but most often alone together. Once a young hawk tried for one of the signets as they rested together on a sandbar, but as the little one scrambled to his mother’s side, the swan had at once thrown wide his perfect wings and rushed the interloper, delivering a frightening blow that knocked the red-tail from the air, sending him spinning and sliding upon the seaweed-caked sand. A second time he rushed the hawk, but it leapt quickly into the air and made off, the Trumpeter lifting his chin crisply at the diminishing foe, shaking his feathers and bugling a warning in his wake.

Weeks passed, and the signets, their first feathers almost fully down, were able to feed themselves on the deeper vegetation their kind favoured. They were growing rapidly now, putting on weight and thickness which would serve them well in a few months' time.

Ever vigilant, their sire watched over them, and no harm came nigh them. Summer was gentle. Eagles routinely hunted the smaller mallards and pintails, spiraling high up onto the updrafts that they might bear their prizes to the ravenous eaglets waiting impatiently in strong, ancient nests. But for all their strength and power, they seldom eyed the swans.

The tides came in, and went. Food was plentiful, and now the four were testing their wings, beating them strongly against the playful breezes blowing in from the sea. Clad in soft grey-brown feathers, these were a credit to the pair who had bred them; three daughters and a son.

The signets now gathered in large troupes when they followed their parents from the nurseries in the marshes to the hay fields a short distance away. Here, they enjoyed the sweet, determined shoots growing even after a third harvest, sunning and preening in the late-summer warmth as the adults looked on.

~

Slowly, Fall began to have its way. Summer colours in the leaves now hinted at the amber, bronze, copper and auburn that would soon enfold green in the promise of rest. The Cob became restless with the need to be moving; gunfire had punctuated the early morning skies these last few days as hunters came to take a share of the bounty of ducks and geese.

It was a sound even those not hunted understood, and he often led his family to a nearby sheltering cove for safety. He knew others of their kind had already answered the call of warmer climes, and he felt his disquietude increasing; they would rise the following morning.

~

Mist hung low in the estuary. The air was cold and still.

The farmer had left a small stand of cow-corn in the middle of the field as part of his agreement with the local hunting association. A natural ‘hide’, the ducks were unable to pick out the shapes of men crouching there, and past years had seen consistent numbers fall to become seasonal delicacies on the menu of more than one of the finer restaurants in town.

When the light was sufficient, the swans and two other families had floated into the hay field for an early graze. A strange tension lay in the air: there was a sense among the mallards, wood-ducks and geese – a need not to fly.

Having arrived when it was still dark, the hunters now rubbed their hands against the cold as the dull morning light crept in. One or two whispered this maybe wasn’t a good day for it, then fell mute. A silent agreement – ‘wait and see’, passed between them, and so hands were tucked into armpits, legs awkwardly stretched, coughs stifled.

A short time later, a puff of wind tested the mist. It moved, sluggishly. Again the breeze rose, this time more persistent, and like a herd of sleepy cattle, the low clouds ambled forward.

His mate and young still grazing under his watchful care, the swan sensed the moving air and stretched his wings to powerfully greet it, eager to be aloft. One or two of the other adults bugled in agreement, and a wave of preparatory wing-beats passed among them. The signets sensed their parent’s anticipation and called excitedly between themselves as the ducks and geese around them squawked in protest.

Their heavier bodies required the swans to take a long take-off run, beating their wings with tremendous effort in order to get clear of the ground. As they rose, the nervous energy coiled around them was unleashed. Flocks of smaller birds seemed to explode into the air with the Trumpeters as if drawn helplessly in their wake.

Seeing this, the men lifted their rifles, leading the path of the game curving gently away from them.

They had begun to form a wide arrowhead, bugling encouragement to each other as the layers of mist fell away below them. Cracks like lightning shattered the air.

His mate fell first without a cry; her breast torn wide. He turned his head and called to her, hesitating in mid-beat as agony poured through his right wing.

He spiraled clumsily – too fast – toward the ground, the shape of what had been her perfection crumpled in a heap below him in the deep, dying reeds not far from their nursery. Somehow, he controlled his fall well enough to crash into the water near her, or he surely would have died from the shock of impact.

His existence was now a blinding woe of pain, made worse as he flapped to pull himself out of the water; where the end of his wing should have been was only shattered bone and torn flesh. It was gone from the elbow.

He called out to her as he approached, called again with a soft crooning urgency; trying to reassure. But she too, was gone from him.

Distantly, their young flew on with the others.

~

The men came shortly afterward. A half-suppressed sneeze had strayed the hunter’s aim just enough to cause this tragedy.

Not one given to weeping, he wept.

When they saw the male yet lived, and not fully grasping the extent of his injury, they tried to approach him thinking to take him to hands better able to help, but here was a creature strong enough to shatter a man’s arm with his wings, and he charged, hissing at them, driving them away from the wreckage of the stolen beauty tangled hideously in the reeds behind him. So deep was his bond with her he could not yet sense she was dead, and so he defended her as though she might rise again as if from slumber.

They stood awkwardly, then, some distance from him. One dug out his phone. Perhaps Conservation would know what to do. They mused about the fine – for there would surely be one, as the one on whose conscience this lay stood apart from them, deaf to their ruminations.

“I’m sorry, shit I’m sorry…” he whispered at the glaring Cob and the ruination of his shattered wing, his tears cold against his skin.

Hours passed. The stand off continued. Some nearby residents, drawn by the unusual sight of hunters gathered so near the homes along the shoreline joined them. A single mother and her daughter struggled their way across the treacherous mudflats then stopped – somehow impossibly close to the swan. They’d enjoyed many visits from the little family throughout the summer, but now as they watched him panting from the dizzying stress of his pain, their faces were pale and sad. They held onto each other tightly, and cried.

Finally, the Conservation officer arrived.

“Had some trouble figuring out where you were,” he said gruffly as he slogged through the sucking mud, “You might want to step back away from him, there,” this to the mother and child, but it fell on deaf ears.

The men drew into a semicircle around him, the few remaining residents who’d braved the chill clustered just close enough to witness the exchange. There was a resignation in the air, a sense there was but one humane outcome to this sad occurrence as they listened to the uniformed officer’s terse questions; watched him take notes.

“’Fraid there’s gonna be a penalty out of this, sir, you know that though.”

The hunter nodded numbly.

The officer turned toward the swan, flipping his notebook closed and tucking it into a pocket on the front of his pant-leg. He shook his head and spit, an unpleasant metallic taste building in the back of his mouth. He hated this part of his job. Hated it. He made his way toward the Cob who in turn rose unsteadily to his feet, his head pushed forward in a posture of warning as the man unclipped his pistol’s holster.

“Don’t you hurt him!”

So focused had he been on this grim task, the officer had all but forgotten about the mother and child.

“Don’t you hurt him – don’t!” the girl shouted, jumping free of her mother’s arms and into the path of the swan.

The officer stopped. Having no children of his own, he blinked at the girl, unsure of what to say.

“Honey I’m sorry, but you see…you see how he’s panting like that – ?”

“Don’t you hurt him – I won’t let you!” the child shrieked, her voice rising as she put her hands out in front of her.

The officer looked to the mother for help, but found none in the lifting chin, the tearfilled eyes.

‘You do this yourself. You’ll get no help from me.’ Her expression said clearly.

He shifted his cap awkwardly, and – stumblingly – continued.

“Honey, he’ll…he’ll never fly again with that wing, do you understand? If I don’t put him out of his misery, well, he’ll be alone. That’s if he lives. But he,” the officer cleared his throat, looking for words a youngster might grasp, “he’ll take a long time to die, honey. It’ll be painful, and the eagles will probably –“

“No they won’t, I won’t let them – mum and I won’t let them!”

He looked pleadingly toward the mother, and was about to speak again when the hunter who’d caused this misery interrupted.

“I’ll stick around. I’ll help. Let ‘im be, officer. Maybe you’re right and…” he looked at the Cob, his voice trailing off. The lump in his throat returned.

“Maybe he will die, but it won’t be no eagle that does it. He could live…have something of a life here. I’ll stick around and help. It’s the least I can do…” he said, his voice growing thick.

Everything in him – all of his training – told him he should do what had to be done. He swore under his breath, and looked toward the swan. There was a fierceness in his eyes, perhaps enough to keep him alive. The weather here was pleasant enough, even in winter. Maybe he’d make it.

The officer sighed, shaking his head.

‘I shouldn’t even be thinking this way,’ he thought.

“I can’t take responsibility for this, but okay. If he really starts suffering –“

“I will.” The hunter said hoarsely.

~

A strange and mostly silent vigil followed. Taking it in turns, the three kept watch as the swan lay in the reeds near his mate’s body. For days he hissed at and threatened anything that came near. One seagull, thinking it had found an opportunity, was nearly beaten to death before it escaped, but the effort of attacking it renewed the bleeding from the swan’s elbow, and that night he fell into an exhausted slumber haunted by the sensation of falling.

Nature though, in Her tender, gentle way, came to his aid. Under brooding clouds that swallowed the moonlight, the high tide reached the dark reeds where the body lay. Lifting it in gentle, lapping waves, the briny water softly carried her away as the Cob slept. In the morning, he awoke with a start, a jab of pain rising through his maimed wing. He looked round, and found himself alone.

The healing began.

~

Fall arrived gently. For the first time in his life, the swan witnessed the bounty of Nature’s treasure – leaves of gold and copper, floating upon the wind, dancing and pirouetting and at last coming to rest upon the tidal flats where eventually the sea claimed them.

His youth and strength served him well, and the amputation closed quickly. He fed in the rich beds of vegetation largely unaffected by the turning of the seasons, and found comfort in the company of the little pintails who stayed the year-round.

Often, he drifted up and down the branches of the river flowing between the sandbars of the estuary, finding his way inevitably to the little cove where the child would sometimes fling a handful of soaked bread into the water for him. He did not always eat, but drawing near, would watch her as closely as she did him.

His first winter was a blessedly mild one, and he adjusted – haltingly, to his inability to fly. Sometimes the sun would warm the tidal flats, and he would stretch and beat his wings against the inviting breeze, running and flapping hard, expecting to rise.

In the early Spring, when the others returned, he trumpeted his welcome and strained for the sound of her. He swam among them as they reclaimed their nesting sites, sometimes calling expectantly, other times, just seeking.

But she was gone from him.

Several nights later, he was drifting in the warm waters under a sky of perfect stars, listening to the courtship song of a newly bonded pair nearby. A pang so like loss poured through him; from some deep place like memory.

He let sound then a long trumpeting cry that echoed across the water and into the sheltering cove.

It was the last time, so far as any knew, that he uttered a sound.

~

That summer, the mother and child moved away.

When the tide was in, some expectation in him brought him near what had been their rocky beach, but the cottage stood quiet and empty; none greeted him upon the shore.

The months passed. He watched the pairs and their little signets, watched the young ones grow into their grey-brown feathers, followed this family or that from a tolerated distance. He could no longer join them when they flew to the fields to graze, so his joy was increased when they returned in the evenings. The weather became colder, crueler. Soon, they were leaving him again.

Sometimes he would forget, and running upon the surface of the water with one of the families, would beat his wings hard, expecting to join them.

October brought driving, biting rain. Many days, his only shelter was in the little cove.

There was enough food. Only a few of the pintails remained with him as winter set in.

It was a cold, crisp November day. The sun brought cheer to the estuary, and lay bright upon the snow that had fallen the night before.

Out of habit, the swan came into the sheltering curve of the beach below the little cottage.

He had almost reached the shore, when the familiar sound of a door closing floated down toward him. He looked up.

He did not recognize the woman making her way to the little stairway, and he hesitated, swimming some distance from where the retreating tide lapped the stones. He studied her carefully as she tentatively made her way down the ancient steps, and watched as she scattered food into the water between them, listening to the sounds she made as she crouched down. He sensed her patience; there was no threat here.

Cautiously, he drifted in, and fed.

***********************************************************************************

LONELY earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

***********************************************************************************

Joanne Bentley’s life-journey to this point has included learning to fly small aircraft (something she very much intends to return to), joining initial-attack forest fire fighters on the front-lines as the crew first-aid attendant, and lately, working and communing with birds-of-prey under the hat labeled “Professional Falconer”.

The short story “Lonely” is based entirely on her observations of a living Trumpeter swan near her home in North Cowichan Bay, and comes from her meditations on how he could have received such a life-lesson as the one he endures. Joanne’s current works-in-progress include several short stories, and a series of fantasy-fiction novels.

###

LATIN FOR PONDER by Gregg Cusick

2009-03-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

I am ersatz, a word I’ve wanted to use for the longest time. Can I say that I’m an ersatz? I’m an inferior substitute, a sad excuse you might say. I may be false or dishonest, in terms of society’s rules, although not unto myself—I’m a thief, a simple burglar really. And I’m something of an anomaly, a paradox, if you will, will allow me to use two more words I’ve wanted to for some time now. I’m a moral, ethical sort of thief. I adhere to a strict code of conduct.

And I’m also wealthy, at least relatively speaking, which is another irony since I’ve been working in the prison wood-shop for the past nineteen months, twenty-two days earning about a dollar and seventy-three cents per day, not the kind of fortune one salts away for an early retirement. Still, I’m fond of the traditional-values feel of the term, which also appeals to my sense of irony, since isn’t salt about the most abundant thing on the planet?

But I mentioned my wealth, so I can afford to ponder the linguistics—Christ, it’s a whole degree-bearing course of study at the state university not seven miles from here, though of course I can’t go there—and like I said, I’ve also got the time to ponder. In fact sometimes I imagine myself a professor of Philosophy or Linguistics or Ethics, in a state-funded think-tank, where I’m fed and clothed and fully supported, a place where the charter mission statement, perhaps on a bronze plaque beneath a statue, is the Latin infinitive to ponder, whatever that word might be.

That whole vision is not far from the truth, really, since right here in Central I’ve got three squares and a reasonably comfortable cot, a hands-on and not mentally taxing, satisfying employ (I operate a lathe), and a small living space that, while not the ivory tower of academia, is certainly simple and sparse enough to fit well as the milieu of a creative type, an artist perhaps. (Forgive me that, another word I’ve been trying to work into everyday conversation; and of the type, like the others, not so much appreciated by those around here.)

Forgive my digressions. As my high school English teacher, Mr. Frey, used to scratch in the margins of my essays, and as the court-appointed head-shrinker used to tell me here, months ago before I grew impatient and clammed up, Excuse me, but what’s your point? Precisely, doctor, I wish to discuss my code (and some of its implicit ironies), to explain my aforementioned wealth (its source, its meaning to other relevant parties), and then, quite frankly, having said my piece, to be left the fuck alone. Pardon my language.

A possible side benefit I’d hope would be some sort of personal epiphany if that’s not too strong a word (and if such understanding can result from casual pondering). Some realization for myself of what in my case has so many local folks, many of whom I know or know of or know their brothers and cousins (this being a small town and many of us have worked together, gone to school together, even church), what has so many locals so up in arms. This is no Unabomber treatise, and I’d hardly like it printed in the New York Times, but I sure wouldn’t mind, after I get out of here, to find some place like Ted did, Idaho or the Dakotas someplace, where people pretty much have their own codes, too. And where folks leave each other pretty much well enough alone.

The prison officials tell me, and it’s right here on page 3 of the News-Dispatch, that there’s at least a dozen picketers outside even now, protesting my release. Protesting, too or moreso, the transfer of funds that should be taking place some time this morning, the twenty-five grand (less, of course, taxes and lawyer’s fees, so that I’ll have in the end a deposit slip for about seven thousand and change, this my aforementioned wealth). The simple and legal, but also ethical, payment for service I provided, namely the “information leading to the arrest of the person responsible” for the “slaying” (this of course the media’s word, and one I was in no hurry to use), let’s just say the killing of a gas station convenience store clerk, January 26 of this year. At the Key-Mart, one of eighteen such establishments owned but not operated by Harrison Keymore III of Stone Mountain; the attempted robbery and murder taking place at the Store #17, corner of Woodstock and Cousins Streets, Bynum, Georgia.

Now I don’t know Harrison Keymore from Adam, but I went to high school with Candy, the deceased, and I had a pretty good idea who was responsible when I first heard about it here in the clink. A guy my brother’s age, three years ahead of Candy and me in school, a sociopath—a term I picked up from the therapist here—with no code at all and a mean streak clear through, name of Pinkerton (like the famous detective, ha!) whom everybody called Pinky. (And note the object-case pronoun usage, Mr. Frey.)

Anyway, when my brother paid me a visit here back in February, we talked about the incident, and he mentions casually how Pinky surprisingly paid off his annual Super Bowl debts that next week. (Perhaps Pinky’s only redeeming quality, his thread of a code: for years he bet on the Bills, and then anyone who played Dallas.) My brother tells me of the shooting, how there were no known witnesses, and how the owner of the chain of stores had put up this reward. This Keymore III, who was running for state congress and probably had insurance covering all of it anyway. So the slick businessman gets some good public image points whether the killer is found or not, but still the tightwad in him (and this how he got rich in the first place, taking good care of the family fortune) would hate to have to pay up.

So while most in town suspected Pinky, no witnesses and no murder weapon meant no crime. But that’s when I started pondering this, in the time I had here, spinning my lathe grinding chair and table-legs at a rate that astonished even myself, trying to get in the head of this code-less Pinky. I even ran the whole thing past the shrink here—a man himself, admittedly “fascinated by the criminal mind,” who no doubt has tax shelters and undeclared earnings well in excess of the reward pittance I should by now have in my account. To this doc I related Pinky’s penchant for firearms, his collection the local police had confiscated and fired every one, looking for a match for the bullet that killed our high school almost-friend Candy. I asked the shrink if such a character, a sociopath, I reminded the doctor, would be likely to dispose of the gun used in the robbery. He agreed that it was possible that such a character might have difficulty throwing a sentimental item such as that off a bridge into murky waters. Might he not hide it, instead, I offered, to the widening eyes of my therapist.

I continued pondering the case for several weeks, until an article in the “police blotter” section of the Dispatch caught my eye. Deer hunting season ended January 1st, and yet some brazen local youths had ignored their calendars and continued shooting Bambis well past the legal date. I guessed—and what did I have to lose?—that Pinky was of this ilk, that he’d be hunting perhaps even still. And that a favorite gun might be safely stashed in a deer-stand on his family’s seventy acres west of town. I hatched a deal with the D.A. and prison officials which would greatly reduce my own prison time if my hunches (of course I described them as certainties) turned out to be accurate. Which in fact they were, nearly exactly, to the degree that had I not been incarcerated at the time of the murder I’d have been brought up on charges myself, as at least an accomplice, or how else could I know so much?

Now I contend that I’d have done the moral thing and supplied the information no matter about the reward, and no matter whether it could help my own situation as it did, in reducing my 36 months to slightly more than twenty. I contend this, but I’m honest, and I of course can’t know this for certain. The local columnist who wrote the article I’m looking at now, the one condemning me more even than Pinky himself, invokes the term “honor among thieves,” wondering to her loyal readers if I should have perhaps protected my “fellow ne’er-do-well,” my high school “partner in crime,” protected him with my silence. Clumping criminals like an inferior race. Give me a fucking break.

Which gets me around, though, to my code and the code-less around me. Now Dr. Freud in his penthouse office here (overlooking the chain-link, razor-wired grandeur), a suite full of taxpayer-endowed plants and numbered-lithograph Rorschachs on the walls, he tells me that I shouldn’t be concerned with what other people think. Which to a large degree I’m not, if those others would just let me alone. But they won’t. Not him, not the lawyers, not the picketers outside, not the newspaper writers with their screaming headlines of indignation, “Crime Pays in Bynum.” Nor does my own family, nor Candy’s. Nobody seems to have the tiniest understanding of my situation, yet they won’t just let me take my few bucks and hopes for a new life and head to Idaho. So I’m appealing, I guess, for a little understanding. What’s so funny?

In the interest of fairness (one of the prime values in my code, along with trueness to oneself), let me to the best of my knowledge present a few of my detractors—

The judge: Hating his job the day he had to rule in my favor, that there was nothing in the reward offer that prevented me, a criminal, from getting paid. (Law enforcement officers pay off informants every day, my lawyer pointed out.)

My lawyer: Who told that columnist he rued the day he passed the Bar, that he’d one day be defending the likes of me, but adding that he was defending the Constitution, “even when it protects the rights of vermin”; such a crock, from a guy who snorts coke, slugs his kids, and has to weasle himself out of a drunk driving arrest once a year.

The columnist: Who champions the just cause, condemns, say, animal testing, pays a grand for a purebred-AKC-registered, when they put down a dozen a week at the pound; who condemns alcoholics and addicts but couldn’t live without her sleep aids and back spasm medications (sore, no doubt, from the crosses she bears).

And all the rest of them, who condemn me while they fill out the insurance claims for their stuff, calling that Cracker Jack broach a priceless heirloom and that handsaw a $200 Makita. Those who take two newspapers from the box for only one quarter, who pitch their beer cans and cigarette butts, not to mention their washers and stoves, by the roadside, who pass their grudges on like chain letters (while maintaining a crisp copy for themselves).

And forgotten in all this: this lynch-mob after me has forgotten Pinky. Pitiful, unchangeable Pinky, who blew away an old friend and probably laughed. Who will get thirty years and serve maybe six, who will be out before you’ve gotten your own shoplifting kids out of the fifth grade. Who’s got a mean streak wide as I-95. But who won’t be in Idaho, I bet.

In grade school, we used to call our town “Buy-none,” and the group of us—my brother and me, Candy, Pinky, Jerry (who later became a cop, ha!), and Cal who moved away before high school—had a pact to pay for as little as possible. Candy (his real name was George Herman, named for the Babe himself, and like him in some ways) used to steal mostly sweets, chocolate bars usually, gum, little stuff. It’s amazing he ever got the job at Key-mart, where when he died he was standing behind the counter munching peanut M&Ms and reading the letters in Penthouse. (My brother, who wasn’t there of course—there were no witnesses—told me this, and said he heard it from Jerry, who heard it from a cop friend who was first to the scene. Blood and M&Ms and Candy slumped over the counter, a hand on a glossy page that began, “I never thought I’d be writing your magazine, but . . .”) Candy used to lift stuff from the Key-mart all the time, magazines and beers and motor oil, would sell it at discount prices around town, and then tell his manager about young shoplifters, whom he could describe quite well from his own experience. “Shrinkage,” that was the retail term for the loss; Candy was responsible for a great deal of shrinkage in his twenty-seven years.

My brother and Cal and Pinky used to go for bigger stuff, for baseball gloves from the big discount store at the shopping center, chicken and burgers from the cafeteria-style diner at the mall, things they stuffed in their jackets. I was very selective even back then, taking only from those I had some score to settle with. I worked at a dry cleaner’s for a time—when I was thirteen and fourteen. I’ve always worked. And people used to come in demanding service, pounding the counter bell, pointing to spots and wrinkles, demanding one-hour service in their busier, more-important-than-others’ lives. Telling me, “Kid, let me talk to your boss,” when I was doing most of the work while he played golf.

People put their addresses on the cleaning receipts, and I’d go to their houses later and grab a lawn chair or a couple of their pink flamingos, never keeping the stuff but arranging it neatly, like the ensembles in furniture showrooms, in the woods at the dead end of our street. If the people worked in stores, I’d go there and take something. Sometimes I’d enter their houses through an open window or a screened porch door, walk around in their cool, dark homes while they were working. I’d assess their belongings and then grab something small but meaningful. Something they’d later ask their wives, “Hey, did you do something with my fountain pen?” And later on, when I started taking stuff I’d sell or pawn, I’d only lift stuff I knew was insured. TVs and stereos were easy, computers sometimes (I’d always leave the disks), golf clubs and power tools from garages. It was remarkably easy, really.

In later years, sometimes I’d follow people home, someone who cut me off in traffic, thoughtless folks I saw pitch litter out their car windows. When I worked in restaurants, I’d note the names from credit cards of patrons who stiffed me or treated me like a servant, so superior were they. I could usually find their addresses in the phone book. Simple. Maybe when their stuff turned up missing, they might have pondered the possible connection, the one I’d made.

The shrink here tells me my emotional growth was stunted about the time I left off working at the dry cleaner’s all those years ago. Dr. Freud tells me that when my friends grew up, and grew out of the thieving stage a lot of kids go through, that I graduated to higher-ticket items while they moved on to the adult world of responsibility. I ask him about Candy, a petty thief who’s dead, about Jerry who can’t pay his mortgage, who gets a few bucks a month to let gambling go on all over town, whose wife cheats with one of his neighbors. About Pinky, or his dad, a tax attorney who finds every client a loophole. He says I’m incapable of real friendship or a serious relationship, because I never learned how to take responsibility, and that I don’t know my identity. I tell him that’s what I’m doing here, is taking responsibility, and pondering who I am. And as for emotional growth, I feel things. I feel plenty, I tell him.

One of my last days here, maybe my last spinning the lathe. Maybe I’ll buy myself one with the reward money, and set it up in my shack in Idaho, and make the most beautiful furniture you ever saw. Tables of oak and elm and ash—I must’ve told you, I believe in wood; it’s absolutely true to itself—cabinets of knotty pine and cedar, rockers maybe of birch, something you don’t see around here. What I hate is that particle-board furniture that I see in everybody’s houses. The bookshelves and cabinets and tables with the plastic wood-grain veneer, it’s everywhere. Get it wet and it bubbles and peels like sunburned skin. So goddamned phony. We all are, I tell the shrink. I am ersatz. And you can print that in your column.

*************************************************************************************

LATIN FOR PONDER earned Second Place in the 2008 Competition.

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Gregg Cusick wrote his first real story, about “Nag, the Horse,” when he was nine. Some years later, in 1990, he received an MA in English-Creative Writing from North Carolina State University. His stories have appeared in Chelsea, The Crescent Review, Alligator Juniper, the Raleigh News & Observer, The Mochila Review, and elsewhere. He tutors literacy and tends bar in Durham, NC.

THE ETIQUETTE OF MOURNING by Rachel S. Thomas-Medwid

2009-03-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

The body arrives unblemished. Beneath its surface, he senses an undefined entity. He tries to put on finger on it, reaching past the adornment, the prim efficiency of her tight pearl gloves that look like they belong to another era. He feels the swift bind of them, but it is another moment before the sensation reaches him. It is when the ramble of the air conditioning slows down that it comes to him.

There, running the river of the corpse, is a thread of sensuality. In all of his postmortem makeovers — the object of everyday life adhered to the body in an effort to sweeten death — he has never felt this. It brings a welling of liquid beneath his tongue, a small pulse to the glands in his neck. Ashamed, he pulls himself back into the narrow line of his profession. Swiftly covering the body, he tries to make it smell, at least, like the others. When the injections are complete he locks the funeral home and goes home to his wife.

Inside the sedate shadows of their house, he sees her office door closed; she is with a patient. Above the ledge of the door sit a wooden plaque, the etching of distant hills. They had gotten it on their honeymoon, in California, when their wine hunger had boosted them and their lips had chattered at the sight of the fertile green slopes. They had taken in each other with a tight-breathed urgency, the days giddy with not only the future, but the immediate past of themselves.

He feels, impulsively, the need to place his palms on his wife’s lower back. Instead he moves into the kitchen, the weight of what he has to tell her slowing him down. Then he sits, stalled and silent, on the floor of the kitchen, waiting for her to emerge.

~

Behind her desk she listens as the patient lays himself out piece by piece. Sometimes she knows what to do with these fragments, which ones to mold and hand back. Others she does not. These patients are the ones she can hear at night, their voices slipping through the air vent of her office. From there, they travel through the internal paths of their house, reaching her in the sleepless hours. She had asked her husband once, whispering close to the thick band of his neck, if he heard them. His eyes had collapsed ever so slightly at his answer, but she had seen and chose not to ask again.

When her patient departs, she finds her husband in this kitchen, mouth resting on the rim of his blue mug. She notices there is nothing in it.

“Do you want me to make a pot?” She nods at the coffee machine.

He shakes his head.

“What’s the matter?”

“A body today.”

She pauses, waiting as she is trained, for more.

He continues, finally, when the wait has slipped close to her lungs. “You know her.”

“Who is it?”

“A patient of yours. Susan McKinley.”

She is not surprised, but stops her movement anyway. She knows of the double mastectomy, the chemotherapy, the desire to live and then let it go. She heard directly from Susan herself. But something in Susan’s voice their last session had lingered with her, confusing the direction of her thoughts.

“The memorial service is tomorrow, if you want to go.”

She declines with a short shake of her head.

“I’d like it if you went.”

She is surprised at the request.

“I didn’t know her that well, is all.” She responds.

“You were her psychiatrist. How could you not know her? If you didn’t know who she was, who did?”

“Maybe no one.”

She continues with the coffee preparation as the silence creeps between them. She knows she has just shut the door but cannot reach for the handle. Instead she inhales the scent of freshly ground beans. When she turns around he is gone and she can feel that he has abandoned the whole house. He will go back to the funeral home, she knows, unable to resist the tide that draws him there.

She leaves the coffee untouched and walks up the back stairwell to their bedroom. In front of the closet she plucks through a line of clothes. The sapphire silk shirt she chooses hardens her skin, the black pants cutting against her knees. They feel honest against her body, tight enough to confine the pulse in her belly without erasing its presence. After running her fingers through her hair she leaves without turning toward the mirror.

Outside the air holds the first breath of late fall, murmurs of cold letting themselves loose prematurely. As she turns the bend of their street, the funeral home comes into sight. Sitting at an angle against its brick neighbors, she notices immediately what her husband refuses to see; the decaying paint like a worn summer tan, the neon sign at odds with the building’s structural dignity. It had belonged originally to a doctor in the time of unanesthetized patients and experimental medicine; a house born into linear progressions of a life.

Inside, the air quickly transforms. It is always this way here, as if the home itself has learned the art of respect. Schooled in the etiquette of mourning, her husband had colored the walls and floors in tones appropriate for grief. Halfway down the hall to his office, she turns toward the light emerging from the slumber room. Inside is Susan.

From the doorway, the body appears to be shrouded in red, floating in a liquid uterus. Stepping inside, she realizes it is only an illusion of the coffin’s interior. Susan lies inside, the buttons of her shirt gripped to the tip of her neck, two spots of rouge on her cheeks. She wonders if her husband did Susan’s makeup, the rest subtly acceptable yet not capturing the correct essence.

She reaches toward the face to fix it, but finds her hand on Susan’s shirt instead. Her fingers slide the pearls through the slits, the release an indulgent breath.

On automation, she is unable to stop them from an instinctive descent to the bottom. When there are no more buttons to let loose, she opens the flaps of the shirt. Someone has put a bra on Susan, flesh-colored and sagging like aged skin. Snapping the front hook, the sound echoes through the room.

The scars are a baby-skin pinkness, not the polished blaze she had imagined. Running the lines of Susan’s chest, she searches for the loss her patient had feverishly voiced.

“War,” Susan used to say. ‘I am at war with my body.” On softer days, days of respite where the pain was muted, Susan would look head on and say “All’s fair in love and war, they say.”

Unable to feel Susan’s destruction directly, there is instead the defeat of Susan’s husband, Mark. The way, maybe, his tongue had run the lengths of her scars to express that she was still whole to him. And then on her naval, a moment of jealousy so black she has to lift her hand away, away from the center of Susan’s life; Mark and her two baby boys, digging through the abyss she has left them in.

She wants to go to her husband now, but cannot make herself move. Lowering her face toward the two quarter-moons she tries to match her eyes against them. Before she can, her lips have reached the coolness of Susan’s skin, the smell of formaldehyde potent. The skin is slick, unfriendly, but she does not lift her head, instead turning it in an underwater slowness until her ear fades into Susan’s chest. It is only in the wait, when she is aware of its silence, that she can uncouple from the corpse.

Her husband is in the doorway.

“I don’t want to try anymore. I can’t," she says, not meeting his eyes.

“Try?”

She feels a piece of anger roll toward him. What else have they been trying for, if not this? The war with her own body to conceive lost repeatedly.

“For a baby. A baby.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want it anymore. That’s it.”

That’s it? his eyes question. He moves past her to the coffin. She expects to see his fingers tremble, shake like leaves falling in their last moment, but they remain steady.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Is all he asks after replacing the last button.

All she can do is nod, able, at least, to give him this.

~

With her agreement hanging between them she departs. He stands over the body, staring into Susan’s eyes. He is not surprised at the depth of them, the consistency that remains alive, for he sees it often; the way they bind to the last moments of the world. But he is taken still with the carnal sense of the body and how the image of his wife’s lips on it has not erased his own urgency. When he saw her fingers sing along Susan’s skin the compulsion that swept through him had again been shameful. He had managed to shed the quick and painful desire before she turned toward him.

Before leaving, he brushes his knuckles against Susan’ cheeks. It is only when he wipes the rouge off that he feels it can be right, that tomorrow might bring him a separate story.

Back in the shadows of their house, he cannot take his eyes from the objects of their collective past. In their possessions he can only see the five years they have been trying. I don’t want to try anymore, she said, and he knows he has to shape that into something that can fit into the palm of his hand. He needs to take from his wife her knowledge of how to veer a mind from the path it has been traveling.

But when he arrives in the bedroom, back-lit by bathroom light, he sees that the shut in her eyes is deliberate. The rigidity in her limbs is not against him, he understands, but for him.

~

In the morning the space between them settles into a low turbulence, a jostling she finds comforting as she digs through the closet. This time she chooses a dejected navy dress, the timeline of it instantly apparent. Four years it has lived in there untouched, bought one year after the trying began.

All of this time passed and they had not gone for help. She knew early on her inability to face the machines, the doctor’s dense fingers; she does not want them, above everything, to feel what she does not have. They had argued about it, thick words that temporarily choked the halls of their home. And then he had conceded, falling into a posture of polite resignation.

They walk together to the funeral home, crushing an occasional leaf of early demise against the sidewalk. The home is empty when they arrive and he begins the choreography of his work. In the ritual of preparation, the wheeling of Susan’s body to the receiving room, the setting of chairs and arranging of flowers, she finds distraction. Watching, distant, she places herself in a chair and waits.

Mark is the first to arrive, the two boys in their baby suits towed like caught fish. Their little bodies muscled into clothes designed for men makes her want to set them free. She remains isolated as the mourners arrive, with bloated eyes and spotty cheeks, huddling in small groups. When Mark approaches the coffin, his legs stutter before he reaches Susan. Before she knows what she is doing, she is by his side.

She touches his arm and feels not the flexibility, which Susan had described, but an unforgiving severity. Whatever she had meant to say slips away in the depth of his loss. Mark’s eyes on her are lucid; they do not ask who she is, only why.

Then her husband enters, dismissing the air of anticipation with his expertise. Mark stays by the coffin as one by one people speak. She can feel the grief around her, inching onto the carefully chosen carpet, but there is nothing in her but dryness. When the service is complete, Mark pulls the boys away from the coffin and looks directly at her. In his eyes she sees a flash of what he will in time become without his wife. Then he is gone, the mourners trailing out behind him.

In the emptiness of the room she is able again to look at Susan. The body is blanched, unchanged from the night before save the absence of blush. She turns to her husband then, burrowing her eyes into him for an answer. It is only when his hand reaches for the coffin lid that she feels it.

It isn’t in her chest as she craved, but near her naval, fluttering like the wingtips of a moth. Her hand, unconsciously, quickly, follows it to catch the movement.

Her husband does not see, but rather feels the change in her. The sensation to him is as shallow as hers; the underwater instinct a bottom feeder might feel in the immeasurable ocean when day is swept by night. When she takes her hand from her belly and gives it to him, they walk together out to the hall.

Outside, the words seems to enter her body like a cone of chilled air, momentarily rushing her blood before dying.

“All’s fair in love and war, they say.”

The words that run through her are so fertile, so immediate, that she is unaware if they have left her body. But she hears them nonetheless, dropping to the pavement, at mercy, like the fragmented leaves of the fall, to the full weight of her departure.

************************************************************************************

THE ETIQUETTE OF MOURNING earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Rachel S. Thomas-Medwid’s fiction has been published in Farmhouse Magazine, In Posse, Literal Latte, and A & U Magazine. Along with receiving the Alice Brandt Deeds Prize for Excellence in Creative Writing, a few of her writing honors include placing in the 2008 The Movie Deal Screenplay Competition, the Writer’s Digest Competition, and the National John Steinbeck Competition.

As news editor of the American Meteorological Society’s monthly magazine, Rachel both edits and writes about the hot topic of global warming. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and three young children, all of whom provide great inspiration for her fiction.

###

THE STANDARD WASH by Heidi Lebauer

2009-03-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

The pallid Russian man with the limp waits for her. He is always patient. And consistent, too. Whenever she comes, which is weekly, he is there, as if expecting her. But they never speak. . .how could they? And his green eyes avoid hers—she usually fidgets with her purse at the beginning to avoid the awkwardness until the suds come up over the windshield in a magnificent spray and suddenly, she is encased in a wet, velvety cocoon—all alone, all alone. This is when she closes her eyes and breathes deep and listens without concern to the hard spray going back and forth and over and under. If it went on too long she would fall asleep, she is quite sure of it, but it is for only a few moments, like a forbidden glance.

Through the lather and her heavy eyes she barely makes out the little red light turning to green—her favorite part—the bit she most anticipates—the part where she lets off on the brake and allows the track to take her in—she relinquishes control for these minutes and feels the tug and release and slowly the little Russian man with the limp disappears and it becomes Just Her.

When the huge wet slabs of fabric pound across the front of the vehicle, she always worries about the antenna. It is always okay. And her world gets darker and more cocoon-like and she begins to feel the urge welling up inside her yet again and for once she doesn’t have to tamp it back down like rising sludge. For once, she doesn’t have to act like she is well when she is not. Happy, when she is sad. Fulfilled, when she is empty.

That oily smell. That waxy smell. It permeates her nostrils and she cannot help but wonder as she moves slowly along the track toward the soft little droplets of Rainex that will patter across her windshield, how often does the Russian man service the car wash? The mechanics of it look ancient, ruinous even. She fantasizes about the track grinding to a halt half way between the wash and the rinse—stranded alone in the middle of the giant, belching cleaning machine. Would anyone come for her? Her husband? Her children? Her parents? The Russian man with the limp?

Since it is a fantasy, she imagines that they don’t. She imagines that she is left there, sitting by herself. Left to her own self for an unidentifiable amount of time. She has snacks stashed under the seat. A half-empty bottle of water in the drink holder. Some mini M&M’s in the glove compartment. She doesn’t consider that if such a thing happened, she could just get out of the vehicle and walk out. No, she is stranded alone and apparently not a soul knows where she is. And it is thrilling.

This is why she almost misses her cue. The jet engines start up as she edges toward them. One on either side blowing like the dickens. Whirling and groaning and screaming. Oh, but that is her. . .

Mouth stretched into an oval. Eyes scrunched together in effort. Middle-aged face, red with the blood-rush, taut and angry. It could be likened to the howl of an injured animal, one that has drug itself into a sheltered place to die. It is a call to the gods for mercy. It is a pleading to oneself to survive.

She screams because of the endless needing. It’s the kids. Or the dogs. Or her husband. Or the phone. Or the house. Or the yard. Or the piles of laundry that never cease. Or the bellies that must continuously be filled. Or the dishes that need to be washed. Again.

She used to have interests outside of all that. Could speak on current events. Had her haircut every 6-8 weeks. Had hobbies. Had passion. Had something other than Them.

She screams for her lost self. Her lost friends. Her lost energy. She has never felt more alone than now, which is ironic since she is hardly ever by herself. But she knows this, deep down, that lonely feeling, that emptiness—it has nothing to do with the others. The one she misses most is Her. There is a shell of a person looking back at her in the mirror—the one with the dark rings around her eyes and the increasingly deep crevices around the mouth. There is no time. There is not time. There isn’t.

At the end, there is a creaky, steamed garage door that opens always too quickly—almost startlingly- as the jets quiet themselves once more. There is also a little light that turns green to let her know that she can now put her vehicle in drive, yes, take back control. There are a few moments between the jets and the light urging her back out into reality. She sips her water then, as she waits, and checks her face in the rear view mirror in a cursory search for signs of disrepair.

Out comes a shiny van. Sparkling and well-maintained.

Her husband disapproves of her spending so much at the car wash. He thinks it is frivolous. Pointless, too. He says, why clean it if it’s just going to get dirty again?

But she knows otherwise, doesn’t she.

*************************************************************************************

THE STANDARD WASH earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

*************************************************************************************

Heidi Lebauer is a member of SCBWI and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN. She is currently at work on both a stage play for children and a romantic comedy for the screen.

###

THE REUNION by Debbie Browning

2009-03-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Fiona Byrne is a woman of no significance. Life’s disappointments have won her, in victory claiming the vibrant trophy of her soul and leaving empty the mirrored case that displayed it. Cleverly, she employs those mirrors; dazzled by them and their own reflections, few notice she is an illusion.

Now, all her tricks sufficiently performed for the duration, she sits alone in the corner of a long gray couch in a room overflowing with conversations she cares nothing for. There is no one here she feels affinity to; her grandmother and Aunt Sarah have long been gone.

The crowd shifts and jostles in the small room. Unbalanced, a man slumps to the cushion beside her. Peripherally, she watches a speckled hand rise from the comfort of a tan polyester knee and push the bridge of square glasses to the top of a flat red nose. Becoming aware of her, he swivels the hand mid-flight, a vague wave hello. Misfit dentures smack noisily on a celery stick as he asks her, loudly, slowly:

“Where…. is… your husband… then?”

“I’m not married.”

“You… and… Ricky divorced….,” smack smack, “Hate…. to…. hear it did you… bring… the kids then?”

“I don’t have kids.”

He furrows his brows and submits her to a darting inspection. “Aren’t… you… Sally Ann, Myrtle’s…. girl?”

“I am Fiona Byrne.”

Hearing this, he dismisses her with a grunt and a gesture then rises irate and clumsy from the couch. A glob of peanut butter perches awkwardly on the edge of the emptied cushion, as though unsure whether to stay or follow.

Fiona pops a thumb knuckle, the slow crack the emotional equivalent of a wildly thrown dish. Sally Ann is a mildly retarded, thirty-something cousin. To be mistaken for her is an affront, yes, but like a bee sting; the true injury, like knife stabs, is voicing her failures to anyone, let alone the lush, ill-tempered Uncle Fink.

She has been judged unworthy by the bottom of the barrel.

A ‘glass-half-full’ kind of woman would pare the compliment from the encounter: after all, Fiona had just been mistaken for a woman at least ten years her minor. Fiona, however, has not seen a half-full glass for many years.

Aunt Sicily, scrawny and puckered beneath a fake mound of blue-black hair, shuffles to a stop nearby. In a skirt as tight and red as her wrinkled lips, she raises birdlike arms and squawks out above the noise: “Someone has tracked dirt on the carpet. Please, check your shoes! Please, check your shoes!”

Fiona crosses her short legs at the ankles but does not inspect her shoes. It would be a silly gesture, like a ghost checking its pulse.

Fiona leaves no footprints.

~

The middle of seven children and the fourth girl before three much-awaited boys, Fiona grew up feeling like an eleventh finger: useful in its own way, but primarily unattractive and not worth touting.

Two relationships in college reinforced those feelings. The first was with Sam, a boy cockier than his looks or intellect would warrant, who after a year of dating (and Fiona’s fifteen-pound weight gain) told her that he was breaking up with her because the relationship had no future; he could never marry a woman with no waist. The second relationship lasted much longer. Who is more like me than me? she would wonder happily in response to Jordan’s claim that he wanted to marry someone ‘just like her’. After five years of being the girl he loved in the mean time, one day Fiona came home to find Jordan packing his bags and aglow in the glory of a woman ‘so wonderful, you’ll love her, she’s just like you!’

In the twenty-five years since, Fiona has not dared risk her heart. She has not dared risk the familiar discomfort of her loneliness for even a moment’s hope of something better. So she lives in a quiet, safe misery that greets her like an abandoned but familiar house after a busy workday.

Fiona does not think often of the times and people who have formed her. But they have not left her. They are heaped in her psyche, where they compost and rot and fertilize weeds of self-doubt, and choke her once lovely self-esteem.

Intuitively, she knows things are amiss. Sometimes she wakes in the earliest morning hours sick with a desperate unrest: life passes while I fail to live! Then sleep comes, and waking, and before she leaves the house she dons a dark cardigan and a mask of indifference, and thus enters protected into the busy-ness that camouflages her barren life.

~

Fiona’s family is outside, the life of the party. Her brothers Ray, Thane and Willis are the immodest stars of a rowdy football match. She hears their whoops and deep-voiced shouts above the low murmurs in the living room.

She rises and walks to the dining room, where an antique walnut table bears the weight of typical mountain foods: cornbread, cole slaw, ears of corn, potato salad, chicken casserole, green beans, sliced ham, various sweets. Fiona is not hungry, but she takes a paper plate and fills it.

Every morning, Fiona rises from bed and thinks, I wonder if I’ll die today. It does not sadden her to think she might. She can find no useful purpose for her self, no point to her existence. Why endure it? But endure she does, for she realizes each day takes her one step closer to death and whatever it holds, which surely must be better than this empty life.

Someone bumps into her. A roll tumbles to the carpet from the edge of her plate. Fiona squats to retrieve it, thinking, Sicily will have a fit. But then, who in their right mind carpets a dining room?

“Is that you, Fiona? Fiona Byrne?” It is a deep voice, soft, hesitant and hopeful.

Fiona stands, and a wide smile lifts her cheeks and crinkles the corners of two green eyes that sparkle and flash.

Smoke and mirrors.

“Yes, I’m Fiona.” She doesn’t recognize the man, at first. He is tall, several inches over six feet. His sandy brown hair is cut military-style. He has large blue eyes and a strong nose, full lips and a square chin. He is thin beneath khakis and a short-sleeved, blue-striped sport shirt.

He is looking at her with… awe? His face shines with it.

He closes his eyes and covers them with a shaky hand. When he opens them again, they are welling with tears.

“It is you. You don’t recognize me, do you?” He takes a step back, for her better inspection.

Then she remembers and sucks in her breath.

When it is released it carries a name: “Stanley.”

Her right eye twitches: inside her, a mirror has cracked.

~

His fists pound on the front door. “I know you’re in there, and you’d better run. I’m coming after you, you hear me?” he screams. “I’m coming after you so you better run.”

Inside, she crouches behind a country-blue couch. It is worn and faded and the middle droops like an old swayback mare. It is so different than when it was delivered seven years ago. Then, it had been a shiny beautiful thing, the first new living room suit she’d ever owned. Lord, how proud she’d been. How she’d monitored what went on it: no food, no shoes, no feet, no dirty kids. How many times had she made them sit on the floor instead?

So pointless now.

She puts hands over her ears to muffle the pounding and screaming. The skin on her hands is red and scabby and cracked from too many hours immersed in detergent and water, too many hours cleaning everything in the house over and over again every day: floors, walls, light switches, clothes, bedspreads, shoes, the couch, light bulbs. Yes, even light bulbs. Jeddy will not tolerate a dirty light bulb, so every light bulb in the house gets washed every day.

For ten long, miserable years she has done it. And for ten long, miserable, miserable years she had been beaten on just like that front door, any time she made a mistake, a misstep. If she breathed wrong and it upset whatever illogical sense of balance existed in Jeddy’s mind, she paid for it with bruises to her body, bruises to her dignity.

She can not take it any more.

But she is afraid, so afraid. Why is he here when he should be at work? Can he know her plans?

Ten minutes more and she would have been gone. Moments earlier, she had been in Zed’s bedroom packing the bare necessities plus a few of his favorite toys, hoping the toys would make this just a little bit easier. She saw the boys through the window as she scurried around: Stanley, ten, under the shade of a big maple tree at the edge of the thick woods, wearing his favorite red cowboy hat and wrestling with the chain on his old rusted bike; Zed, six, on the back porch playing with his miniature cars.

They are oblivious to her plans, and that is exactly what she wants. She is not sure how they will react to leaving, and if they rebel against it, she wants it to be after they are in the car and far from here.

The pounding gets louder. As a precaution this morning after Jeddy left for work, she locked the deadbolt. The key to it has been lost for years, so they never use it. Now Jeddy knows something is up because it is locked, and it has turned his normal fury to a black rage.

Suddenly the pounding stops and she sucks in a breath and wonders what he is up to. She thinks about the windows. They are locked, too, but will he break one to get in?

She drops her head into her hands and silently cries out to her mother.

Can you help me? I need you!

~

They were so poor growing up.

Of course.

In this southwestern West Virginia hollow that has been her home for twenty-six years, poverty is an ogre that roams the hills and devours any blooms of motivation and hope; he belches out ignorance and addiction; he seeps gloom. In his wake is the rubble of education and opportunity.

These hills are beautiful to gaze upon, but their rich green canvas is stretched over a stench of despair.

And she has breathed it so long.

Growing up, there were eight sisters in two bedrooms sharing four beds and four blankets. Her parents slept on an enclosed back porch that stepped down into a yard of stingy, stubborn clay that refused to yield anything but the paltriest vegetables.

Food was hard-earned. Laughter was scarce. Heat was a sweet dream.

But there was strength and dignity that flowed like a river from their mother and she poured it into them, nearly drowned them with it.

So what if their clothes were made from the discarded flour sacks collected from the local mill? They were clean and pressed to perfection; their stitches were impeccable.

So what if they were made fun of at school?

“You’re Kelly stock,” she’d say. “Hold your head up and be proud.”

“Your great-great grandmother came over on the Mohongo in 1851 and worked like a slave to pay for all her brothers and sisters to come to America and escape the famine,” she’d say. “You’re here today because of a strong woman. Her blood runs in you. Hold your head up and be proud.”

“We’ve always been a poor bunch, and your father is nothing to be proud of, but we work hard and we deserve the dignity we claim,” she’d say. “Hold your head up and be proud.”

They were strong stock poured into a weak stew. Her mother’s iron will made sure none of her daughters ever grew to find the taste acceptable.

~

She knows she can’t crouch behind the couch forever. She must do something.

Memories of her mother give her strength. She stands to fight, to claim the dignity she deserves, just as Jeddy breaks through the front door. Rage has taken him. She sees the gun.

He tells her he is going to kill her and the boys because they are his or nothing. He takes aim as she turns to run. She hears the shot and feels it plunk into the wall beside her, a thousand pellets of death.

She runs out the back door. She must save the children. She reaches Zed and scoops him up and is halfway across the yard to Stanley when she hears another shot and in the span of a lifetime sees the right half of Zed’s face disappear, feels him go slack in her arms, feels the stings on her back and then the heat, a fire that burns her inside and out. As she stumbles to the soft grass she sees Fiona step from the woods.

Fiona. Sweet, shy Fiona, a diamond born into a family of gravel. Fiona spends more time here than at her own home; Fiona is more my child than anyone’s.

Run Fiona!

Her dying blue eyes meet Fiona’s wide green ones; Fiona nods slowly, grabs Stanley by the back of the neck just as he takes a step toward his father, and yanks him with her into the trees. They disappear from view and she closes her eyes.

In the woods, Fiona pulls Stanley behind a tree and peaks around to the yard. Aunt Sarah is on the ground dead, she is sure, and Jeddy is running his fat, old body across the yard in their direction. She takes Stanley by the shoulders and whispers, “Lie on the ground behind those bushes and don’t say a word. I’m going to keep running. Once Jeddy follows me, go across to the neighbor’s house and get help. Tell them to call the police.”

Fiona lifts the hat from Stanley’s head and holds it out to her side, shoulder high, then shoves Stanley toward the bushes. “Go!”

She runs through the woods noisily, keeping the hat beside her at a height to mimic Stanley, and is both terrified and triumphant when she hears Jeddy crashing through trees behind her. She hears a shot and feels something small and cold bite into the calf of her left leg. It hurts and scares her; she runs faster, reaching the safety of her own yard and house well ahead of Jeddy. She pushes through the back screen door and turns, watching Jeddy stumble into the yard, bent over and too out of breath to take even a small step.

She catches his gaze and holds up the empty red hat in triumphant taunt: You won’t get him.

Rage flares again on his face, and something else, something she does not know. With a swift move he turns the gun on himself. The blast echoes in the yard long after his body hits the ground.

~

They stare at one another for long moments. Then Stanley pulls from behind his back a stout, rectangular box dressed in bright pink paper and polka-dot bows.

“My mom didn’t want to die that day. I knew she was planning to take us away, and I could tell she was nervous but…hopeful too. I actually saw her smile at breakfast that morning. I think about it a lot, that smile. And sometimes I ache because she deserved so much that she never had a chance to claim. Yet she had so much dignity and strength, even when things were at their worst with my dad. And I think about my responsibility not to squander this life I’ve been given as a gift, twice, first from her and again from you.”

He wipes away a tear. “Sorry. I know I look like a fool. I wanted to get in touch with you so many times but my grandmother wouldn’t allow it. Then, I guess… I guess time just got away from me.”

He pushes the box toward Fiona. “There’s nothing I can give you that equals what I feel or that comes marginally close to expressing my gratitude to you for saving my life that day. But I think it’s something you’ll like.”

Fiona puts her plate of food on the table and takes the box. It is heavy.

“Open it now, if you will. Please.”

She does, slowly, and once all the shiny things are removed and she sees the gift, its simplicity and brilliance, she is too overcome to speak.

Seeing her emotion, he smiles and nods.

“Good, good.” He takes a deep breath of relief then tries to lighten the mood, teasing, “Hey, you better not let Sicily see you messing up her carpet.”

“It was just a roll, no butter or anything.”

“No, I mean that.” He points to her feet. She looks down and is surprised to see dried dirt clumped around the toes of her shoes.

“I guess you’re the one leaving dirty footprints.”

His words slice through her like a fiery sword, and Fiona cannot lift her head for the shame.

*************************************************************************************

THE REUNION earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

*************************************************************************************

Debbie Browning has been a business and freelance writer for almost 20 years, working primarily in the public relations, financial and pharmaceutical industries. Her dream life, however, is as a fiction writer. In 2004, her first two short stories were published in the local newspaper. Her third short story, The Reunion, is the first entered into competition. She is slowly, painfully, joyfully at work on her first novel.

###

DISENGAGEMENT by Kathryn St. Vincent Vogl

2009-03-14T23:44:00.000-07:00

Wedding day, and I am restless as a cat about to birth. I find no comfort in the raw silk chairs or pale pink chinoiserie of this brides’ room. With the large and unshaded picture windows, I feel more exposed than ever, though there’s nothing but woods outside St. Mary’s. I was not prepared for this day to be so hard.

I am, after all, only a bridesmaid.

The bride flutters through questions that beg for hand-holding more than answers. She hasn’t been able to stay on point all day, but I haven’t been much better. Already I’ve forgotten what Kristina wants to know as I help preen her veil.

I am too acutely aware of her mother, Sharon, standing with honeyed poise before the mirror. She’s adjusting her earring, a peace offering I’d given her. But she fumbles and drops it, and when she bends over, her cleavage presses against the edge of her gown. I stare recklessly, not caring that others might see.

I knew Sharon before I knew the bride. It was the summer after my first year of law school. I’d braved a reading down at Sappho’s Books, but lost the cadence of the poetry as I studied the woman across from me. Her chocolate colored hair silked away from her olive face, her jaw so exquisitely defined. Afterwards, Sharon asked if I wanted to get a cup of coffee. I knew what she was asking. She wasn’t my first.

She was older; I thought she was safer. More assured. Too quickly I fell for her, fell hard, as she challenged my memory of nineteenth century women authors. We long debated which Brontë sister got it right depicting the tragedies of marriage and love. I was the one who asked we stay in, away from the leering from other tables. Oh, our long nights in my tiny apartment, that renovated girls’ school. With my odd hours researching for a professor, I hadn’t thought anything of our erratic dates, did not yet realize all we’d snatched from others.

Kristina’s voice pulls me away from dreams I’ve prayed I’ll keep. I barely comprehend that the bride is repeating herself.

“Yes,” I answer, not knowing what I’ve agreed to, desperate for Sharon’s daughter to depend on me still for solace or advice, as she has for years. But the bride turns away to find someone who will truly listen.

How could I fail her now? Fourteen foot high ceilings and it feels too close, too tight. With sudden urgency, I turn to the nearest window to tug it open. But the window doesn’t budge, no matter how I strain or jerk or push. As if no one has touched it. I press my cheek against the cool of the glass, as if to assure myself of my presence here. On the other side of the painted shut window, sugar maples and lesser broadleaved trees clutch tightly to their foliage, leaves of looted gold.

The others joke that I am more nervous than the bride. As if I could be the one giving my precious away. Sharon does not look over, though. She is buttoning a sequined jacket over her bodice, making herself presentable for pictures and the ceremony. I must pull myself together, too.

Someone else adjusts Kristina’s train as she explains to her flower girl what’s in her bouquet. It is the one thing the groom pays for on this day, she says. “Ivy stands for fidelity, for faithfulness,” the bride says, as if the little girl—or any of us, for that matter—could wrap her mind around that. “And these pretty little white flowers? They’re called steph-an-oh-tis. They stand for happiness in marriage.”

The little girl stands up on the tip of her toes, her white patent leathers so stiff and new. “And these?” she asks.

“Gardenias.” Kristina buries her nose in one. “I just love the smell. I’ve no idea what they stand for.”

I close my eyes, struggling whether to remember or forget the significance of gardenias. My head is spinning. Surely not from last night’s drinks still? I cannot stand here alone any longer.

These past seven years have not been in vain, I tell myself as the photographer clumps us together for pictures before the ceremony. He places me next to the mother of the bride. For once I am glad we are near each other in height. Just before he snaps the picture, I loop my pinky around Sharon’s little finger. Our interlocked fingers are lost in the folds of her gown and hidden behind the bride and groom. When Kristina shows me the proofs I will see her mother’s expression and know how far I’ve fallen since Sharon’s declaration of independence this past summer.

It is so hard, sometimes, this dance of silent denials. Perhaps I am the worst, denying it’s over but for fleeting moments of weakness as I lead the procession of silk sheathed women down the aisle. In Sharon’s world, for those at the end of the Metro North Line, I am the one who helped Kristina get on her feet at college. I concentrate on why I am here. “Because you took me under your wing since the day we met. Like you’d known me and my family for forever already,” Kristina had said at her engagement party. These are the only words I wish to remember from that night. Bile rises in my throat as I wait at the altar for the others to join me.

Sharon’s youngest niece scatters crimson rose petals upon the aisle runner, preparing the way for the bride. The whole congregation rises as Kristina trembles at the door. She begins down the narrow path arm in arm with her father, a man whose eyes remained blank whenever Sharon and I returned from too long a time in the kitchen, from too long a visit in the city. Soon Kristina will stand with her betrothed before us all, and the two will promise to love each other until they die.

Such a fucking lie for most.

Father Pio drones through his prayers, through the homily. Fat with years of accumulated dignity, he bears the weight of sins of those brave enough to confess, not mine. He cannot promise me what he’s promised all others: that if God says the word I shall be healed. I know, I know I cannot be cured of what I am, and the Church has no patience for any of my kind.

I remind myself that even Jesus broke bread at the home of a leper for that Last Supper, though no one remembers the leper anymore. I take of the Eucharist anyway, certain I claim a victory of some kind by making the body of Christ a part of me.

“This is exactly what I’ve been talking about,” my Sharon says as we stand at the bar, her voice devoid of our years together.

I’ve slid my foot against her instep as I ordered a Beefeaters. This way I catch the scent of the perfume I gave her, and I know how she stroked that glistening dauber in the hollow behind her ear. I know how it feels there, there when she softly moans.

She is right, I know. I’ve been crossing that fine line of discretion all day. This is what she meant when she left me, that I didn’t know when to stop. But I’ve pushed her ever since I first caught her in a lie. I was volunteering at the new students’ reception, welcoming a family climbing those steps on Hillhouse Avenue for the first time.

Was that Sharon? Was she married?

It was all I could do to smile warmly at Sharon’s long-limbed husband as I guessed at what warped arrangement they’d come to over the years. I dared not stare but could tell how the fine lines around Sharon’s mouth deepened as I offered to show her daughter around campus, to help however I could. Later, the woman I’d thought was my partner stood by the chafing dishes, finally alone. I wandered over casually.

Evening sun warmed the leaded glass windows above us. With the ceiling so high, the chandeliers so old and their light so diffuse, it seemed we stood in shadow. I almost asked how she thought she could get away with this, but she looked at me, her eyes shining in pain tamped down by the years.

“I was too young when I had Kristina,” she said quietly, without prompting. “We had to get married.”

“You never wore a ring,” is all I said.

“I’m allergic to precious metals,” she said, and I believed her even as I stared at the fine gold strands intertwined below the hollow of her neck.

All these years since, I still take her at her word. Except now, when she reminds me we’ve broken up for good. That, I like to think, is a bald-faced lie.

At the bar, at the wedding reception, her trust fund of a husband greets me from behind with a warm if angular embrace, his cheek again to mine. “Liz,” he says, his blue eyes already watery and martini vague. “You’ve made yourself strange these past several months. I swear you’re giving me a complex. Is it something I’ve done?”

It takes everything I have not to look towards Sharon. “This trial for McEwen, it’s taken a lot out of me. So sorry,” I say, but there’s more for which I could apologize. “Congratulations again.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” he says, too easily diverted, that blessing of his perpetual inebriation. “Promise we’ll see more of you?”

Sharon blandly smiles in agreement. I nod without saying a word and lift my drink off the bar, fearful I am shaking so much I will drop it as I thread my way back to the head table.

When the dancing begins, I am left alone, another bitter gin drink before me. I do not glance over at Sharon sitting with her husband. I know without looking how she is sliding the wine stem between her fingers, spread wide into a V shape. I know how she lowers her head to look up at you as she talks, how she drops her voice at the end of her sentences so you have to lean in close to catch everything she says.

But when Sharon quits her table and crosses to the ladies room, I follow. Some god—I don’t know which—has granted me the small blessing of time alone with the mother of the bride. I follow Sharon into a stall, shut the door behind us.

She jumps, her hands covering her chest. “God, you scared me half to death,” she says.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.” Not so much what she said, but what she did.

Sharon pushes me away. “I told you,” she says, her hands shaking. From nervousness of getting caught? “Lay off.”

“Lay off?” I repeat, and the words, strangely obscene, echo across the Italianate tile.

“Please, someone could walk in on us now,” she says, as if repeating a classroom rule for a small child.

“But Memorial Day was just fine for you, wasn’t it?” It’d been during her daughter’s engagement party. The two of us, alone in her flame red kitchen—nothing we hadn’t dared before. And I’d made her shudder in a way I am sure Phillip never could. The drink glass she’d clutched in her hand almost gave us away as it shattered onto the floor.

“You okay in there?” someone had yelled from the patio. Sharon’s eyes fluttered open, and she collected herself enough to say, “Fine, just fine.” I grabbed a broom to sweep away the shards remaining of the glass she’d been readying for Philip.

I was bent at her feet, sweeping debris into a dustpan as she smoothed down her skirt and told me flatly we had to end whatever it was we shared. “God, no,” I said, for I’d never imagined this happening so, with me kneeling before her as melodramatically as the nineteenth century books that had brought us together.

“You want too much of me,” she had said, as if it’d been written long ago. She pulled open the drawer for the garbage and left me in shock as I clinked the broken shards into the trash compacter. I’d had to walk out into the unsuspecting crowd, towards a daughter who still wanted me part of her special day.

Now we stand close in this cramped stall of her county club restroom. All this time, I’ve been so devastated—and I should have been indignant. Waiting as she did until that last stolen shudder in her kitchen, until I was on my knees. “You waited, didn’t you?” I say. “Deliberately waited. You waited to break up until she’d already asked me to be in this wedding.”

My voice is low, a punctured hiss. “What sort of twisted test is this? Did you think I’d be so devastated I couldn’t be here for her today?” I do not shrill, but I can’t stop myself. I move on to questions I do not know the answer to—exactly what my law professors had taught me to never, never do. “What would you do, Sharon, really, if I walked right out of here and told Philip, told your daughter, told everyone what you’ve done? Because I will, you know. Make no doubt about it: I will.”

Sharon bows her head, perhaps ashamed after all of the way she manipulated me. But no, she is hitching up her skirt. “I gotta go,” she says tiredly, and she sits and pees.

I walk out. She knows I don’t like her doing that right in front of me. I do not need to see my image cross the wall mirror to know my dress shifts angrily with each stride. God, how could I make a threat I could never see through?

One of the bridesmaids grabs me on my way back to the table. “The bouquet, it’s time to catch the bouquet,” she says. She sounds so cloyingly eager.

I have no choice but to stand among the simpletons who wait for that one sure sign, convinced that whoever catches a bunch of flowers will enter the next binding relationship. Despite my contempt, or maybe because of it, I wish to hide among this pastel clutch of dresses as Sharon steps back into the room, her face somehow freshened.

God, she is still lovely, so lovely, in the gown I picked out for her.

She’d called for my help not long after that patio evening in May, and I didn’t know what to expect. But I knew the dress was hers the moment I saw it. I rushed back to the dressing room, handed it over the door. Once she slipped it on she let me in. Her skin glowed under the dressing room lights. She agreed with me then, agreed she looked perfect, in a voice soft and pliable.

She’d asked me to unzip her, the zipper too awkward for her to reach. The fabric separated as if she were shedding a skin, all the way to the dimples past the small of her back. There was not much room for me to stand behind her, and I was all too aware that my mouth was close behind the exposed and naked nape of her neck. With much effort, I kept my breaths shallow, so as not to feel the heat of my breath upon her skin. “You’ll want earrings,” I said, ones that dangle against the line of her jaw as she moves through the night. I would not take my eyes off some unnamed stain on the nubbed carpet.

But then, then she was leaning back into me and nestling against me and I did not know where to put my arms, and I could not imagine where to put my hands. “I’ll want more than that,” she said as she pressed her bared back against me. But she laughed lightly, not with the deeper nuances she’d shared other times, in darker places. I found myself standing outside the dressing room as she pulled herself back together, and I did not consider that she might have lost her footing on the small train on the back of her gown. Instead, I held onto that moment—oh that moment—when I believed we’d piece back together what had shattered in her kitchen. I would not have otherwise tried to make it through this evening riddled with excuses and feeble rationalizations, I swear. She took my hand saying good-bye last night, for God’s sake.

For God’s sake.

Kristina’s sorority sisters shriek and in their crush I cannot breathe. I cannot. I move apart from the others, reaching out, straining for the nothingness I believe to be there.

I remember what gardenias stand for, I want to cry out. They mean my lovely, my secret love. If only Sharon could hear me. She smoothes down her rose-colored sheath and sits by her cuckolded husband. My fingers pull the air, as if I could grasp the vision Sharon presents before me, and only too late realize I am holding the fistful of gardenias, the ivy trailing down the sinews of my arm, its touch as deceptively light as spider silk.

**************************************************************************************

DISENGAGEMENT earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

**************************************************************************************

Kate St. Vincent Vogl teaches a variety of courses in Minneapolis at the Loft, the largest and most comprehensive literary center in the nation. She also offers writing, sociology and religion classes through the University of Phoenix. She was graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and cum laude from Cornell. Topics her readings and seminars have addressed include team-building, spirituality, legal writing, and the mother-daughter connection. She is currently shopping her memoir about her birthmother finding her through her mom’s obituary.

###

THE BACKWARD CAROUSEL by Nancy A. Silveria

2009-03-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

It began the summer of my twelfth birthday. I awoke, as I always did, begrudgingly distempered that the sun dared to look at me. My mood was dark you see, liquid black, and the morning light transformed my dream of greatness into just being a kid who needed to clean her room. I was simply little Frannie, daughter of Francine and Michael Stevens, the preacher’s wife and the preacher. On the adolescent food chain, this put me second to last, with only the high school principal’s son, Ernest, trailing me.

I dressed in black denims and a navy tie-dye. I had to maintain my dark side at Webster Middle School; avoiding the goodie-two-shoes label my father’s calling would acquire me. Hell, it was his calling, not mine. I didn’t need to suffer for him any more than he needed to give up chocolate because it turned my face into a demonstration of connect the dots.

My mother didn’t appreciate my views. She bought fluorescent t-shirts that I found spontaneously hanging in the forefront of my closet. Not to hurt her feelings, I wore one whenever we gathered in the driveway to wash the Chevy. It made her happy. I guess that mattered to me back then, though I don’t remember thinking too much about it at the time.

School was a domain of collection, stereotypes abound. There were nerds, prom queens, jocks, yuppies, hippies, hicks, and my group of loners. Prom queens ruled, and if they took a shine to any other group, the entire social ladder of education would shift. At the end of the last day of school, the year of my twelfth birthday, the prom queens took a shine to us loners.

Summer plans changed at a rate of speed undocumented as every queen sort the companionship of a loner for her poolside parties and mall excursions. I found the idea of spending my long awaited summer as a socially acquired manifestation a bit lame. Screw the prom queens, let them sit by the pool with each other, was how I felt about it. That didn’t stop Annabelle Masterson from setting her sights on me, though.

Four foot six inches of blonde hair and hazel eyes gave Annabelle the Barbie look that caused spontaneous whiplash whenever she walked pass the football team. Watching it made me feel ill, but the cafeteria selections were more lethal coming up than going down. Why give her the satisfaction of seeing my annoyance, anyway.

A fellow loner, Mickey Rutgers, a dread-locked, purple wearing, drag queen of a teen, whispered a warning in my ear as Annabelle began her descent on me. Alas, I failed to comprehend quickly enough. Before I knew it, tiny red fingernails attached to bony fingers, bulimic fingers if ever I saw them, had wrapped themselves around my hand. I heard the hideous sound of her high-pitched voice saying my name without the better-than-thou disdain, and it caused me to look at her, really look at her. That’s when it happened. Her all too bright and brilliantly white, my father’s a dentist, smile broke into a flat mark across her face and her eyes welled up in liquid blue. Just my luck, I got the prom queen with feelings.

I tried to pay attention to her self-pitying tirade, but I began debating whether to attend the Saturday matinee at the local cinema that weekend. It wasn’t until the spunky tidbit of boy treat realized that I didn’t care she existed that she grabbed a hold of both of my shoulders and shook me.

“Why aren’t you listening to me, Frannie?” is what I thought I heard as the violent side of my nature exploded. My fist pounded her right in her daddy’s handiwork, splitting her lips against her front teeth. I’d like to say I regretted it immediately, but whom would I be fooling anyway.

The deep red of her blood overshadowed the blonde of her hair, as she stood there with her hands balled into fists determinedly placed on her hips. She let the liquid blue stream down her face as she settled a cold stare directly at me.

“Do you feel better now?” she spat out with contempt, and difficulties, giving that I had split her lips.

Actually, I did feel better, but even I knew better than to say it. My daddy was a preacher! In case you don’t see the relevance, think penance.

“I’m sorry, but you startled me. You really shouldn’t go around putting your hands on people.”

She glared at my audacity to defend my aggression, but something started working in that pea size brain of hers. I thought I saw cogs and wheels beginning to spin as she prepared to speak.

“You’re right. I’m sorry that I grabbed you, but I’m just so desperate and you’re my only hope, Frannie. Please say you’ll help me. If you really are sorry about what you did, I mean.” The conniving little witch backed me up into the politically correct corner of the moment and I began to flail.

“Well, um, yeah, I guess; if I can. What’s wrong, Annabelle?” I said as I began my own prayer that whatever it was would be beyond my control, thus removing my obligation to her deviousness.

She paused, looking around at the kids that had gathered on the corner to watch me pulverize a prom queen. Did I mention that prom queens ruled? Well everyone knows that when you are at the top, everyone else wants to see you fall.

“Not here, Frannie, please. Can’t we just go to my house? It’s kinda private, ya know.”

The question came with sincerity, I thought, which threw me off guard. What could I say? ‘Uh no, I don’t feel like it because I’m the biggest jerk that ever lived’. Uh huh, I was between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

“Okay, Annabelle.” I smiled, giving her credit for the victory. I may have thrown the first punch, but she got the win by decision based on the knock out combination of guilt, fear, and her knowledge of my daddy’s holy retribution.

Nothing could have prepared me for Annabelle’s request as I walked into the courtyard of her parent’s estate, complete with swimming pool and tennis courts. Her parents were out of town, as they often were she confided, and her dog of ten years had died suddenly. Her parents, not being very religious, didn’t have a Bible in the house and little Annabelle Masterson wanted to give Riviera, her poodle, the Last Rites!

“And Consuela, our housekeeper, doesn’t speak English really. I mean she has a couple of phrases, like ‘I’ll tell your Mama’ and ‘such a nice girl’. You must know how it is, Frannie.” Annabelle babbled continually, holding a towel drenched in blood to her face, less I forget that I had punched her.

“Nope.” I looked at her as I answered her honestly, realizing that Annabelle really didn’t understand. It had never crossed her mind that we didn’t have servants. It was at that moment that I changed. I suddenly realized that Annabelle had no idea that most parents didn’t often leave their children in the care of a non-English speaking servant, or any servant for that matter. I felt something, pity, no, compassion. There it was, all my father’s hard work paying off! I felt Christian, and I looked at Annabelle for the first time as a person. The most amazing thing happened in the next second, completely changing my life forever.

“Will you give Riviera her Last Rites, Frannie, please?” the liquid blue dropping from her cheek directly into my heart as she asked me for help melted my barricade of cool indifference. God, help me, it happened. I found a friend. Could someone please tell me, huh, what does a loner do when she finds a friend?

I could recite all the boring details, but to what avail. That summer, I gave my rendition of the Last Rites to Riviera, and six years later, Annabelle and I drove out of town together. College bound, we made a perfect pair, the boy-crazed fashion trendsetter, and the suffering artist determined to discover the meaning of life in the stroke of a paintbrush.

We enjoyed the first few weeks of life at the university with a compromise. Every weekend, I could invite home for dinner a different Adonis, hand chiseled and toned by the Greek gods no doubt, if Annabelle could paint their portraits as only she could in pale silhouettes of light blue and ivory. You see time had taken its wise and all knowing toll on us. I had given to Annabelle a depth of life beyond the football field, and she to me the knowledge of joy simply to enjoy. The only ones surprised by our metamorphosis more than us, were the preacher’s wife and the preacher, who no doubt viewed Annabelle as both my salvation and my downfall. I’d like to say that the Masterson’s were surprised, but in truth, I don’t think they ever really noticed.

I wish I could say that Annabelle had failed to notice her parents’ indifference, but it often haunted her with lingering insecurities and sadness. Whenever her mood turned towards this darkness, I would catch a glimpse of my old self, before I met Annabelle. I imagined the Masterson’s at my mercy as a direct result of retribution by the fist of the preacher’s daughter. I never had enough time to turn that daydream into reality, though, as Annabelle was incapable of remaining dark for very long.

By our second year, we were out of the dorm and living on the edge in the city. School by day, work by afternoon, drinking and dancing until sunset, and finally studying until the sun came up and we started all over again. Weekends, we lay around in our pajamas, ate junk food, and planned our future. Yes, it was a singular future because as of yet, we couldn’t imagine life as individuals.

We were Annie and Frannie, sisters on the verge of everything. We just didn’t realize that being on the verge of everything meant coming to terms with the unpleasant as well. We faced reality the year of graduation, while sitting at home on my front porch, opening the mail to retrieve the diplomas sent by the university for our efforts.

We had come home to attend my father’s graveside funeral a few weeks before graduation, and we stayed because my mother had a breakdown facing my father’s passing. It should only have been one diploma in the mail, but Annabelle was Annabelle. She never left my side, at least not until I tried to force her to return to life because I knew it was wrong to hold her back.

Knowing Annabelle the way I did, I knew it would take more than a punch in the face to turn her away from me. Therefore, I reached into the past for my cloak of liquid black and bitterness, and then I did the unthinkable. I did what ever it took to hurt Annabelle enough to drive her away from me and towards her destiny. She was the best painter our university had ever had the privilege of tutoring, and I had to give her back to the world as the world had giving her to me. After all, I was the preacher’s daughter at heart.

The solemn quiet of that night consumed the house by sundown. I helped my mother to bed and returned to the kitchen to wash the supper dishes. I waited for Annabelle to sit at the table to sketch me as she had done every night since our return. It was the compromise we had arranged upon arriving; she would cook, I would clean, and thus we would all survive.

Annabelle entered with her usual flare, turned a chair towards the sink, and sat with charcoal in hand staring at me. As soon as she had taken the mental measure of the light and distance between us, her hand began to play across her pad in fluid motion. She was as smooth as running water in her movements, as she worked without a thought to what she was doing. She was instinct, and in her domain, she was free to discuss all of life’s little nuances with me as she sketched. I took in the moment, pulling it close to my heart since I reconciled that it was the last that we would share.

Annabelle’s conversation drifted towards the past. I heard descriptions of several old classmates as they appeared to her at the market earlier.

“Mickey Rutgers got married! Can you believe it, just up and moved to Massachusetts with that moose he used to date from Wimbley High? What was his name, oh yeah, Richard.” She giggled and continued.

I kept my back to her so that I could hide my nervousness. Only one of us was aware that this was our last conversation, and I dreaded how I knew it must end. Before I realized how much time had passed or how close her voice was, I felt her hands upon my shoulders turning me from the dishes to face her.

“Why aren’t you listening to me, Frannie?”

These words broke my heart as I realized that they were not just the first words of our friendship but they would also be the last. I knew it was time.

“What do you want from me Annie? My father’s dead, my mom begs to join him and you want to gossip about the locals and expect me to pay homage to your needs. God, I am so tired of coddling your every whim.” I screamed the words in a tone as close as I could get to anger as my heart shattered.

“Frannie, what are you saying?” Annabelle was beyond hurt and confusion, yet she reached for me with her words to try to understand. She wanted to help me. I saw it in her eyes, and I knew that I would have to be more convincing.

“My God, Annie, how long does it have to be all about you, huh? How long can I pity you because your parent’s never knew you existed? I don’t have parents left to share with you anymore. I don’t have the time to worry about you; it’s time you just grew up. My mother needs me now, Annie. For once in your life, try not to be so selfish.”

I screamed these words quickly with my eyes closed so that my tears could not witness the pain that I knew was on her face. The pain I had meant to put there. I closed my eyes so she didn’t see that doing this to her, for her, was killing the part of me that had managed to survive my father’s passing.

Calmness settled over me as I thought I heard my father’s voice telling me to set Annabelle free. I opened my eyes in the wind of change, as I began to regret my actions, and began to think that there must be another way to get Annabelle to return to her life. I expected her to be standing there, bloodied, with her fist balled up and determinedly placed on her hips. I saw the empty room, the sketchpad on the table, and I listened to the sound of the front door creaking closed as she walked away. I expected too much.

Thinking I could not stand another moment, I moved toward the table and sat, less I collapse. With tremble in my hand, I picked up Annabelle’s sketchpad both afraid to see and not to see the truth that always escaped her hands. I stared hard at the picture for several minutes, until the ice inside my soul began to melt and drip from my face upon the page.

As the clear spots of pure emotion stained her masterpiece, I saw my father’s face in charcoal, more life like than the last memory of him that lingered in my mind. I was amazed at how Annabelle always managed to get to the heart of every thought, word, and deed. I saw her words in printed blocks across the bottom and I realized that yet again, she had bested me. For across the bottom of the page she had written me a note.

“I love you too, bonehead. I’ll call from New York, as soon as I sell my first painting. It will be the one I will call ‘FRIEND’, you know, ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’.”

The drips of sorrow became fluid laughter as I realized that she had set me free. She was not sacrificing her life for me. She was allowing me to make a sacrifice for her. She was giving me the gift of giving, and in so doing, giving me another piece of my father to cherish in the character that he instilled in me. She was wisdom, recognizing that moving on into life would be easier for her than coming to terms with returning to the past would be for me.

Once again, the laughter turned to sadness as I realized that in accepting her gift, I would accept the loneliness of living my daily life without her. During the next several days, I framed that sketch of my father and hung it in my mother’s parlor. It remains there, on the wall above my father’s favorite chair even to this day. Though Annabelle’s paintings now reside on the walls of the world’s most famous artistic domains, it is this piece of her work that I treasure most of all. I point to this sketch whenever I tell my daughter about her Aunt Annie and how we became best friends forever the summer of my twelfth birthday.

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THE BACKWARD CAROUSEL earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Nancy A. Silveria, born and raised in New England, aspires to become a published writer. As a graduate of the Community College of Rhode Island, in the study of Clinical Laboratory Science, Nancy works for a leading New England hospital specializing in infant care. The only thing she loves as much as family and friends is the literary realm, and she now creates poetry, articles, and short stories. Her first novel has recently been submitted for competition.

WIZZY-WIG by Kate Amatruda

2009-03-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

My name is MJ Lennox. I’m sorry that’s not a very compelling way to begin, but WYSIWYG. That stands for “what you see is what you get,” and is pronounced “wizzy-wig.” It’s a computer term we web designer’s use. I’m 27 years old. I’m on a train to God knows where. I have nothing, now.

Al got up in the middle of the night and burned down the house. We didn’t have insurance; everything was lost. Even the car in the garage burned to a crispy metal; it looked like barbecued chicken bones. Al died in the fire.

Smoke inhalation and burns put me in the hospital. That killed my savings, so I became “medically indigent” - what they call it when you get sick and can’t pay the bills. I left as soon as I could, and told the cabbie to take me home. I guess I wasn’t thinking. Everything was burnt, charred. The smell was awful. I saw the little blackened heads of my dolls, Sara with no h, Anne with an e, and Mary, in the heap. Their hair was burned off to a frizz, and their eyes were dulled and cracked from the heat. Jane had gotten lost a long time ago.

I didn’t cry. I don’t cry. Tears are wasteful.

The last time I’d been there, they wheeled me out on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over my face. What I thought was a log on the ground, covered with a tarp, was Al. Even my cat died; with her stiff legs sticking out from her body, she looked like a little gray table. I miss her more than I miss Al. The city charged me for the demo, which cost the same as I got from selling the lot. I was glad not to owe anybody anything. Zero-sum game.

My job’s gone. I was a pixel monkey, that means doing the website, at Janenda Dented Can Groceries. Tomatoes one week, then it’d be green beans, and fruit salad the next. After the fire, they took up a collection and Mr. Janenda himself came to the hospital, and gave me the envelope with $329.50 in it. His shoulders were slumped in his old brown suit when he told me he couldn’t keep my job open, and he kept tapping a big liver spot on his cheek, like it was a talisman or something. He’d decided not to do the website anymore, because most of our customers don’t have computers. He was very nice about it, really. I was an independent contractor, with no health plan, no disability, no vacation, no unemployment - nothing. He said, “Good-bye, dear, and thank you for everything” before he shuffled out of the room.

So, my home, my job, my car, my cat, all my clothes - everything I owned, was gone. Is gone. I’ve tried to get another job, but no one is hiring. Plus my hands got burned. Not down to the bone, nothing gross like that, but bad enough so that I can’t type or even sort cans, now. I hide them. They’re pink and shiny, whereas the rest of me is white and pasty.

OK, end the pity party. So what, that I don’t have any friends or family, except for Uncle Archie. It’s the same as it’s always been - WYSIWYG. I was a clumsy, tongue-tied child. My parents had me in the blithe and stupid way they did everything, and I was an only child, a lonely child.

Ronnie and Ron (really Veronica and Ronald) were hippies, who’d decided they were too selfish to ever have a child. Well, they were, and they did. My mom was in her twenties, and she started to get fat. One of the caravaners, a midwife, told my mom she looked pregnant. By then, my mom was about five months along; she hadn’t even realized her periods had stopped. The Ronnies thought it was a hoot. The first and only time she saw a doctor, at the free medical tent, Ronnie was seven months along, and was having some spotting. The doctor told her to get off the road, but she didn’t. She just sat with her legs up at the concerts, instead of spinning and twirling around to the music. I can always picture her so clearly, arms out, head thrown back so her neck was bared, hair and skirts whipping around, a solitary carousel.

Ronnie went into labor at a Dead show. She didn’t want to miss the music, so I was born in the back of the old aqua and white VW camper van. Fortunately, their midwife friend was there, so it was all OK, no complications. I was a scrawny thing, just over 5 pounds, and a little bit jaundiced. They decided it was so marginal that I didn’t need the Billy Rubin lights (whoever he was) that babies are stuck under at the hospital. Ronnie didn’t want her newborn baby to be “in captivity,” which is what she called the hospital. I was skinny and yellow in my earliest photos, like a curried prawn with little arms and legs.

My mom was beautiful; I must’ve been a shock and a disappointment. She was so pretty that she’d be pulled onstage to dance with the lead singer; she was the one photographed for newspapers and magazines, the poster girl for the counter-culture. I never appeared in the pictures; she always handed me off like a sack of groceries to some stranger while she purred and glowed for the cameras. In the few snapshots that I’m in, Ronnie and Ron are both gorgeous, lugging around this little lump of a baby. They both had thick hair down their backs; Ronnie could sit on hers. It was like a field of wheat, ashy golden, and my dad’s was the rich reddish brown of a cup of Lipton’s tea. Mine turned out thin and flat, the color of scuffed brown linoleum on old floors. Her eyes were brown, his blue. You’d think if things were fair, I’d at least have ended up with one good feature, like green eyes. Wrong. I got hazel.

There’s not a single picture in which either of them is looking at me.

They strung a little hammock in the VW for me, and took me on the road. The van would go so slow up a hill that there was always a trail of irate drivers behind us, laying on their horns. It made this little “put-put, chug-chug” sound; like The Little Engine that Could, except a lot of times it couldn’t. We’d pull over to the side of the road.

I didn’t interfere much with their fun; they careened through life, barely making ends meet, because if they’d had real jobs, they’d be buying into the system. They were Deadheads, following the band. My dad made pewter pendants and beads, stuff like marijuana leaves and skulls, and my mom strung them together. I was dragged along, until I had a seizure. The doctor found high lead levels in my blood, from the pewter. He reported it to the state, and they investigated. I was six years old. It was a big deal, because the law is that kids have to go to school. The hospital they took me to wouldn’t release me, and child protective services came in. They told the Ronnies to settle down, put me in school, and give up the pewter.

They didn’t. They left me in the hospital, pinning a note on my johnny with her parents’ phone number and address. I was asleep; they never said good-bye. My Grandma Ellen flew to California to get the grandchild she didn’t even know existed. After being abandoned in a hospital, suddenly I’m in Michigan, which Ronnie had vowed never to step foot in again. I never saw her and my dad after that.

My grandparents were in their 60’s when I was foisted upon them. But what could they do? They had too much pride to allow me to go into foster care. They kept telling people it was temporary. I guess they were ashamed that their daughter, a cheerleader and the homecoming queen, had ditched her kid.

The Ronnies died in a crash when I was ten. High on something, they missed a turn on Highway 1, driving down the coast from Mendocino. The old VW was full of marijuana, which they sold at concerts along with their jewelry. I was an orphan. It didn’t really matter to me, though, because I’d felt like one since the day I was discarded at the hospital.

I loved to read, and my favorite characters were little girls who’d been orphaned. What a cliché I was, reading about Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables and Sara Crewe under the covers at night. The weird thing was that Mary Lennox, the girl in The Secret Garden, had almost the same name as me. My name is MaryJane Lennox; I was named for marijuana. There were a lot of girl orphans; I didn’t much care about the boy ones.

My grandparents were shocked when their daughter died. They always hoped she’d see the light, and return and get me. They were really and truly stuck, then. Grandma Ellen often sighed so deeply I could see her toes move through her sensible shoes. I can picture them perfectly if I close my eyes, with their rubber crepe soles. They were kind of grey beige, with brown laces, and they had this little ridge around the outside. They always smelled bad, and were bumpy from her toes.

They vowed to do it differently, to mold me into the solid citizen they’d failed to do with my mother. So, I had no life, just lots of church. No overnights or playdates, but I was a friendless kid, so even if they’d allowed it, I didn’t have anyone to do these things with.

Ellen didn’t even tell me about periods, so I didn’t know what to think when I started bleeding down there. She hadn’t let me go to the sex ed lectures at school, so I was clueless. My Uncle Archie told me. (Yes, they’d named their kids Archie and Veronica…kind of pathetic, if you ask me.) Archie found me sitting on a log, crying, on one of his rare visits to see his parents, and he asked me why. When I told him I was dying, he started to chuckle. His freckled face got red, and he slapped his hand high on his forehead, right where his sandy hair was already receding, as if he was swatting a mosquito. It was mean, his laughing, but it was reassuring. He went in and told his mother, who dashed out in a mortified dither, wringing her hands. I suppose she believed that if I didn’t know about puberty, it wouldn’t happen.

I was a teenager when Ellen died of breast cancer. Archie didn’t come for the funeral. By that time, he was working in Singapore, and didn’t want to make the long trek home. He hadn’t seen his parents in years.

After Ellen died, I dropped out of the choir, which she’d forced me to join, and we stopped going to church. The pastor came by a few times, but he was easy to blow off. Slowly, after the requisite casseroles, we disappeared off the radar of the people who’d known us. Then Al started forgetting things. First I thought it was grief about Ellen, then I realized he was demented, so I spent my high school years keeping it a secret, because I didn’t want to go into foster care. I tried to contact Uncle Archie, but he’d moved on to another job, and I didn’t know how to reach him. It actually was about two years before I had an address for him, and by then I had it all figured out.

I started inspecting dented cans at Janenda’s when I was 16, after school. A truckload would come in, and I’d have to examine each one, to make sure it wouldn’t kill anybody. I had the “Classification of Visible Can Defects Poster" memorized. I needed money to pay for gas. I’d use Al’s car, we had social security from Ellen, and his pension check. I was good at forging his signature, so there was enough for food and property taxes and stuff. The mortgage had been paid off years before. I didn’t know about homeowner’s insurance then. I just paid the bills that came in.

After Al did some things, I got scared he wasn’t safe, so I’d tether him on a retractable dog leash when I went to school, with food, the TV remote, and a bucket to pee in. It sounds cruel, I know, but it allowed him to stay home, and kept me out of the system. Over time, I had to shorten the leash, because he’d try to cook, and forget to turn off the flame, that kind of stuff. By the end, Al didn’t know me at all, and I had to spoon feed and diaper him, which was disgusting.

I graduated from high school with a C average, and then I went to the community college at night to learn computer skills. I still worked at Janenda’s. When I was 22, and had my AA degree in computer science, they let me start the store website.

The night of the fire was a normal, regular night. I fed Al, and put him to bed. I guess what probably happened was he had worked the leash over the end of the dresser, or something hard. It must’ve taken him years to worry it down so far. When I was in high school, every year I’d get a new leash, a different color, as a present to him. Over time, I just spaced it out. Anyway, I put him to bed, and went to sleep myself. When I woke up, there were flames and smoke. I called 911 and then raced to Al. He was on fire. His pajama shirt had melted and was sticking to his bony chest. I‘ll never forget his scream. It was hideous, beyond anything I ever saw in a horror movie or even on the news. It pierces me still, his look of terror and excruciating pain, and me watching as the sizzling blue polyester ate away at his skin. I quickly grabbed him and rolled with him on the floor. That’s how my hands got burned, and my hair singed off. I look better with eyebrows and eyelashes, but the burn nurses told me they’d grow back. I was really lucky not to have my face burned off.

So, I was on the floor, with Al, when a big fireman picked me up and slung me over his shoulder and brought me outside. They came in time for me, but too late for Al.

I was coughing and choking, and probably wailing like a baby, but that’s to be expected, as the house burned down. I already told you about Al and Mimi, my cat. I didn’t tell you about the smell, though. Burnt flesh smells horrible; that’s another thing I won’t ever forget.

The fire inspectors told me that Al had started the fire, trying to cook. And you know the rest, about Janenda’s, and the demolition. I forgot to tell you that Al had a burial benefit, so I put him next to Ellen. It was kind of a waste, because he was already pretty cremated, but I know Ellen would of wanted it that way.

After I got out of the hospital, the Red Cross gave me a bag of toiletries and a hotel room for a few days while I took care of the demolition and burying Al, and a cream-colored teddy bear with shiny black eyes. I put it between my head and the window when I want to sleep. It muffles the sound of the tracks; it’s soft against my cheek.

I needed clothes, so I got this coat. I thought the brown, tan and red plaid looked vintage, but now it just seems old and sad; the pattern’s barely visible in the back, and the Lucy collar curls up. One of the large plastic buttons is dangling, but I can’t sew right now, with my hands the way they are. The coat reminded me of Ellen, and how she would laugh her wheezy snort at “I Love Lucy.” It’s not my style, nor is this aqua and black Pendleton shirt. My suitcase is red and black tartan, with a zipper. Plaid was 50% off at the Goodwill the day I went shopping.

Uncle Archie called me when I was in the hospital. He said he had a “Google Alert” for his dad. What that is, if you want to track if someone’s in the news, you put in their name, and if the search engines find them, you get an email. So when the news reported that Al Craven, age 83, died in a fire, Archie got a hold of me. He said he was sorry, but he couldn’t come back, and there wasn’t much reason to, because his dad was dead, and there was nothing in the house to box up or sell or anything. So he told me to come stay at his place in Northern California, way out on the coast, even though he still lives in Asia, somewhere.

But then the doctor said I couldn’t fly yet, because my lungs were still healing from the smoke. There wasn’t enough left of the $329.50 for airfare, anyway, so that’s why I’m on this train, off to start my new life, I guess. There’s a lot to see looking out the window. People still hang up their laundry some places, and it dances and flaps in the wind.

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WIZZY-WIG earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Kate Amatruda, MFT, CST-T, BCETS, EMT, DMAT, DSHR-DMH has written chapters and journal articles on trauma and disaster mental health. When she's not responding to disasters, seeing clients, or doing math homework with her son, Kate is scrying for an agent for her novel, a salsa version of Pride and Prejudice with a gender twist.

###

RAMONA, KANSAS by Matthew Adams

2009-03-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

Author's note
The following is a work of complete fiction and is in no way a depiction of the real Ramona, Kansas. From what I've heard, it's actually a lovely place.

In the line at the post office, everyone faces the back of heads, or shoe gazes. Except one, and he's looking to his left at an old bulletin board riddled with colourful tacks, and missing children posters. The man wonders why some are even still there, as the “last seen on” date was more than twenty years ago. As always his eyes eventually settle upon one child, over to the side. Something washes up and crests in the back of his throat. The man wipes his tears on the absorbing cotton of his sleeve. The entrance door jangles a bell, lifting these old eyes up to meet hers.

And now we're pretty much the only ones in this little bar. There's a slouch on a stool, his head curls down and hangs over his beer. He's really thin and the bar maid, who is nice looking, tells him softly that she can't serve him any more beer. He nods accordingly. The bar maid then cracks fresh ice with a pick, maintaining her casual ease.

A small band can hardly be contained by the even smaller stage. Their instruments of euphony poke out into the rest of the bar like pins from a cushion. The drummer's suit shakes dust from itself whenever he moves. A microphone stands in front of the stage, waiting for Pearl's “right quick” bathroom break to end. We can hear a faint flush and moments later she walks out into the open. Pearl is probably close to 50 years old and her hair needs to be dyed again as there are flecks of gray throughout. The one piece dress that clings to her noticeable belly folds is blue and sparkles and it's like she's a queer specter floating across the bar towards the stage. She speaks to her band for a moment and then sings with a great confidence that her average voice shouldn't allow. We can't make out the words but it's probably sad as she hangs her head and holds onto the stand.

~

Excerpt from The American Standard, June. 14th, 1986. Interview with Winston Gale, self proclaimed eccentric billionaire and man behind the much talked about “Gale Towers”.

AS: Thank you again for taking the time to talk to us. We realize you must be pretty busy right now.

WG: Oh, no problem. I think I read your magazine everyday, actually. I love it.

AS: I think you know what the first question is. Why build these enormous parallel towers in Ramona, Kansas of all places?

WG: (laughs) Well, yes everyone's been asking or curious about that now, haven't they? I'll tell you, as a foreigner in this country (born and raised in London, England) with a wealth of funds I've taken every advantage to see and breathe in every crevice of this land. In Ramona I found this wonderful little place that was like no outsider had laid eyes on it. Like an undiscovered island in Fiji. It seems like any other sleepy little town, but I felt something in Ramona. The people and the town are alive in a way that few things are.

AS: Well that narrows down Ramona as a locale. Now why these infamous towers?

WG: What better way to give back to this little community that has been so nice to me. To my understanding things are not so well there. Financially, that is. Many men were able to have jobs in constructing the towers. Now that they're done, people will maintain them and work in the gift shops. And ultimately, my friend, all this attention being deservedly brought to Ramona will kick their economy into a fever pitch.

AS: Why specifically towers?

WG: (pause) Well, why not towers?

AS: That's a point, I guess.

WG: (laughs)

AS: The Gale Towers open in only a few more weeks. There's rumors of an extravagant opening ceremony. Can you go into any details?

WG: I can tell you that there will be an unforgettable act or stunt or what have you involving the towers. It will take your breath away. Also, that there will be a very special guest. One of the most hilarious and genuine women I've had the pleasure of meeting while traveling the country, the lovely Miss Audrey Hepburn.

The American Standard, June. 14Th, 1986. All rights reserved

~

Behind Grace is the little homely looking gas station where she filled up before making the last trek across the steaming highway to her mother. The road is just a black tar run cutting through a wheat field. In the way that Oz was visible to Dorothy from a distance, Grace can easily make out Ramona. This is entirely thanks to two tragically large towers that stand faded blue into the sky with the tiny bumps of a town sitting beneath.

The town seemed like it was ready to be blown out into the blank surroundings. The vibrant paint that was once put on the downtown buildings in preparation for the towers was now chipped and weather beaten. The towers themselves, Grace observed as she walked between them, were fairly thin, about 100 feet apart and 70 stories high. In coming up to Ramona, the towers didn't look so bad. Strange, out of place, but powerful. Now, being this close, Grace could see them for the incredible eye sore that they truly are. Held together by weak stitches from crooked masons, their entrances boarded up and graffiti tattooing the sides.

While on this sidewalk, cracked and breached by weeds and dandelions that came up for air, Grace travels in her mind to the night before the towers opened. The town being walked on by foreign feet, everyone and everything painted in a midnight blue on account of the sun signing off. Each store and restaurant like a glowing orange box to the outside. The carnival, like many of its kind, only looked nice and appealing at night. Everyone walking towards technicolor swinging steel. And all these people never to come back, just leaving behind wrappers and hysterically quiet days. When the media coverage on the towers fizzled out and Gale lost interest so did tourists, that was about ten years ago. In that time Ramona's face lift fell off and Gale had went and shot himself along with his boyfriend. That's how he died.

When Grace opens the door to the bar, it's like opening a coffin for a cigarette and beer corpse. Her eyes adjust shakily to the new found darkness, stumbling over some leg of a table before finding a seat. Her mother, a swaying blueberry disco ball, putting the last vocal brush strokes on a tune from her own pen.

Pearl finishes and can see her Grace sitting alone clapping. She giddily hops off the stage and over to her daughter. Grace stands up, arms open. She's gotten heavier since last time. Pearl tells her this after the hug.

“Mom.” sighed Grace.

“Always were real cute in the face, though.”

“Do you wanna just go home? How's Sam?”

“Oh, Jesus.” spat Pearl.

A green fence fingers out of the snow and winds around the rotting baseball field. We can hardly see through these big fat flakes, but there are two kids trudging their way through snow that goes past their knees. One is in a pink suit and she screams “Sam!” at the one in blue after he shoves snow down her neck. Sam laughs and throws his head back as he tramps towards the fence, leaving her behind to fish the cold stuff out.

Sam dives for the fence, managing to throw most of his weight over. For a brief moment he seesaws on his belly, feeling the fence's arrow points painfully. He quickly falls over to the other side, face first into the white hump which gives away like paper. Sam quickly jumps up, face frozen, he looks back at the pink object in the distance pointing and laughing at him. “Megan! Shhhh!” Sam tries to say more but trails off as he presses the mittens against his face, the snow was already melting off.

Megan stands in front of the fence, a little tornado of flakes blows about in front of her. Sam taunts, splashing snow at his sister. Megan waits for the tornado to find new ground and then makes to climb the million year old fence. A rumbling in the skies draws Sam's head up. He stands, mouth open, a few snow flakes land on his tongue. His eyes scan the clouds. Looking back at Megan, who's on top of the fence now, he asks if she hears that noise. No response. Sam looks up again, turns from Megan and starts walking towards the deeply buried pitchers mound. Yellow and red lights flash warm and dull through the clouds. Sam stops in his tracks. The lights guide over to his sister, who's distorted and occasionally visible though flakes. It looks as if she is floating against the fence. A chest quaking rumble makes Sam cover his already muffed ears. The lights hover over Megan, her collar is yanked to the flashes and bursts above. Sam takes two steps forwards but turns and runs as the rumbling grows higher. He doesn't stop running until he is through the woods and grabbing his mother while she shovels the front steps.

“Aliens.”

“Where this time?”

“Outside of Randy's one night...Saturday.” said Sam

“Does he still have that meth lab?”

“Nope, it blew up”

“Seriously? That was in his garage, was anyone hurt?” Grace wanted know.

“Muffin lost her front leg. That's his cat.”

Sam sat in a swivel chair, leaned back near the window. A breeze picked up, trembled the light curtains and blew his dark thinning hair. Grace sat on the edge of his unmade bed. Her brother smelt like sour milk. That's mostly what she kept thinking about. Years from now and until Grace passed on to the lord, sour milk would always remind her of this moment with Sam.

Her brother talked of patterns in the skies, weather and economic sequences that are all pointing to an external other worldly force. Grace walked over to the window where Sam sat, leaned over and poked her head out the window. A bird on the branch adjacent only said tweet-tweetin' then shuffled off to find a less scrutinized tree. Grace asked her brother if he still had his telescope. He did. She asked him if, tonight, he could point out the constellations, the buckle of Orion's belt and where the saucers cruise the galaxy fantastic. Sam said okay. They dug the apparatus out of the closet and sat assembling together. A breeze blew the instructions under the bed.

Outside the door to the bedroom, Pearl stood for a moment and then walked away downstairs. She sat cross legged next to her bed, surrounded by pictures, albums, the beaten report cards and scholastic macaroni pictures. This is exactly what Pearl would do when Grace came to visit, which was rare now. She held a dog eared photo in her hands. Running fingers across it, the gloss now ceased to exist. It's just old and has a deep crease in the middle, separating the gone from the here. To the left, Washington and Megan. Herself, Sam and Grace on the right. Pearl can remember her sister took the picture at a family reunion. It was the second take because grampy walked in front of the lens on the first try. You could see a lake behind them all, and trifle on the picnic table. Leaving Washington after Megan disappeared didn't make sense but it was the most sensible thing Pearl could think to do. Ramona is small, but she still managed to avoid him mostly. Until today while going to mail a letter, and he was standing in line. They spoke and managed to maintain something Pearl thought would have been lost. A genuine respect and interest in one another. Maybe he would stop by to visit later, with her and the kids. They could all eat and be good too.

Up in the air a jet tore through clouds and just missed colliding with another. Two more jets joined in, racing neck and neck before looping over one another, trailing puffy white exhaust like thread. Way, way down on the ground fingers pointed upwards, kids' eyes widened and their hands quickly covered their ears when one would roar over their heads.

Winston Gale stood on a stage with his hands shaking over the crowd. He stamped his feet with the exuberance of a faith healer whipping the sick out of the sickly. An older but none the less beautifully classy woman put her slender hand on Gale's arm to try and calm him down. She had said some nice words to the town earlier. People were surprised at how short she was in person.

The roars from the sky eventually ceased and Gale shifted focus upon a thick red rope connecting the two towers. What he said into the microphone brought out gasps and and excited chatting. Washington and his family had decided this would be a good thing to go to. Grace was catching the 4:30 bus out of Ramona and almost half way across the country to school.

They all stood together, Sam eating a hot dog Washington had bought, and Pearl dabbing the ketchup off his shirt. Gale yelled something out like “from France” although no one could really hear him, but they all took notice when a woman appeared in a window on the left tower. She stood in front of the rope, above them all, in a red body suit. Now that she was more visible, the audience clapped and cheered down below. A red cape billowed out from behind her and ripped around in the wind. The people of Ramona went silent as this red woman removed her cape and put her arms out like a T. One step out. Two steps. Soon she was towards the middle of the rope. Not a word from the crowd below. Grace felt Sam squeezing the back of her leg. She looked down as he looked up, completely neglecting his hot dog. Grace put a hand on his shoulder and joined his gaze upward.

The red woman looked straight up, now in the middle of the rope. She paused and breathed deep several times. She brought her head back down and maintained eye contact with her manager waiting at the other end.

He smiled.

She finished.

Now resting in her manager's arms, the red woman teared up and began to cry as she heard the huge response from the crowd. This was, after all, only her second time with no net and she had performed flawlessly They applauded louder when she stuck her head out of the window, waving and blowing kisses. Later, on stage, as the ceremony came to a close she threw her cape out to Ramona like a bridal bouquet.

The family said good bye in front of the bus. Pearl probably cried the most. They watched and watched as the bus got smaller and smaller into the blue.

There's a restaurant 'slash' bar grand opening in a couple of hours. That sounded pretty good to Washington. Although, Pearl had requested to be able to sing with a local band they had performing there. He didn't know how that'd be.

It's just Washington and Sam later on, driving in the car from their home to city hall. Then they had to stop off at the rec center and post office before meeting Pearl at the bar. Sam, in the passenger's seat, is quietly staring out the open window as they drove. In the back of the vehicle, on the floor, are pictures Washington had taken of Megan at the park one summer ago. Distracting from his child enjoying that wonderful day was the giant MISSING looming over her head. Five months she had been gone. Only a week since Pearl had yelled at him about wanting to go on with everything and took all the MISSING's down. But what is the harm in having them up anyway? None harm. The car made its way to their second stop, passing people in line for the towers with kids in their arms and dogs at their sides. An hour ago a woman had walked above them on thin air.

And now we're pretty much the only ones that can see Sam's face as he gazes into the side car mirror. He's watching a boy, about his age, who he recognizes from school. The boy has his arms out like a T as he walks along the edge of a curb. Not nearly as sturdy as the red woman, he wobbles and catches his balance. That magnificent god damn cape is around his neck and licks the air. Sam starts to lose sight of him as the car goes down hill. The boys' balance is shaken once again as he sinks out of view. The cape waves good bye and Sam wishes the boy caught himself.

***************************************************************************************

RAMONA, KANSAS earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

***************************************************************************************

Matthew Adams was born and raised in the small town of Summerside in Prince Edward Island, Canada. He has had a keen interest in story telling since a young age. In elementary school he wrote many sequels to the popular 'Gremlins' films. All were well received by teachers and classmates. It was only within the last year that Matthew became interested in writing again and is currently working on a novel. Matthew has a diploma in digital filmmaking and hopes to make a go at a profession in that industry in the not too distant future.

###

FIELDS OF GOLD by Dr. Stephen DB Jefferies

2009-03-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

Joyful I step into a golden field. In days the harvest will drop at the will of the stone-sharpened scythe, the grain threshed from the mother stalk, collected and poured like honey into sacks, then rocked in wagons to the railroad depot. But for now the feathery tips tickle my palms and swish against my skirts, and around me, to the horizon, is the undulating gold, bending in the Chinook wind as if God Himself runs His hand through His hair.

Walk on open heart, in step to the quickening. I ache to press my lips against his smile, to let my hair come down and mingle gold on gold as I fall into his arms, but when all I see is ripe barley for a thousand miles, I know that I shall not see him, that he is here in spirit only.

~

I wake with tears. My hands are clasped prayerfully across my chest; elbows, forearms and fingers numb in mock death. And the dream rushes at me like the West Wind, the strongest of winds, the breath of Mudjekeewis, and lifts me from my slumber quickly to the dresser, to pick up my journal, to write down each fragment immediately, lest I should fail in the moment to embellish the record with other memories, other dreams, other truths.

From my room I look out east at the Red Swan floating in a purple haze. The barley fields glow with sunrise flame. The Indian winter trade has filled our stores with salmon, mountain trout and buffalo. The wet spring saw the ploughing and sowing tableaux across the fields, for anyone who would paint them, and now the crops respond to the summer heat.

At the window I issue thanks and rest my forehead on the cabin wall. Only death will take me from this place, for I love it as I love my memories. It is part of me. It hunkers down in winter, resistant to wind-whipped snow, but in spring the windows and doors are flung wide open and prairie breezes blow through west to east, bringing the promise of rejuvenation.

~

I drop my pail at the door and, leaving a shortening shadow on the porch, move, cooling, into the main room.

"There’s a newcomer on the other side of the River, toward Minot Town," says Poppa.

Momma hunts busily at the range. Poppa sits spread at the table, his eyes focused on cleaning his gun. The two boys are beside him, watching, eating.

"I made some pies yesterday," says Momma, and opens the pantry door and looks in.

"Elinore, you can take one over."

"And ask him to Sunday lunch," says Poppa.

My sweet brothers, how your faces howl with silent, indignant screams, knowing that my chores are now yours! But contrast that with my happiness: moan and groan, yet still manage to get the work done in time to go fishing, you loveable rogues.

Lily of the prairie, Wenonah, is a strong horse, but she likes me, and she likes to run, streaking along, her white mane flicking my laughing face. Like a tick on her neck I suck her zest as she carries me on and on as if I were not there. Together we race along the riverbank, heading north until we reach the ford, a place where scattered rocks and shingle reduce the depth of the river. It is rushing, and four feet deep, so, untying the laces of my boots and removing them and my stockings, I hoist my skirts up round my waist and urge Wenonah into the dark, crystal water; it is cold, and she blows and snorts as the Taquanemaw slaps her belly.

The sun still climbs when I reach his homestead. A thin smoke spiral rises from the chimney. In a small corral is a short-horn cow with her calf and between her cloven toes chickens inspect and stab the dirt. A family of hogs root at the side of the shack; the black backed sow gives me a bloodshot glare. A big dog thumps its tail against the earth, embarrassed because he is too old to get up to protest my arrival.

I stand in the stirrups and holler. Wenonah clops forward and I can smell acid earth, wood smoke, and bacon. I wonder what kind of man comes out here, alone.

Suddenly he is there at my bridle. And look at me: boots tied around my neck, skirt around my thighs, ruckled on the saddle in the gallop. My fault for riding like a man. He is amused, I think, and I take instant offence and my cheeks flush, yet I am staring at him.

The sun is strong and he puts one hand up to shade his eyes. Now I can see their darkness. They look deep, like the middle of the Taquanemaw, where currents fast tug at your legs if you swim when the river is in full spate. It seems to me that I can feel something swirling around, pulling me as I talk to him, but I ignore it because I am a strong swimmer.

~

At the Midsummer Dance it remains light until eleven o’clock. The sun slips below the horizon and leaves a rim of magenta sky, which shades into purple, and then finally, over my head, becomes an inky indigo through which stars shine.

All night I dance with John Buckley. Poppa stands by the band and pounds his hands together in time to the beat, his face split by a huge smile. Momma sits with her friends. Poppa makes her dance with him a couple of times and once I catch her eye, and in that glance she makes it plain that she is simply doing her duty. In reply, I flick out my skirts in a promenade, and laugh.

John Buckley and I walk through the fields, our fingers entwined, brushing the tips of the harvest.

"Can you see the future?" he says.

"Sometimes."

I have learned the enticement of enigma.

He smiles approvingly.

"Will you stay with me?"

"Yes."

"Will you be my love?"

"I am."

He laughs a little at this.

"I promise," I say, slightly hurt. "I will stay with you forever."

He sighs and pulls off an ear of barley, rubs it in his hands, blows the chaff away and drops a few grains into my palm. I put some in my mouth, crunch them, then spit them back onto the earth. He does the same.

"I can’t make promises like you," he says. "In the past I made promises." He looks up, shows me the line of his jaw, the conch of his ear, and stares over his shoulder, towards the east, his origin. "And I’ve broken a few." He turns to me.
"But I swear…"

I put my fingers to his lips.

"No," I say, and drop to the ground, pulling his arm. He kneels beside me, trembling. We do not speak. He kisses me. I feel the pressure of his lips, the thrill of his tongue against mine and, as we lie together, I imagine that I am floating in the golden harvest.

The barley sways and whispers, but he stands suddenly, pulls me to my feet, then stretches out his arm parallel with the horizon and makes a broad sweep.

"Just imagine many years have passed." He points to a hollow by a tree. "Children, running. Can you hear their laughter? And there is the house, the open door, a welcome to our friends, and all around is the ready harvest."

My eyes are closed. His face touches mine, his breath is soft in my mouth as he gives me his words, his promise.

So is it you, John Buckley, who prompts the pictures in my mind?

"One day you’ll remember me," he says, eyes closed against the summer sky.

The stalks of barley stretch to infinity.

"We are quite safe," he says.

I shrink and squirm my wing-blades into the red soil, closer to the pulsing earth, and crackle the barley nest as I shake my head. An Englishman in North Dakota? A man who talks in riddles and boasts, and utters poetry, speaking with crisp clear consonants and soft rounded vowels produced from the largest space at the back of the throat, the space where the tongue takes root.

"Who shall I tell about this?" I tease.

"No one."

"Then only we will know."

"And Him,’ he says, pointing his arm straight up, then flattening his palm to shade my eyes so I can stare at the penumbral glare.

"Gheezis," he says, "the Great Sun, the Beholder, has seen everything, and he is jealous."

"He should be," I whisper.

~

Poppa looks up briefly, lamplight on his weathered face. He is mending a broken halter, the one used on the harvester. Soon, everyone will be in the fields before dawn and home after dusk, almost twenty hours on the longest days, and we will be heartened by the volume of the harvest and Poppa’s booming voice exhorting us to "Keep on." Momma works as hard as he does, but when we stop to rest she is the one who carries barley wine round to the hired hands, while I follow and give out thick slabs of honey wheat cake.

I stand quietly at his elbow.

"There’s a storm coming," he says, and carries on working. I help steady a leather strap as he threads it through a metal ring.

"I know. At the well I could feel the heat on one side of my face and a chill on the other, and the air smells different."

"That’s right," he says.

I am aware of the rolling tempest that nears as we speak: Annemeeke, the thunder, and Waywassimo, the lightning, in deadly partnership with Mudjekeewis. They often come in the night.

By morning the fields are flat.

I fly on a winged horse, brushing grey clouds that press down from the dome of the sky. Poppa rides with me, his steed a fistful of sinew and muscle. At the edge of the farm we soar to the top of a hill and look back at the cabin. The sun breaks through the clouds in great shafts of light. Of our one thousand acres the storm has taken half.

"We’ll have to dig into reserves," he says. "No point getting upset. What’s done is done. Learn from it if you can."

"But what can we learn from this?" I say to myself, to Poppa, and to God.

His gaze rises and fixes on the horizon.

"Something," he says, voice husking, and gently turns his horse away.

~

Come now midnight, one of many in my long winter and, as usual, I am sitting in front of the fire. The glow from the hearth lights up your face in orange and gold and I can see your smile shine through the darkness, a light etched in my memory. You are a poet, yet it is I who know you by heart.

"You can’t leave." I am crying, sobbing, my face ugly, and you don’t care how awful I look because you love me. Nothing in Heaven or on Earth can change that.

"I won’t get through the winter." His voice is flat and toneless. "I’m going to Grand Forks. There’s a mining company, they need people."

"Can’t you borrow money? What about the bank? My father?"

John shakes his head slowly, in time to a distant clock. The seconds pass, one by one.

He says, "In a couple of years—"

"In a couple of years we could all be…anything can happen!"

I am shouting.

This time he approaches, stands behind my chair, stoops and kisses my neck, breathes through my hair, and I am calmed.

"Remember me every day, and I will think of you remembering me, and then, you will know that I am thinking of you. Mornings in April, secrets, laughing like children, warm summer nights, my voice, whispering through the barley. And never forget, I have shown you the future."

~

So I remember. I see his face in the flames of the fire, in the folds of a snowdrift, in the contours of a cloud.

A letter. Poppa collects it from Minot Town when he goes for supplies. He stands in front of the fire, hands pressed against the oak bressummer; after years of smoke and heat it is cracked and split and black as liquorice.

I have not seen Poppa shake before. He moves away, paces the edge of the Hessian rug, stepping over Mische, who lies with his muzzle on crossed paws, slivers of white at the rims of his eyes, making canine sense of the human world.

Eventually one hand crumples the letter. Momma looks into the hearth. The boys are silent, anxious. Every crack from the fire is a rifle shot, each sigh a lament.

"What does it say?"

That’s my voice, but from where it comes I do not know. I feel as if I cannot stand for another second, and yet if I move I think my knees will snap.

Poppa knows that he has been displaced in the hierarchy of love, and that is why he shakes when he tells me that there has been a mining accident at Grand Forks and the authorities are contacting the next of kin.

"And may I ask, who is that?" I say quietly.

Some silences last forever. The wind back-drafts down the chimney, strokes the flames, and coaxes them into life.

"You," he replies.

~

I am back, a long time since, with an ache in my chest like a twisted muscle. On many occasions my toes have spread into the glacial earth that enfolds his body. Skin to skin, my way of feeling him.

The fields reach in every direction to a cobalt-blue sky. This summer, the heads of gold, coarse tresses trailing, sway like dancers mimicking nature mimicking dancers, but I have no more tears.

He left in autumn. The leaves were turning.

~

I wake. The fire is out; there is just a glow, the memory of flame. I get up and walk outside. Through the mist I imagine running children, hear their laughter, indistinct in the distance. And there, at the tip of his finger, is the house, the door open to our never friends. And all around me the harvest sings, lifting more than a million voices to the rising sun, staring from a jealous sky.

Sometimes I can taste the bitter grain.

**************************************************************************************

FIELDS OF GOLD earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

**************************************************************************************

Steve Jefferies is a family doctor in Surrey, England. Married with four children, Steve graduated from the University of Chichester with an MA in Creative Writing in 2004. He has been published in the online magazine Pulp.net.

###

LETTERS FROM THE HOTEL by G. L. Osborne

2009-03-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

She recognises the handwriting immediately. I’m at some hotel, it says. My room overlooks the rubbish bins. The place smells like something’s rotting. I’ll write again when I know more.

Her heart gives a forward bound, as though starting. A fly buzzes on the sill, punching above its weight. The smell of baking bread forces its way in from the bakery across the road. A label on her cotton top scrapes the back of her neck.

The glaring white shimmer of light on the white page. The familiar writing, its immediacy. Words from him at last.

Now she begins to shiver, unfrozen but suddenly so cold. Her teeth chatter. From nowhere the phrase hot water bottle, an image of pink rubber, an imagined feel of intense heat. A memory from childhood. No one owns hot water bottles now.

Her socked feet drag on the floor. Dust mice roll lazily in the drafts coming under the door. Lifting a corner of the bulky quilt. Sliding under it like a knife into water – quickly, cleanly, and down into a thousand-year sleep.

Much later, watching water boiling in a saucepan. (The kettle burnt out weeks ago, soon after he went. She hadn’t been able to stir, and the kettle had whistled itself dry and shat out its base.) Now – watching small bubbles appear around the water’s edge, the gathering of impetus, the sudden rush of boiling – she blows out the flame with the gusto of a birthday girl. Changing her mind, she switches off the gas. Sometimes better not to follow things to their logical conclusion.

A telephone call. Say nothing to anyone about his letter until there is some sort of plan. "Lisa, I’m not up to visitors. It’s been one of those days."

That night a vision of him between the thighs of Erin. Torment. A sense of betrayal like claws dragged down a blackboard, on and on. The claws do not stop; the blackboard does not end. What can you do?

A rash on the back of the neck. Miniscule, raised red dots, painless. Maybe it’s from sleeping between dirty sheets.

The next day another letter.

People aren’t friendly here. There’s a woman who seems to be in charge, who allocates the rooms. She looks familiar, but I can’t place her. Someone said she owns the hotel.

I can’t get used to the smell. I think it’s boiling mince and rubbish bins and disappointment and old sex, but I’m not sure. I asked her for another room because I can’t sleep with the stink of the rubbish. She said, "You can’t just turn up here out of nowhere and expect the penthouse suite."

Inhaling the scent of the ink – that familiar blue, peacock blue, eyes-of-Erin blue. Peacock-blue washable. A tear, a smear.

Her own eyes speckled brown and grey. Sparrow-coloured. Dark-lashed. Unusual. Always her best feature until he’d said one day, "You could get some coloured lenses, you know. That gorgeous cut-glass blue."

A loud pounding on the door. The shadows long across the floor. Where’s the day? An omelette left outside, with little honeyed carrot wheels and a note from Liz. Darling, you need to think less about him and more about yourself.

Like that’s going to happen. Liz dispenses truisms like Oscar Wilde throwing out bon mots. You have to eat more food to keep your immunity up. Don’t drink; you only feel worse next day. If you cry too much, the skin on your eyes starts to go. It’s supposed to hurt; that way you know you’re human. Have a good cry; there, there, better out than in. The only way round it is through it.

Night, day, night, day. Shadows across the floor. Trips to the toilet; no pants to pull up. A boiling saucepan and scalding tea. The rash creeps around to the front of the neck.

There’s a state of consciousness into which you can drop whereby there’s stillness and no time. Just a holding still. You might be cupping a mug or have your hairbrush in your hand, but suddenly the shadows are all that much longer, and there’s a pounding on the door, and someone like Liz or Therese or even Paul the naturopath from flat 6 must be told, "No, I’m perfectly OK. I just need to be alone if it’s no trouble."

A foil-covered plate being set down. A full casserole dish. People are so kind. And once Paul saying gently through the door, "You were calling out; we thought you were being attacked."

The next day another letter.

I’ve forgotten how to sleep. It’s the smell of this place. Someone told me yesterday there’s a train station nearby. I walked and walked and kept getting lost. Remember my good shoes, the black chisel-toed ones with the narrow fit? For some stupid reason they’re the only ones I have with me. I can hardly walk in them.

I forgot the directions I’d been given. I couldn’t find anyone who spoke my language. No train station, just mean little houses looking onto other mean little houses – streets and streets of them. It’s the most depressing place I’ve ever been.

Erin not mentioned – does he miss her? The visions of them together are violent with passion. Other people’s imagined passion is always full of abandon, lacking conscious thought or anxieties about cleanliness or contraception or performance. Is that why he can’t sleep, because he thinks with unbridled intensity of Erin and longs for her secret places? If that’s it, he’s too polite to say so.

I need to get home to you. Today I found the train station. There was a queue. A train was in. I got to the ticket window and asked for a ticket. I’d left my money at the hotel. The train pulled out and they closed the tracks for repairs. No more trains for a month. Someone said to try my luck at the docks.

Does he even remember Erin? Or did the shock of his death drive her out of mind, wreck the spindly little fibres that held her – last in, first out – in his brain? Has she been wiped?

I long for the sound of your voice close to my ear, for a sight of your face, always so beautiful to me. I am more alone than I can say.

Last night something terrible happened. The woman I told you about came to my room with a couple of men. Now I understand what people mean by under duress. I asked when it was over when I would be allowed to leave, and she laughed. She seems to hate me, and I have no idea why.

(Oh, you could tell him; you certainly could.)

The rash burns as blood pulses through the inflamed skin on her neck and face. Parts of it have begun to weep a clear, slippery fluid that she blots with tissues only for it to collect again in a fine film. Could it be from wearing dirty clothes?

She spends too long in front of the bathroom mirror, fascinated by the rash and by the fluid that collects on her skin, even as she watches and blots. There are minuscule, raised dots now all over her hands.

She had a friend once, Sylvia. When Sylvia was angry about something she would break out in a rash. It was impossible not to stare, fascinated, as the red spots traveled up out of Sylvia’s cleavage, up her neck, over her face like quick-marching hordes. If you hadn’t known better, you would have sworn that Sylvia’s rash were being painted on by some invisible internal companion, a voiceless other who signaled desperately to the outside world.

Another letter.

I found the docks today, but no one I called to on the ships could understand me. They shrugged and held up their hands. Or they yelled to their friends, who came to the railing to laugh at me.

I went back to the hotel; I had nowhere else to go. The cold after dark cuts right through you – you could die of hypothermia if you were out too long. At least the hotel is heated, not that I can get warm these days. But I dread the nights.

Paul from flat 6 taps on the door, bucket in hand. He looks at her face and neck, too close for comfort, and says, "Have you seen anyone about that?"

"Yes," she lies. "It’s nerves." (Just as Sylvia once said to her.)

He comes into the narrow hallway and sets down his bucket. "We can smell your flat all over the building, my darling. It’s frightening the customers away. But don’t worry, I used to clean houses in college. For all the rich bitches."

He looks again at her face. "We have to lessen your allergenic load," he says, taking spray bottles, sponges and cloths from the bucket. "The place is crawling with dust mites about to meet their maker."

He glances quickly at her. "Sorry."

"It doesn’t matter," she says. Because it doesn’t. Why would he think it would?

"I’ll get started if you don’t mind," he says.

The cleaning takes four hours, through which she sleeps. When she wakes, it is to the smell of citrus and a cup of tea in a clean mug, and Paul saying "All done, babe. OK if I pop this down here?"

There is no way to leave. Today I tried to walk out of the town through what I thought were the outskirts, but they went on and on until the mountains seemed further away than ever and I gave up hope. My shoes had rubbed off the skin on my toes and heels, and my socks were soaked with blood. A police car with two policemen in it picked me up. I offered to do anything if they’d drive me out of town. They drove me back to the hotel. The woman who runs the hotel was waiting out the front. The policemen seemed to be friends of hers. She laughed because she saw I was shaking. Her laugh was so familiar: wish I could remember where I know her from. I miss you so much I can’t bear it.

The words layer the smooth, creamy page. She runs her fingertips over it. The texture of the page all down the cheek, over the mouth. A sudden pulling back. Skin of Erin.

The mouth of Erin, open to receive him. This image crowds out the rest. All you’d been able to say as tears and snot had coursed down your face after they’d given you the news was, "Don’t let Erin near the funeral. She’s not to come to the funeral."

"No, no – of course not," people had uniformly said, some obviously appalled by her. She couldn’t explain to them that the vision of Erin was what simultaneously sank her and kept her from sinking. The rest – his death – was beyond, in unnameable darkness. Finally, after days, Evie had said, "Erin’s got a right to grieve too. You’re not going to control even his death, are you?"

One by one, all the friends had said it in their own way. (Erin obviously did her best work on the phone – what she didn’t do in the backs of cabs or in stairwells or between illicit, midafternoon sheets.) One friend called it "honouring the man he really was, not the one you wanted him to be." Another said, "It’s time to be a big girl about these things, darling." Another said, "So what if she was doing him? That gives you something in common."

In the end the only thing to say was, "All right, then. She can come to the service; just don’t let her near the wake."

But Erin had sobbed uncontrollably through the service, loud and vivid in a pew up the back. And when the time had come for all the cars to leave, certain hands had been laid on certain arms, and pressure had been brought to bear, and before you could say in flagrante delicto, Erin was sitting across from her in the big hired car and wailing "I thought he’d fallen asleep on top of me" in a voice that could have cut tin.

They’ve posted guards at the front of the hotel. No one is allowed to go out or come in. The woman who owns the hotel listens outside my door. I can feel how she hates me.

The nights are unspeakable. The days are long times spent waiting in dread.

What am I doing here? I remember the blue of your eyes, like blue cut crystal. I can’t imagine why I would ever leave you. Do you know? Can you tell me? I don’t know if you get these letters, or why I’m even allowed to write them. The woman who owns the hotel probably doesn’t post them.

The scent of the ink is sharp, unpleasant. Blood pulses through her hands and neck and face. Paul has given her some cream for the rash. It’s stopped the weeping, and bit by bit will claim back each fraction of skin – each cell, each patch – until the rash is gone and all is clear again.

Clothes that were wet six weeks ago – his clothes, washed that last morning as he got ready for work – are now a dry browned crust in the washing-machine tub. A fly buzzes on the sill, on its back, near the end. Through the cloudy glass, she watches the comings and goings at the bakery across the road – the last customers slipping in and out under the lowered awning in the sun’s final rays. She watches her hand move the pen over the page, over the creamy white paper, recording his desperate words.

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LETTERS FROM THE HOTEL earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Glenys Osborne lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has received various awards for fiction writing, including First Place in the 2008 and Second Place in the 2007 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. She also twice received second prize in the Age (newspaper) Short Story Competition, and the 2007 Marian Eldridge award. Glenys writes early in the morning, teaches editing at masters level, and is fiction editor for the creative and literary journal Etchings.

###

AFTER THE SILENCE by Peter Paton

2009-03-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes mothers and daughters speak of hate by which they usually mean, “You have hurt me”; “You disapprove of me” or “You reject me,” but that is not really hate. Like boxers in a ring, they tiptoe around one another, dodging blows and occasionally hitting home. Rarely, something happens which neither had taken into account and one person doesn't get up and when that happens, what they called hate becomes like a problem which has been puzzled over so long that it has become meaningless. When looked at afresh one can see that the other was not so very different after all, and that will be enough.

My mother looked fierce as she lay burnt and damaged and it made me angry. There was a pain in her that had made her so afraid that she had turned against the world. I wanted to shake her and tell her that I was not her enemy, that she had made her choices and that I hated her for them but how do you shake a burned woman and tell her you hate her? As she slept, her face was hard, tight and strained and as I watched, I pretended that she was a burned old woman, someone's mother. As I combed her hair, thin gray strands that had once been proud and black came away. The useless hair darkened and grew moist in my hand and I knew then with a sad and stupid surprise that I did not want her to die.

After the silence, nothing was ever the same. The Ota River stood like a stagnant steel sheet: the only interruption to the flattened landscape of charred tree stumps and concrete husks. Lifeless beneath the fierce opaque sky: gray and broken, the distant hills offered the only relief. Like startled creatures emerging from their hiding places, the city's bridges extended their wary links, spanning desolation with desolation. What had once been homes, shops and peoples’ livelihoods’ were reduced to kindling, power poles leaned at unnatural angles: limp and powerless. The facade of a bank maintained what dignity it could whilst buried up to its second floor in the splinters it had financed. Unwilling and unable to leave the familiar for the horrors yet to be understood, dazed people functioned as best they could.

Scorched into the wall facing me were the outlines of people who had been passing the tower when the blast occurred. Like a flashbulb immortalizing the moment, they had been incinerated in an instant and their shadows were all that remained. My mind could not make sense of what I saw and for a moment, I thought that if I walked to the other side of the wall I would find the people waiting behind it. As I turned away, I knew that I had entered a changed world where there were no secrets, where people stood revealed: their possessions, their emotions, their bodies raw and broken before me. Hiroshima was not in ruins: it had been obliterated.

My mother lived at Koi, three miles west of the blast area. A neighbour had seen her leave the house on the morning of the blast but she had not returned. The house was old and solid; it was where I had grown up and where my mother chose to stay after my father's death. I looked up at the dirty, yellow sky where the sun, its power usurped, had been broken into a thousand pieces and smeared across a threadbare gray blanket. Powerless to break through, the heat was oppressive.

Field hospitals had been set up on Hijiyama Hill and at the Army's East Parade Ground where the Navy Medical Service Corps had been deployed. Row after row of patients lay in tents or on open ground. Two thousand bodies a day were cremated, so that the smell of burning flesh wafted over those already burned.

It took me three days to find her, on a basketball court at the Koi National School. Lying on a piece of board she was one of hundreds of wretched souls abandoned to their fates. The woman I saw before me seemed so small, so alone that it took me a moment to recognize her. Staring ahead, an orange scarf was wound tightly around her shoulders and gave the impression that her head was rising above a cordon of flames. Her eyes, once vibrant and defiant, were tired and dim, sagging but watchful. Waiting. Perhaps for me, perhaps seeking assistance or pleading to be left alone. I started to smile and then stopped myself. I felt foolish and quickly looked away and then in my confusion, back. She had not looked away.

My mother's burns were limited to those parts of her body which had been exposed, and they seemed less severe than the horrendous cases I had seen, where the skin had peeled from the body leaving raw painful wounds open to infection and almost impossible to treat. There were abrasions on her nose, a cut beneath her left eye and her skin was burned from her chin and extended to her throat. She was in shock, her clothes torn, her blouse missing, she was dirty and exhausted but she could move. I saw her expression changing, straining, drawing me with her eyes as she tried to speak and then to lift her head and then exhausted, fall back. I leant forward, my face so close I could feel her breath on my skin. I pushed my ear to her mouth:

“You've come”.

Was it relief? Surprise? An accusation? I couldn't be sure. Her voice was a whisper. “Take me home”. In those words lay the only hope she had.

The house was not safe to inhabit, however, apart from broken windows the sunroom was undamaged and seemed suitable for our immediate needs. A tree had fallen across the garden dislodging two large stones so that they now filled the pond that they had once over-looked. For some reason it comforted me and I felt this was how it should have been all along. My mother used to say the pond calmed her and that whenever she smelled the jasmine she felt better about whatever was troubling her. It was where she belonged.

She was on her way to the Asano library at Kamiyacho Crossing when she had the sensation of being carried through the air at what was a terrifying speed but which felt as if she were floating on a blinding white light, as if the sky had split open. There was a deafening roar and she hurtled through a doorway hitting the wall with such force that she thought she would pass out. Lying there stunned, wondering if she had broken any bones she realized that behind her was emptiness. The doorway of the building she had been thrown into was all that remained and from what she could tell, those around her were dead. Thinking that the city had been hit by a surprise air-raid she expected to hear sirens and screams and commotion, but there were none to be heard. What struck her most was the silence. There was a burning sensation on her skin; she remembered starting to vomit and then nothing until waking up in the Rescue Station.

In the living room, I found a photograph of my mother: hand-colored and vivid. It had been taken when she was fourteen or fifteen and I remembered it from many years ago. It sat on a wooden chest which had belonged to my grandmother and which she used to store papers, letters and cards: remnants from before her marriage. The chest sat beside her chair, sealed by the photograph, memories of a past life. This girl stood before a painted backdrop of the kind found in a photographer's studio.

It was an image of the sea, with green and white folds of foam and life. My mother stood before this backdrop in a kimono of crimson silk that had been woven for her as a birthday gift from her parents and she said when she put it on, she felt that the world was hers for the asking. She stood poised and confident and held aloft a paper fan of gold, purple and dazzling red as if she were signaling. Her hair was soft and loose and her eyes shone into the future. I once told her that she looked like the guardian of the ocean, warning all who approached to respect its beauty and to tread carefully before its might. She was silent for a moment, I thought she hadn't heard me, but she turned and looked at me and said that it was just canvas and paint and I should know better. Then she said something that made me realize that as a girl she had imagined a different future to what her life had become. She brushed my hand from her shoulder and I saw resentment in her eyes. I wondered if it was at me. She said there was no use in pretending and we never spoke of it again. One day the photograph was gone and I knew that if I were to open the chest I would find it neatly stored away: wrapped in the irrelevant folds of a faded kimono.

I went outside and I sat by the pond and although I had been gone for many years it took but a moment for the past to return. I had left her behind and when I could have come back, I didn't. I felt that I would have suffocated. A force that was stronger than me, of love and memories and obligation would have engulfed me. I was afraid of the pain of truth and chose instead to say nothing. I was afraid of my past, and my future and I knew I had left her confused. I hoped that she was wise enough to know better but even as I thought it, I knew I was lying. I could not be my mother.

I had found a tea canister floating in the pond. The canister contained paintings I had done as a little girl: a bridge, a tree, a house: silly, meaningless dabs of paint. There was a photograph and I recognized myself as the girl in her sailor suit, her shoulders pulled back and her right arm stiff by her side. I stood to attention, staring obediently at the camera, but my attention was on the fact that my father was behind me. Even now, I can feel the heat from his watchful body. My mother is in a ceremonial kimono, hair strictly divided into two flat, black slabs, tight and controlled, resignation in her face as she stares patiently ahead with her hands clenched in her lap. The anger that I felt then returned, as I thought of the uncertainty with which her entire Being consisted: someone afraid who never thought it could be otherwise. Someone I refused to become.

“My life is my choice”. Her voice was firm.

“What choice. You sit there, you criticize me, and all you have ever done is
accept a life carved out for you”.

“What do you have for all the trouble you've caused? Nothing! You drift around lost and alone”.

“It's you who have nothing. I will look and keep looking until I find whatever it is that will give my life some meaning. You will never have that. If I die looking I have rejected all the things that people fill up their lives with. People like you with your empty marriage and your empty days”.

“You criticize me but you have no right. Sometimes being still is enough. If things don't work out as we had hoped, they can work out in other ways we had never even thought of. Why do you feel it is all right to criticize me? One day you might know”.

I had hurt her. I knew it as I avoided her eyes. I had stung her but it was true and if I had hurt her, I felt alive. I felt she had heard me. I had hurt her.

My voice was tired, a whisper:

“You make me say these things. You've always fought me, tolerated me, shut me out”.

I wanted her to argue with me, tell me it wasn't true, tell me I had it all wrong. I wanted her to talk to me. But my mother couldn't do that, I didn't know that then.

Her voice was flat. “We shut each other out”. Before me, she lay dying.

My body was wrapped in wool and it reassured me. The morning was cool and the light was soft as it shared my world. I felt the cold air in my nostrils, embracing my skin. I felt cleansed. It was a quiet time as I stood in the garden and saw indigo dissolve into a confection of reds and pinks and the softest of yellows. I witnessed the landscape appear before me like a magician's trick: from a dark corner emerged a tree and then more trees, a wall materialized: its stone damp, cold and forbidding. Before long the yellow rays, stronger now, would stretch to caress it, bring it warmth, perhaps a place to rest and gather thoughts before moving on.

What was that sound? Music? It came from nowhere and then there was silence, except for the steady wheeze of my mother's breathing. I looked at the pond and saw leaves and twigs and I wanted to cry. You were so quiet; I worried that you would go without saying goodbye. Your burns were minor, you should have healed but you were bleeding: your gums, your nose. You were wasting away before me. You were so tired and I saw that you had passed blood. I didn't know if I would be strong enough. The breeze distracted the trees, sending them scurrying to one side while it stole past and washed my face as I washed yours. I knew you were dying and I could only feed you sugared water. I had never noticed that your front teeth were slightly crooked. The light made them glisten and revealed a vulnerability that made me gasp and I felt my heart would burst with sorrow for having uncovered a useless truth between your quick, short breaths.

I thought of my life in Tokyo, where I had run so long ago and I wondered where my home was. Was I moving towards something or away from something? Where could I go? Or could I only come back? For two days I was frightened, as if someone had wrenched the masks from my face and confronted me with a hopelessness I could not bear. It was as if a lifetime of regrets were realized in a moment. Deprived of the ability to reason I removed myself from the world which I could not join and sought refuge in sleep.

I didn't say goodbye. I awoke to the silence and I knew. The room was so still, I folded my arms around my legs, and I looked at you, so quiet and brave. I moved to touch your hand and you were cold. When I was asleep, you left me as I once left you. I simply left. Would you have called me selfish? I was tired and I slept while you lay dying beside me. Perhaps if you were not weak and wasted you would have covered me, gently so as not to disturb my rest.

That afternoon I walked to a point in the Hijiyama Hills from where I could see the city before me. The air was sharp and it bit into my face as I neared the top of the hill. I felt alive as if with each step someone was slapping me into consciousness. Earlier that day the Emperor had broadcast the news of our surrender and I thought of the Empress I had seen long ago and wondered what would become of her. I marveled at how quiet the streets were, soon to fill with the Occupying Forces. Clouds of smoke crept across the sky from the crematoriums: it was a part of the city now.

Within the smell of the jasmine lay the song of my mother. It is in the air, it is nowhere, she is all around me in a rush of sensations so overpowering they eclipsed the devastation before me. I watched a woman who was stooped over, an orange scarf wound tightly around her shoulders. Behind her was the dark hole of what looked to be a partially buried fireplace, and as she collected firewood, exuding calm and peace, she looked at me. A slash of color against the gray and without warning, with so little reason that it shocked me, she smiled.

“Let us run!” cried my mother as she took the hand of a little girl. Her eyes met mine, I saw caution and warmth but still I pulled away. I was afraid, I am afraid now but the hand is gone and I have myself to rely on. I will not stay, for I have never belonged but I take her with me in a different way and somehow that is enough.

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AFTER THE SILENCE earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Peter Paton lives in Sydney, Australia. He has written a number of short stories and a novella, and is currently working on his first novel. "This story started with the idea of a daughter brushing her mother's hair and then took on a life of its own. To create something from nothing and to have that touch something in others fulfils me. That's why I write."

###

PORT BON TEMPS by Billie Louise Jones

2009-03-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

Port Bon Temps hung on to land’s end below New Orleans. Crushed cars were packed into the edge of the land to shore it up. There used to be a beach, but the tide ate it. There used to be marshes along the Gulf, but salt water had dried them up; the marshes began back from the town. Port Bon Temps, not a resort town, lived from the Gulf. There was an oilrig on the edge of the Continental Shelf, professional fishing boats tied up at the long docks, and a plant that processed shrimp, crab, and oysters. The people were mostly Cajun or Vietnamese.

Yvonne Laborde heard the Weather Channel giving an update on Hurricane Katrina and, carrying the baby, Aimée, went back to the TV. This time of year she kept the TV on, always, for the weather. She was a petite, dark woman with an anxious line between her eyebrows. Katrina had hit Florida and was gathering her strength in the Gulf, getting ready to move on Louisiana and Mississippi. It was Thursday, August 25, 2005.

Yvonne felt a terrible dread: She is bad, her.

Yvonne went out on the porch. The house was raised fifteen feet above sea level on steel stilts; the porch wrapped all around and the French windows had storm shutters. Hot winds from the Gulf slapped waves over the docks and into the road that ran along the waterfront.

She knew the feel of a tropical storm in the air. On the ground, Matt and Brittanie, ten and eight, threw balls for their big puppy, Loup Garou, half shepherd, half everything else. Yvonne leaned over the rail and called them to come up.

Their dark heads came up out of the hole cut in the front room floor for the stairs from outside. “Cher papa home soon, soon,” she told them.

They understood and grinned.

“Big storm!” Matt said cheerfully.

“We light candles,” Brittanie added. “Sing in the dark. We need more Cokes and candy!”

“We pack,” Yvonne said.

Bon Temps Platform was the biggest offshore rig in the region. It stood in 2,000 feet of seawater. Its concrete and steel legs were rooted 600 feet below the seabed. Its airgap was 55 feet, the distance between the surface of the sea and the lower deck; it could withstand a wave that high. Its topsides rose 90 feet above its bottom deck.

Two weeks on, two weeks off. The men on the platform, expecting to evacuate, went on about their work in the meantime. They watched Katrina’s parade as part of the job. Never any wishful thinking that maybe a storm would not be all that bad. Not a word of bravado. They had nothing to prove. They respected danger. The nature of the work required them to function through fear: extracting a highly volatile substance under extreme pressure in an environment where they were not meant to be. There was no margin for error.

The call came to close off the wells on Friday, August 26. Katrina was expected to hit land early Monday. Close enough.

Jack and Yvonne Laborde looked at each other and needed hardly a word to agree that they should not ride this one out.

Jack was a man of the wetlands, a dark Cajun with a long nose and thin lips. The minute he got home from Bon Temps Platform and he saw her packing clothes, water, and food, he closed the storm shutters and dragged sandbags to the doors.

She held up the albums of family pictures. They looked at each other. No need to say anything; he nodded and she packed them. He got the cardboard box where he stored their documents. He moved as much as he could up to the second floor. It was not likely that Katrina would send waves higher than fifteen feet at them, but it was better to make sure nothing of value was on the floor.

He loaded all he could get into the bed of his Ford longbody pickup and fastened the camper shell on. He stacked his Ithaca shotgun and Remington rifle in the gun rack and put his Glock under the driver’s seat. Yvonne put her pretty bone-handled Colt in the outside zip pocket of her diaper bag.

Matt and Brittanie and Loup Garou chased each other through the house. Aimée, already in her car seat, picked up the excitement.

On the way out of Port Bon Temps, Jack stopped the truck several times to pass a few words with friends about evacuating or riding out the storm.

Daniel and Emilie Breaux, Yvonne’s parents, lived by the fringes of the swamp. Narrow back roads paved with crushed oyster shells ran alongside earthwork levees and slow bayous; cypress trees trailed Spanish moss to the ground. Winds whipped the moss like pennants. Daniel and Emilie were already going down the steps with their arms open before Jack pulled the truck up in the yard.

Yvonne hugged them before she let the children grab their attention and spoke in French. “Papa, Mama, pack up quick, quick, and come.”

“Emilie, put on the coffee. What is this rush, rush? You live by the city now?”

Yvonne did not let them draw her into the house. They would not listen to her. They hadn’t followed the storm news because back by the swamp, TV reception came and went.

Jack said, “The Katrina is bad, her. Get in the car and follow me to my brother in Crowley.”

“Convoy!” Matt tugged his grandfather’s arm.

“We refugee once,” Daniel said and turned his mouth down. “We sat in a church basement for days. Hot like goddamn.”

“The stink. The dirt.” Emilie’s fingers expressed disgust. “And nothing happened.” She waved her hands at their intact house.

Daniel slapped the porch rail. “This house, she is indestructible. Yes!”

The Labordes would not stay for coffee, for supper, for anything.

Jack said, “We got to get by New Orleans. Think about the hurricane rolling up a gridlock.”

“Draw plenty of water,” Yvonne said. “At least, go to town for more food and insulin.”

Daniel shrugged away her concern. “The check, it comes on the first. Everything blows over by then.”

“The water will stand,” Jack said, “for a long time.”

Yvonne cried while she got the children settled in the truck. She did not look back.

Late in the day, Saturday, August 27. Three lanes of traffic moved by starts and stops away from New Orleans on I-10. The other side was almost empty.

When something up the road stopped everything, Yvonne said, “Why don’t they let people out on both sides?”

“This ain’t an official evacuation. Maybe they think it won’t be so bad.”

Yvonne punched the Breux number on her cell phone. No connection.

The truck radio said that Katrina was sustaining winds of 160 miles per hour.

Monday, August 29. Waiting for the hurricane, Yvonne could not sleep. In the dark hours of morning, she heard rain strike the tin roof. Storm winds tried the roof and shutters and howled around the house. Katrina began abruptly; her sounds were like a solid wall, no ebb and flow. Beside Yvonne, Jack was asleep, though restless, in the spare room of his brother’s house.

Yvonne reached for her housecoat and went barefooted to the front room. She sat on the floor in front of the TV and turned the sound on low. A satellite picture showed the entire hurricane. Katrina blew herself inland. Her center was so strong that the winds and rain whipping around her giant edges were more than a thunderstorm and lashed Crowley, in Acadia Parish, west of Baton Rouge, and reached higher up the state. Some crazy reporters were still in New Orleans and Biloxi. Rain dashed their cameras; the raindrops on the images gave Yvonne a feeling of looking through the TV like a window, into the actual storm. From what she saw, she knew how it was with Port Bon Temps and Bon Temps Platform and the Breux place.

Jack dropped down beside her and held her close. Jack’s brother, Ed, could not sleep well either and came out to the TV.

Yvonne tried to call her parents. The line was dead.

“Power lines down already,” Ed said. He worked for the power company. “I’ll be busy, me, for a long time. A long time – here, maybe there.”

The TV repeated old news that an evacuation from New Orleans had finally been ordered Sunday and that the Superdome sheltered those who could not get out.

“They only talk New Orleans on the TV,” Yvonne said. “What about us? People live all along the Coast and back in the parishes.”

“The TV can’t get back there,” Jack said. “The roads flooded already.”

Yvonne recognized reason, but she did not feel reasonable.

~

Emilie did not know anymore how many days had passed on the roof after the hurricane. There was only the heat and thirst, the steaminess and fumes of the floodwater. The asphalt shingles scorched through their clothes.

Daniel and Emilie had laughed when they talked about telling Yvonne how foresighted they were. They carried water, food, candles, and medicine up to the attic in plastic grocery sacks. They made a pallet up there. Daniel made sure the trap door to the roof worked; he put it in after he’d had to chop a hole in the roof during a flood some time ago. They climbed down the ladder from the attic. Though they would sleep on the pallet, there was no need to move into the attic. They turned the TV on to zigzagging reception. Daniel played his accordion, and Emilie sang.

The Katrina was a monster on TV, stretching from one end of the Gulf to the other. The light went out, the TV went out. Emilie started to climb the ladder while Daniel held the hurricane lantern high.

The flood hit with so much power that it broke the door in half. The water came up so fast, so fast, they were wet before they got to the attic. Daniel’s glasses fell off, and the water tore the ladder out of his hands before he could pull it up. The water seeped into the attic. Emilie grabbed the sheet off the pallet and bundled the grocery sacks into it. There was an old bureau in the attic to get on. The water came up several feet. Daniel waded into it to get their plastic water jugs. They looked up at the trap door to the roof. The hurricane wanted to peel the roof off; she was so fierce, that one, it would be death to go out to her. Le bon dieu, don’t let the water get higher.

When the storm stopped, the water was up to their waists where they sat on the bureau.

Crawling onto the roof, Emilie lost her glasses. She reached for them, but then the bundle came loose and spilled things. She saw only treetops and brown water that looked strangely thick. Things floated in the water, but she could not make out what they were.

Daniel’s hands were shaking, so she gave him his insulin. She could not find his heart pills in the bundle. The can opener was gone, but she used Daniel’s belt knife to pry open cans of tuna and beans.

The floodwater did not go down.

Their water ran out. They drank a can of DelMonte stewed tomatoes.

If rescue did not come soon, they would have to drink the floodwater and trust to medicine later.

They got so tired they passed into sleep on their precarious perch.

Emilie felt the sun hot on her face. Her skin burned.

“Daniel?”

She touched him. He was dead. She stretched out beside him.

“Hail Mary, full of Grace. Be with us now and in the hour of our death.”

Holding Daniel, she pushed off the roof.

~

September 8. Thursday.

“Don’t look in the water,” Mike Mayeux warned them.

Jack and Yvonne could not get news of her parents. The phone and power lines were down and the roads flooded. They could not get back to Port Bon Temps even by sea because the docks were broken up. A wall of water twenty-nine feet high had surged over the Coast. The TV news showed them only one glimpse from a helicopter: clouds of black smoke billowing out of the processing plant, on fire in the midst of standing flood water. Most of the Coast was still too torn and shattered for rescue teams to go in. No one knew how many people lived back in the coastal parishes and where they were.

“They only talk New Orleans,” Yvonne said bitterly. “Let them send cameras by us.”

Jack did not try to reason with her.

Bon Temps Platform was hit by ninety-foot waves. It stood, but no one knew how much damage there was to the pipes on the seabed. Jack could not work until an underwater repair crew got down there.

He called around to the men on the drilling crew. Most had people they could not locate. Mike Mayeux joined a rescue team, out of a town as far south as the road went anymore. He took his flatbottom boat to places that would be hidden from a helicopter flying over.

Men in the crew helped each other. Jack and Yvonne drove through sopping wet country to find him. The team was an improvised group of volunteers with some Coast Guard liaison, working out of a school cafeteria. So far, no one had worked anywhere near the Breux place.

Yvonne heard a man say, “Ain’t no one alive back there. You got to keep hope, yes, but when the water comes in that fast and that high….”

Mike was willing to take a calculated risk, but only so far as it was calculated. Jack understood. Yvonne would go with them; no discussion; she was controlled beyond tears.

“We got to sleep on the boat coming and going,” Mike warned her. “Days, days, I can’t guess how long.”

Tight-lipped, she nodded.

“Rowboats, flatbottom boats, canoes, pontoons, pirogues, but not motors.” Mike explained, “Not to stir up the waters.”

They loaded the boat with canned beans and meat, water and mosquito spray, rifles for protection. They wore rubber hip boots and life vests. At night, Mike tied the flatbottom boat to a tree and stretched mosquito netting across it.

The water was brown and murky, except for floating oil slicks with a purplish green sheen. The current was slow, stagnant. The smell was not like anything they knew. It was so hot and humid the air felt sticky. The boat slid out into an eerie silence, no sound but the oars in the water. Yvonne realized: no gulls, no pelicans. There were no power poles standing. They glided by treetops, slowly, Mike taking care not to snag on submerged trees. The trees….they looked wrong, Yvonne thought. It came to her that the trees were bare; the storm had stripped off their veils of Spanish moss; some places, shredded plastic hung in the branches. Dead rats and debris floated; roofs crumpled like old paper; furniture; garbage bags; fallen trees and toys; a refrigerator with magnets stuck on the door.

Something bumped the boat. A young woman, either bloated or pregnant. Mike pushed the body away with an oar. Yvonne did not look in the water again.

They paddled down the main streets of parish towns, a few store tops above the water, wreckage a danger below.

“Where are the looters?” Jack cracked.

“People lost their initiative,” Mike hooted.

Yvonne knew the grisly humor of men who worked with danger.

People on housetops called to them. Mike rowed up to them. “I call for help.” He held up a battery-powered unit. They always tried to get him to take the children. It hurt to leave them behind.

A helicopter hovered low over a roof with a family on it. The rescue worker came down the cable with no sign of hesitation in his body.

“Coast Guard,” Mike said.

“Great guys,” Jack said.

Yvonne knew the laconic respect of men who lived with danger for other men who lived with danger.

Further south, the damage was worse. They passed empty stilts standing up in the water like ruined temples of old.

They came to a house that had been torn up and wedged into a grove of treetops. Yvonne recognized the red roof and gingerbread trim, a neighbor’s house. They called out; no answer.

They paddled the flatbottom boat over what would be the bayou, levee, and road leading to the Breux place. Water was up to the eaves. The roof was half-peeled but still on. Mike tied the boat up. Jack crawled onto the roof. The two men helped Yvonne up.

She inched carefully to the trap door and looked down. She straightened up and shook her head.

The men looked into standing water almost up to the ceiling.

“Now I know, me,” Yvonne said. She would not cry until they were back in Crowley, when it would be all over.

“They say another one comes.” Mike put much meaning in the simple statement.

Yvonne nodded. “We go now.”

Jack held her. “I do the rescue with Mike until the Platform calls us.”

Yvonne expected no less. “It is the right thing to do, cher.”

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PORT BON TEMPS earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Billie Louise Jones was born in Louisiana, raised in Texas, and has lived in a number of places. She began writing at age twelve, originally wanting to be an historical novelist. She has been published in Phoebe, The New Orleans Review, Struggle, Primavera, South Dakota Review, Dan River Anthology, Northwoods Anthology, Palo Alto Review, Under Hwy 99, The Storyteller, The Long Story, and Elderhostel's Anniversary Odyssey Anthology. Billie Louise Jones currently lives in Arkansas, where the directions to her home include "turn off the paved road."

###

AN IQUITOS STORY by Douglas Bruton

2009-03-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

A space had been cleared in the great jungle, a space big enough to plant a city, and so a city had grown – a city of sorts: at first a city of corrugated tin and sagging thatch, and wood gleaned from the clearing of trees; later a city of imperfect roads and unfinished concrete and brick dwellings, a work always in progress. And the city brought its own problems and these too filled the space that was made. The city is called Iquitos and the people came and stories were begun or ended here.

I first caught sight of him sitting alone at a table for two. He had grey in his hair and the skin at his neck was pink and loose. He looked lost, like he didn’t belong, as a tourist doesn’t belong. He stared out at the street, stared beyond the people that passed, people who eyed him with interest and not a little suspicion. Three-wheeled motorised rickshaws picked their way between the potholes in the road, taxiing passengers from one side of the city to the other. A man with legs like sticks walked by carrying a heavy sack across the bow of his shoulders. He had a metal whistle that he blew. It made a shrill squeal. He blew his whistle because he thought it would please, and because it gave him pleasure to do so. He grinned at the grey haired man, showed him a toothless smile. The man at the table did not see him and did not hear the piercing squeal of the whistle. He was lost in thought. On the table in front of him was a plate of rice and meat and a glass of hot tea and lemon.

I watched him, this man from another place. I wondered who he was and what he was thinking. I opened my notebook and wrote a description of him there. I noted that his shirt was wet across his back and at the collar, and he flapped a new panama hat back and forth, slowly fanning himself cool. He had the hands of one who does not work, one who shifts paper across a desk, or one who spends his days counting money in a bank. And his eyes were dull and grey, the eyes of someone who has lost his way and all but given up on life. He sipped at the lemon tea, but did not touch the food.

Suddenly a yellow butterfly crossed in front of him and unaccountably this caught his attention where the whistling man had not. The butterfly settled on the dusty ground in front of the café. He watched it open and close its broad wings, fascinated; seeing the world we live in through other people’s eyes we can find beautiful what before we took for granted: there are many butterflies here. The butterfly lifted into the air again, its yellow wings like stiffened cloth folded and unfolded, a silent slow handclap, and I followed its ragged flight across to the other side of the dusty street and away into the trees where washing had been left spread over the branches to dry.

He was getting to his feet when I next looked his way, stiffly, his hat low on his brow now. I closed my notebook and got up to follow him. I don’t know why I did this, but because I did I have his story to tell.

At the hotel where he was staying, I paid to know his name and to know where he had come from. He was from London, the young maid told me, though she had no idea where London was. He had come to Iquitos by plane from Lima. She did not know why he had come. She thought he was a doctor but he had no medicine bag with him. She said that he smoked American cigarettes and drank tea with ice and rum. He slept fitfully, and in the morning his tangled bedsheets were damp with his sweat and smelled of insect repellent.

I wanted to know how long he would be staying; the maid said that there was no departure date written next to his name in the hotel register. I thanked her and pressed a twenty soli note into her small hand. She asked me if I wanted to go to an empty room with her. I knew what she meant and shook my head. She shrugged her shoulders, brushed a fly from her face and moved away without looking back.

At the office where I worked I looked him up on the computer. He was a doctor, as the maid had said. And there was a story to be told. I found an old magazine article on his life. I learned that he was born in China, the only son of English missionary parents. When he was still young his mother and father, and all the other missionaries in that part of China, were ordered out of the country. They refused to leave and were killed for their stiff-upper lip and their obstinacy; the child was turned out onto the streets. The people in the village where he was were forbidden to take him into their homes, but out of love for his parents and following the dictates of Christian charity, they did what they could. They left bowls of food on the steps outside their homes, as you or I would leave broken bits of old bread out for the birds in our gardens. So it was that the boy survived.

His British grandparents eventually got to hear that he was alive and they petitioned their government to rescue the boy. Their influence held sway and at last the boy was taken back to England where he was brought up by his elderly family in a grand house made of stone and with glass in the windows. He worked hard at school and university, and went on to become a doctor, devoting his life to doing good. And now he was here in Iquitos and I did not then know why.

I saw him again several days later. It was no accident. I had gone to the hotel looking for him. The maid from before saw me enter and gifted me a smile. I don’t know if she really remembered me, for she gifted everyone the same winning smile. No doubt she also offered to take other men to an empty room – if they had the money to pay her. I made my way into the bar at the back of the hotel. He was there. He sat at a table reading a three-day-old English newspaper. His glass was empty and I saw my opportunity. At the bar I ordered him a refill and an iced tea for myself. Then I sat down at his table. I apologised for disturbing him, and said that I hoped he didn’t mind. He folded his paper shut and folded it again. Then he laid it on the table beside his empty glass.

“I took the liberty of ordering you another drink, doctor,” I said pushing the glass of rum iced tea across the table towards him.

He did not register surprise. He simply thanked me and lifted the glass to his lips. He took a drink, nodded his approval and set the glass back on the table.

There was a fan spinning on the ceiling above our heads so that the air in the bar was cool. The shutters were open and sunlight lit up the room where it fell, and made soft shadows where it did not reach.

“You know who I am and what I drink. I think you have me at a disadvantage,” the English doctor said.

It was like something from the script of an old film, a movie shot in black and white. The Americans called them movies and the English called them films – I smiled at him, smiled at this thought. I apologised and introduced myself. He reached across the table and we shook hands. And that was like something from a film, too.

We talked about the weather, as Englishmen do when they do not at first know what to say; we talked about the hotel and what was in his newspaper, and about yellow and green butterflies the size of dinner plates, and the hot nights that made sleep difficult and the generator that shut down after ten o’clock so that the fans in the hotel stopped turning and the only light came from the moon and the stars. We talked about the jungle, pressing in on us from all sides, and the noises of the animals it hid, and the slow moving river that coiled at one edge of the city snaking past on its way to join the Amazon itself. Our drinks drained away, the empty glasses stacked like trophies easily won on the table before us. The sun began to slip beneath the trees and the afternoon was soon spent.

Then I asked him; straight out I asked him why he was in Iquitos, what it was that had brought him here.

“Chance,” he said.

I did not understand.

“I am here by chance. I am old,” he said, “old before my time. I have worked hard all my life, worked so hard that I am all used up. I am tired. That is what my doctors at home told me. I should take things easier; I should slow down, see fewer patients. It is not new to me what they said. And one morning I did not go to work. I called in and said I was not well, though I had no temperature and no sickness. I was recommended to take a break. Everyone takes a break, I was told; only, I never had. Not till now. I visited a travel agent and asked a woman there for a ticket to somewhere, anywhere, so long as it was as far away as it was possible to get from everything. She sold me a ticket to Iquitos. So here I am.”

“As far away as it is possible to get from everything,” I said.

He nodded.

Then, suddenly realising the lateness of the hour, and thinking there was after all no real story to follow here, I apologised to the doctor for the second time that afternoon, explained that there was somewhere I had to be and stood up. He got out of his chair and shook my hand again. I said we should talk more, and he agreed, though I did not really think it would happen. Then I left the hotel and rushed out into an early evening storm. The rain was like a blessing in the thick heat. Later, I made notes in my book, recording what I could recall of what we had talked about that afternoon.

We did not meet again for more than three months and then it was quite by chance. I saw him in the market place one day. He was holding the hand of a small boy and together they were buying vegetables and pieces of chicken wrapped in paper, and fish that the woman behind the stall pulled out of a plastic bucket and gutted there in front of them. The doctor looked the same as on that first day, his shirt clinging to his back and damp around the collar, his panama hat low on his brow and his skin still loose and still pink.

“Hello, doctor,” I said.

He recognised me immediately and was, I think, grateful to have someone to speak English with. He shook my hand energetically and said over and over how good it was to see me again. The boy clung to the leg of the doctor’s trousers, his fright-face turned up to see mine. The doctor paid for his few purchases and sent the boy off with them, a slow wave of his hand following the boy along the street. Then we walked to the café we had been in before, that first time, though this time we sat together at the same table. He ordered iced tea for both of us and then turned his attention to me.

“It is good that we meet again.”

There was something different about him and it was immediately obvious: the grey had lifted from his eyes and his gestures were more animated than before.

“I am surprised to find you still here, doctor, still as far away from everything as it is possible to be.”

He agreed and laughed. I had not heard him laugh before.

“I have a house here,” he said. “In Iquitos. A simple house made with adobe bricks and a tin roof on which the occasional rains drum so loud that they break my sleep. There are butterflies in my garden and I keep a bird in a wooden cage, its feathers green and yellow and red. Its singing wakes me in the morning. And every morning I breakfast on fresh picked plantain cooked in a little butter.”

I was surprised and it must have shown on my face.

“I have a place here and a job to do.”

“I thought you were here to rest?” I said.

Then he told me a story. It is a true story, though it is I who tell it now to you.

One day the doctor was eating at a small café just like the one we were sat in. It was around the middle of the day and the heat rose up from the road and made the walls of the buildings opposite ripple as though they were reflected in disturbed water. A man walked by, weighed down by a heavy sack that he had thrown across one shoulder. He was blowing a whistle every few steps, a shrill squeal that made the doctor look up. The man took the whistle from his mouth and grinned at the doctor and shouted something across at him and waved. The doctor could see the rheumy glint in the man’s eyes, the black gaps in his teeth, the dust on his skin, skin the colour of milky coffee; but he did not understand the words that the man spoke. He returned the wave and nodded at the man. It was enough.

Then the doctor was suddenly aware of a hand reaching from the darkness beneath the table where he sat, a hand that stole the food from his plate. It was the hand of a small child, a boy, the bones of his slender wrist showing like knots beneath the skin. The doctor did not move. The doctor understood the need; it was something he recognised, something from somewhere in his own past.

He returned to the same café and sat at the same table the next day, and the day after that. Sometimes the man with the whistle passed and each time he shouted an incomprehensible greeting across at the doctor and the doctor looked up and smiled and nodded in recognition. And the boy beneath his table fed from his plate, and the doctor pretended not to see.

That is the story that the doctor told me. Then two glasses of iced tea were delivered to our table and the doctor paid.

“And so, you see,” he said. “I have a place here and a job to do.”

In Iquitos when the poor cannot feed the children that they have, they turn them out onto the streets, turn their backs on them. This is what the doctor had discovered and this is why he stayed in Iquitos, using up his last years to feed and care for the boys who had been abandoned by their families.

I met with him many times after that day; we drank iced tea and talked, about the weather and what was going on between the pages of three-day old newspapers, about the butterflies that came to his garden, and how the rain kept him awake some nights and the still heat on others. He talked about the extension to his house that he was building and the school he had planned; I noticed that his hands were rough and calloused, a workman’s hands now. But mostly he talked about the boys he found: Luis, Gelen, Gabriel, Segundo, Alexsandar. He knew them all by name and spoke of them fondly, as a father might speak of his sons.

And then, some years later when he died - the doctor - I wrote his story for the newspaper I work for, and others reading what I wrote came to carry on what the English doctor had started.

If this was just a story in a book, you would think that I make these things up. But it is true: there are butterflies the size of dinner plates in Iquitos – yellow and green and orange and black and red; and a man walks the streets with legs like sticks and blowing a whistle just for the fun of it; and three-wheeled motorised rickshaw taxis pick their way around pot-holes in the imperfect roads; and the nights are sometimes too hot to sleep in. And once there was an English doctor here and he worked the last years of his life rescuing abandoned boys from the dark beneath the tables of Iquitos, a city built in a clearing in the biggest jungle in the world, a place that is as far away as it is possible to get from everything.

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AN IQUITOS STORY earned an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Competition.

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Douglas Bruton is a teacher at a high school just outside Edinburgh, Scotland. He has been writing stories for several years, stuffing them into blue-green glass bottles sealed with cork and pitch, and tossing them out to sea. Sometimes the stories return to the beach from which they were launched, in different bottles,with small notes of thanks folded between the pages. That is enough.

###

CONTEST INSIGHTS AND UPDATES

2008-04-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

They arrive one by one, some bearing postmarks from as far away as Australia or Pakistan -- each containing the blood, sweat and vision of an aspiring writer, bound up in 3,000 words or less.

They are the entries in the 2008 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, and they're welcomed daily at the contest's headquarters in Key West, Florida.

Founder and co-director Lorian Hemingway, a respected author and journalist, is the granddaughter of legendary writer Ernest Hemingway. She is best known for her compelling memoir "Walk on Water," and has also penned two other critically acclaimed books.

Like Ernest, who lived and wrote in Key West throughout the 1930s, Lorian is passionate about the island city. She's currently working on an in-depth book on the place and its heritage to be titled "Key West: The Pirate Heart."

Lorian is also passionate about recognizing and nurturing the talents of emerging writers. Every spring since 1981, she has assembled a judging panel of writers, editors, and lovers of literature to read and evaluate the contest's 750 to 1,000 entries.

"With these works of fiction I have been offered glimpses into the workings of the human psyche, the human condition, and the human heart," Lorian says. "I have been touched, inspired, saddened, had the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and once even laughed so hard I nearly choked to death on a conch fritter."

Each July, Lorian announces the winners of the contest's $2,000 annual awards at a literary reception. The reception is held at Casa Antigua, Ernest Hemingway's first residence in Key West -- where, serendipitously delayed on his way from Cuba to the mainland, he wrote, relaxed and began his decade-long love affair with the island.

Casa Antigua is now home to Key West publisher Tom Oosterhoudt and his mother, Mary Ann Worth, who generously share it each July for the awards reception. Meticulously renovated since Hemingway's day, the property is notable for its soaring atrium garden and breathtaking interior architecture.

Just as remarkable as Casa Antigua is the talent of the contest winners whose names are announced there.

"People's talent just astounds and amazes me," Lorian says. "There's nothing more exciting than finding something of brilliance, a shining thing, among the entries."

Lovers of good writing are invited to share her discoveries at the 2008 awards reception. Details of the time and date will be posted shortly on the news section of this website.

###

BURN PILE by Todd Powell

2008-03-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

Late in August, smoke drifts through the open window, entering the house well after the Uhlman dog has quit barking at the raccoons. Even the late-night yokels—the half-drunk teens lucky not to veer off the road down below, the middle-aged thunder riders leaving the local biker tavern—have gone home to bed. The valley is silent as Janice rises to the window and sees the glow beyond the trees.

When she wakes him, Ollie has been dreaming of inconsequential acts, neither troubling nor erotic. He’s so groggy and REM-ed up by trivialities that he forgets, momentarily, where he is.

“What stinks?” is all he can muster.

“I’m calling 911. Get your clothes on and run over there.”

It takes a second before the outline of Janice’s body develops before his eyes. Head over shoulders over breasts over belly. Legs cut off at the thighs by the edge of the bed as if she were wading at the beach.

“Over where?”

“The Eggerts’. I think their house is on fire.”

“Jesus.”

He’s in jeans and a shirt in seconds. His shoes take twice as long, but soon Ollie’s out the door and racing through the grass.

The stars have been pure for weeks, but now the smoke is thickening into low clouds as Ollie approaches the fence that Walt Eggert helped him build last year. Unable to see the gate, he finds a post, sets a foot on a board and hoists himself over. He lands on both feet and a hand, then bounds onto the gravel road. Reaching full speed, Ollie leaps the ditch and lands in Eggert’s pasture. (Once, maybe the day after they moved in, he met the retired English professor here for the first time; Eggert was sitting on an idling lawn tractor, drinking a Dr. Pepper.)

Ollie races up the pasture, the glow annealing behind a grove of apple trees, the smoke swelling through the branches. There’s a trail, Eggert’s mowing path. He scoots past an Adirondack chair, a picnic table, a small greenhouse. Through an arbor and past the lawn, Ollie sees the two-story building, nearly half of it dressed in flames. Despite the smoke, the other half seems oddly serene, untouched, as if a lion has knocked out two gazelles and one lies quietly in the grass while the other is being devoured.

The intensity of the blaze is more than Ollie has ever experienced. He draws sideways, attempting to flank the heat, to find a window or door. He yells their names, screaming into the heat and catching smoke in his lungs. Dropping to the grass, he crawls across a patio toward a side window opposite the flames. Here, he finds a terra cotta planter, about the size of a volleyball, which still holds the cool of night on its underside. Ollie hurls the planter at the window and hears the pop and shatter of glass, the sudden influx of oxygen filling the room. A rake leans against the house near the window. He grabs it and clears the remaining shards from the sill.

Ollie leverages himself up and into a utility sink, next to the washer and dryer. He turns on the water and douses his head and shirt. There’s a door, which he touches to check for heat. He pulls it open.

***

Eggert’s wife is found in the family room on what was once the davenport. Next to her, on the floor, lies Walt. In the kitchen the firefighters discover Ollie, still alive but unconscious from the smoke.

At the hospital when Ollie first wakes up, Janice says how sorry she is for sending him there. She didn’t think he would actually go into a burning house, yet she hoped he would do something brave. “You did both,” she says, “or at least you tried.”

According to Ben Uhlman, the pile had been there for months. One day he saw it—a stack of brush—and noted, casually, that it seemed too close to the house. That was in June, though, when rain still pelted the valley walls at regular intervals. But with the dry spell and all, you can see how one spark might do it.

Other neighbors add their own ideas. The fire was set on purpose, a burn that got out of control. Someone even suggests that maybe the fire didn’t start in the pile but inside the house, that maybe she was in there sleeping as he set it off. During the investigation, Janice confirms that Eggert was distraught about the health of his wife, who had been ill for a long time and never left the house. Maybe she died from her illness, and he couldn’t bear to live without her. The fire was his way for them to go out together. “It’s just so tragic,” she says. “It seemed like he loved her very much. And there was the music.”

“Music?”

Yes, she explains, Eggert liked to sing. They heard him sometimes in the pasture warbling Neil Young tunes. “Heart of Gold” and a breeze full of cottonwood fluff would come their way late in the spring. In August, you might hear Sinatra’s “Summer Wind.” In fall, it was back to Neil Young and “Harvest Moon” or “Cinnamon Girl.” Come winter, though, they were all inside, but chances were Eggert was still singing.

***

As the heat wave ends, Ollie recovers. His lungs take to the cooler air. From the bedroom window, he sees all the scattered fir boughs from a recent storm, the blackberry vines that have gone unchecked. Usually he’s on top of the yard work, but Janice has made him take it easy. She watches him; he can feel her gaze coating him as if he were a child.

In the tool shed Ollie finds the machete. Outside, he walks the fence line and stops at the gate Eggert helped him construct. Not as simple as it looks, building a solid gate that can bear enough stress. He studies the slats and the diagonal support, tests the swing. It glides smoothly, easily.

Ollie follows the line of the fence, which runs the length of his property. When the two men finished building it, Ollie offered his hand. “Thanks. It’s a good fence.” The professor grinned. “Good neighbors make good fences,” he said. When Ollie didn’t catch the reference, Eggert added, “It’s a literary joke. You know, Robert Frost?”

Now, Ollie closes the gate and walks toward a bank of blackberry vines. His eyes trace their entanglements as they weave randomly through the Oregon grape—thorns consorting with glossy, serrated leaves. It’s hard to say whether they’re choking or embracing each other. Janice, he concludes, would opt for the slow, uncultivated dance.

He brings the machete back, holds it up for a second, the tip pointing toward the house, then swipes it hard through the lattice of vines and branches. The separated pieces ride high with the blade before dropping to the ground. Ollie gathers them up and tosses them into a pile. To these he adds all the fir boughs he can gather from the property.

In the afternoon, he lights a fire and watches the flames grow long and toothy. Every so often he tosses on a new bough, choking the flames until the fire bites into the needles and their moisture releases. Hundreds of crackles erupt with ardent applause. Waves of rapid claps, speeding up as if for an encore. He turns and gathers more boughs, enough to occupy both arms. Swinging these around, he dips at the knees to lift them airborne. When the boughs land the fire gives off a stunned exhalation, as if someone nearby has been clocked in the gut.

Smoke furls out the edges. Ollie steps forward, looking for a limb to adjust, when, suddenly, the blanket of green bursts into a riot of marigold flames. Ollie stumbles back, dazed by the rush of heat and frightened by his carelessness. He hasn’t forgotten, of course. He could have died that night. He came that close. Yet somehow this burn pile feels necessary.

After confirming that he hasn’t been singed, he looks back toward the fire. The orange flame surges, and, eventually, the plume thins out. Limbs will char black before crusting white.

Janice calls him into dinner, and he knows that she’s been at the window. When they sit down, she tries to read his mind. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Building that fire. Does it help?”

“I’m not thinking.”

“Then you must be re-enacting, maybe subconsciously?”

She’s not a therapist, he reminds himself, just a lawyer. When they met at the courthouse twelve years ago, he was certain she was looking right through him to the jock-jawed attorney by the elevators. She was, but not for long. Ollie, a half foot shorter than the other guy and considerably less experienced in the courthouse layout, asked where the ex parte courtroom was located. Janice volunteered to show him. He immediately fell for her voice. In the elevator, as the inevitable questions arose, he couldn’t believe that someone who heard all those abysmal stories in family court—the deadbeat fathers, the crack-addled mothers, the abusers, the abused—could sustain such a mellifluous tone about life. Nor could he believe that she was engaging him in a conversation about his legal practice. Encouraged, Ollie told her about the tricked-out Ford Econoline with a balance far in arrears, about the whacked-out customer who had a penchant for holding his client’s repo man at bay with a shotgun. Ollie needed a writ of replevin to authorize the sheriff to intervene.

Looking at Janice this evening, Ollie thinks he knows why she took an interest in him back then. It was the story he told. She liked the stories of family court, depressing as they could be. And she liked his story. After Ollie took a corporate post with an actuarial firm, she could have dropped him because the stories were far less interesting. But she didn’t. He knew she loved him and would plunge, as did he, into a state of despair whenever they were separated for longer than a few days. He had seen it, had felt the yearning in her shoulders when they reunited after business trips. And when it all got too much for him, when he needed to relieve himself of the city, she had seen that in him. The fretfulness bordering on panic—a quick change of the radio station in heavy traffic, a sudden interest in chewing gum, his jaw vising faster and faster the worse the roads got. She, Janice, a thoroughly urbanized woman who held tickets to the symphony and who had once dated a professional baseball player, suggested they move to the country.

“You’ve been through a lot,” she says now as she clears the plates. “Maybe you should consider speaking with a professional.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “Really.”

***

Ollie sits next to the low fire in a white, plastic chair. This time, instead of adding more fuel, he rearranges it, closing in the circle, making certain that every last part of a log or branch gets consumed and turned into a husk of ash.

The embers remind him of the city lights they left behind, clicking off and on. He takes his poking stick and flips a limb. Small medallions leap and tumble like distant acrobats bounding from platforms, lanterns in hand. Staring long enough, he makes out causeways and empty lots. Restaurants open all night. Rooms going to sleep. Floors shutting down, save for the lone custodian. With his stick he scatters the remaining fuel. Inside the house Janice sits by the living room window, feet perched on the ottoman, cup of tea on the end table.

Later, as the last of the fire smolders outside, Ollie joins her in bed. He’s still warm, his ears flushed, his forehead simulating fever. He sleeps with the sheets knee high while she pulls the covers tight over her left shoulder.

By the middle of the night, Ollie grows cold, his bladder swollen as a grapefruit. He stumbles to the bathroom and back, adjusts the covers, and sleeps until morning.

When he wakes, Ollie finds her right arm angled across his chest. He listens to her breathing inches from his ear.

She has watched out for him all these years. Ollie can’t imagine having to take care of anyone like that. He’s afraid of failing somehow, of letting love turn into a burden. He might not be able to handle it.

Janice stirs briefly, removing her arm and rolling onto her back without waking. There’s a strange beauty about this state of slumber. Janice with eyes closed, mouth split open, as if she were about to speak then thought better of it. It must be what their friends with kids mean when they say how much they like to watch their children sleep. He’d always assumed it was because all the activity—the noise, the chaos—was gone from their day, and so they were more relieved than anything. No more parenting. No more responsibility. But maybe it’s more than that.

Ollie watches her, waiting for the next intake of air and the rise of the sheets around her chest. He watches her at length, observing the repetitions in her breathing, how she follows a pattern, and how she breaks it every now and then.

It’s good practice, he tells himself. Just in case.

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BURN PILE earned an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Competition.

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Todd Powell received an M.A. in English from the University of Virginia and has worked as a paralegal, magazine editor, and freelance writer. In addition to his honorable mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, he took first place in The Writer magazine’s 2007 short story contest. He lives in Duvall, Washington.