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writdisord

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The Writing Disorder is a quarterly literary journal. We publish exceptional new works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art. We also feature interviews with writers and artists, as well as reviews.

Right Side Up, Or Upside Down
Inaded
Looks Like Rain
While Rome Burns
Madonna of Aldi
Avocado Toast
Going Up, Or Coming Down
Beware of Men in Suits
What Do You See?
Speak

Artist Biography

Denise Brook is a figurative artist based in San Diego, California. A first-generation Latvian American, her work reflects the experience of growing up in 1970s California with parents still grappling with the lasting effects of displacement. From an early age, she developed a keen ability to observe and translate her experiences into visual narratives.

Identifying as a contemporary surrealist, Brook interweaves layered imagery and everyday objects to create thought-provoking compositions with underlying messages.

Artist Statement

I bend the real world with color, everyday objects, and human figures—usually women. I call myself a gentle surrealist, as surrealism is subtly woven into my work through color and the twisting of perspective. There is often a concept or message embedded in my pieces, some more hidden than others, with many addressing current events. Rather than explicitly stating my concept, I prefer to let the viewer create their own narrative from the story unfolding before them. If asked, I’ll share my interpretation.

My work is figurative, incorporating real-world elements in a semi-dismantled way.

I work in acrylic on canvas; after laying down the main colors, I incorporate multiple layers of glaze to achieve the softness I’m after.

Links:

www.denisebrookstudio.com

www.instagram.com/denisebrookstudio/

Arctic Peonies

by Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis    


In the early morning, on the wide slope of the hill behind the house, the peonies nodded gently, stirring in an almost imperceptible breeze. Ayana walked between the raised, mulched rows. The sun had not set all night, as was typical for Alaska in the summer months, and cast its diffuse, dusky light onto the homestead and surrounding hills. Even though it was mid-June, the peonies were just starting to unfurl their dark green, glossy leaves. It would take some time yet for the flowers to bud, but the plants were fortifying themselves, absorbing the energy of the sun, quietly readying themselves for their season.

Ayana ran her fingers along the slender stems. Her mother had been correct in her assessment that planting peonies in Alaska would one day become a lucrative business. In the lower 48 states, the spring peony season had already passed. The flowers had stopped producing; their supply for Mother’s Day and spring weddings long exhausted. But Alaska’s late blooming peonies provided another surge of the desirable flower when they were available to the market from nowhere else.

Her mother had followed an instinct, even if the vagaries of the northern climate posed uncertainties. When heavy snow blanketed the meadow and ice glittered on spruce branches, she sat by the fire with flower catalogs and gardening books, reading about preparing the soil in raised beds with bone meal and ash and compost, planning the peony varieties she would coax from the hard earth after the break-up season. Ayana looked at the photographs of the soft flowers in shades of coral, pink and blush. She longed for color after the long, white winter. She, like her mother, trusted the earth to come full circle.

They planted the first tubers years ago, kneeling in the soil together, choosing varieties that would flower sequentially. The Festiva Maxima, big white flowers with a red-fringed center, would bloom early. The intense red color of the Karl Rosenfields would grace the hillside next.  Finally, the late blooms of the soft pink Sarah Bernhardts finished the season.

“We’ll have to be patient,” her mother told her. “It will take three or four years before we see the first flowers.” 

Ayana understood patience. She knew how to wait, not so much because of the rewards that being patient would allow her to reap, but because she had no other choice. All her life she had been a backdrop, waiting for things to happen to her rather than because of her. She never pushed herself into the foreground, seizing opportunities, making friends. Like the floral wallpaper that decorated her cabin bedroom, she was a quiet only child that lived in the background.

Mousy and awkward, she was overlooked by the girls at school in Fairbanks when they stood chatting next to their lockers. When they asked her an occasional question, Ayana spoke to her shoes. She was hardly ever asked to join them with her lunch tray in the cafeteria or to sit on the metal bleachers to watch a volleyball game. Ayana breathed more easily when she was on her way home again, sitting beside her father in his pick-up truck, heading north out of town until they reached the lonely mailbox at milepost 47 and the dirt track that led back into their land and to the old homestead cabin.

Finally, sometime in middle school, Ayana’s outcast status at school became too much to bear. She came home one day and sat with her head in her hands while silent tears trickled down the sides of her nose. It was her mother who suggested the homeschool alternative. Her mother had always known what to say on such days, giving Ayana a gentle press on the shoulder, the reassurance that she was not an afterthought. They researched the curriculum and ordered textbooks. Ayana absorbed her studies, immersing herself in books, letting the world fall away. Once a week, they filed a progress report to the homeschooling office in Fairbanks making sure she was in line with her syllabus. Rather than worrying that keeping her home for her studies through the years could be a further hindrance at socialization, Ayana knew that that her mother had sensed, by some motherly instinct, that she would thrive if she remained close to her surroundings, strong in her own soil. The quiet hills surrounding the homestead grounded her in a manner that no friendship at school could.

Ayana breathed in the early morning air that was tinged with the pungent scent of the wild highbush cranberries on the periphery of the peony field. It was the time of day, cool and praiseworthy, when Ayana’s thoughts could escape to a more wholesome time. Ayana walked the length of the meadow. She missed her mother.

Returning to the cabin, Ayana let herself in. Her father’s snores came to her from the back bedroom, in fits and starts, his sleep interrupted and restless. She put on the kettle to boil water for tea, then busied herself preparing breakfast. It was Saturday and they would soon have to start loading the vegetables onto the flatbed of the truck. The earlier they got to their farmstand at the Farmer’s Market, the more produce they would sell.

The Russians, their competitors who drove up from Delta Junction each week, started growing vegetables in heated greenhouses well before spring break-up. They displayed their impressive tomatoes and zucchini and cucumbers in stacked pyramids and charged six or seven dollars for a pound. Sometimes the women added other items onto their tables: honey straws, homemade jellies, crocheted doilies, cream rolls. They greeted their customers with broad smiles and thick accents, loudly pushing their wares.

Ayana sorted the vegetables from their own small vegetable patch onto the farmstand. After her father rumbled off again in his truck, she settled herself onto her stool to take in the people. As much as she cherished the quiet of the homestead, Saturdays had become her connection to the outside world. She smiled when the Russian ladies haggled with their customers, as though their prices weren’t exorbitant enough. She enjoyed watching the woodcarver across from her demonstrate his delicate carving on birch trunks. He sold wooden benches and side tables and salad bowls. She inhaled the scent of sauteed side-striped shrimp, garlicky and pungent, as it drifted to her from the food tent.

A man approached her farmstand. He ran a finger over her broccoli but did not seem particularly interested in buying vegetables. Instead, he looked at the few early peonies that Ayana had arranged decoratively in a plastic bucket alongside. She eyed his clothing and decided he was not from Alaska. He wore the tidy look of someone from the lower 48 states. His loafers, khaki pants, and half-zip sweater were quite out of place in the northern landscape of rough dirt roads and straggly wilderness. He was perhaps a decade older than her, but his handsome, shaven features were not lost on her.

“How much are you selling the flowers for?”

“Oh,” Ayana spurted out. “They are just for decoration. If you like, you can take one.”

“Do you grow them yourself?” he asked.

Ayana nodded her head proudly. “On our homestead. Some miles out of town.”

He touched one of the large, fragrant flowers, an early white Duchesse de Nemours which exuded a sweet, citrusy scent.

“How clever of you to grow them in Alaska.” He smiled at her. “It must be difficult to cultivate such flowers here.”

Even though Ayana was not sure whether his curiosity lay with her abilities as a gardener or with the flowers, she eagerly shared with him the things she had learned from her mother. It was novel to be of interest to someone, particularly a captivating stranger. Peonies were tough and could survive the harsh climate, she told him. In fact, they even relished the cold winters because they needed chilling for bud formation. If planted too deeply, they produced few, if any, flowers. She had been cutting back the blooms for the past three years to make sure all their energy went back to the roots. She was still a small peony grower, with only four hundred roots so far, but she had followed her mother’s gardening journal closely. After three years, this summer would finally bring the fragrant blooms they had envisioned.

That evening, while serving her father a bowl of moose stew, Ayana told him about the man at the market.

“He thinks he can sell our peonies down in the States. He wants to come talk to us about it all. Something along the lines of what Mama had in mind.”

Distracted, her father looked up at her and pushed food around on his plate. Ayana wasn’t even sure he had heard her. He had become a shell of the man he used to be, eyes hollow, the vigor of youth gone. In years past, before Mama died, they had always lived off the land, following the seasons and gleaning from their surroundings what the landscape yielded. In the winter, Papa kept traplines in the woods behind the house where he snared quality furbearers: arctic fox, lynx, marten, wolverine. He skinned and stretched and dried the furs. With his trapline income he bought supplies for the winter: fuel oil, boots, grains with a longer shelf life. In the summer, when the swollen rivers were thick with salmon runs, he fished first the red sockeyes, then the large kings, and finally the coho silvers to fill their freezer for the winter. During the September hunting season, he scanned distant ridges with his scoping rifle for moose. Meanwhile, Ayana and her mother grew vegetables that exploded into tangles of colors under the midnight sun. They canned and preserved and stored their harvest. They were never short on food, even in a land that was hard and inhospitable for much of the year. In the gloaming, Papa often stood on the porch of the cabin, shoulders held back, as he surveyed the homestead. The reflection of a smile had always crossed his features.

Until her mother got sick and withered. The illness descended quickly, leaving them first dumbfounded, then grasping for time. Her mother managed to hang on through a last winter, but with the promise of spring she, ironically, let go. She never saw the peonies they had planted together. Ayana’s heart was wrenched dry with the paradox of it all.

Ayana and her father tried to manage, withdrawn, living alongside in a remoteness of their own making. Her father robotically went about his chores on the homestead, doing only what was necessary. Ayana picked up where her mother had left off, trying to hold the edges together. Over time, she finished the school curriculum they had embarked her upon and graduated without a sense of future. She heard about the girls from school leaving Alaska, some for colleges in Oregon and Washington, seeking degrees and careers. News drifted back about others who had married in haste and remained there, determined to leave the wilds of Alaska for a more civilized life. Ayana felt the passage of time and a pressure to not be left behind. Yet she could not change either.

On Sunday, Ayana stood on the porch and waited until she made out the dusty approach of a car on the dirt road leading up the hill to their cabin. She had given the man directions to the homestead, telling him to come to talk to Papa about his proposition. They sat with cups of coffee at the kitchen table. Richard spoke business with her father while Ayana fell hard in love. He was a man that knew his trade. Ayana saw only his black hair and sculpted chin and dark eyes. Her heart lurched whenever he directed a question towards her, stomach knotted in excitement, as he spoke about the practicalities of shipments and stem prices and freight charges. Her father listened, then retired to the porch swing with his pipe, leaving Ayana to handle matters with the stranger.

In her bed that night, Ayana spoke to her mother. Our poenies, Mama, out in the world, for everyone to enjoy. She told her about Richard and his intentions of selling their flowers in the lower 48 states. “As long as there are brides, there will be a market,” he had said with enthusiasm. Ayana imagined the brides blushing alongside the peonies in their bouquets, linking arms with their grooms. It was almost as good as being there herself.

Ayana was glad to relinquish the business aspects of the peony farm to Richard. She had cursorily read the notebook in which her mother had jotted down a marketing plan, but she could not wrap her head around distribution methods and profit sharing and transportation. She was glad Richard outlined the plan.

Closer to the harvest, mid-summer, he brought a huge metal container on a trailer which he called a “chiller.” The cut flowers needed to be refrigerated as soon as they were harvested so the buds would not open prematurely. There were strict parameters of what the industry would buy, he explained. Only flowers with a thick stem and tight buds would bring them three or four dollars a stem. They had to harvest the peonies as closed balls, before bloom, when the balls felt like a marshmallow to their touch.

“Be sure to clip them carefully, just above a set of leaves,” he demonstrated with a pruner as they walked slowly among the flowers. “The buds must be no more than an-inch-and-a-half to two-inches. The stem should be no longer than 32-inches, with all side buds removed and clean leaves.”

He scrutinized the plants and clipped those he deemed favorable. Ayana wondered about the misfits, ones that nature had granted an entrance, then a shun. When they came across lesser quality stems, he put them aside to sell to local bed-and-breakfasts or for the farmstand at the Farmer’s Market. Ayana walked next to him and hoped for perfection.

They worked together all summer, harvesting the succession of flowers. Carefully, they wrapped the peonies in clear plastic, then packed them into stem boxes and stored them in the chiller. In the evening, they drove the flowers to Fairbanks so they could be shipped on a midnight FedEx flight to Anchorage. From there they were distributed south to their destinations: boutiques in big cities, wholesales to supermarkets, weddings. Ayana cherished the dusky evenings when she sat next to Richard in the truck in companionable silence after the long day. She watched the rolling hills unfold in front of them and quietly celebrated in her heart.

When their first sales came in, Richard smiled and exuberantly swung Ayana up into his arms. Ayana clutched his shoulders, pulse hammering in her throat, as he lowered her to the ground again. For a moment, soft and fleeting, she looked into his dark brown eyes and the world burgeoned with possibility.

As the summer progressed, his ideas became grander. They would offer subscription services so people could order flowers online. He suggested drawing up brochures to mail to clients, with photographs of the homestead and the peonies, emphasizing that the flowers symbolized good fortune and prosperity and romance. They would expand the peony field, plant more rows and varieties with lofty names: white Elsa Sass, dark pink Edulis Superba, raspberry red Felix Crousse. Their first, tentative season had launched itself well beyond their expectations. Of course it did. The name “Ayana,” after all, meant “forever flowering.”

At night, Ayana lay awake and channeled her thoughts about Richard toward her mother. More than anything, she wanted to consult with her, to tell her of the new, burgeoning swell in her chest as well as a doubt that had settled in beneath her ribs. She was suddenly drawn to the open window, where the curtain stirred lazily in the breeze. Leaning onto the windowsill, Ayana listened to the hush of the surrounding forest as it lay still and slumbering. She could make out the remaining peonies in the half-light. She thought she saw her then, at the very edge of the meadow, among the flowers that had not been harvested yet. Her mother, with her long, dark hair, was dressed in familiar gardening clothes. Her hand seemed to float above the peonies, gesturing toward them reassuringly. Ayana peered closely, adjusting to the dimness, wanting to understand, but moments later her mother was gone again.

When August brought rain and darkening nights, they packed and shipped the last of the peonies. They had sent off the flowers nightly, harvesting the latest blooms at the end of the summer. Then Richard returned alone to the lower 48 states. Ayana stood for a long while on the porch, watching the dust behind his truck settle again. He had pleaded with her to go with him, to cultivate new clients and contracts, to work on their efflorescent relationship, to plan the summer’s next harvest. Ayana gazed sadly at him. To her, the peonies meant more than money and marketability.

“What became of that man,” Papa asked much later that winter, sitting by the fire, in the glow of the embers. “The one who was interested in the peonies.”

Ayana turned to look at her father and the fragility that now defined him. It was as though he had not even noticed how Richard and Ayana had worked together all summer in the peony field. Her father’s strength had dissipated. He had given her mother his last best effort, an ultimate gift, by letting her go. He was able to do something for her still by being left behind. Her mother did not have to bear the burden of living on alone.

“He will not return,” Ayana told her father quietly and reached for his hand.

Richard had been a summer, fleeting and grounded only in her imaginings. They had walked together in the never-ending twilight with the sound of the aspens twitching in the breeze and the scent of the peonies heady and fragrant in the air. She was caught up in his stride as he laughed and talked, but she sensed that he would be gone when autumn came.

The horizon he offered was not her home. She did not need faraway places anymore, she realized, and would never leave the homestead. She was familiar with every corner of it: the willows and the birches and the river that gurgled through the land. She loved the hillsides that turned orange and crimson in the fall. She knew that the fireweed tallied the milder days of summer, blooming up its stalk until the fluffy, withered crowns indicated that winter was soon approaching. She felt the first snowfall through her nose before she even got out of bed to look out of her window. She cherished how the winter sun cast its slanting light through the kitchen window, metallic in the mornings, golden in the evenings. And she trusted that beneath the heavy snow blanket covering the hillside the peonies waited. The late blooms of the undemanding flower would turn blousy and luxurious in their season’s full potential.  



BIO

Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis’ work has appeared in Cirque Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, Euphony Journal, Fiction on the Web, Five on the Fifth, Medicine and Meaning, Penman Review and Shark Reef. Her memoir, Transplanted, was published by Cirque Press in 2022. She calls Alaska home and writes overlooking the Tanana Valley. Visit her website here: birgitsarrimanolis.com







I NEVER HAD MY WISDOM TEETH REMOVED

by Alicia Caldanaro



If now is not part of the past, why does the past often go back and forth in my mind
during present moments? It either hangs over my head like a black cloud or burns like
Jack’s fabulous yellow roman candles. Mouths get canker sores and backs break out in
hives. As the escalator gave my ankles a break from shopping, Santa Claus looked up
at me, smiled, and waved. Raindrops became a shower. Gene Kelly gave me his umbrella
and I started dancing. My dance was not as cool as the dance Jenna Ortega choreographed
and performed herself on Wednesday. However, she wears black, I wear gray, and my
piano teacher told me I was one of her few students who did not need a metronome. What
is it with my veterinarian who explained to me, after she removed forty percent of my cat’s
teeth, that they were rotten because of his poor genetics? She left his front canines and
incisors, but was that supposed to soothe him and me? I named my cat Aslan (“The Great
Lion”) because he processioned between my two rows of orange cosmoses where I counted
twenty-nine aggressive bumblebees pollinating in the hot afternoon. A week after Aslan’s teeth
were yanked out, an abscess developed under his chin and it burst when I was on my way out
the door. I padded his open sore till it stopped bleeding, left him in the house, raced to hear
a poet give a reading, and the day improved. It took a month to not see Aslan’s sore mouth
of red inflamed gums. The only item I ever buy in gas stations is pink bubble gum because
I cannot find it at most grocery stores. My two-year-old niece will repeatedly watch me
blow bubble gum bubbles. One time Grandma Agnes started at the crown of my head and
ran her hand gently down the back of my hair while Aunt Ann handed me a chocolate chip
cookie. Masking tape would not hold up my poster of Mulder and Scully so Mom gave me
duct tape. When I was in second grade, Grandma Rosie gave me my first poetry book,
Marigold Garden by Kate Greenaway. Aslan left a dead bird on my front step today. No one
knows what will happen.



THIS ISN’T AN ALL-NIGHT DINER



I am as mad as Yosemite Sam!
When my feet move forward, the
orchestra gives each stomp a strong
staccato. Take the keys and lock up
my fair lady. You didn’t say UNO!
Lonely preparation
and unmelodious response.
See a penny? pick it up!
Too many choices: Pink Lady, Fuji, McIntosh,
Jonagold, Jazz, Golden Delicious,
Honeycrisp, and Granny Smith.
Grandma always said:
better than sliced bread.
Vegetable knife in my right hand.
Band-Aid on my left thumb. Singed
skin from cookie sheets turns into blisters
that change to small, white, and
unerasable marks. Forthcoming book…
still in progress. Distasteful raw carrots were
inaudibly spat out by a rabbit.
Yosemite Sam strained Mel Blanc’s voice the most.
I make a mean carrot cake despite it all—



HAUNTED NEON LIGHTS



I knew it was over. I folded the red construction paper
in half, drew half a heart on the fold, and the scissors
were too dull to cut the heart out. Time to move on
because…what were we going to do? Hang out? No.
It was time for the sovereign remedies—
I relied on Matt Foley who shouted, “La Dee Frickin’ Da!”
in his “van down by the river,” and who fell a million
different ways then exclaimed, “Whoops-A-Daisy!”
to cheer me up. I laughed along with Elaine when Jerry
put the Tweety Bird Pez dispenser on top of her purse. I
wanted Kramer to put up a screen door and spray potted
azaleas, and afterwards we’d sit on old lawn chairs from
the 1970s: woven straps of green and white stripes held
together with Phillips screws in the aluminum chair frames.
I wanted to grill hamburgers and roast marshmallows
over charcoal. I could not wait to devour the toasted-to-a-light-
brown (on the outside) and the semi-melted, glossy-sweet
fluff (on the inside) of the marshmallows. You knew I was
better when you did not see me crying during most of the Little
House on the Prairie reruns I binged.You were proud of me
when at the midst of a table d’hôte, I did not yodel back to the
lonely goatherd. You laughed when I asked three friends to join
me and we copied the overlapping-legs-walk from the Monkees.
You knew I’d recovered when we watched the flowers growing
by the lamppost that told me it had rhymes for me.





BIO

Alicia Caldanaro was born in Valparaiso, Indiana, in 1968 and graduated from Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, in 1990. She studied at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she earned her Master of Library Science degree and “Specialization in Special Collections” certificate in 1999, which included working on the manuscripts of Athol Fugard. Her past work experience includes being a librarian at academic libraries. Alicia has several published poems, and she took Advanced Poetry Writing courses at Indiana University South Bend in 2023, taught by Professor David Dodd Lee, which encouraged her lifelong love of writing poetry. Her poems have appeared in Plath Profiles, Abandoned Mine, North Dakota Quarterly, Caesura, Analecta, and Laurel Review. Forthcoming: Willow Review. Forthcoming: Alicia will have a book of her poems published by Finishing Line Press entitled, The Needle Has Landed.












The Ashtray Heist
or
How to Come Out to Your Fourth-Best Friend

by Kyle Mustain



We hit the sweet spot of the song right as Zorro’s Brother took Henderson, the busiest street in town. The subwoofer in the back rattled the aluminum frame all the way up to the blockheaded hood of the van, reverberated through the front console, coursed back through the floor to then collide with the next wave of bass emitting from the subwoofer, and they crashed into each other somewhere in the middle, exploding all over Zorro’s Brother, but especially through the springs of the bucket seats and onto our backs.

“Feeelssss liiiike aaaa maaaassaaaagggge chaaaaairrrr, doooesssn’tttt iiiiit?!” I yelled through the sound barrier between us.

 “Yeeeaaah, brrrroooothhhherrrrr!” Skutch yelled back, the unharnessed rage of the bass taking him by surprise. I saw him nearly drop the white cylinder of tobacco he held between his double-jointed fingers like my subwoofer had given him early onset arthritis. Regaining the grip on the square and placing it into his mouth, he turned his muzzle to me and beamed, “When in Rome, brother! Yeah!”

This calling people ‘brother’ business and punctuating his statements with ‘Yeah!’ was a recent development. He was trying to sound like his favorite pro wrestlers from TV, tossing out idioms regardless of whether they fit the situation. He now dressed in snowboarder outfits that he ordered out of catalogues (We lived in the central plains of Illinois, nowhere even near a ski resort). He didn’t dress or talk like that two years before. Skutch was more buttoned-up like me back when we used to hang out.

Before the unspeakable night of the duct tape.

This forced hangout of ours was starting off well enough, so I went on and did what came naturally whenever I listened to my favorite band: I gave myself absolutely over to the music. Zorro’s Brother was the perfect vehicle for driving around listening to music. Its steering wheel was loose as hell. I could drum on it with my fingers with no fear of accidentally making the converted box on wheels careen all over the road. There was so much leg room I could practically do a jig from Riverdance. I displayed all of my driver’s seat choreography for Skutch, even doing little turntable glides with my hands along to those points in the remix, gleaming at him with a Kamel Red Light roasting in the corner of my mouth. Seeing how much this cracked him up helped untangle my nerves, just a little.

Then came the part of the song that I knew was coming, but he didn’t. The music halts and a deep voice drops in and says the word, “Annihilate,” but it’s stretched out and modulated, so it sounds like a bad guy from a cartoon like Transformers or G.I. Joe. It’s not just “Annihilate,” it’s “Anniiii-hill-aaaaate!” and who knows what it’s supposed to mean other than to drop in from out of nowhere and be fucking awesome.

Skutch cried out, “Oh my God! I love this shit!”

“Dude . . . right?!!!”

Then in some kind of boy-instinct, we whipped our heads to look each other in the eye and shouted in unison,  “Anniiii-hill-aaaaate!”

We laughed and that felt awesome but the moment passed and it got awkward again. We turned back toward the windshield, back to puffing on our squares. He probably thought this was going well enough, without any idea what my ulterior motive was that afternoon.

If I could only get over that night of the duct tape.

∞

The smoking half of Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream was empty all but for one table with two gray-haired women indulging in post-meal, or perhaps even mid-meal, cigarettes. The nonsmoking half of the restaurant was teeming with marinara-spattered children and their helicoptering parents. Most important to us: The staff was focused on keeping the kids entertained and the parents feeling like they were getting their money’s worth. We stood at the first of the two long tables at the front of the parlor. The premise we came up with back in Zorro’s Brother was that we would pantomime like we were looking for the right spot for the imaginary party we had coming. First we rubbed our chins, then we pointed, spread our arms, shook our heads, “No,” nodded in agreement, and started toward the next table. But before we left, I reached and pocketed the first ashtray from the table and Skutch grabbed the other one.

Skutch started up some nonchalant chatter to accompany the petty larceny we were in the midst of perpetrating: “So I heard you finally quit wrestling.”

“Yeah, I mean, technically I didn’t quit,” I gave a quick look back to the kitchen. A hundred feet away was Allen the manager moving around behind the counter with the black, crescent phone handset tucked between his ear and shoulder while he slid a freshly baked pizza pie off a wooden peel onto the stainless steel cutting table. Allen had a policy of preemptive hostility when it came to teens: A cuss word spoken too loudly or wearing clothes he deemed too baggy was enough to get a whole table full of teens tossed out of his establishment. Preoccupied for the time being, his peering eyes wouldn’t be a problem until we reached the jukebox and salad bar in the middle of the dining room. Trying to maintain a Sunday morning easiness about me, I continued, “It’s not like I walked into Coach Bull’s office, gave him the finger, and told him I quit. I just didn’t show up to practice.”

I nodded him the go-ahead. We smoothly retrieved the next two ashtrays from the second of the two front party tables. Now we started moving along the smaller, four-seater tables set with one ashtray each. At each station we idled for a minute, continuing our pantomime of indecision of where best to seat our forthcoming flood of friends and family, then whoever was closest to an ashtray, gave the eye, and the other turned to give a lookout for Allen.

Skutch continued as if we were doing nothing to arouse concern, “Dude, a lot of wrestlers quit before they hit varsity. I’m glad you figured it out, man,” which was nice of him to offer some friendly reassurance, but he ruined it by adding, “You know what my stance has always been on that sport anyway.” I put on a face like I wasn’t agitated by Skutch’s comment and swiped the closest ashtray.

Skutch always talked trash about the one sport I excelled in. All through junior high, if he was around, I could never brag about my wrestling achievements. While I was spending my nights and weekends busting my ass on the mat, Skutch acted as if none of it counted. He made hacky comments like, Who cares that you won first place at the dry-humping tournament? followed by his mocking laughter, Ahahaha! and looking around the room until he got everyone laughing along with him.

When he made this newest insinuation, I considered making a run for Zorro’s Brother and stranding him there. However, I had a promise to keep with T.J., so I steered us away from this topic. “How’s it been with your parents since you quit football?”

We made our way smoothly now, leapfrogging from table to table, swooping up our little prizes faster than the human eye could see.

“You know my parents, man. What do you think? Not being buddy-buddy with the football team like I used to be annoys the hell out of them. Hanging out at skate parks has opened me up to ‘less than savory folks’ these days. I come home smelling like squares. I even, on occasion, smoke a little reefer.” He said that last part under his breath. Even if there was no one on our side of the restaurant, one had to be careful when mentioning that stuff. He finished, “I’m telling ya, dude, things have definitely changed with me and my folks. ”

Apparently none of our parents were singing our highest praises those days, except for T.J., whose parents pretty much let him raise himself.

“What about your folks?” Skutch cordially passed the question back to me.

“My parents’ve seen too many Disney movies. Every night they make me hold different exotic artifacts and try out different chants in foreign tongues. They’re betting that one of these times I’ll magically switch places with one of my mom’s miscarriages.”

Skutch bent himself in half to slap the table at the booth he was standing next to. This was a sight because he was six-foot-three and cloaked in a double-XL, magenta-colored snowboarding jacket that stuck out like a sore thumb for a region where most men kept their wardrobes to a dull palette. It pissed me off that he could dress as ostentatiously as he wanted while I maintained a strict Gap-and-Abercrombie wardrobe to assert my hetero public persona. When he came up, his hand was over his mouth and he looked at me with watering eyes. Sure, making him lose it like that put the mission at risk, but that was part of the fun of doing things like this.

He stood up straight, heaving, “Oh, woah, ohhhh,” and when he caught his breath he went, “Man, you don’t know how much I missed hearing you say messed up shit like that.”

Missed me? You know who I miss? My best fucking friend! But you turned him against me on the night of the duct tape.

“How do you come up with shit like that?” Skutch asked, still climbing out of his barrel of laughs.

I shrugged that I wouldn’t reveal my secret. Broadly funny guys like Skutch always think that cynically funny guys like me get our jokes from some private source that we hoard away from them. The truth is it comes from years of hating ourselves for not being like normal boys, laying in the dark of our bedrooms, listening to sad and angry music, and learning to metabolize our feelings into twisted phrases that convey the dysfunctions in the world that we fixate on. But you just didn’t share things like that with your fourth-best friend.

“Shit!” I said with urgency, “The manager just looked right at us!”

“Yo, dude, let’s just sit for a minute. That manager will get busy again and quit looking at us in no time.”

I darted over to the last booth before the jukebox and took a seat. Happy Joe’s was a counter service style restaurant. They didn’t have waiters, only food-runners. This was why the night before, T.J., Skutch, and I picked it as the perfect place to hit. Hypothetically, Skutch and I could sit at the booth as long as we wanted. Which meant that, also, this was a good time to talk. Moisture was already accumulating under my arms.

Wiping the water from his eyes, Skutch took the seat across from me. He gave me an honest look like I had rarely seen him use before, like that comment about missing me was something he planned on addressing that afternoon. “So, T.J. said that besides getting ashtrays there was something you wanted to talk to me about?” I mentally cursed T.J. for setting me up like that. He never stuck his neck out for anything. He couldn’t fathom coming out to anyone, let alone what a struggle it was going to be for me to come out to Skutch. I was getting so annoyed with growing up and having to deal with shit that I didn’t want to.

But T.J. and the antidepressant kept urging me that I had to.

“Listen brother, I know it’s been a while since we’ve really hung out and you probably don’t want to get all serious with me right off the bat. Now that I’m coming up on two weeks of being in a committed relationship, I can honestly say that hearing a woman’s perspective has really opened my eyes to things. What I’m saying is I’m a changed man, brother.”

I looked around for something to distract me. Ashtray #8 was set in front of the napkin dispenser. I slid it in front of me, looked around—Allen had gone back to work and nobody in the restaurant was paying attention to us.

You know how at the end of The Crow he puts his hands on the villain’s head and gives him the 30 hours of pain his wife suffered as she died in trauma surgery? I wished I could do that with Skutch. Just flick Ashtray #8 at him, then reach across the table and clench onto his scalp. First, I’d send him to my kitchen, my mother addressing me without looking up from the newspaper: I haven’t seen much of Judd lately. Then just like me, he would have to make up different answers on the spot, over and over again, when put in this exact same scenario with my mother for several months, to not be able to say the real reason: Judd and Skutch quit hanging out with me because they think I’m gay, Mom. For every bullshit answer I gave her, I received that look of disappointment, her assumption that I must have done something stupid to push my friends away. I would like Skutch to see that, because of him, I receded from my parents, receded from everything, and then had the most awkward talk with my father of my whole life: Son, do you think you would like to . . . talk to someone . . . a professional?

I had both hands on Ashtray #8 now, gripping it like I wanted to grip Skutch’s head and send him more memories. My parents were just the tip of the iceberg. Next, I would send him to that night at Judd’s house, when it all went down. How it felt to hear my own friends accusing me of despicable things, with all their stupid jokes about strapping on duct tape to protect themselves from me. I wanted him to cry out in agony as I showed him how it felt to lay there all night, paralyzed with confusion and fear while the two closest friends I ever had cackled at my expense. It wasn’t even funny, but they laughed like it was the funniest shit ever, which made it sting even worse.

The antidepressant was supposed to help me not dwell on all of this anymore.

Okay, just one more memory I’d like Skutch to see: The weekend after the night of the duct tape. Judd and I in his basement standing on either side of his pool table, where we always went to talk about things we didn’t want his parents to hear. Me, spinning a ball in place on the pool table, not able to look up at him.

Can’t we just leave this alone?

Come on, Kyle. Something’s going on. Just tell me.

Nothing’s ‘going on,’ Judd. I like girls! Okay?

. . . Okay.

He quit calling me.

I quit calling him.

Five years of best friendship over, just like that.

All because of Skutch’s bad joke about duct tape.

I wanted to get him back.

So bad.

But T.J. and the antidepressant were in my ear telling me otherwise, that coming out could be the key to bringing all of us back together again.

“You think you got enough ashtrays, man? The closer we get to the back the more we’re risking that manager catching onto us. We could call the mission a success, get out of here and maybe drive around for a while listening to more of that badass Nine Inch Nails remix CD you got. Or we could go someplace quiet and talk . . .”

I put my fingers to my temples.

Yep, my hair was getting sweaty.

Damn antidepressant.

I slid Ashtray #8 off the table and into the right pocket of my leather jacket, making sure that it locked in place with the other three in there. I got up so abruptly Skutch’s eyes bulged. This was the stupidest idea ever. I was going to ream T.J. as soon as it was over.

“Thanks for the offer, but we’re not leaving til we get all of the ashtrays that aren’t currently in use in this place. You ready to finish this, man?”

“When in Rome!”

I was getting seriously sick of him saying that.

∞

We got moving again. There were five more to get, not including the one the two elderly women were flicking their long-stemmed cigarettes into. Five more. No big deal. Then make it out the door without Allen detecting us and we were home free. For now I was done thinking about coming out, quitting wrestling, and my parents.

Skutch leaned over the first booth past the jukebox to grab the ashtray all the way against the wall while I idled at the salad bar—of course this looked ridiculously suspicious. Just as it was within his grasp, I saw him snap his hand back and look up with Uh oh! on his face. A squelching sound quaked across the restaurant. The jukebox stopped playing and the whole place became aware of it. The horde of children and their parents on the smoke-free side of the restaurant froze in place. Skutch took a wide step to join me back at the salad bar.

Everyone in the pizza parlor was just now noticing us.

Two teens not accompanied by adults.

In this moment with the entire restaurant directing their confusion at us, Skutch looked down at me. I looked up at him, wondering what he could possibly want to say right then. He leaned down to my ear and under his breath he said: “Annihilate?”

I tried to hold the laughter down but couldn’t. I flashed him a look that meant: You fucking dick! and simultaneously: You deserve a fist in the shoulder right now! but also: Good one. Totally got me back for the body-swap-with-a-miscarriage joke.

I nodded reluctantly, went ahead and said, “Okay, I missed you too, you big fucking Wookiee.”

To which he replied, “When in Rome, brother.” 

This didn’t mean I was ready to forgive him.

Right then, bubblegum sirens attached at several points along the ceiling started that fire truck winding-up sound and circling red lights gave off a dizzying visual sensation throughout the dimly-lit dining room. The door to the kitchen swung open and a person in a Dalmatian costume came running out, waving its arms at the children. Next came a young woman dressed in a white-and-black-striped referee polo. She was honking an old-timey circular brass horn that, against the blaring siren, gave off a cacophony of sounds mimicking prehistoric birds of prey that even after eons of evolution still activated our caveman fear response.

The referee girl began yelling, “Ladies and Gentleman, may I have your attention, please?! Today we have a very special birthday!” and so on, as the employee in the furry costume encouraged the kid of honor to stand up on his chair. The referee honked the goose horn some more, then asked that everyone join in song to wish the clearly terrified child a happy birthday.

Creeping away from the salad bar to the booths at the unattended side of the restaurant, Skutch and I muttered the whole song, ending on: “Happy Birthday . . . dear . . . Kev–? . . . er . . . Ry–an!” During the commotion we took advantage and jacked the ashtrays off the booths and tables on the other side of the jukebox. Once the song was over the referee was busy handing out ice cream, and the Dalmatian retired to the back to take his head off and redeem his well-earned smoke break.

Now we were in the quadrant of the restaurant closest to the counter, with just one more ashtray to go, not at a booth, but at a table out in the wide-open, and still not counting the ashtray being used by the two chatting elderly women. This was the most sensitive zone as you could practically see yellow beams coming out of Allen the manager’s eyeballs. Whenever there was a bad guy with scanning eyeballs in video games, I never got it right on the first try. I tried not to think about that, but let’s be serious, my constant failure at those scenarios in nearly every video game I had ever played in my life was all I could think about as I crept toward the table at the smack-dab center of which was that final ashtray.

A light cast down on it from Nicotine Heaven.

Right as I was reaching for that final ashtray, I looked up and met the eyeballs encased under Allen’s Cro-Magnon brow. I reeled my hand back in and nodded at him. He nodded right back at me. Recognizably. I walked in the direction of the counter as he pulled me in with his tractor beam. As I was doing this, I half-turned my head to Skutch to communicate to him to chill out and watch whatever was about to happen.

“Hey, Allen!” I said as I neared the counter. I stopped at a safe distance and became hyper-sensitively aware of the six stolen items inside the pockets of my leather jacket.

 “Hey, I know you!” Allen said, stopping what he was doing behind the counter. Cocking his head as if to call up a recollection, he said as a question: “Tyler?” He had for years called me by names that sounded slightly like mine, but I never bothered correcting him because he always looked so impressed with himself for believing he remembered all of my parents’ kids’ names.

Our names all started with K’s. Why would my name be Tyler?

“Yes, Allen,” I started by boasting my solid recall of his own given name, then finished with, “It is I, Tyler Mustain!”

“Your folks on their way?”

 “What? Uhhhh . . . ” then his eyes darted behind me, toward Skutch, my accomplice, who I hoped wasn’t in the action of pocketing anything that didn’t belong to him.

Allen the manager had that permanently pissed-off look in his eyes that middle-aged men trapped in restaurant management always seem to have. Clearly a former athlete, he was daunting in his burliness with thick arms and above-average height. The man had kicked untold denizens of delinquents out of his pizza parlor. Men like him have some kind of carnal instinct they aren’t fully aware of; men whose own once-lofty dreams had over the years been slowly smothered with mozzarella. Once they are drowned so deep beneath the marinara and dough, they grow into being dead-set to ruin the dreams of others. That day, before he recognized me, he looked at me with the same suspecting look he gave every nameless teenager who entered his parlor.

 Looking me dead in the eye, he said, “Your folks don’t normally start dinner til seven, six-thirty at the earliest. What brings you here this afternoon?”

I blurted out the following words as placeholders while I teetered on what to say next. “You—know—what—I—came—in—here—for—Allen?”

If I lied to Allen and got away with the ashtrays, then in just a few minutes Skutch and I would be back inside Zorro’s Brother. What if Skutch presses me again about what I wanted to talk about?

So, what if I slip? Give myself and Skutch away to Allen?

We’d spend the rest of the evening with our parents and the cops, going over everything that happened here. For the next few months, Skutch and I would be grounded and doing community service. T.J. would get off my case about telling Skutch at least until all of that was over.

This scenario even contained a secret ingredient: Payback.

The time between Allen’s query and my response stretched like a personal size portion of dough over an extra-large pan . . .

∞

Seth McHenry was the first to go.

By junior high he didn’t have any boy friends because no boy wanted to be his friend anymore. No boy wanted to stay the night at his house. No boy wanted to go to his birthday party, either. From then on, he only talked to girls, only sat with girls, only walked the halls with them. His parents started letting him have girls over to stay the night when they realized it wasn’t girls they needed to worry about leaving him alone with.

Jonah Simmons was next.

In seventh grade, Jonah confided to his girlfriend that he found boys attractive in addition to girls. He must have liked her a lot to have shared that with her, which was too bad because she freaked out and told her friends. Then they spread it around school that Jonah was a fag. For the rest of our school days, Jonah walked to classes alone, sat at lunch alone. The school smartasses coined him a nickname which you could hear whenever he walked by.

Ross McIntyre was never included from the beginning.

Ross was the rare breed who never even tried to cover up. He let his flame burn bright, as they say. Most high school students are excited at the end of the school day, but Ross dreaded it. Whenever I went out to the parking lot, I hopped right into Zorro’s Brother and started it up without it ever occurring to me that someone could have fucked with it. Ross, on the other hand, had to walk around his car to make sure nobody slashed his tires, tossed their garbage onto his hood, stuffed a sock in his tailpipe.

There was no such thing as a gay, bisexual, or even questioning male either coming out or being found out and his group of straight male friends keeping him around. If it’s one thing I wished my straight friends could have known back then, it was that despite their casual jokes about gay men’s insatiable desire to rape straight men and that the only sport I ever excelled at was a smokescreen for gay sex, the reality was that I had more to fear from them than they had to fear from me.

Exponentially more.

All of the other queer boys could tell that I was like them. All guys who are like us look at each other a certain way. When you see it, you run through the gamut of feelings: At first it is mystifying (How can he tell?), then it’s titillating (Does he like me?), but ultimately you fall into a state of paranoia (Is he going to out me?). When you can tell they clocked you, you get the fear that because they were outed, they want justice by outing the boys they can tell are hiding in the closet. When you are in the closet there is nothing more terrifying than an openly queer person.

I didn’t know until much later what the looks I got from the likes of Seth, Jonah, and Ross really meant: They were mournful. They wanted to know what made me so special that my friends kept me around when theirs threw them out. They wished they still had what I had, which was a normal boy’s life of being included in boy things with my boy friends. In the long run, it turned out that I was just better at covering up than they were.

Do I get a prize? No?

How about all the things I lost because of it? My identity, for starters.

Early photos and videos of me portray a child who was not masculine by any measure. Nor could I be described as feminine, either. In one photo I’ll be wearing a clip-on tie and suspenders, in another I’m posing in my grandmother’s jewelry and nail polish. I was my own entity back then, not yet tethered to any gender, and one hell of a happy kid. It wasn’t until adolescence that I learned to cover up my natural way of being with more masculine traits that I picked up from older boys and men and television and movies. By the time I was in high school I had perfected this public image of myself: Captain of the wrestling team, a sweet-ass conversion van with a prominently-displayed NIИ sticker on it.

I snuck out.

I raised hell.

I got bruises.

I got black eyes.

I proved myself.

I learned that I loved being a boy;

The brotherhood of my group of friends.

How much of it was covering up and how much was blending in?

Was there a way to combine these two spirits within myself?

∞

Kyle Mustain’s time came freshman year.

I made the mistake of describing one of our male classmates as “cute.” That was it. All the wallpaper tumbled down in that instant. To Skutch, I may as well have just confessed to murder. He called up several years of mounting evidence before Judd, my best friend. They talked like I wasn’t even in the room. I got the strong feeling this was not the first discussion they’d had on the subject.

I seemed like a guy, but some things about me sure weren’t. For instance, I didn’t like watching pro sports on TV, but I wrestled, which was highly suspect. Most of the jokes I told and retold over the years were about gay sex. By the age of 14, it got to the point that whenever I told yet another gay joke, the guys didn’t laugh anymore, they just looked at me funny. I lost interest in looking at Playboy magazines years before, which I thought I argued pretty convincingly was because I had developed a taste for more hardcore stuff. Skutch countered that the real reason was because I wanted to see dick.

Finally: Don’t you see how he cowers when we talk about catalytic converters?!!!

For Skutch this all translated not just to me being gay, but a gay man who infiltrated the group in order to violate them, one overnight at a time. As if this was something I could have plotted. In Skutch’s mind, all the way back at the age of eight I was rubbing my palms together, going: Just wait until we have all entered this period known as “puberty”—That is when I will strike!

After the night of the duct tape I got used to my phone not ringing anymore. Reclusivity suited me pretty well, actually. I found ways to pass the time. I tried playing video games but they weren’t as fun without my friends. Want to know what I did? I went to the library. I checked out nonfiction books on topics I wanted to know more about.

Then one night my dad came into my room and asked me if I wanted to see a psychologist. I couldn’t fault my parents for that. They were used to me traveling in a pack of boys all the time, then without explanation I was all alone on nights and weekends. Granted, my father found me on the floor with a deck of cards playing an archaic form of solitaire while listening to a recording of my own voice attempting self-hypnosis.[1]

It did look like I was turning into a weirdo.

Sophomore year, T.J. Timmerman and I had English class together and we partnered up on some projects. Naturally, we talked about old times and I asked him what Judd and Skutch were up to those days. T.J., being so close with Skutch, had a lot to get off his chest about him. I became his confidante, the person he could go to to bitch about his best friend. That’s how I became his other best friend.

At the end of sophomore year I took an after-school class to become a lifeguard, got hired by the city, and became friends with the kids who worked there. The summer between sophomore and junior year I started throwing parties at the old family farmhouse.

The parties were how I came back.

The goal was: Host awesome parties, and once I was popular, nobody would question if I was straight anymore. Only that didn’t really pan out. When I got drunk I slipped again. Way worse than calling a boy cute, when I didn’t have the inhibitions of sobriety safeguarding me, everyone saw that happy little kid from my home movies: gesturing wildly, giving sass, twirling, flirting. Eight years of bottled up flamboyance and lust came out to play. I loved being a boy but those first experiences with alcohol revealed that letting that other side of me out was, well, intoxicating.

I didn’t really know if those other queer boys were sadder than me.

I hadn’t been winning at all. I had been lying.

People were talking. The wallpaper was peeling down all around me. The duct tape would not hold. T.J. said it was time to rip the duct tape. So I declared that I would start making changes to try and live out this new way of life. The first step was quitting wrestling, where I knew I was not going to be welcome anymore. T.J. prodded me: What if coming clean to Skutch would set things right?

But I still really wanted revenge.

Wasn’t that the man thing to do?

∞

Allen had his hands on the opposite side of the red counter. It was the kind with the hinged trapdoor so he could rush out of the kitchen to tackle teenagers. Beads of antidepressant-sweat were coming down from places where sweat normally didn’t come out of that were really freaking me out. As we stared each other down, perhaps the longest we had ever maintained eye contact, not just with each other, but with anyone, I had to make my impossible choice.

Some birthday kids ran past. We all had birthday parties there when we were kids, ran around with tokens for games and tickets for prizes. Happy Joe’s used to be my favorite place and yet I hadn’t felt welcome there in years. Funny how its business thrived on children’s birthday parties, then was so hostile towards those same children once we outgrew its fun and games and had to come up with our own.

Man, adults sure are fucked up.

We teens really needed to stick together.

Wait a minute!

My friends weren’t the ones vandalizing Ross McIntyre’s car! I would have known about it. As for Seth McHenry, were we all supposed to pretend we liked listening to girly music just to be nice to him? And I’m sorry, but regardless of Jonah Simmons’s sexual orientation, he was just plain fucking weird.

I finally figured out what the night of the duct tape was really about!

I was such a fool.

∞

In the nick of time, I shouted at Allen’s face, “I would like a job application!”

Don’t ever count me out.

Remember, my whole life up to this point was a lie—and I was damn good at it.

Allen’s expression went from glowering, protectful proprietor and rose up to smiling, prospective employer. He beamed, “Why, sure! Of course, Tyler!” I could see the possible future forming on the bald spot of his head: He and me in the back of the house after the dinner rush, blowing off some steam by having pepperoni and sausage fights; the day I earn the privilege of donning the Dalmatian costume; me gladly accepting it, and then for the rest of this daydream sequence: me in the Dalmatian costume doing an epic breakdance routine against a blue screen projection of pizza-themed graphics.

Teenagers could be okay, as long as we were kept in line.

Allen crouched under the counter. I took the brief opportunity to check that the ashtrays in my pockets were not sticking out. Surely back at the table Skutch was smooth enough to snag the last one, although it sucked that I didn’t get it. Allen came back up with a pad of red-and-white job applications, ripped one off, and handed it to me. “You need a pen? You can fill that out here.”

“What? Oh no, I’ll fill this out at home. I just wanted to pick one up,” then feeling so impressed with myself, I added, “My mom would just love it if I worked here. She thinks you are so cool!”

“Oh, she does? Well, tell her I think she and your dad are pretty cool, too. Go ahead and drop that off whenever you want, Tyler.” He said it with such glee it was hard not to feel sorry for robbing him.

Then I shrugged it cuz I needed those ashtrays more than he did.

I turned fast. Skutch looked flabbergasted at whatever happened that he couldn’t hear over the noise of the birthday party. I shot him a look that said we were safe for now, but to get moving. Then from behind we heard, “Hold on a minute!” and even though it came from seven feet behind me, Allen’s exclamation point was stabbing right into the back of my neck.

Sweat glands opened up into waterfalls all over my body. I turned back around. Allen looked at me sternly. I thought maybe he was searching for signs that I could have been on some kind of drug. I actually was on some kind of drug. Through something like a sound-tunnel I could just barely make out: “Does your friend need one too?”

My own voice was trembling: “W-w-what d-d-did you s-s-say, Allen?”

“You heard me,” he said. His look was mean. I started to cower. Here comes the part where he drowns my dreams in mozzarella. Allen repeated what he had originally said, “Does your friend need an ashtray?”

The jukebox kicked back on. It was playing a song from an animated film. Shit like that was on heavy-rotation at Happy Joe’s because it was a family joint. Another epiphany struck me: I could suck a thousand dicks and take just as many in the ass and I would never like this neutered Disney Channel shit. That made me feel infinitely better about myself.

I digress.

Allen was looking at me like I must be stupid or something. He repeated himself once more, “I said: Does your friend want an application, too?”

“Ohhh! Nooo! H-h-he’s just along for the ride. Y-y-you’ll be hearing from me, Allen!”

Allen shrugged and went back to work.

The job application was now ruined with palm sweat. It flapped against my leg as I walked toward Skutch. He had his hands at the sides of his legs to obscure all the items he’d stuffed down his deep Jnco pockets. Keeping my hand in front of me so Allen couldn’t see it, I waved for Skutch to start moving toward the door.

Now at our mission’s end, I knew just the thing to say to him: “Yippee kay-yay, <Mister Fowlicker!>”

Skutch’s eyes shot wide. “You remember?” he said.

“Of course I do.”

“Well then, the only proper response to that is: Smile, you son of a <shark!>”

It’s an inside joke we’ve had since fifth grade.[2] He came up with the first part, I came up with the second. I always thought mine was funnier, but they work better together than they do apart. I see that now.

“Annihilate, good buddy.”

“Annihilate, brother.”

The birthday party kids were now at the front of the restaurant, blocking the exit. With suckers sticking out of their mouths, they were crowded around the turn-of-the-century love testing machine and the booth that showed shitty Hanna-Barbera cartoons for a quarter. One, then the rest, tilted their heads up and took in the sight of the two of us: One, a gangly giant with shaggy hair, wearing a snowboarding jacket and jeans both two sizes too big for him; The other with colorless, prickly facial hair perforating out of the sides of his face, unnatural hair color that looked more orange than platinum because it came out of a home dye kit. The kids registered our personal attempts to appear as our own interpretations of “cool,” which had only resulted in the tragedy of appearing strained and obvious. They zoomed in to see the red and white, painful-looking little mounds that covered both of our faces. What little skin of ours was unblemished was covered in a layer of glaze that looked like the grease from the paper they wrap around fast food burgers. In their eyes was the shock of realization that the freakish figures standing above them were what they were hurtling toward on this runaway train they hadn’t bought tickets for. It’s how Gregor Samsa must have gotten a little prickle in the back of his neck every time he encountered a dung beetle.

I started to exit through the plate glass door, but before I was out I noticed Skutch, towering colossus that he is, still standing in front of the children. Slowly he leaned over them, allowing their stares to come into focus. He sprawled open his double-jointed fingers, which look more arthropodal than human when spread out. Posturing himself like one of those pro-wrestlers he so admired, he roared the word of the day: “Anniiii-hill-aaaaate!” and the children went scurrying in every direction across the restaurant. Straightening up, he turned to me, motioned at the exit, and added, “When in Rome, brother.” Now I caught on that the idiom not fitting the situation was intentional. That’s what made it funny.

We had just made off with every single ashtray that had been sitting on a table that afternoon—save for one. As we were about to exit, I stopped, looked all the way back to the women up at the table nearest the counter. “You know? Only one of them is smoking right now . . . and they’re old. When she picks up her cigarette again, I could swoop in and lift the ashtray.”

“That would be killer, but we’re almost out the door, man. Besides, you already had a close call with the manager back there. Best to err on the side of caution, brother.”

“I know, but Skutch, just picture it: When we’re telling this story to all of our friends at the next party, or someday when we’re sitting by a roasting fire, telling our fucking grandchildren about this day, do we want to say we got all but one, or that we went the distance and got every single ashtray, including one that was being used at the time?”

We had arrived at that free-falling sensation between one friend proposing the improbable, and the other looking him in the eye with the corner of his mouth sprung into anticipatory grin, anxious to see if he’s actually going to go for it. We had been in this situation so many times, at the threshold of an idea we both knew was crazy, but also totally fucking awesome, then waiting to see which of us was going to take the plunge and show the other that it, and practically anything we set our minds to, can be done.



BIO

Essays by Kyle Mustain have appeared at Slate, The Writing Disorder, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and his parents’ refrigerator. This piece is a chapter in the forthcoming memoir, You’re Supposed to Be Somebody: Biting Beer Cans, Banging Soda Bottles, and Smashing Funyuns in the Rural Midwest. He works as a substitute teacher and a waiter in Central Illinois. 







[1] To try to make myself not be gay anymore. Okay, and to try to unlock any dormant superpowers I may have had.

[2] To do this joke, when you say the words in brackets you want to make your voice sound like it’s a completely different voice than the one that said all of the words that came before it, just like how some TV stations opt to dub different words over cuss words instead of bleeping them out.







Small World

by John deSouza



Just neighborhood stuff around my in-laws’ house that has changed over the many years.   
An afternoon with my wife, her old Tato, and her sister, who disarms everyone with passion
and kindness, with an endless sort of generous, contagious, merriment. We are adaptable
and try to find the best in people, learn something, or find something to connect us in the
neighborhood, which is gritty but colorful like the strings of bright yellow, green, pink, orange,
black, red of the woven reed baskets in the Ethiopian store’s window.

The tree is fenced around,
the little metal plaque says Linda’s Shoes, 1974
on the tree’s enclosure.

But more recently Linda’s
has been replaced by Yohana Convenience Store.
(ዮሐና (yoḥānisi) is my prenom in Amharic.)

The world gets smaller to us
in some ways, in others grows in all the new detail.
There are 109 languages spoken

in Ethiopia. Some spill over,
cross into Somalia, are from before borders.
Tigrinya is a little different,

a Semitic language
that dates back 4,000 plus years. Tigray spills
its blood into Eritrea to the North.

The people on Bloor St., here, are tired
of differences and wars, of violence. They miss home,
gather to joke and roast coffee,

attract others from elsewhere
with the rush of caffeine and untraceable sacredness
of Frankincense and popcorn.

The owner tells me of a 6th century church,
high on a northern mountain that Orthodox Christians
climb as needed to pray.

The rock-hewn space is beyond our yearnings
for reward and recognition. The ascent is treacherous,
from which no one has ever fallen.



In the Woods



These Connecticut streams
resist arrangement. Doubt
splits attention. Will grapples
rocks. A forced overlay
of wakefulness. No lull.

Here is the stream. In
time’s measure softened.
Blur of capture. Softest
as the light dims. Alone
again, practicing intention.

You and this other,
uncompromised. Flirt
that twists through rustled
leaves. This voice also,
torn sky in treetops.

Thought, a violet clarity,
settles throughout, absorbs
retreat. No path follows.
Moon-time and no-time,
darkness, another return.

Dream here at home,
a living expanse stretched,
the unmeasurable years
alternate, emptied, filled again,
lead back, trickle inward.



Altar/Vivtar/Вівтар



But what do I know of famine and war?
Only the pain or thrill of listening to the reports,
images and videos of other people’s suffering.

Unless kitchen talk, around a Ukrainian table,
like a boisterous altar to a benevolent god,
clever people who were there, who survived.

My wife’s family, five generations
of stories that go back centuries—
What to do, listening to Twitter Spaces,

while I fight slow domestic battles over
what’s for dinner, and my politicians
can’t decide how much not to help.



Letterpress Landscape



Something unspeakable.
Say it. Scraggy trees, a stream, snow.
The way the water
flows across the white card
conveys everything.

The experience of black
streams under white snow,
alive but remembered.
Am I the way there?

While the politicians dither,
good and bad people die.
The reporters putting out bait
for the hate-hunters.

Like those hungry ghosts I animate,
thin necks and bloated bellies.
So many questions, and I,
no longer young.

In the Winter scene there is
less suffering. Describe
what isn’t there is another way.

An invisible stream flowing
between me and you reading this,
a printed landscape.

And in the snow, blood, dead
soldiers strewn like straw.



BIO

John A. deSouza’s poetry has been published by WayWords, Apricity Press, The Orchards, All Existing Literary Review, Half Eaten Mouth, David Cope’s Big Scream Magazine, and has been translated in China in New World Poetry. The poems ‘Altar’ and ‘Letterpress Landscape’ are from his recent collection concerning the war in Ukraine, titled Unimaginable Hardship/Zero Line. The first part of this collection, Unimaginable Hardship was recently short-listed for the Letter Review Prize. John’s wife’s family is Ukrainian.







Vanishing Act

by Seonah Kim


The day Crow met Robert in London, he produced from his wool cap a rabbit as white as midnight snow. She packed her bags that afternoon, left with him by morning. The trick was not part of his normal routine. In fact, Crow has not seen the white rabbit since.

She has been on tour with him for three months. This weekend, they’re in Vegas and Robert says, Baby, every other street clown is a “magician”. From now on, I’m a prestidigitator.

act 1.

The attendant on their flight from Las Vegas to Denver is just one guy. At first, she thinks he is the pilot, because of the loose authority he exhibits as they board. He welcomes them as though they’re entering his own plane, flashes his braces at them, and she thinks he must be fresh out of flight school. And even his clothes, lacking in certain trademarks, (striped shoulder pads? a particular shiny pin?) don’t register as wrong. Perhaps it’s the gummy she took at the gate, THC dosage unspecified, prescribed to her by Robert, who has flight anxiety. Crow does not have flight anxiety. She has flight anticipation, which bubbles in her stomach, muddling like a gassy thrill until she is settled in her narrow pleather seat. They fly coach, a condition which Robert assures her is temporary. As soon as he signs a Netflix special, he swears, soon.

The guy with the braces gets on the loudspeaker and says Welcome aboard folks. I hail from the beeaa-utiful Caribbean Island of Pu-erto Rico, and it is my pleasure to be joining you on this short flight from Las Vegas to. There is a pause, a scattered chuckle from the cabin and then he says Denver, and Crow observes his ignorance and the reaction of the passengers and her own impenetrable ambivalence.  

He enters the cabin and offers a tray containing tinfoil-wrapped fruit bars and chocolate-covered rice crisps. One of each or two of the same, he says. One of each or two of the same. The way he repeats it is so monotonous and bored it is almost playful. This is the smallest plane Crow has ever been on, two seats on one side of each row, one on the other. There is no business class on a flight like this, a fact which Robert no doubt relishes.

Will we fly private from Vegas to Denver once you get your Netflix special? she asks him.

Robert smiles at her with a sleepy sort of dismissal and says that private jet emissions are terrible for the environment, and he has many thoughts on the subject, which he will expound on when he is not so drugged up.

Crow selects two chocolate rice crisps when their pilot passes them the tray. Robert’s eyes are closed so Crow takes two more chocolate rice crisps on his behalf, smiling at the pilot and then glancing to Robert, as if to say, we’re together, he’ll want these later. The pilot in braces looks at Robert too, seems to contemplate making a joke, and then the woman in the seat behind Crow announces to her seatmate, to the whole plane really, that she is on a connecting flight from Venice. The seatmate asks if it was warm in California. The woman laughs tightly and corrects her: Italy is actually quite cold this time of year.

Puerto Rico, my home country, is so warm right now, the pilot says, rolling the Rs in Puerto and Rico as he had on the loudspeaker. I was there last week, but now I am flying to. Denver, the woman smiles. Denver, he says.

It’s only once the plane begins to rumble down the runway and the guy is still standing at the top of the aisle, demonstrating safety procedures, that Crow realizes he is not their pilot after all.

It’s not snowing on the Las Vegas tarmac, but once they begin to graze the clouds, streaks of wet white light race past the windows and she thinks of the way intergalactic travel is depicted in movies. Robert drops her hand, which he had gripped when the rumbling began. Crow wonders why snow doesn’t always reach the ground, if it’s not heavy enough or not fast enough, for the plane is doing the moving, at least in the perpendicular direction; the snow could be still, floating in space like dust, though it appears to her, through the glass, supernatural and screaming.

Crow turns away from the window but Robert is already asleep, having probably taken something stronger than just an edible. He would not have appreciated her observation of the violent, wintery altitude, but she would have told him anyway, had he been awake. The first time she flew with him, she found his panic endearing, was baffled but amused by his need to be unconscious for an hour-long flight. Even now, she feels a pang behind her breast as she examines his slack features, undone and half-bathed in the dark and glow of the overhead compartment. She wonders if her own face looks as empty when she is asleep, wonders if it is often snowing in the clouds on dry, sunny days.

act 2.

In London, I am almost always awake. I tend bar at a pub late into the evenings but rarely go home after my shift because I am usually still wired and restless. Instead of walking to my empty flat in Battersea, I walk from Clapham where I work into the upscale Kensington neighborhood of Chelsea. It takes me an hour and a half to get there by foot but I stay on the busy roads and listen to The Strokes and am in no rush.

It started one night when I was trying to lose a few drunk guys who had been at the pub and whom I had suspected might be following me. The streets that led home were quiet, a little seedy, and the whole evening was giving me the creeps. Imagine if I lived in one of these mansions, I thought as I entered Kensington. Imagine if I was going home to a two-story walk-up with a fireplace and a clawfoot tub. I found myself peering into the few windows lit up all orange and imagining myself inside that life, safe and dim, scented with expensive candlewax, a husband who loved me and a baby on the way.

After walking for a while, it becomes easier to believe that I am moving towards a destination, that I am heading truly home. Instead of turning back, I continue to weave deeper into the paved streets, wide and shadowed in marble.

I am beginning to shiver, exhaustion and the September chill tangling in my calves. I’ve been standing all night at the pub and have just now walked about three miles. I sit on a fire hydrant by the curb. I’ll rest for a few minutes and then go home. My music flutters into ambient silence and I follow the headphone wire into my purse with numb fingers. Locate my phone and pull it out. Dead. Sitting on the hydrant is such relief for my aching legs. If it weren’t so cold, I might have been able to fall asleep.

A navy Honda sedan pulls up to the curb, right into the empty space in front of me, and its hazards begin to blink. The driver switches on the overhead light and his features flicker half-bright. He looks through the glass and meets me with the eye that isn’t in shadow. 

The windshield bears two stickers, neatly aligned: Lyft, Uber. The street is empty besides us two and I approach the car, drawn to its warm exhaust more than anything. I open the right rear door. I climb in, holding down the hem of my skirt as I fold pale legs into the icy leather seat, pull the seatbelt across my chest.

Casey? The driver says into the rearview mirror. I can see both eyes now, brown and sunken beneath a furry brow. His gaze is blank and cloudy.

Yeah, my phone died, sorry. The location might be wrong on your app, I say. He turns off the overhead light and puts the car into reverse. My stomach lurches with the edge I feel before a flight. I shift forward in my seat, trying to see the screen of his Android, which is mounted on the dash and plugged into the stereo. We’re thirty minutes from our destination, Highgate, and then we will be a three hour walk from my flat.

I lean into the headrest, allow the city lights to stream through my lashes like something melted. I wake to the slamming of brakes and blaring of a horn. My driver is spitting what could be Arabic and flipping off a passing car which careens drunkenly through the intersection where we have stopped. He continues mumbling to himself, or actually it seems he is speaking to someone on the phone, a responding voice just audible over the stereo music.

I take account of the streets, which have blurred from ink to charcoal in anticipation of morning. You can just let me out here, actually, I say. This is fine. He stops speaking and looks into the mirror again, almost suspicious now. You sure? I glance at the map on his phone. We are still several blocks from Casey’s destination. I wonder if it’s their apartment or their parents’ house or a place where they work an early morning shift. Yeah, I put the address in wrong. He pulls to a slow stop and I throw open the door before he has a chance to park. Thanks. I hop out, hope Casey’s card doesn’t decline, how strange it is that the ride never cancelled, and enter the cemetery where Karl Marx is buried.

A small park surrounds the enclosed graveyard, which opens only during the day, but I scale the metal posts easily as the Honda’s grumble fades into side streets. When it’s gone, only breathing is left: breathing by invisible animals, by the scattered plants and trees. It can’t be later than five in the morning.

Inside, the silence which settles around stone is cold. My footsteps on the dirt path seem to echo, as though against concrete. Leaves rustle. An owl hoots. I unlace my combat boots and strip my socks and leave them in the grass under a tree.

I used to smoke weed in a cemetery across from my high school, with friends, and then later with a boyfriend. After class, during free periods, turning back up with red eyes, doused in drugstore perfume. We would make crude jokes about the names on the graves, invent stories to try and spook each other. Rebellion felt distinctly safe in high school, intentional and expected like dusty black Converse with my floral-print sundress. I see rebellion now as it is: one of many failed attempts to control the opaque inevitabilities of destiny and chance.

These days, I enjoy walking through cemeteries, surrounded by death and earth, winding trails and willows. They are a cool, perfect escape from the hot London summers. I have never walked through one so early in the morning.

When my phone is not dead, I take pictures of the statues, a stone angel dripping with moss, a Virgin Mary flanked by dried bouquets. My camera roll is full of photos of these things. I occasionally veer off-path to get a closer look at the generational plots, the ones whose little headstones sprawl outwards from some small pillar or block of marble engraved with the surname. Sometimes, the headstones themselves don’t list names, only familial titles: MOTHER, FATHER, DAUGHTER, SON, SON, SISTER, BROTHER, SISTER, BABY. These are often flat, flush with the earth, while the ones that stick straight up contain more detail:

MARY E.,
LOVING MOTHER AND WIFE
1887-1956

or

JANICE K.,
BELOVED ANGEL
MAY 12 1918 – SEPTEMBER 1 1918

+

I feel movement before I see them. A force and its adherent. First, a lanky and regal and wild-looking black dog. Then, a man with shoulder-length brown hair and violent blue eyes. He is wearing a white t-shirt under a black sweatsuit, which makes him look a bit like a priest. He smiles apologetically because his dog, off-leash, has approached and is sniffing my cold legs.

I’m so sorry, the man says, we never see anyone out here this early. He reaches for the dog’s collar. I don’t mind, I say, I love dogs. I bend down to scratch behind its silky ears. I notice as I do so that the backs of the man’s hands are spiked with intricate and dense ink patterns.

Her name is Belle, he says.

Like the princess or the instrument? I ask. My voice sounds shrill next to his measured, melodic one, my words even more out of place. I am suddenly aware of my bare white feet on the hard earth. But the man smiles and finishes attaching a leash to Belle’s collar, coils the strap around his wrist.

That depends, he says. Do you want to see her do a trick?

+

The memory returns only in dreams. I had been eighteen and dating the boyfriend I used to smoke in the cemetery with, Jamie. It’s no big deal, he had said that summer, when we found out. It’s only been a few weeks. You can still take the pill. Or maybe he had said, you can just take the pill. Just take the pill.

I had gone to my mother, trembling, and Mother, who had been young herself when she’d had me, ushered me into the car and drove us to Planned Parenthood, held my hand through the exam, no questions asked. Though occasionally, of course, I wonder what things might have been different had certain questions been asked.

It was still early enough for me to just take the pill. Luckily, said my mother. Lucky you found it so soon, the nurse said. Like cancer, I thought. We’re talking about him like he’s a lump. Which, technically, he still was. And the nurse, who was a woman, warned me fairly of the pain, and the blood, and the emotions, though not about the way bathroom tiles would never again feel normal beneath my hands. Nothing could have prepared me for the texture of his exit, nor for the emptiness after. The nurse had tried, of course, as she adjusted the white paper gown between my braced and elevated legs, as I angled my body on the cushioned gray table so as to view a constellation of white pixels blinking on a black screen of which somehow my son was comprised, but perhaps I hadn’t been listening closely enough.

The dreams are always of Jamie, bare-chested and wearing a frayed Cardinals hat, which had never been fully red in the time I’d known him, but by the end of that summer, had faded into a papery beige. In the dreams, he is holding our child, who is small and bloody and wrapped in cloth, to his chest, even as the cloth blooms red, even as his skin grows sticky and slick. I reach for them, for my son, for Jamie, whom I love, in these dreams, though I have not seen him in so many years, and sometimes these days he looks like Robert, with hair that is jet black, not blond as Jamie’s is in my waking memory. He pulls away, laughing. Laughing not at me, but at something just beyond my line of sight, something constantly in my peripheral, which seems to disappear whenever I turn to face it.

+

Of course I want to see the dog do a trick. I love to be surprised more than anything in the world. Like meeting Robert in London for the first time. He had stopped me for my hair. Red like strawberries, he’d called it. Do you want to see some magic? he had said.

Close your eyes, the man says, just for a moment. And when I clap, open them. I obey. Belle barks. A moment later, he claps. When I open my eyes, I briefly forget what I am looking for. Then I remember. But where’d she go? I ask, turning in a full circle, examining the damp grass for paw prints.

The man is smiling. He seems pleased. He says: Where did who go?

act 3.

They have a few shows in Denver, where Robert is going to try out some new tricks. In one of them, Crow will make her debut as his assistant. The new trick he’s working on is actually old, the oldest in the book, aside from the rabbit one, which she still has not seen since that first day. This trick is the one where she scrunches herself into a box and he saws the box in half, an act which to Crow feels comfortable and intimately satisfying, like she’s been rehearsing for it her whole life.

Robert will expect her to practice with him for hours in their suite, though all she wants to do is eat a room service grilled cheese in the hotel bed and watch House Hunters International on the cable TV. He will make her perfect her expression, as though her face is going to be enlarged on a stadium screen. Really, they’ll be in some mid-tier “historical” playhouse which endures cover bands and provides terrible acoustics. The drinks will be overpriced, the guests will grumble but still buy them, and the bar will make more money on the show than the box office.

Despite the false bravado and constant rebranding and embarrassed disappointment and uncomfortable travel, Crow stays. Because no matter where she is during Robert’s show, if she can see his face while he performs his act, see his hands, whether she is looking up at him from her position on the table, or sideways from a chair angled just so offstage, she gets to feel that thing all over again, soft fur as white as snow, a warm expectant window beaming through white marble, a black and barking dog slipping through the silent air without a trace.

Can I show you a magic trick? he’d asked. And she’d looked into his honey-brown eyes and seen the most radiant and terrifying possibilities, all the hope and disappointment she’d ever felt. Her mind returned to very early birthdays, when she’d been too young to name this feeling, seeing the cake float towards her, all aglow with heat and sugar. Mortified by the singing, squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to cry, puffed up her cheeks to blow out a wish.

act 4.

It’s sort of like a feeling you get in your bowels. Like a lurch at the top of a roller coaster, at the mouth of a tunnel. In the past, she has described it as an edge, though even then that word felt flat and wrong. It’s like holding the key to a lifelong enemy’s demise in your hand, knowing that your next move could destroy them forever. And you feel ashamed, because you have been granted such an easy victory with this key, but also know that your success is inevitable once they are gone, that nothing foreseeable could stand in your way ever again. You know that you must use this key or regret it forever, yet you also know that in doing so you are eliminating the only real obstacle you have ever had. It’s not a choice and it’s also your final choice.

You close your eyes. You wait for the sound of clapping hands.



BIO

Seonah Kim (she/her/hers) was born and raised in the Hudson Valley of New York. Currently, she writes and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is in the process of obtaining her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Virginia. She is also a waitress and a teacher.







            I can’t eat cold chicken.

by Ron Riekki



It comes from the war where
we’d get fed cold chicken
every night.  I’d ask, Isn’t cold
chicken dangerous?  There’d be
no reply.  Maybe they were
thinking, War is dangerous.
I don’t know.  We didn’t speak
much.  It was safer that way.
The worry was that bombs
would get dropped on us,
because we were dropping
bombs on them, and the worry
was that they’d attack us,
storm the building, so that,
when I was security and I’d
look into the jungle I could see
scythes of eyes staring back at me,
and, worse, the real worry, I’ll be honest,
was us, the them of us, how there was this
secret hazing that was occurring, said to
try to keep us on our toes, where they,
we, any of us, could come up behind you,
grab you, duct tape your mouth shut,
your hands to your chair, and then
they’d raise you, haul you through
the hall outside where there was
a fence waiting for what they, we,
they called ‘crucifixion,’ where they
would wrap your wrists to the chain
link and then they could do anything
they wanted to you.  It was just ‘hazing.’
That’s all.  They’d leave you there
for hours, the insects coming out,
and no ability to swat them,
and, this habit, this tradition,
this stupidity, where they’d take
old food left behind the building
in buckets just for this occasion, slop,
rotted, and pour it over your head,
into your mouth, which, I’d warn,
could cause aspiration, but nobody
listened, and it was too loud to speak
what with the B52 engines owning
the sky and I never participated, and
they came for me one night, but I ran,
into the jungle, escaped.



Bállet (With Each Line’s Final Word from a Translation of a Poem by Nils-Aslak Valkeapää)

“the North chose us”
—Nils-Aslak Valkeapää,
from “I have no beginning, no end”

An Anishinaabe elder told me once how important it is to turn off
the world, the city world, the skyscraping world, with its intense lack of colors
when you consider the multitude of greens in the forests, where the visions
wait for us, and by us I mean the indigenous, and I have spent too much of my life—
and that’s the correct phrase, a sad spending—drowned, when the woods are exquisite
and honest and real and here and now and my Saami ancestors tell us
that we should live like reindeer, become reindeer, and I am trying to become reindeer
and bear and elk and Arctic foxes and trees and rocks and fishes

and birds and birds and peace and more peace and more birds
and, when we were sane, forest-sane, we decided
that we
would marvel

at the night
in the North

the far North, where it is just us,

with the rest of the world so far in the distance, so polluting, and so strained



            Sichuan (With Each Line’s Final Word from a Poem by Hussain Ahmed)


“to boil”
—Hussain Ahmed,
from “Love Story”

I was not born
in China but I was born in China.  I remember the leafs
when we kissed and I remember the end,
the taxi cab driver with
his off-key karaoke as we both sat in back and neither of us would answer
the other’s questions.  We met         in the archived
sections of our lives.  Soft legs
as thin as my mouth
and we tried to share each other’s history
and sex
but it rained
so hard that all we have left is this water.




Máttar (With Each Line’s Final Word from a Poem by Mario Meléndez)

“‘Get up, you have to come see this’”
—Mario Meléndez, as translated by Eloisa Amezcua
from “Future Memories”

for Bamewawagezhikaquay

I learned at an early
age of my Saami ancestors.  My father told me
this:

that the stars
are reindeer.  And then this revelation
that every so often one gets away, this thought
of falling stars
as escape, as flight,
him saying that one day I’d run across the sky.



BIO

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to IDLES’ “Danny Nedelko.”











Botox Bitch Fairy

by Katarina Keča


I met a woman yesterday like no other. So unlike anyone I’d ever met, I was shocked and somewhat scared when she opened the door. The biggest lips I had ever seen greeted me. Thin bleach blond pigtails and apple cheeks accentuated the bruising around her eyes where the concealer wasn’t doing its job. I was concerned for a moment; had this woman been beaten?

I knew I was there to help her because she’d had surgery and wasn’t able to move well. Was this a side effect?

But then I remembered—I was in Laguna Beach. My first time visiting the place L.A. folk escape to when they need a vacation or reset. This was “rich people land” and her face must be a botched Botox job. I recovered myself and followed her into the white white white house. I suddenly felt incredibly filthy. I looked down at my clothes as if seeing them for the first time and saw the sandy brown marks of my dusty roadside camp spot all over my green cargo pants and baggy T-shirt. I wore the one with the bald eagle on it—hoping I’d seem more American.

Even my cleaning tote was filthy.  She must think I’m an awful cleaning lady to show up so dirty. She spoke as I followed behind her and her trail of perfume, thinking how unpresentable I felt. I walked into what looked like a tween princess room with white sheets, white furniture and pink fluffy accents. There were things everywhere. It looked as if a spoiled kid had just brought all their presents into their bedroom the day after Christmas. Bright boxes and bags everywhere, clothes, jewelry, gadgets, makeup, etc., etc., etc. She brought me into the small walk-in closet where clothes were bursting and over-explained the job I was to do.

I’d posted an ad on Craigslist offering cleaning services. She was the second person to respond. The first needed a same-day clean and I knew the four-hour drive wouldn’t be worth the gas money. Lynda had texted a long paragraph with emojis and called me babe. She seemed sweet over text—maybe creepy. I was wary pulling up to the bungalow and even kept a small can of dog maize in my pocket.

She was sweet in person though, and talked nonstop. She wanted to make it clear to me that she didn’t think she was better than me, even though I’d be the one picking up her clothes off the floor. I was to organize her closet and put her laundry away, help her make the bed and do some light cleaning. She told me she was moving out in a month, so it didn’t make much sense to me to be organizing everything when she’d start packing it away in under 3 weeks. But I’ve learned that a lot of things that make sense to others don’t make sense to me and I’ll drive myself crazy trying to find the logic in it. I was just happy to have work.

She sat on her bed, massive purplish lips in a perpetual purse and told me about herself. I probably could have said nothing all day and she would have continued to unfold her life to me as I folded her clothes. I didn’t mind though. The hours passed quickly and it was interesting to hear about her experiences.

Like how she moved to Puerto Rico for a man. When it didn’t work out, she found herself without money and almost homeless. She got creative and said what she had to to stay in a women’s shelter. She got free accommodations for six months until she met another man and moved in with him. Both men—the one she moved for and the one she met later—turned out to be awful narcissists. While she pulled out different dresses and tops from her closet, she told me about her current man. She’d been evicted from her rental room without reason and could not afford the current rental prices in Laguna Beach. Although she’d only been dating the new guy for two months, she decided to move in with him. I wanted to scrutinize, but I’d moved into an ex’s bus after only two weeks. Needless to say, it didn’t work out.

Lynda was an esthetician and accountant. One was more surprising than the other. “Oh and if you see any needles lying around it’s just for the Botox!” She laughed. She also apologized for many other things that weren’t necessary—the mess, watching me work, her language. The conversation flowed easily and I started to open up a bit about my own life. We discovered we were both empaths and hadn’t had much luck in past relationships. “I can see it in your eyes, you’ve been through a lot.” Lynda said. I looked at her, trying not to change my expression. Had I? I felt both defensive and seen. I had been through a lot—a sentiment I rarely afforded myself. But, I’m good, I’m fine! Everything’s always fine—I’m a tough girl.

Throughout the hours I organized and cleaned, we became friends. She told me she was 60, I told her I couldn’t tell. Which was true; I had no idea with her unmoving face and bruised under eyes. My judgment greeted me as I looked at all her unnecessary belongings, the rejection of her appearance and age, her dating history. And yet, was I any different? Sure, I lived in my van—but I still had too many clothes. I’d been googling Botox for myself and what I believed to be premature creases between my eyebrows. I had handfuls of failed relationships with narcissists and had definitely stayed too long out of what felt like need instead of choice. Lynda was just a different version of myself—stuck in her own cycles and trying to make the best of it. “You know that’s right bitch-“ She cut herself off “Sorry, I call all my friends bitch” I shrugged “I don’t mind.” And it was mostly true, as long as it wasn’t a man calling me a bitch. “These men don’t deserve us! We’re willing to do soooo much for them and what do they do? Bang me until I need surgery!” She scoffed. I wasn’t sure what to make of the information—how could she let him do that? Though it was easier to boggle at her lack of boundaries than my own. 

As night fell, I had a pile of clothes and shoes forming that she no longer wanted and gave to me. Some designer, some knockoffs. The best was a vintage Giorgio Armani blazer. Some I knew I wouldn’t wear, some I knew I could sell. As I was finishing scrubbing the bathroom, she started putting a goodie bag together: facemasks, hand cream, body wash, collagen cleanser and expensive moisturizers, makeup and face scrubbers. She even gave me the basics like Q-tips and soap, wet wipes and paper towels. She wanted to help me out, and she did. And she needed someone to listen, and I did.

After loading my things in my van, I followed her in her white BMW with her rhinestone license plate to the bank. She withdrew cash for me and gave me a huge tip. We hugged goodbye with promises of more work. I just made $250 USD. I was starving and could barely move about my 19 square-foot van with all the new clothes, shoes and cleaning supplies everywhere. I made a veggie burger and climbed into the driver’s seat next to my dog. I sat down, bit into my burger and started crying. I made money. I could breathe. A wave of gratitude washed over me. This kind woman had given me so much: clothes, snacks, soaps and makeup, a job, a big tip and a friendship.

When I’d left my camp spot to show up at some random house of a woman on Craigslist—I asked the universe that she’d be kind and offer abundance. It felt like it had been answered. While I sat in the bank parking lot, watching cars pull in and out, a deep knowing settled in my chest. It would all work out. Not even two weeks post-breakup, driving 2,000 miles west and being on my last few dollars, here I was—cash in hand, feeling accomplished. Maybe it was only $250, but to me, it felt like everything. It was hope. It was proof that I’d be okay, that I could do it on my own.

It reminded me that I was always okay. And that we often have more in common with the strangers we meet than we first think. You never know when a fairy godmother will appear and grant your wishes.



BIO

Katarina is a writer, artist, and digital creator who lives on the road full-time in her van, traveling alongside her rescue dog, Manuka. Once an award-winning actress, Katarina stepped away from the film industry to embrace a more authentic, nomadic life. Her journey has taken her from crossing Canada on horseback to living in a cave in southern Spain, and solo backpacking through Mexico and Costa Rica. Her writing offers a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the people, places, and experiences that shape her, and her travels—each story an exploration of the unexpected beauty and truths found along the way.







Missy Anderson’s Funeral

by Viktor Athelstan


Missy Anderson’s death was highly expected for everyone that was not her family. The Andersons thought she would live forever. And no wonder they did. She was one hundred and ten years old and still going strong. Or at least she had been going strong until she tripped over her cat and smashed her head on her glass coffee table, shattering that into a million pieces as well. She probably would’ve survived the initial fall and the initial head smashing with comparatively little damage had she had been wearing her life alert button. But Missy Anderson was a proud woman and refused to wear it. She always said she’d rather starve to death on the floor of her house and get eaten alive by her pets than wear one of those buttons.

Well, that is almost exactly what happened to Missy Anderson.

Her son Eric, discovered her on the floor of her house with several bites taken out of her frail elderly body and a very nonchalant looking tabby cat named Mr. Snookums and a very guilty looking golden retriever named Eugene standing over her prone body. The names of the pets are not really relevant to this story, but it is necessary for you to know as it sets the scene of what kind of horrifying madness Eric walked into. Eric was convinced and could not be convinced otherwise no matter what anyone said that Mr. Snookums put Eugene up to eating his mother alive.

He never liked that cat.

Ironically enough Missy did survive the fall and the head smashing and the mildly being eaten alive. Eric rushed her to the hospital himself. It was a shock to the hospital staff and Eric did look a bit like a cannibal carrying his semi-eaten mother into the Emergency Room, but he didn’t really care too much about that. If he saved his mother’s life, he figured she would have to love him despite his beauty. (His beauty is relevant to the story, but not at the moment. We will get to that part soon.)

At the hospital, Missy Anderson was put in the intensive care unit and given about a million antibiotics and a copious amount of rabies shots. The doctors did not expect her to make a full recovery. But her children were insistent. Until this point in her life, Missy Anderson had survived just about everything and of course at one hundred and ten years old she would survive this as well. She had survived bee stings despite being highly allergic, she had survived bicycle accidents in which she rode into a telephone pole without a helmet, she survived giving birth to seven beautiful children and three ugly ones; hell, she had even survived accidentally being shot one time on a hunting trip. She seemed immortal.

And Missy Anderson did survive. She survived and escaped the hospital in a wheelchair of her own volition. No one could convince her to return. But no one had ever been able to convince Missy Anderson to do anything she did not want to do, so this was not a surprise to anyone.

What ended up killing Missy Anderson was the second time she fell and smashed her head and was eaten alive by her pets. This time, neither Eric nor any of her children came to the house in time to save her. Why would they? She refused to wear a life alert button or own a cell phone. Or accept any visitors from Wednesday to Monday. After birthing ten children of various appearances, and coming from a family of twenty other siblings, Missy Anderson valued her time alone and regrettably for her, her children respected that.

On Tuesday morning, Eric found his mother dead and with significantly more bites taken out of her than last time. And this time, Eugene the Golden Retriever didn’t even have the common decency to at least look a little guilty. Mr. Snookums the Cat ignored Eric as he shouted at them both and could only be convinced to stop eating Missy Anderson when he was forcefully thrown into his carrier cage. (And not without great bodily injury to Eric.)

Her family grieved tremendously. No one grieved more than her three ugly children whom she loved dearly and significantly more than the beautiful ones. After all, they would survive anything like her. In a world where beauty is everything, it’s easy to get ahead in life when you are stunning. So naturally she favored her ugly children. She had to. No one else would. (None of her seven beautiful children could find spouses or good jobs due to their lack of self esteem in any capacity. Her ugly children were all very successful as they had good hygiene and radiated enough confidence that they could convince a saltwater fish to buy ocean water.)

The Andersons were a close knit family, despite the blatant favoritism. At least that’s how it seemed to every outsider. Secretly they all hated each other with the passion of eleven trillion fiery suns. They only pretended to like each other for their mother’s sake. It’s all she had going for her. After all, she was constantly getting herself into all sorts of scraps and accidents and near death experiences. They had to give her some kind of win.

But now she was dead. And they didn’t have to do that anymore.

Nor would they.

Each of the seven beautiful children, Eric included, decided to make the entire circumstances surrounding planning their mother’s funeral the worst experience anyone has ever had in their entire life organizing a funeral. Of course, organizing a funeral is always a horrible experience, but sometimes it can be less horrible than others. The beautiful children were determined to make it exceptionally horrible. If there was a Guinness Book of World Records entry for worst funeral experience in the world–no! In the universe!–Missy Anderson’s funeral would’ve won it.

But there isn’t, so it didn’t.

The first thing the beautiful children did once everyone got to her house after Eric called them was try to resuscitate their mother. This was their revenge for years of mistreatment. It did not matter to them that Missy Anderson was very and extremely obviously dead. She had gone past rigor mortis and was now green and rotting. They were going to have the EMTs do CPR whether they wanted to or not. And the EMTs did not. However, the seven beautiful children threatened to sue if they did not try to resuscitate Missy Anderson. So, the EMTs did resuscitate Missy Anderson. Well, they tried. After a brief moment where life actually and miraculously seemed possible, it soon became apparent nothing would in fact work and any attempt at trying was futile at best and borderline ridiculous at worst. Missy Anderson got all over everyone and everything. It was only when the seven beautiful children and the three ugly children were covered in the fluids of their dead mother, were the seven satisfied that she was in fact gone and not coming back.

Now the real revenge could start.

Despite the fact Missy Anderson had indeed anticipated her death and pre-planned everything for her funeral, her beautiful children decided that wasn’t good enough. For one, the coffin she had picked out was tacky. It was silver and metallic and had little daisies painted all over it. No, that simply would not do for their mother. She was–had been a classy woman.

(Never mind the fact Missy Anderson collected about a billion Beanie Babies in her lifetime and only wore bootleg shirts with cartoon characters on them. Fun hobbies, but certainly not classy ones. There is nothing classy about getting into a fistfight at a Hallmark store over the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby while wearing a T-shirt with a bootleg Tweety Bird on it.)

Their mother’s coffin could be no less than mahogany and hand carved by a master carver from England or Germany or maybe Spain or Austria or Italy or maybe even Peru. Either way it had to be expensive. It did not matter that the silver daisy coffin was prepaid. They would sell it on eBay for a small profit. Who would buy a preowned silver daisy coffin was beyond anyone’s guess but the seven beautiful children were insistent. And the three ugly children were too much in mourning to argue much at that time.

So the ugly children let the beautiful children buy the expensive mahogany coffin. After all, they sort of loved their siblings. Well, they loved them enough that they weren’t going to cause a big scene at the funeral home.

Their resolve would not last.

After they bought a new coffin, they needed to pick out a plot. It did not matter that Missy Anderson had already picked out and pre-paid for a plot. The beautiful children insisted they needed a new one. It also didn’t matter that Missy Anderson’s previously pre-picked out and pre-paid plot was very expensive and on a cliff overlooking the ocean. With climate change causing all sorts of nasty storms, the cliff was slowly wearing away. Did the ugly children really want their mother’s body to fall into the sea? Is that what they wanted? They knew it! They didn’t love their mother like the beautiful children did!

The three ugly children relented to avoid causing another scene at the funeral home.

Now, the funeral which previously would’ve been free, was getting very expensive. Over ten thousand American dollars. And of course, the ugly children would be expected to pay for it. After all, the three ugly children were a CEO of a massive health insurance company, an Intellectual Property lawyer for a major media monopoly that created cartoon animals and a variety of overpriced theme parks, and a plastic surgeon for celebrities. They were also all on TikTok with about one million followers each. Some of those followers were just hate followers, but they still had at least one million followers each. Meanwhile, the seven beautiful children worked in retail, nursing homes, elementary schools as teachers, daycares for poor children, and public libraries. Clearly, the ugly children contributed much more to society than the beautiful ones. Why else would they be paid so much? Why else would everyone love them with a burning passion of ten trillion suns? People must have loved them! At the end of the day, they were the ones in newspapers and the ones everyone always talked about.

(Perhaps not always positively, but that didn’t really matter. The point was that people were talking about them and they were making a ton of money which is really the only marker of success in this world besides being beautiful. But they were not beautiful, they were ugly, so really they were the ones at a disadvantage here in the miserable existence humans call life. Obviously.)

After they sorted out the coffin and the plot, it was now time to decide whether Missy Anderson would be embalmed or not. Missy Anderson had not wanted to be embalmed. She wanted to go straight into the dirt and be worm food. At least be worm food once her silver daisy coffin disintegrated…whenever that would be. It could be a few decades, it could be a few months, it could be millennia. No one really knew and no one really cared to know. No one actually wanted to dig up Missy Anderson to make sure she was in fact, worm food. Missy Anderson not being embalmed potentially could have been something all ten of her children, no matter their beauty status, could have agreed upon. There was something nice about the thought of their mother going back into the earth.

But then, Missy Anderson’s most beautiful daughter, Denise, remembered that one time when she was seven years old her mother had made her dig in the rose garden, despite the freezing weather with no winter coat or proper boots. Missy Anderson had claimed such hardships build character. Additionally, when Denise was twelve years old, her mother made her forage for wild mushrooms. Again to build character…or so Missy Anderson claimed. Denise suspected that in reality her mother was trying to poison her. She had no proof of this, so her ugly siblings did not believe their mother would intentionally do such a thing. Their mother probably had some kind of brain damage from all the freak accidents she had been in. Years later, at a Thanksgiving meal, Denise tried to point out the fact that their mother insisted she pick the red mushrooms with the white spots on them. The classic poison mushroom! The ugly children had scoffed and called Denise crazy and that their mother did not know the mushroom was poisonous so she could not blame poor old Missy Anderson.

(Even at twelve years old Denise knew they were poisonous. But she was going to eat them to please her mother, even though she knew she would probably die. Her father stopped her just in time. At that point in her life, Denise did secretly hope she would die. Then everyone would stop seeing her mother as the paragon of the community. How could she be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect everything if her child died of eating a poisonous mushroom that Missy Anderson had made her eat? Of course, Denise, as she grew older, realized that her mother would deny being responsible in any way whatsoever for her daughter’s tragic death. She’d probably milk it too! So despite feeling slightly suicidal at all times, Denise never acted on it to spite Missy Anderson)

Denise insisted her mother be embalmed. And because Denise, one of the seven beautiful children, wanted this, the other six agreed with their beautiful sister. They fought long and hard for this. A shoe was thrown at one point. It didn’t hit anyone or anything besides the wall of the funeral director’s office, but a shoe was thrown. The act of complete and utter barbarity infuriated the ugly children. What if the shoe had hit one of them and broke their nose? Then they would be even uglier!

(Of course, the plastic surgeon could have fixed their noses, but what if it hit the plastic surgeon? What would they do?! Nevermind the fact her entire circle consisted of successful plastic surgeons.)

By this time, it was apparent to the funeral director, Alina Rollo, that the Andersons were not in fact, a perfect family and they really fucking hated each other.

But she had seen this all before, and was not phased by it at all. Just about every single family fell to pieces once the matriarch or the patriarch perished. And with the Andersons, it had been unexpected…at least to them. That always makes the family falling apart even worse. Alina Rollo’s apprentice, Judy Brick, had not seen this all before and was quite alarmed and bewildered and shocked and dismayed and horrified. How could such a fine family just evolve into senseless squabbling? How could they decide to spend so much money when everything had been paid for? Why would they decide to go against their mother, Missy Anderson’s wishes? What kind of family was this?!

(The answer is that they were an average family. But Judy Brick being new to the mortuary business, did not know this quite yet. She would learn. Oh, how she would learn. The Andersons would teach her quite well.)

After the shoe was thrown, the beautiful children and the ugly children had a nasty blowout fight right smack dab in the middle of the funeral director’s office. They shouted! They called each other names! They slandered each other! They brought up embarrassing past childhood stories! They insulted each other’s professions! Declarations of all sorts of crimes, state and federal and white collar and blue collar and otherwise, were thrown carelessly around in horrible accusations! Oh the humiliation! Oh, the depravity! Oh, the shame!

The fight was so loud that the people having funerals and wakes in the other parlors could hear the Anderson family meltdown. They were shocked and appalled. How could the Andersons have been anything less than perfect?

Their reputation was crumbling.

And oh, how it would crumble further!

It would crumble not only to dust, but straight into the sea!

(A metaphorical sea of course. And not a nice one either, with gentle waves, crystal clear cerulean water, and with some nice fish and peaceful dolphins. A metaphorical sea with choppy waves, harsh brutal winds, and a wide vast variety of bloodthirsty man-eating sea monsters!)

Eventually, the humiliation of the three ugly children by the seven beautiful children became too much and the ugly children relented once again! How could they not? Their personal reputations and professional careers and TikTok stardom were on the line! Missy Anderson would have to be embalmed. Just like the seven beautiful children wanted.

(Well, what Denise wanted. But that is neither here nor there.)

Despite being exhausted by the battle, it was now time to decide what kind of funeral Missy Anderson would have. Would it be big? Would it be small? Secular? Or perhaps religious? What kind of religion, if so? Was Missy Anderson even religious? None of the Anderson children actually knew. Their mother tended to switch her religions whenever she wanted something and the previous one was not giving her what she wanted. She cycled through evangelical Christianity, New Age paganism, atheism, and Buddhism with an alarming regularity. Sometimes she was even Wiccan for a week or two until she decided she hated Halloween. It was all very confusing. And the children did not know what she wanted. So in this sentiment, they did all agree on one thing and one thing only: Missy Anderson would have a secular funeral to avoid the children the trouble of hunting down some sort of religious leader.

Alina Rollo smiled and nodded and said that could be done. Judy Brick sighed with relief.

The fight picked up again when they had to decide what Missy Anderson would wear for the rest of her earthly existence when she was finally buried. The three ugly children wanted to pick out her favorite bootleg Tweety Bird shirt. The one she wore most often and loved perhaps even more than her husband or her children. It was the one she was wearing when she got into the fistfight at the Hallmark store over the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby. It was the one she wore to every fancy event. Even to the expensive galas her ugly children often hosted and attended. Missy Anderson did not care that she was going to meet important world leaders including but not limited to the President of the United States, several African Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Royalty, all the Prime Ministers in Europe and the Emperor of Japan! She was going to wear her bootleg Tweety Bird shirt, whether her children liked it or not!

It was quite embarrassing sometimes to have Missy Anderson as a mother. But she had survived so much! What harm would there be to letting her wear the bootleg Tweety Bird shirt to meet important politicians? Sometimes those politicians needed to be brought down a peg and realize that some people did not actually care if they were important or not.

(Privately, however, all of her children silently suspected Missy Anderson’s total lack of respect for authority and her extremely accident prone life were perhaps related. But none of them would ever say that out loud because that would be insane. After all, what politician would care enough to assassinate their mother? Even though she was their world, their creator, their tormentor, she was merely a blip in the radar to the authority figures of the world.)

Also, the three ugly children wanted Missy Anderson to be buried in the bootleg Tweety Bird shirt so they would never have to see that damn thing ever again.

The beautiful children wanted Missy Anderson to be buried in something classy like a little black dress and with a string of pearls and maybe even a real diamond tiara. And they also wanted to frame the Tweety Bird shirt like it was a signed sports jersey and make copies so they could all wear similar ones to the funeral.

Naturally, this caused another fight that the seven beautiful children won once again.

However, secretly the ugly intellectual property lawyer child was planning to file a lawsuit against his siblings for copyright infringement, even though he did not actually work for Universal Studios or whoever owns the intellectual property rights to Tweety Bird. He didn’t actually know or care. (He just knew his company did not own the rights.) He would ruin his seven beautiful siblings! He would ruin them for all they were worth! He did not care that none of the seven beautiful children made more than $30,000 a year (if even that). Most of them made closer to $25,000 or $20,000 or sometimes even $10,000 a year. He would sue them each for half a billion dollars. And he would win. After all, the copyright infringement of a bootleg Tweety Bird shirt was the most fighting and pressing matter of his time.

(It would turn out later, even though he did win and put all of his seven beautiful siblings highly into debt and homelessness, that the average Joe, who the lawyer never really interacted with nor cared to, would indeed care. He would be shot dead on the street. And none of his siblings would come to the funeral. Especially not the CEO and the plastic surgeon siblings, as they had also gotten caught up in the lawsuit because they were also wearing the Tweety Bird shirts. Even though they made buckets and buckets of money every single minute, half a billion dollars was still a lot of money that they really did not want to lose in a stupid petty lawsuit. The plastic surgeon and the healthcare CEO would conspire and lobby and end up making more money through new government regulations and laws they bribed Congress and Senate to pass. They would be fine even if slightly annoyed for an extended period of time.)

Anyway, the rest of the funeral planning went relatively uneventfully and there is no point to recounting it here. The funeral itself happened on a pleasant fall evening. Many people came. They mourned. They told funny stories. They had some cake and coffee at the reception. The Anderson children wore the Tweety Bird shirts. They were sued into oblivion. And the Anderson family never recovered.

The end result was exactly what Missy Anderson would have wanted.



BIO

Viktor Athelstan is the author of the 2022 Shirley Jackson Award nominated story “Brother Maternitas.” His short story “Okehampton Fog” can be heard on the Creepy Podcast. He recently published the novel “Decessit Vita Matris.” When Viktor isn’t writing short stories, he writes webnovels about medieval monks. 







Oh!

by Jordyn Pimental



Oh!
The flora wraps
her tenderly.
Engraved her
in the ground.
Played with hair
and filled her lungs.

Oh!
Rushing and pacing
yet again.
April isn’t meant to be
so hot.
Although my heart did
quicken at the notion.

Oh!
Asked very hushed:
Is it real?
Well-versed
also pretty
enough to make up for it.
Like a picture
or a doll.

Oh!
Aging and crushing,
I’ll embark on the
patterned sea.
Not there yet
although soon.
I love you.



Doll Face



The ocean was alive and well

Life sprouted from each sea while the sun dripped down golden hair

Fitting as many seashells she could fit into the palm of her pearly hand

Now Celine went by Cel and she had evening shifts

But she didn’t always work

Once she slept amongst deep-water coral

Waking to lounge on a bed of barnacled rocks for hours

Soaking in the Pacific warmth, hours turned to centuries

And blue! It was all so beautifully blue wherever she went

A lavish year-long blue soiree with the other nymph women

They would look like ancient artwork when they danced

Once a goddess in her own right

Cel mastered the art of remembering her days with all that power

Before her shift started at eleven she’d stop by the shore

Reminiscing about her old forever

Then drooping with sorrow she’d shuffle back to the diner

Where the old men called her “doll face”



Night Bugs



As for the winged things up high
and the little worms beneath the earth
Lou hurt somewhere in between; feet planted in the herb garden.

Though none of them know
how to dream like a child.
Remembering made her fangs sprout and fur grow.

The lovage stopped growing
because it thought it was late.
Making so much shade that she attracted the night bugs.

She was a nightmare. A monster.
A female monster,
which is somehow far worse than a regular monster.



BIO

Jordyn Pimental is a college student and Massachusetts resident, often wandering. You can find her poetry and visual art in Sea Change magazine and Front Porch Review. Aside from writing and taking pictures, she enjoys finding feathers on the ground of all different shapes and colors.







Of Two Minds

by Vicki Addesso


            I rode to the wake with my sister, Paige. There was no way I could spend another second around my mother. I’d been listening to her cry between each rendition of reasons why Charlie couldn’t possibly have done what he did. “That son-of-a-bitch! He wouldn’t do that to us,” she’d say, as if she could make the facts of his death disappear.

Charlie was Mom’s uncle, her father’s younger brother. He was only ten years older than her, more like a big brother than an uncle. Other than my father, my sister, and me, Mom had no family left. She’d complain about Charlie all the time. That he came to our house unannounced and hung out for hours. That he borrowed money. That he gambled. She said his drinking was the worst. “A lush. A real drunk,” she called him. Yeah, but guess what? Mom was the first one to crack open a beer the second the clock struck noon. “You’re not an alcoholic until you start drinking in the morning,” she’d say. So, Mom and Charlie were drinking buddies, those two.

Charlie had never married; I don’t think he ever had a girlfriend. He lived two blocks away and worked down in the subways of Manhattan, sitting in a booth selling tokens. My mother worked part-time at a deli in town, the early shift on weekdays. She was in a bowling league with a few friends and went over to their houses once in a while to play cards. My dad worked two jobs, and when he was home he was up in bed, watching TV or sleeping. Not a people person, my father. So Charlie and Mom would talk and drink, sometimes after work, but mostly on the weekends. And the talking turned to yelling, arguing, as the cans piled up. About the money he kept borrowing and never paid back, or the fact that he always showed up at our house empty-handed but left full of beer. Her beer.

            It was five days ago when Paige called me at my latest job, receptionist for a realty company. I’d stepped away from my desk to grab a cup of coffee in the kitchen just outside my office. I ran back, picking up the phone on the fourth ring.

“Wright Real Estate. Beth speaking,” I said.

“Beth, it’s me.”

“Hey, Paige. What’s wrong?” I could tell she was crying. I thought maybe her son was sick. He had just turned a year. I looked at the photo I had of him, pinned to the bulletin board next to my desk — chubby round face, big brown eyes, smiling.

“Uncle Charlie is dead. He killed himself,” she said.

I laughed.

“Really. He’s dead. He jumped off the roof of his apartment building.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I believe you. It’s just that…of course Charlie did that.”

She was quiet.

“Paige? He was miserable.”

“I know. But how could he do that?”

I didn’t say what I was thinking: How could he not?

            Paige’s old Toyota Corolla was a mess. I was sitting in the passenger seat, empty baby bottles with chunks of sour milk stuck to their plastic insides, pacifiers, crumpled McDonald’s bags at my feet. A smashed half-empty box of Kleenex. A brightly colored toy had squeaked as I’d stepped on it getting in the car. Her son Bobby’s car seat was in the back behind me, and there were stuffed animals, a carton of diapers, blankets piled up around it, and Cheerios splattered everywhere.

“You really need to clean out this car,” I said.

“Fuck you. You don’t even have a car,” she said. “Never mind a baby to take care of! How’s work, by the way?”

“It sucks.”

“You’re never happy.”

“I’m going to have to quit.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said, slamming on the brakes at a red light.

“Whoa, slow down! And don’t judge me. You sit home all day watching game shows and soap operas while Greg is out working. Must be nice. You have no idea what it’s like to get up every day and spend eight hours feeling like you’re dying.”

“And you have no idea what it’s like taking care of another person. Two people, and one’s a baby!”

Paige thought I was a loser. I was two years older than she was, still living at home, single, childless. I was only twenty-five, but she acted like I was an old maid. Blonde and beautiful, a real dumb blonde in my book, Paige barely made it out of high school. I was the mousy-brown-haired, nerdy big sister who kept her nose in her books and slinked through high school unnoticed. Paige had her clique of cool friends and a parade of guys falling in love with her. Senior year she hooked up with Greg, who managed the Mobil in town. He was twenty-one when they met. On her nineteenth birthday, they got married.

Paige turned into the parking lot at the funeral home. I saw my parents’ car. That was it. Maybe some of Uncle Charlie’s friends from work and the bar would show up later. Then I wondered, did he even have friends? Maybe, like me, he just had acquaintances. And this fucked-up family.

I walked ahead of Paige. The wind was biting. This February had been nothing but snow and ice. Inside, I was hit by the sickening sweet smell of lilies. I’d been to three other wakes. Both my grandfathers’ (my grandmothers died before I was born) and my friend Frank’s. I began to feel nauseous, yet somehow comforted. I did have friends; or at least I’d had a friend. Frank was my friend.

I went straight to the casket, avoiding my parents, who were sitting off to the side. The first thing I noticed as I looked at Charlie lying there was his right ear. The skin around it was wrinkled in big lumpy folds, and it was not where it should have been. It was too far back from its original spot, as if it were slipping away.

This was not Charlie. Where was the long, fleshy nose I knew so well, the pockmarked cheeks, the small blue eyes with golden feathers for lashes? This face was slathered in make-up and powder. Did they actually put mascara on him? That ear, his right ear, looked too small. I wanted to see those two great big pretzel twists stuck to the sides of his head. I wanted to rub my hand over his crew-cut hair that had turned from dark blonde to gray with the years. That was something I did lately, when I’d come home from work and find him sitting with Mom at the kitchen table. His hair felt like velvet, and he would say, “Oh, come back, that feels nice,” as I walked away, up the stairs to my bedroom. But I couldn’t do that now because this was not Charlie. Were the three pink moles on the back of his neck that turned red in summertime still there? I almost reached in to lift his head, to look, to prove to myself that this was not him and this was not real. Instead, I made the sign of the cross and pretended to say a prayer.

            My grandfathers had died years ago, and my parents hadn’t let my sister or me go up to the casket. I’d heard my mother tell my father, “They are too young to see death.” So we sat in the back of the room on a sofa, with our baby dolls, watching the adults chatting and laughing while Grandpa, and then a year later, Pop-pop, lay still in a big box up front.

The casket was closed at my friend Frank’s wake. Mom had come with me, as she knew Frank’s mother. Actually, my mother made me go. How do you make someone do something they don’t want to do, can’t do? How did she get me there? I was seventeen. My face covered in acne, like Uncle Charlie’s must have been when he was young. Paige, with her spotless skin, called me pizza face. But was that it, being seventeen, hating my skin, being so shy, being afraid? I told my mother I didn’t want to go, I couldn’t go. “Tell them I’m sick,” I said. But she would not leave me alone. I begged, I cried. She pulled me off my bed. She said, “You will never be able to live with yourself if you don’t show up.” Then she slapped me across the face, and something in me split apart. I shoved pieces of my mind into a dark corner. I got dressed and went to the wake.

            I’d known Frank Nunez since kindergarten. He was an only child, lived four houses away from us. Thick curly black hair, eyes the color of coal, and a slight overbite that curled his full lips into a permanent smile. He was shy, awkward, odd, like me. We seemed to recognize something in each other. I didn’t have a name for it. I still don’t. We sat together in the cafeteria, my fair, freckled arm next to his spotless olive one. When all the other children were laughing and playing during recess, we stood quietly and watched. At least we weren’t alone. He was never a boyfriend, but the other kids teased us with that old sing-song jingle: Frank and Beth, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g… As we got older we would watch movies together, go shopping together, and spend hours sitting and reading together. And sometimes, late at night, when I felt like I needed to hear my own voice and then hear someone else’s voice responding, I’d call him on the phone. He’d pick up on the first ring so his parents wouldn’t wake up.

My mother walked to Frank’s casket, a closed casket, and knelt, made the sign of the cross, as I stood behind her. I stared at the polished oak, at the spray of red roses lying across the top, and I wondered what was inside. I imagined Frank at home, in his room, reading or writing. I’d go see him later. I’d talk him out of it. I’d stay with him to make sure he didn’t go.

The wake had been crowded. Frank’s parents had relatives, big families. Neighbors and teachers from school, accompanied by reluctant classmates, came and went. As my mother mingled, I headed to the back of the room where I had sat for my grandfathers’ wakes. No sister or doll to keep me company. I scanned the faces of the mothers and fathers of sons and daughters who were normal and happy. I saw expressions of relief mixed with shame. Their children, our classmates, were alive. Years of school with these people, and yet I knew they knew nothing about Frank and me. We had long ago ceased to interest them. Except for there, then, at the wake. It was as if a spotlight had been turned on me. Eyes caught mine, briefly, and then shifted away. I had to have known something, they must have been whispering. Frank’s parents stayed seated in front, staring at the closed casket. I looked at the back of their heads.

Frank had jumped in front of a speeding train on a Friday night in early June. It was the Friday night he and I had talked about all that week. I was watching my small black-and-white TV in my bedroom.  At 9:06 I heard the whistle of the express train. Soon after I heard the sound of sirens. It was like the howling of wild animals, a call of longing. I remember reaching for the blanket at the bottom of my bed even though it was a warm evening. I knew but pretended to myself that I did not. How does one fall asleep under the weight of such knowing?

The next morning, when I came downstairs and into the kitchen, I heard Mom talking with my father, telling him what she’d heard from one of the neighbors. That the rescue workers had to pick up the body pieces. Arms and legs. My father shushed her when he saw me.

I kept looking at the casket. Had they put him back together?

            “He looks good, doesn’t he?” my mother said as she walked up behind me and put her arm around my shoulders.

I flinched. I didn’t need to tell her this was not Charlie.

“They did a good job,” she said.

I sat on a chair toward the back of the room. My parents and Paige sat up front, and as a few visitors trickled in they greeted them with handshakes or hugs. Small talk. A few embarrassed chuckles.

An hour passed. How long would I have to stay here? Then I heard her voice. Raspy, husky, so discordant for her slight build. The remnants of a Portuguese accent, from a childhood lived across the Atlantic. Frank’s mother, Mrs. Nunez, had come to Uncle Charlie’s wake. Alone. I knew she and my mother talked whenever they saw each other, out on the block, in the grocery store, at the deli when Mom was working. Mrs. Nunez would stop in to grab a cup of coffee before heading off to her job. My mother was obsessed with telling me how well Frank’s mother seemed to be doing, as if I needed to know that Frank hadn’t destroyed her. Why was she here? She had barely known Uncle Charlie. How could she come here, to this place, this room?

After Frank’s death, Mrs. Nunez would call my mother, asking if I had said anything, if I had told her anything about what Frank had done. I hadn’t. I refused to speak about Frank. And for years now I had managed to avoid any contact with his parents, who lived on the same street as mine. You would think it would be impossible not to run into each other at some point. But I was careful. I’d look out the window, and then out the front door, up and down the road, to be sure neither of them was around. I never walked past their house. I made sure to check for their cars in parking lots at stores. Sometimes, when I was home alone, I would be overcome with a fear that one or both of them would knock on the door. They would have seen that my parents’ cars were gone, known they were at work or shopping, and come to confront me.

As Mrs. Nunez rose from the kneeler at the casket and turned to walk to my parents, I got up, grabbed my coat, and left.

The frigid air slapped me in the face as soon as I stepped outside. The steel blue sky was streaked with flimsy, pink, windswept clouds. In moments, even though it was still early — it could not have been past five o’clock — evening would fall. The sky would turn black, and I would disappear. I loved walking at night. I felt protected by the darkness. It was a fifteen-minute trek to home. I stepped carefully over patches of frozen snow at the curbs. I pulled my coat tight around me, cursing myself for not having a hat, scarf, or gloves.

At the front door I realized I didn’t have keys. I went to the garage and pulled the door up, turned on the light. I found the spare key that Mom had hidden under the toolbox on the floor in the corner. As soon as I got into the house I went to the kitchen, opened the drawer by the sink, and found the keys to Charlie’s apartment. I put them and our house key in my coat pocket and went back out into the darkness.

Only two blocks. Our small town was a bedroom community, just a twenty-minute train ride from Manhattan. It was rush hour and the streets were busy. I walked with my head down, not wanting to see the faces of other people anxious to get home, to get warm. I heard laughter, the laughter of two young women, one of them saying she needed a beer. Then I heard the train whistle. The express was flying past our town, screaming out its warning. I began to cry. The tears were hot on my cheeks.

The lobby of Charlie’s building was filled with people coming home from work or school, chatting by the mailboxes, waiting for the elevator. His place was on the tenth floor, the top floor. I watched from the sidewalk, glancing sideways through the glass doors. I waited until no one was inside.

The elevator creaked, smelled of perfume and cigarette smoke. I wiped my nose and cheeks with my coat sleeve. The tenth-floor hallway was empty, but I could hear sounds, voices, from the other apartments. Once I got into Uncle Charlie’s place, I walked to a small lamp by the sofa and turned it on. Just one large room, a studio, with a kitchenette, small table with two chairs, and the convertible sofa facing the television. The curtains were pulled closed. On the table next to the sofa, lying in the lamplight, was a small spiral notebook with a pen clipped to the cover, and a paperback. A murder mystery. A bookmark was holding his place near the end of the story. Hadn’t he wanted to finish it, find out who did it?

I took off my coat, picked up the book, and sat on the sofa. I would finish it for him. Before I began to read, though, I thought about Frank. He would laugh his ass off to see me reading a book like this, some dime-store pulp fiction paperback. Waste-time reading, he would call it.

In fifth grade Frank began dragging me to the library weekly. While he browsed the shelves in the adult section, I would grab my books off the YA shelf. At twelve, at his insistence, I finally left Nancy Drew and The Happy Hollisters behind. He told me I must read Kurt Vonnegut. He gave me Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle. Then it was time for a shift — Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Frank also devoured poetry, and he would read aloud to me — Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas.

Two years before he died, Frank began to write his own stories. One after the other, and he would ask me to read them and then ask what I thought. They were good, well-written, long and intricate. He built alternate universes with such clarity that I would get lost for hours. He filled marble notebooks with his horrid handwriting. I kept those notebooks in my closet; Frank didn’t want them in his house. I’d asked him why, but he just said I wouldn’t understand. The stories were frightening, full of evil monsters and vengeful villains, and the violence was detailed and disturbing. But the endings were always happy, with a hero, or heroine, destroying the enemies and restoring hope. Somehow that disappointed me, that simplistic way he had of bringing it all to a sunny conclusion. But I always told him they were wonderful. His smile would spread wide.

Once, a few months before he died, we rode the bus to the mall to shop at the bookstore. I bought my first book ever — Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. Frank and I had recently watched the movie of her book The Bell Jar. We went back to his house and up to his room, where he read it aloud to me from cover to cover. I left it with him that night, and he copied every poem into a new marble notebook. And for all the weeks after that, Frank would talk about Sylvia. Sylvia and what she had done. He would say it was inevitable. Necessary to her greatness. I asked him, wouldn’t her poetry still be amazing if she were alive? He was emphatic. No. No one would have remembered her.

            Sitting in Uncle Charlie’s apartment, his paperback in my hand, remembering Frank, I heard a knock at the door. Mrs. Nunez? Did she follow me here? I knew that was ridiculous.

I opened the door slowly. A woman I did not know, with short gray hair and squinty, blue eyes, stood with her hands folded in front of her belly. She was shorter than me and wore a floral housedress.

“Hi. Are you Charlie’s niece?”

“Great-niece.”

“I’m Evelyn. I live down the hall. Can you come with me?”

Why I followed I cannot say. I made sure the key to the apartment was in my pocket. When we entered her place I saw a man at the table in the dining room. He sat hunched over a mug of what I assumed was coffee, wearing thick glasses, a strip of curly white hair circling the shiny bald top of his head.

“This is my husband, Sid.”

I nodded. He nodded back.

“We were sitting here, just sat down to breakfast. We weren’t looking out the window, but out of the corner of my eye I saw something, something big, fly by, and at the same time I heard a scratching sound.” 

She led me to the window. The screen had three long, thin tears.

“Look,” she said. “He must have done this.  He must have reached out to grab something.”

I looked at the screen and then down. It was dark, but the parking lot below was brightly lit. I saw the snow-covered tops of cars and a man shoveling the walkway. When did it start snowing? I saw where Charlie must have landed.

“I’m sorry,” I told Evelyn and her husband, then I left.

            I stood in Charlie’s apartment, by the table with the lamp, looking at the small spiral notebook and pen, noticing the dust. Dust gathers so quickly.

The police had found a note in Charlie’s pocket, addressed to my mother.

“Ann, I can’t take much more. I don’t know what else to tell you. I have nothing. I need more. I’m sorry. Charlie.”

Mom had shown me a photocopy of the note. The police officer had told her the original had to be held as evidence. So strange, I thought then, as if there’d been a crime.

Now I see my uncle here, in his apartment, picking up the pen and tearing a piece of paper from the notebook. He writes quickly and stuffs the note into his pocket.  He walks to the door and puts on his jacket and hat. When he leaves the apartment, he closes the door very quietly.

He climbs the stairs to the roof. He steps outside. It is cold and clear, and he can hear the morning traffic. He looks around, realizing he has to climb over the chain-link fence that surrounds him. He forgot his gloves and his fingers are cold, but he makes it over. He’s standing on the wall of the roof now. He takes his time. He sits down. He checks his pocket. The note is there. He leans to one side, onto his elbow, and rolls off.  He reaches out, fast and hard, and tears a window screen as he falls.

No crime. With Frank, too. They just wanted to be gone. The crime was ours. The crime was mine. I had let him go.

            I put on my coat, grabbed the book, and left Charlie’s apartment, slamming the door behind me. I walked and walked.

It’s Monday night, eight years ago. I’m in Frank’s room. He hands me another marble notebook and tells me to keep it safe. He tells me his parents think he is crazy. “They think I’m sick,” he says. “Do you?” he asks me.

You don’t sleep anymore; you tell me your stories are real, that the monsters talk to you. You are changing. I want to scream at him to stop. Instead, all I say is, “No. I think you’re okay.”

Then he tells me his plan. I tell myself it is just another one of his stories.

            I walked past the grocery store, the post office, the elementary school. I was headed to the train station. I can’t take much more, I thought. Of a job I hated. Of being lonely. Of being angry. Of feeling guilty. Of being afraid.

My mind told me to jump off a roof. Jump in front of a speeding train.

Change your mind.

Turn around. Go home. Go to your room. Read the book. Finish it for Charlie. Fall asleep. In the morning, sit on your bed with a pen and a notebook and write. Write it all down. And then go to your closet and pack up the marble notebooks. Mrs. Nunez needs them. Maybe she will forgive you.



BIO

Vicki Addesso has worked in various fields over the years, and in between family life and paying the bills, she works at writing.

She is co-author of the collaborative memoir Still Here Thinking of You~A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013). Her work has appeared in such publications as The Writing Disorder, Gravel Magazine, Barren Magazine, The Writer, The Bluebird Word, Sleet Magazine, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Feminine Collective, and Tweetspeak Poetry. Her short story, Cinnamon and Me (Sleet Magazine), was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize. She has a personal essay included in the anthology My Body My Words, edited by Loren Kleinman and Amye Archer.







Flag Day 1968

by Fran O’Farrell



The city grieves for Robert Kennedy–
city that took his life.
The bear flag flies half-staff,

but children bend like birch and will rebound.
I walk home on Beverly Boulevard,
leaving my school for the last time,

the western sky awash with gelt
at four o’clock. I pass ponies
drowsing in their barn–ponies I

am now too old to ride.
(Blaze, my favorite, is retired.)
Small shops prepare to close.

The fountain at Mount Sinai Hospital sends up
a little plume that drops like tears into
a tiled basin. My neighbor’s Tudor house

greets me as I turn onto our street; the paint flakes
from her hitching post, a man in jockey’s clothes who
lifts his hand to take a horse’s reins.

Why can’t I shift the sadness in my heart?
Weltschmerz is in me now,
a companion for all my days.



Kashmir


for Agha Shahid Ali


The Jhelum River makes paisleys
as it moves through the vale.
The waterway houses display
their saffron-colored shawls

and on a houseboat called
Abode of Love a couple waits
for the greengrocer to bring his
shikara to their door.

Tonight guns have fallen silent
on the Line of Control, and stones
once thrown in anger line
the paths of Shalimar.

If you had human form
you would be here to watch
as geldings with curled ears
graze the Fairy Meadows

and islands on Dal Lake
are towed from place to place
until, from the peak of
Nanga Parbat, they look like stars.



Moses



Once you threw your
wand in the sea
and made
a water road

leading us back
to rocky hills
where we made wine
from prickly pears.

You polished with long sleeves
sapphire tablets
until they showed
asterism

and let us rest
in law.



Sylvia at Stonehenge



West through Wiltshire
the monument appeared
and disappeared
as the road rose and fell.

She did not yet know
her world would sink
off Cornwall’s coast
like Lyonnesse.

She should have stayed
in the ring of sarsens
and slept among
the ancient stones.



A Water Burial



his brown eyes turned
to river-polished stones

his high, clear voice
became brook sounds

he came to me that night
with streaming hair

and said he’d swum the Wolf
as far as Loosahatchie Bar

before the current carried him
to God



BIO

Fran O’Farrell is a graduate of UCLA and of the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Fran’s work has appeared in California journals. Fran has worked as a librarian and magazine editor but is now retired and living in Los Angeles.







Influencing Henry

by Lesley Morrison


My neighbor Henry ran a small farm. He grew spring wheat, barley and alfalfa on 300 acres along the edge of a fertile valley in Northeast Washington. His father, Angus, who had run the farm before him, was still living in the original farm house his father had built, but when Angus was taken out of commission by a hip replacement and then a long bout of pneumonia, Henry took over the day-to-day operations. It was now Henry who drove the tractor around the fields, dragging various implements behind it to till the soil or plant the seed, Henry who wrote checks for fertilizer and herbicides to the farm supply store, hired local boys to buck the bales, or tinkered with the combine’s hydraulics under his father’s watchful eye.

Henry liked to shoot the shit, as it was referred to, in the evenings after the tractor had been parked under the canopy next to the combine. He’d built a large board veranda off an old milk barn, one of the original farm buildings he’d converted into a home for himself, and when farming season began, some of the neighbors, mostly farmers from the same valley, would drop over in the evenings to sit on the veranda with a view over their valley. The lack of feminine order along with little regard for late hours or occasional over-indulgence made his place a popular gathering spot for the men after a day of work. They filtered in, each heralded by a cloud of dust as they parked a pickup truck in the dirt driveway and climbed out, a farm dog or two padding at their heels. With the persistent background of crickets and strains from a classic rock radio station filtering out through an open window, cheap cans of beer were cracked open, joints were passed around and the shit-shooting ensued.

It was dusk, one of the first warm April evenings of the year. I could already hear distant voices and laughter floating across the field in the still air as I walked down the road that separated my small property from Henry’s, the flanking pines dark sentinels against the fading light. Angus, Henry’s father, walked towards me from his house that sat further down the road, both of us drawn by the promise of companionship and libation. I raised my hand to him, and we met at the top of Henry’s driveway and walked down together.

It had been over a year and I still felt a little unsure of my place in this close circle of like-minded men, what with my university degree and lack of experience in some real-life occupation such as farming. I had replaced my most casual slacks with denim after some ribbing from the group. I soon realized that my opinions, although listened to politely, were not taken seriously, so I sat back and listened, allowing myself a few contributory comments or jokes in support of the general conversation.

It helped that Henry and Angus and I were naturally bonded by our bachelor status; my move into the old place up the road had been precipitated by my wife divorcing me, while Angus’s wife and Henry’s mother, Loretta, had died some years back, and Henry had never married.

Several friends had already arrived, Ernie and Glen, who fit the red-faced, buzz-pated, belt-buckled and cowboy-booted local stereotype, plus Reed, a diminutive hippie with a shock of grey-blond dreadlocks. He had come up from California to farm, and was always well-supplied with good weed. Angus and Henry had their own unconventional look; they wore the boots, but had high foreheads with hair swept back in a regal manner, Angus’s grey and thinning and Henry’s longer, with the grey just beginning. In Angus, I could see the man Henry would eventually become, and in Henry, Angus as a younger man. Both had a skull-like bone structure where the nose and chin and cheekbones appeared to slowly grow larger, rather than the flesh receding.

Someone had put a couple of six packs on the table and I wrested a beer from the plastic webbing and handed it to Angus, then took one for myself and settled into a deck chair, while Reed absentmindedly offered Angus a soggy looking joint, to which Angus, as always, shook his head. He tolerated the addition of marijuana along with the beer or occasional bottle of whiskey, but it was a bridge too far for him to partake at his age.

 Reed extended the joint in the other direction and Henry took it, managing to hold on to it without seeming to notice he had taken several inhalations before passing it on. As scion to one of the original local farming families, lately deposing his father, Henry regarded his own position amongst the group with the importance it merited, never with condescension, but rather an air of benevolence.

Ernie was in the middle of a story of personal oppression; his wife had thrown a shoe at him earlier, something that had apparently astonished him, as he kept repeating it incredulously. When the joint was his, he took a huge drag and then exhaled with a loud sigh and settled back, darting a hurt look at Angus, who had taken the opportunity to change the subject while he was incapable of speech.

“Supposed to be a good rain this weekend,” said Angus, which was a signal towards a discussion about planting times.

This was an oft-returned-to topic, and like all of their favorite discussions, the conversation followed a well-worn track. At this point I knew the answers as well as the rest of them.

“That there’s the trick, getting in the seed before a good rain,” offered Reed, starting them off.

“A good soaker,” said Angus, “That soil needs to be saturated.” 

“But not too much rain, a’course,” added Ernie, “You don’t want to flood them seeds out.”

“It’s all in the timing,” pronounced Henry. “They got to have a good hold with the roots, and down deep enough to withstand a dry spell.”

Each point was brought up with slow relish and nodded over sagaciously, when the sight of the rising moon, gibbous waxing, brought to my mind a line from a book I’d read long ago.

“People used to plant by the moon phases years back,” I said, as a break in the conversation occurred, “before satellite weather forecasting.”

The group, who had a scornful view of college learnin’, as they called it, and most things government-run, with exceptions for farm grants or subsidies, took immediate interest, eager to hear this insight from the good old days, and I found myself with a captive audience for perhaps the first time.

“This was from a book that was written about life in the late 1800s, and it had a farmer saying he liked to get his crops in before the new moon,” I told them. They ruminated over this with nods and thoughtful grunts at first, then began the airing of opinions.

All were happy to give the idea their full attention, except perhaps Angus, who grew cooler towards it the more that Henry showed interest, probably due to a long-going contention between them over farming methods. When Angus was too unwell to run the farm, Henry had seen his chance and insisted that if he was to take over, he wanted to run things his own way, and Angus was forced to agree. To Angus’s dismay, Henry, one year in, was already dabbling in organic farming, encouraged by Reed’s enthusiastic stories of extra profits, so Angus was very sensitive to any further siren song that might fall on his son’s ears.

“Well, I might have heard of that,” mused Glen. “If I did, it had to be from my granddad.”

“If I’d-a heard of it,” said Ernie, “It would have been from old man Johnson; he had a lot of stories from their family farm back in Wisconsin.”

After each had taken a turn in reflecting where they might have heard of it, if they had heard of it at all, Angus, clearly getting annoyed, retorted, “If it was all that great, everybody would have been passing it down. I sure never heard of it.”

I decided to play devil’s advocate to see if I could draw the conversation out a while longer, as I was gratified to have introduced such an engrossing topic.

“You’re discounting the influence of chemical fertilizers in the 20th century, especially after WWII, when they really needed to increase food productivity.”

This got a wary affirmation from Angus, a devout disciple of the chemical manufacturers, although he was suspicious of my direction.

“The government had a big operation to manufacture ammonium nitrate for explosives, and those facilities were still in place. They knew it could be used as fertilizer, so there was a big push for the farmers to use this method.”

Except for Angus, none of them had been around at that time. However, the chemical was familiar to them, if not its origins, so they were still nodding, but I could sense that their patience with being educated was flagging.

“Also, since the gravity from the moon influences the tides, it’s obviously a powerful force. Maybe it has some effect on the water table or something like that.”

They were starting to look restless, so I quickly wrapped up, hoping I hadn’t overplayed my hand.

“With the advantage of hindsight, we can choose from the best of the old and new farming methods. Just something to think about.” I shrugged, disqualifying myself from any sort of endorsement.

Regardless, the bit about the moon had hit home with Henry. In a burst of inspiration, and possibly equating visibility with available mass, he hazarded, “Well, as the moon grows to full it can sort of pull…” here he rose to his feet and raised his arms expressively… “the sprouts up out of the ground with gravity!”

Henry’s declaration, along with the general impairment of his audience, was pithy enough to draw appreciation and even some applause, and that, along with his father’s obvious disapproval, convinced Henry that he wanted to try it. Although he had intended to plant the following day in time for the rainfall predicted over the weekend, he at once began talking through the logistics, and the conversation shifted to speculations about the next new moon, which eventually, with some laborious mental computations and counting on fingers, was pronounced by Ernie to be in two weeks, give or take.

Here is a good place to note that these repeated conversations had also taught me the risks of not planting at the right time. If you don’t get the seeds in during a fairly narrow range in April, soil temperature and weather permitting, you are much more dependent on the weather during harvest time – the wheat needs a stretch of hot dry days in August to ripen properly. You can’t harvest wheat that is not fully ripe and dry as it will mold in the granary. If you can get it in the ground early enough, the chance of it completing its full growth cycle before August, when the best harvest weather typically occurs, is greatest. Otherwise, you might find yourself in September, when that stretch of hot dry days with no moisture is less likely.

Angus was visibly unhappy with the new plan. He sometimes visited me in the mornings for coffee, and he showed up every morning for the next two weeks, growing more and more agitated each day over Henry’s inaction until he was practically wringing his hands. “There’s two important times in the year when it comes to farming,” he told me daily, “And that’s the planting and the harvest.”

He tried, but all his efforts to change Henry’s course were in vain. He could look uncomfortable, he could make suggestions, but he couldn’t make demands anymore.

Watching Angus’s discomfort had begun to instill twinges of guilt in me, and at the next shoot-the-shit session I hastened to say that even the character in the book had said this was just a superstition, and I couldn’t guarantee any rational reason or effect. But Henry had adopted the method so passionately that nothing could dissuade him.

The soaking rain came and went, and the moon blossomed to full and then shrank night by night until it was gone. Henry was ready. He planted his wheat before the new sliver of moon appeared and worked on adapting his other planting. He had a calendar with the phases of the moon pinned up on his wall. He started quoting the minimal forecast information in the Old Farmer’s Almanac, an annual magazine of former renown amongst its readers that had slowly lost its sway and shrunk to a slim pamphlet, full of advertising and trite generalizations. Henry had gone full-on prior century, and sang the praises of this natural, back-to-nature approach with many recriminations about modern scientific-based methods during the shoot-the-shit sessions until most of his audience, who had sensibly stuck to their current practices, started to drop off.

It rained off and on, but the wheat wasn’t where it should have been in May, and then in June there was a stretch of hot weather that dried the fields out too early, but Henry was obstinately optimistic. “It’ll turn around on the other end,” he swore, “I’ll have the best crops in the valley when it’s all said and done.”

Of course he lost the crop. It never did fully develop and withered in the field. His alfalfa yield that year was a few scattered bales. Even in the face of this obvious debacle Henry clung like a limpet to his new approach. He was stubborn that way, some would say pig-headed. He was certain it would eventually pay off, or so he told us. But things never went quite right after that disastrous season and it’s hard to keep up payments and put money back into new parts and equipment when that annual paycheck isn’t there.

Angus died several years later with the farm he’d built into a profitable enterprise much diminished, and Henry followed him a year after that with a sudden onset of lung cancer, possibly from early exposure to herbicides. The farm went back to the bank, and I ended up buying some of the adjacent acreage and equipment at a reduced sum and starting a Christmas tree farm, an idea that had come up at one of the shoot-the-shit sessions.

A few years after Henry had passed away, I was going through some old cartons I’d never unpacked and discovered the book I’d been thinking of that night on the porch long ago. I thumbed through the yellowed pages and found the passage. I read: “I was determined to get my crops in before the full of the moon… superstitious I know, but still…”

Later, as I stood gazing out my kitchen window across my field that had once belonged to Henry, I felt a heightening of the undercurrent of guilt that I had never quite been able to put behind me. But for my misquote, Henry would have noted the alignment with his intended planting time and then probably forgotten all about it.

However, as they were fond of saying in that valley, it was an ill wind that blew nobody no good, and the sight of tidy rows of spruce and fir in various stages of growth mollified me to some extent, as did the sheaf of contracts on the table with several local and city tree lots for the coming holiday season.



BIO

Lesley Morrison dabbles in speculative short fiction, experimenting with different genres and voices. Her most recent story was published in an anthology titled These Dark Things, from Briar Press NY, in October, 2024. She has published stories in Luna Station Quarterly, Pif Magazine, horror anthology From the Yonder II, The New School’s DIAL magazine in NYC, and Canadian magazines TransVersions and On Spec. She recently fled NYC for Oahu. You can connect with her at https://lesleymorrisonspeculates.com.







Sam the Fishing Dog

by Jeff Hazlett


Henry Weaver and his dog Milo lived at the end of Chestnut Street on the western edge of Augustana.

            Their one-story home was small and simple, built in the prairie style with a low-pitched roof and broad, overhanging eaves to blend into the surroundings. It sat modestly among the dwarf apple trees and flowering shrubbery that dotted the front and side yards.

            Yet Henry always felt his home to be embarrassingly extravagant. The stone fireplace and hand-carved surround belonged in a castle, he thought, and the leaded glass window in the front door, with its intricate design of tulips and daylilies and wildflowers, in a cathedral. He admired the built-in cherry bookcases that covered one wall of the main living area, but he didn’t own any books. Not one. The shelves, instead, held framed photos of each of his dogs since the very first, since Sam.

            On this late-winter morning, the sun steadily climbing through a clear blue sky that held only the whisps of a cloud, Henry sat in his kitchen drinking coffee, checking his watch and looking out the back window across the familiar field of undisturbed prairie grass and to the Three Sister Hills in the distance. Milo laid sleeping underneath the kitchen table.

            “Missy has a little snow on her,” Henry said. “Reaching just into the treeline.”

            Milo’s left eye twitched; otherwise, he didn’t move.

            “It’s been a dry winter. But you never know. Something might be coming.”

            Henry checked his watch again – ten o’clock.

            “It’s time,” he said.

            He rinsed his coffee cup, left it in the sink and took Milo’s leash down off its peg. The soft leather uncoiled, the metal clip at the end tapped lightly on the floor. Milo came out from under the table, shook himself awake and stood expectantly.

            “I’m sure it’s okay if I bring you,” said Henry. “I mean, I didn’t check or ask or anything. But I’m sure it’s okay. You’re a good dog.”

            Of all the dogs Henry had ever owned, Milo reminded him the most of Sam. It wasn’t just Milo’s similar heritage – part bloodhound, part bluetick coonhound and part something else entirely – or his quiet steps and easy manner. They just understood each other, the way he and Sam used to.

#

Henry stepped from his front door with Milo at his side and started the familiar walk toward the center of town. He followed Chestnut Street to Seventh Avenue and turned north.

            He patted his pants pockets as he walked. Did he have his wallet in his back right pocket? Yes. His house keys in his front right pocket? Yes. His comb and handkerchief in his back left? Yes. And in his front left, yes, his 1876 silver half-dollar with its mysterious bullet hole.

            “I could talk about my lucky coin,” said Henry. “Yes. I could make something up about that. About where and when it came to be shot and by whom. Whom, right? Whom, not who?”

            Milo didn’t seem to have an opinion.

            “Yes, that might be a nice story. Kids might like that. Fun and adventure. But then, no, no, maybe not. Guns and bullets. That might not go.”

            A cool breeze from the west pushed a few dead leaves and an empty paper bag across Seventh Avenue. Henry heard a window slide shut in one of the houses to his right. The wind rushed through again, feeling just a bit wet.

            “Maybe I should have grabbed a jacket before we left,” Henry said to Milo. “The weather might be turning.”

            He had dressed lightly in a pair of gray cotton work pants and a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a blue-gray plaid pattern; the top of a white crewneck t-shirt peeked out from underneath the unbuttoned collar. His dark brown shoes were clean and polished.

            At Sprague Street, he and Milo headed east again. Augustana Elementary was just a few blocks ahead, shielded from view by the copse of black walnut trees on the schoolgrounds.

            A squirrel darted across their path on Sprague and stopped a few feet from a barren maple tree in one of the yards; it rooted into the brown grass, stopped to glance at Milo, then rooted again more diligently.

            Henry gripped the handle of the leash a bit tighter as they walked. Milo looked toward the squirrel but made no move to chase it. He snorted and turned his gaze back to the sidewalk and the coming intersection.

            “You know,” said Henry, “it wouldn’t hurt you to bark or try to chase a squirrel here and there. You don’t want people to start thinking you’re stuck up or something. Or maybe you are a bit stuck up. Maybe you think you should be living among the presidents. They say Jefferson was a bit stuck up. Or Washington. They say he was kind of a prude. But then, no, you’re not a prude, I guess. At least not when you get a chance at Miss Emerson’s goldendoodle. What’s her name? Honey? Don’t know what you see in her. She shows absolutely no enthusiasm for you. Talk about stuck up.”

            They crossed Twelfth Avenue and as Henry stepped up the curb to the sidewalk his left knee buckled slightly. He felt no pain, only a familiar wariness that reminded him to step up with his right leg whenever he could. He felt thankful that the first grade class at Augustana Elementary was on the ground floor.

#

Mid-morning, the kids were outside on the playground, boisterous and intense at their games. None of them were bundled in spite of the season; the bright sunlight kept them warm.

            Inside the school’s foyer, Henry stopped for a moment. The familiar bulletin boards and display cases held important-looking notices and, in a long row along the right hand wall, a string of drawings, some in crayon, some in color pencil, some in watercolor.

            “Look, Milo,” said Henry. “One of the kids has drawn a yellow lab, like your friend Trixie, but, no, wait. I didn’t see the wings. So maybe this is, uh . . . hmmm.”

            The first grade classroom was at the end of the hallway to the right, he knew. On the way, Henry stopped outside the steel double-doors that led to the school’s kitchen, careful to stay far enough back so that a sudden swing of a door wouldn’t catch him or Milo by surprise. The clang and clatter of metal trays resonated into the hallway. Henry heard someone from inside the kitchen barking orders. “You’ve got to spray those trays first,” she called. “And get those other trays into the warming cabinets. No kid gets a soggy fish stick from this kitchen.”

            “Fish sticks,” said Henry. “There we go, Milo. Yes, fish sticks.”

            Milo’s left eye closed and he dipped his head slightly to aim his right eye at the crack between the doors. He sniffed once, twice, three times and then let out a low, trilling growl that settled into a gentle kitteny purr.

            “Mr. Weaver!” A voice called from further down the hallway. “Henry, hello.” It was Mrs. Baker, the first grade teacher, outside her classroom, shining like the coming spring in a flared green skirt and a flowing, flowery top of purple and yellow and blue. Mrs. Baker had moved to Augustana from the state capital just a few years earlier, when she was Miss Helen Atchison and fresh out of teachers college. Not long after and to everyone’s delight, she met and married young Roger Baker, whose family owned the local mortuary. Everyone liked the match: the lively bride, beloved by her students, softened the handsome yet always-too-serious groom. More than five hundred people showed up for the dance after the wedding reception, packing the high school gymnasium well into the night, and no one danced lighter or stayed longer than the school board members who felt that the wedding vows no doubt sealed a lifelong commitment to the children of Augustana from their new first-grade teacher.

            Henry and Milo walked down the hall to greet her. Milo kept to Henry’s side but glanced back over his shoulder more than once to the steel double-doors.

            “I hope it’s okay,” said Henry, motioning to Milo. “He’s never been to school. And I thought the kids might like him.”

            Mrs. Baker glanced at Milo and then to Henry and then to Milo again.

            “It wouldn’t be Augustana without a dog in the classroom,” she said finally. “But let’s get you two out of the hallway. I’ve got your spot set up.”

            Inside the classroom, Mrs. Baker motioned Henry to a wide, solitary wingback chair with a deep, curved barrel-back and upholstered in a rich dark-brown leather. The chair, by itself, would seem out of place in the classroom; but, set as it was on a thick gray rug and accompanied by a side table and floor lamp, it provided just the right bit of staging for story hour. This is where all the storytellers sat – on the wingback chair, against the far wall and its row of low, full bookcases running underneath the tall windows that looked out onto the playground.

            Mrs. Baker pulled the black shades down on the two windows behind Henry and turned on the floor lamp; her preparations were nearly complete.

            In front of the chair, the floor was open. There, Henry knew, the first-graders would sit and listen and laugh and groan and interrupt and poke at each other and then poke at him with questions – oh so smart questions and silly questions and questions from the furthest reaches of their minds that they could barely put into words, as they pondered the story he’d tell and try to find a place for it within their nascent understanding of the world.

            Mrs. Baker unstacked the books on the small side table and set them out in an array, so that Henry could see the various covers and titles.

            “A lot of our guests for story hour let the children choose from their favorites,” she said. “You know you’re always free to read a story if you like. Last week, Miss Emerson read The Dragon’s Missing Tooth. She did a wonderful job voicing out all the characters.”

            Henry really didn’t want to hear anything about Miss Emerson. The week before she’d also turned a hose on Milo, which seemed so unjust. So he had a thing for Honey. He was just being a dog.

            Henry settled into his chair and patted one of the books on the table as if considering his options. He unclipped the leash from Milo’s collar and his companion settled himself comfortably on the rug.

            A gust of wind came in through an open window near the front of the classroom, rustling papers and rolling pencils off desks. Mrs. Baker pulled the window shut and pulled down the remaining window shades as well. The school bell rang, sending its call outside and up and down the hallways.

#

The first-graders streamed into the classroom, their faces flush and their voices still calling loudly to each other. One young boy clung to a kickball, even when he sat down on the floor in front of Henry. A young girl with a ponytail and a purple sweatshirt sat down next to him.

            “Bobby and Anna!” teased a nearby classmate.

            “Anna and Bobby!” echoed another.

            Henry counted the kids around the room. If his memory served, Mrs. Baker had twenty kids the year before and now, this year, just sixteen. All so tiny and new, thought Henry. And one, he noticed, who set himself just a little bit apart and off to the side. His nice yellow sweater was embroidered with the name Jeffrey.

            The kids jostled each other as they sat on the floor in front of him, but the rowdiness and buzz of the playground disappeared instantly when Milo sat up. The kids turned to look at Mrs. Baker and then back to Milo and then back to Mrs. Baker again.

            “Mrs. Baker,” said one little girl. “There’s a dog.”

            “Just for today,” said Mrs. Baker. “And just for story hour.”

            An excitement swept over the kids, as if they’d just been told they were having cake and ice cream for lunch. A few gently whistled; a few patted the floor in front of them with their hands, coaxing quietly, “Here, boy.” For his part, Milo stood, his tail wagging but only modestly. He did not rush forward to play; instead, he laid back down on the rug.

            Henry sighed and considered his companion. Perhaps it’s true, he thought, dogs really do take after their owners. And Milo takes after me too much. He’s just three years old, but he behaves like an old man, not barking or chasing or playing, just being there, observing, from a chair, from a spot on the sofa, from a spot on the floor.

            Mrs. Baker stepped next to Henry and put a hand on his shoulder.

            “Class, this is Mr. Henry Weaver,” she said. “Mr. Weaver grew up in Augustana, just like you. He still lives in the house where he grew up – right, Henry? A cute little house at the end of Chestnut Street. He visits my first-grade class once a year and always tells a fantastical story. All of my other classes have loved him, and I know you will, too.”

            Henry smiled to the class as Mrs. Baker moved to the light switch near the classroom door.

            “How old are you?” asked one boy, fidgeting and fussing with his shoelaces.

            “How old am I?” asked Henry. “I’m seven dogs old. That’s how old I am. And that’s saying something, let me tell you.”

            “You look like a baby,” said a girl near the front.

            The children giggled.

            “You look like my baby brother Arlie,” said another girl. “Your head is all shiny and your face is all smooth and round and your cheeks are all red.”

            Henry had heard this before – many times, though never in such scrupulous detail. He could barely visit the barbershop or the diner or the grocery store without someone, somewhere on the scene, commenting, “I hope I look as good as you when I’m your age.” He was, he knew, baby-faced. He didn’t mind.

            “Did you go to school here?” the first girl asked.

            “Was Mrs. Baker your teacher?” asked Arlie’s older sister.

            “Oh, no,” said Henry. “When I was your age, this school wasn’t even built yet. The elementary school back then was a lot smaller, over on Monroe, and my teacher’s name was Mrs. Ortega. She was a short gal, kind of hefty, not pretty at all, looked like a man in a dress. She had hairy legs and a twin brother named George. And I remember she had a thing for smoking cigars.”

            Mrs. Baker coughed loudly and Henry noticed her head shaking no – shaking no, no, no.

            “But today,” said Henry, “I was thinking maybe I’d tell you a story about a dog, about my first dog, the one I had when I was your age, my dog Sam. We used to have so much fun together and get into all sorts of adventures, just by accident, it seemed. That is, if you like dogs and it seems that you do.

            “Sam looked a lot like Milo here. He had short hair, all gray and black speckled like Milo. And he was real, real smart. So smart. Smarter than me.

            “But the interesting thing about Sam, the thing that made him unlike any other dog I’ve ever owned, was that Sam was a fishing dog.”

            Henry waited for a reaction.

            The ponytailed girl named Anna raised her hand. “A fishing dog?”

            A few others chimed in. “What’s a fishing dog?”

            “Well,” said Henry, “a fishing dog has a sharp eye and a keen nose. He can see things and smell things that people can’t and regular dogs can’t either. He can help you find the best fishing spot and help you choose just the right bait, too. He can help carry your gear or your catch and if he’s been trained right – and, oh, Sam was such an educated fishing dog – he could help you clean and prepare your catch and even start a campfire.”

            The kids looked at each other. This was a lot of new information. Some glanced back at Mrs. Baker, but she maintained a steady gaze on Henry.

            “My goodness, Henry,” she said. “Sam must have been such a special dog. And you loved him so, too. I can tell.”

            A gust of wind pushed against the windows, and with a stronger gust the widows rattled in their frames.

            Mrs. Baker dimmed the classroom lights, leaving Henry in his chair and Milo on the rug under the solitary glow of the floor lamp. Henry began in his usual way:

From the Three Sister Hills,

Missy, Mandy and Mabel.

Down the Whispering Stream,

Past the Stone Creek church gable.

A white winter storm,

A fierce grizzly bear.

With just a few words,

You’ll find yourselves there.

So sit close together,

As close as can be,

And listen . . . listen to me.

#

It was a Saturday morning. Yes, a Saturday morning. What other morning could it be? Everyone knows the greatest adventures begin on a Saturday morning.

            I was just a little fellow, a first-grader, so many years and years and years ago, and it was the middle of a Saturday morning in late winter and I was just sitting on my bed at home with nothing to do.

            And then I heard my dog Sam.

            Short little barks. Low little growls. He was barking to himself. Growling to himself. Like people do sometimes, talking and muttering under their breath.

            Sam was dragging something down the hallway toward my room. It got snagged on the rug. Ruff! It got caught on a chair leg. Grrrr!

            Then there he was. He had hold of both of our wicker creels by their straps and he dropped them, finally, at the foot of my bed.

            Sam wanted to go fishing.

            Part of me thought this was silly. It was still winter! Part of me thought it was too late to get started. It was already ten in the morning! But another part of me knew that Sam was a fishing dog and not just any fishing dog but the world’s greatest fishing dog. And, if Sam said there were fish to be caught, well, Sam was never wrong.

            So I changed into my jeans, put on some thicker socks and pulled on a warm, hooded sweatshirt. I stepped into my brown boots and tied the corded laces tight.

            I strapped the two creels across Sam’s back, almost like a saddle. Empty, they’d be no burden to him, but if we had the kind of luck Sam seemed to be expecting, they’d soon be packed tight with cutthroat trout and then I’d have to carry them myself on the way home. And that would be okay. That would be wonderful.

            Then I threw on my pack jacket, grabbled our tackle kit and my best rod and spinner and the two of us together rushed out the door. Rushed. Raced. Ran. In such a hurry that we forgot to pack any lunch at all. Not even a cracker or a cookie.

#

Sam got ahead of me. Across the yard out back and down the trail to our usual spot. Mulberry Pond. In the woodlands off from Stone Creek.

            The trail was muddy and I had to go around in a few spots, trudging off into the taller fescue and prairie grass. But when I got to the pond I didn’t see Sam. Just the dark pond, covered in shade from the surrounding Mulberry trees and quiet. Our spot’s no good, I thought. Not today, anyway. And good spots from the bank are hard to find. Where’s Sam going?

            Then I heard Sam bark; he was waiting for me, not far, climbing, up Stone Creek and toward the Whispering Stream. I trudged on.

            As the woodlands cleared, I could see the Three Sister Hills off in the distance. Missy and Mandy both had snow on their tops, reaching down to the treeline. Maybe Mabel, too, but some hilltop cloud cover kept me from knowing.

            Sam kept barking and I kept following. We were reaching the mouth of Stone Creek and approaching the more rapid waters of the Whispering Stream. We had never gone this far before, and I thought I felt the wind turn wet, as if a winter storm might be coming.

            I stopped and called for Sam to come back.

            He barked.

            I called.

            He barked.

            I called.

            Finally, with great exasperation, he came back to find me sitting on the ground off from the juncture of the creek and stream.

            He sat and stared at me and seemed to roll his eyes as if to say, What in the world am I to do with such a boy? A boy who won’t come when I bark?

#

And so we went on, Sam leading and me following. The ground got steeper. The stream narrower. The water faster and louder.

            We climbed and climbed and climbed.  To spots I’d never seen before. To trees Sam had never peed on before. And that’s saying something, let me tell you.

            I lost my sense of the Three Sisters. I no longer knew which hill we climbed – maybe Missy to the north, maybe Mabel to the south or maybe Mandy, the middle sister. I only knew the ground under my feet and the trail that led up and up – covered here and there with leaves and pine needles, marked here and there by loose stones, crossed here and there by an exposed root from a nearby tree.

            And then a sharp bend in the stream; it turned away from us and I saw, behind a huge boulder, a small eddy where the water swirled and overflowed and chased down a curve in the ground to our left.

            This couldn’t be it, I thought. This little eddy. This tiny bit of water. It would be way too small, way too cold, too close to the trees, always shaded.

            I looked at Sam and, as if reading my mind, he snorted.

            In a bit of a huff, he stomped off to the side now, away from the stream, barking for me to follow.

            Then just a few paces further I saw it, where the water fed off from the eddy and created a large backwater pond, on a level bit of ground, clear and beautiful and exposed to the sunlight from edge to edge. I saw in the middle of the water a steady, gentle run flowing from the eddy back to the rocky hillside where it hit and then split off left and right to push shallow little riffles back along the edges of the pond.

            Sam stood on the bank of the pond, his head lowered, his left eye closed, his right eye targeted on the water. He let out this low, little, trilling growl . . . grrrrrr . . . that turned into the gentlest little purrrrrrr . . . softer than you ever heard from any cat or kitten. This is how he let me know, this is how he always let me know, that we’d found our spot.

            I stepped next to him, and Sam sat down, looking out onto the water. He was, I could tell, quite satisfied with himself and I patted the back of his neck and rubbed his shoulders.

            “I see it now,” I told him. “I see why you hurried to get here.”

            The sun was high, the pond lit. What fish it held, we would soon find out.

            I grabbed my tackle kit and looked for my favorite lures.

            Jumper – a giant cicada with a shiny brown head and orange body and giant see-through wings. The wings would stay tight to the body on the water but if you tugged on the line a bit the wings would open like it was going to fly off. Real eye-catching for a trout or a bass. I thought the still water of this backwater pond would be perfect to really work it.

            Or maybe Spitter, a grasshopper lure that I liked. If I worked the line just right it would pop and dance across the pond and even spit water out of its mouth.

            When I grabbed for Jumper, Sam howled. A long, awful howl. And then another that cried into the hillside. “Oh, in the name of all my lost toys and long-forgotten buried bones,” his howl declared. “Do I have to teach this boy everything?”

            He came over and put his paw on my hand and then he rummaged through my kit with his nose and grabbed a neatly arranged sheet of nymphs and mayflies and stoneflies and midges and scuds and worms and sculpins.

            I didn’t understand at first, but then I got it.

            He wanted me to do some bottom bouncing. Tricky. And I could lose some leaders and lures that way. But I wasn’t going to argue. Not with Sam.

            When I got older, I would learn all the keys to winter fishing that Sam already knew – that the fish weren’t going to jump to the surface and chase Jumper or Spitter. They weren’t going to rise and chase any surface lure at all. They were feeding on nymphs and minnows and crayfish or whatever else they could find along the bottom. In winter, they were nesting, almost hibernating like a bear. Even in the warm, sunlit waters, they’d maybe dart six inches or a foot for a meal. But no more than that.

            So I took a nymph lure – a hare’s ear, all gold colored beads and wire wraps. It would sink. And it was a chameleon; it could look like any kind of bug to a fish, any kind at all.

            I looked for where the sun hit the water, where the fish might congregate. From the bank, I cast my line and I must have spun it out forty feet or more and I slowly worked the rod and the spinner to bounce the lure back towards me and sometimes a little left and sometimes a little right.

            A strike! I pulled back hard on the line. But I felt nothing. Did I miss? No! He had the lure and had turned toward me. I waited for him to turn away, and when I felt the tension in the line I pulled back hard. My rod bowed. I had him! Sam let out a yelp.

            What a fight! I held the line and let him struggle and, when he turned towards me on the bank, I reeled in as much line as I could. When he turned back out to the middle, I held again, all the time worrying that my line might break. Holding and reeling, holding and reeling, I brought him in. Our first catch – a cutthroat trout with the bright red stripes below his jawline. Into the wicker creel.

            And then I saw the pond churning, clearer than ever, thick with fish. We could have dipped them out with a fishing net, but where would the sport have been in that?

            “My goodness, Sam!” I called out. “What a spot!”

            I reeled in cutthroat trout, rainbow trout, brown trout and, when I switched to a worm lure, six straight mountain whitefish – small but still good eating.

            Our two creels were overflowing when Sam grabbed my coat sleeve to keep me from making another cast.

            “Sam,” I said. “You’re all white!”

            I hadn’t noticed the quickening snow, falling thick and growing on the banks of the pond, on Sam and on me. Sam shook himself free of his snowy coat, and I noticed the hood of my sweatshirt, hanging  heavy and wet down the back of my pack jacket. It’s funny, sometimes, how things can sneak up on you and leave you wondering . . . just leave you wondering.

            Sam tugged again at my coat sleeve, just a gentle tug. Then he nudged me in my legs with his nose, nudged me with some urgency away from the pond and back up the bank.

            “You’re right,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

            We were tired and hungry, and it showed when I cut my lure from my line and dropped it in my kit instead of untying and cleaning it first. I picked up handfuls of the new snow and packed our catch tightly into the creels for the walk home.

            I heard a tiny growl. And a second.

            “Is that you or me, Sam?” I asked. “I know I’m hungry.”

            Sam tugged at my sleeve again, harder this time.

            Then I heard the tiny growls again. Not my stomach. Not Sam’s either. From the direction of the eddy. First one. Then the other. Back and forth they went. And then the growl that filled my ears and shook my bones. Louder, deeper, tripping toward angry and coming closer.

            “Grrrrrarrrhhhhh!”

            Sam let go of my sleeve. We stood there. Quiet. Unmoving. Staring each other in the eye. I turned my head just enough to look back towards the eddy. Just over the rise, I knew, they were coming – a momma grizzly and two cubs, out from their den early this season and without a doubt hungry.

As quietly as I could, I grabbed my gear and the two creels crammed with our catch. But where to go?

Sam tugged again at my coat sleeve. He didn’t bark or whimper or make a sound. He just tugged. Away from the eddy, away from the backwater pond, and up the hill. So we climbed.

Up and up and up.

Did the bears see us? Hear us? Smell us?

We climbed up the trail. Up and up. We climbed until I thought we were in the clouds. But no, not the clouds. Snow, thick in the air, and blowing down from the hilltop.

We wanted to run but the hill grew too steep, the trail too slick. With each step we struggled against the hill, against the wind and against our fear.

We heard the grizzly growl again.

“Grrrrrarrrhhhhh!”

She’d found our spot on the bank of the backwater pond.

#

Finally we reached level ground and a small clearing – and at the back, set against the rise of the hill, a cabin with a log frame, finished sides and a simple shed roof sloping from back to front.

            We rushed for it and didn’t bother to knock. The heavy door resisted us at first but unlocked and unlatched it finally gave way. We scrambled inside and pushed the door shut. I saw steel brackets set in the doorframe and, leaning against the wall, a stout wooden bar. I placed the bar across the door and let it fall into the brackets. A heavy bar lock for a heavy door. More, really, than we could have hoped for.

            Sam and I sat on the floor and caught our breath and stayed as quiet as we could as we turned our eyes to our new surroundings.

            The cabin was one large room with a couple of cots, a table and chairs and against one of the side walls a number of wooden barrels of different sizes. A row of large cupboards ran across the back wall. In one of the back corners, an antique copper washtub held firewood and kindling. In front of the cupboards sat a prominent cast iron stove with a black flu climbing up through the ceiling.

            “Sam,” I whispered. “Where are we? Is this somebody’s home?”

            Then I noticed on the floor one of my creels, unclasped and lying open. The six little whitefish I caught . . . all gone. They’d fallen out, somewhere outside, somewhere on the trail.

            “Sam. The whitefish.”

            I worried that I’d left a trail of appetizers from the pond to the cabin. Grabbed by the momma grizzly, “Mmmmmm, yes, please and thank you.” Snatched up by the cubs, “Mmmmmm, please, sir – may we have another?”

            A heavy blow against the door proved my worries true and brought us both to our feet. With a second blow, we were both howling and crying – the wooden bar securing the door was cracked. With each succeeding blow, the crack grew wider and deeper. How many more blows could it take?

            The momma grizzly turned away. But we knew she’d be back. She and her two cubs. No doubt they smelled our catch. And me. And Sam. If and when the bar gave way, she and her cubs would have the rest of our catch for a snack and us for dinner.

“Grrrrrarrrhhhhh!”

The large grizzly slammed against the door again. The bar held.

In the next instant, Sam grabbed our two creels and carried them back to the stove. He began rummaging through the cupboards, whacking their doors open and shut as he searched and searched.

Rushing back and forth, he pulled out a large sack of flour, a five-gallon bucket labeled applesauce and box after box after box of cornflakes.

“Sam!” I cried.

I shook my head no, emphatically no, this was not the time to worry about eating. This was a time to worry about getting eaten.

But Sam had an idea.

He was putting everything to work now, absolutely everything he’d ever learned through his studies. His standing as the world’s foremost fishing dog was not an empty boast of his child owner. He carried the highest honors ever received from the Université des Chiens de Pêche, located on the outskirts of Saint-Bernard-Les-Faux in northern France. The prestigious university’s most decorated graduate was going to take our catch and turn it into an irresistible bear trap.

#

The stove looked new. Square. Dark gray. Cast iron with a steel cooktop. The front had two doors with glass viewing windows and long spring handles for opening and closing. The top door was the firebox; the bottom door was for the huge baking oven, which had a lining that looked like brick and two wire cooking racks.

            I opened the door to the firebox and placed a log on each side. I used them as a base for three more logs set crossways and then filled the space in the middle with kindling. With a long match from one of the cupboards, I lit the kindling and nursed it along. When it looked ready, I loaded a couple of smaller pieces of firewood into the middle. Soon I was out of my pack jacket and helping Sam with the other tasks.

            We cleaned our catch and prepped the cutlets.

            Sam insisted I slice the cutlets into little strips, not more than a half-inch or three-quarters of an inch wide. They looked so tiny. Like little sticks. I’d never seen fish prepared like this before.

            Sam showed me how to roll the sticks in the flour, dip them in the applesauce and roll them across the crumbled cornflakes, which he had seasoned with other things he’d found in the cupboards – parmesan cheese, garlic powder and a lemon pepper mix.

            To a grizzly, nearly any scent smelled like food – good smells, bad smells, anything at all. So Sam wanted to create something that would overpower any other scent in the cabin and draw the momma grizzly and her cubs straight to the fish. He planned to arrange the baked fish in a pattern on the floor under the cupboards and have the trail of fish lead the bears to an open five-gallon bucket of raspberry preserves. Irresistible.    

            We found trays.

            I was about to load them with the fish and shove them in the oven when Sam howled loud and clear. I needed to coat the trays in cooking oil first. Or the fish would stick to the tray and that was no good.

            With everything in the oven, we had about fifteen to twenty minutes for the other parts of Sam’s plan – that’s how long it would take for the fish to bake. The scent of the baking fish escaping through the flue seemed to reach the bears – the two cubs cried louder and louder. We glanced at the wooden bar securing the front door and hoped it would hold at least one more time.

            We turned our attention to the empty wooden barrels off to the side of the room. This was the trickiest part of Sam’s plan and presented me with the greatest unknowns.  We needed to break apart the barrels without breaking the individual staves. Within a few minutes, we had done enough, and I had picked out two longer ones and Sam four shorter ones.  

We took the trays out from the oven and Sam arranged the fish in what he felt was a suitable presentation leading to the raspberry preserves in the furthest back corner. Then we tied the barrel staves to our feet with some paracord from my own pack.

We were ready.

            I lifted the wood bar lock out of its latches and leaned it against the wall. Then we both stood beside the door, our backs to the wall. The next time the momma grizzly attacked, she and her cubs would be inside.

We waited.

            Suddenly Sam turned his attention back to the meal he’d prepared. Something wasn’t right. He clomped to the back of the cabin in his barrel staves.

            “Sam!” I called, as quietly as I could.

            He was re-arranging the array of breaded fish cutlets, grouping them differently, ordering them differently. I did not know why.

            “Sam!”

            He ignored me.

            “Sam, they won’t care!”

            He was in his own world. His perfectionism possessed him.

            “Sam, you might as well set out napkins, too! It won’t make any difference!”

            The door flew open and the momma grizzly sauntered in, stepping slowly, patiently.

            “Sam! Let’s go!”

            The grizzly stood on her hind legs, her short arms reaching up, her head thrown back as she let our an enormous, deep-chested growl. Her two cubs ran in and joined her, one on each side, mimicking her every move and sound.

            I put my fingers to my mouth and blew the loudest whistle I could – a shrill, high-pitched whistle that penetrated through the low guttural threats from the bears.

            I was out of breath.

            “Sam,” I wheezed. “Sam, please. I don’t want to lose you.”

            I caught Sam’s eye. He looked at me. Strangely. He seemed to have forgotten where we were and what we were doing. All of the cooking, all of the preparation, all of the fine and disciplined details – they had transported him back to his university days and his life in France.

            “Sam,” I mouthed to him. “Come. Now.” I held my right arm straight out and then brought it to my left shoulder. I rarely commanded him. But I tried now. Did he even remember the command? My eyes were wet and their wetness was spilling down onto my cheeks. I repeated the motion. And waited. Never taking my eyes from his.

            The bears rushed to the fish and they took no notice as Sam dodged between them and joined me at the door. We were off – slow, slow, slow across the small clearing, awkwardly clomping, lifting our knees high to get the staves above the ground and then stepping forward and repeating and repeating and repeating. I was nearly exhausted by the time we reached the top of the trail.

            Then it was all speed, a blur, faster and faster and faster. Downhill. Gliding down the snow-covered trail. First Sam was ahead and then me and then Sam again as we ducked tree limbs and took flight from snow drifts and tree roots across the trail, navigating turns, sometimes on the edge of a single stave.

Sam howled and I howled louder back at him, until we finally tumbled to a stop in a large snowdrift at our spot on the bank the backwater pond.

I started laughing.

“Let’s do it again, Sam!” I called. “Let’s do it again!”

I laughed from the thrill of it all, from the joy of it all, from the joy of the day, from the joy of having a friend like Sam, from the joy of the sport, of the catch, of the cold, of the wind, of the snow. I laughed and didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay right there at the backwater pond with Sam.

When I stood up, I realized Sam had already untied the staves from our feet. And I saw that the once clear pond was now cloudy and gray and framed in white billowing snowdrifts all along its banks.

I knelt back down and hugged Sam and he in turn licked my face warm.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I know. Time to head home.”

We looked east and began the walk back to our little house on Chestnut Street.

#

“And that, my young friends,” said Henry, “is how Sam and I escaped the momma grizzly and her two cubs, how Sam invented fish sticks . . . and, incidentally, how I learned to ski.”

Henry waited. For laughter. For groans. For hands shooting up in the air.

            Mrs. Baker turned the lights on.

            Henry scanned the faces of the children – kickball Bobby, ponytail Anna, monogrammed Jeffrey. They weren’t looking at him, though; all of the kids were focused on Milo, who was standing next to Henry’s chair, his head low, his left eye closed, his right eye focused on the classroom door. And he was purring. Like a cat.

            “Look, Mr. Weaver,” said Anna. “Look. Milo’s a fishing dog, just like Sam.”

            “Yeah,” came other voices. “Milo’s a fishing dog.”

            “That’s just silly,” said the boy forever fussing with his shoelaces. “What’s he pointing at? There aren’t any fish around here.”

            The kids considered this puzzle, looking to each other, to Milo, to Henry, to the floor.

            “Well,” said Mrs. Baker, from her spot by the door. “It is fish stick Friday.”

            The school bell rang.

            The kids jumped up.

            “Can Milo come with us, Mrs. Baker?” asked Bobby. “Can Milo come and have some fish sticks?”

            The others chorused the plea.

            “You know he wants to, Mrs. Baker,” said Anna.

            Henry joined in, “Oh, my, yes. Milo loves fish sticks. And well he ought to.”

            The kids heard Henry’s “yes” and took it as permission granted. Without waiting to hear more, they were gone and Milo, too – much to Henry’s surprise and satisfaction.

            “I’m sorry, Henry,” said Mrs. Baker. “They’ve rushed off without so much as a thank you. But I know they loved your story.”

            Henry picked up Milo’s leash from the floor and coiled it tightly in his hands.

            “Tonight,” Mrs. Baker said, as she and Henry started down the hallway to the cafeteria, “half of them will ask their parents for a fishing dog and the other half will ask for a spinner and a box of nymphs and worms. Then their moms and dads will ring me at home after dinner for a full and detailed explanation.”

            Henry saw Jeffrey hurrying back toward them in the hallway. The young boy stopped in front of them, his eyes anxious, but he had no words. Henry handed him Milo’s leash and Jeffrey hurried back to the cafeteria.

            “Sam sure was a special dog,” said Mrs. Baker, taking Henry’s arm. “Was he the same dog who invented Sloppy Joes in order to catch a gang of cattle rustlers?”

            “Oh, no,” said Henry. “That was my third dog, Fido. And they weren’t cattle rustlers, they were horse thieves.”

            “Ah, yes, I remember now. The calls I got that evening. Moms and dads wanting to know why their kids were begging for roping dogs and chewing tobacco. Yes, I remember.”

#

The next morning, Henry sat in his kitchen, drinking coffee. Milo was asleep underneath the kitchen table.

            Henry considered the view from his kitchen window. The good weather persisted and Friday’s wind had quieted.

            His doorbell rang.

            Henry opened his front door to find a small group of youngsters from Mrs. Bakers first grade class outside – Bobby, Anna, Jeffrey and two others. Anna stepped to the door.

            “Good morning, Mr. Weaver,” she said. “We were wondering if Milo might like to come fishing with us.”

            Henry glanced around at the kids again.

            This is a wonder, he thought. An absolute wonder.

            Bobby stepped forward, too. “Please, Mr. Weaver.”

            Henry noticed that Bobby and one of the other boys each carried a rod and spinner and a wicker creel.

            “My goodness,” said Henry. “What nice looking rigs you’ve put together.”

            “Our dads both fish,” said Bobby, “and we’ve been a few times, too.”

            Milo came onto the porch, circulated among the kids and settled next to Jeffrey, who held something that Henry did not recognize.

            “Yeah,” said Bobby, following Henry’s gaze and reading his expression. “Jeff is such a dork. He brought his older brother’s snowboard.”

            The kids laughed.

            “Well,” said Jeffrey. “Just in case, you know? Right, Mr. Weaver?”

            Henry went back inside and grabbed Milo’s leash from its peg; he returned and gave the leash to Jeffrey.

            “Just in case,” said Henry, smiling.

            “We won’t go far,” said Anna, as the kids and Milo hurried away.

            “No, don’t go far,” called Henry. “But bring back a good story.”


BIO

Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Jeff Hazlett today lives in Omaha and is a member of the Nebraska Writers Guild. His short stories have appeared this year in Lighthouse Digest and the Ginosko Literary Journal and are expected soon in Talking River Review and other publications. Find him at: jeffhaz.com.







My Ever-Changing Muse

by Paul Rabinowitz



As the morning sun brushes my face
I remember watching you on stage
white bandana woven through dark hair
swollen eyes behind spotted glasses

struggling with the measured cadence
you shade your eyes from the light
then just before the big reveal
a paralysis sets into your jaw

as the audience hangs on for the finish
an unbearable silence sets in
the DJ quickly spins Amy Winehouse
as you duck under the spotlight

you join us poets who preceded you at the bar
I ask if you’d like something special
as you untie the bandana open my book
feel your hair brush my cheek and whisper

Your work moved me

and thought how Amy must have felt
alone on stage under the spotlight
endlessly interrogated by her fans
as she floated away on scattered debris

cheating herself   someone might throw a lifeline
instead they screamed for another song
about arrows piercing her heart
bloodstains on the bathroom floor

especially the endings

so when the sun on my face becomes too much
I set last night’s images in order for my next poem
head to the kitchen to make coffee
and find a scribbled note to wake you early

this one’s my favorite

and like I’ve been doing since the beginning
I heat the milk and blend the sugar
that special way you’ve always liked
sweetness inevitably rising to the top



Trapped



This morning
after a week of torrential rains
sitting alone in the garden
watching hundreds of perennials
burst into glimmering clusters
of pink and orange
I trap a memory

walking the perimeter
of a desert crater
I come across
a single flower
pushing through
clay and sandstone

when a small bird
lands on the arm
of my Adirondack chair
its head twitching
as if curious
about why a lost memory
from a distant land
without context
or association
suddenly appears

Yet every detail
of the single desert flower
is clear
like my reflection
in the puddle
at the edge of my feet

and without warning
a spectacular bolt of lighting
charges across the sky

your face appears
crying for help
as I run
down the escarpment
tumbling over
smoldering rocks

the small bird
tilts its head
flies to another perch
under a verdant canopy
protected from predators
as I let go
to find you there



BIO

Paul Rabinowitz is an author, photographer and founder of ARTS By The People. His works appear in The Sun Magazine, New World Writing, Burningword, The Montreal Review and elsewhere. Rabinowitz was a featured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020, Mud Season Review in 2022, Apricity in 2023, Rappahannock Review in 2024 and Woven Take Press, 2025. He is the author of 5 books including his latest book of short stories called Syncopated Rhythms due out in 2025. Rabinowitz’s poems and fiction are the inspiration for 8 award winning experimental films, including Best Experimental Short at Cannes, Venice Shorts Film Festival, Oregon Short Film Festival and The Paris Film Festival.

For more about Paul: paulrabinowitz.com







Covet Thy Brother’s Truck

by Travis Lee


Earl had just slathered the first lick of peanut butter on his toast when Chuck gurgled. Earl held the knife and the bread steady, watching his brother. They sat across from each other at a small, round breakfast table. Flies buzzed above dishpiles in the sink. Behind Earl, a cool morning breeze whispered through the screen door and groundfog crawled over the fields. Chuck gurgled once more. Then he keeled over in his chair, his elbow plunging into his cereal and splashing milk and Froot Loops on a stained, Dollar Store tablecloth.

Earl stabbed his butter knife upright in the peanut butter jar. Couldn’t you’ve waited till I was done fixin my damn toast?

#

Earl wolfed down his toast, saving the crust for the stray mutt who wandered by sometimes. He tossed the crust into the backyard one piece at a time. In high school he was the baseball team’s ace and twenty some-odd years later he still had his arm strength. He balled up the last piece of crust in his palm and launched it, a rocket that landed somewhere behind the natural gas tank Chuck once tried to shoot while drunk. Too many Michelobs mixed with jars of God knew what. When Chuck got to drinking, he got to thinking, and he wasn’t too good at either one.

I seen you out here, Earl whispered to the groundfog covering the fields. And now it’s time.

Earl went back in, latching the screen door behind him. He stood with his hands on his hips, eyeballing the scene. Chuck lay slumped in his chair, elbow still in the cereal bowl. Stray Froot Loops floated in a puddle of milk. It would dry and ruin the tablecloth if he didn’t wipe it up.

Earl sipped his coffee and checked the time on the stove. County Clerk’s office opened in about an hour and if he hurried it might be first in line.

#

Earl showered and got dressed. He sat in his truck, letting it warm up. All the work he’d put into it. A Ford F-150 from 1987, two gas tanks and beaded seat covers. In high school he’d pulled up to the bonfire like a king, the dual-exhaust roaring for miles. Earl on the tailgate in his letterman jacket with Susie and Sara, the S twins, while Chuck wandered around the party with a jar of homebrew. A man six years graduated, still partying with high schoolers. Chuck was a joke in Oakwood’s hallways, but it wasn’t Earl’s house or Earl’s land, it was Chuck’s, and it wasn’t Earl’s liquor or Earl’s keg, it was Chuck’s. Sumbitch was good for that much at least.

Motion in the groundfog jarred Earl from his dreams. The blur was quick and brown, the deer hopping into the woods. Gimme my thirty-thirty and I’ll knock your head back, but Earl hadn’t gone hunting since his daddy passed.

#

The County Clerk’s office was in downtown Easton and there was no line. The courthouse, the clerk’s office and city hall occupied the same building, facing a main street longing for better days. In his daddy’s youth Easton’s main street was bustling. Now it featured a few salons, a gunshop only open on Thursdays, the Dollar Theater boarding up its doors last summer.

Earl got out of his truck and bounded up the steps, wiping his boots on the welcome mat. Inside, the receptionist smiled at him from behind thick glass.

Yes sir?

I need to report a death.

Oh sorry to hear that sir. She wore thick-framed glasses and Earl was certain he knew her. She went on, I’ll just need you to fill out a form. Were there any medical professionals present at the time of death?

He died at home.

So no doctors or nurses?

No. Just me. Why?

She pushed up her glasses. Well, sir. First, we gotta notify—

While she babbled, Earl saw himself behind the wheel of the beautiful Cummins diesel that had belonged to Chuck. Big rims, a dual-exhaust purring at normal speeds and roaring louder than any other truck in the county. Cruising these country roads, envy of Carter County. Earl’s eyes watered.

Sir?

Earl wiped his eyes. Sorry. You were sayin?

You can go ahead and get this form done if you want. Only fill out the first two pages.

I ain’t got a pen.

She dug around in the drawers some more, turning up a pen, and passed the pen and the form under the glass.

Earl sat on a bench and filled out the form. Scratched letters on the pen identified it as property of Easton Motel. Earl finished the first two pages and went back to the desk. He pushed them under the glass.

The receptionist glanced over the first page. Alright sir, looks in order. That’ll be forty-four oh two.

Earl grunted. Death wasn’t cheap, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about a funeral. He opened his wallet, attached to his belt by a silver chain, and forked over two twenties and a five.

The receptionist dumped his change in his palm and he stuffed the change in his pocket and hooked his thumbs through his beltloops. That the old governor? he asked.

Yessir. New one ain’t sent in no picture yet.

Shame. Earl looked at the receptionist. There any way I can just get it all done today? I’ll be needin that certificate.

Well sir, if you’re worried about the funeral, home don’t need one to store the body.

He ain’t gettin no funeral.

Oh. Well sir, you know you can’t legally bury your deceased till you get that certificate. And if you ain’t usin the morgue, you gotta keep the body on ice yourself. Now I can give you the funeral home’s number and the director over there’s ken to me, I know he’ll be happy to walk you through it, won’t be no trouble at all.

Alright. I’ll get that number from you.

#

Earl started his truck and read over the number. The receptionist crossed her 7’s and it weirded Earl out when people did that. The 7’s looked like they couldn’t make up their minds if they wanted to be F’s or t’s.

Earl folded the slip of paper and shoved it in the cupholder. Shouldn’t have to wait, he whispered, putting his truck in reverse. Done waited long enough.

He drove across Easton to First Volunteer Bank. The bank occupied an island of artificial grass in a concrete sea, a vast parking lot serving the bowling alley next door and the Electrolux plant in the back. Earl did a circle through the parking lot, letting his dual-exhaust roar. In high school all the dualed-out trucks backed in to the spots along the gym. Earl and the guys called it Murderer’s Row.

Earl backed in to a space a few feet from the door and got out of his truck. Guy backed in next to him drove a black GMC Sierra with Hunters displayed on the back window in fiery letters. Giddy, Earl picked up his step and hurried inside the bank.

He didn’t find Ricky Anderson, star running back Earl’s senior year, but Susie Bennett behind the glass, doing a crossword puzzle.

How about it? Earl said as he waltzed up to the counter. One of the S twins, the years after high school had done her no favors. She still had a big butt, but the rest of her had grown to match it and all that remained of her high school beauty was her eyes, deep blue and fixed on him with recognition.

Earl, she said with no sign of joy.

Hey it’s been a while. How was the reunion?

That ain’t till next month.

Well shit guess I’ll find out myself then. How was the other one?

That was ten years ago. What can I do for you?

Earl cleared his throat. He wanted to remind Susie that in high school she’d worn his letterman jacket and while she’d never let him hit it, Earl knew he’d come close. 

How’s Ricky?

Still doin landscapin.

Yeah. I remember him sayin somethin about wantin to start up his own business after high school.

Yep. Susie nodded, one hand on her crossword puzzle book. Well he did.

Guess I should keep in touch more. Earl grinned. His teeth were crooked, his gums receding. Last time he visited a dentist the dentist told him that he was suffering from chronic gum recession. Eventually his teeth would loosen and fall out, but he could hold it off by brushing and flossing every day. Five years later, and Earl’s teeth were still intact and saw a toothbrush whenever he felt like it.

You know people get educated and think they’re smart, Earl said.

Do what?

Oh nothin. Just thinkin out loud.

Yeah. She pinched a page in her crossword book. Can I help you with something?

Yeah you can actually. I need to open Chuck’s safe deposit box.

She closed her crossword puzzle book. You got the papers for that?

Not yet but the clerk said come on down here and open it. Earl smiled at her.

Susie returned none of his good humor. Earl couldn’t remember if she was this much of a bitch in high school or not. Oakwood was in short supply for hot girls, and the ones who did meet Oakwood’s standards flocked together, going not just for athletes but clean-cut athletes. Guys who lived in the country but were not of the country, guys like Ricky Anderson.

Like I said, clerk sent me over here to open it.

I need the forms.

Forms?

Yeah, the forms.

Earl shrugged. Clerk didn’t say nothin about no forms.

You either gotta have the forms, Susie said, Or you need you Chuck’s written permission.

Earl laughed. I ain’t gettin that. Chuck passed away this morning.

Sorry to hear that.

When the Good Lord calls your number, there ain’t no refusin it. Chuck’s in a better place now and he wanted me to open his safe deposit box when he passed, so…that’s why I’m here. To get that thing open in accordance with his last wishes.

Susie’s face reminded Earl of statues he’d seen in a social studies book. Earl hadn’t bothered to pay attention much in school. But what stood out to Earl was those statues, on some island in the Pacific Ocean. Someone built those things. Purpose didn’t matter to Earl—only to the builders. A huge undertaking, for themselves, and Susie’s expression was cut from the same sort of stone those Indians had used.

Earl, you ain’t openin your brother’s box without the forms.

#

Earl got home that afternoon. The groundfog had burned off but the sun remained locked behind sliding scums of clouds. Earl went in the house and the buzzing caught his ears. He approached the kitchen at a lope, catching sight of Chuck slumped in the chair, and a black blanket of flies covering the screen door.

A few flies lifted off, zipping in confused circles. The rest of them writhed as one black mass on the screen, and Earl curled his lips. He charged the door, yelling, and the flies billowed like a cloud of black smoke, settling once Earl retreated.

Sumbitches. Got the cure for you, and Earl grabbed a bucket from under the sink and filled it with tapwater. The faucet belched a few splashes of brown before pouring clear. Earl tilted the bucket, leaning it on the pile of dishes, letting the water swirl round and round. Then he shut off the faucet and hauled the bucket to the screen door.

Earl raised the bucket, Get yourselves somethin to drink, and he dumped the entire bucket on the screen door. Some of flies fell from the screen like torn velcro strips, others buzzing to safety on the outer edge of the porch.

Earl tossed the bucket aside and turned to his brother. Look what you done, draggin all these flies over here. He snatched a chair and sat facing Chuck. Earl glanced at the stoveclock. Just after four. Time for Chuck to start drinking, catch his first buzz and stare dully at a rerun of Cheers before drinking more and yelling at the nightly news.

You never reckoned it happenin like this, did you? Thought you might outlive me, but you didn’t. And you know somethin? Here in a few days, they’re openin that box you got at the bank, they’re givin me your keys and that truck of yours is mine. And don’t you worry none. I’ll take good care of her.

Earl got up and went to the living room. A sofa wrapped in yellowed bedsheets faced a rabbit-eared TV that picked up five channels, six if the weather cooperated. Earl plopped on the sofa and picked up the telephone. He called a family he knew and got their son on the phone, a teenager who cut his grass in the summer.

I need you to bury something for me, Earl told the boy. There’s fifty bucks in it for you. Can you come over tomorrow morning?

Blade agreed, and Earl hung up, thinking about what a stupid name that was. Blade. But that was the trend these days. Special kids grew up to become special adults, giving their kids special names. Where did it end? In some dim way, Earl understood the world had passed him by and that was fine, he was content to let it keep going.

#

Earl woke up several times in the night and the last time he lay in bed till the first hints of a new day snuck in under the curtains. Earl and Chuck’s old man had trusted them to take care of his legacy, and how had Chuck mourned him? Chuck, a grown man six years out of high school, threw a kegger on their property and he’d brought the kegs not in the F-150 that Earl drove around, but a brand-spanking new Cummins Diesel. Huge rims, a dual-exhaust that silenced every other truck. Nearly a hundred grand, and watching his brother, his dumbass brother too stupid to appreciate the wealth that had fallen in his lap, Earl had decided that Chuck’s truck would be his. He deserved it. Chuck didn’t deserve anything.

And now the day’s come.

Earl got out of bed and got dressed. He went to the back porch. The pile of dead flies was smaller than he remembered. Earl hosed off the porch and dug some flypaper out of his shed and strung up two pieces, flanking the screen door.

As Earl admired the flypaper, Blade pulled up in a beat-up Chevy S-10. Decent starter, nothing to brag about. Earl went over and shook his hand. The boy had a weak grip, but that was par for the course considering kids these days. He played on the football team and they chatted about the season. Blade thought there was a good chance the Warriors might make the playoffs this year and Earl thought if so, they wouldn’t make it past the first round with a handshake like that.

You need somethin buried? Blade asked.

Yeah come on in. Earl threw open the screen door and waved the boy inside.

Blade took a step back. That’s your brother.

Sure is. He passed yesterday morning, God rest his soul, and now I need you to give him a proper burial.

Don’t he need a funeral?

Didn’t want one. Wanted to be buried here on the family property like our daddy. Told it to me out of his own lips.

Blade wrinkled his nose. He scratched the few whiskers on his chin, nothing you’d call a proper beard. Ain’t there rules about this kinda stuff?

Ain’t no rules about a funeral. All I gotta do is bury him twenty-five feet from the road and as you can see, we’re plainly more than twenty-five feet from that there road.

I don’t know, Blade said. When you said you needed me to bury somethin, I was thinkin i a cat or dog.’

Since when’ve I had a dog? I’m payin you fifty bucks and it ain’t hard. I’ll even help you carry him.

I don’t know…

Hundred bucks then.

The boy’s gaze settled on Chuck and quickly shifted elsewhere. Lemme head out to my truck for a sec.

The screen door opened and slapped shut. When the motor started, Earl went outside. The boy’s truck cruised down the driveway, took a left and disappeared up the road behind a blend of creekside trees.

#

Earl was halfway through his peanut butter toast when the phone rang. With the bread in one hand, he picked up the phone with the other.

Yeah?

It was Blade’s father. Earl, you really ask my son to bury your brother?

Yeah.

Why the hell—  and Blade’s father laid into him.

Earl relaxed on the couch, chomping on his toast where it could be heard clearly on the other end. After Blade’s father was done, Earl said, What if I up it to a hundred and fifty?

My son ain’t buryin your damn brother, Earl.

Alright. Let me ask you somethin though. How come you give your boy such a dumbass name? Hello?’

Earl dropped the receiver back in the cradle and finished his toast on the couch. He got up and passed his brother and opened the screen door.

Past the gas tank, the mutt was sniffing around. He was mostly white, with a brown splotch stretching from his neck and ringing one eye. Earl couldn’t place the dog’s mix to save his life. He placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Hey!

The dog trotted up to him, tongue out. Earl knelt down and rubbed his ears, You’re a good boy aren’t you? You hungry? Earl held out his hand and as the dog went to gobble up the crust, Earl pulled his arm back and stood up straight, Check out my fast ball, and he balled up the crust and launched it past the natural gas tank. The dog ran after it and when the dog returned, Earl rubbed his ears again, There’s a good boy.

#

In the kitchen, Earl fit his dish in the pile like a Jenga piece, then turned to face Chuck. He guessed his brother weighed two-hundred pounds. In his heyday Chuck had clocked in at a buck fifty but that was before post-high-school pudge. The football team Chuck’s senior year, everyone picked them for State. The highlight of their season was keeping within one touchdown of eventual state champions Ezell-Harding, a private school recruited all the good players and best coaches, as Chuck was happy to point out, And we almost beat em. It’s alright though. We’ll see em again in the playoffs and beat em then, but the rematch stayed a fantasy. The Oakwood team Chuck and his buddies claimed was the best in school history bowed out in the first round of the playoffs, Chuck losing four fumbles.

Ya’ll just got lucky against Ezell, Earl said. Outside, thunder popped. It was cold already and the storms would roll over the house, leaving worse cold in their wake. Chuck once said tossing the football in the cold was like throwing a block of ice around, but it would be worth it to play on Thanksgiving, Except you never did. All that shit ya’ll talked, couldn’t even make it past the first round. What were ya’ll doin the night before? Partyin. Pretty hard to hold onto the football when you’re too hungover to know which way’s up.

Earl assessed his brother. The skin on Chuck’s forehead sagged like his flesh was sloughing off his skull and gray hairs curled from nostrils spiderwebbed in capillaries the color of a fever.

Earl thought over the steps needed to give his brother a proper burial. It wasn’t too complicated, and for a hundred bucks, a teenage Earl would’ve dug that hole with no gripes.

Kids these days got no work ethic, and Earl went out to the shed. The wind picked up, the shed’s sheetmetal walls groaning in a strong gust. Earl grabbed a shovel hanging from a hook on the wall and on the way back in winter winds tickled the back of his neck.

Earl leaned the shovel by the screen door and went in the kitchen. Thunder boomed, the house rattled, and Earl looked through the screen door to see the first explosion of rain, and the mutt whining in the downpour.

#

It rained all night and Earl slept dreamlessly, waking a couple hours before dawn. He listened. The mutt snored at the foot of the bed. Slowbeat of rain on the roof. Earl sighed.

He got out of bed and downstairs heard the buzz. The stench of the cerealmilk had grown worse and Earl pinched his nose as he leaned toward the back door, listening.

He opened the door and the buzz vanished. Earl switched on the kitchen light. One of Chuck’s gray eyes stared sightlessly at him. Earl checked the screen door but there were no flies and no noise but his own breathing, raspy, and the rainbeat of a Tennessee winter storm.

#

Earl let the mutt out through the screen door and grabbed the shovel. He pulled on his workboots and walked the wet grass and mud of his property. The mutt trotted playfully behind him. Scent of morning dew. Earl savored it as he did all things about this land, God’s country, let no one tarnish it.

The patch of land he chose was in the woods. Earl stabbed it with his shovel. The ground was soft enough and Earl looked back but the mutt was gone. Earl turned, clutching the shovel with both hands, and lowered his head. His own daddy was cremated, his ashes spread in the creek. Chuck had never specified what to do with his body, And besides it don’t matter. Oughta be happy you’re gettin a burial here and I’m not haulin your ass off to the morgue. Payin out the tail-end for some ugly motherfucker to pretty your ass up and put you in a nice box with a nice gravestone, beloved son and all that. You oughta be happy you’re getting this much, and Earl started digging.

By the time the hole was hip-deep, Earl stopped, leaning on the shovel. Sweat stung his eyes and he wiped at it with his shirtsleeve. The ground got harder to penetrate the deeper you dug. He thought about asking another kid—for a hundred bucks, they ought to be grateful—and pushed the idea away.

Earl left the shovel in the hole and climbed out, brushing himself off. The mutt came trotting out from around the gas tank soaking wet and Earl rubbed his ears, You been in the creek again? You been swimmin in the creek again ain’t you? You’re a good boy you’re a good boy, and Earl went in the house, latching the screen door behind him.

The stench hit him like a gust from a landfill. It reminded Earl of the cat. He and his daddy had been walking their property when they chanced upon a stray cat, its belly torn open. Earl gulped, half-digested scrambled eggs crawling up his throat, his daddy unaffected, Go grab my shovel, and Earl had gone to the house and brought back the shovel and he and his daddy had alternated digging a shallow grave for the cat, Chuck couldn’t help cause he was out working the drive-thru at the Hardees in Easton, one of the many jobs he’d fired from.

Earl hooked his shirt over his nose and stared into his brother’s gray eye, You never could keep a job longer than a week. Only reason Hardee’s didn’t get rid of your ass sooner was that manager had a crush on you. Can’t begin to imagine why, and Earl carefully lifted Chuck’s elbow out of the cerealbowl and dumped the sour milk over the dirty dishes. He placed the bowl outside the main formation of food-encrusted plates and stepped outside.

Earl lowered his shirt, sucking in cold, dry air. He looked at the sky. Plenty of daylight left. He looked out at the gas tank. The mutt was gone.

Alright then. Earl backed his truck up to the porch and lowered the tailgate. He went in the house through the front door and upstairs grabbed one of Chuck’s shirts from the closet. He used garden shears from the shed to cut a slice from it and tied that slice around his nose and mouth. In the kitchen he sifted through expired bottles of cleaner under the sink and snagged a pair of dishwashing gloves from the back, peeling cobwebs from between the fingers.

Earl pushed open the screen door and stood in front of his brother. Last job Chuck ever held was in the year after their daddy died.  On a Sunday morning Chuck stumbled home reeking of Michelob Ultra, Got fired they caught me bangin Cassie, and whether the part about Cassie was true or not, Kroger had indeed fired Chuck from bagging groceries. From there his life unraveled into a steady cycle of drinking and hangovers. Eventually the hangovers stopped but the drinking plowed right along, finally ending the other morning.

Earl gripped the top of the chair and tilted it. The weight nearly knocked him over. Shaking, Earl dragged the chair toward the back door.

He saw the problem but tried to force the chair through anyway, the sides knocking against the doorframe. Earl steadied Chuck and leaned on the doorframe, catching his breath. Angle, he whispered between breaths, and tilted the chair, grunting, its legs leaving scratchmarks on the floor. This house wasn’t much and once the interment was done, Earl thought he might build a new one. He deserved a nice house to complement his nice new truck.

C’mon. Earl angled the chair, but it still wouldn’t fit. Chuck’s body began its slide and Earl reached out, but it was too late.

Chuck slumped in the doorway, sour milk leaking out his lips.

Shit fuck shit. Earl worked the chair through the door and launched it into the yard, where it tumbled into a cherry bush. Panting, Earl looked down at his brother, You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, and Earl wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. Way this was going, it might be better to do a damn funeral after all and the thought of all that time and money made Earl’s head hurt. Funeral directors were conmen. No better than carnival grifters. It was his damn land and his damn brother, and he’d bury the motherfucker any way he liked.

Earl took off his gloves. He went inside and drank water from the bathroom sink. He cupped handfuls into his mouth and on the way to the backporch heard the familiar crunch of tires on gravel.

Earl pushed open the screen door as the Carter County Sheriff’s Department cruiser rolled to a stop. It parked too close to Earl’s truck for his liking and he winced as the deputy swung open the door. The man who stepped out, his uniform clung to him like saranwrap, his belly sinking below his belt. It took Earl a moment too long to stamp a name on the cop’s face and when he did he grinned, Damn they’re still lettin you run around with a gun?

Guess they are, Tyler said. Got a call about you yesterday.

Yeah? Bout what?

I— Tyler began, but Earl cut him off.

Don’t shoot my guns off at the creek no more. Told ole Miss Annie sorry for wakin her granbaby up and now when I shoot em off I make sure and do it here.

It’s not that, Tyler said. It’s that.

Tyler jabbed a stubby finger at Chuck.

Yeah he passed yesterday.

Earl, there’s procedures you gotta follow.

I know. I’m buryin him twenty-five feet from the road.

Not just that. You gotta a casket of some kind?

I got some tarp in the shed.

Tyler rubbed his face. Look Earl, you gotta get a death certificate first, but before that a doctor’s gotta declare him dead, the medical—

Lady at the clerk’s office never mentioned that.

Well I spoke to her about an hour ago and she said she told you everything you need to do.

She didn’t tell me nothin, Tyler.

Well whatever you think she said or didn’t say, medical examiner’s gotta take a look—

What the hell for?

Rule out foul play.

Foul play? Shit. It’s Chuck, Tyler. It’s a damn miracle he lasted this long and you know I’m right.

Don’t matter. You gotta follow the rules, Earl, and once everything’s done, then you can bury him.

Earl squinted at the gas tank. He squinted instead of rolling his eyes ever since his daddy slapped the taste out of his mouth when he was a boy.

Fuck.

Earl pursed his lips, Listen Tyler. I gotta tell you the truth. I really don’t care how my brother gets buried. I already talked to the lady at the clerk’s office and I’m just waitin on them documents so I can go open his box at the bank. You know what’s waitin for me in there?

I sure don’t.

Keys to his truck. I’m getting ahold of Chuck’s truck, God rest his soul. Remember how he used to come out to parties drivin that damn thing full of kegs like he was cool or somethin. Fuckin grown man partyin with high schoolers. The fuck was wrong with him?

You oughtn’t speak ill of the dead, Earl.

Well shit, you know I’m right Tyler. Only reason anybody liked him was he got em beer.

Still, Tyler said, It’s not proper.

Yeah. So you gonna help me?

Help you what?

Haul Chuck to his final resting place. It ain’t far, just down yonder.

Did you hear a word I just said? Tyler stared at him wide-eyed and the look was the same one Earl gave Chuck many times. Shooting at the gas tank. Doing donuts in Old Lady Landry’s yard. Starting fights in the drunk tank before Earl could bail him out. Lighting—

—fires he can’t control, and Earl took a breath. Pain in the ass, Tyler. You know it and I know it.

Ambulance’ll be by soon to get him, Tyler said. You can ride with them or not, it don’t matter. Just need you to sign some papers when the morgue’s done pokin at him.

And then I can bury him?

You gotta get him a casket, Earl.

I said I got some tarp in the shed.

Tyler sighed, got back in his cruiser and left.

#

The ambulance showed up later that afternoon, no siren. It turned around and backed up beside Earl’s truck, putting more distance than Tyler had bothered with. The back doors opened and the EMTs were young, looked to be in football shape. The driver joined them and got Earl and Chuck’s names.

Bout how long’ll this take? Earl asked as the EMTs zipped up Chuck in a bodybag.

Will what take? the driver said.

Examinin my brother. Earl disliked the driver’s tone. He sounded like some college kid too smart for his own good, the types Earl and his buddies used to flick spitballs at in Algebra.

All told, takes about a week.

A week? I ain’t got a week.

Sir, the driver said, I don’t control the time. If you got an issue with it, you need to talk to the medical examiner. She’s the one who sets the pace and I can tell you your brother’s just the latest in the queue.

Latest in the queue…who the hell talks like that? Earl fumed, and after the ambulance was gone, he went back inside.

The chair was missing but Earl didn’t feel like retrieving it. Chuck had died in that chair and it could be infectious. Earl sniffed. The stench lingered, and he reached back and pulled the screen door shut, latching it.

He got on the phone and dialed the county clerk’s office. It took two tries to get ahold of her and he asked where his paperwork was.

Sir you gotta let the doctor and medical examiner take a look first.

Since when?

Sir, I told you yesterday what you need to do.

Earl stared at the TV and the antenna. Chuck used to say the rabbit ears looked like a hooker’s legs the way they were spread.

You sure there ain’t nothin you can do for me?

I’m sorry sir. Wish I could be of more help.

Earl hung up without saying goodbye. All this, over his dead brother. He rubbed his eyes. Making sense of the world was a tall task. Earl had anticipated Chuck’s death for years, only not like this. His brother would croak, Earl would toss him in some hole in the woods, and go riding around in his truck. His truck. A mighty Cummins diesel.

Earl got up from the couch.

#

After Chuck’s last trip to the drunk tank, the state took away his license—this time for good. Chuck was confined to the house or riding with Earl, and the longer Chuck drank, the more he stayed in. It often fell on Earl to head down to Herndon’s and buy his beer, but sometimes Chuck would walk down there. A couple times he hitchhiked. After all, everyone around here knew the Oakwood running back, greatest class in school history even if they did get upset in the first round of the playoffs thanks to Mr. Football’s four lost fumbles.

Earl had got onto Chuck for walking to Herndon’s, What the hell’re you thinkin? You lookin to get robbed or somethin? and Chuck just smiled that wide smile of his, blackening teeth strangers to brush and floss, and the longer Chuck drank, the more he cast his eyes away when Earl talked to him, only coming alive after several beers, waking up the next morning not with a hangover but with a dull glaze in his eyes, eager for the next drink.

It was Herndon’s Earl pulled into. A lone gas pump served the town, a parking lot on the side. Earl backed into a space, and spotting some girls coming out of the store, old habits took over. He revved his truck, the trick not to press the gas too hard, let her purr, don’t let her roar. Purring brings them in but the girls, who as they passed looked high school age and it was a coin-flip for legal, didn’t even glance in his direction. They piled into some loser Honda sedan and drove away.

Earl got out of the truck. The temperature was down and he stuffed his hands in his pockets and went inside. He bought a box of chicken tenders, asking the Indian man behind the register not to be stingy with the honey mustard. Earl also grabbed a liter of Sprite and paid for everything then sat eating his tenders in his truck. Across the street from Adams’ lone gas station was the Methodist Church. Earl couldn’t recall the last time he went—must’ve been before daddy’s passing.

Earl finished his tenders, burping the biting aftertaste of Sprite. He glanced around the parking lot hoping for another truck—a Chevy would work best—but there were none, and so he tossed his trash on the floorboard.

Earl followed the highway north. Miles of farmland later, Earl crossed the state line into Guthrie, Kentucky. Red neon lights danced on a sign for a country club, Billy’s, and the highway hauled Earl over the traintracks, past a buy-here pay-here lot and the scraps of Guthrie’s former downtown. Only place open was the historical society.

At the four-way, Earl drove straight.

He didn’t listen to the radio, the growl of the dual-exhaust his companion as night crept into the world, last signs of the sun burning out behind grain silos and smokebarns, skeletal winter trees framing a sparse country path and it was full night when Earl made it to the storage units.

Earl punched in the code. The gate opened and he cruised down a gravel road, triggering motionlights above the corrugated rolling steel doors guarding each storage shed. The road dead-ended at a caution sign and a rusty engine block painted in bird droppings. Earl parked facing the storage shed and killed the motor and sat there, his windows rolled down. He waited until the motionlight died. Then he stuck his hand out the driver’s side window and waved. The motionlight flickered to life. When it was dead again, Earl tried the passenger window.

When the motionlight remained dull, Earl got out of his truck through the passenger door and reached in the bed of his truck without looking, feeling for the bolt cutter. He grasped it with both hands and approached the massive steel door. Hundred and fifty bucks a month, more of daddy’s money down the drain and the morning of, Earl had tried to talk some sense into his brother, Ain’t no reason you can’t keep it in the driveway, and Earl went down the list, Disconnect the battery and Cover it up with a tarp and I’ll keep the tires inflated and at last, as a light sparked in Chuck’s eyes so rarely seen that it frightened Earl, You don’t trust me? Just keep em with the rest of your damn keys. It ain’t like I’m gonna go joyridin in it when you’re sleepin.

But Chuck insisted on storing his truck after the state revoked his license and got two of his buddies drive it out here—he wouldn’t even allow Earl that small pleasure. And the keys? In a lockbox, their freedom depending on red tape, bullshit to stop Earl from claiming what was rightfully his. 

Earl whispered, I’m glad you’re gone.

He knelt and worked on the first lock. Two padlocks secured the door and Earl grunted, squeezing the bolt cutters, pressing all his weight into them. The first lock snapped, the second.

Earl raised the corrugated door.

The truck was so beautiful it robbed Earl of his thoughts. He stared at it, awestruck. The motionlight died and in the dark he wetted his lips. He pulled the chain for the bulb hanging above the truck.

The truck was backed-in and unlocked. Chuck used to leave the keys on the dash when he was still allowed to drive and would stumble in drunk around midnight and pass out in the living room after doing donuts in the yard, the dual-exhaust terrorizing poor ole Miss Annie who lived across the creek. Earl held out some hope that Chuck’s buddies had accidentally left the keys here—like Chuck they weren’t the brightest crayons to come rolling out of the Crayola factory—but the dash was empty.

Ain’t no worry. I come prepared, and Earl eased his own truck close enough to kiss Chuck’s. Then he got the screwdriver and drill and jumper cables from his passenger seat. He laid in the seat of Chuck’s truck and compared his truck key to the drill bit, doing so until he knew the length by heart. Then he drilled into the keyhole. He drilled three times and lowered the drill and maneuvered the screwdriver in place. Leaving it alone, he got out of Chuck’s truck.    He popped both hoods and hooked the jump starter cables to the battery in Chuck’s truck. Earl started his own truck and waited a couple minutes.

Then he started Chuck’s.

His eyelids fluttered at the purr of the dual exhaust. He closed his eyes and he was back in high school, pulling into the party in a brand-new Cummins diesel. The girls couldn’t ignore him and Earl stroked the steering wheel.

He smiled.

He disconnected the jumper cables and backed his truck up. He cut the engine and got back in Chuck’s, now his truck, Should have always been mine now let’s see how you handle these roads, and Earl put the truck in drive.

He pulled out of the storage unit’s lot and cruised down the road. The dual exhaust purred, but dual exhausts weren’t meant to purr, they were built to roar. Earl stomped on the gas and hooted as the dual exhaust roared, triumphant in the hands of someone who could appreciate its beauty.

He turned without signaling, swerving onto a country road lacking a centerline. No barriers on the curves. Earl hooted some more and whooped and screamed Fuck yeah and approaching the traintracks, he gunned the motor.

The truck started to pass over the tracks, and rocked.

Motherfucker. Earl stomped the gas pedal. The dual exhaust roared like it was supposed to, but the truck refused to budge. He stomped again on the gas pedal. The dual exhaust belched.

Then it died.

Earl tried the keys. Icons flashed on the dashboard, but Earl couldn’t make heads or tails of them. Motherfucker, mother God damn—

Earl got out of his truck and popped the hood. He’d brought no flashlight and the engine was a cluster of vague shapes in the dark. Chuck wasn’t a gearhead and Earl apologized to the truck, Sorry. I’ll get you fixed up, don’t you worry.

A whistle blew.

A blinding light cut between families of crooked trees. It took a second for the situation to register in Earl’s mind and when he understood, he uttered a primal scream, his fingers and toes tingling.

No fuck no please, and Earl got behind the wheel. He shifted to neutral and ran to the back of the truck as the whistle blew again, louder, and he pushed. He groaned. He screamed.

The truck didn’t budge.

C’mon c’mon come the fuck on. Earl pushed, he slapped the tailgate, and now the light was upon him, swallowing him, the truck, and he fled back, waving in vain for the train to stop.

It didn’t. It collided with the truck and dragged it down the tracks, dumping it off in a pile of gravel.

Earl ran to the truck. And as the train slowed Earl fell to his knees, face buried in his hands, sobbing before a mangled, smoking wreck. 



BIO

A Tennessee native, Travis Lee is the author of several books available on Amazon, including Irish Lightning and Letters from a Dead Mentor. His short stories have appeared in The Colored Lens, The Rumen and As You Were: The Military Review, among other places. Connect with him on his free Substack: TL1138.substack.com







The Tomb in the Orchard

Claude Chabot


Do I believe in premonitions? I never had any until the night I came home and was sitting by the fire and I imagined my mother’s voice saying, “Soon you will understand.” I admit I was startled, as I had not been thinking of her at all. “Understand what?” was my thought. It seemed she was present in the room, so clear was the elegant tone and clarity of diction that I remembered from life. This sudden evocation of her voice was startling, yet I had heard her voice often enough following her death…I had heard it because I missed its warmth and love and conjured it frequently. But that night it came to me without my behest and I only could dismiss it as the symptom of an excited mind having endured the fatigue of a long journey and about to embark on another. My attorney had pleaded with me not to go, as America, and New York in particular, were dangerous now, he told me, with all the unemployed and the economic devastation, but I insisted.

I had returned to Paris from a dig in North Africa that was at once gratifying and exhausting to find a letter from the estate agent awaiting me upon my arrival at my home in the Place des Vosges. Although I had wanted time alone in the peaceful confines of my old house in town, the letter moved me to leave almost immediately for America, in order to meet with the agent to address his urgent request, and to visit South Cliff, the mansion that had been the locus of my childhood reveries.

I didn’t hesitate as I needed a reprieve from my dusty and laborious inquiries into the ancient civilizations of the Levant that was not satisfied by merely returning to the pretensions of la grande ville. Thus, one week after receiving the agent’s letter, I flew to London on an aeroplane to board the Cunard liner Antonia for America. I arrived in New York in September on a fine autumn morning and after settling myself and my secretary at the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, I made plans to visit the estate.

I remembered the oft-mentioned stories told to me about its location: perched high atop the Hudson River commanding a view of the great city down its banks and its otherwise virtual isolation in a forest outside a tiny village. The only other neighbors were estates to the south and north. A great expanse of greenwood to the west was only recently evacuated of the Lenni Lenape Indians who had once enjoyed the bounty of the forest and the gleaming catch of the river, and, roaming up and down the steep, almost impassable cliffs, had probably first glimpsed the Europeans who would soon evict them from their land. My mother had often related these stories to me in her dreamy way, as she was a romantic like myself, and our mutual love of history inspired my passion for ancient cultures and dictated my choice of archaeology over custom and companionship.

But the real purpose of my visit from my home in my native France was to visit South Cliff, summoned by the estate agent’s cryptic query regarding my interest in the sale of the house, gardens and various outbuildings that comprise the estate atop the Palisades cliffs where my mother had first met my stepfather. Both of them have been dead for many years, and I had inherited from them a considerable bequest that enabled me to pursue my archaeological studies and excavations in the Levant. I hardly gave a thought to South Cliff, a place I had never visited, not even knowing whether or not it was occupied by a tenant, as the expenses of the estate had been paid through a trust fund in America for that purpose.

The Depression ravaging the world has changed that. Now, some of the costs of the estate and paying its taxes are borne by me. The expenses are never large, but now that the estate agent had contacted me, I thought it time to investigate what I am paying for and whether I wished to keep this mysterious property: mysterious because I have never actually seen it. After my mother and stepfather had settled in France, they spoke of its exceptional beauty and location, but never returned to it.

The next morning after my arrival in New York, I placed a trunk call to the estate agent only to discover that he was away for the day. I admit I was vexed. This presented a minor problem for me as I was taking advantage of my time in America to deliver a lecture at Princeton in two days’ time where I had long been asked to speak, and then planned to embark on a trip to Mexico to visit some colleagues who were conducting excavations in the Yucatan. The estate agent had known of my date of arrival and my plans, and I was irritated about his absence.

After dining with friends of friends the night before in New York and discussing my dilemma, they encouraged me to visit the estate on my own and connecting with the agent, if possible, the next day. After all, the whole point of coming to America in the first place was to see my inheritance, and if the agent were not available the caretaker could certainly show me the house and grounds. So, leaving my secretary Matilde in New York and giving her a surprise stipend to shop for a new hat, I hired a car, much to Matilde’s horror. She insisted that I have a chauffeur and thought it improper that a woman should drive herself. She forgets that on the digs in the Levant I am the chief archaeologist, never shrinking from what is normally considered a man’s work.

I embarked on a brilliantly sunny morning to the upper reaches of Manhattan and traversed the Hudson over a beautiful bridge, which, I understand, had only recently opened. I admit to being impressed and even awed by its soaring towers and wide expanse over the majestic Hudson, even as I am frequently annoyed and even repulsed by the aggrandizement of American achievement and the chauvinism with which it trumpets its superiority to the world. I could only be so repulsed by this chauvinism, because as a French citizen I know first-hand what contempt born of insecurity a great nation can have for a far less powerful but equally potent native culture.

My large American sedan took me up a forested boulevard through quaint villages and woods, passing the gates and gate houses of many other grand houses on the way, encountering very little traffic on this country road, when I finally arrived at South Cliff. It was not difficult to find, as it clearly was designated as 656 Hudson Terrace on the estate’s walled enclosure, the address given to me by the estate agent’s telegram. I saw the caretaker’s house from the highway easily but could not see the grounds or the main house from the highway. Tall trees blocked any view of the extensive property, and a badly maintained driveway was all that I could see from the highway, besides the gatehouse, which, though in good repair, looked forlorn. It seemed such a lonely, decrepit and dark place, not helped by the sun suddenly sliding behind a cloud when I arrived, and not at all what I had expected of the fine house and grounds that my mother and stepfather had celebrated over the years. Perhaps I was mistaken in finding this place on my own, I thought. But the number the agent had given me in his telegram to me that I held was the same as that on the cracked blue and white terracotta shingle on the side of the gatehouse. A sign next to this on a splintered board read, “South Cliff Estate-Private Property.” 

While the day had been clear skied and pleasantly warm, the sun was now out of sight and the air was hot and thickly humid, filled with gnats and the nearby sound of buzzing bees. I parked my sedan at the side of the road, as the gates, while partially open, were loosely chained, and I was only barely able to pass through them, confirming my suspicion that the estate was not occupied. I walked up to the caretaker’s house. I was alarmed to see that some windows on the first floor were shattered. This had not been visible from the road and was completely unexpected.

I stepped away from the house and walked further into the property, more than a little puzzled and a trifle alarmed at what presented itself before me. I had presumed that this house, which I held title to, was in full repair and occupied, but the gatehouse and gate made me think otherwise. At the same time, I felt suddenly dizzy and lightheaded. I am not at all an anxious person or an hysteric, but I felt unsettled and strangely confused by my surroundings, although I knew where I was and why I was there, I also felt that I was not there and in some way my trip to America had not really happened. Such an odd, nonsensical feeling! In fact, it is difficult to explain what I felt, but in some way I felt dislocated. However, I chose to steady my nerves, breathed deeply and as I recovered I felt well-oriented again. I was certainly not surprised by my vertigo because these spells happened frequently in the desert heat and colonial cities that were the usual location of my excavations. Nevertheless, I was still unwell and although my outstretched hand tried to grasp a small tree growing in the drive, I fainted.

Sometime later, not a very long time perhaps, I awoke lying on the ground near the drive to the main house. I had awakened from my faint by someone calling my name, again and again, a woman’s voice from far off and yet, quite close, “Francesca, Francesca!” Then silence and the sound of bees buzzing and a thick cloud of gnats up against my eyes. I started to answer, but the insects flew into my mouth and I closed it in disgust. But again, the voice of the woman shouted, “Francesca, Francesca,” and then again silence. I stood up, almost in a trance, very slowly dusted myself off, but momentarily stopped and leaned against a tree feeling suddenly dizzy again.

I looked around once more and started to approach the drive trying to see who was calling me. I now felt fully alert, but saw that my first impression of the drive as a poorly maintained roadway had been wrong, for although there were a few wildflowers growing at its sides, it actually appeared to be well-paved and clear of debris. Then, I happened to glance at the gatehouse, which although almost identical to my first impression of it, now appeared neatly maintained with white curtains fluttering in the breeze in an upstairs window. I was far enough away not to see the ground floor or the windows I had thought were shattered, but I did not want to take the time to walk back as I wanted to see the main house. The sun had come out again and I dismissed the illusion of the drive’s neglect to the clouded sky. I remembered how bleak the mountains on the island of Crete had once seemed in mid-summer on a clouded day and how beautiful and inviting they looked when the sun returned. The state of the gatehouse I dismissed as a mere economy, as a tenant was unlikely to keep a full staff, which was why the gatehouse might be vandalized. And I thought nothing more of my changed perception, at least, not then.

I heard that voice again; high-pitched, thin, unsteady but distinct, now clearly coming from somewhere down the drive shouting, “Francesca, Francesca.” I walked toward it. While the drive seemed to extend into the distance, after about one hundred feet it turned sharply to the left amongst the trees, and suddenly and dramatically revealed a well-kept expanse of lawn that barely sloped up to the fine house built to look like a Tudor manor. This was another Americanism I had anticipated not liking, the aping of English and Continental culture and architecture at the expense of the great American native cultures, but I admit the house pleased me greatly, even as it had so pleased my mother. At the side and back of the house, I could see the orchard rows beginning, just as my mother had so carefully described them, and the lavishly planted flower gardens at the manor house’s front. My immediate and delighted impression of the house and its gardens was that of a memory brought to life. And shortly, coming around to the front of the house was a woman who waved to me while holding onto her straw gardening hat. Suddenly, all the growing dread dissipated and I was being welcomed in the way I had anticipated.

 “Francesca, we’ve been waiting for you.”

I smiled and walked toward her until I was within a few feet of her kind face squinting in the bright sunshine. She was an older woman with a face that showed the lines of either age or illness, and she moved slowly coming to me as if she had little energy, but there was benevolence and an eagerness to please that shown through her physical infirmity. She was beautifully attired in an old-fashioned dress popular many years before. It looked faded but well kept, and her sun hat and shears that she held in her hand demonstrated that evidently she had been gardening.

She looked at my eyes, I think, taking in all the details I had just observed and laughed a bit.

“Yes, I hold onto things for quite some time if I can find a use for something when I garden.” She looked down briefly as if embarrassed. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Francesca; I’ve been waiting for you.” And she turned her face anticipating a kiss, which I happily bestowed upon this person who was truly unknown to me.

“Oh, you knew I was coming.” I was pleased at this. Obviously, the agent had informed the tenant of my arrival.

“Of course, my dear. I have been waiting for you and so has my husband.”

“Oh. I would have been clearer about my plans, but…”

“There was no need. I never leave here. This is my paradise. It’s true the gardener keeps the grounds, but I lend my care to the flower beds and roses, and the orchard, of course. What bounty we will have soon! My husband thinks me silly, but the apple and pear orchards please me. Come with me and see them.”

“I remember hearing so much about the flowers, gardens and orchards here.”

“From Francois?”

“Yes,” I answered slowly. Francois was my stepfather’s name. I was a trifle puzzled that she should know his name but assumed that the estate agent had mentioned the names of my parents who were the previous occupants, or she had found something in the house with his name.

“He loves them as much as I. Maybe more so.” 

Loves them. Or did she say loved? My stepfather had been dead for years. Or was it possible that she had married someone named Francois? Improbable but not impossible. After all, I was named Francesca, after my mother. Yet, I was becoming confused by this blending of the past and present and this stranger’s odd familiarity with details of the house and my life that it seemed only I should know. 

We walked in silence toward the back of the house and it all seemed a dream: the perfect verdant lawn; the brilliant sunshine drenching the pale cocoa-yellow stone of which it was constructed; the elegant casement windows, and not least its poised placement on a knoll facing south toward the river. Beyond this the fringe of forest and then the drop of the cliffs and, I think, the hazy view of Westchester and in the great distance the Long Island Sound, floating somewhere beyond it all.

Once there, the woman stopped and stared ahead of herself and smiled, the smile of someone proud of some very great undertaking. So she should be, as the park at the back of the house bloomed in discrete shadings of white, lavender and indigo, and presented such a strikingly elegant composition that I almost gasped. And to the side of the house, a small orchard of perhaps a half-acre, arranged in a half-moon beyond the fringe of the luxurious garden, seemed a kind of Eden, both contrived and yet somehow spontaneous, as the grasses and wildflowers had been allowed to grow tall within the orchard, thus presenting a rustic scene that contrasted handsomely with the brilliantly planted and impeccable symmetry of the flower beds.

“It’s so fine to be here.” I had the feeling of returning home, and I had, as my mother had described the details of the house, gardens and orchard exactly.

The woman smiled, “Forgive me, my enthusiasm for meeting you has overcome my manners. My name is Elizabeth Allison.”

I blushed for no reason other than pleasure and was about to tell her my name when she bent her head backward and laughed, an odd laugh, a bitter and unhappy laugh that quite surprised me. I bent forward to take her hand, but she suddenly stepped aside, stooping forward and walking ahead, as if she had suddenly changed entirely and whispered, “Would you like to see where I will live when the time comes?” in what I thought was an unnerving, sing-song and even childish manner, very different from her previous deportment. Without waiting for my reply, she walked off surprisingly quickly and turned after a few seconds to see if I were following, still smiling that sweet smile, which now seemed fixed and mask-like.

Her meaning was all too clear and all too strange. I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. And how odd the way she put it. I was beginning to suspect that her physical illness had affected her mental state. I didn’t answer, but didn’t have to, as she was suddenly moving quickly toward the edge of the orchard and toward the cliffs and I had no choice but to follow her.

There within the orchard was a small mausoleum, built of the same stone as the house. There was no cemetery, so the placement of the tomb looked out of place and unexpected, as if you had happened upon some grotesquerie while turning a corner. At the same time it was a gem of a building, with a sumptuously cast gate of Art Nouveau origin. Bees buzzed drowsily around the entryway flanked by bas-relief statues of heavy, crouching women with their eyes closed, their hands cast down and their arms hanging loosely at their sides; beautiful, but eerie in this unexpected setting of orchard in forest, the only strange note in this otherwise esthetically remarkable park. I had seen something like those women before in a tomb I had excavated in Egypt and it was most peculiar glimpsing the motif repeated in the New World.

“These are my lovelies…waiting for me.”

Now I began to feel very much ill at ease with her odd manner and sing-song, childish voice so very different from the woman I had first met. I was now certain that her illness had progressed so far that either it had affected her behavior or she made these statements out of despair. She stopped in front of the crypt as I stepped forward to examine it.

“I have paid for them and Francois will always be reminded of me, whether he wishes to be or not,” she muttered darkly, suddenly, and when I turned to look at her, she was scowling at me with the most terrible fury, and then her face closed into a kind of dead stillness as she spoke.

“You think, Francesca that I don’t know the reason for your visit? That I don’t understand once and for all why Francois married me? You think…you believe,” now she was shouting and she stepped weakly toward me, “…that I don’t understand!”

I was appalled and surprised, frightened and confused at all once.

“Francois?”

“Yes, Francois, my pretty pretty,” she hissed with particular venom on the repetition of the word, making it exceptionally ugly. Suddenly her face changed from the dull torpor and exhaustion of illness to a snide and ugly grimace of a sly and bitter smile.

“Yes, Francois, my pretty pretty, as if you had never heard of him. I brought you here to my tomb so you could see first-hand that even when I die, I will be here, close by, watching both of you. And you will bury me here because if you do not Francois will not inherit his portion of the estate. I would even change that now if I could, my bequest to him, but my marriage to him was tied to a legacy and cannot be altered. I was so stupid then, yes, stupid, the stupidity of a woman in love. That is why I do not use his name as my own any longer. Now all that is left to me is my hatred…of him, and of you, and my intent of staying here forever to remind both of you of your sin!” The last word she elongated into a sinuous shriek in the hot stillness of this forlorn and unfortunate morning.

I stumbled back, as if the sound had physical force, and losing my composure was about to say, “But, Francois is my stepfather.” However, even as I was confused, I understood what she meant, oh, I understood only too clearly and realized why my parents had never returned here, and the answers to many undesirable questions that lingered in the recesses of memory were suddenly thrust into clarity on this sunny, untoward morning. Questions I meant to ask my mother all those years now had ugly answers. That was when I recalled that fleeting memory of my mother’s voice in front of the fire at my home in Paris saying, “Soon you will understand.” But why, why did I need to understand, why at this point in my life was my parents’ relationship and my stepfather’s infidelity brought home to me?

Then she was at me, this hitherto frail woman, her fists raised and then striking me, my face, my eyes, pulling my hair and screaming, “Slut! Slut! You will leave with him, both of you. I will never allow you to remain in my home.” Although we were only a few feet apart, I was able to turn and run…run as fast as I could from this virago. I ran away from her, beyond the orchard, beyond the house, panting, gasping for air, down the drive where I stumbled in the gravel and fainted. The world faded quickly, but I heard her quite close by, repeating as I slipped away, “Yes, run, my pretty pretty, but you will not escape me.”

†   †   †

An August sun ravished the small office: windows were thrown open and fans lining the office shelves groaned and turned in the savage heat and humidity without offering relief. The window curtains fluttered, and then they hung limply as the trail of one quietly buzzing fan swept past them.

“She’s opened her eyes.”

I lay on a leather chaise lounge and I saw the ceiling fan, turning—a soft whir, and the bright afternoon sunlight coming through the blinds; then silence as the fan turned slowly away from me.

“Is the light bothering you?”

I shook my head.

“Drink this,” a well-dressed older man whispered as he bent down to offer me a glass delicately frosted with ice. I sipped. It was cold lemonade. I smiled and looked at him and swallowed the piquant liquid. He returned my smile.

“You speak English?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you sit up?”

“Yes.”

“You were not well. You had fainted and couldn’t rouse yourself.”

“I see. I feel well enough now.” I pulled myself up from the chaise lounge, and turning, put my feet on the floor, but felt dizzy, wavered and the old man steadied me as he took the glass from my hand. I lay down again. “Maybe not so well,” I murmured, smiling weakly.

“The doctor was here, you know. Says you had a shock.”

“I must have, since nothing like this has ever happened before.” I stared at him and he didn’t look away. “Would you tell me who you are and where I am?” But I knew where I was. This could only be the realtor’s office. I could see the maps of the local area from where I lay and postings of houses and estates for sale.

He sat down and again looked at me with sympathy.

“You’re at your estate agent’s offices, not far from South Cliff. I am Mr. Carlisle, the owner. I went up to South Cliff to meet you because your agent had a death in the family and couldn’t make the appointment you arranged with him.”

“I wish I could have met you there. A strange house, it looked vacant at first…”

 “It is vacant. I sent you letters, three or four over the years, inquiring if you wished to lease the gatehouse. It had been occupied until ten years ago. I wrote you, and thankfully you finally responded.”

“The main house is vacant?”

“The main house is a ruin, madam. It has never been cared for, except for the gatehouse.”

“Why…why is it a ruin?”

“Immediately before the owner died, she added a codicil to her will that it never be occupied, nor sold, nor rented, and never cared for after her death. But the gatehouse is technically a different property, due to the way the lands were assembled and the deeds drawn, and she never mentioned it, only the main house. So we have advertised it and rented it as South Cliff, the name of the main house and the estate. But even the gatehouse has not been occupied for several years. That is why I wrote you. You never received the letters?”

“Perhaps. I am out of the country for long periods of time. My attorney opens the mails when I am not home…”

“This is most curious. He never informed you of these matters?”

“Oh yes, yes. At least, that the trust could no longer support the taxes on the estate.”

The agent looked surprised.

“But that is not the case. We have sent ample funds along to you and we have received back the small payment from you for taxes. A peculiar arrangement, as we could have had the funds deposited with the town here to pay the taxes without all the fuss and bother of sending you the check and then receiving payment in return, but we assumed that you wished to make certain that your trust income was not being squandered.”

“There were funds to pay the taxes?”

“Yes, quite a bit, far more than needed. You must know that?”

He looked at me closely, studying my surprise.

“You don’t know, do you? But you did send us the tax payments?”

I nodded. I think I understood. My attorney who didn’t wish me to make this trip…and why he did not wish me to make it.

I think Mr. Carlisle also understood, perturbed by a disturbing revelation for both of us.

“There is a plan to build a new highway to link the Catskill Mountains with New York City, going down from New York State, then atop the Palisades and across the new bridge to the city. All of the great houses have been condemned for some time now and will be demolished to accommodate this highway. You will receive a check from the road authority for the assessed value of your holdings. You may not agree with the sale, but unfortunately, there is no room for negotiation in this matter.”

“But why did you not tell me all of this in your letter?”

“Because I did not wish to upset you. I handle other estates with other absentee landlords and some of these families have been furious with me. With me! You would have thought that I was personally going to raze their homes. Fortunately or not, in your instance, South Cliff has been ruined for years. The roof of the main house has fallen in and the grounds have returned to scrub.”

I was astonished. “For years?”

“There was a fire several years after the last residents left.”

“My parents.”

“Yes, your parents were the last residents, although the owner still lived in the house high up in a cramped attic room after the divorce. They had come to live there when they were married. It seems a strange arrangement.”

I said nothing. It was a strange and sad arrangement.

Perhaps you are curious about the name of the estate?”

I smiled, “Do tell me.”

“It was called South Cliff because it was a wedding gift from your grandparents who lived on the Greycliff estate, just north of the house. Greycliff was a marvelous place, hewn from the bluestone of the Palisades themselves. But that house is a ruin as well.  It never was occupied again after your grandparents built South Cliff. I believe your grandparents relocated to Southampton many years ago. Such a waste, such a beautiful home…all these homes…ruined or about to be demolished. Greycliff’s lawns are wild with overgrown hedgerows planted in the English style and tea roses climb and bloom against the cracked walls. I remember it as a boy, a strange and forbidding place, built in a typical Victorian manner, with an enormous widow’s walk surveying incomparable views of the Hudson, Manhattan and New York Harbor. South Cliff was a smaller, lighter and friendlier home, inspired by the Gothic cathedrals of France and the Tudor homes of England.”

“Yes, it is lovely.” He looked at me quizzically. “Or it was lovely, as I imagined it. Or dreamt it. “Was it a dream?” I asked myself.

“In any event, there is something else that I must speak to you about. Or perhaps this is not a good time?”

I looked at Mr. Carlisle, the dapper Mr. Carlisle, and wondered if he were in league with my attorney on these tax matters. Perhaps not. He seemed genuinely surprised. In any event, I would have my secretary broach a customs director I knew who would know how to address embezzlement.

“We will have to make arrangements to move the remains.”

“What remains?” But he didn’t have to tell me.

“Perhaps your father spoke of his first wife?”

I corrected him, “My stepfather. He told me that she had died. I had no idea where she was buried, until today.”

“Today?”

“She is interred in the orchard guarded by those strange statues. Or what is left of the orchard. Correct?”

Now Mr. Carlisle looked more than startled.

I looked away from him and brushed off a drop of moisture rolling down my cheek in the oppressive heat, watched and listened to the monotonous drone of the fan and saw and heard two bees buzzing around the casement window in the office.

A window so like that of South Cliff. There had also been the sound of bees buzzing around those strange bas relief statues of heavy, crouching women with their eyes closed, their hands cast down and their arms hanging loosely at their sides, guarding the tomb in the orchard when Elizabeth Allison had told me, “These are my lovelies…waiting for me.”



BIO

Claude Chabot has published over 20 short stories and has produced and directed four radio plays based on his own stories. One of them, an adaptation of his own ghost story, was aired on public radio worldwide. 

Claude has supported himself by writing advertising copy, promotional materials and other media.







A Review of Teresa Carmody’s
A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others

by Anne Osmer



Stories within stories. Threads that start, stop and pick back up again. Intriguing characters and lots of gossip. Teresa Carmody’s latest work of autofiction, A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others, is profound and playful, complementing her earlier works, The Reconception of Marie and Maison Femme.

In this latest narrative we follow Marie across twenty-five years, beginning in her twenties with her self-discovery as a writer and realization of queerness. Marie is finding her way in California, returning home occasionally to Michigan where she must grapple with her identity. There are tensions between her smalltown, Midwest roots and newfound communities in Los Angeles, yet there is comfort in the familiarity of home and while mind-opening at first, L.A. proves to be close-minded in its own ways. Through Marie’s ever-curious and precise lens, we undergo conflicts and events that are philosophical and existential as well as mundane and petty.

True to its autofiction designation, A Healthy Interest defies easy categorization and encompasses elements beyond simple narrative. Illustrations accompany the beginning of each chapter, depicting the stories in symbols and shapes. The paratext plays a role: The cover is pleasing in terms of colors and design but look more closely and you’ll see a book cover within a book cover within a book cover—a never-ending funhouse mirror of images, literally the embodiment of the narrative we are about to experience. Pastel-colored letters in the title of each book cover spell out the word “STORY.” The reader is alerted up front that this novel is a puzzle, with meaning to be found within and without.

But I’m making it sound serious and academic. A Healthy Interest, while deep with multiple meanings, is fun and funny—even hilarious at times. We see Marie and the characters as they navigate the insular world of their chosen literary community that at times borders on precious. This is where the theme of gossip is especially strong. A panoply of characters populate the novel. Frederick is grandiose and likely a narcissist, sitting in judgement of everyone he encounters and offering up opinions vast and humorous. (He writes literary pamphlets on acid-free paper so they will last long into the future.) Joel is new to the literary scene, outwardly confident and obnoxious and also judgmental of others; we learn he hasn’t dealt with some serious family stuff that has left him damaged and, quite frankly, unbearable. Michele, a longstanding friend of Marie’s, chooses to write about the fictive death of her father as Marie undergoes the actual death of her own father (yes, writers steal material but the timing here is insensitive at best). We watch as Marie scrambles to understand why a friend will no longer talk to her, polling her friends for their opinions on the matter. Communities and friendships form and break apart, sometimes with no discernible reason. The anecdotes are comical and true-to-life: who hasn’t experienced similar moments and wondered if we ever really grow up?

Interspersed in the loosely-related chapters of stories are unnamed and unpage-numbered mini “chapters” featuring a childhood Marie and a character name Monette. Sandwiched between ampersands, these tender vignettes depict Marie’s burgeoning sexual awakening. She later will have boyfriends and girlfriends, and eventually a wife (a questionable character who simply must take a trip to Paris just as Marie begins a first round of chemo for breast cancer). The Monette interludes harken back to a less complicated, yet foundational, time in Marie’s life, where the discoveries of childhood are free of the detritus and prejudices of adulthood. These interludes serve as a refreshing counterbalance to the more fraught adult chapters.

Intentionality is everywhere in this narrative. The language is precise and compact: every word matters. Carmody likes working under self and externally-imposed constraints, and while I don’t profess to have identified all (or even most) of them, constraints figure throughout the novel, including the shifting points of view, the Marie/Monette interludes, and the various rules of the chapters,  for example one that describes a literary event where spectators participate in an animal theme. Another chapter features seven days of finding trash and an inverse of the seven deadly sins as structural elements.

Gossip is also everywhere. I couldn’t help wondering how events in the narrative “really” played out, and whether the characters are identifiable in real life, either by others or themselves, and what their reactions might be. This dynamic—of conjecture, and even embarrassment for the characters-as-real-people, plays into the omnipresent theme of gossip, one that serves as a throughline for the novel. The effect is one of depth and surface all at once, which are, of course, fascinating attributes of gossip itself.

While I’m sure I don’t understand all the nuanced meanings in this novel, here is what I do know: A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others is captivating, replete with writing and characters that feel vulnerable and true.



BIO



Anne Osmer is an MFA in Writing candidate at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her writing has appeared in Promethean and Peninsula Writers.







BOOK REVIEW: The Story of Art Without Men
by Katy Hessel

London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 2022. 512 pp.; 120 color ills. $49
Hardcover. ISBN 978-1529151145.


Reviewed by Mahshid Gorjian


Abstract

This review examines Katy Hessel’s book The Story of Art Without Men, which is a revisionist work of art history that focuses on the artistic achievements of women over five hundred years. While Hessel’s work is an important addition to female art history, the review talks about how much the book adds to the canon instead of taking it apart. The review looks at how Hessel deals with gender, Eurocentrism, and structural critiques of art history by putting her work in the context of important feminist art historical texts. In the end, this review places Hessel’s work in the context of larger discussions about how art history is being rewritten and what that means for how research is done.

Keywords: feminist art history, art historiography, canon, intersectionality, institutional critique

Introduction: A Necessary Corrective to the Canon?

Western art history has long been seen as the story of male genius, with the contributions of women and other minority creators being actively hidden. The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel tries to fill this gap by showing women’s artistic achievements over five hundred years from a different point of view. The book investigates the institutional structures that determine the value of art and questions the structural barriers that have historically kept women from achieving consideration.

Hessel’s work is meant to be read in contrast to classics like E. H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art (1950), an important work that didn’t include any women artists at first and only had one by the sixteenth version. Hessel says that this lack is not a mistake but rather a normal part of a field that has valued male-centered stories over more diverse historiography. In this way, her work is like the early feminist contributions to art history made by Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, and Whitney Chadwick. But it stands out because it has a bigger effect and is easier for most people to understand.

The Story of Art Without Men is an important addition to the history of female art, but its methods, length, and main ideas need to be carefully thought through. Is Hessel’s way of looking at things revisionist, or is it still limited by the rules of standard art history? Does the book take gender into account, or does it support the Eurocentrism it criticizes? This review looks at Hessel’s work in the bigger picture of female art history, pointing out both its positive and negative points.

Methodological Interventions: Feminist Art History and the Canon

Hessel’s main point that women aren’t included in the canon of art history because of systematic discrimination, not a lack of artistic ability, is like Nochlin’s famous essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971). Nochlin asserted that societal factors such as training, funding, and institutional support shape creative greatness. Hessel emphasizes this concept by providing a timeline of female artists excluded from conventional art histories.

But her method is different from that of researchers like Griselda Pollock, whose book Differencing the Canon (1999) calls for a basic breakdown of the ideologies that define creative talent. Hessel, on the other hand, holds to the structure of traditional art history, which is based on events and movements. It’s unclear whether she is destroying the canon by putting artists in known times like the Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, and Modernism or whether she is just adding female figures to make it better.

Hessel acknowledges the unfair treatment of women in art schools, but she fails to fully address the philosophical reasons for this. So, Rozsika Parker’s 1984 book The Subversive Stitch looks at how “craft” and “decorative arts” were seen as activities for women, which kept male lines in the industry. Hessel talks about these past events, but she doesn’t talk about how feminist studies today are still challenging these differences. For a more radical method, they might have investigated how economic and imperial forces have shaped the value of art, considering both who is included and how art’s worth is established.

Modernism and Gender: Participation or Confinement?

One of the most intriguing parts of the book is Hessel’s look at modernism. She disagrees with the idea that modernist artists were only creative when it came to new ideas. To show this, she talks about the work of early modernist artists like Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Suzanne Valadon. But a lot of the time, she talks about these artists as if they were responding to modernist style instead of creating it.

For example, when she talks about Impressionism, she talks about how gender roles kept women painting domestic scenes. But she doesn’t go into detail about how female artists changed the movement’s visual language. In her 1998 book Bodies of Modernity, Tamar Garb says that women Impressionists came up with new ways to show things that were different from traditional cultural standards and didn’t just reflect their limited circumstances. In the same way, Hessel recognizes how important women were in Surrealism, but she doesn’t say enough about how sexist the movement was. Leonora Carrington, Claude Cahun, and Lee Miller are known as important people, but more research is needed to fully understand how their gender, power, and self-representation affected each other.

Conclusion: Expanding but Not Dismantling the Canon

The Story of Art Without Men is an important addition to feminist art history because it expands the standard and brings to light the works of women artists who were not previously known. Hessel’s work is very different from the strict rules of art history. She can put together a lot of different kinds of information into a story that makes sense and is enjoyable to read. This is a great resource for both experts and regular people.

The book does succeed in adding to the standard, but it fails to destroy it. Hessel’s reliance on standard periods and movement-based analysis makes me wonder if she is offering a new way of writing history or just adding to what is already there. Also, the fact that she is Eurocentric and doesn’t think about racism, colonialism, or intersectionality shows that there is still a lot of work to be done to make art history truly varied.

Ultimately, we should view The Story of Art Without Men as a starting point rather than a comprehensive solution. Even as the field changes, the question still stands: can we picture an art history that is fundamentally different from the one we know today, rather than just one “without men”?

Endnotes

  1. Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
  2. Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (London: Routledge, 1999).
  3. Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: Women’s Press, 1984).
  4. Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men (London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 2022), 157.
  5. Tamar Garb, Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998).
  6. Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, 412.

Bibliography (Selected Works Mentioned in the Review)

Garb, Tamar. Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998.
Jones, Amelia. Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: Women’s Press, 1984.
Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. London: Routledge, 1999.



BIO

Mahshid Gorjian is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Denver. As a Book Reviewer for Leonardo Journal (MIT Press), she provides critical and insightful analyses of art history publications. Her expertise spans fine arts, digital media, and urban studies, bridging traditional and emerging artistic methodologies.







Cutthroat

by Nicholas Godec


April 30

            All thanks to last night’s law school gala I didn’t want to attend, I’ve got an interview tomorrow with Drakovitch & Associates. It was an over-the-top Saturday evening—I arrived to find a red carpet that ran from the sidewalk to the two hulking metal doors, which were swung wide open. The uniformed security detail checked to confirm everyone on the list, adding to the air of thick exclusivity. The air was thick indeed. NYU Law spared no expense. And no shame. I’ve just made my last tuition payment, have $200K in student loans, and have already received a letter in the mail requesting a charitable donation for the future class. Unbelievable. All that money and not a job to show for it. Well, we’ll see what Drakovitch wants from me.

            Inside, the space was massive, with a looming ceiling and walls that seemed miles away. The room was packed, full pandemonium well underway. It was only eight thirty p.m. when I entered, and already most people were either drunk or well on their way there. I had done a few lines before entering, just to stay on my toes.

            Flood lights painted the room in NYU’s deep purple. Ornate chandeliers refracted purple on the pool of fresh bodies. Many round dining tables made a circle around the dance floor. Waiters buzzed around taking drink orders, and there was a long line of takers for a photobooth well equipped with jumbo cowboy and top hats, oversized plastic glasses, and clip on bowties.

            Everyone, in their tuxes and gowns, looked happy, sexy, and successful. I felt like a phony. Probably the only one without a job in the room. I saw Matt and my friends clustered in a corner with some of the girls from our class. They were doing shots and high fiving while grabbing the pigs in blankets that floated by. Matt saw me and signaled me over. I joined them, putting on a cheerful mask as best I could.

            Stuck at the edge of the group watching everyone partying, I headed to the bathroom for another bump.

            I had a slight, energetic buzz when I rejoined the guys. Matt was laughing and moving closer to a dark-haired woman who looked a few years older than the rest of the class.

“John, meet Natasha,” Matt said. “She’s very interested in speaking with you.”

            “Natasha,” I said. Red lips contrasting with her pale face. A black, form-hugging dress. A petite and precise frame.

            “Hello, John,” she said with perfect enunciation, but an accent that sounded Eastern European. She had a reserved smile as if she were keeping a secret. “I was just hearing about you. I’m Natasha Vondra, senior associate at Drakovitch & Associates. Pleasure.”

            Her grip was firm, her hand cool to the touch.

            “Drakovitch … hmm, I can’t say I’ve heard of them. What brings you here? Are you an alum?”

            “No, no. I schooled in Vienna. I’m here hunting for new blood on behalf of the firm. We need a new junior associate, as one of our old ones has moved on. And I’m here because Drakovitch wants the best.” Her hand gestured expansively to the room.

            “I told her you were the smartest guy I know,” Matt chimed in.

            “Yeah, a real tortured genius,” Derrick added, causing Matt to subtly elbow his ribs.

            Natasha smiled. “Smartest at NYU Law, liked by your peers.” She stepped closer. “Lucky for us, and lucky for you, maybe.”

            She extended a card held between thin fingers.

            “Call me on Monday. We’ll see if an interview makes sense.”

            I took the card and looked at it. Park Avenue. Midtown.

            “Okay, will do,” I said looking up, but she was gone. I couldn’t see her anywhere in the packed room.

            I didn’t stay much longer.

            This morning, I called Natasha after a couple of iced coffees and a bacon, egg and cheese. I told her about my background growing up in Hudson, New York. How I worked summers as a caddy at the local golf club. I left out how my mom took off in ninth grade, how I felt embarrassed by my dad, who managed a pharmaceutical assembly line. I caddied for Mr. Heint and his lawyer Mr. Gasi. Both drove the same type of Benz.

            After asking where I interned, Natasha asked why I didn’t get an offer from Carson & Fielding. I told her that the group they were hiring into, their environmental desk, wasn’t up my alley. The truth was the associate couldn’t stand me. Anyway, I’m not sure she bought the environmental bit, but she still wants me there tomorrow at nine to speak with Victor Renfield, the hiring manager.

            She went on to explain their practice. They focused on trust and estate matters. Their clientele, a limited number of Europeans, were, by the sound of it, obscenely wealthy. They all had extensive assets in the United States.

May 01

            It was a quiet Tuesday morning when I arrived for my interview. The building was gray art deco, its lines severe and shadowy. I entered. There was an elevator bank to upstairs offices on the left and a frosted-glass door, with an intercom, to Drakovitch & Associates on my right. I hit the button.

            Natasha answered, her voice resonant. She buzzed me in.

            The door buzzed and I entered and walked down a hallway that led to a waiting room. A large wooden door on the opposite side of the room appeared to lead further into the building. I tried the door, but it was locked. I took a seat on an aged leather couch and waited.

            Moments later the door clicked, and there was Natasha, wearing a well-tailored black pantsuit.

            “John, come this way,” she said. She wasn’t smiling at me. I assumed she was an all-business-at-the-office type. I followed her through the door and down another hallway. The walls were made of stone masonry, more like a medieval castle than a Park Avenue building, and the floor was a seamless maroon carpet. I walked past old paintings. I’m not the most well versed in art, but old masters came to mind. Everything was cast in dim light from gilded wall sconces.

            “The building design is unique,” I said to fill the quiet as we walked.

            “Yes,” Natasha said.

            Must’ve cost a fortune, I thought.

            The passageway was narrow. I had no choice but to trail Natasha. We walked past frosted-glass doors; each door had a keycard panel to open it.

            “Mr. Renfield’s office is just at the end of the hall.”

            When stopped in front of a door, she knocked. “May we come in?”

            The door clicked, and we entered.

            A gaunt older man in a gray pinstripe suit stood in the middle of the room. I had a good sense, judging by his face and neck, of what his skeleton looked like. His suit sagged limply on his bony frame. He had thin white hair.

            His grin revealed a single gold front tooth.

            “Thank you, Natasha,” he said. She left the room.

            “And you must be John,” he said hoarsely, extending a brittle hand that felt filled with air when I took it. “I’m Vic Renfield. I’m pleased to meet you. Please take a seat.”

            He gestured to the chair across from his desk. I took a seat opposite him. He asked about where I grew up, my classes, my ambitions. I wondered if he sensed my hunger. Then he quizzed me on international, corporate, and estate law.

            “Close enough,” he’d said, when I explained my understanding of the tax treatment of estates held by foreign entities headquartered within and without the EU. I was relieved that it sounded like I knew something.

            He explained that they expected to hire two junior associates, me and someone named Colby, though they expected only one would remain after a three-month trial.

            At the end of our conversation Mr. Renfield reclined in his chair and stared blankly toward the frosted-glass door. “I’ve been here a long time. A long, long time. I’ve served Alex and Drakovitch & Associates for decades. Many years ago I was at a crossroads. My career, my life—I had to decide. You’re there now. What you decide will soon define you, so you better be able to live with your decision.” His mouth broadened to a wide grin.

            He moved to stand, again extending his nothing hand. “You’ve got the job, if you want it. Only accept if you will do whatever it takes. Commitment, loyalty, and most of all, discretion. That’s all we require.”

            I asked about comp. They agreed to pay me what a typical third year associate makes. I accepted immediately.

            “I’m all in,” I replied.

August 21

            Today was my first day. I got home thirty minutes ago. It’s ten to eight and I’m splayed on the couch. I feel dead. It was a strange day.

            I got to the office shortly before eight. Mr. Renfield was waiting for me at his desk. He looked exactly as he did during my interview.

            The first few hours of the day I signed the most elaborate NDAs I’ve ever seen. Nothing like these showed up in the classroom or at my internship. If I spoke of firm matters to anyone outside, I’d be in hot water.

            I was given a keycard to an office next door to Mr. Renfield’s. My keycard only opened three doors, the one to Drakovitch & Associates from the building lobby, the one from the reception room to the offices, and the one to my office. Before leading me into my new office, Mr. Renfield stopped me.

            “Just remember, yours is the office opposite the painting of Saturn devouring his children.”

            I looked at the painting, in which a wide-eyed figure, grotesque and bloody-mouthed, held the decapitated body of an infant.

            “Whoa, that’s pretty extreme,” I said.

            “Saturn got it right,” Mr. Renfield said, staring at the painting wistfully. “Stay alive at all costs.”

            An immense office. A large dark-oak desk. A couch opposite the desk and two worn leather-backed chairs that seemed to match the couch in the reception area.

            “I love the desk,” I said.

            “Yeah, they don’t give those out to juniors at the bulge brackets, do they?”

            No breakroom at the place. I met Colby, the other junior associate, in passing in the hallway, a gangly redhead who didn’t bother making small talk.

            “You’ll start on the Varga account,” Mr. Renfield said. “Mr. Varga is purchasing a majority interest in an elder care operation with a presence across California. He’s to be a silent owner behind his trust, or trusts, I should say. There’s much to draft, much to file.”

            Mr. Renfield dropped a stack of papers on my desk, old legal agreements covering Mr. Varga’s interests. I had to draft new contracts to arrange the purchasing entities. The account needed multiple NDAs, purchase agreements; each one I had to write from scratch.

            I’m nowhere near done. But I’m finally working in the real world. And I can smell my paycheck on the way.

September 12

            I’m finally home. I worked really hard today constantly trying to stay half a step ahead of Mr. Renfield’s deadlines. I’ve been learning a ton. Renfield and I usually came in around the same time in the morning, and then stayed until late. Often he dropped assignments on my desk as late as nine p.m., and some nights I didn’t eat dinner until midnight.

            At noon I walked out of my office to go to lunch. Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to walk beyond Mr. Renfield’s office, deeper into the building. I took a turn to the left. In the long hallway, there were two doors: one of frosted glass to my right, and another facing me at the very end, an imposing door with a thick iron ring.

            I set my hand on it and pulled. It wouldn’t budge.

            I jumped after I heard a loud thud in the office adjacent to the iron door. It pounded again. Then again, this time with the shadow of what looked like a hand pressed against the frosted glass.

            “Hello? Is someone in there?” I shouted. I tried my keycard. Access denied. I pulled on the handle. Nothing. I yelled over my shoulder, “Somebody help! I need help over here! Someone!—”

            A hard yank on my forearm pulled me away. I turned to see Natasha scowling at me.  

            “Natasha, quick! Whoever is in there is in trouble.”

            “No one is in there.” She grabbed my wrist. “You shouldn’t be back here.”

            “But—ouch!”

            She pulled me away, back toward my office. She was freakishly strong.

            “Natasha, please! I’m telling you—”

            “Shut up! Do you want to get fired? Because that’s what Alex will do,” she said, “if he learns you wandered farther than you should. I’ve got a master key. I’ll look. You just get back to work.”

            We were at my office where she left me. Back at my desk, I unbuttoned my sleeve to find red marks where her fingers had grasped. I look at them now and they still sting when I touch them.

September 13

            “Hey. Turns out you were right.” Natasha said to me from the reception room when I arrived this morning. A janitor somehow got in and the door wouldn’t unlock. He’s fine. Was just a bit startled.”

            She was dressed, as usual, in black. I thought of the handprint pressing against the glass like a plea for help.

            “Good, I’m glad to hear it.”

            But why didn’t he say anything?

            Mr. Renfield came into my office this afternoon.

            “How’s the purchase agreement progressing?” he asked.

            “It’s good. There are a ton of provisions, but I’m almost done.”

            “Good, because the Vargas, along with a few other of the firm’s clients, are forming a consortium to buy as many elder care facilities as they can get ahold of in the Mid- and Southwest. We need to execute their buys quietly via a number of shell companies to maintain their anonymity. We’re going to be exceptionally busy for a while, until these deals are done.”

            Mr. Renfield’s thin white hair was tightly gelled back but frayed in places like a worn rope.

            “Here,” Mr. Renfield said dropping a large file box on my desk. “This should get you started. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

            I felt a pit in my stomach and was suddenly lightheaded. “I’m on it, Mr. Renfield.”

            “Good. By the end of week, please.”

            I loaded up on Red Bulls and got to work. I didn’t leave my desk for several hours. I ran out to pick up Chinese for dinner when I became aware of how hungry I was. I brought it back to my desk and kept at it. I was barely making a dent. I had no idea how I’d finish by end of week. I dreaded the thought of being rewarded with more of the same. This was the job. At that moment, I hated it.

            Deep into redlining a draft agreement, I heard some shuffling from the hallway. I got up and opened the door to see Natasha, along with three men who appeared ragged, each wearing layers of dirty clothes. Two had unkempt beards. Their faces looked weathered, their eyes absent.

            “This way gentlemen,” Natasha said with a smile, that same smile she wore when I first met her at the gala. “We’ll take care of you.”

            “Hey, Natasha,” I said, pulling her focus away. “What’s going on?”

            “Hey, John,” she said warmly, her face glowing from the wall sconces. “Meet some of our newest clients.” She took a step toward me, her mouth at my ear. “Pro bono.”

            Her cool, sweet aroma cut through the stench the three men carried.

            “Right this way,” she said to the men. “You best get back to it, John,” she said with a wink, and continued down the hall.

            I went back to my desk. 11:07 p.m. What was Natasha even doing here? Did she work this late often? I knew the bulge brackets overloaded their associates, but this was insane.

            I wondered about those ragged men. What were they doing here? Pro bono … must be for some sort of tax break. I sank back into the latest agreement I’d been reviewing, consoled by the paycheck I knew was accruing as I worked.

             I cracked a Red Bull, probably my thousandth of the day. I worked and worked, and my back ached, but I was locked in. Hours passed.

            A rap at my door, then a click and it opened. Natasha. She swayed slightly and was smiling. A genuine smile like I’d never seen her wear. Her face was flushed as if she’d been drinking.

            “Hey, John,” she said, leaning on the wall.

            “Hey. Still here?” I looked at the clock—2:39 a.m. What the fuck was I doing? I decided I’d pack it up.

            “Yes of course. The work never stops. I think you’re starting to see that.”

            She walked toward me. “Why don’t you relax a little bit.” She ruffled my hair. “I’m leaving. I suggest you leave soon too.”

            “I will soon. I’ve just got to finish this up,” I said.

            “I do like a man who works hard,” she said, then kissed me on the mouth. Her hands were on my face. Then her lips trailed down and landed on my neck. She kissed again, even nibbled.

            Her nibbles tickled. She pulled my hair and I flinched, but that didn’t stop me from reaching down and running my hands over her dress to her calves, then back up again, teasing the dress up, bit by bit. I turned toward her and pulled her on top of me.

            “Naughty Johnny,” she said. I kissed her mouth hard and plunged my hand between her legs. She purred and dug her nails into me, cutting through my shirt and, I was sure, drawing blood.

            She wasn’t wearing anything under her dress. I unzipped. Then I was inside her and exploded.

            “I’m sorry. I—”

            “It’s okay. I can’t get pregnant.”

            “That’s not what I meant. You were … I couldn’t help myself.”

            She stared at me.

            I felt a chill run down my spine. She got off my lap and fixed her dress.

            “This never happened,” she said, then left without a goodbye.

September 20

            The last couple of days have been a blur. I eventually finished working through the box of documents. Mr. Renfield was ecstatic when I dropped it on his desk.

            “Good work. Now let’s see if we can speed it up a bit.” Renfield looked more tired than usual.

            He handed me another box. I looked at the overstuffed files, bigger than the last one, and felt my guts twist. The last box hurt. Not just mentally, but physically. My back and neck ached. I felt the lightheaded dizziness from excessive caffeine.

            I opened the box and pulled out the first document. Started working on it. Slow and painful.

            Part of me was hoping for a return visit from Natasha.

September 27

            The agreements … the multitudinous corporate entities … shadow entities within shell companies wrapped in shadows. Elite obfuscation. Law school never taught this. But it was coming together in cryptographic beauty.

            The Vargas family, as of earlier this afternoon, owns shares in a consortium quietly worth more than many public companies. They’re smart to focus on elder care. It’s a profitable, booming industry with strong expected growth.

            I was starting to like it here, even with the grueling hours. I often stayed close to midnight, while Colby checked out every day at seven p.m. on the nose.

October 07

            Natasha breezed into my office. I hadn’t seen her since what “didn’t happen” happened. “Come. Mr. Drakovitch wants to see you.”

            We walked down the hall deeper into the building. We took a left, then another left. Then we were at the terrific iron door I’d seen before, which now lay open, revealing a spiral stone staircase that led down to, I assumed, a basement level. To my surprise, the stairs were lit by actual torchlight. I asked myself if I was dreaming. I hadn’t slept much. But I felt the temperature drop (I don’t think you can feel temperature in dreams), the chill raising goosebumps on my flesh.

            Down the staircase, a hallway led to a large open office. There was an imposing, ornate, dark mahogany desk surrounded by shelves of books on the walls. Beside the desk, a globe rotated on a gilded column. Mr. Drakovitch stood behind the desk, towering over Mr. Renfield, who stood close by.

            Mr. Drakovitch wore a blue pinstripe suit, the bluest I’d ever seen. His smile was disarming. He winked and took my hand and called me sport.

            I noticed that Natasha’s face melted in adoration.

            “Our man of the hour,” Mr. Drakovitch said with a soft Eastern European accent. “Renfield. Leave us.”

            “Yes sir, Mr. Drakovitch. Right away. And thank you, sir.”

            “Settling in, sport?” He asked, extending his hand. He shook my hand, slowly tightening his grip. His blue-gray eyes dazzled despite the dim lighting. He continued to hold that first smile, a crooked smile, as if he were scoffing at the world, as if he knew a joke no one else was in on.

            “Yes, sir. So far, it’s been great. I’m learning a ton from Mr. Renfield, and Natasha has made sure I have, uh, everything I need.”

            Mr. Drakovitch looked me over. He nodded to Natasha, who stood quietly by the entrance.

            “Terrific. I thought you’d fit in. Please, John, sit. Make yourself comfortable.”

            I sat and sank into the plush leather. Drakovitch remained standing, leaning at a tilt on the bookshelf behind his desk, crossing one leg over the other. His eyes never left me.

            “I’ve heard good things about you,” Drakovitch said, his voice low and melodic. Natasha speaks highly of your … dedication.” He continued to study me. “And I know Renfield doesn’t offer praise lightly. In addition to delivering good work, he says you have adjusted to our odd schedule here. You dig into the work with vigor. I have just arrived from Paris, and had to meet our new star.”

            I shifted in my seat under the weight of Mr. Drakovitch’s gaze. I was charmed, but underneath I felt a slight unease. “Thank you, Mr. Drakovitch. I try to give everything I have.”

            “We appreciate it. I appreciate it.” He straightened and walked around his desk. He was close and smelled like smoke and wine. “You know, John”—his voice dropped almost to a whisper—“the world … it’s filled with unbelievable possibility. Leaning in here can take you far.”

            Behind the thrill of his praise, I felt a knot of fear in my stomach. “Thank you, Mr. Drakovitch. I’m really loving it so far. I’m excited to keep digging in.”

            Mr. Drakovitch chuckled. “I’m sure you are. You remind me of myself as a young chap just starting out. I had nothing but an insatiable hunger. Eventually it brought me here, to this country.”

            Mr. Drakovitch walked toward me and rested his hand on my shoulder. I looked up into those smoky blue eyes, eyes that looked aged beyond his chiseled face, eyes that seemed to see me for what I was, that accepted me as I was. “I’m all in, Mr. Drakovitch.”

            Mr. Drakovitch squeezed my shoulder.

            “Good boy.” He straightened, adjusted the cuffs of his suit. He stepped back and pointed to the door. “Now, go and make us proud. Natasha will see you out.”

October 13

            I ran into Natasha this morning as I was entering the office. She was sitting in reception, waiting. “Hey, what’s up?” I said.

            She looked at me flatly. “Hi.”

            “I’ve been thinking of you lately,” I said. It was the truth. “Want to grab a coffee later?”

“            No, no. I have to work,” she said. She looked down into the notebook in her lap, letting me know our brief chat was over.

            Mr. Renfield popped into my office that afternoon.

            “Hey John. I’ll only be but a minute. I wanted to do a quick performance check-in.” Mr. Renfield sat in the chair opposite me at my desk.

            Performance check-in? I felt a shiver run up my spine.

            “Look, you’ve been doing swell. We still on track with the purchase agreements?”

            “Yes sir, Mr. Renfield. On track and going strong.”

            “Ha, I figured.” He reclined in the chair. “How are you settling in?”

            I felt myself sit a bit straighter. “Great, Mr. Renfield. It’s hard work, but I’m enjoying it.”

            “We work pretty late here. How’s that going for you?”

            “Good. I mean, I’m a legal associate, I’d expect to work late anywhere.”

            There was a pause. He eyed me closely. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Just like anywhere. Good. You’re doing alright. Keep your head down and stay the course.” With that he left.

            That evening, I walked to the bathroom and heard low voices. I quietly inched forward without rounding the corner.

            “Look, I’m sorry you’re sick. But that’s not up to me.” Natasha’s voice.

            “I understand that,” I heard Mr. Renfield reply. “But I’m saying it’s time. You all need to keep your promise and not let me perish into obscurity.”

            I slunk back to my desk, not wanting to wander into whatever that was. Mr. Renfield, sick? I wondered what promise he was referring to.

October 23

            The late hours and lack of sleep persisted, but I didn’t care. I cruised through setting up the necessary contracts for the other families involved in the consortium. The sums of money going to acquire these companies were staggering. I felt I was on the inside, in the know.

            This afternoon, Mr. Renfield came into my office after reviewing the latest batch of contracts I’d delivered.

            “You’re ready, and I can’t be more thrilled,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this, to find someone who could take my place. Mr. Drakovitch made it clear that was necessary for me to get my … um … payout. I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

            I wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he retiring? I felt alert, excited. Was I getting promoted? Already?

            “I hope you’re not going anywhere,” I replied.

            “No, no. Not going anywhere. Sticking around. Just moving up. And taking you with me.”

October 31

            Yesterday, I finished the complete legal setup of the consortium, executed the last remaining purchase agreements for the elder care companies, the numerous shell entities, with ultimate legal ownership hidden in the hands of these powerful European families. We finished three weeks ahead of Mr. Renfield’s timeline. Mr. Renfield hummed and walked with extra pep the few times I saw him.

            The rest of the day was light. I was packing up to go home when Natasha came into my office.

            “Great work, John. You’ve exceeded expectations. Tomorrow night we’re having a reception honoring you and Mr. Renfield for securing this deal. It’ll start at eleven p.m. here at the office.”

            She left before I could respond. Exceeded expectations played on repeat in my mind. But a reception at eleven p.m.? I’d come to expect weird practices from the firm, late-night client visits and locked doors. The firm’s conventions were bizarre, but the checks came in and I was becoming a dangerous attorney. I pushed the reception out of my mind.

            I left the office at five, knowing I’d be coming back at night. I went for a run in Central Park, something I hadn’t done in months. It was chilly out, but as I ran, I saw plenty of twentysomething women heading to Halloween parties in skimpy costumes. Plenty of nurses, schoolgirls, devils, police officers. Some of the women were gorgeous. But every beautiful, short-tailed devil made me think of Natasha. Despite her terse and standoffish manner, something about her was so mesmerizing that these other women paled by comparison.

            As I ran, I realized I looked forward to getting back to the office. Drakovitch & Associates had become the place in the world that excited me most. I looked forward to the next monumental task Mr. Renfield would throw at me. I looked forward to Natasha. The sun was retreating, casting long dark shadows underneath a crimson sky.

            Matt from NYU texted me earlier that he was throwing a party in his loft downtown and assured me there’d be plenty of “talent.” I texted him I’d be at the office late. I had no desire to go to his party—it felt frivolous, a waste of time.

            I got back to the office at ten to eleven p.m. Natasha was there, waiting in the reception in the same sexy dress she wore when I first met her at the gala.

            “Good evening, John. Right this way.”

            I followed her until we reached the imposing iron door. We entered and went down the torchlit stone staircase, passed through Mr. Drakovitch’s office and entered a hidden hallway that was revealed behind a bookshelf that hinged from the wall. The hallway was long, damp, and dark, lit only by scattered torches. The hallway opened into a cavernous, circular room with a high stone ceiling.

            I looked around, then made out Mr. Renfield’s limp, bloody body on the floor in the middle of the room. He was bleeding profusely from the neck. Mr. Drakovitch towered over the body as if he were examining a curiosity.

            “Ah, my protégé,” Mr. Renfield said weakly from his pool of blood. “On time, as usual.”

            Mr. Drakovitch looked up and presented me with a warm, bloody smile. “Welcome to the party, old sport. We’re just making Mr. Renfield here into a permanent member of the Drakovitch clan.”

            I was frozen in place. I realized I wasn’t breathing and gasped. My chest pounded. The smell of iron hung in the air.

            “What … what’s happening?!” I finally managed. “Is this some Halloween gag?” But I thought I knew the answer.

            “No. This is no joke, my boy. Mr. Renfield has been a most exceptional servant. He’s sick, his cancer has advanced, so we had to accelerate his promotion. The members of our firm, the valued ones, are like family. Mr. Renfield, with your help, is receiving the gift of eternal life. He’s earned it.”

Mr. Renfield looked up from his puddle of blood. “This future can be yours one day, too,” Renfield said quietly.

I gasped again, I was breathing hard and my chest pounded and ants crawled under my skin.

“Finally, I’m glad this life will be over soon.” Mr. Renfield said barely audibly. “I’m ready to feel good again; to live forever. Let’s get on with it. I don’t feel too hot right now.”

“Okay. Moving right along. John, you may recognize Mr. Colby,” Mr. Drakovitch said, retrieving my red-haired peer from the shadows. Mr. Colby’s eyes were bulging. Tears and snot dripped down his face. “It’s not that Mr. Colby underperformed. It’s more that you ate his lunch. Now, Mr. Renfield will need to feed on him to complete his transition.”

I remembered my interview with Mr. Renfield, during which he said only one of us would remain after three months.

“Oh, and you’re getting made permanent, with a significant pay bump. Exciting, right? That is, once you do the honors and earn our trust.”

Still holding Colby, Mr. Drakovitch moved forward and held out a shaving knife, which I took without thought. I stared at the sharp edge of the blade, the handle resting loosely in my hand. I couldn’t clasp it firmly—my hand was shaking.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, but I knew the answer.

“You’re smart. Don’t ask stupid questions,” Mr. Drakovitch replied.

“Go on,” rasped Mr. Renfield, crumpled and bloodied on the floor. “Do your job.”

I couldn’t move. I stared at the knife, balanced in the center of my open palm. My eye reflected to me in the side of the blade.

Did I have a choice? I looked at Colby. Mr. Drakovitch would demand new blood, one way or the other.

Colby kept crying. He tried to scream, was pleading behind his gag.

“John, it’s a bloody world we live in,” Mr. Drakovitch said. “Best act fast, sport. Or Mr. Renfield will die. He’s waited a long time for this.”

I closed my fist around the knife, tried to will my body to move.

“Do it now,” Mr. Drakovitch said. “We’re out of time.”

Renfield appeared unconscious. The pool of blood was now stretching to our feet.

“Do it if you want to remain with Drakovitch & Associates.” Mr. Drakovitch’s eyes narrowed. “Do it if you want to remain. It’s either Colby or you.”

I forced myself to meet Colby’s eyes.

“Sorry man,” I said as I slowly moved toward him.

He writhed as best he could while Mr. Drakovitch held him.

“Here, I’ll make it easy for you.” Mr. Drakovitch held Colby’s head sideways, exposing Colby’s neck. Colby’s artery was bulging.

I cut his throat. It was surprising; the skin easily gave way. He went limp and crumpled to the ground.

Natasha came forward, grabbed Colby’s arm and dragged the corpse to where Mr. Renfield lay. She licked blood off her fingers.

Mr. Drakovitch came toward me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Well done,” he said.

“Welcome to the team,” Natasha said, and added, “we’ve got you now.”

            Mr. Renfield woke and began licking Colby’s blood. Renfield’s face grew plump and rosy. It was as if he were sprouting muscle. Thick white hair grew, replacing the thin white wisps. As his strength picked up, Mr. Renfield found Colby’s throat, sunk his teeth in and continued to drink, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

            “Come. Let’s let the man enjoy his first feed in peace,” Drakovitch said. “He’ll be here awhile.”

            “Yes, nothing like it,” Natasha said. “You never forget your first time.”

            There was cheese and charcuterie waiting for us in Mr. Drakovitch’s office. “All for you, I’m afraid, but enjoy,” Mr. Drakovitch said. Natasha and Mr. Drakovitch made small talk around me. I ate what was on the plate in front of me; it felt like the safe thing to do.

            After some time, Mr. Renfield joined us. He was beaming. He saw me, rushed over and hoisted me in the air with a hug.

            “What did I tell you?” Mr. Renfield said, patting me on the back. “Our boy John is a stand-up guy! Officially, welcome to the firm.”

            I’m home now, staring at the white ceiling. I can only see red. Colby and Mr. Renfield’s blood mixed, my hand on the knife, cutting, their splayed bodies, one drinking the other.



BIO

Nick Godec writes poetry and short fiction, with works appearing in a variety of journals, including Sierra Nevada Review, El Portal, Grey Sparrow, and MORIA Literary Magazine. He has a B.A. in history and an MBA from Columbia University and works in finance in New York City. Nick enjoys spending time with his wife, Julia, and their miniature pinscher, Emma.







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