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What Cannot Remain

by Tessa Case


It was late summer. Heavy, black clouds consumed the days, weeping furiously onto the sizzling pavement before parting for an even angrier sun that left the air thick and sweltering. Clara, however, felt twenty pounds lighter in the muggy twilight, and she thought to tell her mother of this feeling. She thought to tell her mother that maybe it was the weighty silence in the house that made her feel as if she occupied too much space.

The green bulbs of fireflies flickered, radioactive against the rose and lavender sunset. A handful of storm clouds remained. Lurid oranges and reds bled out from their edges. Clara wondered if that light—neon, luminescent—was the pollution everyone said made the sky so pretty. And how often, then, were the things that killed us beautiful?

Her grease-slicked hair, swept into a lazy ponytail, pulled at her scalp. Clara ran her fingers through it, loosening the strands, hoping it would make it look less flat against her head. She felt her cheeks get hot and wondered why she had to be embarrassed about being embarrassed, why she had to care so much about her hair, or the smell of tender garlic oozing from her armpits, or the way her body shape-shifted before her eyes when no one looked at her. Heat built up in the empty space between herself and the cocoon of her father’s sweatshirt she couldn’t take off. Her thighs brushed lightly against each other as she walked, and she winced, flinching away from the invisible stares of all the people who did not surround her.

Such was the benefit and the curse of the neighborhood: it was just outside the city, scattered with apartment complexes, historic homes being perpetually renovated, or the shells of these former historic homes, their insides torn out and sliced into twos, threes or fours. College students and young professionals littered the streets, droning along in their shiny cars to and from wherever it was they thought they had to be.

Clara was inconsequential to them. No one ever saw her—or for that matter, her brother—as if these afterimage strangers didn’t know how to act around child bodies, couldn’t remember ever having one, and so pretended as if they didn’t exist at all.

A sigh brushed along Clara’s teeth, and she slipped her phone out from her short’s pocket. The blank notification screen stared back at her. She’d wanted to be alone; she’d been certain that was exactly what she wanted, but it hadn’t stopped her from slamming the door on her way out, and it didn’t stop the sour twist of her stomach every time she didn’t get a notification. The phone felt heavy, her arms felt heavy, it all felt heavy, so Clara sat down. Her fingernail clicked against the glass screen before she tucked her phone back into her pocket, swore she wouldn’t look at it again until she got home.

The historic homes loomed around her. The sun, lowered now, louring, cast them into silhouette, only recognizable by their large columns, the wrap-around porches, or the curved groove of tiled roofs. Soft-white light crept out from the windows, breaking up the black space where facades should have been, casting its glow on potted plants and stacks of recyclables and creaking chains of porch swings.

Clara had never seen anyone cross through that light, had never heard voices whispering to each other, or laughter, or crying, or anything. Who lived in these big houses? Were there many people or only a few? Young or old? Couples without children? Never had there been another child body in the street. So, was it five or six college students wedged in there together yet still so far apart they had to wander to find one another? Was it lonely, in those big houses? Did the loneliness feel less heavy when given more space? Did it travel lightly across all the rooms, stretching itself so thin one might not even notice it was there?

She waited and waited while the darkness crept off the walls of the homes and filled the sky. The sun lingered in a dying gasp before vanishing into the cavernous mouth of the horizon. Fireflies glowed off and on around her, and Clara realized she didn’t know where she was, and, more importantly, didn’t care. She rose back to her feet and kept moving farther and farther away from her parents’ little shotgun house—rented, not owned. One or two fireflies flickered at a time, then five or six, and Clara felt a smile on her lips even if she was unhappy.

Her feet carried her along the tortuous roads. Gray shadow veiled the neighborhood until the streetlights kicked on, unmasking the alien world around her. Anxiety took a tentative chew of her stomach, and her wretched fingers reached around and traced the edge of her phone, threatening to break her promise. She must have gone farther than she thought. Balmy air settled in a thick layer on her skin. Baby hair wilted and clung to her neck and the curve of her jaw. Even the breeze was hot. Clara wiped her forehead with her arm, the sleeve of her father’s sweatshirt already damp from the air alone. Sweat beaded and dripped off the corner of her right eyebrow, brushing past her eyelashes on the way down.

“Rachel?”

The rasping voice startled Clara. Her shoulders jolted up to her ears. She reached around and turned her phone on.

“Rachel, is that you?”

Clara examined the houses around her, their styles slipping out of her mind uninvited. Neo-classical Greek revival, Federalist, Victorian, Queen Anne. Her eyes almost glazed past the old man, his body a misshapen post in shadow, his white-knuckled fingers clinging to the wooden edge of his fence, his shaking arms holding him up. Deep-socketed eyes stared right through Clara.

Queen Anne was her dad’s favorite style. He loved the porches. He would have loved this porch, even though there were balustrades missing, floorboards broken in. Even though cracks split the panes of the big, open windows. Even though the paint looked desperate to get itself off and away from the rotting damp of the wood underneath. The soft scent of decay filled Clara’s nose. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. Sweat dripped in a cool line down her back.

“Rachel.” There was a hitch in the old man’s voice, and his shoulders shook.

Go, she told herself, but her feet did not listen. Go, now. Run, she tried again, and her feet continued to stay glued to the sidewalk. Her whole body lingered, frozen, and Clara wanted to reach up, pull her hair out, cow her body back into something that listened to her.

“Please, please, Rachel,” the old man whispered. His steps, uncertain, betrayed the uncanniness of his body. “Rachel, is that you?” he called, and his voice held all the mournfulness Clara thought she’d hidden deep in her own chest. The big, empty ache of it cleaved apart her ribs.

“I’m not Rachel,” she answered. The old man wasn’t far from her now. His trembling arms threatened surrender, a refusal to bear the weight of his body. Light carved into the lines of his face. Clara couldn’t quite make out his eyes in their hollows.

“Rachel, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I—I need some help. Rachel, I want to go home. Can you help me? I just want to go home.” His long, curled eyebrows furrowed, rose, furrowed into deeper anguish. Clara watched his wordless mouth open and close.

“I’m not Rachel,” she repeated. I’m not who you’re looking for, she wanted to say.

The old man lifted a hand, a feeble swat at the air. “Don’t do that, Rachel, Just come inside now, and we’ve gotta—we’ve got to, you’ve gotta . . . you’re going to help me, right?” He reached his arm over the fence, the wood impassive to the weight of his body, as if he wanted to grab her hand and hold it.

“I’m not Rachel—”

“Rachel, please. Please. Why won’t you—Rachel, why won’t you help me?”

“I’m not Rachel—”

“Stop, Rachel. Stop. Just stop. Why are you doing this to me?”

“Sir, please, my name is—”

“Why are you doing this to me? Why won’t you help?” His voice rose over hers then broke off with a snap. Clara’s ears rung. The old man looked up into the streetlight. His eyes were green. Tears dripped down his cheeks.

Clara lowered her hands away from her ears and stared at them— sentient beings they were— and wondered if they would show her what do next. They would not. The smell of onion and garlic rose into her nostrils. Her skin tingled with painful awareness of each place her shirt clung to her. Sweat pooled beneath the new folds of her small breasts then dripped down the soft expanse of her stomach. Every muscle was taut, and, for a moment, Clara wished she could pull herself apart and burst into a million fireflies.

“You’re not Rachel?” the old man whispered. He shook his head, squinted harder at her. “You’re … not Rachel?”

Why was he asking? Why couldn’t he just say it?

Clara stared at the old man, his violent, racking sobs the answer to his own question. She had never seen a man cry. Her father never cried, just went silent.

Clara took a step back, and another and another, while her mouth stammered half words and sounds that could have been an apology. When she was far enough away, her feet spun her around and carried her home now that her mind was no longer in the way. She stopped running as the houses grew squat and long. Her throat burned; her lungs burned. Her skin was no longer skin, only a sheet of sweat holding her loosely together. She was crying. She didn’t know why she was crying. She didn’t know when she started crying.

She used her forearm as a tissue and cut through the alley that led back to her house. Habit steered her away from the potholes. Dull light shone from her kitchen window, illuminating dented, steel trashcans and decaying relics from torn bags past. Clara took her phone out of her pocket. 9:47 p.m. It had been four hours since she left. There was no notification.

Clara approached from the side of the house, and, through the window, she saw her mother standing over the cutting board, her red, peeling fingers wrapped limply around the handle of a knife. Who knew how long she’d been there? It was a new thing her mother did: freezing mid-action, her stare alternating between going out and going in, too far in either direction to be touched. Her mother directed that stare, now, into her belly, her brows knit together as though something inside her might have answers, if she only knew what questions to ask. Or, more likely, her mother wondered which form of deprivation she should take on next to get back everything she’d given. Her mother, Clara knew, wanted to become small enough to disappear. She’d never said that outright, but Clara couldn’t help but see that she was practicing how to do this, how to disappear. She’d gotten good, except that her pesky body kept getting in the way. An arm could be grabbed and pulled, a hand could be held, other bodies, her children’s bodies, could ask for all those things her body no longer had to give.

Clara gripped the windowsill and pulled herself higher on the tips of her toes. Her mother’s phone sat to the right of the cutting board. Its screen was black. Clara chewed on her lip. She could text her mother. She could see what would happen. She could stand here forever, just outside the window, not even ten feet away, and see if there was any chance she existed in the space her mother inhabited. Clara sank back onto her heels. She’d rather not know, which was a knowing in and of itself.

Had she succeeded, then, in her mother’s quest? Had Clara done a better job disappearing than her brother, who practiced his own version with loud men’s voices, lasers and gunshots, little fingers flying across his controller in such contradictory movements they seemed to have minds of their own?

Clara did not want to disappear. It occurred to her that wanting had very little to do with it.

A black cat groomed itself in the middle of the sidewalk leading to Clara’s front door. At her approaching footsteps, it sprung up and scurried a few feet away. A pathetic mew rasped out of its mouth in warning. Fur bristled along the crescent moon arch of its back. Clara squatted down and held her hand out as her father taught her to. The small cat reared back. Clara waited. The cat neared and sniffed her hand. Clara waited. The cat’s cold, wet nose bumped her fingers, her palm, her wrist. Clara reached forward, and the cat retreated, lips pulled back over sharp teeth in a hiss somehow silent. Clara lowered herself onto the sidewalk and tucked her knees into her chest. The cat’s wide pupils reflected the streetlights like marbles. It stared, and then it took off, leaving through the vast empty space where Clara’s father’s car should have been. Where it hadn’t been for over a week.

* * * *

The knife lay on the cutting board. A stray fly buzzed around the only evidence anyone had even considered dinner: a bell pepper cut in half. Clara threw it in the trash. Her stomach’s growl twisted into a whine. Reese had to be hungry, too.

Clara was not a cook. That had been her father. He’d tried to teach her before, but she didn’t want to know. She liked the magic of not knowing.

There was a tub of peanut butter left. Remnants from around the lid smeared across her forearm as she stuck the knife in, scooping out as much as she could. One fold-over sandwich, two, three, four, five, six. She ate two without tasting, barely chewing. Peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth and the dry part of her throat. Water dribbled down her chin as she tried to wash it all down. She left two of the other sandwiches outside Reese’s door and knocked.

She took a cold shower—the only tangible way to experience any cold in her house. The window units tried their best, but their sputtering efforts hardly made a dent in the blanket of heat draped over the world in summer. Clara avoided her reflection in the mirror, cloaking herself in a loose t-shirt and shorts. Her second toe peeked out of a hole in her black sneakers, where the canvas pulled away from the rubber soles.

The front door closed with a soft click behind her. The brown paper sack rustled against her legs. It held the last two fold-overs and an apple with a big, soft bruise. The clouds had vanished, leaving the sky bursting with friendly sunlight. Sunlight too friendly, even, like a golden retriever who couldn’t help but jump on you and lick your face. The little black cat napped in the sunspot where Clara’s father’s car was not. Clara’s steps hit hard against the pavement.

The neighborhood’s streets twisted and turned, met at hard, ninety-degree angles in some spots, and led her nowhere. Clara hadn’t been paying attention the night before. She wondered, briefly, if the old man’s house existed at all, or whether she’d just dreamt it. Her hair had already lost its clean sleekness. The ends frizzed and clung to her neck and back. She’d left her hair tie at home and tried hard not to let it ruin her mood.

Her feet kept going, as did her thoughts:

What are you doing out here?

He looked so sad.

What are you going to do about it?

So alone.

Who is Rachel?

I could be Rachel.

But you’re not.

Who cares?

Are you less alone if you have to be someone else?

Who cares?

Sweat dripped into her eyes. Her arm swept across her face, taking two eyelashes with it. Clara brushed them off and did not wish for anything.

She’d come from the other side of the street last night and didn’t recognize the house as it appeared before her. The mumbling caught her attention, and the pale groan of the wooden porch boards. The old man advanced from the side of his house with what looked like great urgency slowed down. His back curved, leaving his gait precarious and his shoulders dangerously close to his ears. Unease eroded any resolve Clara had felt in her bones. Each step begged her to stop and turn around. Clara swallowed. She kept walking until she arrived at the gate. Her hand hesitated on the latch.

“Hello?” she said and the bag in her hand suddenly felt very stupid.

The old man did not look at her.

“Excuse me?” she tried again, her voice louder. The old man swatted at the air, kept pacing. “Excuse me!” she said, when she wanted to say, Look at me.

The old man stopped. He frowned. He looked at everything except Clara.

“Are—are you looking for something?” Clara’s cheeks burned.

The old man startled. His eyes landed on her. He looked suspicious. He looked scared. Clara waited.

“Morning,” he said after some time. He looked away.

“I brought you some sandwiches.” Clara held the bag over the fence. Sweat dripped down her sternum, thick as syrup. The old man’s eyes flitted over her. Clara felt the burning in her cheeks sink down to her chest. She gestured to the sandwich bag, as if were a prize on a gameshow, and that made the sweat worse. “Are you hungry?”

“Naw,” he said. His eyes moved past her.

“It’s peanut butter sandwiches. And an apple,” Clara said.

He wasn’t listening. His search preoccupied him. Clara looked around herself. All she saw was an empty neighborhood; all she heard was the sporadic, heat-strangled call of a bird.

The old man had stepped off the porch. He stood in front of the stairs, squinting out into the day. Clara wondered if he wondered, too, where everyone had gone. He checked his watch. Clara stood on her toes, peered over the fence, and saw it wasn’t ticking.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

The old man did not look at her. Clara watched as his gaze stretched out, so familiar, into nothing. The muscles in his face slackened, until his lip began trembling and his brows lowered over his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said.

He looked at her now. They stared at each other, each immobile, each holding breath deep in their chests. Something fragile grew in the space between them; Clara didn’t want to hear it shatter.

“Please,” the old man whispered. “I want to go home.”

“You are home,” she said. “Right?”

The old man’s face twisted up. He lifted a hand, rested it over his eyes, then looked at it as if he didn’t know where it came from. “I want to go home,” he said again.

Me too, Clara did not say. I want to go home, too. Her grip tightened on the latch of the fence.

“I’m stuck in here,” he said. “They won’t let me out.”

“Who?”

“Rachel, please.”

The man hobbled toward the fence. Clara took a step back. The sandwich bag dropped from her hand. Her body did not obey when she told it to pick the bag up. The old man stared at Clara, then down at his hands. He kept staring at his hands, twisting his eyes at them, willing them to do something Clara could not know.

Clara’s hand lifted to the fence. The hot metal of the latch brushed against her fingers, and was she pulling it open? Was that the sound of the hinges groaning? She couldn’t think in the heat. There was no room for her own thoughts beneath the old man’s desperate litany. It happened fast, so fast, maybe not at all, and she moved away from the gate. Her feet pointed toward home, though, suddenly, Clara felt unsure of where and what exactly that was.

She stopped at the end of a cul-de-sac she didn’t recognize. Her head ached behind her eyes. Parasol mushrooms formed a fairy ring in someone’s yard. Her father had told her the name. He’d shown her photographs from one of his many encyclopedias, the same way he’d taught her the names of the styles of homes. She sank to her knees just outside the misshapen circle.

Clara tried to take a picture on her phone but felt dissatisfied with the harsh sunlight, and, anyway, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She had one text from Reese: thx 4 sandwiches. The sweat on her body felt cold and sick. She was all salt.

Her finger ran along the flesh of a mushroom cap. It felt like baby skin, smooth and hairless, like her own legs up until a year ago. The tops were soft and yielding on the surface, firm below that, like her mother’s stomach. Her fingertips left soft imprints on the skin of the caps, and she marveled at how gently everything must be treated.

* * * *

She did not go back to the old man’s house the next day. Nor the next. Nor the day after that. Each time she thought about what her fingers may or may not have done, she shook and ached and felt ill.

The heat, anyway, made Clara sluggish and sad, and, on that second day, her mother had appeared, somehow, ready to take her and Reese back-to-school shopping. Clara had held herself so tightly that day, careful not to do anything to spoil the tepid normalcy. It hadn’t mattered in the end; her mother was back in her room now, with no sign of coming out. Sobs leaked out from under the crack of the bedroom door each time Clara approached. Clara couldn’t bring herself to knock, felt breathless at the idea that her mother might not answer.

Reese already sat at the kitchen table when Clara came in. He had a bowl of soggy cereal before him, a spoon in his hand, dry and shiny.

“Do you think Dad left ’cause of me?” he asked.

That had not been the question Clara had expected, and all she could think was how Reese’s skin had turned green. She took too long to answer. Reese shoved himself away from the table. His shoulder collided with hers as he went past. The slam of his door cracked through the air. His lock turned. Stillness crept back in. Clara’s bones turned cold and cramped. The house was too small for the swampy heat and the leaden silence that made the air feel so tensely wound it could snap in two.

She went out the door without eating, her mind blazing hot. Hot enough to burn away the image of her brother’s face, her mother’s tears, her father’s empty parking spot, the way he’d driven off, left her there to bear this unspeakable weight, how he’d left her alone to crumble beneath the heft of absence. Clara walked and then ran and then walked again and ran some more. Somewhere in that walking and running, she realized she’d left her phone at home, but who cared? Who was there to notice? He hadn’t answered her calls before. He had never texted her back. How had it been that easy for him?

Clara stopped running. She stopped walking. She wanted to scream. She did not scream. Birds leapt off power lines and screamed instead. The houses didn’t move. They never moved. Clara dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. She wanted someone to find her. She didn’t want someone to find her. It didn’t matter what she wanted.

No one came. Of course no one came. No one was there to come. Somewhere, she heard a car door shut but she saw nothing. Could not imagine the human who had opened and closed it.

The old man’s house sat just down the street. No one stood in the yard. No one paced the porch. Clara hadn’t noticed how the old man’s presence hid the extent of disrepair. Whole boards and balusters were broken or missing. An old shoe, a rusted shovel, a towel or maybe a blanket, a one-eyed teddy bear, broken plates, not broken plates, dead leaves, rotting leaves, thick, dusty cobwebs and broken glass covered the porch. Some of it was in the yard. Toward the back of the house, whole boards of plywood rotted in the tall grass.

An ant bit her ankle. She looked down and frowned. The lunch bag she’d brought days ago was still there. The apple had turned liquid in the heat; its sugars formed a sour-smelling syrup. A line of ants filed in and out of their rotting cafeteria. Clara swiped at the few that had crawled on her shoes and legs, then moved out of the way. She should have picked the bag up, she knew, but ants needed to eat, too.

The latch was undone, gate slightly ajar. Clara stood by it for what felt like forever. The air thickened around her. Clouds threatened in the corner of her vision. Clara stared through the windows, but all she saw were pulled curtains, except where a broken rod had fallen halfway down. It revealed nothing. Clara looked around her, at the neighboring houses, at the lack of movement within them.

She circled the block, cutting into one of the alleys behind that revealed yards and secret driveways for those who could afford them. Some of those yards were immaculate, with back porches and little sheds, trampolines, or swing sets for all the children that Clara had never ever seen. Wildness overtook others. Rose bushes and vines climbed up useless chimneys. Beer cans galore. Old, broken cars, some left in the open to display peeling paint and rusted frames, others hidden beneath pollen-soaked tarps. Clara jerked at the ferocious bark of a dog. Its muscles twitched underneath its short fur, legs stretching and contracting as it hurled its body against the chain-link fence. She put her head down and walked past.

The old man’s backyard was a ruin. Where the grass wasn’t dead, it came up to her knees. More lost and broken and heart-breaking things littered the earth. Dirt soaked them all. What remained of a small shed slumped against the back fence. Its tin roof had collapsed and now housed pine straw, dead branches, and a small abandoned bird’s nest. Shelf fungus sprouted from the rotting limbs.

Clara did not see the old man. She waited. The sky darkened. Thick, roiling clouds swallowed the sun. Lightning flickered within them. No shadows moved behind the old man’s curtains. Clara bit at loose skin on her lips while the hairs on her arms grew semi-erect.

Should she ask the neighbors? What neighbors? No one was ever here, and even if they were, the old man was as invisible as she was. People had stopped looking at him a long time ago.

Even Rachel.

Clara chewed on her fingernails. The moisture in the air trebled, worming into her skin and hair and clothes alongside wind that howled in preparation for a storm.

She went back through the alley to the front of the house. Her eyes darted back and forth at the neighboring homes. Clara pushed the fence gate open and slid through. Weeds grew in the cracks of the sidewalk that led to the porch. The stairs moaned under her feet. Maybe she moaned, too, or that sound might have only been in her head.

Someone had left the front door cracked. Clara put her hand against the wood but couldn’t push it open. A hello lingered in the back of her throat. It couldn’t seem to make its way out from behind her teeth.

Lightning cracked, and wind gusted through the broken windows. The front door slammed shut. Clara startled back, and her foot fell into the empty space of a broken board. She told herself to be careful, but she was not, and the splintered wood scraped her skin away from her ankle. Rain poured in sheets behind her, a veil that occulted the world beyond the old man’s porch.

Clara’s ankle throbbed. She thought about her phone, its black screen, its screen alight. She wondered if, now, her father sat outside the house, his car parked in its spot, windshield wipers scraping back and forth, his hands death-gripped on the steering wheel, green eyes glaring out toward what had once been home. She saw him getting out of the car; she saw him driving away. He was never there. She knew he had never been there at all. His disappearance had plucked him out of time and space. His face wouldn’t appear in her mind’s eye. The voice in her head she imagined to be his was an impression, and Clara’s inability to name what was off about it was worse than having forgotten entirely.

The rain continued, unrelenting. The closed door remained closed. Clara wobbled toward the front window. Her hand pressed against the glass. She toyed with a spidering crack, following all the different legs with her fingertip. Thunder shook the boards beneath her feet. Her teeth rattled against each other. She tapped the glass with her finger. Once. Twice.

A hand, a sheeted ghost, pushed against hers from the other side.

“Rachel?” the old man said.

Clara laid her palm flat.

“Is that you?” he whispered.

She rested her forehead against the window, against the old man’s hand. The ghost vanished. The hole inside Clara’s chest threatened implosion. Her hand pressed harder against the glass. She wished it were different. She wished it were all different, but a wish was nothing but a reminder of what was not.  

Clara waited. Footsteps shuffled inside. Or was it the curtain and the wind? Clara kept waiting. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. The shuffling stopped. The deadbolt slid out of its lock. An unseen hand fumbled with the doorknob. Clara watched it go back and forth, back and forth until it fell open. The old man’s body filled the crack in the frame. A shaking hand stretched out toward her.

“What are you doing out in the rain, Rachel?”

His knuckles were thick and warped. Callouses covered his palms. His fingers curved, slightly, upward. Grime darkened the whites of his fingernails.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her hand wove into his. Her foot stepped through the doorway. Dust and must and grime filled her nostrils. The old man snaked an arm over her shoulders and sagged against her, but he was the lightest thing Clara had carried in a long time.

“Rachel?” he said.

The door clicked shut softly behind her.

“Yes?”



BIO

Tessa Case is a bookseller and writer from Birmingham, AL, where she currently lives with her cat, Coraline. This is her first published short story.











Henry Lack’s Lodger

by Ben Coppin



One morning, Henry Lack woke to find two strange men on his doorstep.

One was thin, long-nosed, towering. The other man, much shorter, spoke: “Good morning Mister Lack. You’ve been assigned a lodger. Here he is. Mister Dice.”

As soon as he finished speaking he turned and began to walk away.

“A what?” Henry said and reached to grab the short man by the arm.

“Don’t touch me,” the short man said without slowing, pulling his arm away from Henry.

The taller man, who looked like he might fall forward at any moment, stood still, smiling distantly.

Henry watched the short man walk down his drive and disappear into the lines of cars and hedges.

“I suppose you should come in,” he said. “It’s Mister Dice, is it?”

Mister Dice nodded, a short precise movement, and stepped past Henry into the house. He looked around and held up his small leather briefcase.

“Where shall I put this?” he asked.

“Oh,” Henry said, trying to understand what was happening, “anywhere will be fine.”

The man’s smile lengthened.

“I meant to say, where will I be sleeping?” he said.

“Well, we don’t have a spare room, but there’s my study,” Henry said, scratching his chin. “We could perhaps put a mattress in there.”

“That will be perfect,” Mr Dice said. “You can remove any things you might need for your work.”

Henry frowned, slightly, but he didn’t want to cause any trouble, so he led Mr Dice upstairs to his study.

The study was small, and held a desk and a chair and a single pot-plant.

“This will do nicely,” Mr Dice said. “Does the door lock?”

“No, but we could add a lock for you, perhaps.”

Mr Dice nodded, that sharp motion again, and sat on the chair.

“And you’ll bring that mattress?”

“Yes,” Henry said, “the children can share a bed. It’ll be an adventure for them.”

For a moment he stood and looked at Mr Dice, unsure what to say or do. Mr Dice raised his eyebrows slightly and Henry took this as a sign of dismissal.

“I’ll leave you in peace, Mr Dice. Do let me know if you need anything.”

He stepped out of his study and closed the door.

“What am I doing?” he thought. “This man can’t just move in to my house. What right do they have to treat my family this way?”

He turned, but the sight of the closed door stopped him from going any further.

“I’ll speak to Mr Dice about it later,” he thought. “No need to disturb him right now.”

As his family sat down for breakfast, Henry explained what had happened.

“We’ve been honoured,” he told them, “with a special guest. Mr Dice. He’s in my study now and will be staying for…” How long would he be staying for? No-one had said anything about that. “Mr Dice will be staying with us, in my study. You girls will need to share a bed.”

He poured some cold milk on his cornflakes.

“I’m not sharing a bed with her,” his older daughter said.

“I don’t mind,” the younger said, dreamily.

“Henry,” his wife said, “what are you talking about? We can’t have another person living here. We have enough to deal with, you know that. Why did you let them do this?”

“May,” he said to her, using the voice he used when he hoped to bring her round to his side, “it’s an honour! It was, I think, a high ranking government official who brought Mr Dice to us, and this could well mean something good for me in terms of my work prospects. You know we need the money.”

May was thoughtful.

“How do you know he was high ranking?” she asked.

“I can see these things,” he said, hoping this would be enough to end the conversation.

“Was he wearing a hat?” his younger daughter asked. “They always wear hats.”

Henry cast his mind back, but now, other than being short, he could remember nothing of the man who brought Mr Dice to his house. Probably things would go more smoothly if he created a version of the short man that fit his family’s expectations.

“That’s right,” he said, “he had a very official-looking hat, and an identity badge. And his shoes were the shiniest I think I’ve ever seen.”

“If I still had internet access I could look him up. Check him out,” his older daughter said, reviving a long-running and uncomfortable topic.

Henry looked to May for support, but she was focusing on her coffee now.

“You know there’s nothing we can do about that,” Henry told his older daughter. “The Government has made clear how dangerous the internet is.”

“You still use it,” she said, without much energy.

“I do, but only very rarely and when really necessary,” he said. “It’s just too risky. The Enemy can read everything we say online, and can even use it to control us, in extreme cases. I heard of a man who became a spy for the Enemy after he ordered eggs online.”

“Will he join us for breakfast,” Henry’s younger daughter asked.

“No,” Henry said authoritatively, “Mr Dice is resting. Not to be disturbed.”

At that moment, Mr Dice appeared in the kitchen, leaning precariously.

“Ah,” he said. “Breakfast. Splendid.”

“Who are you,” May asked, “and how long do you plan to stay with us?”

“May,” Henry said, a warning in his voice.

But Mr Dice replied.

“Ah, the details, yes. I believe the appropriate authorities will be in touch with you about those. Now, what’s for breakfast?”

Not long after breakfast, Mr Dice left the house.

“Back for dinner,” he said as he teetered out of the front door.

“Henry,” May said. “What are you going to do about this? You need to find out what that man is doing in our house and get rid of him. Today. You know what will happen otherwise.”

Henry did know what would happen otherwise. May had been threatening to leave him, move back in with her ex-boyfriend, since the day he’d met her. She had never done so, of course, but this time things were different. Nothing of the magnitude of Mr Dice had come between them before.

“Yes, dear,” he said, looking down. “I’ll see to it.”

“Good. I’m taking the children to the market. We need vegetables. I want you to have worked out how to get rid of him by the time we get back.”

Henry crept upstairs, carefully opened his study door and sat at his desk. He pulled out his dusty laptop and started it up. It hadn’t had an update in years, of course, so it was painfully slow, but at least that meant it was safe from spyware. Not that he had anything anyone would want to spy on.

The Goverment-sanctioned search-engine slowly materialised on his screen.

He paused, his fingers hovering over the worn-out keyboard. What should he search for? “Uninvited guest?” No, what was the word the short man had used? Tenant? Ah, no.

“Lodger”. He typed it slowly, one finger at a time.

Instead of a page of search results, he was presented with a red flashing message:

“Congratulations! Thank you for doing your part to help the country at this troubling time. If you have not been allotted a lodger and would like one, please call seven on your telephone. If you already have a lodger and would love to have another, or two more, please call any other number.”

He wasn’t sure how to proceed. Should he dial seven, or another number? He already had a lodger, but he didn’t want another one. He settled on six, in the end. Close enough to seven without quite committing to it.

“Hello,” the friendly female voice on the other end of the line said, when he’d finally found the telephone in a pile under the stairs.

“H—hello?” he said.

“How many additional lodgers would you like to request?” The woman asked him.

“No, no,” he stuttered. “No, I don’t want any more, I want to get rid of the one I have. My wife—”

“Ah,” the woman said, a note of steely sunshine entering her voice, “your wife must be so very proud to be helping out in this way, and at this time. Please pass on my congratulations to her.”

“But you don’t understand,” Henry said, trying to pull his thoughts together.

“Oh, but I do!” she said, chirpily. “I have a lodger myself. My husband does such a wonderful job with him. I’m sure he’ll bring us only joy. I’ve arranged for another lodger to be with you right away. Please reassure your wife she won’t have to wait long.”

Tears pricked Henry’s eyes.

“Please,” he said, but the woman had hung up.

Should he try dialing seven this time?

But before he could decide what to do, the doorbell rang.

Standing on the doorstep was the short man, this time with a young woman, perhaps no more than eighteen.

“So good of you, Mister Lack, to offer another room in your house. Your nation thanks you.”

Before Henry could say a word, in a co-ordinated motion the young woman moved into the house and the short man walked away.

Henry ran after him, grabbed his arm, more firmly than he had the first time.

The man stopped walking, looked up at Henry.

“Please let go of my sleeve,” he said, blandly.

At that moment, Henry noticed that they were not alone. Three men in dark uniforms were standing menacingly close, hands poised on their belts, as if they might have guns.

But Henry found he could not let go.

“No,” he said, “I’ve had enough. You need to get rid of Mister Dice and Miss, whatever her name is. And you need to do it right now. I won’t tolerate this. It’s not right.”

“You understand, Mister Lack, that we are at war, do you not?”

The short man stepped away from Henry, easily breaking his grip on his sleeve. The three men in dark uniforms moved a step closer to Henry, surrounding him.

“We all have to make sacrifices,” the short man was saying, “at times of great need, such as this. Your nation would like to thank you for yours, but if you are saying that you are not patriotic enough to make such a sacrifice, well then…”

The short man glanced meaningfully at the three men in dark suits. One of them pulled something from his waist — a baton, not a gun.

“I just don’t think—” Henry started to say.

The short man raised an eyebrow inquiringly, turned his ear towards Henry as if to hear more clearly.

“I just don’t think my wife will put up with it,” he said.

“Your wife? Oh, well we can take care of that,” the short man said, sounding pleased.

Henry did not like the sound of that.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply that my wife was not a patriot. Of course she is.”

The four men watched him expectantly.

“As am I,” he said, finally realising what was expected of him.

The short man nodded. The man with the baton put it away.

“Goodbye, Mister Lack,” the short man said.

Henry walked back to his house, defeated.

“You can sleep in my daughters’ room,” he told the young lady. She seemed very pleasant, and of course it was a good thing that he and his family were doing.

When May came home that afternoon with the girls, Henry told her what had happened.

She said nothing, looked away from him, her eyes wet, and went upstairs.

Twenty minutes later she and the girls came downstairs with packed suitcases.

“You know where we’re going,” May said. Henry said nothing.

After they were gone, Henry considered his situation. It made good sense for May and the girls to move out. The space was needed; it was the patriotic thing to do. He did not like the idea of May going back to her ex-boyfriend, but in a sense it was a relief. The threat of it had been hanging over him for years, and now that it was happening, he felt very little.

He picked up the telephone. Now what was the number to dial for more lodgers?



BIO

Ben Coppin lives in Ely in the UK with his wife and two teenage children. He works for one of the big tech companies. He’s had a textbook on artificial intelligence published, as well as a number of short stories, mostly science fiction, but also horror, fairy tales and other things. All his published stories can be found listed here: http://coppin.family/ben.






Voltaire’s Toothache

by Raymond Walker


A twinge. A small stab of pain in his upper right jaw. Could be anything. A temporary build-up of gas. A nervous tic.

A festering abscess.

Probably not, he tells himself. And later me. He tells me everything, every tedious detail. He assumes I’m interested.

A person can have these twinges for no reason at all, or at least any reason that they and the health care community in their combined ignorance can determine. We still don’t understand how the body works and aren’t really that far removed from the ancients who relied on chicken guts for diagnoses.

So he tells himself. And me.

At birth we rely upon others to feed and diaper us. In our dotage we depend again on that same charity. In the meantime our bodies are hostage to disease and injury. They are never really ours to command.

That’s how he thinks. Half the time I don’t understand what he is saying.

A couple of weeks later … another twinge.

Instead of making a dental appointment, he makes excuses.  The body will often miraculously heal itself. Well, maybe not often, but sometimes. So he says.

The twinges become more frequent. Sharper. Spontaneous healing seems unlikely, I suggest. Sarcasm is lost on him.

The bit about the medical community being ignorant is mere prevarication, I tell him at supper one night when the hot mashed potatoes makes him yelp. Mere prevarication. God, I’m even staring to talk like him.  I feel like grabbing his ears and smushing his head into his too-hot potatoes. I smile at the thought. He thinks I am being empathetic.

There is a deeper truth, he concedes. An appointment with a medical practitioner is an admission of frailty. It is an admission that the body is corruptible and death inevitable.

That’s just stupid. I blurt it out. I can’t help myself. It is so stupid

I know, he says, with that smirk I have come to loathe.

He rouses me finally in the darkest part of the night, shaking a turned-away shoulder. Do we have stronger painkillers? Where? What is the name of our family dentist anyway?

A root canal may be necessary, the dentist advises the next day during an emergency consultation.

His heart constricts. He knows what that means.

His mouth will be forced agape with metal restraints. His jaw will be frozen with a succession of needles each one bigger than the one before. His knuckles will be white where he grasps the arms of the dentist’s chairs. Muscles, arms, legs, stomach, will be rigid with barely-restrained panic. He will gag on his own saliva even though the nurse hovers over him with her little suction tube.  And even though he is supposed to be safely anesthetized he will feel excruciating pain as the dentist roots for corruption. Smoke and the odour of burning tissue will waft past unnaturally parted lips as rotten bits of himself are ruthlessly filed. His toes will curl as the empty shell of his tooth is crammed with foul-tasting plaster. 

We’ve had this discussion before. Dentists are able to do the most profound surgery with minimal discomfort, I tell him as calmly as I can. I feel like shouting, though. I often feel like shouting these days.

 It’s not so much the pain. It’s the potential for pain that’s unnerving. He admits this is irrational. We fear the future. We regret the past, he says. Yea, yea, yea. I am so sick of his philosophizing. He thinks he’s Yoda.

There’s a problem though.

The offending tooth can’t be pinpointed. Nothing shows on the x-rays. He does have a suspect . . . two down from his left incisor. Either that or the fourth one down, which is also tender.

I have complained about his wishy-washiness. Can we know anything for certain, he says. Even that we exist? 

Why do I bother?

The dentist has three choices: do the procedure on the most likely tooth, send him to a specialist, or wait for the pain to localize. He’ll wait. The tooth isn’t hurting that much.

His conscience nags him. He knows it’s a stupid choice.

He wonders about his conscience at supper. Is it separate from body? From mind? Why does it not speak or fall silent at his command? How can a man boast of free will if he cannot control the voices that command him? 

We never have normal conversations. Why can’t we talk about the weather or gossip about movie stars?

His conscience has my voice, he says.

I turn up the radio.

The next day he is reading on the couch when it occurs to him the ache had become intolerable. How appropriate, he says, hand capping a jaw that is noticeably swollen. For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently. Those aren’t his words, of course. He is quoting from his book. He is always quoting dead people. I asked him once if the living had anything interesting to say. It was like he didn’t even hear.

He phones his dentist. Never mind that he can’t pinpoint the tooth. If necessary, he’ll have all the teeth in the upper right quadrant removed. In fact, the dentist can remove all his teeth. He’ll get dentures.

The dentist is away. Family emergency. Won’t be back in the office until Tuesday.

His shoulders sag. That can’t be right, he says to the receptionist. He sounds like he is about to cry. I am embarrassed for him. Slouching there with his pot belly sagging over his boxers, hand cupping his jaw. He looks old. Feeble. He has no dignity.

The receptionist orders powerful pain killers.

The drugs work. The infection bubbles, but he is insulated from pain. He can survive until Tuesday.

So he thinks.

The pain escalates to a heretofore unimaginable level by Sunday night. The drugs are as useless as an umbrella in a hurricane, he says.

There are not enough words to describe the different levels of pain, it occurs to him as he paces the living room. His original discomfort which he thought severe at the time, is nothing compared to this. It’s the kind of agony a man might feel getting sucked into a jetliner’s engine, except that pain, while severe, is transient. A tooth ache lingers.

I stifle a yawn. It’s getting late.

It’s like hot coals in his mouth, he says.

I hate his whining.

It’s like tens of thousands of tiny, maniacal, demons with dull, serrated blades that have been bewitched so that any injury they do is immediately healed, allowing them to continue their torment throughout eternity, or until his face explodes.

I don’t bother to hide my yawn this time. 

He wonders who will rescue him from the night that has settled in like a nuclear winter.

Who will rescue me from having to listen to somebody who always speaks in metaphors? I’m in bed. I have work in the morning. 

He paces. He’s sorry. He understands I don’t like to see him suffer.

I don’t bother to contradict him.  

Even the deepest bonds of love have been sundered by the fleshless fingers of infection, he says. He sits on the foot of the bed, trapping my feet beneath the covers. Fleshless fingers of infection? I  grit my teeth, pretend I’m asleep.

During the Bubonic Plague, brothers left brothers, husbands deserted wives, wives deserted husbands. He lectures as if I’m one of his history students. Fathers and mothers abandoned their own children untended, unvisited, as if they had been strangers, he says in that irritating voice that tells me he is quoting somebody. What kind of person memorizes a quote about kids being left to die? He is popular with his students. Not so much his colleagues.

He would never abandon me, he says. If I was infected and could not be cured he would infect himself so that we might die together.  

If you love me so much, please shut the fuck up and let me go to sleep. I almost say it. So close. I have to choke back the words.

He moves to the window. Sooner or later we all sleep alone, he mutters to his reflection. He thinks he says something original. If I wasn’t pretending to be asleep, I would sing him the chorus from Cher’s song.

Isn’t it strange though that he can be in such distress, and I, closest to him of all the people in the world, don’t even feel a twinge. Nor could he feel my pain, if I suffered, though he loves me so much he would give his life to make me happy. There is always a gap between us no matter how passionate the embrace. Infinitely small. As wide as the universe. All the millions of people in the world and each one locked away in their own bubbles, isolated in separate realities.

Passionate embraces? Yea right. I almost smile.

Can we really know someone else, or do we just populate the universe with variations of our own personality? The you that I see is different than the you that you see and the I that you see is different than the I that I see, he says. He moans in that aggravating way he has. I want to throw the clock radio at his head. I want to pound the mattress. I want to scream. La la la, I shout in my head, but I can’t drown him out.

The doting husbands sleeping every night for fifteen years beside his wife is ultimately just as much a stranger to her as the man she brushes past in the shopping mall.

I gasp. A small, sharp, inhalation, but he doesn’t notice.

Does he suspect?

No. He’s just babbling. I try to block him out, but I have ensnared myself. I listen, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched, pretending to sleep. His breath is like insect legs on my skin. My back itches.

I can’t bear to think of life without you, he says. God, he’s so nauseatingly melodramatic. I stifle a groan. He is silent for a long time, but just as I am drifting off he pipes up again.

Snow is falling on the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lays buried. Quoting someone, I suppose, but it’s mid August for Christ’s sake. He whispers, but it may as well be shouting. He falls silent again. I count every wheezing breath and imagine myself holding a pillow over his face. Finally, he shuffles downstairs to his library. I offer a silent cheer.

He is waiting when I come downstairs in the morning. He has not died the mewing death of a sick cat expiring in his own feces under an abandoned car. (Yes, even first thing in the morning he talks like this!) He made coffee. Tries to smile when he says good morning. His face is wan. I can’t bear to look at him.

On my way to work I take him to a different dentist who has mercifully agreed to make room in his schedule. I offer my cheek when he tries to kiss me goodbye.

The dentist presses a hot probe against the suspect tooth. The pain stabs from the jaw down to the right ventricle, telling dentist and patient this is the one that needs repair.

Drilling releases the pressure. The pain disappears. He is overwhelmed with gratitude. If he could do more than grunt, he would offer the dentist his first-born son, except his first-born is an often surly adult who rarely visits, so he will settle for paying his dental bill promptly.

This is his sense of humour.

He calls to let me know he is better. Doesn’t want me to worry. Tells me how the dentist laughed at his joke.

I pretend I’m busy with a client.

That night he feels a familiar twinge.

Whom the gods would destroy … he mutters. I don’t hear the rest of the sentence, but I don’t care. A familiar pressure builds. The little men with bewitched knives return.

When I go to bed he is cupping his jaw. He paces In the morning, I return him to the dentist. He begs me to wait. 

The dentist determines, to their mutual astonishment, that he has another abscessed tooth. The root canal will take more than an hour. Happily anesthetized, he comes into the waiting room to warn me.

I’m already on my way out. I don’t care. I’m leaving. He can have the cat.

I see his reflection in the mirror. His arms are hanging limply, his mouth agape. There’s a small string of saliva on his chin.

A different kind of pain on his face.




BIO

Raymond Walker is a former journalist living in Vancouver B.C. He did at one time have two abscessed teeth, but his wife didn’t leave him.







Forgiveness

By Ellis Shuman


The village was nestled in green foothills not far from the Greek border. Quaint wooden farmhouses and ramshackle barns. Cultivated fields of summer crops; fenced-off pastures spotted with dairy cows and goats. Grassy meadows bordered by colorful wildflowers. In the distance, snow-capped peaks below a cloudless blue sky. The Rhodope Mountains, scenic and bucolic, home to some of Bulgaria’s oldest citizens. One of them was waiting to see me.

“My grandfather is ninety-five-years old,” Anna reminded me as we drove south on the narrow highway. “He’s half blind, walks with a cane, and doesn’t hear very well, but he still has his wits about him. He rises at the crack of dawn to milk his cow and tends his vegetable garden in the afternoons. And he eats a lot of yoghurt,” she added with a laugh.

“I can’t believe I’m here, that I’ve flown all the way from Tel Aviv just to meet him.”

“Well, it’s good you came. He’s very eager to see you.” Anna continued to talk excitedly as she drove, but I remained mostly silent, keeping my eyes focused on the beautiful countryside.

I was looking forward to meeting him as well, but I had a growing feeling of trepidation ahead of my visit to his home. Why had I come to Bulgaria? Had I made a mistake? Was I on a wild goose chase that would make me a laughingstock when I returned to my office in a few days’ time? I shook my head, shocked at my impulsive decision to come.

Anna slowed down when we passed the sign announcing our arrival in Gela, the village that was our destination. A minute later, she parked the car. I got out, took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air, and followed her up a gravel path towards a wooden farmhouse that had seen better days. We took off our shoes outside the door and went inside.

It took several minutes for my eyes to fully acclimate to the dark interior. Outside it was a warm June day, but inside the farmhouse I shivered. The unlit fireplace at the side of an open kitchen brought up images of roasting logs. The Rhodopes were ski territory, I had learned. Visions of snow-covered slopes brought back memories of the ski trip I took with friends after finishing my compulsory service in the Israeli army.

“Sit here,” Anna said, pointing at a low bench near the dining room table. “My mother is probably shopping in Smolyan. I will see if my grandfather is awake.”

I sat down and looked around the rustic, homey room. Watercolor paintings of green landscapes hung on one wall; a window opened to real-life vistas of the same. All the furniture was wooden, apparently homemade. I rested my hands on a colorful embroidered tablecloth, kicked my backpack under the table, and fidgeted as I waited for Anna’s grandfather. All I knew was that he had something to give me, and I didn’t have a clue what it could be.

* * *

I had never been to Bulgaria before, had never considered visiting the country. Although I traveled extensively for my Internet software company, organizing trade exhibitions at conferences in western Europe, North America, and once in Japan, Bulgaria had never been on my radar, neither for business nor pleasure. Bulgaria? Never in a million years did I consider traveling there.

This journey came about after I responded to an email that should have gone straight into my junk folder. The mail, which had been scanned and posed no threat to my computer or the network, appeared among the many messages that demanded my attention one morning at the office.

“My grandfather knew your grandfather—Avraham Levy,” an unfamiliar woman claimed in the mail. “In fact, they were best friends at university. My grandfather, Aleksandar, is getting old and wishes to see you before he dies. He needs to give you something.”

Convinced this was a prank, a scam or scheme to get me to transfer funds to an overseas hacker, my finger prepared to delete the mail forever. But I hesitated. The mention of my grandfather by name raised my curiosity. The mail seemed harmless enough. It wasn’t as if I was going to click on any suspicious links. If this unknown woman—she signed her mail as Anna Todorova—asks for money or help of any kind, I will block her account, I told myself.

This is what I know about my grandfather. He was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, but came to Israel shortly after the establishment of the State. He settled, like so many of his compatriots, in Jaffa, a town later incorporated into the Tel Aviv municipality. It was in Jaffa that my grandfather met and fell in love with Maria, the beautiful waitress who would serve him coffee in the late afternoons. The couple married and moved to Na’an, where they were accepted as members of the kibbutz. I never knew my grandmother Maria because she died when I was an infant. My grandfather remained alone in his sparse apartment, a virtual recluse who I only saw when my family visited on the occasional weekend and holidays.

It’s been ten years since my grandfather passed away and as far as I could remember, he never once spoke to me of his childhood, or of growing up in Bulgaria.

I wrote a quick response to the woman, and she responded in turn. Correspondence followed, at first once every few days, but then on a daily basis. Anna lived in Sofia, she explained in her mails, and worked as a dental technician. She was, I would learn, a very educated woman who spoke several languages. Her husband served in the traffic police, and they had three children. Anna didn’t like living in the city, she informed me, and that was why she came to the mountains whenever possible to see her mother and grandfather. Her husband said the countryside wasn’t for him. The children, Anna said, preferred to remain in the city, to meet friends, attend soccer practice, and socialize in the malls. Much like their counterparts in Israel, I realized. Anna shared personal anecdotes in her mails, easing my original hesitation about answering her.

 Little by little, I began to trust Anna. I became convinced she was telling me the truth. There was an elderly man in a Bulgarian village who wanted to see me. He had once been a friend of my grandfather, and I assumed he had some memento from their friendship to give me. I was about to learn what it was.

* * *

A noise behind me made me turn around. Anna led a spry old man into the room; by no means was he feeble or unsure on his feet. Ninety-five years old, but he looked healthy, more fit than I would have imagined. He shrugged off his granddaughter’s arm, balanced himself on his cane, and extended his hand towards me. Anna translated his greeting.

“He said you look just like Avraham.”

Before I had a chance to reply, Aleksandar asked a one-word question, and this seemed to embarrass Anna. I waited for her translation but she hesitated.

“What did he say?”

“He asked if you were a Jew.”

I rose to my feet, fearful I was about to be attacked with a vitriolic outburst of antisemitism from a senile old man, but Anna urged me to sit back down. She listened to her grandfather for several minutes and then turned to me.

“He said that if you are a Jew, it is good. It means his invitation has gone to the right person because his friend from long ago, Avraham, was a Jew. And it is only to a Jew he wishes to speak, to state his heartfelt plea for forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?”

At that moment, Anna’s mother returned from her shopping. Anna helped unpack the groceries and the two women set out a spread of salads and cold meats on the table. As for Aleksandar, he sat on his wooden chair, stomping the floor with his cane, regarding me with a knowing look. I enjoyed the food, but the only thing the old man ate was a thick, yoghurt-based drink.

“What is it that your grandfather wishes to give me?” I asked impatiently, handing my plate back to my hosts at the end of the meal.

Anna nodded at Aleksandar, and he raised himself slowly from his chair. He wobbled across the room to a wooden breakfront, opened its top drawer, and took out a cardboard box. Inside was a pile of envelopes, tightly bound by a thin blue ribbon. He extended the box to me.

When I didn’t immediately reach for the box, Anna coughed, took the box from her grandfather’s hand, and undid the ribbon.

“What is this?”

“Letters,” she replied. “Letters your grandfather wrote.” When she saw my confusion, she explained. “This is what my grandfather wanted to share with you. They are written in Bulgarian but I will translate. This is my grandfather’s wish.”

“I came all this way for some letters? You could have mailed them to me!”

“He insisted you hear them in person. He’s an old man. How could I refuse him? Especially when this concerns your grandfather. These letters were written during the war, when your grandfather was in the camps.”

The camps? Auschwitz? Treblinka? My heart sank. My grandfather never said anything about being in the camps; my mother had never spoken of this either. I had grown up in a country where memorializing the Holocaust was institutionalized on our annual calendar. It was a subject forced upon us in school. We read books about the Holocaust; watch television shows, plays, and films on the subject; but the Holocaust had no real meaning for me.

Until now.

Learning that my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor was a shock. My heart beat rapidly as Anna pulled out sheets of paper from the first brown envelope. She began to read.

July 24, 1941

My dear Aleksandar,

It has already been many years since we were boys, racing one after the other on the streets of Sofia. I remember chasing after our classmates in the schoolyard, and in the winter months, throwing snowballs at the trams. We were young then, good friends.

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “I thought our grandfathers studied together at the university. They also knew each other when they were boys?”

“Let me explain,” Anna said, lighting a cigarette. She smiled at her grandfather, who didn’t understand a word of what we were saying. “My family’s origins are here, in this village. We have lived here for generations. Aleksandar’s father, my great-grandfather, was a wise man, a modern man. He wanted his son to get an education, to have a real profession. To become someone more than a simple Rhodopes farmer. He sent Aleksandar to live with relatives in Sofia, and he grew up there. He attended school in the city and that is where he met and befriended Avraham Levy, your grandfather.

“These letters were your grandfather’s way of recording his family history, of retaining their friendship. Let me continue.”

I remember when we passed by the Great Synagogue on our way to school each day, how envious you were that I had a connection to that magnificent building. Although I am of the Jewish faith, I wasn’t familiar with what happened inside. My family celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Passover with festive meals, but we didn’t observe the Sabbath. Even at my bar mitzvah, when I was thirteen, the words that came out of my mouth at the rabbi’s instructions were not words I understood. Still, you were jealous. You had no religion, you claimed. You believed that through that synagogue, that fine building, I could speak to God and he would listen.

At school, I was the only Jew in our class. But this mattered little to the other boys. They only teased me because I was slightly underweight. They called me names, but you were always on my side, protecting me from their curses and fists. Those incidents were few and far between, and they ended when I finally gained some weight.

When we were growing up, no one cared I was a Jew. My family was as Bulgarian as the next. We were treated no better, or worse, than our neighbors.

I remember going to the parks with you on the weekends, traveling on school excursions in the mountains. Do you remember when we went by train to your cousins in Varna? To the beach on the Black Sea shores? Those were good times, when we didn’t have a worry in the world.

Good times, indeed, before darkness fell on Europe.

Do you remember the Olympic Games in 1936? We were, what, sixteen then? That was the year Hitler paraded his Nazi pageantry on the world’s stage. Despite calls for a boycott, all the nations competed, marching into the stadium while banners high above their heads bore the hated swastika. Only one foreign leader attended the games, if you recall. It was our leader, our beloved king, our czar. Boris. He was at Hitler’s side and all the world applauded. Bulgaria did not win a single medal at those games, but we were so proud. Boris stood on that podium with the leader of our great ally.

“Bulgaria sided with the Nazis?” This came to me as a surprise.

“Yes, did you not know? We were allied with Germany, and our wartime government was pro-Nazi. In Bulgaria, we have always lived peacefully side by side, Christians and Jews, and Muslims too, but during the war, anti-Semitic, fascist rulers came to power here. During those years, the vast majority of our citizens held Boris in esteem for how he conducted his affairs, for siding with Hitler.”

“This sounds very much like a history lesson.”

“I am trying to give you background and context to your grandfather’s letters. Without the complete history, I don’t think you would fully understand this story.”

When we started university studies in Sofia, you wanted to become an engineer. To do something practical with your hands. To prove to your father that it had not been a mistake to take you from the Rhodopes and send you for an education. As for me, I studied philosophy. I wanted to do something with my mind! We may have attended the same school, but our lives veered off in different directions.

Do you remember my sister, Ester? You said you fancied her, but you never told her. Well, let me reveal a secret. She fancied you as well! She said you were handsome, with a head of hair like one of those Hollywood stars you see in the movies. When you would come to our house on Stamboliyski Street for dinner, you made her laugh, but she was too embarrassed to say anything. And you never approached her.

Ester, my great aunt. She had died long ago, had never come to Israel. Ester was listed on the family tree I created as part of my bar mitzvah year’s ‘roots’ project, but except for her name, I knew nothing of my grandfather’s sister. Now I was hearing a firsthand account from my grandfather about his family.

Things took a turn for the worse. More and more students harassed me because of my religion, calling me names, and even physically accosting me. The professors turned their heads; they couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t know if they were afraid to stop these attacks, happening right under their noses, or if they secretly held me in disgust as well.

The war started, and at first, it didn’t concern us. Germany invaded Poland; the Russians were on the move; Britain and France declared war on Hitler. In Bulgaria, we felt safe. Even us of the Jewish faith. We heard how our people were being treated in Germany, but in Bulgaria nothing would ever happen to us. After all, we were Bulgarian citizens!

It was around that time that Bogdan Filov was appointed prime minister. Later that year, Parliament approved the LPN, legislation which was also endorsed by Czar Boris.

“LPN? What’s that?”

“I think you call it ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’,” Anna said. “It was very similar to the Nuremberg Laws in Germany. You will understand more about the LPN when you hear what your grandfather wrote.”

Aleksandar, you of course know of the LPN because you read the newspapers that serve as the government’s mouthpiece. Yet, I am not sure you know how the LPN affects me and my family. I will list the government’s decrees for you, but also so that I can make some order of them.

There are restrictions where Jews can live, in what professions we can work. Limits are imposed on how many Jews can study in higher education. They forced me to leave my university studies!

We are obliged to wear yellow stars on our outer garments. Restaurants put up notices reading ‘Entrance Forbidden for Jews’. There is a curfew.

Jews are required to pay special taxes. We must declare what valuables we possess, even furniture and carpets. We are not allowed to own property. Our radio set was confiscated!

My mother was sure nothing would happen to us, but my father realized this was not true. Wisely, he sold our family’s linen factory to our neighbor, who bought it for a pittance, promising to return it to us when things got better. My father wanted to send us away, to America or even to Palestine, but my mother refused to leave. Ester was engaged to be married by then. We didn’t want to leave Bulgaria, our home.

One night, the police showed up at our door with papers bearing my name. All the Jewish men in our neighborhood between the ages of twenty and forty were ordered to go with them. I hurriedly packed a suitcase, bade farewell to my parents and to Ester, and followed the police into the street.

I remember leaving with them that evening, the future uncertain. Going with them to the camps.

“Your grandfather’s Bulgarian is excellent,” Anna commented. “Some of his words are—how do you say it—a bit flowery. So unlike how my grandfather writes.” She put down the letter and lit a cigarette. “I apologize if my English is not of the same level. It’s challenging to translate as I read.”

“Your English is just fine,” I assured her. I picked up the letter from the table and stared at the handwritten words. Indecipherable Cyrillic script. The text was small, smudged in some places. Holding the letter, I felt a physical connection to my grandfather. When was the last time I held his hand? I missed him and felt sorry I wasn’t aware of his past.

Aleksandar sat in the corner, attentive to our conversation although he didn’t understand it. The rest of the letters would have to wait until the next day, I told Anna, because I was exhausted. Exhausted and overwhelmed by everything. The hurriedly planned trip to Bulgaria and the revelations about my grandfather’s life were taking their toll.

“Let me show you to your room,” Anna said when I stood up.

“Perhaps it’s best if I stayed in some hotel nearby?”

“I told you, there is nowhere else to stay in the village. We have a spare bedroom and I think you’ll find the bed comfortable. I’m tired myself. It’s been a long day, and I spent much of it driving. You’ll sleep here. It’s not even a question!”

As tired as I was, my mind remained fully awake. Hearing what my grandfather had written long ago to someone who had been his contemporary, his friend, was as if I was stepping into the past, into an unfamiliar and terrible era. I tossed and turned, wondering why my mother had never told me her father’s story. When I talked with her in the morning, I would find out.

I realized what was troubling me more than anything else. I was about to hear the story of my family during the Holocaust. The Holocaust, when six million of my people had been murdered. The Holocaust was about to get personal.

To learn that my grandfather had been discriminated against because of his Judaism; that he had been dragged from his home by the police and sent to the camps—it all came as a shock. There were many more letters in the box. I feared the worst was yet come.

Why had my grandfather written these letters? Why was it so important for him to tell his friend of his experiences? I believed my grandfather feared he would not survive the war. He felt compelled to document everything that happened.

But wait! My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He came to Israel. There was a happy ending to his story. Or was there?

That question ran through my head before I fell asleep at last.

* * *

August 11, 1941

My dear Aleksandar,

I have yet to receive a response to my earlier letter. You enlisted in the army, serving our country, and I respect you for that, but surely you have time to reply? I wait anxiously to hear of your experiences.

I am here in the labor camp. We are in the south, near the village of Belitsa. There are many of us, perhaps a few hundred. Jews from various towns; the majority are from Sofia. There are Jews from my neighborhood and others who I would see occasionally as they went to the synagogue. They divided us into different work battalions constructing the railways. Each unit has its platoon supervisor, a Bulgarian army officer. Our unit has a very cruel supervisor. A man my age from Plovdiv. We call him ‘Red’ because of the color of his beard. His army service was cut short because of his asthma; even now he wheezes when he shouts. Red humiliates us; he hits us; he kicks at us and beats us with a stick. He barks orders at all hours of the day. He punishes us for the slightest offenses. He calls us anti-Semitic names, names I never heard growing up with you in Sofia.

The labor is intense, with much physical effort required on our part. We work under the harsh sun, but also in the cold and rain. We haul wagons of stones from the excavation pits, where we are laying the tracks. We shovel dirt and raise our pick axes again and again. Twelve hours a day we toil, struggling to meet a quota measured by wheelbarrows of rocks. When we meet our quota, they give us something else to do. Usually we have Sundays off, but frequently this privilege is taken from us.

Beans and lentils are provided for our meals, also half a loaf of bread each. Occasionally, we receive a dessert of rice with water. That comes to us as a luxury. At night, we bandage our blisters, rub our aching muscles, and fall asleep on our cots at once.

It is hard here, but bearable. I miss my parents, my sister. Often, I think of you, and hope you will soon reply.

Your friend,

Avraham

“This was a Bulgarian labor camp,” Anna explained. I was relieved I was not hearing a report from Auschwitz. Not yet, anyway.

Throughout the morning, Anna read the letters my grandfather wrote during his stay in Belitsa. He described the poor conditions; the meager food portions; and the cold and damp barracks. Like the others in his labor battalion, my grandfather lost weight, although he built up his muscles from the strenuous work. My grandfather informed his friend, Aleksandar, that despite the tough physical regime, his spirit remained strong.

Hearing of these experiences was difficult for me. I was troubled by what my grandfather had gone through. But then my mood lifted when I heard his next letter.

I should mention one thing, so you will not think everything in Belitsa is bad. After we dug the pits so deep that when we were working, we could not be seen from above, Red gathered us around and declared, ‘Fellow Bulgarians, you have worked so hard and faithfully, that I now trust you. From this day forth, I will protect you.’

After that, everything changed. Red no longer called us names, no longer struck at us, no longer swore. In the heat of the day, Red would tell us to hide in the pit’s shade. When the camp’s commander came to inspect our work, Red whistled and we would pick up our axes and shovels. We would start working very hard. And when the commander left, Red let us return to the shade. I am not sure whether Red felt guilty for his earlier actions or if he had an affinity for his Jewish countrymen. Maybe he originally wanted to show his commanders how true he was to the fascist cause. In the end, Red became our friend!

I must tell you a story. There is a Jewish army officer in the camp—Shapira is his name. He served in the Bulgarian Army during the First World War. While we toil every day clearing roads through the forest, Shapira enjoys the good conditions of dining with the Bulgarian officers. He jokes with them, sleeps in their quarters. On some days, when Red is on leave, Shapira supervises our work shifts. We work as a Jewish crew with a Jewish supervisor. He is not strict about our work requirements.

And then one day, several German soldiers arrived at the camp. It is not clear if they came with a purpose, or if they were traveling to an army base in Greece. They approached Shapira and saw before them a decorated army veteran. The Germans saluted Shapira. He saluted back. Can you believe this? Germans saluting Jews in wartime Bulgaria?

We work; we sweat; we bear the weight of difficult days. But we are certain this period will end in a short time, and our lives will resume as they once were.

I do not give up hope. We will meet again soon, my friend.

* * *

When Aleksandar retired to his room for an afternoon nap, I joined Anna on a walk in the village. We passed by wooden farmhouses similar in construction to Aleksandar’s, and barns appearing to be on the brink of collapse. Down in the valley, I heard the clang of cowbells. I saw a farmer leading his herd to pasture. In the distance, the snow on the mountaintops sparkled in the sunlight. Everything was so serene, so tranquil, so distant from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.

“You know Gela is famous?” Anna said as we followed the path up the hillside.

“Famous?”

“Yes. Our village is the birthplace of Orpheus. Surely, you’ve heard of him. No? Well, I’ll tell you the story.

“Orpheus was a mythical singer, musician, and poet. Some say he was Greek, but he was born here, in Bulgaria. He is often pictured carrying a stringed lyre on his shoulder. He was married to a beautiful woman, Eurydice, but she was bitten by a poisonous snake on their wedding night. She was taken into the Underworld, and Orpheus followed. He wanted to ask Hades, the god of the Underworld, to allow Eurydice to return to the land of the living.

“To make a long story short, or rather a long legend, I can tell you that the entrance to the Underworld is not far from Gela. Have you heard of Devil’s Throat Cave? No? You should visit it while you’re here; it’s a popular site. According to the legend, Orpheus descended into the cave to demand that the gods release his beloved. He vowed that he, instead, would remain in the Underworld. The gods agreed, and the two lovers began their journey to the entrance of the cave. Orpheus looked back, to make sure Eurydice was following, but he saw only her shadow before she vanished. Orpheus emerged from the cave alone. He mourned Eurydice and never played the lyre again.”

“Interesting legend,” I remarked.

“Yes, and it all started here in Gela, and I don’t care what the Greeks say.”

“Anna, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“These stories about the forced labor camps, and what your country did to the Jews—how much did you know of these events? Did they teach you this in school?”

“Not all Bulgarians are familiar with this story,” she said after a momentary pause. “I first learned about Bulgarian Jewry in high school. There were programs on television as well. Once the communists came to power, they distorted our history. What we heard was not exactly what had happened. Today, most young Bulgarians know little about the World War Two period, and that’s a shame.”

“Oh, one other thing. How did you ever find me?”

“Find you?”

“Yes. How did you know whom to contact and invite to Bulgaria?”

“My grandfather knew that Avraham had moved to Israel. From a distance, he tried to keep track of his childhood friend and he was heartbroken when Avraham died. A few months ago, he asked me to find Avraham’s daughter, or if not, his grandchildren. It took a lot of Googling to locate someone related to Avraham. You don’t know how many emails I sent until finally one reached you, and you responded.”

I wanted to ask her more, but Anna pulled my hand. “Let’s hurry back to the house. My grandfather will soon be awake. He will want me to continue reading Avraham’s letters to you.”

* * *

February 15, 1942

My dear Aleksandar,

I pray you are well. Did you receive my correspondence? Where is your army unit posted these days?

Much time has passed since I last wrote and what should I next tell you? We labored at the camp for many months, building the railway, but then they let us leave for a winter break. Back to our homes, and our families. I had taken ill in the camp, but I struggled along with my work battalion as much as possible. Red tried to protect me, to give me easier work assignments, but I was not the only one suffering from the labor. Being sent home was the best thing that could happen for all of us.

Last month, we returned to Belitsa. We have heard rumors about the camps in Poland, camps from which one does not return. But this is Bulgaria, our beloved homeland. Here we labor on behalf of our country. The camp commander is a fascist, but Red is on our side. He makes sure no one would ever harm us.

In the evenings, we sit in the barracks and raise each other’s spirits. We tell tales of our lives in Sofia, Plovdiv, and elsewhere. We reminisce about our childhoods, speak fondly of our families. We relate funny stories, we laugh. One of my bunkmates has a guitar and we sing.

Some have escaped the camp to become partisans and fight the government from the forests and mountains, but I prefer to remain with my newfound friends. We dream of better days and we know those days will come at war’s end.

When I was at home, Ester asked about you many times. I told you of her engagement, but the wedding has been postponed. Her fiancé was sent to a labor camp in the north. During the days of my illness, Ester cared for me, nursed me back to health. My parents spoke of you fondly. I anxiously await your letters for news about your army days!

* * *

“Imma, yes, I am still in the village,” I told my mother on the phone, although this was not exactly true. Anna’s mother had driven me down the mountain to a town where there was cellphone reception. I was using the Wi-Fi connection of a corner café. “I am learning so much about Saba, about our family’s roots. Why didn’t you tell me about his time in the labor camps? Did you know what he did during those years?”

“Saba spoke little about his childhood and even less of what happened to him during the war.”

“But why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“I wanted to protect you. Why should I share with you things that your grandfather didn’t want to share with me?”

I ignored her comment and asked instead, “Were you aware of friendship with Aleksandar?”

“Yes, but they did not remain friends. Something happened between them. I’m not exactly sure what it was.”

“All these letters Saba wrote, what a story they tell! Didn’t Saba keep any letters Aleksandar wrote in response?”

“I don’t know of any such letters.”

“And what about Ester?”

“Ester?”

“Grandfather’s sister. What happened to her?”

“The past is the past, and there are things it is better not to know,” my mother responded without further explanation. She quickly changed the subject and a short while later, the Internet connection gave out. It was time to return to the family’s home where Anna and Aleksandar were waiting.

* * *

I am uncertain whether you received all the letters I sent you out of great friendship. I hope my correspondence has not gotten lost! These days, one can doubt the efficiency of postal services in southern Bulgaria.

I wrote of my return to the labor camp at Belitsa, and of our continued construction of the railway. Of the tough challenges we faced, of our reliance on Red as our protector, of the outlandish demands of the camp commander. I wrote of our labor during the long summer days, and of how we rejoiced at the comradery in the barracks at night. I wrote of the rain, of the sleet, of the snow. Of the freezing nights when we shivered under our thin blankets.

I wonder how you are faring in the army, where you are serving. What do you do during the hot days? Where do you patrol during the wintry nights?

I wish you well, my dear friend. One day soon we will see each other again and renew the friendship we shared as young boys in Sofia and at the university.

Pausing only to catch her breath from time to time, Anna maintained a steady and pleasing tone of voice as she read. She was never at a loss for words, never stumbled over her translations. I was convinced she accurately presented my grandfather’s narrative and could not help but admire her for keeping her composure when reciting a very disturbing account of wartime events.

My grandfather wrote that he remained strong, physically and mentally. He had the stamina to persevere, he assured Aleksandar, no matter how difficult it was to toil away in the harsh conditions of the camp. He wrote of his deteriorating health, of his constant cough, muscle pains, and his chills at night. He wrote he felt lucky because many of the others had come down with malaria. Hearing his words, I realized that my grandfather’s spirit never wavered. He was resilient. He endured his ordeal with great fortitude. But throughout it all, it was surprising to learn that he retained a profound love for his homeland, even his respect for the czar.

I was about to suggest to Anna that we skip some of the letters because the narrative from the camp was becoming somewhat repetitious, but then she read a mail which changed everything for me.

June 6, 1943

My dear Aleksandar,

I hope this letter finds you well, and in good spirits. There has been a gap in my correspondence, and for this I apologize. I write to you now of the circumstances that took me far from the Belitsa camp. That period of my labor came to its timely conclusion. Instead, I am in Samovit, a small village sitting on the shores of the Danube north of Pleven.

Let me tell you how this came to pass.

I was allowed to leave the labor camp because of my constant cough. It was Red who arranged for my return to Sofia. He argued that my medical condition was dire, although this was hardly the case. He intervened with the camp commander and secured my release from Belitsa!

I returned to Sofia, but if I expected a return to the good times from the past, I was to be mistaken. The war was still raging and the reports we were hearing were grim. We didn’t have a radio, but our neighbor listened to Radio Berlin. He informed us of the declaration stating that the Jews of Bulgaria were to be deported. In compliance with government orders, the Jews of Sofia were to be taken to live in other towns and villages.

We did not leave Sofia without protest. We demonstrated, beseeching the government to allow us to remain in our homes. Many of our fellow Bulgarian citizens stood up for us. Christian writers and artists; merchants and clergy; lawyers and journalists. Our gentile neighbors and our friends. All of them demanded that the government reverse its decisions. The Jews were Bulgarian citizens, our loyal countrymen cried, but the czar remained silent.

I must mention two notables from the Orthodox Church who remain steadfastly opposed to the fascist government’s rulings. I wonder if you have heard their story. Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia offered to baptize any Jews who sought the protection of the church. And Metropolitan Kiril of Plovdiv confronted the czar, saying that if ever the trains come to take the Jews of Plovdiv, he would personally lie on the tracks to prevent such trains from leaving the station.

Few Jews, if any, volunteered for baptism, but the words and actions of these Church leaders are truly holy.

My parents and Ester are here with me in Samovit, and they express their concern for you nearly every day. Samovit is not a labor camp, but rather an internment camp. We are prisoners here, and our imprisonment is indefinite and absolute. Still, we remain hopeful, as always, and eagerly await our return to Sofia.

Aleksandar coughed, and Anna brought him a glass of water. The old man whispered to her and Anna translated.

“He again said that you look like Avraham.”

When Aleksandar smiled, I saw that two of his front teeth were missing; another one was capped in gold. I smiled back at him and turned my attention to the next letter.

June 10, 1943

My dear Aleksandar,

It is within the empty classrooms of a two-story red-brick school that my parents, Ester, and I are housed, along with hundreds of our coreligionists. Women and children, the elderly and the unfit. Among the detainees are leaders of Sofia’s Jewish community, well-known lawyers, judges, businessmen, and doctors—all men of high standing who lost their positions shortly after passage of the LPN.

Besides the Jewish detainees, Samovit is where the government incarcerates anyone considered dangerous to the security of the state. Opposition leaders, political activists, and writers who objected to the policies of Prime Minister Filov and his cabinet. There are criminals here, as well as those whose only crime is recent residence in a mental institution. Jews, communists, felons, homosexuals, gypsies, and the insane—we are all being held until further notice.

We sleep on mattresses on the classroom floor, some forty people in each room. Soldiers wake us at six in the morning and we follow them outside, even if it is raining heavily. We are given half an hour to visit the latrines. There is no electricity; no running water to wash one’s face; no showers or places to take a bath.

During the first two hours of each day, no food is served. When the morning meal is finally available, it is nothing more than a slice or two of stale bread and a lukewarm cup of tea. Lunch comprises more bread and a bowl of watery bean soup. Our meager meals are often supplemented with food brought to the camp by Christian residents of the nearby villages. Kind Bulgarian citizens making sure we don’t go hungry. Conditions are hard, but we survive.

Anna’s mother brought us each a glass of sweet tea and placed a tray of sweet pastries on the table. Anna picked up the next letter.

June 13, 1943

My dear Aleksandar,

No one knows how long we will be here, but most presume it will be until the war ends, whenever that will be. Our future is uncertain.

We know of Jews who were transported across Bulgaria on trains bound for Lom. They were sent on barges to Poland, to the Auschwitz camp where they were murdered by the Nazis. Mass shootings, or worse. From Samovit, we can see ships docked on the Danube. We fear this will be our fate as well!

Despite the harsh conditions, the threat of deportation, the fear of the fate that awaits us on the other side of the river, we have hope. We know many Bulgarians are working diligently to secure our release. Ordinary citizens and even some politicians.

Are you aware that Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speaker of Parliament, spoke out against the planned deportations? He demanded to meet officials at the Ministry of the Interior and with Prime Minister Filov. Peshev, a very brave and honorable man, acted on our behalf. Are there no other members of Parliament who will come to our aid?

And what of you, my friend? Where does the war find you these days? Where are you serving? Ester and my parents send their fondest regards and pray for your good health. I hope to hear from you soon, before they take us away from this camp. Before they force us to leave our beloved Bulgaria.

* * *

Dusk was falling, and lights flickered in the houses of the village. I was breathless after hearing my grandfather’s correspondence with Aleksandar. Learning that he was in an internment camp and about to be deported with his family and sent to Auschwitz made me shiver. I had a sudden urge to leap from my chair, run outside, and clear my head in the cool mountain air.

“There is one more letter,” Anna told me. “Should we read it now?”

“I don’t know if I am ready for another letter. Maybe we should put it off until morning.”

“It is not from Avraham. It is from my grandfather,” she said, pointing to Aleksandar, who had dozed off in his chair.

“But what about my grandfather’s parents and Ester? What happened to them at that camp? Did they get sent to Poland? He must have written something more.”

“I think you need to hear my grandfather’s letter,” Anna insisted. “It is the only letter he ever wrote in response to Avraham. You are returning to Sofia tomorrow for your flight back to Tel Aviv. This last letter will give you closure; it will make you understand what happened to your family and why it was so important for you to come to Bulgaria and hear everything in person.”

There was no way I could ever get to sleep after hearing that introduction. I took a long sip of water and nodded to Anna.

My dear Avraham,

I am writing to you in response to your many mails. I am not a man of words like you. I have always been a simple man, a boy born in the Rhodopes sent to Sofia to become an engineer. I studied to improve my mechanical skills, not to expand my literary talents.

Your letters describing your family’s misfortunes during the war have touched me deeply. I read them carefully with great interest, and eagerly anticipated each one. I was both fearful and hopeful each time I read your news.

There is much for me to say, and many apologies for me to make. I write to ask your forgiveness for so many things. For my failure to respond, for the delay in my response when it was sent at last, and for what I am about to reveal to you on these pages.

It is now two years since the war ended—

“Two years after the war?”

“Yes. My grandfather did not write to Avraham when he was in the camps. He only ever wrote this one letter in late September 1947. He composed it here, in this very house. My grandfather never returned to Sofia and in fact, he has barely left Gela in all the years since. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me continue.”

I am so relieved that you and your parents are again living in Sofia, that your lives have returned to some sort of normalcy, despite what happened. I heard your father re-bought the linen factory from your neighbor. I am very interested in your family’s welfare, even if I never reached out to contact you during the war, or since.

Even greater is my relief that not a single Jew was deported from our homeland and sent to the death camps. Our fascist government is long gone; the labor and displacement camps have been dismantled; and all our Jewish neighbors, all the Jews of our beloved Bulgaria have been saved! Every last one of them!

“All the Jews of Bulgaria were saved?” I again interrupted.

“Yes, not a single one died in the Holocaust.”

“I don’t understand. My grandfather wrote of trains passing through the night, full of Jews being sent on barges to the concentration camps.”

“Yes, that’s true. There were Jews who were transported through Bulgaria on their way to Poland, but not Bulgarian Jewish citizens. Those were Jews from other regions, from Macedonia and Greece. Whether we were responsible for their wellbeing is a contentious issue. Our country was aligned with Hitler; our government was fascist; our laws were anti-Semitic; but our Jewish citizens were saved.”

“This is incredible. Why didn’t they teach this to us in school?” Or maybe they did, I thought, and I hadn’t been paying attention. I looked at Anna and said, “One thing isn’t clear to me, though. Who saved Bulgaria’s Jews? The czar?”

“You have touched upon a very interesting subject. A controversial one.” Anna glanced at Aleksandar, who was fast asleep, slouched on his wooden chair. Her mother was sitting at the end of the table, concentrating on the shirt she was embroidering. Anna turned to me and said, “I can give you some sort of answer to your question, but wait. Hear the rest of my grandfather’s letter and then, I hope, you will fully understand.”

I have hesitated to write to you, even after all this time has passed. I have been reluctant to tell you of my own experiences during these past years. I have been fearful as to your response, what you would think of me. I have wondered if you would ever forgive me for what I did during the war. I think of you often, and of Ester. And how I could have prevented what happened. I need to tell you my side of the tragic events that occurred.

These are difficult words to write.

In your letters, you recalled our childhood, our studies in primary school and later at the university. I, too, remember those years as the best of times, yet in retrospect, they were not good times at all. Clouds were darkening in the skies over Europe. The laws enacted by our government directly affected your family, and all Bulgaria’s Jews. There was little any of us could do to stop what was bound to come.

Yet, I thought I could do something. I believed I could play a role and ensure a better future. That is why I left university to enlist in the army. I gladly donned my uniform out of a sense of duty to our country. If I recall correctly, you honored my decision and said it was be the right thing to do.

Our future actually looked good then. We loved the czar and what he was doing for our country. He aligned us with the Nazis, it’s true, but there were benefits for Bulgaria and we all acknowledged them.

At the start of the war, if you recall, the Germans invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. While we didn’t take part in those battles, we moved our troops into Thrace and Macedonia. Czar Boris announced we made the move “to preserve order and stability in the territories taken over by Germany.” All Bulgarians were proud of what Boris had done. He had not occupied those territories, he liberated them. They were a natural part of our national homeland. For this, we called Boris the ‘King Unifier’.

You are aware of all this. What you don’t know is that they sent me to serve in the territories. They assigned me to a unit in Macedonia. We assumed we would be welcomed as liberators and at first, we were. Many, if not all the residents, spoke Bulgarian, and we understood those who only spoke Macedonian. We were there to reunite with them under Bulgarian leadership. We called the territories New Bulgaria.

I served in Bitola, a town the Jews still call Monastir despite its official name change after the Balkan Wars. I patrolled the various neighborhoods, but I spent most of my time in Los Kortezus. This was the poorest section, close to the center and near the largest market square. The houses lining the narrow cobblestone streets were two-storied affairs with tiled roofs, shared by more than one family. Each house had its own well, but there was no electricity. Kitchens were in the yards, toilets too. In the summer months, residents slept outside to get relief from the crowded conditions within their homes. It was not the most comfortable place to live.

I write this to give you some background to my story, to show how different conditions were in Bitola, so unlike our modern lives in Sofia. The Jews, I learned, had lived in Macedonia for a long time. They had their synagogues, their schools, their colorful history. They had their own culture and traditions. They spoke Macedonian, but also a different language. Ladino.

The Jews of Macedonia were not eligible to become Bulgarian citizens. Instead, the LPN was introduced, the same as in Bulgaria proper. Jews lost much of their property, and were forbidden to work in industry and commerce.

And then it was decided that the Jews of Macedonia must be deported. Whether it was a Bulgarian decision or something demanded by the Germans, I cannot say. But as a soldier in the Bulgarian army, I was part of the troops that carried out the deportation orders.

I am ashamed to tell you what I did. Even after the passage of time, I cannot escape these dreadful memories.

I remember pounding on doors at five in the morning, rousing the residents and telling them to take their jewelry and valuables and leave immediately with only what they could carry. There were wagons waiting in the streets for the baggage. We shouted at the residents, demanded that they hurry. House by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, we rounded up the Jews of the town. We transported them to a temporary internment camp at Monopol, the tobacco warehouse in Skopje. Monopol was chosen because the warehouse could accommodate thousands, and because it sat right on the railway tracks.

That was my new post, patrolling the perimeter with a ferocious-looking German Shepherd at my side, and you are aware of my distaste for dogs! Guarding adults and children, pregnant women and the seriously ill, all of them held in the most terrible conditions.

There were rules at Monopol, what was allowed and what was forbidden. Prohibitions against smoking, playing games, and reading newspapers. Prohibitions against drinking alcohol and receiving food from outside the camp. The Jews were not even permitted to look out through the windows. Disease in Monopol was widespread, and not one day passed without someone dying.

Holding my head high, I circled the warehouse. On my shoulder I carried my rifle; in my hand I held the leash of my dog. A Bulgarian soldier fulfilling his duties, following his orders. Protecting his homeland.

Looking back, I wonder if I could have done things differently. If I could have protested the inhumanity of our actions. If I could have ignored the orders I was given. I wasn’t strong enough then, and I sincerely regret everything I did.

“Should we take a break?” Anna asked me.

My mouth was dry and my head was spinning. But we couldn’t stop now. I needed to hear this story until its end.

Orders came for the deportation of the Jews housed in the warehouse. My commander tried to reassure us it was for the best. The deportees would be employed in agriculture and as semi-skilled laborers, elsewhere in the German territories. They would return to their homes after the war, our commander promised. This benefited the war effort.

I still remember that horrid night, as if it was yesterday. We pulled the Jews from the warehouse and led them to the railway tracks. They were crying and screaming. The mothers could not keep their children quiet; the fathers could not comfort their wives.

The train was waiting, but it was not one fit for passengers. This was a freight train, with cargo compartments meant for cattle. Boxcars not suitable for the transport of human beings, yet this is how we were sending the Jews to their new home.

Along with the other soldiers and armed guards, I struck the Jews with my truncheon, shoved them, and forced them to stumble aboard the boxcars. Over a hundred in each car, I think, like sardines they were, with a single pail in the corner for their private needs. I pulled back the bolt, locking them within.

How were my actions possible? I question this now, but then I felt I was fulfilling my duties as a soldier. Was this a good thing? Today, I can say it was a horrific thing, but back then? I was doing what I was commanded to do.

This I can tell you. On the platform, watching us herd the Jews into the boxcars, stood two important-looking men. One was a Bulgarian dressed in civilian clothing and I knew his name. He was Alexander Belev, head of the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, the agency which had full authority to do whatever was necessary to solve what they described as the ‘Jewish problem’.

Standing next to Belev was a German officer uniformed in full regalia. I didn’t know his name then, but afterwards I learned this was none other than Theodore Dannecker, an SS Hauptsturmführer, previously responsible for the round-up of French Jews in Paris.

These two men were present on the railway platform in Skopje as the prisoners from the tobacco warehouse boarded the train. A German commander and a Bulgarian bureaucrat overseeing the transport of the Macedonian Jews, making sure everything was handled and documented properly.

As I stepped back, I detected what I thought at first was the scent of bovine beasts, but no, this was something different, something more powerful. It was the stench of human sweat, urine, and feces. And later, as the train barreled across the countryside, I was to learn it was the odor of death as well.

My conditions on the train were fortunately suitable for a company of Bulgarian soldiers. We laughed; we joked; and because of the rumble of the train on the tracks, we could ignore the misery in the cargo cars behind us. The train sped north and we passed into Bulgaria proper. The whistle sounded, and we jerked in our seats as the brakes hissed. I looked out the window and saw that we were in Dupnitsa, some 50 kilometers south of Sofia. I left my compartment and strolled along the platform. I lit a cigarette and laughed at one of the other soldier’s jokes.

With the train’s engines silent, I could clearly hear the Jews inside the cargo cars. Crying, sobbing, hysterical moaning. Screaming, the wailing of children. Some called out in Macedonian; others beseeched me in Bulgarian. “Water!” they begged. “We cannot breathe!” “Something to eat, please! There are children here!” And then, one call more disturbing than the others. “An old lady has died! Can we not take out her body to bury her?”

“We’ll be in Lom by morning,” our commander reassured us, trying to lighten the mood. But I was beginning to feel my own despair.

The other soldiers kept their eyes low, laughing nervously. It was one thing to be in a separate compartment, away from the Jewish passengers, but quite another to hear their pleas for salvation. We were transporting them like livestock. I avoided looking at the faces peering out at us through the slits of the boxcar.

A commotion started up at the end of the platform and I spun around. A group of local residents had gathered there, arguing with our commander. I retraced my steps and approached.

“It’s bread and cheese,” a woman said. “We brought them water,” one man said. “Some vegetables,” added another.

“No nourishments are to be given to the Jews,” the commander argued, holding back the crowd.

“These Jews are human beings,” protested the woman. “How can you deny them their basic right to eat and drink?”

“They can barely breathe in there!” shouted the man.

“We are following our orders,” the commander said, dismissing these pleas for mercy.

At the time, I was simply following the orders of my commander. He was following the orders of his superior. That high ranked officer was following the orders of the Bulgarian government. And the Bulgarian government was following the orders of the Germans.

I looked at the citizens of Dupnitsa standing before us on the platform. Bulgarian citizens speaking out for the Jews, willing to come to the aid of the Jews. Some of them ran towards the boxcars, tried to break the locks and open the doors, and we had to pull them away. This was the true heart of the Bulgarian people, I knew. This showed our true feelings for our Jewish neighbors. We cared for them and saw them as citizens of our country, the same as us.

On that bleak railway platform, I did nothing. I was weak. I witnessed a very horrid human tragedy, but I stood silent, motionless. I did not speak up on the citizens’ behalf; I did not argue with my commander when he ordered our company back on the train. The whistle sounded as we took our seats. We continued to the north.

Hundreds of Jews were on that train, hundreds more on the next one. Even as you languished in the camp near Pleven, of which you wrote, thousands of Jews from Macedonia and Thrace were transported like cattle across the Bulgarian countryside. And I did nothing.

“I think I understand now,” I said to Anna, when she put down the weathered pages and rubbed her eyes. Her voice was dry, but she smiled when her mother brought refreshments to the table. Aleksandar had woken up for several minutes, but now he had dozed off again. The elderly man’s light snoring brought some comic relief to the tragic tale I had just heard.

“What do you understand?” Anna asked me.

“Why it was so important for Aleksandar that I should hear his words. They are an apology to my grandfather, for not acting to protect the Jews during the war.”

“That is what you think? I wish it was so easy.”

“What does that mean?”

“There is more to my grandfather’s mail.”

“More? I thought Aleksandar was a man of few words.”

“Avraham wrote many letters, sometimes every week, but my grandfather wrote only this one letter, and it took him, apparently, many months to compose it. It wasn’t easy for him. His wartime experiences weighed heavily on him, with memories too painful to bear. But somehow, he put his words on paper, wrote of his trauma. I guess you could call it a confession of sorts.

“There are other things you must learn,” she continued. “They will be difficult for you to hear because they describe something horrible, something very tragic. Something that is an essential part of your family’s story, much more personal than the story of the Macedonian Jews.”

You and I, Avraham, we are both Bulgarians. Neither of us is better than the other. We are equal. Yet, I have failed you. I served our country while you struggled to stay alive in the detention camps. Camps on Bulgarian soil, guarded by Bulgarian soldiers like me.

If I had taken action against the inhuman cruelty I witnessed, maybe you and your parents would not have suffered so. I remember your sister so fondly. Her fair skin, her bright eyes, her whimsical smile. If things had been different, Ester would still be alive.

“What is he talking about? Ester died? My grandfather never mentioned that.”

Anna ignored my question and instead said, “It is not easy for me to read this last part, but you must hear the story it tells. You must learn what my grandfather did, and why he pleas for your forgiveness.”

“Please continue,” I said.

My final posting was in Kaylaka. Although few Bulgarians are aware of this camp, or of what purpose it played in the war, you know what occurred there.

When we heard Aleksandar tap his cane, signaling he was awake again, Anna put down the letter and helped him up. After he hobbled off to the bathroom, she turned to me. “Before I continue, I will fill you in on what was happening in the war. Another history lesson, if you will, but this will help put things in context.

“They assigned my grandfather to Kaylaka in July 1944. Boris had died a year previously under mysterious circumstances. Some say he suffered a heart attack; others say the Nazis poisoned him. We may never know for certain. Let me go back a bit further, and I apologize for telling you these events out of sequence. The Allies bombed Sofia the previous November for the first time. The city was bombed again in March. Each bombing was severe. Hundreds of planes flying low; over 3,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. More than 100 people killed. Then there was Black Easter in April. Again, Allied bombers filled the sky and dropped their bombs. So you see, we paid the price for our alliance with the Nazis.

“In June 1944, one month before my grandfather was sent to Kaylaka, British and American troops landed on Normandy Beach. The Soviet offensive was driving west towards Warsaw. Only when the end was in sight, and Hitler had been dead four months, did Bulgaria declare war on Germany. Afterwards, the communists came to power, but that’s another story altogether.”

Aleksandar came back into the room, shrugged off an offer of tea from his daughter, and nodded at Anna. Anna picked up the letter and resumed her reading.

Kaylaka camp was located five kilometers south of Pleven. The detainees there, prisoners actually, were incarcerated at the whim of the Bulgarian authorities in Sofia. The prisoners were housed in long, narrow, wooden barracks. Built to serve 50 people, each held over 100 prisoners inside. Entrance to these unfurnished halls was through a single door, and this door was locked at night. Windows let in light but could not be opened. The air inside the barracks was stuffy, the heat stifling. When the men, women, and children slept, they could barely breathe.

I know of these horrid conditions because I patrolled the camp, walking near the wooden fence, with barbed wire beyond that. In each corner, a sentry was posted, armed with a machine gun. I had no dog at my side as I performed my duties. Following my orders, daring not to question them. Looking back, I realize that I played an atrocious role in the events at Kaylaka.

Additional prisoners arrived. Educated Bulgarians, merchants and teachers and doctors and lawyers. Jews from Kyustendil and Dupnitsa. Communist sympathizers and partisan leaders. The rabbi from your synagogue. Families were there. Husbands and wives. Children of all ages. Infants.

And that is where I saw Ester. Your sister.

I hardly recognized her because she was so thin. She was frail and vulnerable. Her hair, which was once long and luxurious, was cut short. Her eyes bore no resemblance to those that captured me in their spell when I visited your family.

Seeing Ester in Kaylaka was shocking. Although I was hopeful she would soon be released and allowed to return to your home in Sofia, I could not promise that no harm would ever fall her way. I approached Ester but she did not acknowledge my presence.

And then, one night, there was a fire. One of the wooden barracks burst into flames, trapping the prisoners sleeping inside. Who lit the fire, I swear I do not know! Whether it was an order issued by the army, I cannot say. Maybe it was the communists, or the partisans? These groups, fighting against our fascist government, were hiding in the forests. What I do know was that while the fire raged, no one took action to extinguish the flames.

And then I saw Ester’s face in one of the windows of the burning barracks. Her eyes were wide in horror. She was screaming, calling out for mercy, but I could not hear her words. The fire raged, and I stood there, motionless, holding a water canteen in one hand and with my rifle slung over my shoulder.

I did nothing, Avraham. I stood and watched the blaze burn down the barracks.

Ester, fair Ester. If only things had been different.

I am here, in Gela, far away from you but close to you in my thoughts and prayers.

I have caused you and your family great sorrow, Avraham. I have failed the Jews. I have failed Bulgaria.

For this, I am truly sorry.

Avraham, my dear friend. I long to come to Sofia to speak my thoughts, to tell you this story in person. I have transgressed, and now I beg for your mercy. Will you ever forgive me? Please accept my apology in the spirit in which it is given.

Your dearest friend,

Aleksandar

* * *

“My grandfather returned to our village after the war,” Anna said, a sad look in her eyes. “Apparently, memories of the war; what he had done as a soldier; and witnessing Ester’s death, were a heavy burden for him, more than he could bear. My grandmother said he was not the same man as before. He took over the family farm, barely leaving the village. He worked our potato fields, took the sheep to pasture, milked our cow. A simple life, the one his father wanted him to escape. They said he often walked through the hills, staring off into the distance at the snow-capped mountains in Greece, but rarely spoke of the past. He never formed friendships, certainly not the type he had with Avraham.”

Aleksandar fidgeted, and then using his cane as balance, he rose shakily to his feet. He moved forward, approaching the table where I was seated. He realized I had finished listening to his letter, the last one from the cardboard box.

“Now he is old, near death,” Anna said, gently touching her grandfather’s shoulder. “Seeing you, giving you these letters, telling of Avraham’s history and his own, and most importantly seeking forgiveness for what he did, that is what he needed to do before he died. If he could not get your grandfather’s forgiveness, he begs for yours.”

I stared at Aleksandar, who was standing next to me, waiting. I saw honesty in his eyes, a pleading appeal for my response. I shook his calloused hand, hardened from his years as a Rhodopes farmer, and realized it was not unlike my own grandfather’s hands, which had toughened from his work as a kibbutznik. My eyes filled with tears. What else could I say? I left the room; I left the past.

* * *

The flight from Sofia to Tel Aviv was a short one, and I had much to think about. Despite the many hardships he had faced, my grandfather made aliyah. He came to Israel, married, and started a family. He led a good life on the kibbutz; his story had a happy ending after all. But he had never spoken of his past. I had learned so much about my family’s history and a lot of it was very troubling.

At first, I thought the stories I had heard, in the letters of both my grandfather and Aleksandar, were too fantastical to be true. An elaborated and very creative description of wartime events, it was at points totally unbelievable. Hours of fact-checking in my Sofia hotel bedroom with an uninterrupted Internet connection, though, led me to believe otherwise.

These are the things I learned:

There were 48,000 Jews living in Bulgaria before the war and none of them were sent to the Polish concentration camps. The Jews of Bulgaria survived the Holocaust, but not everyone agrees who should be acknowledged for saving them.

Some say credit is due to Czar Boris. He was the supreme ruler, the ultimate decision-maker. Nothing could be done in Bulgaria without his consent. Ignoring both the Nazis’ demands and his country’s fascist government, Boris never permitted the deportation of his country’s Jewish citizens. On the other hand, Boris sided with Hitler and adopted Germany’s anti-Semitic policies. The majority of sources I read indicated that the czar actually did little on the Jews’ behalf.

Dimitar Peshev, Deputy Speaker of Bulgaria’s National Assembly, rebelled against his country’s government, losing his parliamentary position as a result. For his brave actions in the fight for Bulgarian Jewry, Yad Vashem recognized Peshev as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Leading clergy in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church were also honored as Righteous Among the Nations. The Metropolitan of Sofia, Stefan, and the Metropolitan of Plovdiv, Kiril—both of them mentioned in my grandfather’s letters—fought the government’s decrees. In March 1943, when the Nazis first called on Bulgaria to hand over Jews from Sofia for deportation, Stephan intervened and went to confront the czar. Boris feigned illness to avoid him, I read online, but Stefan refused to leave the palace. Finally, the two met and Stephen demanded that the decision to hand over the Jews to the Nazis be postponed. Otherwise, he would instruct all churches and monasteries to open their doors to the Jews. The czar gave in, and none of the country’s Jewish citizens were deported. From what I saw on the Internet, this was one of many incidents in which the church spoke out for the Jews.

Prominent gentile writers, artists, and merchants demonstrated on the Jews’ behalf. Ordinary citizens fought the anti-Semitic decrees. They temporarily bought Jewish businesses and properties, as did my great-grandfather’s neighbor, only to return them at the war’s end. Others, as Aleksandar had mentioned, rushed out to the train tracks offering bread and water to Jewish refugees as they passed through the countryside on their way to the camps in Poland.

“We refused to let them take away our friends, our neighbors,” Anna had said as she drove me back to Sofia. “Jews are as Bulgarian as we are. Your people have lived in our country for centuries. How could we allow anyone to harm them?”

Based on their actions in defiance of the fascist government, I believed that ultimately the Bulgarian people should be credited for saving the country’s Jews.

“Of this we are most proud,” Anna said. But, as I also learned in her grandfather’s letter, there was a very tragic side to this story. My continued Internet research provided more details.

No fewer than 11,343 Jews of Thrace and Macedonia were murdered in the Holocaust. They died at the hands of the Nazis in the camps, but who was responsible for their deaths? Bulgaria administered its ‘liberated’ territories during the war and, unlike the postponement of similar orders in Bulgaria proper, in Thrace and Macedonia, Bulgarian officials sanctioned the Jews’ deportation.

When I questioned Anna about this, she replied, “Much of the population does not know of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews, or of our country’s role in the deaths of others. Of those who do know, many dismiss allegations that we occupied Macedonia and claim we simply administered it on the Germans’ behalf. That only the Germans should be held to blame. But we were there, in Macedonia. We were there, in Thrace, and in Serbia as well. Bulgarian army, Bulgarian police, Bulgarian civil servants. Our actions came perhaps from our collective naïve patriotism. Our guilt has been repressed all these years. I guess most of my country is suffering from a severe case of historical amnesia.”

Anna said nothing more about this part of Aleksandar’s story.

If the Nazis had had their way, all the Jews of Bulgaria would have been murdered in the concentration camps, but this did not come to pass. As I had asked myself previously, many times—Why didn’t I know any of this?

The Belitsa and Samovit camps were real. I confirmed this in my online research. In the first, one of many forced labor camps active across the country, hundreds of Bulgarian Jewish men labored on national infrastructure projects, like the railway construction my grandfather described. The latter was an internment camp for Jews forced to leave their homes in Sofia and elsewhere.

The tragic fire at the Kaylaka camp in northern Bulgaria actually happened, and it was deadly. Although assumed to be arson, no one was ever held accountable for the fire, which broke out shortly after midnight on July 11, 1944. Eleven Jews were killed in the blaze; three of them died in the flaming wooden barracks and the other eight succumbed at a Pleven hospital in the following days. Among the victims and the wounded were men, women, and children. Although not listed anywhere in the information I found online, my great aunt Ester apparently was one of those who died.

Until now, Ester had been just a name on my family tree. My mother never spoke of her; she never shared Ester’s story. The letters my grandfather wrote gave Ester life, while Aleksandar’s response explained her death. I now understood my grandfather’s stubborn silence, why he refused to discuss those times, why he tried to erase them from his memories.

As the pilot announced our preparations for landing at Ben Gurion Airport, my thoughts were still in Bulgaria. I remembered what Anna told me on my last night in Gela.

“My grandfather never sent his mail to Avraham. He bore too much guilt. That is why this last envelope is here. It was never posted.”

It was shocking to hear this, but her next revelation was far more devastating.

“That night, as the barracks burned in Kaylaka, my grandfather saw Avraham. Avraham was there, in the camp. With Ester. Avraham was burnt, suffered from smoke inhalation, but he managed to escape. His parents too. They survived, but Ester did not.

“As they gasped for breath in the fresh air, desperately looking for Ester, my grandfather stepped forward. He tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat. My grandfather stood there, not lifting a hand to help, not moving to stop the blaze, and Avraham saw this. No doubt he held my grandfather responsible for Ester’s death.”

Anna’s final words were lodged in my brain and I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had just learned. Aleksandar could have acted, yet he did nothing. I wondered whether his blindly following orders in Macedonia was criminal, whether witnessing a deadly fire in Kaylaka without trying to extinguish it made him an accomplice to arson and murder.

The plane descended quickly, sightings of the Tel Aviv skyline having given way to views of concrete runways. I smiled, thinking back about my brief stay in Gela. Anna and her mother had warmly welcomed me into their home; their hospitality was genuine. The food they served me, the comfortable lodgings, even Anna’s tales of Gela’s mythical past—all made my time in the village memorable, a reason to come back one day. Still, the letters that brought me to Bulgaria, and the horrific stories they told, troubled me greatly. But not as much as the one question that lingered in my mind.

By having Anna voice the words he planned to say to my grandfather, Aleksandar had at last expressed his heartfelt apologies for not saving Ester’s life. Ten years after my grandfather was no longer alive to hear his confession. My grandfather had never forgiven Aleksandar, but could I?



BIO

Ellis Shuman is an American-born Israeli author, travel writer, and book reviewer. His writing has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, and The Huffington Post. He is the author of The Virtual Kibbutz, Valley of Thracians, and The Burgas Affair. His short fiction has appeared in Isele Magazine, Vagabond, Esoterica, The Write Launch, Adelaide Literary, and other literary publications. You can find him at https://ellisshuman.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @ellisshuman







The Huntsman

By Rozanne Charbonneau


Zurich, 2022

You remove your sports bra and lower your eyes to the floor. At forty-five, you hope that your breasts do not follow. The huntsman peers at the scar that travels out of the fold.

Will he touch it? It is still sore.

He turns to your husband, Elias, who sits on the other side of the room. “The surgeon made a beautiful cut,” he says in Swiss German.

Elias remains poker-faced. This huntsman, Dr S, wants to kill the wolf that still lurks inside you. He wants to stalk the beast, but only if you submit to the poison. 

“Your mouth will erupt in sores, your stomach will hurl, and your body will return to the hairless state of a newborn,” he warns, clicking open his pen.

He is a legend. The newspapers declare that thirty out of one hundred women would die without his thirst to murder the wild and the untamed.

“You seem like a very strong woman, Frau Bertelsmann. I think you can handle it.”

The Zurich dialect is far too difficult right now, but answering him in French could appear arrogant.

“Yes, please help me,” you whisper in English.

The huntsman takes out a notepad and looks at you both. “Good. Then let’s get to know one another.”

He asks the standard questions. Profession? You design textiles and have lived in Switzerland for over twenty years. Yes, this country is now your own. Elias is more secretive about his work. “I sell my time,” is all he will say. Dr S studies his face for a moment, as if trying to place him. He turns and asks about children. You shake your head. “Why not?” he queries. Because you were too lazy. The quip always makes people laugh, but it is the truth.

His complexion is ruddy, and he sports oversized black glasses and a crew cut. How old is he? Maybe fifty at the most. His pen lopes across the page in broad strokes, dogged yet passionate. Is this what it takes to kill the wolf?

He warns you that the hunt will be long and arduous. After the many months of venom, he will send you to a dungeon on the outskirts of town. His shooters will fire rays of war at the wounded beast, over and over again.

He leans across his desk. “Your breast will weep from the blisters and burns. As the skin heals, it will turn a grayish brown. This color will fade, but the tinge of boiled liver may remain forever.”

The torture will not end. You will return to him. He will then drop pills on your tongue to exterminate all womanly butterflies in your body.

“Wolves love female company. If we kill the nymphalidae, no future predators will have reason to come back.”

You squeeze an old Kleenex in your pocket. “So, you want to knock me into menopause before my time? For how long, a year?”

“Ten years,” he says with compassion.

*****

You were nine years old. You pulled Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch from the bookshelf and stared at the cover. A woman’s naked torso hung on a clothesline in the darkness. The nipples were pretty and pink, just like the buttons on your nightgown. The sex had no hair, no slit. It was a mouth that could not scream.  

*****

“You will experience all the regular symptoms. Hot flashes, night sweats, thinning of the bones.”

“Please. Don’t hold back,” you say, rapping your fingers on the desk.

The huntsman turns to Elias. “She will experience extreme dryness. Instead of sex once a week, you need to cut down to once a fortnight.”

The face of your devoted spouse reveals no emotion whatsoever. You are tempted to laugh at them both. Elias has coached you to pretend you are the perfect couple, joined at the hip.  

Ever so meek, you nod in his direction. “Well, it’s after six p.m. I am sure we all need to get home.”

Rage.

An Evening Stroll 

You walk with Elias to the lake of Zurich. It is the best place to collect your thoughts. The September sun still casts its rays over the Promenade, illuminating the leaves of the poplar trees. You let go of Elias’s hand and walk to the edge of the water. A cool wind skates over the surface. Waves appear out of nowhere. They slap against a family of swans and toss them about, helter-skelter. The parents cry oh-OH oh-OH, and the ducklings swim towards the shore. The father hoists himself out of the water and hisses at you to step back. It is best to comply. The mother guides their young onto the rocks. Their bellies sway as they waddle onto the grass and sit down together under a tree, ready for the rain. You envy them. They mate for life.  

*****

You were only twenty-three when you arrived here from Québec with your duffel bag, your muskrat hat, so full of joy. This man wanted you to be his wife. He didn’t dare offer a dramatic proposal during your previous visit, as you were the one who would leave country, family and friends. His career was already taking off, and yours had not begun. Instead, he showed you the city and its people, hoping you would return. After two weeks back home, you made the call across the ocean, promising to jump. And today? Would you leap blind into the void for any man again? You don’t know.

*****

Elias joins you at the shore, ready to rein you in. His face has more lines than a linen shirt at the end of the day, but the skin does not sag. His left eye is slightly higher than the right. Women interpret the raised brow as a sign of attraction, and whether eight or eighty-eight, they respond in kind.

“That papa swan is rather fierce …”

“Being five years younger, I always dreaded becoming a widow. But now the tables have turned.”

“Don’t say things like that, Eva. It’s dangerous to think so black.”

“You can smoke, drink, and fuck whom you please. I never thought I would be the first to die.”

He steps close and cradles your shoulders. “Don’t …”

Week 1

It is Monday morning. Flühstrasse is packed with people rushing to the station. How many times have you gazed in the window of Osswald, the shoe shop specializing in ballerina flats? For two hundred and fifty Swiss francs a pop, the salesman has adorned your feet in green suede, panther print and mother of pearl. You have never noticed the souls entering the Bauhaus style building on the corner. They all hope to buy a little more time from Dr S, and now you’re one of them.

The doorbell trills like a bugle. Six doorways line the walls of the corridor, and a cacophony of voices bounce out of the rooms, all cheerful, all reassuring. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

The huntsman reads the counts of your blood. “How did you sleep last night?”

“Not well.”

He nods in sympathy. “It will get better.”

He accompanies you to the door, turns around.

“I’ve been wanting to ask … are you of Swedish descent?”

“No. French Canadian.”

“But your hair is so fair …”

You burst out laughing. “That’s thanks to the salon. My ancestors left France in a boat because they didn’t want to fight for Napoleon. They had no intention of freezing to death in the Russian snow.”

He touches your arm, lets his fingers linger. “Ahh, a Québécoise. That explains your strength.”

You look down, self-conscious. The tips of his snakeskin boots are as sharp as spears.

The chair is made of leather and quite comfortable. It could pass as a Barcalounger in any magazine. The nurse, Frau Gutermann, has black eyes and rosy cheeks. She is well over sixty-five. Taking care of the women here must be her calling. Retired husband at home be damned. She places a rubber helmet on your lap.

“The DigniCap is not for everyone, Frau Bertelsmann. This will only save your hair for the next twelve weeks.”

“I still think it’s worth a try …”

This first cycle of poison will be sweeter than the second. The huntsman has warned that there is nothing he can do to save your locks from the final mixture of toxins. You open your blouse, and Frau Gutermann pierces a needle into the port in your chest. The balloon above gleams like a chandelier. Drops of crystal seep down the tube. No pain, no convulsions. She tightens the strap of the DigniCap under your chin and turns on the machine. Fifty pounds of vibrating ice begin to shake your skull. Chattering teeth. Do women bite off their tongues in the name of beauty? After fifteen minutes you ring the bell. Frau Gutermann hurries to your side and flicks off the switch.  

“You lasted longer than many women,” she says.

The drip is finally empty. She pulls the tube out of the port. The moment you stand, a young boy jumps into the chair. Oh God help him. He’s wearing a Flintstone beanie.  

Elias jumps up from the sofa in the waiting room. In the hallway, he makes a point of wishing all the nurses a good day and grabs your coat. The women titter and twirl for the master of charm.

*****

“No doctor or nurse should know we are separated,” he said as he tore through the filing cabinet in the apartment where you had shared your life with him. “They must think that your husband is watching their every move.”

“Aren’t you being a bit paranoid?”

He pulled out your health records and stuck them in his briefcase. “If you want the best treatment, you need to let me handle them.”

“But the wolf is mine, not yours. I should learn how to deal with these things by myself.”

Elias’s lips turned down. “Why?”

“Because I’m not a child. We may get along, but you don’t own me.”

“Forget feminism. Right now, you need a man.”

You burst out laughing.

“What is so funny?”

“You were the one who left …”

He throws on his jacket and looks you in the eye. “I was a middle-aged cliché, chasing after my youth. But how can I make things right if you won’t take me back?”  

And why is that? Because you might leave again. You are a good man, Elias, but the wolf can’t rewrite the past.

He hugged you at the door. “At least let me help. The Swiss patriarchy still reigns supreme.”

Twilight

Elias turns down the covers of the bed and you collapse on the sheets. Shadows linger in the corners of the room when you wake in the gloaming. As if in a trance, you rummage through the drawers that hold your scarves, creating a rainbow of silk in the air.

“I can’t take the DigniCap. I will be bald in three weeks …”

Elias picks up the scarf he bought in Como and stares at the pattern of lilies.

“Never mind. That’s the least of our concerns right now.”

You twist the Kleenex in your pocket.

Ahh. Divine Acceptance. Now how would Elias feel if Gerta Klein, his darling cellist, were to lose her hair? Yes, he’s told you it has been over for months, but the betrayal still cuts like a knife. And then Dr Schmid, that bloody Jungian analyst, was secretly on his side. “We cannot make progress without Eva’s forgiveness. I suggest that the two of you separate,” he advised last January. What a macho. This “professional” got such a vicarious thrill out of Elias’s bachelor pad and nights of passion. You didn’t stand a chance against this younger woman, who could open her legs and squeeze an instrument in a vice.

He motions you to sit down next to him and wraps the scarf around your neck. “How about an omelette? Could you manage that?”

“Yes, please. I’m starving.”

He still has the keys to the apartment but always calls first. You’ve never erased his name from the answering machine. You now eat together twice a week and take walks in the countryside on the weekends. Why try to “move on” when the two of you enjoy each other’s company so much? “Living apart together,” is how Dr Schmid defines the new arrangement. But the contradictions are no longer relevant. Only the hunt fills your minds. 

Week 2

The huntsman studies your blood counts at his desk.

“Is everything okay?” you ask.

He raises his eyes and smiles. “Everything is in order. You’ve pushed off the mountain with well-waxed skis.”

“So far I feel alright.”

He cuts a few grapes from a bunch in a bowl and dangles them over the desk.

“You’re the picture of health.”

Flattered, you pop one in your mouth.

He accompanies you to the chair. Is the room too hot or too cold? You fumble with your cardigan and backpack full of books. The side table is too small for everything, but the huntsman’s grapes must come first. Fortunately, the handkerchief in your pocket is clean and can stand in as a plate for the fruit. Oh dear, how rude! Dr S is waiting to say goodbye. You turn around and catch his stare.

“Please excuse me,” you say. “I didn’t mean to waste your time …”

He takes your hand and holds on. The boundaries of his lab coat begin to blur with the white of the walls. Voices from the nurses’ station go mute. The old woman in the chair across the room disappears. Only the face of your huntsman remains.

Frau Gutermann enters the room with the drip. Dr S pretends to help you into the chair. You play along.

What just happened?

He turns on his heel to escape the dowager. Everything has changed. You unbutton your shirt and expose the port in your chest. “Frau Gutermann, I would like to try the DigniCap again.”

The old woman across the room winks her eye.

Coiffeur Merz

The nameplate over the buzzer is barely visible. Discretion is de rigueur. You need to prepare for the future. The DigniCap almost froze off your ears and can buy only so much time. In ten weeks, Red Lucifer will shimmy down the tube and set your scalp aflame.

The assistant answers the door and ushers you down a hall lined with private booths. At the very end, she opens a curtain and motions you to step inside.

“Herr Merz will arrive shortly. Please do not leave this cubicle under any circumstances. Our clients’ privacy is our utmost priority.”

She closes the curtain behind her. The lamp on the ceiling casts a peachy haze over your face in the mirror, like Vaseline smeared on a lens.

What does he want from you? What do you want from him?

Herr Merz, a man with hips no wider than a python, opens the curtain and sits down at your side.

“We need to go for a shorter style,” he says. “A long-haired wig will make you look like a Jewish Orthodox bride.”

You ignore his comment. The subtle undercurrent of anti-Semitism running through Zurich will never disappear. He pulls a board out of the drawer and points at the selection of tones available. Once he finds the perfect match, he hurries out and closes the curtain behind him.

The buzz of a razor starts in the booth next door and a woman sobs. You cover your ears to block out the pain.

He must think I’m going to live. He wouldn’t look at me like that if I were going to die.

Week 5

The huntsman smiles across his desk.

“The short style is flattering. Not everyone can pull it off.”

You touch the side of your wig, ever so coquette. “Frau Gutermann said I should practice wearing it before the time comes.”

His hands reach over and trap your fingers beneath his own. “Let me just …”

Your skin remembers lying in the wheat with your first love, so long ago. He moves the wig upwards and slightly to the right. His pupils have dilated into black orbs. He finally leans back and admires his work from afar.

“You’re perfect. Herr Merz is the best in town.”

The clock is ticking. Your time is almost up.

“I wanted to ask, is it okay for me to attend an event in Lausanne, or do I need to avoid crowds?”

“Of course, you can be among people. The first rule is to never let the wolf think he is the boss.”

“My husband manages the music group Jetzt und Alles. They’re receiving the Swiss Music Prize this Saturday.”

His eyes light up in surprise, then travel towards the window. They darken and linger on the panes, as if they were bars of a cell. “I thought I recognized Herr Bertelsmann, but I wasn’t sure. Our paths crossed back in the nineties at Sunset Studio.” His tone has a slight edge.

Now the snakeskin boots make sense.

“Oh! So, you were a musician?”

He sighs and turns back to you. “Yes. In another life, before my days as a huntsman consumed me.”

“What did you play?”

“I sang lead vocals for the hardest post-punk band in Switzerland.”

Zurich is truly small.

“What was it called?”

His expression is deadpan. “The Sick.”  

Stalking

You sit in your studio, dipping a paintbrush into the cerulean blue. Ammann und Partner has asked you to develop seven wallpaper designs with the shade. It is intense, and doesn’t suit the understated Swiss aesthetic at all, but who knows? If used as an accent, say over a fireplace, it could be refreshing. Dream on. Herr Ammann will make twenty test rolls for the shop, and they will never sell. Both the Zurich elite and the working class find serenity within the white walls of their abodes.

Working is futile.

You take out a piece of paper and begin to sketch the huntsman’s form from memory. The killer boots, the hands as long as tree branches sticking out of his lab coat … but how to capture his face? Several photos appear on your phone. He could be anyone. And what does his first name—Basil—really mean? For the Greeks, he is the King, Emperor or Tzar, says Wikipedia. Yes, that makes sense. He is a dominant male. He has given you his number on the official phone line for emergency calls, and so far, you haven’t used it. His name automatically pops up on WhatsApp. You put down the phone as if it were a bomb. The face of his profile picture is painted white and a strip of black cloaks his eyes like a mask. Wow. Who is he channelling? Annie Lennox? You laugh and sketch in his head.

Lausanne

The audience claps and cheers when the musicians from Jetzt und Alles walk onto the stage. True to form, Elias sits tight in his seat as they beckon him to join them.

You nudge his elbow. “Go on, Elias, they want you up there.”

“This is their night, not mine.”

“You’ve got two seconds. It won’t kill you.”

He stands up, his face reddening, cameras clicking. He is a paradox in the music business, where insiders refer to him as His Gray Eminence. His lack of ego has helped him flourish in the trade for over twenty-five years. Everyone trusts him with their careers, their secrets, their cash.

The people of Lausanne know how to throw a party.

“Désirez-vous une coupe de champagne, Madame Bertelsmann?” asks the waiter at the buffet.

It feels so good to hear your mother tongue. “Non merci, pas ce soir.”

The wolf loves alcohol and will grow more ferocious under the influence. You order a Perrier.

Thank God you still have your hair. Elias’s colleagues comment on how well you look, and at least they don’t have to lie. You couldn’t stand the pity. None of them was too keen on the cellist, and they hope to see you reconciled with the cardinal once and for all. They are a cautious tribe—better the devil you know.

Vevey

You are getting weaker. Hiking on the steep hills above the town is now out of the question.

“Let’s jump on the boat and switch off our phones,” Elias suggests.

Anything to escape the press.

Today the Lake of Geneva is the color of cornflowers in the sun. Elias sips his coffee and studies the seagulls circling the boat. Before he opens his newspaper and is lost to the world, you pop the question.

“In the nineties … did you ever come across a band called The Sick?”

Elias’s eyes flicker in recognition. “Sure. They were talented, but I didn’t take them on.”

The plot thickens. You lean in and wait for him to continue. He strokes his chin and journeys back to his days as a young man in Artists and Repertoire.

“The lead vocalist had charisma to spare, but I knew the post-punk movement wouldn’t last.”

“So, I guess Jetzt und Alles was a safer bet.”

Elias smiles like the cat that got the cream. “They were a smarter bet.” He picks up his newspaper and scans the front page. “What’s brought on all this interest in The Sick? As I predicted, they were a flash in the pan.”

You offer him your packet of sugar. “Here, I don’t need this.”

Distracted, he pours the crystals into his coffee. He lifts the cup, gulps it down. “Fuel in the tank,” he says, then strolls up to the deck for a smoke.

The water is calm. Beads of silver scatter over the blue. You want to shout at the beauty but remain silent. No one must know you’re in love.

Week 8

As usual, the huntsman pores over the blood counts.

“You are unstoppable.”

You run your fingers through your hair. No strands come loose.

He leans over his desk. “Do you promise to come here while I am away for two weeks? We cannot allow the wolf to gain strength.”

Is he spending it alone? His desk is clean of pictures or any other clues about his life. He reveals nothing to the females in his care.    

You pick up the copy of your blood counts and pretend to study the results. Do you dare pry?

“Absolutely. A vacation? Anywhere nice?”

He ignores the question and looks you in the eye. “I had a dream about you last night.”

You return his gaze. And I think about you all the time.

“It was night. You were in a boat, rowing across the ocean towards a new country.”

“Do I make it to the other side?”

He remains silent, knowing better than to offer false promises.

Christ, can’t he humor me just this once?

You jump up and he follows you to the door.  

His fingers graze your arm when you reach for the handle. “And I was Canada.”

Today, the walls in the empty infusion room are drab from a lack of sun. No one has bothered to turn on the light. A single leaf clings to a branch outside the window, swaying back and forth in the breeze, like a dying bat. But who cares about atmosphere when a man has revealed his soul? You climb into the chair and open your shirt. Frau Gutermann enters the room and glides the needle into your port. She is as gentle as a mother with child. You reach for the DigniCap and fasten the strap under your chin.

She shakes her head in disapproval. “Is it worth it, Frau Bertelsmann?” She points to the crystal balloon above. “In four weeks, there is nothing we can do to save your hair.”

You stick out your chin. “Bring it on.”

Her lips turn down. She does not like being crossed. “Red Lucifer spares no woman alive,” she says, flicking on the switch. Her lips curve upwards, almost sadistic.

And I am going to screw your boss before I go bald, you old hag.

The chamber of ice begins to shake your skull. The cold is now a comfort as you row across the Atlantic towards your beloved, towards home.  

Bürkliplatz

You walk through the marketplace in bliss. A cold wind rips through the square, threatening to tear the roofs off the stalls. Fruits and flowers gleam in the fog. Rich women bark at the vendors, but they no longer irk. Today they sound like mermaids singing on the rocks. Wallburger, the most popular stall for meat, has attracted a crowd. You buy wild boar sausages to cook for Elias, who will devour them when he visits this evening. Didn’t the huntsman slay this beast and feed its heart and liver to the wicked queen? Will he eat your food one day? He is skin and bone, a sure sign that no woman has chained him to her bed.

The Final Hours

The world of wallpaper is absurd.  

You sit at your desk, studying the sketch of your beloved. Oh, how you’ve missed him, but the days of famine end tomorrow. Do you dare immortalize him in a painting? What would Elias do if he saw the huntsman on the canvas, waiting to take his place? Would he laugh at your fantasy, or would he report his rival to the powers that be in a jealous rage? The middle finger on the hand of your muse has grown longer. It is gratifying to see him come to life as the shades of cerulean blue bore you to tears. The doorbell rings and you hide the sketch in the drawer.

Week 10

The nails on your hands and feet have gone black overnight from the poison. No problem. Two coats of Chanel’s Le Vernis Rouge Noir will cover the carnage. However, the stench of a fox’s cadaver wafts out of your thumb. You soak the little vermin in rubbing alcohol and hope for the best. The underwire of your green lace bra cuts into the scar but who cares? This is the season of love.

The huntsman smiles from across his desk.

“So, Frau Bertelsmann, it is December 1.”

There’s so little time left.

He folds his hands. “I opened the first day of my Advent calendar and what did I find?”

“I have no idea.”

“Frau Bertelsmann was there, just for me.”

He’s so charming. So inventive.

“That is nice.” You raise your arm in the air. “I seem to have a swollen ligament.”

He looks concerned. “Then I’d best take a look.”

You remove your shirt. He takes hold of your arm and traces his finger along the protruding chord.

“It feels like a guitar string,” you say.

He strokes it again, searching for the music. You look into his eyes and find a young man onstage, skinny as a blade of grass, singing to the back row.  

“Don’t worry, dear. With a few exercises, it will go away.”

You lower your arm to trap his hand close to your heart. Your sex stirs. The poison cannot kill the hunger. His lips come closer and take command of yours.

Can the wolf feel his breath? Can he feel the life?

He pulls away. “I need to see you on the outside. Could you meet me on Friday after work at 6 p.m.?”

You fumble with the buttons of your shirt and nod, nervous. He wears no ring but is wed to the hunt. Your own band looks a little tarnished. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is one of the murky rules of your arrangement with Elias. But with carte blanche to “explore the unknown with discretion,” why has your foot slipped off a cliff?

Second Thoughts

It is Wednesday morning. Electricity shoots through your ligament as you reach into the cupboard. Porcelain crashes to the floor. Why didn’t the huntsman prescribe the exercises? Because he was distracted. The scar rages from the trappings of metal and green lace. You have both lost sight of the wolf.

Today the tints, tones, and shades of cerulean blue all look the same. Has the poison erased your gift or are you merely afraid? Once it starts it won’t stop. The moment you lay down in the forest he will own you, body and soul. And why does he want someone so dependent, so weak? You pull his sketch out of the drawer. His eyes are inscrutable behind the black mask. He still dreams of rock and roll. A wave of dread hits your chest. I thought I recognized your husband. Our paths crossed at Sunset Studio in the nineties. His tone was resentful. What if his seduction is just revenge for the doors that Elias closed?

A cascade of water falls onto your head and shoulders. Soap slicks over your nipples and they harden. You still want him. Circling away from the center, your finger stumbles. The claw of a she wolf pushes out the skin.

The Woman Whisperer

The examining table is cold.

“I can’t feel him,” says the Woman Whisperer, palpitating your breast.  

“Lupa is a female. She must have burrowed herself between my ribs.”

“Please be rational, Frau Bertelsmann. New beasts never appear during the hunt. I only did this examination to put your mind at ease.”

“She wants to feast on my heart and lungs.”

She helps you into a sitting position. “Listen to me. It is dangerous to give any wolf a name. They become too powerful if you get attached.”

A tear rolls down your cheek. “We’ve been torturing Wolfgang for months. His sister Lupa has the right to avenge him.”

Alarmed, she eases you off the table. “I cannot order further tests without the huntsman’s consent.”

“No! Don’t contact him.”

She observes the angry scar. Her eyes narrow. “Are you comfortable with Dr. S, your huntsman?”

You hook your bra, unsteady. “Of course. He is the best huntsman in Zurich.”

She remains silent as you shake her hand.

“I will tell him that I was here. It’s best if it comes from me.”

Friday, 5 p.m.

Why does meeting the huntsman fill you with dread? It’s what you’ve been hoping for all along. But you haven’t thought past the big bang. What happens afterwards, when all hell breaks loose? Boy, will he be sorry he ever mentioned his Advent calendar. By December twenty-fifth, you’ll look like The Ghost of Christmas Past, and his eyes will wander elsewhere. If you were a Continental, you could knock down a mocktail while negotiating the rules of the game.

“We pretend that we are two strangers who have met in a foreign city,” you would tell him. “We make love once, twice at the max and then we walk away.”

A tidy exit strategy. If you both have a foot out the door, no one gets left. But you’re not so sophisticated…  

Flühstrasse

The huntsman stands outside his office. His face breaks into a smile as you walk closer.

“I can’t go through with this,” you say, raising your hands in the air.

His houndstooth jacket and scarf are far too thin. He shivers, then opens the front door and beckons you into the entranceway. How to explain?

“I’m sorry. I like you, but …”

He sits on the stairs and coaxes you to join him. “You’re married. I understand.”

“Were you ever married? I don’t know anything about you.”

“Divorced. Twice.”

“Look, there are laws against what we’ve been doing. You could get into a lot of trouble.”

He leans a little closer. “Not if I find you another huntsman. I even know an excellent woman in the field.”

Your chest tightens. “No! You can’t leave me now!”

He sighs and takes hold of your hand. “Alright then. I won’t.”

It is time to pull away, before confusion sets in. “So, we’ll see each other Monday?”

You scratch an itch near your ear. His eyes widen as blood flows down your cheek.   

Up in the lab, the huntsman wraps your thumb in gauze. The offending nail lies on a bed of cotton and pus.

“In a way, Eva, we’re also married,” he says, placing antibiotics and painkillers next to a plastic cup. “You’ll be visiting me for many years to come.”

“I know. And I’m grateful for that.”

He laughs to himself. “That’s my fate. Right now, I have twenty-seven princess brides—and no one to love.”

Week 11

Frau Gutermann tiptoes into the room with a beautiful woman in her early thirties. Auburn curls tumble down her back. A newborn sleeps in her arms.

“Will you be using the DigniCap during your treatment, Frau Leitner?” Frau Gutermann whispers, helping the creature into the chair.

“No. I need to be present for Joshua.” She opens her shirt for the first hit.

You sigh in awe of this young woman. Who raised her to be so wise? Women with such beauty wield real power over men, and she is willing to relinquish it all for the sake of her child. Your vanity over the past weeks now feels ridiculous.   

Frau Gutermann approaches and places the helmet of hailstones on your lap. You shake your head.

“Thanks, but it’s time to let go.”

Week 12

Red Lucifer lives up to his name. Waves of nausea hit your stomach and even water tastes like metal. Elias holds your head over the toilet as you wretch. At night he jabs a shot into your thigh to stop the demon from feasting on your bones.

He opens the curtain on the fourth day. Tufts of hair cover the pillow. You do not care.  

“Let’s take a walk. It is time to move,” he says.

The poplar trees along the lake are now bare, but the sun is bright. Elias stops in front of the Badi Utoquai, the old wooden bathhouse that was built in 1890. Its waters are too cold for mortals to swim in, but the restaurant is still open for the worshippers of Wim Hof.

The two of you sit down at a metal table close to the water. The cappuccino slides down your throat and the butter in the brioche sings on your tongue. A chickadee lands on the table and cocks her head. She is ever so bold. You tear off pieces of bread and lay them at her feet, but she wants more, so much more. In one fell swoop, she hauls your breakfast to the deck. You burst out laughing. Elias lights a cigarette and inhales. His fingers creep towards your sugar and he coughs, coughs, coughs. Your heart skips a beat.

How much longer will you keep this man you love at arm’s length? How many days do you have left with him? So, he fell under another woman’s spell. And your huntsman? Just two weeks ago, you would have painted his face with the stars. There will always be risks. Desire can strike anyone at any time, just like the wolf.

“Come home, Elias. Please come home.”  

He smiles, then takes another puff. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Smoke rises in the air. He flicks his ash into the water and a wave carries it away.



BIO

Rozanne Charbonneau was born in Texas but has lived most of her life in Switzerland and Italy. She has an MFA in Screenwriting from the National Film and Television School in the UK. During covid, she began a blog called privateknife.com to write about food and memories. She now writes short stories. Fiction on the Web has nominated her story “The Train to Modena” for the 2023 Pushcart Prize.






Memories of Birds

by Jonas David


Author’s preface:

I often imagine myself as Alfred Wallace during his expedition to Brazil in 1848. For four years he explored and charted the Rio Negro, and described and captured a wide variety of insects, birds, and other animal specimens to sell to museums, and for his own private collection. My thoughts when reading his story years ago, and rereading it now, hover always around what Wallace’s first impressions must have been. I imagine myself in the depths of that forest, surrounded by unfamiliar bird-calls and insect songs and other animal cries, the strange scents and colors, even the shapes and sizes of the leaves would have been unfamiliar. I try to imagine the surrealness of being in a place completely unknown, where not only every plant, insect and animal is new, but even the water itself is a mystery. Wallace writes in an 1853 paper for the Royal Geographical Society:

The most striking characteristic of the Rio Negro is that from which it derives its name–its black waters. And this is no imaginative or fanciful appellation; forasmuch as the waters of the ocean are blue, so are those of this river jet black.

Wallace found endless and fascinating life along the river. He collected thousands of specimens from hundreds of species and made copious notes and drawings. He described some species in detail and some only in passing, but his descriptions always evoke a feeling of the fantastical in me. On a species of monkeys living along the Rio Negro, for example, he writes:

…Their large eyes, cat-like faces, soft woolly hair and nocturnal habits render them a very interesting group. They are called “devil monkeys” by the Indians, and are said to sleep during the day and to roam about only at night. I have had specimens of them alive, but they are very delicate and soon die.

And on the abundant species of butterflies:

They all fly with excessive rapidity, and are exceedingly shy; they settle on trunks of trees or on rocks by the water, where several species are only found. … The Callitheas are another genus of butterflies unsurpassed for exquisite beauty. … [and were] found plentifully on the trunks of trees, where a black sap was exuding.

These are just some of the things he must have seen and documented, which themselves are just a small subset of the possibilities within the entire sprawling forest. Even one side of the river to the next were completely different worlds, as Wallace notes:

During my residence in the Amazon district I took every opportunity of determining the limits of species, and I soon found that the Amazon, the Rio Negro and the Madeira formed the limits beyond which certain species never passed. …  the species found on one side very often do not occur on the other. … the same phænomena occur both with birds and insects, as I have observed in many instances.

If two sides of a river are so drastically different, I often think, then even five miles away must also be a different world. A single species might live exclusively in a single five-mile radius of the forest. Perhaps a species of beetle or butterfly or ant could go its entire millions years existence unknown to humanity. Perhaps this hypothetical beetle or ant, never seen by human eyes, went extinct when Wallace himself walked over its nest, crushing the final members of the species. Such scenarios must happen every day, completely unwitnessed, undocumented, and unremembered.

Wallace must have known, in some way, that his task was impossible. But this, I think, only fired his passion to see and describe whatever he could.

The more I see of the country, the more I want to, and I can see no end of the species of butterflies when the whole country is well explored…

Four years later, with his mind packed full of discovery and data, and his ship packed with drawings and samples, Wallace began the journey home.

On the 12th of July I embarked in the “Helen,” 235 tons, for London…

I have a recurring vision of Wallace’s departure that day, of my own imagining, I’m sure. But I see the scene so vividly that sometimes I convince myself it could be a memory, and I play with the idea that I am perhaps some form of a reincarnation of Wallace. In my vision, Wallace stands at the prow of the ship, his hands on the splintered railing, gazing into the horizon. The warm wind ruffles his hair, and he breathes deep as his belongings are loaded onto the ship behind him. All his countless thoughts and discoveries are safely packed up, and soon to be shared with the world. There is a feeling of contentment that resides in his chest. A feeling of satisfaction, of creation. And a feeling of anticipation for what the world will think of the things he is about to show them. He hears the deep flutter and snap of the unfurled sails catching wind, and the ship moves under his feet.

At certain times in my life, I have felt as if on the precipice of disaster. As if I were on an inevitable path to something terrible. This cold feeling of dread and terror is directed nowhere and attached to nothing. Nothing disastrous ever happens during these episodes, and the feeling fades to calmness after, at most, several hours. I have often wondered if these feelings, seemingly unattached to any events happening around me, are an echo of future trauma. Could certain impactful things that will happen in my life send ripples of emotion backward in time? I wonder, too, because just before my vision of Wallace ends, I feel that same cold feeling of anticipation, perhaps an echo from a day 26 days later.

On the 6th of August, … at 9, A.M., smoke was discovered issuing from the hatchways … and soon filled the cabin… By noon the flames had burst into the cabin and on deck, and we were driven to take refuge in the boats, which, being much shrunk by exposure to the sun, required all our exertions to keep them from filling with water. The flames spread most rapidly; and by night the masts had fallen, and the deck and cargo was one fierce mass of flame. We staid near the vessel all night; the next morning we left the ship still burning down at the water’s edge, and steered for Bermuda…

The only things which I saved were my watch, my drawings of fishes, and a portion of my notes and journals. Most of my journals, notes on the habits of animals, and drawings of the transformations of insects, were lost.

My collections were mostly from … the wildest and least known parts of South America, and their loss is therefore the more to be regretted. I had a fine collection of the river tortoises (Chelydidæ) consisting of ten species, many of which I believe were new. Also upwards of a hundred species of the little known fishes of the Rio Negro … My private collection of Lepidoptera … there must have been at least a hundred new and unique species. I had also a number of curious Coleoptera, several species of ants in all their different states, and complete skeletons and skins of an ant-eater and cow-fish, …  the whole of which, together with a small collection of living monkeys, parrots, macaws, and other birds, are irrecoverably lost.

I try to imagine Wallace sitting on that crowded little boat, rocking on the waves, watching for hours as four years of work slowly burn and sink into dark waters.

As I write this in 2019 the Amazon rainforest is being burnt to clear way for cattle grazing land, and many of the species Wallace once documented are likely gone. Though he had no way to know it, with the destruction of his specimens and notes, those species were lost forever. When Wallace died, the last traces of their existence that resided within his mind, were erased from reality.

When I think about this I inevitably think about my own knowledge and experiences. If I were to die, they too would be lost forever, for I have written none of them down. We live in a fragile world full of temporary things. Every animal, every insect, every tree, lake, ocean–everything is temporary. It is imperative not to take these things for granted while we do have them. We must also attempt to preserve the memory of the world around us for future generations to learn from and enjoy. The life of the Amazon that Wallace, and others, did manage to describe and research will continue to be learned from and enjoyed long after the Amazon itself is gone from the world.

Our own lives, too, are temporary. I feel, now more than ever, an urge to describe everything around me and inside me, for preservation.

Memories of Birds

1.

As a young teen walking home one night just after sunset I saw a swirling mass of crows above a lone pine tree. They spun like a black funnel against the purple sky, and every so often their cacophonic mess of caws synchronized like a radio coming briefly into tune, caw! caw! caw! I felt as if they knew a secret, as if their calls had a purpose. That particular tree seemed to have some special meaning to them. I imagined the tree was an altar in some crow religion, or a fortress in a bird war. After that night I noticed every crow that crossed my path, flew overhead, or hopped into the street to peck at a piece of trash. I remember wondering how I never noticed them before.

Some years later I read an article describing crow intelligence as being equal to that of a six- or seven-year-old human child. I watched crows carefully after that, and tried to imagine their intentions and ideas, their memories and friends. Coming across a dead crow, stiff with tattered wings, laying on a sidewalk, as one does now and then, became a memorable experience. I would often think about the scene for hours, unable to avoid the image of a six-year-old child laying ignored on the pavement. I wondered if other crows were missing him or her as they waited at a meeting spot in the trees. I wondered if the others called for the dead crow. I wondered if they mourned. And I wondered if the dead crow had known death was coming, and if he or she had dreaded the end. I wondered if the fear of death was possible for crows, as it is for human children–a kind of primal fear that children experience even if they do not understand the source of the fear.

In 2013 I encountered an unusual group of crows on the edge of a man-made pond outside my office building. I would often walk circles around this pond, which was perhaps twenty feet across, in an effort to relax during stressful days. No fish lived in it, but various birds gathered there. One fall afternoon I saw perhaps a dozen crows standing near the water in a scattering of red and brown leaves beneath a maple tree. I often would see birds in this area searching for insects or inspecting some trash, but in this instance the crows stood in a circle facing each other. I wondered what fascinated them, and approached slowly for a better look. As I did, the crows began to caw in unison. Although they must not have noticed me, because they hadn’t moved, I felt I had somehow caused their caws. A sense that something was impending settled over me and I was overcome, as I sometimes am, with an unfocused dread and coldness. The chill autumn wind seemed to pass through my jacket, my skin, and into my bones. I took a step and crunched a leaf underfoot, and the circle broke apart. The crows took flight hesitantly, not as if scared, but as if unwilling to leave. When the snap and flutter of their wings had faded into the sky I saw, on a bed of brown leaves, a stiff, black-feathered carcass. Spread around and on the body were perhaps a dozen aluminum beer tabs, bottle caps and various coins, which I stared at for some time before understanding what they were. The objects, all shiny, seemed to be placed deliberately on and around the dead crow. One item stood out to me. It was gold in color and looked like a medallion or pendant, rather than a coin. I carefully plucked it from the body and slipped it into my pocket.

Several days later I searched the internet for the meaning of the symbol on the pendant, which I at first had thought was a stylized dragon. I scrolled through several pages of dragon icons before I tried a reverse image search and got a result which I found hard to believe. The symbol, I read, originated in Korean mythology and represented Samjogo, or Samjok-o, a three-legged crow who lived in the sun. This creature appeared in several east Asian mythologies, the oldest of which was Chinese in origin. In the Chinese version of the story, ten sun-crows, called the Yangwu, or Jīnwū, meaning ‘golden crow,’ lived in ten different suns. Each day one of the sun-crows would be chosen to fly around the world in a carriage driven by Xihe, who was the Chinese sun deity, and mother of the suns. As soon as one crow returned, another would set out in its place to circle the world. Folklore says that sometime around 2170 BC all ten sun-crows came out on the same day, causing the world to burn. Complete destruction was averted, however, by the mythological archer Hou Yi, who shot down all but one of the sun-crows. 

For several weeks after reading about Samjogo, I thought continuously about the origins of the pendant. I tried to visualize, as I do with many objects, the pendant’s past. These thoughts became more vivid and detailed, until I had crafted a complete story of its history, and what began as a simple curiosity about the pendant’s age had evolved into a fantastic belief that I had found an artifact. I imagined a first century tradesman of the Goguryeo kingdom pouring liquid metal into a mould. I saw the glowing red icon dipped into a barrel of black water with an angry spit, and I saw the icon presented to its commissioner–perhaps a royal, uncomfortably wary of staining his robes in the tradesman’s filthy workshop. Perhaps, I imagined, the pendant was a family seal, created for a new, upstart house. Perhaps the three legs of Samjogo symbolized the three princes that held up this new house. Perhaps the two younger princes, jealous of their older brother’s position and his gift of this new icon and status, conspired against him. I imagined a hunting trip, a contrived reason to leave the view of the servants, and a sudden attack, the prince’s body tumbling into a ravine, splashing blood onto leaves and branches and rocks with every bone-breaking tumble. And the two brothers, climbing carefully down, searching the body, then searching for hours the bloody path of its descent, unable to find the pendant, which hangs tangled in the branches of a young sapling. The brothers leave. Days flicker by, then years. The sapling grows and lifts the pendant toward the sun and the sky. Light glints on the metal, dew settles and evaporates and tarnishes the gleam as the pendant rises on the extending, growing branch. The branch swells and presses against the thin silver until the chain snaps, and the pendant falls from the great height it has risen to, and lands in a wheel rut in what is now a well-beaten path alongside the towering tree…

At this point the desire to know how this pendant came to be resting atop a dead crow in the United States overwhelmed me, and I brought the item to a jeweler to be evaluated. Within several seconds of holding the pendant in his manicured hand, the jeweler informed me that the icon was composed of pewter and paint, and had been manufactured within the past decade. When I pressed him about the possibility of it being much older, he informed me that the certainty of the pendant being made in this century was 100%, due to the kind of mould used. After some further reading I learned that at least two sports teams and several corporations in Korea use the three-legged sun-crow as their logo, including a luxury car manufacturer.

While the details of my vision did not apply to that specific pendant, I was enthralled by the idea that the Samjogo symbol, originating thousands of years ago across the sea, had found its way onto the body of a dead crow in my own city. I have kept the pendant on my nightstand ever since. I often wonder about the crow that found the pendant–perhaps shining in the sunlight in the dirt or grass, or on a busy sidewalk–and after a curious turning of its head, plucked the treasure up in its beak to take to the body of its friend or relative. Samjogo, I have often thought, is a kind of metaphysical monument to crows, crafted by society, and history, and stories, and the mind.

Three years later I moved to a new city, and the presence of another crow monument refreshed my memories of Samjogo and renewed my interest in birds. This new monument was constructed not of ideas and culture, but of powder-coated aluminum and concrete, and stood outside my local library. The sculpture was 12 feet high and 18 feet long, and depicted a common black crow standing next to a familiar, orange colored box of French fries. The crow held one fry in its beak with its head tilted slightly to the side, as if ready to take flight at any sign of danger. At night, the crow was lit from below with a subtle blue light and its eyes glowed yellow. This sculpture’s commonness, its reflection of such an everyday sight on a grand scale, struck at my heart. Other bird monuments came to mind, such as the Seagull Monument in Salt Lake City, or the monument to the passenger pigeon in Wisconsin. But this aluminum crow seemed, despite its size, much humbler than those. I passed this piece, entitled Crow With Fries, every day as I drove to my office, and was constantly reminded of all my experiences, visions and interests associated with crows and birds in general. Each time I passed it I felt as if a million tiny black eyes looked out from its face. As if a million scaled talons and beating wings pulled me toward it.

I first met Lisa Ong in Singapore in 2015 while waiting for a taxi outside the crowded Geylang market. I was watching a little hovering bird peck at the frayed edge of a large canvas banner advertising some event. The brown and yellow bird would dart back and forth and pluck until a strand came loose, then speed away in a blink, only to return moments later for more. The bird had flown off and returned multiple times as I waited. I imagined it was using the strands to build a nest somewhere. The bird was small enough to perch between the anti-roosting devices, or ‘bird spikes’ that had been installed on nearly every surface in the rafters and roof of the market. I was holding my camera toward the little bird, which had a dull greenish brown back and a yellow belly, when Lisa, standing next to me, spoke. That’s not a hummingbird, you know, she said. I lowered my camera, at first annoyed at the interruption, but I had in fact assumed it to be a hummingbird. No? I asked. She shook her head, smiling. She had short, black hair and large, round glasses that made her head look small. She was perhaps 40, near my age. It’s an olive-backed sunbird, she said. Westerners think they are hummingbirds, she said, but there are no hummingbirds in Singapore. She extended a slim hand. I’m Lisa, she said. We held a brief conversation while we waited at the taxi stand. The olive-backed sunbird, she told me, is common even in densely populated areas due to its incredible adaptation to humans. Despite all the bird spikes and loud noises in cities, the birds manage to make nests here. I learned, as we waited, that Lisa was an ornithologist who studied intelligence in various bird species. As we talked, every time she mentioned the olive-backed sunbird, the word ‘sun’ fell into my mind like a pebble into a dark lake. The ripples compounded and splashed, and I remembered the three-legged sun-crow, and then the funnel of birds above the lone tree I had seen as a teenager. I asked Lisa about this persistent memory from my youth, and her eyes sparkled with the rare passion possessed only by those asked about a thing they are desperate to talk about. The birds circling above that tree, she told me, were preparing to roost. Crows roosted, she said, in groups of thousands or more. The largest such roosts had been documented at over 200,000 birds. The crows were known to return to the same locations over and over, often for many years, and the exact reasons for this are unknown. Our talk was cut short when her taxi arrived. We exchanged contact information and parted ways. Her description of the crows’ habitual behaviors made me realize I had never gone back to look at that pine tree in the twilight, despite knowing its exact location and having thought about that memory most of my life. I decided in that moment that I would visit the tree, and I did, shortly before I began writing this. The tree, however, had long since been cut down and the area paved over.

I thought of Lisa rarely in the intervening years, and neither of us ever contacted the other. When I decided to write about birds, however, I immediately remembered our spontaneous conversation and sought out her info. She answered my email within the hour, and we soon were chatting by phone. I was startled to learn that she was staying on Bainbridge Island, a mere ferry ride from my own city. She was there, she told me, to study the behavior of certain crows who had been observed bringing gifts to a local girl who had fed them for several weeks. I remembered reading the story, which had gained brief national attention. The gifts consisted of shining objects such as coins or bottle caps. The fact that Lisa was studying crows in my own area, and the remarkable similarity of the crow’s gifts to the objects at the scene I had witnessed by the pond, combined to create a strong sense of surreality in me. I felt as if I were having one of my detailed visions, but instead of some trinket or historical figure, this vision was about my own future. We arranged to meet two weeks later. I spent several hours preparing questions, and I purchased a new notebook and pen to document our conversation. I felt certain it would be a long and detailed talk. During the nights leading up to our meeting I had several dreams featuring the Crow With Fries sculpture. In the most memorable of these dreams the city had been erased, as well as all trees, grass and any signs of life. The crow stood alone on an endless, sandy plain, and was pelted by dust in waves that built until I could see nothing.

It was raining on the morning of our meeting and I stayed below deck during the ferry ride across the Puget Sound. Later, as I drove off the ferry, I saw a group of children in brightly colored raincoats holding bright yellow bags and picking trash out of the dark morning waters on the foggy shore.

I entered, with some trepidation, the coffee shop where we had agreed to meet. I had visualized our possible conversations so vividly and repeatedly that I worried I would, as I sometimes do in these cases, get confused about what had actually been said and what I’d imagined her saying in the days leading up to our meeting. As I entered the little cafe, which had a small stage and microphone in one corner and was decorated with various colorful paintings, those fears vanished. Lisa’s appearance had changed much in four years. Her hair was now shoulder length and had accumulated several grey streaks. She no longer wore glasses, and her eyebrows seemed to have all but disappeared. I would have no trouble differentiating this Lisa from the imagined Lisa I had already spent hours talking with.

Despite these changes to her appearance, I recognized her immediately when she stood up and greeted me with an extended hand. Her voice contained the same passionate excitement as in our first conversation, though now it seemed tinged with a kind of weariness. I sat across from her. We were alone, seemingly in the world. The barista had yet to make an appearance and the parking lot and roads were empty in this early hour. We smiled at one another, but with nothing beside our one previous conversation to go on, small talk was impossible. I took out my notebook, which was leather and embossed with two wrens in flight on the cover. I asked her if she minded, and when she shrugged I placed the notebook on the table and opened to the first page. I wanted to continue, I told her, our conversation about the crows. She seemed to be thinking of what to say, then hesitated. She folded and unfolded her hands, cleared her throat, all the while watching the tip of my pen. I set down the pen and told her I would not write anything that she didn’t want me to write. She insisted that she wasn’t bothered, and that she only hadn’t expected to feel as if she were being interviewed. The oppressive silence of the coffee shop struck me suddenly. There was no music, no other people, no splash and clatter of dishes being washed in a back room. The lights were not on and we sat in the dim grey of early morning filtered through low clouds. I saw that Lisa had no drink in front of her and I wondered for a moment if any employees were here at all. The sense that we were alone in the world rose like a cold wave. I imagined outside there were empty roads and empty houses slowly being grown over with ivy, walls and floors pushed through by vines and trees that swelled and burst through the roofs, crumbling everything into dirt to feed their roots. In this new world birds would black the sky with their wings and roost on every surface. A moment later the lights blinked on, and the speakers popped to life, spilling out the nostalgic piano and echoing vocal opening of ABBA’s The Winner Takes It All. A door slammed, the barista appeared–a tall, thin man with a small beard—and he brought us the two black coffees we asked for. Cars droned outside. The cafe door opened and closed with a jingle and two grey-haired women entered and took a table near the stage. The world moved around us again. Lisa smiled, and seemed to blink away the same fog I had been experiencing. I sensed that I had been going about the meeting the wrong way. I closed my notebook. Why did you come to be an ornithologist? I asked her. Her eyes sparkled with the same passion I had seen in our first conversation years ago, and she began to talk. When I opened my notebook again, she did not notice.

2.

Before I was ever interested in birds, my greatest passion was art, Lisa began. From ages nine to thirteen I wanted nothing more than to be a great painter. I read everything about art and artists, and their ways of living–all kinds of art, not just painting. I considered musicians and actors and dancers all to be artists as well, and I studied them and their creations, searching for what elements would grab my heart. It all felt so important then. I often imagine what I might be doing today if I’d kept my focus on painting. Sometimes, when I lay unsleeping in the dark, I feel the presence of an alternate self living alongside me, on the other side of a thin, yet indestructible membrane. She, this other me, is dreaming of colors and canvas instead of beaks and flight patterns, and I feel that if I could only turn at just the right angle, I could slip over to that other life and be her without skipping a heartbeat.

On my thirteenth birthday, Lisa said, my father gave me a book on the 19th century Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyosai. Kyosai’s colorful, active, and often ridiculous paintings appealed to my childish humor and tastes, and his personality was a paradigm shift in my young mind. His multiple arrests, his drinking and general reckless behavior were completely at odds with my notions of what an artist should be. Such confusion and danger made him more real and identifiable. It made important art seem possible for normal, flawed people like me. One particular sentence in this book, a very short sentence lacking details, mentioned almost offhandedly that Kyosai had picked up a severed human head out of the Kanda river as a boy of nine, and that this event had affected his aesthetics. I tried to imagine, Lisa said, what I would do if I found a head in the Singapore River. Would I pick it up? I could not decide if I would. I read the sentence over and over, as if my eyes could scrub away the vague words to find more detail beneath. The way the sentence was phrased did not make it clear whether the head was alone, or if the rest of the body was there as well. The sentence could even be read as though Kyosai had removed the head from the body himself.

I thought about Kyosai and the head in the river for days, Lisa told me. In my mind, she said, it is early morning and raining when Kyosai finds the head. A light rain, almost a mist, sends ripples across the muddy water on the riverbank. I see Kyosai thrashing at grass with a long stick and squelching mud between his bare toes, stomping as young boys do. Taking up space. At the river’s edge he lets the running water rinse his feet and thrusts his stick at imaginary fish. Then, there to his right, tangled in reeds or pinned against rocks, is the body. In my vision, Lisa told me, the head is above water and facing away from Kyosai. Short, tangled black hair sways with the lapping water, back and forth, like seaweed. It is human nature, isn’t it, Lisa said, to need to see a face? It is the most natural thing in the world. And if you asked me to name something unnatural, the most unnatural thing to me, Lisa said, would be a person with no face. A person whose back is always to me, ever turning away as I try to circle him. Kyosai knew, I think, Lisa told me, that if he did not see this dead person’s face, the unknown visage would haunt him. The body in the river would be forever with its back to him, and whenever he recalled it he would see only the wet, limp hair on the back of the head and always wonder about the unseen face. Perhaps he also knew, subconsciously, that the unseen is always more terrifying than the seen. So he wades carefully into the black, chilled river water on that cloudy morning, and he picks up the head, which comes loose from the body as he tries to move it. He turns the head, cold and wet with hair tangling in his child’s fingers, and looks on the face.

Lisa paused at this point and took several sips of her coffee in silence while staring at some point behind me. Of course I have no real details about Kosai’s experience at the river, Lisa continued, folding her hands in front of her. This is only what I imagined as a child. For several weeks I scoured the library–this was before the internet was widely available–for any books about Kyosai, and found none. Then I borrowed, one by one, any books on Japanese art, which I scanned line by line for any mentions of Kyosai. All this was in an effort to find the slightest detail on Kyosai’s experience with the head. I was never able to find anything beyond those few sentences about his aesthetic shock at the Kanda river. Sometimes I am certain that this story must be written of somewhere, and now and then I spend a few minutes or hours searching for references. But a part of me also wonders if that experience died with Kyosai, and if the small fragment of hearsay I read in the book my father gave me as a child is the only evidence that remains of that day.

During my weeks in the library looking at page after page of Japanese art, I was attracted to several Kyosai drawings which I recognized from the book my father had given me. Two of these drawings, Crow on a Withered Branch and Crow on a Plum Branch, at first appeared to be the same drawing, though upon closer examination I found subtle differences in the feathers. The third, Two Ravens on a Plum Tree, also featured similarly drawn black birds. The stark, cool style of these three bird drawings, in which the birds stared calmly ahead at some unknown feature off-canvas, stood out from Kyosai’s wildly colorful, elaborate paintings. Each time I came across one of these three bird drawings I looked at it longer. Then one day, instead of finding a new art book to scour, I opened a book about birds and searched for an entry on crows. I learned, among other things that day, that crows are monogamous, can live up to forty years, can use tools, are incredibly intelligent and can be trained to speak. At that time there were an abundance of crows in Singapore. They roosted everywhere, were always in the sky, and were such a common sight to me that they had become invisible. As I read about crows, they reentered my world. It seemed that each fact I learned brought more crows into existence around me, until the city was crowded with them. I found myself staring at them on the walk home from school as they flapped out from a tree or pecked at something on the ground. I felt on the verge of being able to communicate to them, and understand them.

Only a few days after I started reading about birds I learned that my father, as a member of the Singapore Gun Club, had been enlisted by the government to help reduce the crow population, which at that point had climbed to near 150,000. Every day my father and several other men from the club would go out into the city and hunt crows. They drove up and down the streets looking for the black birds, and when sighting one or more they would stop, hop out of their van, and shoot. Sometimes they would gather over 100 birds in a single outing. I learned my father was doing this not from him or my mother, but from other children at my school who’d seen my father carrying a gun on the street–very unusual in Singapore–and spread the story around.

That day when I returned home, I confronted my father about the stories I’d heard. I felt convinced it all must be a cruel joke orchestrated by my schoolmates. When my father not only confirmed what I’d heard but did so with a shameless smile and a pat on my shoulder, I burst into tears and fled to my room. After some time crying into my pillow, I decided that my father must not know anything about crows. They must be invisible to him as they had been to me only a few days earlier. All it would take, I thought, Lisa told me, would be for him to learn what I had learned, and he would no longer want to shoot crows.

As I began what I now think of as my first research project, Lisa said, certain unwelcome thoughts repeatedly interrupted me. These intrusive thoughts told me that my father had somehow discovered my interest in crows and was purposefully trying to remove them from view so that I would refocus on art. Most of me acknowledged the absurdity of this, but part of me kept returning to the question: why now? Why had my father begun to kill crows the moment I took an interest in them? During the next week I spent hours every day in the library collecting crow facts like bits of treasure and arranging them in the most provocative order. I felt, then, an absolute certainty that if I communicated my knowledge in a clear and simple way, my father would stop killing crows.

The day came when I was ready, and I sat my mother and father on the couch in our living room and set up my diorama: a folded piece of cardboard with various pictures and text attached. I described to my parents the evidence I’d found for the emotional and mental capabilities of crows. I highlighted the crows’ monogamy and strong social relationships with other crows, and their massive roosts that lasted for years or decades, full of crows that all knew each other. I described their ability to learn and remember, the capability to recognize human faces, and their understanding of mortality as evidenced by the gatherings of crows that form around the dead, which I described as funerals. I went on to outline in detail the various tools crows had been known to use, and tools they themselves had made. As I spoke, the postures of my parents changed in opposite directions. My mother leaned forward with interest, while my father leaned back and folded his arms. My mother’s eyes widened, my father’s narrowed. When I was finished, my mother complimented my speaking voice and organization and asked what class the project was for. My father stood and went to look out the kitchen window. After a moment I followed him and waited silently a few steps away, Lisa said. My father gripped the edge of the countertop tightly for several seconds, then said: Lisa, you think I want to kill all those birds? I don’t want to do it, it’s not a hobby. But someone has to do it. It’s for the good of our city, and someone has to do it. You have just made my job harder, he told me, Lisa said.

As a child I did not consider the differences between Singapore and the rest of the world, and I assumed, Lisa continued, that people everywhere must be killing crows. I thought, said Lisa, that if my father was not convinced by his own daughter to stop shooting them, then no one else on Earth would be. I really believed then that nothing would stop the killing, and crows would be wiped out. So my goal became to learn and document everything I could about crows before they were gone. Within a few years the crow population in Singapore was down to a manageable 35,000 and my father and the gun club were no longer needed. By then, though, my focus had been forever changed. I still have not forgotten that desperate feeling, like a burning fuse, as I rushed to gather what I thought would be the final photos and information on crows available to the world. I feel hints of that desperation today, sometimes, but I know much more about how the world works now.

At this point Lisa caught my eye and seemed to sense a question I hadn’t asked. These kinds of bird cullings, Lisa told me, are normal, and happen frequently. Only a few years ago, Lisa said, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore removed several hundred Javanese Myna birds from a large sea apple tree using a ‘roost net’ which officers lowered over the tree. Myna birds are pervasive in Singapore and are considered an invasive species. These particular birds were removed because their raucous chirping was upsetting people in the surrounding area. The net was hung over the tree during the night to prevent the sleeping birds from escaping, and the captured birds were then euthanized by AVA officers using carbon dioxide. It must sound to you like Singapore has a particular distaste for birds, Lisa said, but this is only because I lived there and am more aware of what goes on there than other places. Bird culling happens everywhere, even right here in Bainbridge. Only several days ago at the pier, USDA specialists were collecting seagulls to be euthanized. They carried carbon dioxide chambers, about the size of a microwave, with canisters of gas attached. The gulls are placed inside the chamber and the gas turned on, for a quick and easy death. This kind of thing is common practice to keep populations under control. It is not new historically speaking, either. Mao Zedong’s 1958 attempt to exterminate sparrows being one example.

Here I felt an impulse to interject and mention what were, in my opinion, some major differences between Zedong’s war on sparrows and the other bird cullings she had described. From my first sentence, though, I could see her face harden, and the fire in her eyes began to smolder and cool. I sensed that, to keep the conversation going, it was important that I change the subject. I asked her again about crow roosts and described my memory of the crows above the pine tree.

Little is known about how crows choose their roosts, Lisa told me, but once chosen, they tend to stay there for years, sometimes generations. Even when they are forced to move, such as when a tree is cleared for agricultural purposes, or for logging, the crows will choose a new roost in the same area. Some crow roosts have been known to form in the same areas for over 100 years. Most crows you see in cities, pecking at trash in the streets or standing on rooftops, commute into the city from roosts in the country dozens of miles away. They make this trip each morning and evening, forming long, loud convoys across the sky. When I see one of these so-called murders passing overhead, I often find myself stopping to watch. As I stare at the sky, Lisa said, I try to imagine where each crow might be heading, and I wonder if any of them are birds that I have encountered before. The same crows, usually in mated pairs, visit the same parts of their chosen cities every day, and encountering the same crows repeatedly is more likely than one might think. I remember distinctly the first time I noticed this. In the parking lot of a supermarket I would frequent, many years ago, I caught sight of a crow hopping on one foot and holding the other, presumably injured, leg up in its feathers. Its neck also appeared injured, with a section of bare skin exposed. It hopped agilely despite its injury, and pecked the pavement, scanning left and right for anything that might be food. Two more times that week I saw the same injured crow hopping about the same area of that parking lot. The third time, I felt somehow that it looked at me with recognition it its black eyes. I began to keep sunflower seeds in my car with the plan of giving some to the bird, but in the following weeks I could not find him, and did not see him again. All that is to say that crows are adept at remembering their chosen areas and the individual humans that they share the space with. I expect that in the coming years certain research projects will show that crows are sentient in a similar way to humans; that they are aware they exist and are able to think about their own thoughts.

Although it is most likely, Lisa continued, that the crows you see in cities have flown in from the country, city roosts are becoming increasingly common. Our own University of Washington is host to 150,000 crows each winter, at the Bothell campus. Campus goers have described the trees in the area as ‘slouching’ under their weight, and the crows themselves as a deafening cloud that blocks the sun. The crows’ reasons for moving into the city are not certain, but some possibilities include the ‘heat island’ effect caused by urban areas radiating more heat into the atmosphere than country areas, or the abundance of artificial lighting, which allows the crows to more easily watch for predators at night. Whatever the reasons, crows are more often choosing to roost in city trees, or even on rooftops. While rooftops can be covered with anti-roosting spikes to deter crows, residents are generally not as eager to remove trees from their neighborhoods. As a result, in order to quiet the crows, the USDA’s Wildlife Services has been using an avicide, DRC-1399, a slow-acting poison that targets the kidneys and heart. Birds poisoned in this way usually take several days to die, and there is no evidence that poisoning encourages the crows to change roosts. No matter how effective alternative methods, such as the repeated use of pyrotechnics or lasers in the area, are known to be at encouraging crows to change roosting locations, they require more effort and attention, and money, while poisoning is easy and cheap.

I again had the impulse to interrupt Lisa and say that while poisoning is distasteful to us as outsiders, it would be disingenuous to assume the Wildlife Services were using it solely due to a lack of funds, or a lack of will. But again, I had barely finished that statement when I saw that her desire to speak had shrunk, and she was looking at her watch.

At this point the coffee shop had become loud with chatter. I’ve been rambling, Lisa said, glancing around like she’d just woken from a dream into disappointing reality. I realize, she said, that I never answered your original question about why I became an ornithologist. I will answer it directly, then I must be off. I first wanted to be an ornithologist because I feared the extinction of my favorite bird. In the end, I survived all the study and hard work to reach my goal because I let go of certain hopes and accepted that change is inevitable. That acceptance has enabled me to focus on preserving the memory and knowledge of everything around me, without fear, anger, or sadness clouding my mind. She paused for a moment and her eyes seemed pointed at distant things beyond the walls of the cafe. As I get older, though, she said, I find again and again that there is always more hope for me to let go of.

I wanted to ask Lisa more about this, but she was standing, and we were shaking hands, and then I was alone.

3.

I stayed in the coffee shop for some time after Lisa left. I went over my notes and began to reconstruct the conversation, but I felt distracted and uneasy. My mind repeatedly returned to Lisa’s mention of Mao Zedong’s war on sparrows. I felt then, as I do now, that Zedong’s attempted extermination was far different from other examples of bird culling, and it bothered me that Lisa had equated his extreme actions with the moderate culling of crows and myna birds that she had witnessed.

In the 1950’s Chinese scientists determined that each Eurasian Tree Sparrow consumed over 4 kg of grain per year. Using these numbers, they calculated that for every one-million sparrows killed they could save enough grain to feed over fifty thousand people. In 1958 Mao began his Great Sparrow Campaign. Millions of Chinese citizens took part in the effort and filled the streets, banging pots and pans or drums to scare the birds and prevent them from landing, forcing them to fly until they dropped from exhaustion. Out of civic duty the people destroyed nests and eggs, killed chicks, and shot at birds in flight. In the Xincheng district alone the people produced more than 80,000 scarecrows overnight, and over 100 free-fire zones were set up for citizens to shoot at the sparrows.

Whenever I read or think about this campaign, vivid imaginings intrude on me. In these visions I am a sparrow piercing the night wind above the twinkling lights of houses and farms and factories. I dip toward the ground, hoping to land, as I have attempted to many times in the past hour. An alien roar of clangs and explosions spikes my heart with adrenaline and my aching wings flap, raising me up, up, of their own accord. Everywhere I turn noise and moving shapes trigger my flight reflex. Danger is below. My muscles burn and my heart vibrates against my tiny ribs. I dip, and rise again at the shocking sounds. Down again, feathers fluttering, eyes darting. I can’t land, but I must, but I can’t, but I must–It is estimated that hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed in Mao’s campaign, before an influx of locusts destroyed even more grain, and the effort was called off. This concentrated effort to eliminate sparrows with the intent of extermination cannot, in my opinion, be honestly placed alongside Lisa’s other examples, in which the killings were for preservation and balance. Mao’s attempt to remove a species in this unnatural way was a major contributing factor to the Great Chinese Famine, in which thirty million people died of starvation.

Being unable to express these thoughts directly to Lisa frustrated me, and I decided to walk up the street from the coffee shop to clear my head. I often walk aimlessly for this reason. I find, in many ways, that the mind functions as a machine in which gears must be turned by physical force. I often imagine that each time I swing my leg forward a lever is pulled which turns a gear and moves my thoughts along as if on a conveyor. This production line of thoughts moves through my awareness, transporting ideas out of a jumbled heap into a long, organized line for me to observe at my leisure. The sun had burned away some of the low clouds, and I felt its gentle heat on my neck as I walked. Only several blocks later a sense of calm had come over me.

After some time walking, I encountered an antique shop, or what some may call a curiosity shop. On display behind a window were dozens of painted animal figurines between one and two inches in height. I cupped my hand against the smudged glass. The figurines appeared worn by years of handling. I saw many dogs, cats, horses, bears and dolphins. Also among them were four black birds, which drew my interest. Black birds such as crows and ravens are rarely chosen by figurine makers due to their lack of bright color and their common association with death. These figurines appeared hand carved and painted, and the positioning of the black birds reminded me of the Crow With Fries sculpture near my home. I wanted to hold one and feel the weight and hard edges against my palm. A bell clacked weakly as I entered the shop. I saw no one, and heard nothing but the whirring and clicking of an air conditioner. I maneuvered my way between leaning mirrors which reflected me from all sides and shelves stacked with dusty clocks, over to the figurine display. When seen closely, the figurines seemed thinner and somehow airy, like ghosts. I plucked a black bird perching on a stick up from the group of animals, and found that the figurine was light, hollow, and plastic. I rubbed away a sheen of dust which had led me to believe the plastic was worn paint on wood, and my thumb scuffed against a ridge where two halves of the figure had been pressed together in a factory.

Though not hand made as I had originally thought, these kinds of figurines held their own charm and interest. I often wondered, when seeing these kinds of mass-produced items, how many were out in the world. These particular figurines appeared old, perhaps older than me, and were likely discontinued. Even so, there could be hundreds or even thousands spread throughout the world, sitting in shops like this one, or on bookshelves in homes, or in drawers or toy boxes, in basements or attics or stowed under stairs, or outside being grown over by moss or weathered by sun, or buried deep in the earth. Many of them would remain exactly where they were long after I was dead.

And what of the bird who this figurine had been modeled on? Designers often used a photo for reference, or a sketch based on a real bird seen by the artist. The individual bird, surely dead by now in this case, would never know the progeny it left, the resilient replicas scattered across the continent, many more, certainly, than its biological descendants. Sometimes when I come across simple toy birds in a discount store or supermarket, formed in the familiar ‘v’ shape that gives the barest impression of a bird, I imagine the factory that is, perhaps, still producing them at that moment. I imagine the injection molding machine pumping the molten polyethylene beads into the mould, which then opens with a hiss to birth the hardened replica. The toys tumble out, one after the other, as if the goal were to produce one for each individual bird on Earth. In some cases, such as Peacock or Bald Eagle figurines, the number in existence without doubt outnumber all living members of the species.

After some time an elderly woman wearing a green knit coat appeared to sell me two of the bird figurines for three dollars each. Next to the register a taxidermied grey squirrel on a plinth held down a stack of crumpled receipts. On the side that faced me, the glass bead eye that such creations usually possessed was missing.

I returned to my car and placed the plastic bag containing the two figurines on the passenger seat. I was immediately aware of the whining buzz of a fly in the car with me. The fly passed near my face and pattered repeatedly against the window making a sound like raindrops. I watched the insect for a moment and imagined that it must be perceiving the window as some invisible, impenetrable force. Despite all its senses telling it there were clear skies ahead, the fly was blocked by some unnatural presence beyond its understanding. I rolled down the window to let the creature escape into the sunlight where it would, perhaps, end up dead on the outside of a windshield instead. The fly reminded me of a morning in my office three years prior. At that time I was experiencing severe anxiety and would employ a certain strategy for relaxation. I would take regular breaks from my work to stand at the window and stare at the trees and sky across the parking lot, which were in the same area as the man-made pond I have already described. I would stare at the towering pine trees, black against the pale morning sky, the grey, puffball clouds, the birds. These things, I would tell myself, are all that exists. I focused on the tops of the trees in order to keep the parking lot and cars out of my field of vision. This was an alternate version of a form of meditation I had created, which normally involved the ocean and a seagull, but required prolonged focus and quiet not available when at the office. On that particular morning I had watched as several birds, one by one, fluttered down to land on the tip of the tallest pine tree. The thin top of the tree swayed under their weight, and at once the birds burst into the sky in all directions. One flew directly toward me, and its flight was so straight that it seemed to be hovering in place and growing, as if being slowly zoomed in on by a telescope. In a moment I could see its brown head and black eyes, its tiny yellow beak. I was so mesmerized by the sight that the hollow thud! when the bird hit the window, mere feet from my face, made me jump and spill coffee over my hand and forearm. I couldn’t have spent more than a few seconds setting down my mug and hurrying to the window, but when I looked down, a maintenance employee who had been cleaning the lot was already sweeping the body into a black plastic trash bag, as if he’d been waiting for it to fall.

For the rest of that day I was occupied with thoughts of the bird. I imagined its rippling feathers as it gracefully pierced the morning, gliding toward what it surely thought was cool, sunlit air. I wondered if the bird had any sense of unease or foreboding before it hit. I thought of my own life, and all our lives, which could end at any moment due to things completely outside our understanding or control. Any one of us might be taking actions similar to an insect racing toward the light of an electric bug trap, or a dog bounding playfully into traffic, or a bird rushing toward glass. I wondered if I would feel a hint of danger before the end, or if I would be smiling, oblivious, certain that what lay before me was the wide, open air of tomorrow. 

The maintenance man I had seen that day likely was quite familiar with sweeping up dead birds. Hundreds of millions of birds die from colliding with windows each morning, and most are cleaned up by custodians before the early crowd on their way into the offices and restaurants and other places of work around the world can be upset by them. In New York City alone between 100,000 and 250,000 birds die this way every year. I sometimes imagine that our towering skylines are like hands reaching up into a storm of birds. Like fingers out the window of a moving car being spattered by rain, a constant barrage strikes the windows like some gruesome hail. I often wonder how long it will take for birds to adapt to the phenomenon of glass. Even 150 years ago, birds died by the thousands from crashing into the panels of the Statue of Liberty’s torch or circling the bright light like confused moths until dropping to their deaths from exhaustion. In all the time that cities have existed, most birds have not adjusted to their new environment. Some, such as mynah birds or crows can easily make their homes in our cities. But most species simply die. It is because these birds have failed to adapt, to glass among other things, that in North America the bird population has dropped by nearly 30% in the past 50 years.

After my walk and sitting in my car for a moment I felt at peace, and I called Lisa to set up another meeting. I had some hopes we could talk again that evening, and wanted to find out if so before I left. The phone rang quite a long time before she answered, and her hello sounded hesitant. For some reason I imagined a group of people behind her being waved to silence as she held a hand over the mouthpiece. I thanked her for her time and elaborated on how interesting our conversation had been. As I talked, I sensed ice melting. She apologized for her abrupt departure from the coffee shop. There are certain memories and certain subjects, she said, that I am wary to talk about because of how people tend to react. I asked her about the possibility of meeting once more that evening and she hesitated again, but this time I felt it was the pause at the peak of a parabola right before descent, and that she would accept. I gave what I thought would be a helpful nudge, and mentioned my interest in discussing the passenger pigeon. I imagined the glint in her eye that I had seen previously, and her eager gush of words. But instead, I immediately felt the wall of ice return. After some moments of silence she said that someone had just arrived at her house, and that she would have to talk later. The call ended.

4.

The weather had cleared up by the time I was on the ferry back to Seattle and I spent some time on deck enjoying the crisp wind and clear sky. As the ferry pushed away from the pier a long line of birds flew far overhead. They stretched from one horizon to the other in a continuous trickle of black spots. If I were living in some other year in the past, or perhaps in the future, instead of a trickle I might have seen a thick, undulating stream that cast rippling shadows over the blue waters. When I think of the ebb and flow of animal populations, I cannot help but to visualize a thundering mass of passenger pigeons blacking the sky. No flock of birds has or will ever compare to the passenger pigeon, which I had hoped to speak about with Lisa. The passenger pigeon first fascinated me when I read an 1895 article describing them, written by Simon Pokagon, a Pottawatomi Indian author and Native American advocate. I encountered his article purely by luck during a visit to the Ernst Mayr Library at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology.

At the time, I had been enamored with old texts of all kinds. I would take great pleasure from holding the oldest books I could find and imagining the scores of long dead people who read them before me. I would carefully note each tear or stain on each page and envision the ways these marks may have come to be. I would often sit for minutes or longer before I began to read, visualizing the ghosts who’d turned the pages and contemplating what ideas had been implanted in their minds, and what changes they had spread through the world as a result of those ideas. Because of this habit of mine, the Ernst Mayr Library’s collection of over 300,000 rare books and manuscripts and personal papers was like a magnet to me, especially the Special Collections within the library, a room containing nearly 15,000 of the most rare and valuable books and papers, as well as art, microforms, and some audio and video recordings. I imagined this priceless room must be a whirlwind of ghosts, and I thought that perhaps my imaginings would be even more detailed and vivid were I to sit in the exact center, surrounded by such a thick distillation of the past. After several years of considering a trip, an opportunity presented itself when I was called to attend my grandfather’s funeral in Hartford Connecticut, only a two hours’ drive from Harvard University. Even though I had only a few days’ notice, I was fortunate enough to secure two hours of private access to the Special Collections room for research purposes on the day after the funeral.

The funeral took place on a bright and hot July morning and I had great difficulty paying attention to anything. I had few strong memories of my grandfather, the clearest one being of a fishing trip we took together, perhaps ten years earlier. But instead of reminiscing I found myself imagining what books he must have read. His hands–I had a vague image of extraordinarily thick fingers, which I imagined were now folded on his chest in the darkness of the closed coffin–would never turn another page. What, I wondered, was the last book he read? The last sentence? One rarely had the luxury of being aware of their lasts as they happened. This, I thought, could be the last funeral I attended, and I would never know it. As the ceremony proceeded, I became increasingly fixated on the idea of My Grandfather’s Last Book. I decided it must have been a used book, perhaps one he discovered tucked into the wrong section at a bargain bookstore. An old and tatted printing of something widely read, perhaps a Dostoyevsky. I settled, for some reason, on Notes From Underground. I imagined the volume as a soft, pocket sized, leatherbound version, the kind commonly published in the early 1900’s, scuffed and frayed at the edges and stained on the cover. I imagined my grandfather’s large hands carefully turning the brittle, yellowed pages, his thumbs touching the corners exactly where unknown others had a hundred years before. If I could somehow discover everyone across time who had read that volume, I wondered, for how many would it also be their Last Book? Perhaps my grandfather was unique in that way. Perhaps he would even be the last person ever to read that particular stack of paper and ink. Books, as all things, must also eventually die, whether they are destroyed by fire or water, or eaten by insects. I realized then that some person in the future would be the last person to ever read Notes From Underground at all. Not just a particular printing of the book, but the novel as a whole must too eventually be lost to decay.

When the priest finished speaking and the other family members had their say, the casket was lowered ponderously into the ground. We then lined up to take handfuls of dirt from a bucket that had been set aside for this purpose. I heard repeated mumbles of ‘ashes to ashes’ and the clatter of pebbles on the coffin as the line moved forward. When my turn came, I tossed the dirt onto the lacquered wood lid, then brushed away an ant that was crawling up my wrist. The ant fell into the grave, and for a moment I had a sickening vision of it crawling across my grandfather’s face, seeking a soft place to bite. But of course, that was only my imagination. That ant would be dead, as would, possibly, some of the people at this funeral, before any insect drew sustenance from my grandfather’s body. The chemicals that now filled his veins, the treated wood of the coffin, the cement enclosure around the grave–all these would ensure that my grandfather took as long as possible to decompose. As I left the cemetery a few minutes later I could not help but imagine, beneath my feet and all across America, the hundreds of thousands of gallons of formaldehyde, the tens of thousands of tons of steel and cement, and the tens of thousands of trees-worth of wood, all silently working for the cause of preservation.

During the two hours’ drive to Harvard University I thought continuously about the gravesite, which was surely clear of onlookers by then. Even with no one observing it, the gravesite, and my grandfather in his coffin, would continue to move forward in time, silent, dry, and motionless.

When I arrived at the library I signed in at the Circulation Desk with my photo ID, and was directed to the Special Collections. Several rules were explained to me before I was allowed to access any of the materials. Only items for the use of note taking were allowed inside, this included laptop computers. I had brought only a notebook and five freshly sharpened pencils, as no pens were allowed. All materials were to be kept in their original order. No marks or annotations should be added or erased. No tracings or rubbings were allowed. All materials in the Special Collections were to be handled with extreme care. Nothing should be placed on top of a book or manuscript. Materials should only be laid flat on the table or placed in a provided book cradle. No material should ever be placed on the table’s edge, on top of another book, or in one’s lap. Notes should never be made on top of the material being consulted. I had of course already researched these requirements many months ago and agreed to them wholeheartedly. This process of explaining the rules only took a few minutes, and I was then allowed into the room and left to the books.

My first impression was of very thick, dry air, and dampened sound. The shelves seemed impossibly strong to be holding up such weight. The stillness and silence made my ears ring. I sat at the large, empty table where materials were to be placed, and spent several minutes enjoying the aura of age the books around me emitted. I imagined all the people who had sat silently reading in this room before me, 150 years’ worth of researchers whose fingers had touched these books, whose eyes had absorbed their information. After some minutes of these kinds of thoughts, I began pulling books at random from the shelves, taking care to note the locations I should return them to. Many of the texts were not in English, but I did not take them out to read. I wanted only to hold them, to become connected with them. Now, I thought, I was one of the few through history to touch each of these specific books. I imagined the threads tying me to the previous researchers and found the image to be extremely satisfying. Each book I chose I opened and turned idly through a few pages. I sought out smudges more than words, my greatest desire would be to find a fingerprint, or handwritten observation in the margins. Though most of the notes I made on these books were relating to the feelings and ideas that were triggered in me by this experience, I did record several entries that I found particularly memorable or interesting.

One such entry describes what I found in a catalog of Japanese wild birds, dated 1893, which contained brief descriptions of 70 different birds. This volume was quite tattered, and I remember my pulse raced as I set it gingerly on the table. I experienced equal parts worry and hope at the idea of tearing one of the fragile pages. On one hand my stomach twisted at the thought of damaging an artifact, but on the other hand, to leave such a mark would cement me in the book’s history for the rest of its existence. I turned to several entries at random:

   (1) ALANDA JAPONICA, T. & S.
(HIBARI.) (SMALL JAPANESE SKY LARK.)
Passers. -Alandidae.

WHERE FOUND:
It is a native of Japan and lives in plains.

CHARACTERISTICS:
Both sexes are alike in the color of the plumage. It sings loudly and can be heard at a great distance. It builds the nest among bushes and does not form in flocks. The flight is powerful. It ascends high in the air, flying round and round; and when it is tired, it darts down and gets in to bushes. Though it is omnivorous, it feeds mostly on insects.

UTILITY:
It is kept in the cage and its flesh can be used for food.

   (22) ZOSTEROPS JAPONICA, T. & S.
(MEJIRO.) (JAPANESE WHITE-EYE.)
Passers. -Crateropodidae

WHERE FOUND:
It is a native of Japan. It lives in mountains and comes down to plains from the autumn.

CHARACTERISTICS:
The male and female differ in the color of the plumage. The voice is high in tone. It is a most sociable bird and loves to live in company with others of its own species. It is very skillful in making its nest. It feeds mostly upon fruits, though it is omnivorous.

UTILITY:
It is of no use but as a cage bird.

   (50) RHYNCHAEA CAPENSIS, L.
(TAMASHIGI.) (PAINTED SNIPE.)
Grallae. -Scolopacidae

WHERE FOUND:
It is a native of Japan and inhabits mountains.

CHARACTERISTICS:
The male and female differ in the color of the plumage. In all birds, it is only with this species that the female is more brilliantly colored than the male. It feeds always upon insects and mollusks in the neighborhood of lakes, marshes, and small streams. It is weak in the wings and cannot fly to any great distance.

UTILITY:
It is an important species among the birds used for food and its flesh is delicious.

As I carefully transcribed these descriptions into my notebook, I imagined being in the Japanese plains of a century past, crouching in the brush with my binoculars and journal, carefully recording each bird’s appearance and behavior. I never would have suspected that someone four generations later and on the opposite end of the planet would be reading my translated words.

In another book, entitled Save the sage grouse from extinction; a demand from civilization to the western states by William T. Hornaday, published 1916, I noticed this insert near the front of the volume:

Your grandfather hunted elk and buffalo, until there were none.

Your father hunted antelope and mountain sheep, until there were none.

You are hunting deer, there still are some.

WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR SON TO HUNT? RABBITS?

Join the Game Protective Associations
Help bring back the game

And on one of the first pages inside the same book:

ROBBED.

(A Western Father presents his twelve-year-old Son with a new Gun)

Oh, where is the game, daddy? Where is the game
            That you hunted when you were a boy?
You’ve told me a lot of the game that you shot;
            No wonder such sport gave you joy.
I’m old enough now to handle a gun;
            Let me be a sportsman, too.
I’d like my fair share of clean outdoor fun,
            And I want to shoot, just like you

But where are the birds, daddy? Where are the birds?
            I can’t put them up anywhere!
You had your good sport with the wild flocks and herds,
            And surely you saved me my share.
And where is the big game that roamed around here
            When grandfather came here with you?
I don’t see one antelope, bison or deer,
            Didn’t grandfather save me a few?

Why don’t you speak up, dad, and show me some game?
            Now, why do you look far away?
Your face is all red, with what looks like shame!
            Is there nothing at all you can say?
What! “The game is all gone?” There is “no hunting now?”
            No game birds to shoot or to see?
Then take back your gun; I’ll go back to the plow;
            But oh! daddy, how could you rob me!

-W.T.H.

The arrow of time, I thought, is in reality a circle, or perhaps a spiral. We return always to the same events, the same fads and worries, the same disagreements. The passion with which this poem must have been composed, the fear and anger at those who were taking away this valuable resource for future generations, was so familiar to me that I had no trouble imagining its author. I pictured him at home alone sitting at a large oak desk that stretched out before him like a dinner table, empty of anything but paper and two candles to light the pages. He bends over it in a fervor, his greying hair sticking out at angles from being pulled in frustration, his shoulders hunched, the pen jerking back and forth across the page like the needle of a seismograph. The author of this poem could have written it about any number of species in 2016, or in 1816 for that matter. Of course, many of these worries go nowhere, as many worries today will go nowhere. Even 100 years later there are still well over 100,000 sage grouse in existence. The species that do go extinct were likely never destined to survive in our world.

I spent most of an hour pulling out and turning idly through books in this way. I tried to identify with the essence of the book and to imagine its history, and the life of its author. When I took The wild pigeon of North America by Simon Pokagon from the shelf and laid it on the materials table, though, I found myself reading the article straight through without a thought of anything but the visions Mr. Pokagon was placing in my mind, a telepathic message from a century past.

THE WILD PIGEON OF NORTH AMERICA.
BY CHIEF POKAGON.

The migratory or wild pigeon of North America was known by our race as o-me-me-wog. Why the European race did not accept that name was, no doubt, because the bird so much resembled the domesticated pigeon; they naturally called it a wild pigeon, as they called us wild men.

This remarkable bird differs from the dove or domesticated pigeon, which was imported into this country, in the grace of its long neck, its slender bill and legs, and its narrow wings… Its back and upper part of the wings and head are a darkish blue, with a silken velvety appearance. Its neck is resplendent in gold and green with royal purple intermixed. Its breast is reddish brown, fading toward the belly into white. Its tail is tipped with white, intermixed with bluish black…

It was proverbial with our fathers that if the Great Spirit in His wisdom could have created a more elegant bird in plumage, form, and movement, He never did.

When a young man I have stood for hours admiring the movements of these birds. I have seen them fly in unbroken lines from the horizon, one line succeeding another from morning until night… At other times I have seen them move in one unbroken column for hours across the sky, like some great river, ever varying in hue; and as the mighty stream, sweeping on at sixty miles an hour, reached some deep valley, it would pour its living mass headlong down hundreds of feet, sounding as though a whirlwind was abroad in the land. I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America and regarded the descending torrents in wonder and astonishment, yet never have my astonishment, wonder, and admiration been so stirred as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven.

While feeding, they always have guards on duty, to give alarm of danger. It is made by the watch bird as it takes its flight, beating its wings together in quick succession, sounding like the rolling beat of a snare drum. Quick as thought each bird repeats the alarm with a thundering sound, as the flock struggles to rise, leading a stranger to think a young cyclone is being born.

I have visited many of the roosting places of these birds, where the ground under the great forest trees for thousands of acres was covered with branches torn from the parent trees, some from eight to ten inches in diameter. At such a time so much confusion of sound is caused by the breaking of limbs and the continual fluttering and chattering that a gun fired a few feet distant can not be heard, while to converse so as to be understood is almost impossible.

About the middle of May, 1850, while I was in the fur trade, I was camping on the head waters of the Manistee river in Michigan. One morning on leaving my wigwam I was startled by hearing a gurgling, rumbling sound, as though an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests toward me. As I listened more intently I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm, and beautiful. Nearer and nearer came the strange commingling sounds of sleigh bells, mixed with the rumbling of an approaching storm. While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front, millions of pigeons… They passed like a cloud through the branches of the high trees, through the underbrush, and over the ground, apparently overturning every leaf. Statuelike I stood, half concealed by cedar boughs. They fluttered all around me, lighting on my head and shoulders…

…I sat down and carefully watched their movements, amid the great tumult. I tried to understand their strange language, and why they all chatted in concert. In the course of the day the great on-moving mass passed by me, but the trees were still filled with them sitting in pairs in convenient crotches of the limbs, now and then gently fluttering their half spread wings and uttering to their mates those strange bell-like wooing notes which I had mistaken for the ringing of bells in the distance.

On the third day after, this chattering ceased and all were busy carrying sticks with which they were building nests… On the morning of the fourth day their nests were finished and eggs laid… On the morning of the eleventh day after the eggs were laid I found the nesting grounds strewn with egg shells, convincing me the young were hatched. In thirteen days more the parent birds left the young to shift for themselves, flying to the east about sixty miles, where they again nested.

 Both sexes secret in their crops milk or curd with which they feed their young, until they are nearly ready to fly, when they stuff them with mast and such other raw material as they themselves eat, until their crops exceed their bodies in size, giving them the appearance of two birds with one head. Within two days of the stuffing they become a mass of fat, a “squab.”…

It has been well established that these birds look after and take care of all orphan squabs whose parents have been killed or are missing. These birds are long lived, having been known to live twenty-five years caged.

During my early life I learned that these birds in spring and fall were seen in their migrations from the Atlantic to the Mississippi river. This knowledge, together with my observation of their countless numbers, led me to believe that they were almost as inexhaustible as the great ocean itself…

Between 1840 and 1880 I visited in the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan many brooding places that were from twenty to thirty miles long and from three to four miles wide, every tree in its limits being spotted with nests. Yet notwithstanding their countless numbers, great endurance, and long life, they have almost entirely disappeared from our forests.

A pigeon nesting was always a great source of revenue for our people. Whole tribes would wigwam in the brooding places. They seldom killed the old birds, but made great preparations to secure their young, out of which the squaws would make squab butter and smoked and dried them by the thousands for future use. Yet under our manner of securing them they continued to increase.

White men commenced netting them for market about the year 1840. These men were known as professional pigeoners, from the fact that they banded themselves together, so as to keep in telegraphic communication with these great moving bodies. In this they became so expert as to be almost continually on the borders of their brooding places. As they were always prepared with trained stool pigeons and fliers which they carried with them, they were enabled to call down the passing flocks and secure as many by net as they were able to pack in ice and ship to market. In the year 1848 there were shipped from Catteraugus county, N.Y., eighty tons of these birds; and from that time to 1878 the wholesale slaughter continued to increase, and in that year there were shipped from Michigan not less than three hundred tons of these birds. During the thirty years of their greatest slaughter there must have been shipped to our great cities 5,700 tons of these birds; allowing each pigeon to weigh one half pound would show twenty-three millions of these birds. … and all these were caught during their brooding season, which must have decreased their numbers as many more. Nor is this all. During the same time hunters from all parts of the country gathered at these brooding places and slaughtered them without mercy.

In the above estimate are not reckoned the thousands of dozens that were shipped alive to sporting clubs for trap shooting …

These experts finally learned that the birds while nesting were frantic after salty mud and water, so they frequently made near the nesting places, what was known by the craft as mud beds, which were salted, to which the birds would flock by the million. In April, 1876, I was invited to see a net over one of these death pits. It was near Petoskey, Michigan. I think I am correct in saying the birds piled one upon another at least two feet deep when the net was sprung, and it seemed to me that most of them escaped the trap, but on killing and counting, there were found to be over one hundred dozen, all nesting birds.

When squabs of a nesting became fit for market, these experts prepared with climbers would get into some convenient place in a tree top loaded with nests, and with a long pole punch out the young, which would fall with a thud like lead on the ground.

In May, 1880, I visited the last known nesting place east of the Great Lakes. It was on Platt River in Benzie County, Michigan. There were on these grounds many large white birch trees filled with nests. These trees have manifold bark, which when old hangs in shreds like rags or flowing moss, along their trunks and limbs. This bark will burn like paper soaked in oil. Here for the first time I saw with shame and pity a new mode for robbing these birds’ nests, which I look upon as being devilish. These outlaws to all moral sense would touch a lighted match to the bark of the trees at the base, when with a flash more like an explosion the blast would reach every limb of the tree and while the affrighted young birds would leap simultaneously to the ground, the parent birds, with plumage scorched, would rise high in the air amid flame and smoke. I noticed that many of these young squabs were so fat and clumsy they would burst open on striking the ground. Several thousand were obtained during the day by that cruel process. …

I have read recently in some of our game sporting journals, “A warwhoop has been sounded against some of our western Indians for killing game in the mountain region.” Now if these red men are guilty of a moral wrong which subjects them to punishment, I would most prayerfully ask in the name of Him who suffers not a sparrow to fall unnoticed, what must be the nature of the crime and degree of punishment awaiting our white neighbors who have so wantonly butchered and driven from our forests these wild pigeons, the most beautiful flowers of the animal creation of North America.

In closing this article I wish to say a few words relative to the knowledge of things about them that these birds seem to possess.

In the spring of 1866 there were scattered throughout northern Indiana and southern Michigan vast numbers of these birds. On April 10 in the morning they commenced moving in small flocks in diverging lines toward the northwest part of Van Buren County, Michigan. For two days they continued to pour into that vicinity from all directions, commencing at once to build their nests. I talked with an old trapper who lived on the brooding grounds, and he assured me that the first pigeons he had seen that season were on the day they commenced nesting and that he had lived there fifteen years and never known them to nest there before.

From the above instance and hundreds of others I might mention, it is well established in my mind beyond a reasonable doubt, that these birds, as well as many other animals, have communicated to them by some means unknown to us, a knowledge of distant places, and of one another when separated, and that they act on such knowledge with just as much certainty as if it were conveyed to them by ear or eye. Hence we conclude that it is possible that the Great Spirit in His wisdom has provided them a means to receive electric communications from distant places and with one another.

I sometimes wonder if perhaps at the same moment in 1853 while Alfred Wallace watched a ship full of his research sink into the ocean, Simon Pokagon watched a roaring cloud of Pigeons descend from the sky, knowing full well they would be slaughtered by the thousands as they landed.

Simon Pokagon died four years after this article was published, in 1899. Little more than a year after his death, the last wild pigeon, or passenger pigeon, was shot in March of 1900, though some remained alive in captivity. I learned all of this and more, weeks later during my own research and reading on the passenger pigeon. I was able to visit, later that year, Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin, where a monument to the passenger pigeon was built by the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology in 1947. The stone monument was erected upon a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, and is adorned with a bronze plaque featuring a passenger pigeon as drawn by Wisconsin bird artist Owen Gromme. Conservationist and environmentalist Aldo Leopold gave the commencement speech at the monument’s unveiling, in which he said, “We have erected a monument to commemorate the funeral of a species. It symbolizes our sorrow. We grieve because no living man will see again the onrushing phalanx of victorious birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from all the woods and prairies of Wisconsin. Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know. There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book-pigeons cannot dive out of a cloud to make the deer run for cover, or clap their wings in thunderous applause of mast-laden woods. Book-pigeons cannot breakfast on new-mown wheat in Minnesota, and dine on blueberries in Canada. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all…”

Species do not often have deaths that can easily be memorialized. They tend to fade away over decades, like a missing loved one, only begrudgingly admitted to be dead after many years without being seen. In the case of the passenger pigeon, however, the date of extinction is known down to within a few hours. The last passenger pigeon was named Martha, and she was born, lived, and died in the Cincinnati zoo. She outlived several other pigeons in the zoo, and survived in isolation in her eighteen by twenty foot cage for the final four years of her life, before dying on September 1st, 1914, at around 1pm. She was twenty-nine years old. I sometimes wonder if Martha had any sense of what she might have been, or if she felt any missing pieces within her. Her ancestors had flown in flocks by the millions, descending on forests like storms, spreading their young like a plague across the land. Martha had never been in a group of more than a dozen other birds, never laid a viable egg, never flown more than a few yards. Did she sense some other life she could have lived, outside the bars? After her death, Martha was frozen in a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian, where she was skinned, dissected, photographed, and taxidermied. She was displayed for some years, then put into the museum vault. Recently, in 2015, she was again put on display, 100 years after her, and the species’, death.

The passenger pigeon fascinated me not only because the idea of such a large flock of birds had never occurred to me, but also because despite the relative recency of their demise, I had never heard of them. One expects dead things to fade into obscurity, but how could something so vast and stunning as a pigeon colony, the largest of which was estimated to contain 136 million birds, be forgotten just 100 years later by all but bird and nature enthusiasts? Though I have spent many an hour imagining the clamor and sound and crushing wind of a mass of these pigeons, I do not mourn their death, but rather I mourn the death of their memory. The passenger pigeon was not meant to live in our modern world, and never could have. Cities and planes and farming would have been their end, if not the hunting. They did not belong in a world with us, any more than a dinosaur brought back to life today would belong. Yet, the average person knows more about a millions-years-gone lizard than they do the passenger pigeon, despite the monuments built and articles written for them.

The Wyalusing State Park monument is not the only monument to the passenger pigeon in America. Another is at the Grange Audubon Center in Columbus, Ohio. This sculpture is one of five such memorials to extinct birds created by sculptor Todd McGrain of the Lost Birds Project. It is sculpted of solid, polished bronze and stands six feet high, weighing 700 pounds. It is posed perched on a stump, gazing upward as if, perhaps, imagining a time when the sky was not so empty. The other sculptures in the series are memorials to the Great Auk in Newfoundland, the Labrador Duck in New York, the Heath Hen in Massachusetts, and the Carolina Parakeet in Okeechobee, Florida.

The last Carolina Parakeet, called Incus, also died in the Cincinnati zoo, in the same cage as Martha. I hope to someday visit all five sculptures, and I often imagine a future far from now, when all memory of these birds has faded to myth and speculation. Perhaps people in such a far-off time would imagine the sculptures were, like the three-legged sun-crow, simply inventions of an imaginative society.

5.

The ferry arrived back in Seattle and I drove off the ramp with the other passengers. I decided to stop near the pier and walk along the water a while before returning home. The sound of wind and the lapping of waves has always soothed some part inside of me that I do not understand. The feeling can be so strong that I sometimes play with the fantastical idea that humans are secretly descended from sea dwelling creatures, rather than apes. I passed many shops and restaurants along the pier before I found an empty railing to idle against. I relished in the screeching cries of the gulls overhead. They seemed a sound of the sea itself, synonymous with crashing waves and soft sand and windblown hair. I rubbed my hands back and forth over the metal railing and watched the sunlight glinting on the face of the Puget sound. Few ever consider the sea as anything more than its surface. But the waves that trickle constantly into shore are only palpitations on the skin of an unknowable, ancient being ten thousand feet tall who smothers our globe with its body.

Whenever I have been watching the waves for some time, I will inevitably recall one twilight I spent on a beach in Cancun, Mexico. That night I was alone on the shore as I watched the light drain from the sky. I stood at the edge of the water and let it roll up and over my ankles and bury my feet in smooth, white sand. No one else was nearby, and I could angle my line of sight so that it included only ocean and clouds. No piece of human creation interrupted the endless sky and endless sea, each stretching off in their own directions. The only sound was the thudding heartbeat of the surf. I could have been, I thought then, a time traveler to any point in history, present or future, and I would not have known it until I turned around. I remember noticing a blinking light that I suspected to be a plane, and in order to maintain my illusion of solitude I imagined the blinking was caused by distant lightning. Only a moment later I saw that it was, in actuality, the flicker of lightning that brightened the swollen clouds in the distance. I stood motionless for some time, and tried to believe that instead of a resort several hundred feet behind me and bustling cities just miles away, there was nothing but more sand, followed by trees and jungle. I could convince myself, for brief moments, that even I did not exist, that only the world existed, ancient and steady. The waves, repeating their timeless journeys to the shore, as they had always done for a billion years before man, and would continue to do for a billion years after, were the immortal pulse of this creature known as water. The sea, I thought then, was eternal. The metronomic waves were its heartbeat and were unending, and uncountable, and would always be, no matter how the earth may shift and reshape, like a glacial amoeba beneath its caress.

On other beaches, this kind of imagined solitude is impossible. The Singaporean shores, for example, are crowded with cargo ships coming into port. There is not a day without dozens of them visible scattered at various distances along the edge of sky and sea. I remember distinctly one afternoon walking along the beach at East Coast Park. The ships were so numerous that they seemed to fade into the horizon, as if the whole ocean were covered in them. As I bent, then, to gather a few shells from the sand, I noticed a dead fish lolling on the waves just several feet out from shore. The fish was perhaps eighteen inches long, white and tattered, and seemed to have been dead for some time. It struck me as unusual that there were no birds pecking at its flesh or circling above. I neither saw, nor heard, any birds in the area, and the lack of their cries and movement made the air seem still to me, even as the breeze pulled at my hair. A plane dragged its jet of steam across the sky, the ships bellowed. These beings, perhaps, were new kinds of birds and fishes in the world. As of January 2018, there existed over 53,000 ships in the world’s merchant fleets, and about 39,000 commercial and military planes. Each of these numbers on its own far exceeds the total combined populations of all Laysan ducks, Puerto Rican nightjars, Shore dotterels, Storm’s storks, Socorro doves, Narcondam hornbills, Black-hooded coucals, Madagascar fish eagles, Bornean peacock-pheasants, Lord Howe woodhens, Flightless cormorants, Ivory-billed woodpeckers, New Zealand grebes, New Zealand storm petrels, Kakapos, Galapagos penguins, Little spotted kiwis, and Javan trogons. These new mechanical beings have climbed to the top of the food chain and spread their population across the globe, much in the manner of any other species. The animal world will eventually adapt to the new hierarchy, as it has adapted to other invasive species, or forest fires, droughts, diseases, meteor strikes and countless other changes across the long, worn, and embattled history of life.

The deep rumble of a diesel engine somewhere behind me vibrated my spine, and four seagulls trilled and flapped over my head and out toward the horizon. I watched them until they were a braille ‘Z’ against the pale sky, then they were gone from sight. The gulls would return at their leisure, here, or elsewhere. They could easily stay at sea for days, or even weeks. Exocrine glands possessed by all seabirds allowed them to drink seawater and excrete the salt through their nostrils. Unbound to the freshwater of land, they could roam the rippling blue surface, free to hunt or scavenge the waves as they pleased.

I have often envied seabirds this freedom and have spent much time imagining myself as a bird, specifically a gull, gliding above the waves. Over the years I have adapted my own style of meditation based on various methods I’ve encountered in books and other research. In my meditations I begin by imagining myself on a shore facing a perfectly clear twilight sky. I empty my mind and focus on the sound of the waves and the wind, and let these sounds lull me into tranquility. Inevitably, some thought of daily life will intrude on my calm. Perhaps a worry about an upcoming meeting will appear, or stress about a looming confrontation. When these worries appear I immediately throw them into the sea, where they are devoured by dark shapes beneath the waves. It is important that the source of the worry is destroyed. For example, in the case of the upcoming meeting, I feed the meeting itself to the waves. In my mind at that moment, I am no longer going to attend that meeting. The subsequent worries about how my absence will affect my job lead me to throw my job to the waves. A great lightness and relief always proceed this particular destruction. Without a job, I will be unable to pay my mortgage, so my house is next to splash into the sea and be swallowed by the dark form. All such worries follow in turn, until I have no money, no possessions, no family or friends to care for, and so on. Each subsequent worry that I destroy in this way detaches some part of my human life. Each weight I remove brings a thrilling lightness, and soon, in my vision, I float above the shore. The final worry, after all possessions and attachments are fed to the darkness in the sea, is a concern for my own body, my own being. This primal worry for life and safety is the most ancient and difficult to detach. In my meditation I tell myself that I am not my body. That I have no body. That I am simply I. I repeat this mantra as I rise further into the sky. Then, like a leaden vest peeling away, I watch my flesh body plummet limply out of the sky and splash into the dark waves. What remains is my spirit, or awareness, or soul. In my meditation I visualize my spirit-self as a white gull with piercing eyes and a sharply curved beak. After I have fed my human body to the waves I, in the form of a gull, fly out over the sea toward the horizon. The cool air ruffles my feathers. I scan the waves and the sky for points of interest and fly in any direction, on any whim, with no attachments or fears to dissuade me. Wherever I go, the sea will be there to provide food and drink from its bountiful surface. If I can reach this point of freedom during my meditation, it is the ultimate peace.

In some of my early meditations a monstrous shadow under the waves would follow beneath me, tracing my flight wherever I went. This happened several times and I was unable to remove the shadow from my visualization. I suspected it was perhaps some subconscious reminder of my mortality. Then, in one meditation, the shadow grew larger and more solid, until a black whale breached the surface. I dove down and grasped with my talons and tore up strips of flesh from the whale’s back and tossed them down my throat, as some gulls have been observed to do.

In reality, gulls rarely stay away from land for more than a week. Perhaps, if I had known more about various bird species when I developed my meditation, I would have chosen a tern as my spirit form, specifically a Sooty tern. The Sooty tern will spend anywhere from 3 to 10 years at sea, only returning to land to breed. Sooty terns have no oil in their feathers, and cannot float, so must spend every minute of these years at sea in flight, even sleeping while on the wing. It is not known exactly how many birds carry on their existence out in the blue wild, because many of these birds tend to avoid the research vessels that would count them, but there are certainly many millions. The idea of swirling flocks of thousands of birds living their lives out of our sight, over the waves, is comforting to me.

The northernmost island in the Seychelles archipelago, the so-called Bird Island, is the nesting site of around 700,000 pairs of Sooty terns. The island is less than one square kilometer, and the sheer mass of the birds that land there from late March through April each year is a spectacle that some will travel across the world to see. Though I have never been, I imagine that the sight of those birds pouring in from over the waves must be, in some ways, a reflection of the colonies of passenger pigeons that have been lost to time. Perhaps, in a smaller mirror, they are like the hundreds of myna birds weighing the treetops, their roaring chirrups filling the air each morning in Singapore. The lonely spot of land that is Bird Island, 200 km from the only island of any size in the area, Mahe, which is itself over 1000 kilometers from the shores of Africa, has some special meaning to the birds. Since Bird Island was first spotted from the deck of a passing ship over 250 years ago and observed to be “covered with birds innumerable,” and almost certainly long before that, the birds have returned there each year to lay their eggs. I sometimes wonder if the island used to be larger in the distant past. Perhaps through time and rising waters the island has shrunk to the spot that it is now, and the generational memory of the birds keeps them returning there century after century.

I imagine a tern flying alone over the waves, gliding, searching for shadows beneath the surface. Every direction is blue, highlighted with white puffs above and white glints below. But as the sun sinks and the world turns, some ancient urge rises within the bird, and it turns its course toward that tiny point, the presence of which it feels as some undefined calling. For days it flies on alone, toward the call. Then other birds appear along the horizon, from other directions, all converging on a path, like drops of rain into a rivulet into a stream, into a wave of wings crashing toward the tiny island that lay below them, ever below them, pulling them like a black hole pulls light. And then the descent, a cloud dropping from the sky, a treble roar of chirrups and the constant clattering bap! bap! bap! of wings, the sky and trees and grass are covered with them, they sit in plain sight with no fear of predators and lay their eggs in the open on the ground. Everywhere they turn they see kin and the familiar sounds and sights of their own kind. They have come here for thousands of years, some from as far as Australia, over 6000 kilometers away. After that long trek, they rest here, at this safe harbor in the sea, their ancient refuge.

Bird Island is now a privately owned resort with 24 bungalows, and I often consider visiting. To experience the whirlwind breeding season of the terns would be a shining gem among my memories. But whether I do or not, the birds will continue to come, year upon year, long after I am gone.

6.

A faint muscular vibration in my thigh, similar to those which stress can cause around the eye, startled me and dispersed my visions of Bird Island. This is akin to another twitch I often feel in a certain part of my ribcage. These spasms are, for me, an uncomfortable reminder that the human body, as much as we’d like to believe it is in our control, follows its own path. This mysterious machine carries us across the earth but has barely anything to do with us as we perceive ourselves. It chases its own desires and makes its own decisions based on an internal ecology as alien to most of us as that of a sea anemone. At any moment something as innocuous as a stretching blood vessel or a few out of sync heartbeats could cause the whole system to collapse catastrophically and without warning. Such are the paths of my thoughts whenever these various twitchings scatter themselves across my body, and sometimes I find myself unable to concentrate on anything other than my own seemingly imminent death. In this case, however, I realized with some relief that the vibration was only my phone ringing in my pocket. I saw Lisa’s name on the screen and answered. She apologized for being brief with me earlier, then asked me if we could meet again after all. I’ve thought more about it, she said, and I think I sense something different in you. You have such a genuine interest in the world that I feel I can talk to you about certain things I usually avoid with others, she said. When I told her that I had already returned to Seattle, she surprised me by asking if I had time to talk right then on the phone. I was no stranger to standing on the pier for hours, so I agreed. Before I could raise my first question, she began to speak.

I have learned so much in my research, she said, so many truths that I feel desperate to talk about. But at the same time, I feel I must restrict myself. I have learned repeatedly throughout my life that certain subjects, once mentioned, will cause the listener to close themselves off to me as if I have spoken a key which turns in the lock and bolts the door. I have felt that I live in two worlds: the one which exists, and the one which people allow themselves to see. I have found that if I, purposefully or unwittingly, cause someone to view the world in a way that contradicts what they wish to see, they close their eyes and ears to me forever. I suppose you find this kind of talk dramatic, but it is my experience, and is why I have been hesitant to discuss certain things with you. It is so rare to find someone interested in the same subjects as me, and I did not want to lose that pleasure. After our conversation in the cafe, Lisa told me, I drove aimlessly and thought about my life. I thought of how vindicating it felt to describe my experiences to someone who was interested enough to write them down. I thought about the many times I’ve censored myself preemptively, the times I’ve struggled to find the subtlest way of saying something in order to avoid giving discomfort. People so often flinch away from facts as if they were pain that I have gained a habit of trying to exist in the world of whoever I’m speaking with. But with you, such a curious and open person, I felt certain I would eventually be unable to censor myself.

Finally, after perhaps an hour of driving, Lisa told me, I found myself parked in front of my house. I sat there for some time wondering if I could ever change myself or the world, and if there was any point in trying. I went inside and I sat on my recliner in my study and flipped through the Kyosai art book my father gave me, which I still have, and keep on my desk as a reminder to myself. The book reminds me of my origins as a scientist and my motivations, but it also reminds me how I felt that day that I told my father about the crows. I have spent my life trying to avoid that feeling of rejection while at the same time chasing my passion for the knowledge of, and preservation of life. I have crafted a precarious balance of these two opposing desires, and it seemed, in that moment, that it would be terribly easy to fall over one side or the other. It was as I sat fondling my book and considering these thoughts that you called. I let the phone vibrate in my lap for some time, unsure of what I would say. When I finally brought myself to answer, your calm, straightforward words made me feel that I could talk to you, but when you asked me about the passenger pigeons I felt myself begin to self-edit, and I knew, or thought I knew, that if I spoke bluntly it would shut a door on you. So, I instead chose to end the conversation.

I continued to sit in silence, Lisa said, and flip idly through the pages of my book. I thought of Kyosai and the severed head in the river. I had imagined that Kyosai picked up the head because the unseen face would have haunted him, and the more I thought of this, the more I realized that not speaking to you would haunt me. Why should I project onto you all the bad experiences I’ve had conversing with others? Have you not shown yourself to be a curious, interested person with a passion for life, the same as me? You asked me before about the passenger pigeon. I have much to say about this bird, but most of it can be surmised as an overwhelming sadness that I will never witness their great shadow across the sky. The consensus I often hear is that it was natural for this bird to die out. But I find myself wondering what is natural about an animal that kills on such a massive scale as humans do. No other animal could, or would have any desire to, kill a billion birds in such a short time. The passenger pigeon’s death required humans across the continent to work together in new methods and with new technologies. If only we had the same passion for the preservation of life as we do for its consumption. This passion for destruction continues to the modern day. My whole life I have watched as the creatures I love drop dead around me. One eighth of all known bird species are threatened with extinction. Eight species have disappeared in the past decade alone. The total population of all birds in North America has dropped by thirty percent in the past fifty years. We know the reasons: farming, hunting, and climate change, yet we embrace or ignore these things, nonetheless. Nearly 40% of the land surface of Earth is now farmland, Lisa said. What of the creatures that lived on this land previously? Humanity, it seems, could be completely satisfied if the only animals remaining on the planet were the ones we eat. Twenty-five million migratory songbirds, golden orioles and bee-eaters and more, are shot for sport every year in the Mediterranean alone. No law nor any amount of pleading will stop the people there from having their fun. 90% of all seabirds have plastic in their stomachs. Even in the remotest parts of Alaska, diving birds are eating bottle caps or bags or bits the size of rice grains, worn down by the waves. 17 out of 22 albatross species are nearly extinct due to long line fishing. The population of all seabirds has dropped by nearly 70% since 1950, Lisa said, and she went on in this manner for some time. Her voice became agitated and loud, and I recalled the image I had of the author of the poem “Robbed” when I read it in the Ernst Myer special collections. Rather than sitting at a desk scrawling feverishly, however, I saw Lisa pacing manically in her room, her hair a mess from being clenched between her fingers, her free arm waving about as she rattled off her grievances against the world. Whatever it was she wanted of me, I felt certain I would be unable to give it to her. I told her I would need to call her back another time so we could continue the discussion in better circumstances. I ended the call.

I let out a long breath, and the low groan of a ship horn sounded somewhere to my right. I watched a pair of ducks rock back and forth on the rippling waves and thought of what Lisa had said. Her agitated words took me back to my most clear memory of my grandfather, when we had sailed on the Puget sound in his catamaran, in one of his final active years. It was a cloudy summer morning with very few other boats in sight and we were relaxing, enjoying the silence before later we would fish for salmon and flounder. I remember watching a lone bird on the horizon, a black dot which steadily grew closer, every now and then swooping down to the water’s surface. I followed the bird’s movements for several minutes and began to feel a kind of connection with it through this simple act of prolonged observation. As it drew nearer, I saw that it was a common seagull, and heard the high trill of its call on the wind. At this time in my life I was just mastering my meditation method, and so I felt a strong empathy toward this seagull, a bird that I regularly imagined myself as. The approaching gull seemed a kind of omen to me because of this, and appeared it would soon fly directly over us. I kept my eyes locked on it, and as it passed above us it suddenly dropped from the sky and splashed into the water, perhaps ten yards from our boat. My first thought was that the gull was dive-bombing for fish, but the bird did not surface again. After a few moments of searching, I saw its splayed wings bobbing on the waves, its head hanging limply beneath the water.

For weeks after the incident I was plagued by the uneasy feeling that I had caused the gull’s death somehow. I wondered obsessively if, had I not been scrutinizing the bird’s flight so intently, it would still be alive today. It was only after long contemplation that I was able to release myself from this manufactured guilt.

I sensed then that Lisa was feeling something similar to my unease over the death of the seagull. She would, I believe, eventually find her own peace and acceptance of the loss of her beloved birds. I hope that she will not long carry with her the burden of that responsibility. It is a common quirk of being human, I have noticed, that we see ourselves as the cause of, and solution to, all the problems around us. Extinctions are not necessarily tied to human activity and are often simply part of the ebb and flow of life. Nature swells and shrinks like a tide, leaving behind species like shells on a beach, yet we feel we are to blame, be it for deforestation, global warming, or pollution. But nature is far stronger than humanity, and Earth will adapt to us the same as it adapts to anything else. Animals that once lived in the forests we’ve cut or burned down can move into the new forests that we plant, or they can adapt to live in the plains. Seabirds can learn not to dive for fishing lines, and perhaps they also will evolve the ability to metabolize plastics and help us to clean up the environment.

I will never know what killed the seagull I saw that day. Perhaps it was a sudden aneurysm or other mysterious ailment, or maybe it simply hit the water wrong when diving for a fish. But whatever caused its death was bound to happen regardless and is not something I should allow to haunt my dreams and sleepless nights. What I have done instead of worrying is to write about the gull. Now, in some way, that gull’s final moments will live on in the minds of anyone who reads this, as will the passenger pigeon, the terns, the crows, and so on.

As I drove home that evening, I passed the Crow With Fries statue and, as always, I felt that its golden, glowing eye was watching me. I think, now and then, about how that statue will exist longer than me, and it always gives me some comfort and peace. Like writing, sculpting, too, is a kind of preservation. Should Lisa’s wild fears come to pass, or should, just as likely, the ten sun-crows fly out from their ten suns to burn the world once more, even then the statue of the crow will preserve the image of all crows. The eyes of the crow statue, and those of the sculptures of the auk, the passenger pigeon, the Labrador duck–perhaps they all watch us from that distant world where they exist alone, silent and continuous, pelted by dust and wind and the light of a harsh, red star, and yet still carry their preserved image of beauty, ever onward and deeper into the labyrinth of time.



BIO

Jonas David is a writer and editor at Lucent Dreaming magazine. He lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two cats. 





Mercy
gave the prodigal son
a second chance.

Love
gave him a feast.
—unknown

resonant

by amy g dahla


     taciturn| Her father didn’t know she was coming. Well, perhaps he did. But not because she’d told him—she hadn’t told anyone. She didn’t want to count the years since she’d last seen her dad, but she’d had no contact with him since she was a child. Back then he had an uncanny way of knowing things. And it always seemed to be greater than her skill in hiding them. So, after all these years, she thought that, somehow, he might sense that she was near.

she swallowed
the bitter taste
what she had done
  settled
caustic
in her stomach

     echoes| For the moment, her memory spiraled backward three decades. When she was a child, she and her father were inseparable. The pair were architects, building forts and playhouses out of appliance boxes in the backyard. On other days they were explorers, forging new adventure trails in the wilderness. The two built a special world to explore. Together.

     As she grew, her relationship with her dad flourished. He enjoyed hiking and running, and she joined him on these forays from infancy in what she would later call her “running buggy.” The stroller, designed with all-terrain tires and extra ground clearance, allowed them to log many a mile through neighborhoods and along park roads and wilderness trails where her dad was a park ranger. As she grew, they learned to rollerblade together, expanding their exploration. When her baby sister was born, the three of them continued the tradition of togetherness. He would run, she would rollerblade, and her new sister assumed the seat of honor in the running buggy.

     Later came snorkeling— first in a bathtub, and later in the sparkling Caribbean. Her baby sister was snorkeling by the age of four. At home, the three constructed and painted plywood Disney characters for Christmas decorations—enough to fill the entire front yard. It became a tradition for the neighborhood kids to come and help paint each year’s new addition.

     And then there were the other moments that seemed at the time not so terribly important. Peanut butter on a shared banana, one dollop at a time. Two sisters and a dad rolling down the hill in the front yard, lawn clippings and laughter.

     She smiled—only a bit— as she recalled how she and her father spent more days chatting than she could ever hope to count. Sometimes about silly things, and other times she was in tears over a problem with friends at school. Her father was a storyteller. He’d spin a tale about a young rabbit or small bear facing a similar situation. Then they’d talk about how the outcome of a story can change, depending on how the character chose to respond. Her dad never gave her an exact answer, but through the stories and discussions, things had a way of working out.

     Now, she was a parent and holy cow! It was not as easy as she had hoped. When she was a little girl, her father had once given her the advice that for every word she spoke, she would be wise to listen to ten, or a hundred, or a thousand. As she reflected, she hoped she had inherited his knack for listening.

listening
in this moment
more than any previous moment
the single word
listen
echoed in her mind
 a shout into a deep canyon
and the resounding voice
was her own

     silence| She coasted the car to a stop beneath the shade of a grand old oak tree, not yet ready to open the door. With the ignition off and the windows closed, she became acutely aware of the silence around her. At this moment there was no sound whatsoever. The term deafening silence suddenly took on a specific meaning, as the resonance of her own voice slowly faded in her mind. She gasped as she realized she had been holding her breath—a moment too long! She abruptly engaged the ignition and lowered a window. The car was immediately filled with fresh air and the sounds of life outside the vehicle.

silence settles
shadows linger
echoes fade
destiny awaits

     Perhaps it was her silence for so many years that haunted her. Most people knew her father as a bit quieter than most, especially in large gatherings. Many who knew him well had determined that his life and experience on various islands around the world had simply instilled a laid-back attitude. Maybe that was part of it, but he was also content to sit back and soak in his surroundings. And of course, listen.

     resounding| She directed her attention outside the car. Her father had moved here only months before. The elements of nature were what she would have expected. Here in late summer, in a place far removed from honking horns and exhaust fumes, she noticed that the melancholy drone of cicadas was the first sound to shatter her reverie.  Drifting in through the car window the hum was hypnotic, as she once again drifted through the mist of memory. Some of her favorite times, she now realized, involved listening.

     The sounds of nature illumed the shadows of memories in the long-darkened recesses of her mind. There were tranquil afternoons of swinging in a backyard hammock with her dad by the river, listening to the twilight chorus of frogs and crickets. He’d explained that the nocturnal symphony could only be brought forth by a composer powerful enough to create the entire universe.

     Rewinding her memory next brought back evenings of lying under the stars on a Caribbean island, locating constellations. In this remote location, a dad and two daughters could scan the dark skies and imagineer their own personal, mystical constellations. She’d reveled in these creative tales, spun wildly together, as the constellations slowly swirled around the North Star.

the night sky
held its own music
one simply
had to
listen

     And how many evenings had they swum at sunset, watching the sun porpoise into the Caribbean Sea? If you didn’t blink, you might see the elusive green flash, and hear the haunting resonance of the momentary exodus sonata.

     She and her father shared many sounds through the years.

     She realized that her father often spoke in poetic verse. Here amidst the time- machine-whirr of nature sounds in her car, this was the first time that she noticed her thoughts about her father following that same, sing-song pattern.

     strain| One thing she would never comprehend is what kind of elixir her father held within his soul that drove him to pick up an acoustic guitar and tease from six strings and an imperfect voice the songs of his soul. The first song he wrote was about her. Well, in truth the song was about losing his father and gaining his first daughter. But the final chorus was about finding comfort with a new child.  

a new life to love
in place
of one recently lost
that was definitely
about her

      Then there were her favorite songs over the years, and he added many of those compositions to his big songbook with the well-worn pages. How many evenings had she fallen asleep to those refrains, wafting down the hallway outside her bedroom? Which reminded her…

     She picked up an envelope from the car seat beside her. Her name was printed on the outside in her father’s careful hand. He must’ve kept the contents for decades before mailing them to her. In truth, the receipt of this letter helped inform her decision to make today’s visit. She carefully pulled out the yellowed paper inside. Inscribed thereon, by her twelve-year-old fingers, were her own words about her father. “The Soloist. Being a seventh grader, I come across many problems. Dad is always there.”

     She could not help but glance into the rear-view mirror, as seventh grade seemed an entire lifetime behind her now. The road behind the car was empty. But what she saw was a mirage-view of her own life path. Grown, now. Married. A family of her own.

     She glanced back down to notice a slight tremble in her fingers, grasping the page she’d shared with her classmates so long ago. The final words read, Years from now, I’ll still remember how he had all the answers to my troubles, helped me play the guitar, and stretched my imagination as far as it would go.  So, when

 i hear that beautiful guitar
strummed gently
with my dad’s soft
 encouraging voice
i smile
i know he’s there
to love me
as long as i live.”

      reverberate| She reached up and tilted the mirror a bit to find herself staring into her father’s eyes! She spun around to see the seats empty behind her.

     It took her a moment to recover from the fright of the apparition. She caught her breath and angled the mirror to reflect her own face, more fully. The eyes she had glimpsed were her own, after all. But for the first time, she noticed that her eyes could easily have been his.  In a way— much more real than she wanted to admit— her eyes were her father’s.

     She took a moment to allow her heartbeat to return to normal. In the rapid-breath moments of recovery, her thoughts turned toward fate and the inevitable. There are many things over which we have no alternative. But there is also Choice and Consequences that we live with. Sometimes for too long. That the eye in the mirror could have been her father’s: that was fate. That she was here today to speak to her father for the first time in decades was a choice. But not without consequence.

     The recovery from her disconcerting glance into the mirror provided her with the impetus to notice the faded paper, still in her hands. She carefully folded and placed her seventh-grade self on the seat beside her.

hand-scribed words
bearing witness to memories
long repressed

she opened the car door
and stepped out
into her father’s world

     translation| She found herself cloaked in dappled sunlight, filtering through the leaves above. Lofty branches swayed in the dog-days breeze that beckoned the changing of the season. She remembered lessons of nature from her youth, and how her father explained to her that a dry summer can bring about an early,  faux autumn when the lack of moisture in the ground can cause trees to turn color and drop their leaves early.

     Leaning back, she peered upward, squinting. She soaked in the blue sky shining through the playful kaleidoscope of leaves. Raising her hand for shadow, she absorbed the foliage glowing in flaming color as the sun shone through. She shifted her stance and heard a familiar crunch. She dropped her gaze to see beneath her feet the beginning of what would be nature’s winter carpet.

fallen leaves
 faux autumn
august 31
anniversary of her birth
a dry summer
here
her father’s new place

     The calico collection of leaves and the haunting of seeing her father’s eyes in her own reminded her that her father was partially colorblind. But he always told her that once someone pointed something out as a certain color, in his mind he could then see the color. It had been many—too many—years since she helped him see a tree with brilliant yellow, flaming orange, or deep red autumn foliage.

     She could never quite understand how his mental image could be so transformed, vicariously, through her own eyes (the picture in his mind’s eye being inexplicably not colorblind).

     She closed her eyes and heard echoes of her own youthful voice painting the world anew for her father. She smiled as she recalled the sparkle of wonderment in his eyes. She knew that her words had transformed his world.

words have power
in the yin and the yang
of life’s precarious
balance

yet silence
has an equal
perhaps greater
power

     hearing| Her father’s new environs were both familiar and foreign to her. He had moved away many years ago and had lived in several different locations, as witnessed by the return addresses on the letters he had written over the years. She’d never bothered to acknowledge any of them. It wasn’t until after they stopped that she decided to visit him. Her feet began to crunch the leaves, slowly guiding her in his direction.

     As she absorbed the song of cicadas and the whisper of a late summer breeze through the trees, her silence descended upon her again, like a darkness. The void of that silence had broken her father’s heart.

     The notions of Living and Life mean making mistakes. When her father left her mother, that was a mistake she could not accept.

     “I HATE you and never want to speak to you again!”

     Her teenage scream echoed through the decades. And she meant it. She felt abandoned. It mattered not that her father intended to retain the relationship with his daughters. Her mother would not allow that. Her mom’s bitterness became her own, as she witnessed the destruction of all remnants of a life that had previously given such great comfort. Over time it simply became easier to hold onto the anger and the hurt than to face the challenge of healing. She chose silence.

colors fade
memories linger
words fail
not so
destiny

     discord| It is human nature to look for things that validate our choices. In alienating her father, she fortified her justification over the years. The extended divorce battle between her parents was enough to buttress this for a lifetime.

     Through the years, he had never stopped trying to reach her. Sure, there were some tough times in the beginning when they were both angry, but the final decision was hers, alone. Over the years she fought dreams of a life that had been forever lost. They fed a creeping awareness that had become a dark-shadowed burden on her heart.

     As a few years turned into many, his methods of contacting her diminished. She made sure of that. Despite her persistent evasiveness, he would somehow find a way to reach out to her. The cards and gifts were never acknowledged. Many were discarded, unopened. Over time, the wall she built around her own heart was stone-solid. But no barricade could insulate her from a world that brought back memories for fleeting moments through a song, or a sunset, or a twinkling star.

     In the end the strength of nature, and the universe— and a father’s love—all proved to be stronger than her wall. Here she was, walking toward him after all these years. Once again, she had a deep sense that he was prepared.

     pause| Her pace slowed as she came into view of her father’s humble abode— nothing at all like her childhood home. Moving closer, she was not fully prepared to see her maiden name—his name—

 in writing. Somehow this made the moment more real. There was no mistake. This was the place. Now was the time.

     She froze and could not swallow, choking on the moment. Her breath came as a struggle; her heart stuttered. Looking around, she found no other person in sight. This was her preference, and it calmed her. Only a little.

     She was uncertain what she might say to her father. She only knew the word she would say first. Then she hoped to trust her instinct for what might follow.

     Maybe she would describe the colorful leaves. Breaking such a long silence is not easy.

     In this instance, she realized that fate had as much to do with her presence as did choice. Shaking with emotion, she moved forward with silent resolve.

     Over the years, she’d entertained brief thoughts about what it might be like to dial her father’s phone number or knock on his door. She always knew that when this moment arrived, she would break the chasm of silence. Unannounced.

     But this was more difficult than she had imagined. An inescapable sense in her heart informed her that he already felt her presence. She felt his, unmistakably.

in all the time
all the distance
through all the silence
she always knew
the last moments
the last few steps
would be the most difficult

     deafening whisper| The daughter found herself at last on her father’s doorstep. She reached out her hand. The last few inches felt impermeable. She stood frozen in the moment, in a chill of her own making. The final barrier between her and her father was not fancy. It held no window through which her father might glimpse her. She was powerless to knock. The gravity of the moment drank her thoughts, her breath, her resolve.

     Her chest and shoulders quaked as she fought to inhale, hoping to steady her voice. She felt unready, as if in not speaking to her father for so long, she had never spoken at all. Would he listen?

     For a moment she battled the urge to turn and flee. Standing there, far from resolute, she struggled to say the one word that she knew she must utter. Her eyes glistened as she sought her voice. This was not going as she had planned.

     “Dad?”

     She was startled by the sound of a single escaping sob, as her eyes struggled to focus on the face she knew she would someday stand before.

     Time had taken its toll. Nature created his visage. The years had shaped it. But in the end, her father made the final choice. A man with eyes the color of granite, but now there was only… cold marble.

simple
quiet
few words
simply his name
nothing else
carved in stone
 save one exception
that reached her
still

     His epitaph read: “I Will Hear.”

     She dropped to her knees on the soft earth, turned barely a month before. It took a moment to still the quivering of her mouth and throat. Her body convulsed as her tears watered her father’s grave. She began again.

     “Dad?

     —quietus—  




BIO

amy g dahla is a retired park ranger and naturalist who spent a career writing creative nonfiction for museums, visitor centers, and magazines. Their work has been featured in national visitor centers, museum displays & brochures, as well as by the Associated Press and the National Science Center. Their current work in poetry and prose combines both natural and human elements, sometimes aligned but often juxtaposed. amy currently resides on the slopes of Mt. Ogden with their partner, thirteen guitars, and a well-worn pair of hiking boots. “resonant” recently received awards from the League of Utah Writers for best fiction.






The Mission Rooms

By Jennifer Blake


            Records, records, up to the ceiling, records all around and on top of me. They’re my children and they will smother me, what if the Big One comes and they all topple down? Daddy, save us. At least they will need me, Joel doesn’t need me and so must not want me. Tired of me doing nothing, playing that one show and then none, the only one and to no one, no one listened. There was so much art and was any of it mine?

            Music and children thumped upstairs and shook the dangling ceiling light so it tap-danced. Traitor. Daniel played music and the lamp never danced. How dare those people above him vibrate his walls with their bodies? Their vibrations touched him, vibrations from their clammy bodies reaching down and across the building to search through him.

            There had been so much noise on the walls that night, some of it art, the rest of it awful. Joel’s paintings were strung along the brick walls. Daniel had seen each one born but along the brick wall on display they were proud and aloof, not giving him the time of day. Daniel wanted to sink into each one. They were Joel’s, his, he made them, his brain and heart, smeared on the wall, privately Joel’s. Paint me. How can I be part of it? He couldn’t respond with his piano. He could only repeat the work of others. The notes fell in a different sequence and the pedal punctuated different points but it was the work of others. He couldn’t answer Joel with his own bright shapes, with something to admire, to watch others admire about him. He had nothing for Joel to envy, Joel was jealous of no one. There were no new eyes locking onto Daniel’s; Joel needn’t swallow Daniel’s music to keep it from the prying world. Daniel was fading and Joel could barely hear him. There was so much art, and the artists took it back to their breasts and hid it when Daniel passed. Art didn’t want him. Joel didn’t need him.

            Mariachi from upstairs and Daniel’s records pulsed through Alex’s walls and she found it interesting how they interrupted her heartbeat. She listened for her heart and it retreated mutely, not certain where to go next. Take my hand, heart. We’re all we have. We’ll lie on this bed right against this window that touches the street, where anything can happen. I can’t believe I sleep right by the street. Metaphorically, and actually, so close to being on the street. Oh God, just one feather landing on the scale – she and Daniel and Joel spreading their weight on the quicksand and if anyone took a sick day or got bad tips they would be swallowed. Now Alex felt her heart. Every time she thought about money. I hate it hate it HATE IT SO MUCH, so much, but I need it, I have to keep going. Being dragged through life in chains.

            She sat up in her bed and pried the blinds apart to make a tiny aperture in the corner. If anyone looked in, would they see her eye? Her eyes were small and she had an inordinate number of acquaintances who possessed large, wide, captivating eyes, an inordinate number for a girl with such small eyes.

            It was night and her light was on, so she would be visible in the window. She drew back further so that it was necessary to read the picture outside through the blinds line by line. When she moved her head down, there was streetlight glow. She moved it up, and through the aperture she caught the line of the street like an astronomer moving from the moon to something black and disorienting, and felt like she was falling.

            Satellites crossed her view. Boys? Young men? Neither quite fit the entities who slunk along the sidewalk, with hands shoved into the pockets of pants that displayed every lack of bulge. Boys and young men dabbled in each other’s purview in this city so that neither they nor the onlooker knew quite what they were looking at. The all had in common black sock hats and wallet chains, as though they’d gotten dressed together before hitting the town. Can I borrow your sock hat? Sure, can I borrow that shirt with the New Wave band we’ve never heard of? Sure. Now let’s all go to a fancy bar and pretend to be miserable. Their eyes leant forward to convey that they belonged in the neighborhood and weren’t born yesterday but at a warily brisk pace that betrayed their panic. Alex watched them until they left her frame and became all laughs and headlights.

            Alex stayed secure in her gatehouse, reigning her slum, praying for those who ventured through and out, long since having discarded the notion for herself. She sighed, the long-suffering queen. She had to be at work at five AM. It was now a quarter past ten the PM before. She found she was more cheerful at work when delirious with sleep deprivation, so she had at least another two hours with which to consider the world.

            Something growled and ripped through the floor, the sonic bray of an injured dragon. It reached Alex as just another percussion in Daniel’s music, and it reached Daniel as just another violation from upstairs. It was in fact Joel’s contribution to the voice of the walls. His credenza was out of place amongst his new paintings, the lines were off, the gravity was wrong.

            The credenza was a pity purchase but Joel loved it like an ugly dog whose odd lines represented God’s experiment. Putrid yellow and green enamel mermaids; wood—light ash; compartments soaked in stale cigar. As he pulled its bulk across the hardwood floor, the woods gnashed and screamed. Joel relaxed for a moment, face-down on the credenza’s surface, and let his ribcage melt into the wood. Always bends and wilts like a sad flower, Daniel had said to him. Have you a fat fairy sat on your head? Joel possessed only enough biology to communicate movement. No wasted skin, and everything long – his toe to his finger one line on the right, the same making another line on the left, and a graceful head with a sharp face through the center.

            How many conversations and fights and decisions must have been had and made in here. Joel’s room was technically the dining room in the 1920s apartment. He turned his head so his right cheek felt the freezing surface of the enamel mermaid and caught sight of the built-in bookshelf on the next wall. Or, it just occurred to him, china shelf. Pantry? Jars of pickled onions and preserved fruits and peppers, like he’d seen in estate houses during his summer art program in England. Decades had taken a couple inches of brine from the tops of the jars, but the vegetables remained, browned like newspaper and shedding small particles that made muck at the jar bottoms. Joel was always in awe of the onions that had been grown and picked in an entirely different way, and which probably had a genetic makeup that has long since been lost in the onion of late. I am a brined onion from 1910. Nothing modern in me. Perhaps people look at me in awe, perhaps I’m sepia-toned.

            The latest painting was composed of four square canvasses. It was, all together, a grinning chimera. The southeastern canvas contained only the monster’s clawed hand, which held in its palm the moon. The piece was dense with hard color, bright, with each hue adjacent to its wavelength antonym so the whole business seemed to shift. You’re too incongruous, even for me, Joel said to the credenza. You’ve got to go. I’m taking the monster over the mermaid.

            Joel sadly realized it was the opposite choice he’d made when he chose Daniel. Mermaids are flighty and want nothing more than to take you under with them. Joel wanted so to believe Daniel didn’t desire that he drown, but simply assumed everyone could live while submerged. Joel loved that joy in Daniel. Myopic ebullience, like Peter Pan. But why can’t you come with me? We can fly, can’t we? Joel planted his feet on the ground, guilty, terrified, resolute. Is it always either fairy dust or drudgery? Daniel implored. Couldn’t there be a life in tempered starlight?

            The credenza was maneuvered to the wall that divided the apartment air into Joel’s on one side and Daniel’s on the other. It was not a smooth landing—the corner of the floor was warped.

            Daniel started and dropped the record he’d chosen from the top shelf. Joel knocking? No, Joel fussing. Joel has never knocked on a wall, or a door, he floats through walls and under doors and materializes, a sprite, his shoulders must actually be furled wings. Blades, blades, sharpening until he cuts through the wall and into me. He hasn’t been in my room in a week. How is he happy in a deli? Those hands on meat, all day. Is it that the hands make such beauty that they must be punished? Extremes. He lives in extremes. From this over here to that. An alien perhaps in a human suit, tasting the world.

            He should knock on Alex’s door and get outside into the air. Maybe he could catch her in the middle of a tryst. She always had a boy in there. Alex is lovely, loverly. Isn’t it difficult for us pretty people, he had once sighed to her. She had crossed her eyes and shoved her finger into her right nostril.

            He stayed put, paralyzed by the options of life. Take to the night and wake at noon. Mornings were for panicking people, swishing and cramming. He winced when people panicked at him. He couldn’t stand panicking, tense veins and wrinkly mouths and hard eyes, this insistence upon unhappiness. But am I happy now? Melancholy and her sycophants joined in a circle round his floor-bound mattress and sang with tinny voices through pointy teeth.

            The image sent him shooting up onto his knees. He shoved the blind of the window above him upward and looked hard out of the glass to be sure he wasn’t surrounded. Beige wood planks filled his eyes, as though his window were boarded up, and he felt trapped until he pulled his eyes inward and the dimensions popped out again. His view was of the tiny vent space between apartments, a little ledge, the opposite wall, and a narrow two-story plunge. He plugged his nose and pretended to dive down through the window, through the hole. He would look up from the bottom, like a well, and long for the tiny point of the sun. Tiny point of sun? Could that be a song? He spun round to his piano and slammed the keys.

            Daniels’ muddy piano made Alex suddenly restless. She needed fresh air for her ears.

            She’d been fitfully napping, vanishing under headphones to consume alternately shameful pop music and obscure classical voice, and staring out the window since she returned from work at three PM. Too weary to shower, she still reeked of coffee grime. A clean, pressed man with solid shoulders and a smile that knew all the solutions had yelled at her about a bagel that morning.

             Alex had the room in the apartment that she liked to imagine had been the sitting-room, since it had a (non-functioning and now bricked up and strictly decorative) fireplace. It had more likely been, unromantically, always a bedroom. She’d never actually thought about it until now – where would the chimney have gone? She would have to remember to look for it the next time she went outside.

            Turn, pull up, arch toward, pull down – the secret to opening the warped door in the crooked frame without scraping the floor or drawing an explosive crack of wood. As it was, the opening of any door in the place sent a whisper of pressure release through every room that all could sense in a tiny pulse of their own doors and a mild loss of equilibrium.

            Alex slid down the hallway past Daniel’s door to her left, then the shower room, then the toilet room, which she supposed was technically a water-closet. Joel’s curtain was closed. This was the only formidable obstacle she faced in the tiny, lively place. To get to the kitchen, one needed to pass through Joel’s space. He was home so rarely that it didn’t much come up – but now she gritted her teeth and announced, “Knock, knock.”

            “It’s OK!”

            Alex swung her hips to the left to avoid the credenza and said “Oh! Your piece!” It wasn’t in the spot she’d learned to avoid in the last couple days.

            She found Joel considering it alongside its new wall, his hands on his hips. Was he a flamingo? No, more of an egret.

            “It wasn’t happy over there.”

            “I guess it didn’t like competing with your moon-creature.” Alex looked carefully up at the monster. Joel’s paintings all have this…distortion. A caught-in-a-windstorm insult, taken by surprise, an impersonal cyclone smearing their faces just enough out of proportion to breed a bit of disappointment in the viewer who was craving something that couldn’t easily be done. But still they lived, beseeching you from the wall. Alex admired how prolific he was. Notebooks, sketch books, walls and coasters spewing words that made pictures and pictures that made worlds. One’s envy of the collection was not excited by any unique or trained skill, but by the exclusivity of the new reality created. Alex looked back at Joel from his wall of paintings and didn’t immediately perceive a difference.        

            “Moon-creature – I like that….” Such a working girl, Alex. Independent. San Francisco was bursting with them and they were each composed mostly of flighty, shrill fear, shirted in insincere jubilation with a shade of overwrought flower-child. Joel knew that Alex penetrated that diseased shell that coated her surroundings with keen regard and found it all terribly funny. Joel could catch her eye across the madness and laugh. The unspoken joke shared between them was that of the state of the whole universe.

            Joel watched her as she passed into the kitchen. She tended to beat her curly hair straight with tools that sent a slight singe into the air in the mornings, but there was always a missed bump or a frame of irritated strands awakened by the morning fog. Everything on her was just so slightly deconstructed, as though she’d begun to decorate herself on the outside, but had gotten distracted and her brain had left her body for other endeavors.

            The boys are both home but locked in their rooms. God, how uncomfortable. Alex searched for her almonds in the cabinet. Taking on the goal of eating cleanly provided for her an excuse within an excuse. Everyone in her neighborhood and most in her city were jumping onto the organic-local-whole-food horse (well if this or that wasn’t whole and a food, then what had she been eating all this time?). Doing the same not only helped her meld into the fabric of the zeitgeist so that she could someday speak wistfully of her days in the “slow food” revolution; additionally, she could justify that the time it was taking to focus on her health was better spent than it would be by picking up her cello again. It stood in the corner of her closet, dusty to the point of stickiness. She had been competent—talented? But she’d forgotten – and now she was so, so tired. Two jobs and the rest of the time spent in ways to forget them.

            The roommates shared a flowerbox of a backyard balcony with the people in the next flat, but she’d never seen a sign of them. Joel had claimed their half with one of his pieces used as a platform for another piece used as an ashtray for their frequent guests, only distinguished from your everyday squatters by confessions of intellectual aspirations blown out languidly with their smoke.

            Joel had brought a cat home one night, a soft ball of fright and need, colored mystical blue-grey. Joel proclaimed him to be Crumpet. Alex had adored the animal and fancied the two of them particular friends until Joel hosted a beast of a cocktail party and the animal had taken to Alex’s bed, as far away from the kitchen and the balcony as he could get, horrified. Crumpet had wet through everything that Alex was interested in sleeping on or in. She had started shutting the door and chucking him off her lap.

            This memory tore at her heart a bit as she gazed from the flowerbox into the world. Maybe she should apologize.

            The balcony, or landing, or incompetent extension of the floorboards beyond the intended dimensions of the kitchen, whatever it was, made Alex wonder if she was just one cell in a panel of identical balconies with one person in each, staring wistfully as she was, each taking a deep breath to prep for the first note in a spontaneous musical.

            Meatballs? Something was wafting from the restaurant whose backside their flowerbox balcony faced, and it must be the remains of the day’s sauce slowly dying in the pot. It was hard to reconcile the tiny relic of any old lady who owned the place with the angular red and black communist pop art hung in a line on otherwise neon-white walls. Who could eat meatballs in that situation? The skeletal proprietress had promised the residents of their apartment building that she would furnish dinner for them all sometime, her treat. The offer had been made months ago. Alex cringed at the memory of this platitude between new acquaintances, the promise to connect that both parties knew would never manifest, a social grace covertly rooted in sadism that Alex thought should be stricken from human expectation. It did far more harm than saying nothing at all.

            There was a fundamental flaw in Alex’s thinking, she knew. Why do I assume there won’t be any follow-up? Certainly, she could take it upon herself. When she’d first gotten to San Francisco, she’d begun consciously exuding hostility, once she found out what the bus was like. Something right below her ribcage flipped as it occurred to her that maybe she had forgotten to stop once she had gotten off the bus.

            Sirens. In every angle of her shadowy radius something was happening that would change or end a life, and the dust left would settle into cursory blurbs in the newspaper. Alex used those reports as bookmarks for her own fortune. Where had she been at approximately quarter-past-eleven on Friday night when a twenty-three-year-old male was found with gunshot wounds on the corner of 24th and Tennessee? She’d been eating almonds on her flowerbox balcony. She’d escaped again. It had been that time for the twenty-three-year-old male. He certainly hadn’t seen it coming. If her moment was next, she certainly wasn’t seeing it coming.

             Daniel ripped open his bedroom door and played through it. The chords progressed through the hallway and around the kitchen table. His hands were built for this. Not for Joel, not for nothing, but for this.

            The cacophony ceased and Alex realized she could once again hear birds.

            “RAR.”

            Alex’s almonds went over the balcony. “Jesus on a stick,” she said, “where did you come from?”

            “Don’t speak to me of Christ and sticks,” he enunciated haughtily. “I am a servant of the waves and clouds and twinkling—“

            “I cooked chicken in your pan last night.”

            “WHAT?” Daniel was a vegan dancing perilously on the ledge of a raw diet. “I told you—”

            “I’m kidding.”

            Daniel jumped in front of her and narrowed his eyes. “Listen!” He sprinted back into the house. Alex looked after him quizzically. The piano timidly trickled out onto the balcony.

            Alex strained forward to hear the tinny plinking. Daniel was like a lion who reared up, unhinged his jaws, and belched out a peep. He returned, breathless, wide-eyed.

            “What’s that, Liberace?”

            “No, you twit, it’s me, it’s all me.”

            “Oh – have you been composing in there? That’s great.”

            “No. Composing is boring. I’m bleeding.Good lord—Alex took in her unhinged roommate—most people are so boring. You can see the air around Daniel change color with his mood.

            “Well, if you have the kind of talent that lets you just pump out art out of nowhere, then you’re the luckiest man alive.”

            Daniel took a step back and lowered his chin. Taking a compliment was like accepting the egg of an endangered animal. It was the burden of new responsibility toward the giver and toward the entity of the sentiment. If he didn’t receive it correctly, he’d be slipping on the yolk of the last dodo, and everyone would hate him. “Do you think I’m talented…?” he asked in falsetto, batting his lashes. Humor was the best way to deflect a kindness.

            “I guess I’d be tooting my own horn—get it, music joke—because I can play a cello—though I haven’t really lately, who knows if I still can—but it’s pretty hard to do what we do, isn’t it? I define talent as being in a minority, I guess.” Was that right? Did that make any sense? So, the skeletal proprietress of the neighboring restaurant was talented because she was one of few specimens possessing both visibly slouching compression stockings and a delicate understanding of deconstructed communist propaganda as art? Alex vowed to think through her newly realized convictions before she spouted them off. “So, yes, I do think you’re talented. How about that?”

            “How do I use it?” His mouth was purple with suspense; his eyes leaked out of his head.

            “So, those who can’t, tell other people how?”

            “I’m serious. How do I make this in to something? I’ve been slaving away for THE MAN in these revolting cafes, and so have you, serving up puke to pathetic people who just drag themselves around and don’t LIVE. No one has ever understood me, or hell, anything. And I thought San Francisco would be the place of all places that would get it, you know?”

            Alex shook off the fantasy of jumping off the balcony to escape this emotional confrontation. She figured she may need someone to blow up at someday and Daniel may be the nearest one at the time. The accusatory finger of her mind pointed through the kitchen door and paused at Joel’s walls and floor and surfaces that were choking with art, good and bad, so long as it existed, then floated down the hall, into her room, and alighted on her cello. The finger plucked a string, pointedly pizzicato, the cello raising a reproachful eyebrow. The vibration shook the drops of guilt concentrated in her heart to the surface and they pulsed through her arteries. Do you know what it means to be alive? Breathe, send air to where the blood is waiting, and it carries oxygen on the backs of its cells, runs with all it has and knows, which is dedication to you. Drops the oxygen and cycles back for more. Breathlessly, because they’ve starved for a millisecond, bone and string and lever and pleasure, moles and nails, hair and pain take the oxygen and turn, make and remake constantly, tear down and turn over in chaos and what must be a roaring racket up close. To make me again. Why do I not feel all of that? Why do I not move when I’m not moving? All of that happening and I’ve never said thank you.

            Her cello still rang. She struggled to see Daniel.

            “It has to be the most important thing. Everything else has to be food. All your experiences, the people who like you, the person you love, you have to secretly feed them to your music. It has to be the most important thing. You can just take life and be happy I guess, but if you want to make something, you need to take from somewhere else.” She threw a surviving almond off the balcony. Wheeee.

            Now that she was uncorked, she spilled. “I suppose I’m telling you to stop being so lazy. The trick to doing things is to do them.”

            Daniel spoke quietly. “Joel came up to me after my gig at his art show, while I was on stage.”

            The stage had been the waxed wooden floor of a corner of the gallery. One exhibit had cancelled and the event organizers, faced with an empty wall, were presented the choice of a rejected entry of canvasses chunky with flung used condoms (a young local up-and-comer) or a makeshift stage for a piano interlude. Daniel had been offered the space for two hundred and fifteen dollars. The owners had thrown in a drink ticket. Joel had lent him one hundred.

            “I was sweaty and all jazzed, man, people were grooving– and anyway everyone in there was a fetus and had no clue what I was playing anyway. So Joel comes up to me after I finished and said I can’t. That he couldn’t, I mean.”

            Alex was impatient because she’d heard this before. From Joel. But she had to reverse and remember all the receptive faces she’d made when the news was fresh, one and one-half weeks ago. Remember them and alter them according to the following possible emissions from Daniel: whimsy, fury, suicide, petulance.

            “He said I like myself. That he liked himself, I mean. I mean, what did he mean? He’s in love with himself? Is he celibate now? Are you celibate if you love yourself, or no? He said, I like myself and you’ve made me start to dislike parts of myself. I remember every single word.”

            Joel’s account: I can’t keep taking care of you.

            “I said, what, did I embarrass you? That all I needed was this one opening onto the scene, that now I can talk to the owners, and they can refer me to other places. That I can get gigs without him, you know, and he didn’t need to see me play, if it embarrassed him and all.”

            He leaned at Alex and spoke with mortality. “He meant that it made him sad to watch me. I know it. And he was losing himself. That too.”

            Joel’s account: I’m losing myself with him.

            The roommates saw the point at which their three knowledges met and made sense. They breathed and smiled in relief: Joel was satisfied with the resting place of the mermaid and leaned over it to breathe it in; Daniel writhed with the loss; Alex grieved for them. What was beyond this meeting place was something they didn’t yet know, and whether this ignorance was for the best was a different matter. It was that Joel was genuinely out of love with Daniel, out of that thing that both parties thought, when it began, would not necessarily hold forever, but would at least become perpetual motion in one another, virile enough to be called upon again someday. Daniel mucked himself in this idea, rolled in it and smeared it in his hair, cozy and warm in the safety of uncertainty. Maybe not? Maybe?

            Joel wasn’t inclined to dismiss possibilities and hardly knew what to expect from himself most of the time. He knew that his love for Daniel could open a cautious eye and emerge, fully functioning and less childlike, again; because of this he couldn’t tell Daniel that his love was obsolete. The mermaid felt the waves of finality beating through the wall between their rooms, the last imprint on each other as they’d like to be remembered, and the resigned, tight smiles of farewell they unconsciously gave one another. At the level of white light and perfect quiet, they were done. The more superficial levels would be harder.

            Maaaahw.

            “What is it, Crumpet?” Daniel cooed into the kitchen. “Is it your gout?”

            Alex had a (rather useless, she thought, unless being commanded by a serial killer fond of psychological mayhem to shut her eyes and pick her loved ones out of a circle of people singing together or else they’d all die) talent for recognizing voices. “That’s not Crumpet.”

            “Have you ever heard him make a sound? He hasn’t, once.”

            “He has, twice. That’s not him.” Another indignant squeal.

            An animal issue could usually distract Alex from a human one. She usually regarded human issues as animal, anyway, but other animals were nicer. She leaned over the flowerbox balcony but could see nothing through the blanket of the security light.

            Three successive meows. “It’s panicking. We should find it.”

            “It sounds like it’s inside. I tell you, it’s that stupid Crumpet.”

            Alex wandered slowly into the apartment, stalking the sound. Joel peered out of his room. “What is that noise? Have you seen Crumpet lately? It doesn’t sound like him….”

            Alex turned an eye to Daniel. “Aren’t you a musician? Where’s your ear?”

            Daniel snarled.

            The roommates peered under every cushion (which weren’t many) and each of Joel’s pieces (which were many), including their drawers (though, the two roommates convinced it was Crumpet were dubious of the chubby cat’s dimensions being compliant with those of the drawers).

            “There’s no experience in that meow.” Joel stood straight in the terminal posture of decision. “It’s not Crumpet – but it’s in here.”

            “It’s in the walls, maybe.” Alex placed her palms against Daniel’s closed door. “Daniel, are you hoarding kittens? I wouldn’t put it past you.”  

            “Yes – for roasting.”

            Alex sent an impulse to her arm to open Daniel’s door but the wall held her back by the wrists. What’s the matter with you? the wall asked. Have some respect.

            “Daniel, it’s in your room.”  Maaaah! “Would you mind if we checked?”

            Daniel sniffled and asked for a password.

            “Dead cat,” said Alex. Daniel opened the door.

            The room dripped wearily, in contrast with the subito dynamics of its owner. The room was at its wit’s end. Stacks of records cackled, spit, shot up, and otherwise squatted in the calm cube that had simply found that it existed one day.

            Maah. Maah. Maaaah!

            “It knows we’re here! We’re coming, keep meowing, don’t give up!” Alex crossed the wooden floor and contorted over the head of Daniel’s frameless mattress to peer out of the window. She saw only her reflection and, shaking her head to recalibrate, shimmied her gaze through her own chest. She threw open the window with the violence needed to release it from the frame to which it had been painted stuck.

            Cold and fresh and reviving. Alex breathed and nearly forgot the cat. The cat reminded her. Alex looked at the sound, and it was orange and huddled on the ledge of the vent space, horrified.

            The creature needed someone, and in light of this, leaning out of a two-story window didn’t seem nearly as stupid as it might usually have.

            Joel and Daniel saw the rear of Alex as she walked on her hands out of the window and onto the ledge. Joel seized her ankles. “I’ve got you! Go get him!”

            Alex considered her several past encounters with terrified cats. They became very sharp when vexed. Vexed. She thought that was the perfect word for cats in general. She expected the kitten to eviscerate her with impressive aplomb for such a small thing, or to launch itself out of her reach, death at such a young age being preferable to human whim.

            The kitten fit in one hand. It shrank itself around her palm. Alex could have fanned her fingers open and the cat would have remained.

            “He’s in!” The room sucked them back in. The roommates regarded the kitten and were warmed by looking at it. It pinned itself to Alex’s sweater. Each claw that Alex removed, the kitten replaced. The front right paw was removed, then the back one sunk in, and on and on. They danced like this for a minute while Joel and Daniel softly prodded its back and ears.

            “So – there’s a kitten.”

            Responsibility fogged them in and they stood and frowned. Now what?

            “Now what?” Alex asked.

            “If Crumpet notices him, they’ll fight,” Joel mused.

            “More probably he’d run away,” Alex corrected. “Crumpet is a chicken shit.”

            “Let’s put him in the bathtub.” Daniel stared the kitten in the eye, trying to reach him telepathically. “He needs to think. That’s where I go when I need to think.”

            “Sure. I don’t think he’s old enough to have any stereotypical comic-strip cat phobias of bathtubs.”

            He paced in the tub. Less agitated, but aware that his life was now new. He wanted the soft sweater again. The curving surfaces of the tub caught every speck of light so the kitten felt he was being orbited. He chased the bowl of the tub. The humans cackled. Crumpet was forgotten, and he felt it where he hid, in a place of which the roommates had no inkling. Crumpet shrugged, trotted down the back stairs of the flower box balcony, and made his way forth.

            “We have to find out where he came from.” Daniel, firm and exasperated as a lioness, reduced the kitten to obedient folds of fur by grasping him by his upper back and looking him in the eyes. Joel focused into the scene. Dominance and nurture were forces that Daniel absorbed from people until they found they had none left when they pulled the trigger one day. These virtues (which they were, in context) existed in Daniel, but were kept in a glass box to be seen and not used, until now, when he unleashed them on a kitten. Joel didn’t process the observation as a personal affront. Daniel could only be contrary – he could give the kitten these things because the kitten had none.

            “I’ll take him around the building, at least.” Alex held out her hands and Daniel glared and squeezed the kitten. He handed the bundle over with a pout.

            “Farewell, Furlingame!” Daniel threw his hands in the air. “The light of Bast is in you!”

            “The light of Bast is in you,” Alex and Joel repeated at the kitten.

            The floors absorbed the moment and built it into the specter the next occupants would feel without knowing why or what. The structure was becoming fossilized, organics replaced with notions and glances and sobs behind doors and bonds formed through repeated nonchalance. For the sake of the kitten, Alex spoke to strangers and knocked on apartment doors. When she found the kitten’s new guardian, she smiled in tandem with the girl, looking her in the eye. Maybe now, cross the bridge, say something! The door closed.

            On occasion, Daniel peered out from behind himself and made others laugh, with or at, or made them recoil, but he made, not in the manner he wanted for himself, but still, he made.

            Joel was the last to leave the apartment, eventually, after life came for the others. The apartment remained just another organ in the city system. Joel smelled the damp air cooling the old wood through the window once more and closed the front door cheerfully. He walked through the beating aorta and was willingly lost in the weary, pounding heart. 



BIO

Jennifer Blake was raised in Los Angeles but grew up in San Francisco. Her work is inspired by human idiosyncrasies and the belief that cities are characters with souls. With a graduate degree in anthropology from San Francisco State University, she has spent much of her career as an archaeologist, but words are her first obsession. She now resides in the magical Eastern Sierras. 




Apptitude Test

by Tina Dolly Ilangovan


It was a dark and dreary night, a night just like any other. The sort of night where abounding terror abides. The kind of night where your imagination alone can send a chill or two, or ten, down your spine. The type of night that beckons you with the beauty of its all-encompassing darkness while simultaneously begging you to stay put inside.

On such a night as this, marked by the absence of the moon to lead his way, Kevin found himself on a lonesome road, save for the dimly waning lamps and the shadow that followed. With anxiety seeping out of him through beads of sweat, he cautiously made his way forward, head lowered, dressed inconspicuously enough to blend into the night. A night he was incredibly concerned with, though not for any of the reasons stated above.

This was an important night for Kevin, one filled with nervous excitement and fearsome nerves to the point it could make or break him, his reputation, his legacy. After all, it’s not every night a monster from the underworld ventures among the living to make their first kill.

Albeit a monster in our most objective sense of the word, he’d rather call himself Kevin. Though the name he originated with and was referred to by all who knew him was The Minute Man. Armed with a couple of sharpened clock hands, his life-leaving stab wounds point to the exact time his victim’s life leaves them. At least that’s what he’d been preparing for at Underworld University. Technically he should’ve been known as Clock Hand Man, although he was more “Boy” than “Man”, but everyone agreed “The Minute Man” just rolled off the tongue better, while he was left enamored with “Kevin” thanks to a “Human Pop Culture: Movie & TV Medium” course he attended during Hellfire Camp.

Kevin dived behind an empty car as the human he had been waiting for stepped out of the gate and into the road three houses down. He made sure not to touch it in case that set off the car alarm, recalling that was how they got The Hide & Kill Seeker. A travesty, considering he was so close to attaining the ability to silence car alarms as well! Kevin had done his due diligence, though. Learning from others’ mistakes was one of his covert assets (and favourite classes) that was already lending its hand tonight with his very first victim. As the saying goes, “You never forget your first!” and Lincoln was no exception to that rule.

Bright-eyed, broad-shouldered, benevolent-heartthrob, Lincoln. If he had a tail, it would undoubtedly have been bushy. But neither looks nor personality were ever a concern of Kevin’s. What he did have his sight set on was status, and being one of the most popular kids on campus, Lincoln was swimming in it.

“The higher the status, the deeper the mark.”

This solitary sentence rang through Kevin’s head as he zeroed in on Lincoln during his preliminary research. A straight A student, teachers’ pet, track star, quarterback star, debate star, the velvety voice of an angel star, all rolled up into one swarthy stud, loved and respected by anyone lucky enough to know his name, let alone bask in his presence; he was the most suitable prey to bring Nolok University to its knees and subsequently establish it as his haunting.

His colleagues and mentors said he was aiming too high, that he had to start low and make his way up, but he didn’t see the point in that.

“Life is for the living. And the more they live, the more we lose our patience.”

It’ll catch on after tonight, he thought, because from his observations, that’s exactly what some of his predecessors got wrong. They went low, underestimated their target, and spectacularly lost their patience along with everything else they’d worked hard for.

Any sown seeds of doubt stopped sprouting and uprooted themselves from his head upon seeing Lincoln make his way back home on the lonely road after a successful midnight rendezvous, given the skip in his step. It’s a well-established fact that horny young adults make the most satisfying prey.

With minutes to accomplish what he had set out to do, he came out of hiding and continued onward with his new travel partner. Maintaining enough distance between you and your prey where they remain within your sight while being oblivious to your presence is an artful science that Kevin was currently excelling at.

Kevin did not consider patience one of his virtues. To be fair, he had no virtues. Nevertheless, he couldn’t ignore its importance in this next step. The enveloping darkness set the scene with a shudder-worthy atmosphere, playing its part in the induction of fear. Tangy, sweet fear, ambrosia for the soul, or whatever constitutes a soul in the undead. It was their fuel, their drive, their strength. It wouldn’t be too far off to say that it was the sole purpose of their existence. He’d been preparing for this for as long as he could remember being, and was now mere moments away from tasting it.

It was time to start pulling out the big guns. Or in Kevin’s case, a flip phone. He’d read a magazine blurb in Undead Weekly that said humans never went anywhere without this tiny device that could connect them to the entirety of the living world. Not even in the most private of spaces reserved for the human body’s daily evacuation needs did they let go of it. Rather, especially there. Yet, what some feared the most was a call to connect.

“Phone Privileges” was still out of his curriculum’s reach, but he’d be damned if he didn’t utilize this tried & tested harbinger of dread to his advantage. Well, he was already damned, so it didn’t take much convincing for his senior to lend him a phone.

He dialed the number he’d memorised from the soul book. Lincoln didn’t stop as he took one look at the smartphone already in his hand and answered. Granted, it was an odd time for a phone call, and an unrecognizable number such as this would usually prompt him to silence the call and ignore it until it went away, but he was in an obligingly curious mood.

“Hello?” his smooth voice rang out on Kevin’s end.

Kevin’s natural voice was deeply demonic enough to raise hairs, but this was a do-and-die situation. Mustering newer, lower depths of ominousness, the words flew out of him just as they had in front of the mirror all week, “Hello, Lincoln. I have been following you…”

Lincoln slowed down in confusion. All he had to do next was turn back, witness The Minute Man’s daunting silhouette–sorry, Kevin’s–and begin to walk faster. At this point Kevin, matching his pace, would reiterate his stance, adding the fact that he could try all he wanted to run and hide, he was still going to get him. Once Lincoln would start running, Kevin would catch up and seal the deal. Textbook horror haunting.

Instead Lincoln asked, “On Twitter?”

Now Kevin wasn’t one for social civilities, but he couldn’t help blurting out, “Sorry, what?”

“Twitter! Or is it TikTok? Facebook? Maybe Instagram?”

It was Kevin’s turn to slow down in confusion. “I… I do not know what you are talking about…”

“Oh, you are missing out bud! Are you a Snapchat guy then? YouTube? Soundcloud?” The enthusiastic kindness in his quick speech was hard to miss.

“I am? Uhh no… wait…”

“LinkedIn? ResearchGate? Wattpad?”

If anyone had been around to sneak a peek at Kevin, they would’ve instantly caught how visibly flustered he was at that moment.

If anyone had been around to sneak a peek at Lincoln, they would’ve instantly caught him entering the front gate to his apartment building at that moment.

But no one was around except for Kevin, stuttering and mumbling to himself, still too visibly flustered to notice.

“HitRecord? Letterboxd? Apple Podcasts?” Lincoln prodded, a little too helpful, a little too hopeful.

“I do not care for apples.” Disdain was catching up to him. And so was the alarming realisation that he needed to catch up to his prey.

Lincoln chuckled. “You don’t? Me neither, bud. Okay, last resort… Goodreads? WordPress? Ravelry?”

Kevin, now in a full sprint ahead, answered between pants “I suppose… technically… I am your rival, yes.”

Lincoln, mishearing Kevin’s mishear was elated. “Mystery solved! You should join our knitting club! We’ll provide the yarn and needles unless you’d like to bring your own.”

“Oh, I will bring my needles, alright.” Kevin sneered into the phone, his free hand reaching for his sharpened clock needles, confirming they were ready for the kill.

“Perfect!” Lincoln continued, “I’ll see you at the club.” With heartfelt earnestness he ended, “And thank you. It means so much to me that you’ve chosen to follow me. Good night!”

Click

Kevin stared at the bolted building door between him and his victim, now housed safely inside because his hunter wasn’t born with the ability to walk through walls, and neither had he learned it yet. Then he stared at the useless piece of metal in his hand, that just like his currently useless self, had been drained of its power and minutes. He stared back and forth between the two, exchanging looks ranging from incredulous rage to appalling dread to sheer, painful defeat. His first chance to prove himself, and he had failed, not even spectacularly.

Unable to sit right within his system, these mixed emotions bubbled to the surface and spilled out in an earsplitting shriek. Fortunately for the residents of Nolok University, their ears were saved for at that exact moment, a solitary gust of wind amidst the still night pulled Kevin away from the mortal world and into a void that had no choice but to bear the brunt of his feelings.

Panic set in as he realised where he was going. He wasn’t ready to face his peers and superiors moments after the most embarrassing blunder of his existence. Not without processing any of it at the very least. Where he was from, embarrassing blunders never faded away. They grew, and grew, and grew right in front of your face until they could grow no more. Diminishing just enough to linger. Hovering across the expanse of the inferno. Floating into every crevice available. Haunting the hurt hunter for the rest of their unlife.

But he would have plenty of time to process all that and more as the void dropped him off on a high stool in the middle of Underworld University’s sprawling lobby. The same solitary gust of wind stuck a large conical hat on his head with the letters “D U N C E” vertically emblazoned upon it, and left with the very swiftness it had arrived.

He had always been on the other side, generous with his raucous laughter before exploring the error of their ways with careful precision to prevent himself from ending up in their position. Now here he was, on the receiving end of raucous laughter, in the very seat he’d desperately worked hard to stay out of. Their laughter continued to ring through his ears, as it would forever, leaving him in a state of perpetual seething. The Highchair of Humiliation left an indelible mark on one’s career. Success was rare to those whose behinds landed upon it. With Kevin’s behind now added to the list, it became further incentive to prove what he originally set out to do.

As much a motivator as fear is to Kevin’s kind, so indeed is shame.

To the point that Kevin’s sole focus now rested on Lincoln’s demise and the destruction of Nolok University. Depending on the generosity of his superiors, who were anything but generous, he would be let out of that chair in weeks if not months. More than enough time to reflect on every detail that brought him here and to strategise his way forward between bursts of humiliation.

It was already working; he knew exactly what to do first. Sign up for every single class about cell phones, and weave his way into the ancient art of alternative needle stabbing. Or as Lincoln called it: knitting.



BIO

A budding writing enthusiast from India, Tina Dolly’s short story, Apptitude Test, is her first foray into the world of storytelling. She strives to dive deeper into said world with humour and heart on her sleeves. You can find her on Instagram @tuna.tries where she dabbles in prose, poetry, as well as anything in-between and beyond.









The Hot Spring at Spetterhorn

by Brad Gottschalk


            Visitors to my home often comment on a large brass statuette that stands on a cylindrical pedestal near the fireplace in the living room. About two and a half feet in height, it is in the form of a young woman, tall and slender, blindfolded, treading on the heads of four men that lay on the ground beneath her feet (the heads lay on the ground that is, they have no bodies.). In the crook of her left arm she holds a cornucopia filled with large coins; in her right hand, she holds several of these same coins in a position that suggest she is about to fling them away. I often tell people that it was created by the obscure American artist, Jacob Giraud, and was bought from his studio years ago by my uncle, Philip. The truth is, I got it at a junk shop and know nothing about its provenance.

            The figure is, of course, Tyche, the Greek goddess of chance. Sadly, we of the modern era have lost our respect for chance; we like to believe that we are in control of our destinies, and that everything happens for a reason, but that belief reveals itself to be an illusion with every accident, diagnosis, flood, and tornado. And many a less drastic occurrence. In the past, when we had fewer creature comforts, fewer machines, and less medical knowledge, we were much more aware of chance’s importance. For the gambler, who courts chance by vocation, the replacement in popularity of faro with poker is a perfect metaphor for our attitude. Faro is openly a game of chance—that was part of its appeal. Poker players, on the other hand, have fooled themselves into believing that theirs is a game of skill, and a good player will win no matter what hand they are dealt. But a pair of twos is a pair of twos at any table, and winning with a bad hand is a matter as much of luck as of skill.

            The events I am about to relate will demonstrate this assertion beyond doubt. They occurred some time ago, in the summer of nineteen eighty-seven, and they effected broad changes in my life, both for the better and for the worse. At the time, I was two years out of college, living in Chicago with two roommates, and working part time in a store that sold vinyl records (these were common at the time), and in the office of a magazine catering to collectors of beer and soda bottles. I was not exactly prospering, but I was paying my own way and had quite a bit of free time. I mention this only to point out that it was a sacrifice to leave, but not a great one. In May of that year, I was called back to my hometown, Spetterhorn, by my aunt, Carissa, and my cousin, Elliot. A number of people in town had been stirring up trouble for Aunt Carissa, and, having no one else to turn to, as my parents had both passed away the year before, she asked for my help. So I packed a suitcase and boarded a Greyhound (a bus, another common feature of life in nineteen eighty-seven) bound for my former home.

            Spetterhorn is a town of about eight thousand residents, scattered about the eponymous Mount Spetterhorn and its surrounding plain. Mount Spetterhorn is what geologists refer to as an “inselberg,” an isolated hill or mountain on otherwise fairly flat or rolling ground. The hill itself is about a mile long, running from the southwest to the northeast, about a quarter of a mile wide, and, at its crest, about three hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding terrain. It was formed by volcanic activity and contains granite, basalt, and chert overlain in places by sandstone, limestone, and shale, and while there have been no volcanic eruptions in human (or at least white people’s) memory, there is some remaining geothermal activity that feeds a hot spring which happens to be on my aunt’s property, about thirty yards downhill from her house. The spring, while increasing significantly the value of Carissa’ property, was also the root of her trouble. A gang of people from town was pressuring my aunt to give public access to it, and to understand why this would cause my aunt grief, one must understand some of the peculiarities of Spetterhorn’s history.

            The town was founded in eighteen seventy-one as a farming community dedicated to the raising of Finnish pygmy sheep, a breed that produces exceedingly soft wool used for luxury coats, throw rugs, and sacks, and these sheep live almost exclusively on the leaves and fruit of the takiainenberry plant, which then grew in abundance on the plain around Mount Spetterhorn but not on the hill. Because of this, the hill was used mainly for recreation, such as snipe hunting, hiking, and adultery, while the houses, shops, churches, and saloons of the town were constructed exclusively on the plain. However, even in prosperous times, people sometimes lost their farms through drinking, gambling, or other such missteps (such is chance), and those who did so and did not have family to support them moved up to the hill, where land could be claimed simply by staking out a plot. Hill people built houses, a few roads, and even a general store, but the area continued to be regarded as uncivilized, undesirable, and unworthy by the people who lived below. Long before any of us were born, my uncle Phillip’s family suffered this fate. I call him my uncle only out of custom; he was really a distant relative the precise nature of which I have never really known. Shortly after the Civil War there was a rift in the family involving railroad speculation, and my uncle’s ancestors lost their farm and reluctantly claimed a piece of land near the top of Mount Spetterhorn. Tensions from this rift continued well into the twentieth century.

            The move soon turned into a boon for Phillip’s ancestors, though, owing to the presence of the aforementioned spring. Soon after its discovery, people from town were paying modest fees to relax in the steaming waters, especially during the long winter months. The average water temperature was 102 degrees Fahrenheit, and people could relax in the pool while looking down at the snow covered streets and farmland. In the summer it was common practice to loll in the spring for half an hour or so then run down the hill and jump into the Pishwaukee, a wide and slow moving river running through the town. However, for the majority of townspeople, visits to the spring resulted in nothing more than a transactional relationship with its owners. Attitudes towards people on the hill never varied, and social circles in the plain below were ever closed to everyone in my uncle’s family. One story, related to me by Carissa, involved my uncle’s great grandfather, who, in the flush of new prosperity bestowed by the spring’s entrance fees, traveled to Evanston and purchased a motorboat of the kind that was coming into fashion at the time. However, when it was transported to Spetterhorn, the board of the boating club refused to give him a dock on the riverfront. At considerable expense, my uncle’s great grandfather had the boat hauled up the hill to the house where it gathered dust and rust and was eventually broken up for firewood.

            Directly after the end of World War One, everything changed. An influx of inexpensive Bolivian alpaca destroyed the market for the wool of the Finnish pygmy sheep, and in a few short years, all farms but three stopped operation. Many of the plains people tried growing other crops, but the takiainenberry plants had leeched acids into the soil that rendered it unfit for growing anything other than that and dwarf potatoes, a crop with small yields. A silverware company that had made mess kits for the army provided a small number of people with meagre incomes, but Spetterhorn’s prosperity had come to an end. As the people of the plain sank into poverty, their negative regard for the hill people began to dissipate. At the same time, the hot spring’s reputation spread past Spetterhorn to the larger towns in the area and then beyond. From the late nineteen twenties through the fifties the spa was visited by people from Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Omaha, and smaller cities throughout the Midwest and Great Plains. My uncle’s grandfather artificially expanded the spring using man-made basins and aquifers, built a shelter over part of it so that people could enjoy the waters even in bad weather, added a funicular which brought guests up from the town, and christened it Magnum Balneum. And other hill folks took part in the enterprise. At the peak of Magnum Balneum’s popularity there were two small hotels, three restaurants, a hunting park, and a peep show, all primarily serving the spring’s guests. My uncle’s grandfather, no longer dependent on the patronage of Spetterhorn residents, became a grim and rigid gatekeeper. He allowed almost no one from town to use the spring, and those who were admitted paid exorbitant entrance fees. It mattered little to him that the people he was shutting out were but the poor descendants of those who had snubbed his family, his rules were the embodiment of fifty years of resentment.

            Of course, Dama Fortuna does not linger in one place for long. Throughout the late nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties interest in Magnum Balneum waned.Ease of travel and the proliferation of the tourist industry with its endless series of novelties lured guests away, and by nineteen seventy, the spring’s customers were too few to support the hotels, restaurants, and live nude girls, all of which closed. Phillip was running the place at that point. Faced with the choice between shuttering the business or opening it up to the people of Spetterhorn, he chose the former. He died in nineteen-eighty, and afterwards Carissa, out of both dedication to Phillip and her own inclination, kept the waters private.

            I had not, in fact, thought much of any of this during my four years of college and two years in Chicago. Even before that I spent only a little time at the house, as my immediate family was not included in the group considered eligible to visit the spring. However, the summer after my uncle died, for reasons I never understood, I was often invited up to the house where Carissa entertained small groups of friends and relatives, parading around in a bikini and sarong but never going into the waters herself, enjoying her high social standing as hostess and “Queen of the Spa,” a soubriquet she claims was dubbed her by a guest, but one I suspect she gave herself. I and a few distant relatives would lounge in the various pools drinking lemonade and lying about the people with whom we’d made out and the various bases we’d rounded.

            The shadows were long across the street as the bus pulled into the terminal, an ancient gas station with pumps that no longer operated. I gathered my bag and walked up the side of the hill. Carissa and Elliot met me at the front door. Carissa was at the time in her early fifties but still held at least the outline of the shape she bore as queen of the spa. She was able, I learned, to keep the spring shut to outsiders by running a thriving mail order business in antique postcards. Travel cards were her specialty, and though she had never been anywhere farther away than Omaha, if one were looking for historical postcards of the Hagia Sophia, the St. Charles Bridge, the brothels of Pompeii, or the Suq of Marrakesh, she would, using a network of contacts, have them in the mail to you within a week. Elliot had turned into a handsome young man, though thin and not robust. He was studying botany. He greeted me politely but seemed a bit resentful at my presence. This is understandable, considering how I treated him while visiting the house as a teenager.

            It was early evening by the time I settled in, so we did little but put away dinner and a bottle of bourbon then went to bed.The next day, I inspected Magnum Balneum. The shelter over the main pool had decayed from lack of maintenance and had long since been removed. The only structure left was a storage shed containing a couple of pool skimmers, metal folding chairs, and twenty-year-old rat poison (the speckled egg rat, native to the region, frequently infested houses on the hill, but their numbers had decreased sharply after World War Two). The spring itself consisted of one large pool, about twenty feet across and five feet deep, with four smaller pools, ten feet down the hill, fed by two man-made aquifers dug into the hillside and lined with rocks and concrete. There was no one around, so I stripped, slid into the main pool, and lounged there for half an hour or so. After drying in the sun, I walked into town. Out of pure nostalgia, I went past the small, old house in which I had grown up. My parents’ families both had given up on farming before they were born, and my grandfather had supported his with a store that sold radios and second-hand furniture. My father then took over the business, which was far from lucrative, and the house, a one-story two-bedroom, was the best he could afford. After my parents’ deaths, I was unable to sell it, and it still stood deserted, with crumbling siding and a yard of grim weeds. One of the windowpanes facing the street was missing, but I declined to enter.

            On High Street, near the park at the town’s center, I happened to run into Joe Peachum, one of the people agitating against Carissa. He offered to buy me a cup of coffee, so we walked over to the Screech Owl Diner (specialty coffee shops of the type that litter the contemporary landscapes were rare in nineteen eighty-seven). At the diner, I found myself seated at a long table facing not just Peachum, but Sally Kohl and Ed Dewey, all sitting in a row opposite me. I was but twenty-four years old, facing people my parents’ age, all in positions of authority. Peachum was a successful realtor, and no doubt had commercial reasons for wanting the spring open to the public. Kohl was a pharmacist, knew every person in town, and wielded a great deal of influence. Dewey ran a shoe store, but he also sat on the town council, and as he was able to produce a hot cloud of invented information from his mouth at a moment’s notice, he was often able to convince other members to vote his way, even when what he wanted was baldly idiotic.

            These three pretended to explain to me that opening up the spring to the public was in the town’s best interest, and that Carissa’s desire to keep it closed was not only selfish but unpatriotic. Dewey mentioned eminent domain, but I knew that was a long reach. Peachum declared stonily that the three of them would encourage people from town to trespass on our property and take over the spring by osmosis. They then asked for my help in persuading Carissa to concede. I told them I was here to support her and would not be a party to any backroom deals. They were all eating cherry pie, and I fancied they were pretending that Carissa was baked into it. I did not touch my coffee.

            Upon returning to the house, I related the essence of the conversation to Carissa. She then presented her plan to dynamite the spring rather than let the rabble from town take it over. This was not an idle threat; she had, in fact, been in touch with a demolition company and had already obtained an estimate for the work. I tried to dissuade her. I asked her to give me a week to figure out a course of action, and at the end, if I could not come up with anything, I would support the spring’s destruction.

            That night, after darkness had spread completely, I stole quietly out to Magnum Balneum. Peachum’s comment had struck me ominously, and I suspected that it was not just a threat, but that an invasion had already begun. The path was overgrown from disuse, and the trees obscured the moonlight, so I had to feel my way along, moving slowly, grasping trees and hedges. At the spring, moonlight shone through an opening in the trees, and by it I could see that there were indeed two trespassers there, a man and woman, middle-aged and naked, rolling in the water like a couple of walruses. As I watched, they stood up, moved down to one of the lower pools, slid in and submerged. Moving as quietly as I could, I made my way back to the house to get my uncle’s hunting rifle. I did not plan to shoot the couple, but if Peachum was going to set the town upon us, I was determined at least to make it uncomfortable for them. However, when I got back to the spring, the couple was already dressed and moving down the hill. Staying out of sight, I followed them as they walked back to their house and made a note of their address. (I did so only in case we might be forced to resort to legal action over the affair.)

            I spent the following week pondering the situation and doing what research I could at the public library. We had no internet then of course, so I was limited in what I could discover to the few books mentioning the ownership and management of springs, to newspapers on microfiche, and to the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature which, unsurprisingly, yielded little useful information. I even phoned my record store boss, thinking he, as a business owner, might have some useful insights. In the end, inspiration struck as I drove Carissa’s car past Kochliche, a former supper club and Spetterhorn’s oldest restaurant. I advised Carissa to invite Peachum, Kohl, and Dewey to the house for a dinner during which we would discuss my plan, and afterwards we would have a round of cocktails in Magnum Balneum.

            That Saturday evening, the guests arrived. Kohl was looking smart in a business suit with gray pinstripes, and Peachum always dressed as if he worked in a bank. These were the Reagan years after all, and Wall Street set the tone for clothes as well as behavior. Dewey wore a painfully loud Hawaiian shirt and maroon and ochre wing tips. Elliot wore a Cramps t-shirt and was asked to eat in the kitchen. Salt encrusted salmon steaks were served with fingerling potatoes, but the resentment that filled the room did not abate. We each had a second glass of wine, then I outlined my proposal. It was simply this: the spring would be run as a private club. People from town (some) would be allowed to purchase memberships, and members would be free to use the spring during daylight hours as they might wish. In return, members would pay to have a privacy fence constructed between the house and spring to hide their revelries from my aunt’s attention. Carissa would have strict control over whom would be allowed to join and could refuse membership for any, or no reason. Dewey objected. He wondered how in a democratic society one person could exhibit such a high level of snobbery. Peachum and Kohl concurred, though with little enthusiasm. At this point in the discussion, I produced the estimate for dynamiting the spring along with a report from a geologist I had hired claiming the destruction of the spring was necessary to protect drinking water obtained from private wells on the hill. The documents were quite persuasive. If the sign of a productive negotiation is that no one is happy, this one was a great success. Taking to various rooms, we all changed into our swimsuits, gathered together some bottles of gin and tonic water, and headed down to the waters.

            Here, I would like to remind the reader that my original point concerned the importance of chance, for this is the moment in which chance re-wrote the story. As we walked down the hill, Kohl and Dewey were in the lead, followed by Peachum, then by Carissa and me, carrying the garnishes and bottles. Kohl suddenly let out a shriek that echoed through the entire hillside and caused owls, nightjars, and whip-poor-wills suddenly to take flight. I stumbled down as quickly as I could and stood at the edge of the aquifer that drew water from the largest pool to the others. In the large pool, two people were floating, face down, not moving, bloated bodies white in the moonlight. It was, in fact, the couple I had spotted trespassing the week before. We called the authorities, the bodies were removed, and Peachum, Kohl, and Dewey left without taking advantage of their opportunity to bathe.

            This might have been but a temporary obstacle in our plans, but at the autopsies, it was determined that the couple died not from drowning, but of arsenic poisoning. Apparently, they had been drinking the water of the spring, not simply bathing in it, and the water contained a high level of the poison. Arsenic is, in fact, often found joined with sulphur, a common element in igneous rock, and will be dissolved in whatever water passes over or through such rock. When the water is heated, as in a hot spring, the effect is magnified. The townspeople’s interest in bathing in the spring waned quickly after this incident, and my aunt was left in peace.

            Unfortunately, it was a short-lived peace. Two years later, Elliot and Carissa died as well, also of arsenic poisoning. It seems there were cracks in the bedrock between the spring and their well, and water from the spring was travelling through those cracks and seeping into their drinking water. It is a bitter irony that the feature of Carissa’s property of which she was so possessive in the end caused her death. As it was, as her closest living relative, I inherited Magnum Balneum, and two years after Carissa’s death, I re-opened it to the public. Now you may wonder how a spring the water of which caused four deaths would be an inviting destination. Almost miraculously, the arsenic levels abated. The geologist I hired assured me that this is quite normal, as arsenic levels in spring water often fluctuate owing to rain and groundwater recharge. Besides, people’s memories are short, and there has been no illness and not a single death since Carissa’s attributable to the spring. Since nineteen ninety-one it has continued to provide healing waters to the people of Spetterhorn and surrounding communities, and even to the occasional visitor from Omaha. And those of an egalitarian cast can be assured that there is no restriction on the spring’s use other than the cost of admission.


BIO

Brad Gottschalk is a writer and cartoonist who has lived most of his life in Wisconsin. His comics, illustrations and fiction have appeared in numerous journals; most recently his fiction has appeared in Caveat Lector, Sangam, and Rosebud. You can see more of his work at www.silenttheatercomics.com






Getting Serious

by Paul Perilli


I had played two exhibition games in Madrid. I had been to Mallorca for other reasons. I liked Spain. It’s a beautiful country. Yet, when my agent called to tell me about an offer from a team there, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take it. He reminded me it was the best deal I had on the table. While others were sure to come in, Sevilla was a first-rate squad in one of Europe’s top leagues.

“Two years, a million two five zero Euros per. You get an apartment and a car. An opt out to go back to the NBA. You can thrive over there.”

So here I am in the city founded by Hercules, walled in by the Romans, sacked by the Arabs and Vikings, and conquered by Ferdinand III. These days it’s known for its festivals and flamenco dancing. Its tapas joints and heat too.

My name is David Garri. I play guard for the Ocho Nodos. I’m six-foot tall, on the small side for a professional basketball player, but I can shoot the lights out. Halfway through the season we’re in third place in the Spanish League and first in our EuroCup group. I average fifteen points and five assists. Those might not sound like much, I topped them in three of my NBA seasons, but Europeans play a different style of ball. Over here it’s team and system oriented. Defense is emphasized. The games are shorter. The scores lower. Besides Spain, my teammates are from Slovakia, Turkey, Italy, France, and Lithuania. Tony Daniels is the only other import from the States. Newcomer I might be, so far they’ve treated me well. So has the press. The fans act like fans everywhere. After the games they approach me outside the arena wanting my autograph. The kids get a kick out of my Boston accented Spanish. Which I know is rough, but passable. My tutor’s surprised how fast I’m picking it up.

Rápido como eres en la cancha,” she told me.

Como un rayo,” was my reply.

All this love for me won’t last forever. I say that from experience. Eight seasons in the NBA, I went from a second-round draft pick out of Providence College to a starter with a four year thirty-million dollar contract to a player cut by two teams in one season. From good to nothing special to a twenty-eight year old reserve getting in ten minutes a game.

My home here is the six-room apartment the team’s front office set up for me. It’s a fine enough place in a modern building even if I prefer the architectural styles of the older ones. It has new furniture, a giant t.v. screen, a balcony that looks out over the Plaza de Toros. There’s a parking spot for my Peugeot in a private lot across the street. I don’t take it out much. Sevilla’s a walking city. A city you want to walk in. With time on my hands, I did a lot of that my first weeks here. I checked out the Cathedral, the Plaza de España, The Mushrooms. I went to a soccer game. I packed away plates of delicious food in Triana tapas bars. I made two trips to the Royal Alcazar where I knew scenes for the Principality of Dorne in Game of Thrones were filmed. Outrageous as it sounds, one of those trips had a lot to do with my getting together with a journalist for Diario de Sevilla. An outgoing woman with dark hair, Valentina and I met at a casual eating and drinking spot near my apartment. I remember it well. It was a Thursday evening. Back from the Royal Alcazar, I was at a table by the windows drinking a beer and waiting for my serraitos, a Sevilla specialty. At the next table with a couple of coworkers, Valentina recognized me from the photo her paper had published two days earlier alongside an article about the team.

She caught my eyes, and said, “You’re the new guy.”

“I am him,” I said.

“Welcome to Sevilla.”

“Nice to be here. Who are you?”

That started things off. But instead of news or basketball we got to talking about Game of Thrones. She was as big a fan of the series as I was. She had written about its filming in Spain. We became so involved in the discussion we must have bored her friends. They finished up, said so long and left us alone. One drink later we were back at my place. The new mattress was firm, but it didn’t hinder our enjoyment. After that, we took glasses of wine into the living room and streamed the final episode of Season 1, where Daenerys emerges from the pyre as the Mother of Dragons. When it was over Valentina went into the bedroom, put on the rest of her clothes, came out and said, “I am sorry but I must leave. I have to be up early to go to Gibraltar for a story.”

What could I say? Maybe we’d see each other again?

“I will let you know,” she said.

Whatever. Except in a few cases, those were the days I could go around Sevilla without being recognized. I could eat in a restaurant or go to a museum without being approached for an autograph or selfie. Since the season got underway that’s no longer the case. In the third game on our home court we beat Barcelona, one of the league’s best teams. It was tight until the end when I drained a couple of threes in the final minutes to seal the win. When the final buzzer sounded the fans went wild, cheering “olé olé olé” in celebration. The next day the media was all over it. It brought me the kind of attention I hadn’t had in a while.

However it was for me, it was the start of a nine game winning streak for the team. As the season progressed and we kept winning, my teammates and I became a tight knit unit as winning teams tend to be. We hung out after games and practices. Sometimes, instead of going to a bar or club, we played poker at my place. We had fun. Most of us were away from our home countries and I think it was something we were looking for, that feeling of family. Though I’ll say in my case a lot of that had to do with Tony Daniels.

Tony and I had crossed paths in the NBA. By then he was a journeyman and except as competitors on the court, we didn’t interact much. What I remember most from those days was the profile Sports Illustrated did about him. Tony Daniels, you may not know, is a fine trumpet player. He would tell me one night in the bar of our hotel in Ljubljana he saw being cut loose from the NBA as a sign he should retire to be a professional musician.

“The trumpet was calling me,” he said. “It was powerful.”

What I didn’t know until then was he had gotten a degree from Julliard and in the off season traveled with a quintet called “The Five Spots.” Yet, he wasn’t quite ready to give up hoop. So here he was playing for the Ocho Nodos.

That aside, we had hit it off from day one when he picked me up at the airport after my flight from the States. On the drive into the city I knew he was glad to have someone from back home to hang out and chat it up with.

“Man, I’m happy you showed up,” he said. “It ain’t the NBA, but it’s a great place to be.”

“I know it’s gonna be good,” I said.

During those early weeks he showed me the ropes. He took me to his favorite haunts. Dražen, a hot shot guard from Croatia, was with us most of the time. Marco, a gym rat from Milan, and Rudy, a board crasher from Bratislava, joined us on a regular basis. As the season went on we stayed out later and later. It didn’t take long for word about us to get around, yet it didn’t seem to matter what we did off the court. We beat Baskonia by twenty-three points on the road for our seventeenth win in the Spanish League. It might have been our best game of the season. Everything clicked. Dražen led the way with twenty-six. I went for seventeen. The victory put us one game behind Barcelona for second place in the standings. We had a joyous time in the locker room. We were on a roll and saw big things ahead. Coach Lolo praised our pressure defense. It was his system and game plan, and the chant went up, “Coach, Coach, Coach.” We were about to get on our way to the airport when the team manager got a text saying a thunderstorm was about to sweep in and our charter flight to Belgrade was cancelled. The good news was, the hotel we had stayed in had enough rooms for us. It was eleven o’clock by the time we checked in. Except instead of staying put to rest for our game against Partizan the next night, Tony, Dražen, and I went to a club off Vitoria-Gasteiz’s main plaza.

Dražen had been to it the year before when he played for Žalgiris. It was a bustling place with a restless Friday night crowd. Lights were blinking. Electronic music blasting. On the dance floor people bounced and gyrated. At the bar Tony bought a round of marianitos. It went down pretty easy and in no time we had fresh glasses in our hands. We stood there watching the goings on until a few people recognized us and asked if we’d take selfies with them. Then more folks came over. After a few more pictures my drink was on the bar and I was dancing, though I’m not sure if I asked her or she asked me? I recall her name was Lia. She was on the slender side with short hair. A bit tipsy I could tell, but it didn’t interfere with her moves. She had some fine ones, though I’ll add I’m no slouch out there. I matched her step for step, spin for spin. It wasn’t long before Tony and Dražen were bopping to the beat with their own partners.

We must have been out there an hour. When one-thirty came around we were out the door on the way to our hotel to party some more. I’m not sure how much sleep I got. Three hours at most. In the morning I was late getting to the lobby. Tony and Dražen were there looking tired as I was. It was obvious Coach Lolo was on pins and needles. He didn’t say anything to us, but I had a hunch the good feelings he’d had in the locker room after our win were past tense.

I suppose it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you we lost to Partizan? We were never in the game. Tony came through with some decent play, but Dražen and I never got going. Our energy was low. Our production was too. I had six points when Coach Lolo pulled me for the last five minutes hoping my replacement would hit a few buckets to give us a chance. That didn’t happen. After it, Dražen admitted the hour he slept on the plane was the only shuteye he got.

“Can’t dance all night and expect to play well the next day,” he said.

“I hear that,” I said.

We had a couple of days off before our next game to get back in sync. Instead of that, we hit a snag. We lost our next three games, two at home, the other away against Joventut. We were in a bad way. Our shots weren’t dropping. Our on court communication was out of whack. Me, I sucked. My scoring and assists were down. My confidence took a hit. I didn’t think Coach Lolo would bench me, but I knew I had to pick up my play. As it was, I was on the court fewer minutes. In our last loss I hit two shots, that was it, and Coach Lolo sat me the entire fourth quarter. Walking to the bench, a few of our fans started getting on me. Booing and tossing out their hands. Just a few, but it was enough to get my attention. I mean, I’d been booed before. It was no big deal. Part of being a pro athlete. The fans pay to watch you and they have that right. And since I was from the US, the pressure was on. I was the team’s main acquisition that year and there I was shooting bricks.

The next day a few sports writers ripped me good. One said I was a big reason we had dropped from third to fifth place in the league. Another questioned if I was worth it? Along with that, we continued to go south in our EuroCup group. We had lost focus. Coach Lolo had lost patience. At the next practice he read us the riot act. He put us through a string of grueling drills. He used his whistle a lot to point out what we were doing wrong. We heard rumors he planned to shake up the lineup if our bad play continued.

On my way home that evening my phone buzzed. I’d been expecting the call. My agent wondered what was up? Was I injured and not telling anyone?

“I’m good,” I said.

But I think he knew all along what the deal was. What came next was no surprise. I had to cut out the late nights, get my shit together, or I could kiss off any chance of getting back to the NBA.

“They’re not looking for partiers to take up a spot on the bench,” he said. “It’s time to get serious.”

“Too many other things that don’t have to do with hoop,” was how Valentina described it when we were out at dinner. She had dated two professional soccer players. She knew what went down on road trips. She heard the whispering about our adventures to Sevilla’s clubs.

Of course, I said that wasn’t what we were about.

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“Uh huh,” she said. “I was not born yesterday.”

The restaurant we were in served some of the finest seafood in Sevilla. We took our time eating and splitting a bottle of French wine. When we finished, we went back to my place to watch Game of Thrones. Some weeks before that we had decided to replay the entire series. We looked forward to doing that together, though as I mentioned, the nights she stayed with me were sporadic. Anyway, we were up to Season 3, episode 4, the one Daenerys trades Kraznys a dragon for his Unsullied army. You may recall after the transaction Daenerys orders the Unsullied to kill their slavers and her dragon to burn Kraznys to death.

Ocho Nodos needs to be that dragon, to be slayers instead of the slayed,” Valentina said.

I was laughing. She was laughing. Then I got an idea. Crazy as it was, and it was crazy, I aired it out.

“I should have the team over to watch this. As a way to get everyone on the same page. It might help. We need something. Anything. Even this.”

“That is crazy. But I like it. You should do it right away so you’re all on the same page, as you say.”

“You’re right. It can’t wait. Tomorrow. I’ll mention it after practice.”

I called Tony the next morning to find out what he thought? If he didn’t want to do it, that would be the end of my bizarro idea.

“No Coach?” he said.

“No Coach. Just us.”

“We tell him though. Otherwise, if he finds out he might think we’re planning a mutiny.”

“So you’re into it?”

“Did I say no? Yeah, I’m all for it, man.”

In our street clothes after the next practice, Tony and I asked our teammates to wait in locker room while we went to see Coach Lolo. They couldn’t figure out what we were up to. We didn’t want to tell them in case Coach didn’t like the idea.

In his office, he stared at us as if for the first time. Game of Thrones? He laughed. But to our surprise, it turned out he was all in. If we thought it would help, why not?

“Can’t hurt,” I said.

“We need something,” Tony said.

“Not too late,” Coach Lolo said.

We played Unicaja the next night. The stands were sure to be packed. We had to be ready.

“In by five out by nine,” Tony said.

With a bit more back and forth, Coach decided he liked the idea so much he told us the team would pay for the food and drink. “If we win Sunday night,” he said. “Only if we win.”

It was a bet we were willing to take. “Since it looks like you’re buying, we’re ordering from the best restaurant,” I said.

I have to admit I was skeptical. I wasn’t sure what affect watching Game of Thrones would have on us. I had a hunch Tony thought the same.

Back in the locker room, Tony explained the situation, “Coach gave us the go ahead. Don’t bring anything but yourselves. No spouses or companions. No snacks or wine.”

I said, “Coach is buying dinner if we win.”

When we win,” Dražen said.

I took six folding chairs from the practice facility’s storage room and brought them to my place. I set them around the screen with my couch and chairs. I wanted it to be casual, eating, talking, while watching Game of Thrones. The next day at four o’clock two men from Triana’s best tapas restaurant arrived with a banquet table they set a white cloth, tableware, and tin platters of food on: charcuterie and cheese plates, potato croquettes, chorizo, roasted asparagus wrapped in ibérico ham, skewers of pork and shrimp, tarts and cakes for dessert. Bottles of beer, wine, and sparkling water were set on the kitchen counter.

At five my doorbell sounded out. Tony, Dražen, and our other teammates began showing up one or two at a time. When all were present I handed out drinks, then I told them to make themselves a plate and get comfortable.

“I’ll fire up the screen,” I said.

“What’s on?” Marco said.

“Game film of a sort,” Tony said.

With a few clicks I had Season 3, Episode 4 ready to go. That got a laugh.

When six-thirty came around, I said, “Let the Game of Thrones begin.”

So there we were, gathered around the screen. I could feel the excitement in my teammates as the scenes shifted from Kings Landing to the north, then beyond the wall before it moved to Astapor where Daenerys, Kraznys, the dragon, and the Unsullied army were gathered. As it unfolded even those who hadn’t seen it knew something big was about to happen. Daenerys was giving in. With a dragon Kraznys would be dangerous. Then it happened. Daenerys took charge. There’s no reason to rehash the ending, except to say in the closing scene Daenerys leads the Unsullied out of Astapor as the dragon soars overhead.

At that point I stood up and said, “We want to be like Daenerys and the dragon. We want to be the slayers.”

“Hear hear,” Tony raised a hand.

Other joined in.

“Don’t mess with us.”

“No way.”

The next thing I did was tell everyone to eat and drink some more, then we had to call it a night. We had to be fresh the next day.

“For the shootaround. Then we…” I left that hanging.

Win!” was the undisputed reply.

A moment later we were on our feet smiling and slapping high fives. I got everyone to huddle close together. Then I set my camera on the table of food and jumped into the frame in time for the photo. An hour after that everyone was out the door on their way home in high spirits. Tony was last to leave.

“It worked,” he said. “I can feel it.”

After he left I looked around, nodding my head in the belief we had come together. My whacko idea had been a success.

There were leftovers in the tins. Wine, beer, and water on the kitchen counter. I covered the food and put it and the beer in the refrigerator. I made a phone call. Not long after that the two men from the restaurant came back to take everything else away.

It was just ten o’clock when they left, but I was tired. Much as I wanted to call Valentina to tell her how it went, I decided against it. She had the ticket I gave her for the game. I expected her to be there. I figured she would be curious what came of it. Game of Thrones as a device to unify the team. It sounded ridiculous. Maybe it was.

Any doubts I had were erased the next day. We put on a clinic, beating Unicaja by twenty points. After our string of losses, a victory felt good. Tony was our high scorer. The first time that season he led the team. To go with those, he chipped in his usual rebounds and blocks. I hadn’t seen him play with that much energy in weeks. The next day the press said it was a solid team performance. A win we needed. Some wondered if we could keep it up?

Of course, they didn’t know our secret weapon. We weren’t going to tell them, though we assumed it would get to them in time. As it turned out, after our next game it was the basis of a Diario de Sevilla article: ¿Game of Thrones Inspiró a los Ocho Nodos? When the reporter inquired about it in an email, I avoided the question and instead told her whatever the reason, it was about time we turned on the afterburners.

The question for us was, do we keep it going? We had two days off before our next game. When I talked to Tony on the phone, I asked if he thought it was a good idea? Did he think the other guys would be in on it?

To my surprise, he said, “We do it again. At your place, but not right away.”

Four days later we traveled to Italy for a EuroCup game against Germani Brescia. It was one of those games I was deep in the zone. My teammates got the ball to me. I was one step ahead of the defense. By the time Coach Lolo took me out I had scored thirty-five in a blowout win. Walking off the court, a few Germani Brescia fans applauded me. Of course, many more booed. One threw a cookie my way. It happens.

Two Sundays after that we met up again at my place for eats, drinks, and another episode of Game of Thrones. With Valentina’s input I showed “Battle of the Bastards.” The episode where the epic clash for Winterfell ends with Ramsay Bolton being eaten by his own dogs. After it, we went on a six game winning streak. We won our fans back. They were cheering me again. The rest of the team too. By season’s end we climbed back to third place in the league standings. In the playoffs, we lost in the second round to the eventual champ Real Madrid three games to two.

Our season wasn’t done. We finished second in our EuroCup group to make the playoffs. A final Game of Thrones get together at my place started us on our way to the championship game. Played on TürkTelekom’s home court, it was close all the way until Dražen knocked down three straight shots that included a dagger with thirty seconds left to lead us to the win.

Back in Sevilla the next day, the Mayor held a parade in our honor. Standing on decorated flatbed trucks, we rode through the center of town. Along the way our fans clapped and cheered. Many wore hats and jerseys bearing the team’s logo. The procession ended at the Plaza de Espagna. A stage had been set up and we gave speeches to the jubilant crowd. When it was my turn, I mentioned how at first I was hesitant to join the Ocho Nodos but now I didn’t want to leave it or Sevilla. At the end I thanked them, raised a hand and led a fist pumping chant: “olé, olé…”

It was an exclamation point to a glorious season. I hadn’t known what to expect when my plane landed nine months earlier and Tony greeted me in Arrivals. A lot had happened. It turned out better than I ever imagined.

Without a firm offer from an NBA team, I decided to stay with the Ocho Nodos. Instead of Boston, I spent most of the summer in Sevilla. Valentina and I were together much of that time. I was happy with her and I believe she was with me. In August we traveled to London and Iceland, then spent a week at the beach on the Portuguese coast. That was where I got the message Dražen signed with the Miami Heat and two other teammates were off to European teams in Italy and Israel. Their replacements were from Spain, Russia, and Senegal.

The Senegalese player was a nineteen year old six foot nine high flyer Coach Lolo had met at a basketball camp in that country four years earlier. His name was Moussa Sene and he was OKC’s second round pick in the recent NBA draft. He was lanky, unpolished, but his shot was good and skill set developing fast. He was in Spain to get a year of professional experience under his belt. It was rumored his family didn’t want him to go right to the States. That seemed sensible since he’d only played three years of organized ball and there was no way to know how he would react to NBA life in one giant leap. That said, he arrived at our practice facility a week after the rest of us. His parents, who came with him, wanted to be sure the setup was right.

The practices Coach Lolo put us through were hard as ever. He had no intention to let us rest on our laurels. Far as he was concerned, the EuroCup championship and advancement to the Spanish League semifinals were in the history books. Winning the EuroCup had qualified us for the EuroLeague, the top tier league in Europe. We would have to play at the highest level to compete with the best teams. There would be no coming back from a letdown like we had last year.

That first week we were back I met Tony and Marco at Diez Puntos, a blues and jazz joint on a side street in the Macarena district. It was a favorite of Tony’s, which meant it was a favorite of ours too. How could it not be? The music was excellent. The vibe cool.

Since it was a Wednesday night we got a table easy enough. We drank beer and listened to a jazz quartet improvise some fine tunes. Between sets we talked about Moussa, the other new guys on the team, and the EuroLeague. Tony was sure something good was about to happen. He was always sure big things were ahead. Feeling the magic, he banged his chest. Despite losing Dražen he thought our team was stronger than a year ago.

“Remember,” I reminded him, “All the best teams got stronger, not just us. And the EuroLeague…” I stopped. I didn’t want to sound negative.”

“Very soon we’ll find out what we’re about,” Marco said.

Before we hit the sidewalk, we signed autographs. We did that every time we were there. I know some players get touchy about it. They don’t want their personal space intruded on. I get that. But to me it’s no bother. It would be that way if they stopped asking us to sign, was how Tony looked at it.

Outside, Tony and Marco grabbed taxis. I lived closer and decided to walk. There were still a lot of people on the streets. For the first time since my early weeks in Sevilla I saw it as it was, a city easy on the eyes. Full of energy and enjoyment. Then out of the blue it struck me. My mind hadn’t been going in that direction, but the question popped up. Should I repeat our winning device of last season? With the new players we might be better, but the team had a different character. It might not sync as well. I figured Tony, Marco, and Rudy were sure to be in. Four or five of the others. What about the Russian guy Vilensky? We didn’t know him well. He was a serious dude who kept to himself. A Game of Thrones gathering might not be to his liking. And Moussa? Would his parents let him get in on it? We would have to find that out. It seemed doubtful. I decided to wait and see if someone else brought it up.

It turned out Tony did. After a practice he wondered if we should try it before our first game? He figured Coach Lolo would buy in on it. Why wouldn’t he after last season?

“Read my mind,” I said.

“I knew you would want to do it,” he said.

“Has to be at my place,” I said. “Keep everything the same. The food. Everything. Why push our good luck?”

The night before our first game the team got together. Everyone was present. Moussa and Vilensky included. I ordered tapas and drinks from the same Triana restaurant. “The Winds of Winter” was the episode I decided to show. Not only was it a turning point in the series, but much of it was filmed in Girona and Almeria. As usual we broke ranks at nine. Before we did, we got in a circle with our arms around each other listening to Tony give a rousing speech that fired us up. The next night we kicked off the season with a win over Bilbao. With Dražen gone I had more scoring opportunities. I led the team with twenty-four. Yet, most everyone’s eyes were on Moussa. In his first game he had nine points and four rebounds. He looked comfortable on the court against players with five and ten years more experience. In no time he was a fan favorite. They stood and cheered when he capped off his debut with an alley-oop dunk I fed to him. On the court at the time, I remembered Tony looking over at me as if to say, now we know he’s for real.

My second year with the Ocho Nodos turned out to be almost as successful as the first. We didn’t win a championship, we did make it to the finals of the Spanish League playoffs, where we were again knocked off by Real Madrid three games to two. In the EuroLeague we finished sixth. A loss in the semifinal round to Anadolu Efes sent us back to next year’s EuroCup.

To my surprise, when the end of year awards were announced I was named a Second Team Spanish League all star, one of the league’s top ten players. I was happy with it even if it was Moussa who got most of the attention as the season progressed. He showed off his explosive moves around the basket. He got better every game. And that was it for him and the Ocho Nodos. The day after we lost to Anadolu Efes he took off back to Dakar with his parents. Before he left a few of us met him outside the arena to wish him well. He thanked us for everything we did for him.

“Since you have the talent, it had nothing to do with us,” Tony said.

“We’ll be calling you for free tickets, the best seats too,” I said.

Moussa laughed and shook his head. “You guys,” he said.

High fives went around. Then he and his parents got into the van the team manager drove them to the airport in.

It so happened Valentina and I were still an item. Only by then we were more so. We had stopped looking for other partners. Once in a while we eyed each other in surprise, as if to say, you’re still here? One night at my place we decided to live together. In fact, she brought it up. A month later we found an apartment in the Santa Cruz district. A month after that we moved in. It was a settling down for both of us. I admit I was losing interest in the late hours, clubbing and drinking.

Since there was no way I could leave Sevilla and be with her, my agent and I rejected offers from other European teams to sign a second two-year contract with the Ocho Nodos. That would take me to age thirty-two. I didn’t know how many more years I would play. I didn’t have a retirement plan. While I had been an okay student, I was drafted after my junior year and never got a degree. Basketball had consumed my life since I was ten. Meanwhile, Valentina’s career was going great guns. Her column in the Diario de Sevilla appeared three days a week. She was called upon to contribute to radio and television. She was doing what she set out to do.

In the off season she came with me to Boston on a family visit. I was happy to see that my parents and siblings liked her. In fact, they got along better than they had with any of my other partners. At night we hung out with friends I grew up with. She heard the stories about me. Not the athletic successes but the wild stuff we did as teens. One night we went to a Red Sox game with two other couples. I scored tickets for us behind the third base dugout and we cheered the team on in what turned out to be a lackluster two to one game.

“It is not as interesting as soccer, but I like your fans, they’re noisy like the Spanish,” Valentina said.

I agreed. What else could I say? I was one of those noisy fans. Always had been.

From Boston we traveled for ten days. Valentina had been to New York and Washington so we started off in New Orleans. We stayed in a hotel on Bourbon Street, went to the clubs Tony emailed to me; Preservation Hall, Maple Leaf Bar, Tipitina’s. We took up a two of his restaurant suggestions; Cochon and Dooky Chase’s. From there we flew to Los Angeles for three days, then we rented a car and drove up the coast to San Francisco. After that, we spent two nights in a lodge at Yellowstone National Park. It turned out to be a special trip for us. There wasn’t a dull moment.

Back in Spain I came to the realization the country would be my home for as long as I was with Valentina. When marriage came up, we agreed to wait.

“I intend to marry once, have children, and live as normal a life as possible,” was how she put it.

I did too, I said, and I meant it.

The next season was a rebuilding year for the Ocho Nodos. With four new players we came in sixth in the Spanish League. This time we lost in the first round of the playoffs. We missed making them in the EuroCup. And that turned out to be Tony’s last year with the team. Not offered a new contract, he decided to take up the call of the trumpet. His loss hit me the hardest of any teammate I had played with. He had been my guide in Sevilla my first year. We became tight on and off the court. I understood where he was at. His group in New York was waiting for him. It was time to make the move to music full time.

As a team it appeared we were heading into another down year. Marco and others left for new teams. We had more new players. But instead of struggling, we came in first in the Spanish League with a twenty-six and eight record. We beat Real Madrid in the playoff semifinals and from there went on to win the league title. Then in what might have been the highlight of my basketball career, three weeks later we won the EuroCup championship for the second time in four years. What more can I say? Winning two championships in the same year was a huge achievement. One still talked about in Sevilla.

“Man, wish I was there with you,” Tony wrote in a text the next day.

“No way you did that without me, no way,” was Dražen’s comment. That was him for sure.

The following week we were paraded through the city center to the Plaza de Espagna. It was a sunny day. A perfect day for everyone to have a good time and for us to be celebrated. The crowd that showed up was bigger than the one three years earlier. Once again, a stage was set up. Coach Lolo and my teammates took turns to say something. When my turn came up I led the fans in another olé, olé chant.

I would play one more year with the Ocho Nodos. That made five, the longest I had spent with one team. The team I look back on as being the best time of my career.

I’m not saying I was done. I wasn’t. I spent a season with AEK in the Greek League and another for Treviso in the Italian League. I had other high scoring games. There were more wins against good teams. Yet, it wasn’t the same as my glory days with the Ocho Nodos. When Treviso’s season was over I hung it up. It was the right time. I was thirty-six. I had played professional basketball fifteen years. I was still in good shape. I could put points on the board, but I’d lost some of my quickness and ability to get an open shot. Which was a lot of my game. The game that had attracted me to coaches and scouts since junior high school. And I admit, I didn’t want to end up like a lot of others, having my minutes cut to the point I was getting a few here and there before being let go a final time.

Did I mention Valentina and I got married? I don’t think I did. Well, it worked out. The woman I met my first week in Sevilla became my great love and wife. By the time I left basketball we had a two year old daughter named Gabriella. We nicknamed her The Olé Kid, and I spent much of my first year away from the game taking care of her. I had much needed help. A woman named Marta was around during the week. Valentina’s parents moved from Zaragoza to be close to their grandchild and took her when the need arose. Gabriella was our bright light and I admit I enjoyed being a daddy. It was something I never imagined was possible.

My basketball career might have been over but Valentina’s continued to thrive. She was promoted to one of the top editor slots at Diario de Sevilla. She continued to write two columns a week, along with doing radio and television. She was one of the newspaper’s public faces. Then, after a successful screen test, I caught on as a basketball analyst for a television station in Barcelona. It was in English for a European wide audience. Most of the time I worked out of the studio of a local affiliate, though I did have to travel fifty or so days during the season. It was another thing I never imagined, me with a job requiring I talk into a camera.

Then that spring I got an email from Tony saying his group was heading to Europe. They were booked to play in Madrid for a week.

“Check us out if you can make it, would be great if you could be there,” was how he ended.

I hadn’t seen him since he left the Ocho Nodos. I looked forward to getting together.

“I’ll be there, count on it,” was my reply.

I checked out his group’s website. He was doing well. “The Five Spots” were doing well. Tony looked happy in the splash page photo, holding his trumpet and smiling wide as he could. On another page I looked over the list of their recordings. On another I read the press and reviews written about them. “Their arrangements are a pleasure to hear” and “there is undeniable chemistry between these five master musicians.” I clicked the links and listened to their sounds on YouTube. Some pieces were white hot. Others toned down. Different as they might have been, I detected an urgent message coming through in each. Something troubling that needed expression. I dug their music a lot.

The next month Valentina was pregnant with our second child when we left Gabriella with her grandparents and rode the bullet train up to Madrid. It was a Friday afternoon, the first weekend we had to ourselves since Gabriella was born. For the entire ride we couldn’t stop smiling.

“We have made this new life,” Valentina said. She patted her stomach. It wasn’t yet evident she was pregnant.

“It happened this fast,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “But here we are with a weekend off to do what we want.”

“It might be many years before we get another one,” she said.

Our hotel was adjacent to the Puerta de Alcala. At nine-thirty we took a taxi to the club Tony was playing in. It was one of the best in Madrid. In all of Spain, I should add. In the door, we were told Tony had reserved a table for us. We ordered dinner, and before his set Tony came out from the back to say hello. He looked sharp. Dressed in all black. His hair longer. First thing he did was congratulate us.

“I’m still running around as a single man,” he said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

“Yes, David wishes he were one of those again,” Valentina said. There was a smile on her lips.

Tony sat a while with us. The whole time I could feel a pregame tension vibrating off him. I imagined it was a lot like that, and I admit I missed it. The heightened anticipation waiting for the game to get underway.

I don’t know which of us started it. It might have been Tony, it might have been me, but we were telling stories about things that happened to us on the Ocho Nodos. Funny stuff about Coach Lolo’s brutal practices. About Dražen, Marco, and Moussa. The tight games, big victories, and bad losses. About how Game of Thrones was the catalyst that turned around one season. I had forgotten about that. Valentina hadn’t. Had she recommended it to me and then I to the team? Neither of us was sure. As we laughed about it, I looked at Tony thinking he was the reason I had stayed in Spain instead of moving on. In fact, he might have been the reason I was there at all. The reason the Ocho Nodos decided to sign me. I recalled him saying he told the front office and Coach Lolo to get me while I was available. And I was still there with a wife, child, another child on the way, and a new career as a basketball analyst.

Before Tony went on stage, he introduced us to the group. Then they took their positions, checked their instruments, and got to it full speed ahead. It was a pleasure to see him on stage. He was a forceful presence with the trumpet in his hands. At one point he took the lead, stepped forward and came out attacking. His fingers pumped the keys. The sound leapt out at us. He didn’t leave anything on the field, as the saying goes. He put his whole self into it.

By the time the second set was over it was two o’clock. Valentina and I had just enough left in us to chat with Tony a while. The waiter brought over a night cap on the house. Valentina shook off hers, so he brought her a sparkling water. The three of us toasted to the future though after that we talked about the past. In the middle of the conversation the waiter came back to see if we needed anything else? I waved him off. Then he asked if he could take a selfie with Tony and I? He recognized us from the Ocho Nodos. Of course, we asked him if he was a Real Madrid fan? He smiled. Tony smiled. I smiled. It was okay, I said, we wouldn’t hold it against him. Anyway, it was something that hadn’t happened in a while. Fans wanting to take a picture with us. It was like a trip back to our days of championship fame. People wanting our photos and autographs. To be honest with you, I had just gotten used to not missing it.




BIO

Paul Perilli ives in Brooklyn, NY. His fiction and non-fiction have been published in dozens of magazines in the US and internationally. His recent fiction appears in Fairlight Books, The Write Launch, The Fictional Café, and others. His recent essays appear in Rabble Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L). Another essay is forthcoming in Otoliths final issue. His website is: https://paulperilli.com/





Dream On

by CL Glanzing


Sinead Simon has a toothache. She prods it with her tongue hoping to find a dullness through the sting. In the night, curled in her sleeping bag, with the wind whipping the tent against her knees and head, she imagines using her adjustable spanner to rip the belligerent bastard from her aching gum. But it is unlikely she could remain silent throughout. She will not even make a fire to draw attention to her presence. She has become accustomed to softening her steps, keeping the gas stove on low.  She knows where the ivy is pulpy and easiest to step through, and where the blackberry brambles make trip-wires across the forest floor.

Ten metres behind her lies the wall, above the moss-drenched ditch with its lattice of dead logs. Narrow, wrought-iron slats — four inches thick and six feet high. A row of dense boxwood lines the inside of the fence, prickling branches through the slats and obscuring the house on three sides. The only breach is a narrow, but regal, iron-framed gate with wood infill. But it never opens, and the red eye of the camera on its shoulder never dims.

Sinead paws her feet in her sleeping bag, flexing and curling. She is snug, being so constricted. She knows where she is. The immediate world is known.

At 06:50 she emerges from her nylon cocoon. She wiggles the hot water-bottle from the feet of her sleeping bag and tips the cold contents into the bushes. She sometimes likes to end the evening with it zipped into her jacket, stroking it like a pregnant belly.

She laces her boots and pockets her waterproof notebook and pen. She hangs her field binoculars around her neck. Her hands circle the trunk of the beech tree under which she camps. She finds purchase on a low branch and a deformed knot at shoulder height, lifting her weight. She steps into the Y of the beech and swings carefully as she climbs higher and higher. She straddles a thick branch running parallel to the ground and jutting forwards in the direction of the house. She slides herself forward like an inchworm, buttocks raising and pushing her torso forward until the glass box house is in clear sight. She lifts her binoculars and points them towards her subjects.

The Lady in White sits at the kitchen island, sipping from a porcelain espresso cup. From the beech, Sinead has a clear view of the entire lower floor – the black leather sofa, the oak dining room table, the chrome kitchen. The french doors leading to the manicured lawn and, a little ways down, the tasteful gazebo and koi pond. Above this floor is the master bedroom, just behind a balcony with frameless glass.

Sinead watches the Lady waft to the sink and carefully rinse and dry her cup. She wipes her finger along the underside of the espresso machine and then rubs her fingers together. She then wets a cloth and rubs where she has found the dust or grime or whatever has displeased her.

The Lady returns to the kitchen island and kneads her temples in a circular motion for a while, slowly, until she is sitting with her fingers framing her face, as if attempting some trick of telepathy. She stares out the window of the glass house in the direction of the lawn.

Sinead wonders where the Lady’s mind has gone. She is coldly vacant, expressionless. Perhaps melancholy.

The Lady is warm and dry, cuddled in a cashmere cardigan and soft slippers. There is fruit on the kitchen island, central heating, a teepee of logs in the fireplace. And yet, she does not want to be here.

Sinead thinks about the two blue macaws in her aunt’s house. ‘I think they want out,’ Sinead had said, looking at the majestic birds perched in their cage. Looking into their black eyes, still like shadowed caves, she convinced herself she could see a light within, pleading and restless. ‘Don’t anthropomorphize,’ said her aunt.

Sinead does not want to be biassed. She reminds herself not to interpret, just record the physical phenomenon in her little notebook: lips turned downwards, unfocused eyes, sighing.

And then she reminds herself: Confirmation bias – the experimenter interprets results incorrectly because they are looking for information that confirms their hypothesis and overlooks information that argues against it.

She is probably the worst scientist for this job, but also the only one that can perform it.

Another figure comes into the room with the Lady. She watches her speak some words as the figure packs a suitcase on the dining room table. The Lady is kissed on the cheek and she smiles warmly. Then she is left alone.

Sinead cannot see the Mercedes departing the garage, but she can hear the gravel crunching under its weight, and the electric gate drawing back and then piercing shut in the car’s wake.

The Lady goes upstairs and changes out of her cream robe and into grey leggings and a grey sports bra. Sinead knows the rest of her morning routine. Elliptical for an hour, followed by a green smoothie. Then she will sit on the sofa and play CandyCrush – she once left her tablet propped on the sofa facing the window. There is only one computer in the house, but it’s in the study and the Lady never uses it. She has her tablet.

She lets the Waitrose delivery in through the gates on Friday afternoons. And the maid comes Mondays at 10:00. Sometimes she’ll read a book – Sinead’s binoculars are not sharp enough to read the titles.

Sinead knows the Lady has a PhD in mediaeval literature. And used to teach at the University of Essex until three years ago. Now she is on sabbatical, returning tee-bee-dee. Conducting neither research or maternity leave. Snow White pacing in her glass coffin.

Sinead should call the Lady by her real name – Dr. Elizabeth nee Marjoribanks. But the Lady in White feels better. Makes it more objective in her reconnaissance, and gives a mythic power to her observation. Like debunking a ghost spotted by a local farmer. A ghoulish folk-story moulded and churned in the minds of the frightened villagers – an obscene blemish on their perfect town. And Sinead wants nothing more than to prove it wrong, methodically, scientifically. Pull the mask off the ghost and declare, ‘Ah-HA! It was the janitor all along! And here are the missing church alms.’

Δ

Sinead is not new to science.

At a bioengineering conference, she stood in row EE of the conference hall in front of a vinyl poster describing the impact of deep brain stimulation on phantom limb pain. As second author, she began to feel wholly anonymous in the rows upon rows of colourful posters. Only the young researchers seem to be standing next to their work, searching for eye contact from passersby, like hopeful puppies in a department store window.

Just the week before, her gladiatorial pursuit of a PhD grant bestowed by the Scottish Research Council had gone to another student with whom she shared a closet office. Her career prospects were seeming their bleakest. 

Then a handsome man with walnut hair and panto glasses approached. 

He frowned as he read the text behind her head, not looking at Sinead directly. Indicating with his cup of Starbucks and still avoiding her eye, he spoke: A little derivative of Jenkins et al, don’t you think?

‘Well, unlike Jenkins, we used aggregated data,’ she replied.

He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows as if to say, Perhaps, perhaps.

He eyed the other bodies mingling around the rows of posters, and said offhandedly, So, tell me something I don’t know yet. It sounded rehearsed, clearly directed to every new person he encountered. She did not really want to engage in such an obvious goading, but she felt compelled. She did not know who this man was, but she did not want any conference gossip painting her as a poor sport, or unenthusiastic.

‘Well, I think this technology will be in everyone’s homes in 20 years.’

He exhaled sharply through his nose, half-laughing at a private joke. Sooner than that, he said.

He handed her a card – ‘Jack Delaney, Founder’ – and told her to stop by his start-up’s stall. By the end of the evening, he had offered her a job and she waved goodbye to her PhD pipedream.   

He was fascinating, pensive, with a penetrating stare like a harrier. He did not suffer fools gladly. The slightest unintelligent or unoriginal opinion, he nipped at its heels, sometimes fearcely enough to draw blood. He was sarcastic, with a dark humour bordering on cruel. But his observations on chemistry, biomedicine, and neurosurgery were astonishing. He was a database, casually referencing literature like he was pulling light from the aether. Not just citing, but deconstructing, destroying, and reassembling the pieces into an empire of his choosing. He cackled like a young boy when something delighted him, and he stabbed his finger in the air to punctuate displeasure.

At dinner, after the conference, his colleagues started talking about their new project – the use of delta sub-4 frequencies to de-synchronise abnormal oscillations in brain neurons.

‘Interesting,’ said Sinead. ‘What for?’

The table laughed. They looked to their leader seated at the top of the table, waiting for the word of God. He took a sip of his beer and said, We’re going to cure mental illness.

Δ

Sinead shimmies down the tree. She takes her gas stove from out of her tent, and twists the dial to snap the blue flame into life. Nothing happens. She clicks it a few more times before concluding that the gas canister is empty. She had to order them online especially before she left.

No more hot meals. Her hot water bottle will remain empty at night. Which is not really a problem, considering it is May.

And she has learnt to ignore ‘wants’. The meringue-softness of a duvet, porcelain sinks, plastered walls. She has concluded that wanting comes from the stomach; needing from the head. And wanting is weakness. It says you are not self-sufficient, that there is a hole inside you that you cannot fix with a hot meal. It means that you may not survive. You are looking down from the tightrope – suddenly aware of your precarious existence. Un-wanting is self-preservation and acceptance.

But the inability to boil water from the stream – that will be a problem. She will have to walk the seven miles to the petrol station with the small corner shop.

In this sleepy Surrey village, the roads cut through steep embankments with few shoulders or gutters. They are punctuated by wide driveways that declare the property names in large, rustic fonts – Badger Cottage, Oak Stables, Mosswood Farms, Bramble Lodge. The ‘cottages’ always seem to be the size of aeroplane hangers. These kinds of properties are never sold – only if the occupants are childless and needing to go into specialised care homes. Otherwise, they are inherited and exchanged between the hands of the same small group of upper middle class snobs. There was always the nouveau riche outlier – actors, hedge-fund managers. Tech billionaires.

Parts of these open fields make Sinead angry – all that space just sitting there when twice the population is stacked in high-rises half the square footage in the city. Despite the majestic breathlessness that stirs in her when she sees a horse cantering through a field, she can empathise with the current political movement to have them banned in Britain. Too much space for a creature that does nothing but offer vein entertainment for rich cunts to stroke and brush and race. Not that such a bill would ever pass through those very same rich cunts sitting in the House of Lords.

When Sinead arrives at the petrol station, she is feeling parched and her knees ache. She first checks her balance at the cash machine outside by pressing her thumb to the fingerprint reader. £56. Fuck.

After she has purchased enough canned vegetables and bags of peanuts to fit inside her backpack and two gallon water jugs, Sinead reluctantly walks into the public telephone booth next to the cashpoint, and presses her thumb against the screen to access her cloud contacts. She simultaneously hopes and dreads the end of the dial tone.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Natalie. It’s Sinead.’

‘Oh my god, where are you?’

‘Listen, I’m going to be a while longer and -’

‘-I haven’t heard from you in three weeks. I’ve been going out of my mind.’

‘I know, I’m sorry. My solar battery died.’

‘When are you coming home? You can’t possibly still be camping. My mobile says you’re calling from Dorking… Why – why are you in Dorking?’

Sinead’s mouth is a hot, dry cave sloshing saliva around and around. Get to the point, she tells herself.

‘Natalie, I need you to give my two weeks’ notice. Please can you cancel the standing order with Mrs. Tobakias for my half of the rent so that I don’t get charged next week.’

‘Why are you in Dorking?’ Natalie repeats. ‘You’re not doing what I think you’re doing?’

Sinead squeezes her eyes shut. ‘Got to go. Love you, bye.’ She ends the call and sinks her head against the telephone screen. She opens one of the water gallons and slurps as much as she can manage by tilting the heavy container to her mouth. The cold water shocks the spot in her teeth that has been worrying her.

She walks the miles back to her camp. The road is narrow, twisting, rising and dipping over the gentle hills. Passing cars could almost clip her arms swinging the water jugs. She steps into the narrow gutter a few times or scrambles up a steep bank to let a large lumber-carrying truck past. The drivers raise a polite hand to her in thanks. It is generally a friendly place, just not one built for one on foot. Who is poor enough to walk here?

She does not take the same route back in case anyone begins to recognise her around the area. This time she cuts through the woodlands, damp from recent rain, and the mud sucks her boots into the gelatinous, yellow paste. Overhead a woodpecker raps against an oak. A pair of sparrows flutter out of view as she snaps her way through fallen twigs.

She saw a goldfinch several weeks ago when she was feeling disheartened and nearly ready to bundle up her camp. It was that night that she heard the Mercedes roar from its garage and screech down the country road. The house lights were left on. Sinead scrambled up her tree in the dark, barefooted, her feet pierced by bark.

The Lady was standing in the bedroom window looking out at the woodlands. From the steep angle, Sinead could not see the bed or the rest of the room, only the Lady from the waist upwards.

The Lady was crying. Despite the light behind her, her shoulders were shaking heavily. Her chin was practically to her sternum and her hands were locked at the back of her neck, forearms pressed tightly against her chest.

She withdrew for an instant and when she returned, she opened the bedroom window and hurled something out onto the lawn below. The window closed and the Lady disappeared out of sight again.

Sinead dismounted the tree, landing on her feet and then knees. The impact stung her joints, but she scrambled to the back gate, just behind the camera’s eye, which pointed sharply downwards to the gate’s entrance, as if obsessively glaring at an invisible doormat. She peered between the gap between the hinges of the door.

Whatever was launched into the garden, it swivelled in the air clockwise and landed on the ground like a frisbee. It was pigeon grey, with a soft blue light flashing to one side. Sinead shone the torch from her pocket across the lawn, just for a moment. The beam of light caught the object, now visible. Circular – no, donut shaped. But thin.

She recognised it. A Somnus XE7. Retail price, £399.

Why did she fling it, for it to be ruined by dew? A light on the ground floor turned on, and Sinead hastily switched off her torch. The Lady appeared in the living room and unlocked the French doors. An alarm whistled and she punched her fingers against the unseen side of the wall, presumably to disarm it, because the noise abruptly stopped.

She glided across the lawn in her white robe, clutching it closed to her breast. Sinead could hear her breathing, sharp and shrill. The Lady located the device and sighed – perhaps with relief? – and her breathing slowed.

She wiped the Somnus with her sleeve and carried it into the house, resting on her palms like a dead bird. As she turned to close the French doors, the living room light caught her face, and Sinead saw her furrowed, anxious brow. Her shoulders were bent, heavy. This was a resigned woman. This was a defeated woman. Returning to her aviary.

I know you, thought Sinead. I won’t leave you.

Δ

The public footpath snakes between two empty fields and then ends at the junction of a public road. Temptation gets the better of her, and she walks leftwards, down the road past a wide, electric gate hugged between two enormous rectangular pillars. Hound Hall declares a shining plaque. As if that was not austentatious enough, two stone bloodhounds sit poised to attention on each pillar of the gate. Her nose crinkles seeing them again. So subtle.

The stone guardians came with the property when it was purchased three years ago. It’s just surprising they remained – could anyone actually like them?

Sinead is unable to take her eyes off the house’s brutal asymmetry and feature floor-ceiling windows. Two shoeboxes of concrete and glass stacked precariously. The bust of another hound guarded the chrome knocker on the front door. The idea that anyone would need to knock after gaining entry through the draconian security gates seemed odd.

But this sleepy Surrey village was full of contradictions. Loud signs declaring ‘Beware of the Doberman’ while a plump Yorkie yips along the fence. Front gates only a metre high containing elaborate security keypads. Electric doorbells pointing away from the open shed offering £1 for a dozen eggs – honour system. They were optimistic, but paranoid. Good fences make good neighbours. Longing for the comradery of their father’s generation but also fearful of the present, as the Daily Mail tells them to be.

A voice interrupts Sinead’s thoughts. ‘Would you like some mint?’

She stops in her tracks. On the other side of the barred fence is the Lady, on her knees in front of a tidy flower bed running the inside periphery of the front fence. She wears yellow gardening gloves and a wide sun-hat. She holds a pair of pruners and wipes her brow with her sleeve.

‘Sorry?’ says Sinead, surprised.

‘It’s turning into a bit of a hedge and I feel sad hacking it back and letting it go to waste. Would you like some? You could make some tea.’

Sinead looks at her earnest face, and the beads of perspiration forming near her eyes. She has never seen the Lady this close. It is unnerving, like examining an impressionist painting familiar only from postcards. She has never imagined how the Lady’s eyes were coloured. Now she can see they are brown, with a touch of green by the irises.

‘Thank you,’ says Sinead. ‘That would be very nice.’

Observer effect, she thinks, disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.

The Lady passes a bushy stem through the barred fence to Sinead. ‘Here, take some more,’ she adds, passing more, one by one. They both laugh politely at this slow activity. The slats brush against the mint, releasing the fresh oils into the air. Sinead’s mouth waters, thinking about chewing the leaves. She had been without toothpaste for at least six weeks. It could explain the toothache.

‘Do you live around here?’ asks the Lady.

‘I’m renting,’ Sinead says, having practised this explanation in her head many times. ‘A shepherd’s hut in one of the North fields.’

‘Oh, how marvellous. For how long?’

‘A few weeks. I’m working on a novel.’

‘Goodness. Well, I hope the village is inspiring for you.’

‘It is. How long have you lived here?’ Sinead already knew the answer.

‘Three years. Or thereabouts.’

‘With a partner? Husband?’

‘My husband. He works in the city but he – we – always wanted to live in the countryside.’

‘Is your husband nice?’

The Lady begins to smile and laugh, but then notices the intensity on Sinead’s face, the ferociousness in her eyes. The Lady does not know why, but it is in discord with the innocence of the question. Her smile lowers in.

‘Yes,’ the Lady says. And then the smile suddenly flickers on again like the revved engine of a hotwired car. ‘I should get out of the sun now. It was nice meeting you.’

‘You too,’ says Sinead, and watches the Lady take her basket of gardening tools inside the house.

Sinead picks up her water jugs again and walks back to the road. Once she reaches the end of the fence, she drops one jug to the ground and strikes her face once, twice, three times with an open palm. Stupid stupid stupid. She frightened the lady with her rough questioning.

The fence ends, and the woodland begins again. A narrow stream trickles out of the roots, twisting into a gutter and disappearing into a culvert pipe under the road. She steps onto the bank of the stream, and follows the void of trees until she reaches the end of Hound House. Then, it is a sharp ninety degrees through a thicket of young saplings and trees until she reaches her campsite at the back of the house.

The jugs were heavy and the stream battered her with every step. She should eat, but she does not feel like she deserves it. 

Δ

Twenty hour shifts. Sixity days until the funding from their private donor ran out. They had promised results by quarter-one, and now they had crept into quarter-three. They had moved into cheaper accommodation in the basement of a former paper warehouse. Enough space to rig a sterile lab and operate their £300,000 MRI machine sparingly. No windows or natural light.

The storage cupboard was converted into a shift-room with three rows of bunk-beds. Jack woke the sleeping bodies by turning on the lights and clapping his hands loudly. Come on, you pussies. If I’m awake, you’re awake.

Sinead was the only woman in the R&D team, and it showed. By the end of six weeks she smelt just as pungent as the others, and she stopped blanching when she walked past the blow-up sex doll by the watercooler, with a rotating A4-printed face of various celebrities and politicians. When Davidson pretended to hump one of the subjects in the MRI machine, spanking the air above the sedated body, she did not laugh with the other boys in the control room. But she also said nothing.

The lack of sleep and poor, freeze-dried noodle diet had caused her to gain a stone, which she hid under baggy band t-shirts and sweatpants, which seemed to be the dress-code anyway.

And driving her unwavering momentum was the desire to impress Jack. One evening – or perhaps it was so late that it was early – they were hunched over a Mac together, rerunning the analysis code for the umpteenth time, and Sinead finally spotted an errant parenthesis in row 74 of the R code. Jack put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her against his chest. She was conscious of not having showered in two days, but she knew that he was admiring her mind, not her body, which was a greater intimacy.

I knew you were brilliant.

And Sinead beamed. 

Before she could dismiss it with the trained modesty instilled in all young women, he kissed her fully on the lips. The bunks were all occupied, so they got into his car in the parking lot and fumbled under the glow of the streetlight like a couple of teenagers.

Δ

She moved her bags into his office. They shared the single mattress on his floor, tucked between the file cabinets and his desk. No bottom sheet, only a thin duvet and Jack’s chest to keep her warm. The entire floor kept at a chilly 14ºC in order to offset the heat of the servers which lined the hallway.

At first it feels cosy, working next to Jack, their laptops back to back. Sharing gastronomically questionable take-out from the greasy spoon across the road. He demanded perfection with an urgency that felt like a dizzying rush. Pygmalion effect, he reminded his staff. High expectations lead to improved performance. And all the while feeling like her status in the team had been elevated to queen regent.

The fluorescent lights were always on, and the lack of windows made it impossible to determine day from night. One long night in a casino, with her career sitting on the pass line of the craps table.

Then, a potential investor got cold feet. A marathon of an ethical review application failed. A successful reduction in symptoms for a volunteer with treatment-resistant depression – their accountant, Henry – but an inability to replicate it with five more volunteers.

Jack bristled when Sinead placed her arms around him. When she closed her laptop and lay down on the mattress to close her eyes, Jack would exhale sharply. By all means, get your beauty sleep. I’ll just be over here trying to save the company. She would rouse herself and make them more instant coffee with hot water straight from the tap.

Days blurred together. Punctuated only by minor milestones of progress. The rest of the team began to resent her for perks they imagined her getting. They distanced themselves from her, she and Jack becoming isolated in an echo chamber. He made paranoid assertions about the team, and wielded them against her as well when she did not agree.

When she slept – for the few precious hours when Jack was off presenting to investors or haggling for new equipment – it was a putrid, dark sleep. She felt like a seagull doused in oil, unable to move or breathe. Rousing herself was becoming more difficult as she went for longer and longer stretches without.

Sometimes, she would be woken from this cavernous sleep to the feeling of Jack’s mouth on her neck, his hands pawing at her sweatshirt. Unsure if it was morning or night. You can’t get enough of it, can you, he would grunt. His body began to repulse her, and he noticed. This made him bolder, wanting to force his way into her like a mole sensing a coming frost. His kisses became sloppier, his fingernails catching on the folds of her skin. He pounded into her with a desperation bordering on a scream.

Δ

The world has a breath. The swell of grass in the breeze. The hush before rain, inhaling, and the spurt of life in the exhale. This is how we learn to count: in and out.

The darkness creeps over her tent. It seeps in her bones – the cold, the futility. The day has circled back to eat itself. She must be fierce, she must warm herself with her resolve, even as she hugs her knees to her chest and coughs with the damp crawling down her throat.

She is the fearful watcher, the unwinking. sentinel. Often she awakes, sitting upright, not remembering what impulse had hinged her body so forcefully. She wakes holding her foam earplugs, despite having wedged them in her ears an hour ago – what was she trying to hear? Or was it in a dream?

After midnight, awake and trembling with cold, she emerges from her tent. The ivy rustles underfoot. The house is dark, with black eyes. Staring at the house feels insidious – like gazing at the black water at the bottom of a well, tipping yourself forward and daring gravity not to seize you and smash your face into that cold, foetid water.

She imagines his clammy hands around her body, clutching her frame like ivy smothering a house. Trying to soften her angles and the tension of her bones. She was moist when he wanted her to be, and soft when he wanted her to be. She was naked – but more than naked. Peeled. Skinned.

She remembering how she buried deeper within herself to escape. Pulling her elbows in towards her body, squeezing her legs together. His flaccid wetness against the back of her thigh. It might as well have been a hook, having pulled something deep and solemn out of her, and left to shrivel under the cold, fluorescent lights.

Don’t sleep, she had thought. Don’t leave your body. You must keep watch.

And a part of her does want to leave, to sink into a warm, velvet pool away from the body that failed her. But sleep is surrender. Not just to yourself, or to the dark waves of your unconscious that can cast any number of terrifying shadows, but you also must surrender to whatever surrounds your hollow body. The air, the sheets, and whomever you lay beside. You are absent, you abandon your meat suit. Every night.

The body and the mind are an unhappy marriage. How can the body forgive the mind every morning? The mind says: I’m sorry, I left you with Him. I had to go, I had to leave – because I could. You would have done the same. 

‘And what did she do?’ you are asking yourself. ‘When does she put her hands up and leave?’ But the truth is that she hated herself for being repulsed, unable to take the intensity that he flung at her. Most women are raised to never disappoint – a worse sin than being stupid or lazy or cruel. She was no different. And she was frightened of making him angry or sad. She feared his intensity could backfire, like a loaded shotgun and destroy them both.

One night sitting in their car, he unfastened the glove compartment and showed her the loaded Glock he kept ‘for protection.’ Her first thought was not ‘I am a strong, independent woman who deserves better.’ It was, ‘I don’t want to die. Say whatever it takes to keep that thing out of his hands.’

The world consists of facts, she tells herself, rubbing her arms for warmth. We are stuck between the cosmos and the atoms. With enough time, all effects can be measured. All truths are revealed. She must observe and quantify.

She can feel the invisible weight that she must drag behind her everyday. If she can prove it real, then she can prove the pain to be real.

The prospect of disproving her hypothesis is frightening. Did she have the wrong subject? Could her variable not have a measurable effect on her subject? Illusory correlation: perceiving a relationship between variables even when no such relationship exists. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc. After all, three hundred scientific papers were published about N-Rays which amounted to be nothing but a fictional phenomenon created by experimenter bias. And astronomers once believed a planet Vulcan orbited next to the Sun, drawing Mercury into its bizarre dance.

This research is cauterisation, an exorcism, she tells herself. A course of antibiotics stronger than radium. Strip the marrow – suck it dry. She read that the body replaces all its cells in seven to ten years, but this seems like a lie. What of the parts of him she swallowed? Did they become part of her muscles and bones? She shudders and wants to tear her veins apart, unspool them like yarn.

Sinead knows the Lady. She was the Lady. She knows where she goes when she sleeps, and she knows what remains, defenceless and silent.

Δ

Her fingers are numb, they feel as stiff as chopsticks. Her mouth throbs. She takes out her torch and shines it between her gum and lower lip. The reflection of her Swiss army knife reveals a black cross on the surface of her left premolar. She wonders if she could scrape the decay out herself. Risky, if it has penetrated the root. She swirls more water around her mouth and swallows.

In the morning, the pain is worse. The gum is puffy. Her neck lymph nodes are swollen like robin’s eggs. She can barely swallow. She does not want to have to return to the shops two days in a row. But she needs paracetamol. Maybe some Bonjela will tide her over. Help her get back up in the tree.

She changes her shirt and ties a bandana around her hair to look as different as possible. She adds a pair of sunglasses to the ensemble. Hopefully someone different will be operating the shop this morning. She exits her patch of woodland and takes a shortcut across a sheep field, shortening the journey by two miles.

When she turns the corner in the village, there is a police car parked outside the petrol station, a policeman leaning on the bonnet. She lowers her head and decides to walk past discreetly. Then, the door opens, and Natalie steps out.

‘That’s her,’ she says, flapping her hand to get the policeman’s attention. Natalie lunges towards Sinead and embraces her. ‘Thank God, you’re okay.’

The policeman approaches and Natalie lets go. ‘Sinead Simon?’ he says, ‘We’re here to check on you. Your friend was very worried about you.’ He approaches with his palms facing her, like she is a bridleless horse about to bolt. His partner emerges from the shop and flanks her. She feels constricted, trapped.

‘Do you want to have a seat?’ says the first policeman. ‘And we can have a chat?’

‘Not really,’ says Sinead.

‘We just want to check if you’re okay.’

‘I’m fine, really.’

‘Where are you staying?’ asks the second officer.

‘Glamping,’ she says. The policemen exchange glances.

‘Your friend is concerned you’re not taking your medication.’

Sinead laughs, unsure why. Raw embarrassment perhaps. ‘I only took those to help me sleep,’ she says, frustrated by the need to reveal personal information.

‘They’re antipsychotics,’ Natalie stage-whispers to her.

‘Also prescribed for sleep disorders,’ declares Sinead, now realising she has raised her voice. She threads her fingers though either side of her hair. This isn’t happening. If only she could let her body float away with her mind like the basket of a hot air balloon.

‘Your friend is worried you might be a danger to yourself or – perhaps it would be best if you came with us to a hospital and we could get you checked out.’

‘What are you doing in the area?’ asks the second officer. Clearly the bad cop.

‘Hiking,’ she says.

‘You wouldn’t happen to be visiting a Mr. Delaney, would you? Or staying nearby?’

Sinead glares at Natalie. She never should have told her.

It had just come tumbling out of Sinead’s mouth when Natalie had found her trying to toast and butter a Wheetabix at four in the morning – having been awake for three days and stoned for two of them.

‘Is that the guy?’ Natalie had asked, pointing to the open copy of Fortune magazine on their kitchen table. The face above the headline, What’s next for Mr. Sandman? had been burnt into a black circle with a Bic lighter, the scorch penetrating into the table.

Sinead had nodded, her shoulders wedged high under her ears. She stood in the middle of their broom-closet kitchen, clutching the counter like a drowning woman clinging to a buoy.

Natalie gently closed the magazine and carried it to the recycling box as if it contained a live spider. 

‘Good riddance,’ Natalie had said. But Sinead had read it too many times by now. The words created a scalding stew in her mind, slopping around and around. As Natalie tried to put her to bed, she could still feel them.

Wunderkind Jack Delaney will return to the UK after four years in silicon valley. On the eve of his company going public, with a £5 billion valuation, ‘Mr. Sandman’ has opened a new head office in East London’s Tech City.

‘It’s a far cry from our humble broom–closet in Shoreditch,’ laughed Delaney, referencing the start-up which discovered he and his team discovered the revolutionary method for administering delta-waves in order to guarantee sleep within 3 to 5 minutes. What Elon Musk recently described as ‘The biggest disruption to the tech market since the iPhone.’

‘I wouldn’t go so far as saying “discovered.” It was a happy accident,’ explained the Oxford alumnus. ‘We realised that when we administered delta-waves to participants as part of our mental health study, they were falling asleep – and staying asleep – until we turned off the wave machine.’

Last month’s study in the Lancet revealed that with the Somnus™, the quality of life of shift-workers has risen dramatically.

‘In a 24-7 world, we should be able to control exactly when we need to sleep,’ said Delaney. ‘Doctors, pilots, bus drivers, coal miners … now able to get the rest they deserve and wake up refreshed whenever they are needed. No more insomnia. And no more health problems associated with circadian rhythm disruption.’

The Somnus™ will be released a new, 200 gram lighter XE edition, available in a choice of colours, by Christmas.

When asked whether he uses the Somnus himself, he said, smiling, ‘No, but my wife can’t get enough of it.’

Natalie knew that Sinead was lying when she said she was going on a research trip – for what kind of research does a Boots Pharmacy send its junior pharmacy technician? It hurt to lie. Natalie had been a good flatmate, kind and quiet. Probably the longest relationship Sinead had ever had.

But right now, standing a metre away from two armed policemen, Sinead is a canister about to blow. She is the sharpness in the eye of a cottontail.

She nods slowly, and pretends to take off her backpack from her shoulder. Then she flings it in the direction of the policeman – assuming the surprise would give her a few seconds – and she bolts down the road.

She knows these back gardens better than them. She darts right over a low fence and snakes through an orchard, and over another fence. She veres left and meets a public footpath that turns sharply and intersects a farm road. She whips off her bandana, and throws it leftwards up the path in an act of misdirection, and then sprints in the opposite direction. She hops a cherry laurel hedge – one of the houses advertising a dog despite not having one – and lies flat with her belly against the lawn. She waits several minutes, listening for the sound of running footsteps.

Δ

Your voice is too pitchy in the mornings. The coffee is too cold – make it again. You’re sabotaging me. You don’t believe in me. Corporate espionage. What is that car outside doing? Write down the licence plate – I shouldn’t have to ask. You are empty. You were nothing before you had our goals – look how far you’ve come. I’m proud of you. You challenge me. It’s okay to disagree with you. Are you being intentionally dense? Are you trying to get a rise out of me? I just want to fucking relax. Kiss me. Like you mean it. You’re so hot. Turn around. Come on. You can’t get enough of it.

Δ

Sinead and the Lady. Two data points – that’s a line. Plus time – that makes a vector. She never liked vectors at school. They made her queasy with their untidiness. She preferred natural logs, which felt like launching a kite on a string and then pulling back to the ground. Doing and undoing your work, safely on a string. The laws gave you a path to follow and they held you safe.

The lawn grass tickles her face. She watches the slug trail on a dandelion glint in the sunlight. In the distance, she hears the sound of pounding feet approach, along with the static and consonantless word-garbage from a shoulder radio. Then the noise trails away into nothingness.

Slugs are just wriggles of muscle, she thinks. Perhaps she’s delirious from her sprint on an empty stomach, which is now pressed uncomfortably against the ground.

But from this angle, everything seems connected to grandmother Earth. Some creatures are capable of peeling off her skin for a moment, but always return to the bosom of her gravity. The hare leaps, the mayfly zips, the fox pounces. Natural arcs of creation, destruction, and recreation. Man is the only creature to struggle against this natural concept, and resistance breeds despair. He grieves. He thrashes violently, wanting to seize control of his natural parabula. I am bigger and mightier, he says, attempting to cast off the net. And none are more hubristic than scientists. Beating their fists in the dark.

She lifts herself off the lawn and climbs over the garden fence. Back onto the residential road, she zig-zags down the path, onto the public footpath snaking between two fields.

She runs to the front of Hound House and pounds the buzzer with her fist.

‘Yes?’ says a female voice.

‘This is the writer from up the hill – could I talk with you for a second?’

‘Oh, um, what about?’

‘Better in person,’ she pants. ‘It’s about your husband.’

The crinkle of the autocom soothes into a dead horizon. ‘Just a second.’

The longest wait of Sinead’s life. A car passes and she turns to hide her face against the gate, breathing heavily. She is compromising the experiment. She’s sticking a finger on the scale. But she cannot imagine leaving this valley without knowing.

The Lady emerges from the front door. She looks flummoxed when she sees Sinead, who is still panting hard, her nose and cheeks flushed. The Lady keeps a wary distance from the gate, her arms holding another cream cardigan closed.

‘What’s this about?’ she says.

Sinead swallows. ‘I knew your husband,’ heaving the words from her body like stones. ‘He was cruel. He was a monster.’

The Lady looks bewildered, as if Sinead has just slapped her.

‘I need to know whether you’re safe,’ says Sinead.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Are you safe? With him?’        

A car engine builds to a crescendo behind her and screeches as it cuts the corner of the road and comes to a stop on the driveway. It honks twice, rudely, attention-seeking. Sinead flattens her back against the fence as the horn ornament comes into view.

From the black Mercedes emerges a tall man, chestnut hair, a pale beard trimmed to sharp perfection along his cheekbones. He’s wearing a navy suit and paisley shirt with no tie, just a baby-blue pocket square. He is shorter than Sinead remembers.

Darling, He says to the Lady, leaving the car door open and the car purring. He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a mobile phone. Get away from the gate.

‘What is going on,’ says the Lady, frightened.

There was a message from Surrey Police waiting for me at the office. They wanted to do a wellness check and something about a former lab assistant stalking our house. So I came right back.

Sinead wants to curl inside herself like a snail. She presses her back against the bars. A terrible anachronism stands before her. Beneath the crows-feet and greying eyebrows she can see the outline of the young man she used to know.

‘Stay away from me,’ is all she can manage.

‘Do you know her?’ the Lady asks her husband.

No. He raised his phone to his ear. I’m calling the police.

‘Tell her about the mattress in your office. About the hotel room in San Francisco,’ says Sinead. ‘And the Ambien you gave me for jet lag.’

She’s crazy.

He grasps her arm and flings her in a sharp arch away from the gate. She stumbles to the driveway on her knee and then hip. She is infantilized sitting on the crazy-paving, her arm aloft in his tightening grasp. She looks up at the underside of his chin and the softness of a belly spilling over his belt. She sees the echo of a body she used to know – like a soldier staring at his own severed limb, watching the fingers twitch. 

‘Listen to me – listen to me,’ Sinead says, twisting her body to grasp the bars of the fence. ‘Elizabeth – Dr. Elizabeth Marjoribanks-Delaney. I know you. If you need  help – if you need to get out – when you need to get out, I’ll be here. I’ll be here for you. You’re not alone.’

Sinead’s eyes are watering, begging Elizabeth to see the sincerity. Recognise her reflection.

Then Elizabeth looks towards her husband. ‘How long until the police?’

The light in Sinead flickers out. The planet Vulcan shadows her face. You can observe phenomena, watch a brain shrivel – it’s another thing to try and intervene. That takes years of clinical trials. And this trial has failed.

Prospect theory: a loss is perceived to be more significant than the equivalent gain.

Sinead walks her hands up the gate bars until she is standing, Jack’s hand is still on the arm of her jacket, leashing her. He is speaking the address into the phone in his palm. She thrusts her elbow into his chest, unstabling him for an instant, and then sprints down the driveway as soon as his grasp releases her sleeve.

She runs until her lungs sour with the metallic taste of blood. She runs until her gasping breath smothers the sound of her weeping.

Δ

Natalie parks the Prius in the driveway leading to a field of black-nosed sheep.

‘Just here?’ confirms Natalie.

Sinead nods, removing her forehead from the passenger window. ‘Thank you for doing this.’

‘I don’t like helping you violate an injunction.’

‘We won’t have to get that close,’ says Sinead. ‘Ten minutes, I promise.’

Natalie does not protest, considering the value of the items left at the campsite and the back-rent that Sinead owes. She takes two Ikea bags from underneath her seat and shakes them out. It’s been two weeks since Sinead left Hound House and walked aimlessly into evening, eventually following the signage to Gatwick. She spent the last dregs of her savings on a night in a hostel. And in the morning, she called Natalie, who quickly borrowed her brother’s Uber vehicle.

They cut across the field, and turn left into a thicket of ferns, Sinead leading the way. When they reach the familiar pocket of woodland, Sinead catches sight of her green tent. She tries not to eye the wall behind it, imagining it to have a piercing quality to her eyes like the sun.

The wind or a curious animal has managed to unzip the tent, letting rain flood the base. Together they begin to pack the remains of her campsite. Her gas-stove, binoculars, good wellies, cutlery, and pans. No sense leaving them to rot and litter what countryside we have left.

After Sinead has dismantled the tent and tucked the frame parts into the Ikea bag, she stands and wipes her hands on her jeans. She allows herself to properly look at the fence. Slowly, she approaches.

Natalie is rolling the sleeping bag into a soggy roulade. ‘That’s not twenty feet,’ she warns.

‘Give me a second.’

Sinead creeps to the gate. There is something thrusting from the gap between the door and the fence. Something green upsetting the smoothness of the wall.

There, resting on the hinges of the gate, is a bouquet of mint stems.



BIO

CL Glanzing is an international nomad, currently living in London. By day, she works in healthcare research, trying to use those ridiculous letters after her name (MA, MSc, PhD). By night, she does heritage crafts and runs an LGBTQ+ bookclub. Her story “Fishbone” was recently included in Issue 51 of Luna Station Quarterly.







The Sad Princess of Highland Park

By Cara Diaconoff


In her bedroom in her father’s house, the wealthy daughter sat staring out the window. Six months she’d sat this way, since she’d graduated from college last winter, watching the workmen, who were renovating the fountain at the center of the circular driveway.

The fountain renovation was part of her father’s “statement piece,” a massive grounds project being built in memory of Francesca’s mother, dead now eighteen years. This was how her father was spending his earnings from the two celebrity criminal cases that had made him a household name. It would be the wonderland her mother had always dreamed about.

The grounds would be ready in time for what would have been their twenty-fifth anniversary. Francesca’s father had requested topiary in the shapes of dragons and mermaids and devils from the Polish tales of her mother’s childhood. And he had envisioned terraced hillocks of poppies and geraniums and mazes lined with evergreen hedges so intricate that a wanderer might really get lost. The fountain was the coup de grace. Its centerpiece was a rusalka, the water nymph of Slavic tales, sitting naked on a bank with head thrown back, throat gushing water.

The fountain was taking longer than projected. The pipes had needed to be rerouted, permits from the city secured. For weeks the fountain had been a pile of unattended rubble, baking sullenly in the Texas sun by day, and by night glinting in the moonlight like the ruins of a temple to some ancient, bored god.

But now the work crew had returned. The statue of the rusalka was raised, presiding over the piles of stones and tools.

One of the new crew members caught Francesca’s eye—although why, she couldn’t say. Was it just that he was tall and skinny? He wore a kerchief tied around his crown that made him look like a very tall woman, long hair gathered in a bun on top of his head. He was gentle in all his movements, in contrast to the irascible foreman, chronically red-faced.

The foreman called him Marco. She could understand most of what they said to each other. With her window open to the fresh air, in the morning before it got too hot, she would listen and watch as they carted blocks of cement around the grounds.

It was good to have a diversion. Usually, the most exciting thing that ever happened in this neighborhood would be a sighting of Miss Clara, the Argentinian widow, suffering from dementia, who lived next door and sometimes came out to wander the border between the two properties, dressed in a pea-green jumpsuit like a huntress or a wood-sprite.

Francesca was twenty-two now and hadn’t laughed since her twenty-first birthday. Every morning, she would wake up at nine to Carmelita, the housekeeper’s, rapping on the door.

“We are just making sure you’re alive!” Carmelita said this every morning, always in the same bravely joking tone.

“I’m alive, dear!” Francesca would call back, as merrily as she could muster. Carmelita had been with the family for years—for as long as Francesca could remember.

She could have stayed in her own condo, out in the high-rise by Turtle Creek. But most of the friends she’d had in town were elsewhere now, working or traveling. Without knocks on her door, she would have lain in bed till nightfall at least. She barely needed to eat. She didn’t know why she felt this way. It had only gotten worse since she’d finished college.

So it was good, she told herself, that she was forced to haul her body from the bed, push her feet into felt clogs, and shuffle downstairs to the east dining nook to pick at a toasted bagel. Yes, it was good, even if the effort would exhaust her so much that, again, it was only the need to avoid alarming the help that could motivate her to shuffle back upstairs.

Her father was working on a case, which meant that he left home at dawn and didn’t return till dinnertime or later. She found herself often alone in the house except for the help, who came and went, distantly heard. Times when she felt more wakeful, she would wander the halls, listless yet ready to be detained by anything sufficiently interesting—like scrapbook photos of her late mother, with the heart-shaped face and dark eyes.

Her mother had died, by her own hand, before Francesca had been able to form any memory of her more than a scent of Chanel and a pair of black sunglasses that covered half the face. Her mother, Julia, had met her father when he was visiting Warsaw on a Fulbright. Smitten, he had been, with this girl behind the law-school office counter who smiled so demurely yet also so slyly. And she, perhaps, had been entranced by the self-assured man with the piercing green eyes. When the school year ended, he had spirited her back with him to the United States, and in a picture in his scrapbook, taken after they first arrived, he is staring at the camera with a hint of jauntiness, and she, sitting by his side on a doily-covered couch in someone’s living room, is gazing away.

Francesca always wondered if really her mother had never wanted to expatriate.

From the outside, this house she had lived in her whole life was a massive hacienda with Moorish turrets, presiding impassively at the center of its two acres of land. Inside were enough twists and turns to supply a Tudor castle. On one of these languid afternoons, she entered a sub-wing and counted four doors. She could swear she had been in the same one the day before and counted only three.

Try the knob of the seemingly extra door. Ah yes, it gives—so obligingly, as they all do. She is grateful to her father for not ordering the unused rooms locked.

And it was in the drawers of an old cedar dresser in this room that, this afternoon in early July, she found mysterious treasure. A pile of empty jewelry boxes, encased in rococo gilt. Pencil drawings, on crumpled graph paper, of a rusalka seeming to transpire from a woodland creek, limbs and hair intertwined with the grasses of its banks. Other knick-knacks like the detritus of a toy garrison: tiny metal horses and swords and helmets. And, in the midst of it all, a wedding-cake topper that Francesca could not imagine had ever been used for a real cake. Could it be a joke? The groom was grim-faced, apparently bald under a top hat, while on his arm hung an emaciated bride wearing a crown of roses and a red-lipped mouth (the paint looked freshly applied) stretched in a ghastly grin.

The next day, she was afoot again, too restless to stay in her room after the crew had broken for lunch. Would she be able to find that drawer? Down the main second-floor hallway, through a door, up a small flight of stairs, and there was the choice of two wings. She chose one, and, yes—four doors again, and the fourth one led into the room with the stripped four-poster and the cedar dresser.

She took hold of both handles, and with a sound like a yawning cat, it creaked open. Everything in it looked the same as before. There was the wedding couple, poking from a mess of miniature rifles. She ran her fingers through them and touched the edge of a spiral notebook she hadn’t noticed the day before. Curious, she pushed aside the toy weapons.

The notebook had her mother’s name on the outside. Just her first name, Julia, felt-penned in careful cursive. Inside were a series of drawings, some in color. Even the black-and-white ones exuded lushness, lavish in their precision and level of detail. One of them showed a row of wombs, each encasing its own monstrosity. One fat fetus was covered with bloodshot eyes, another with scaly stumps. Francesca turned the page to find a sketch in color. Again it was set up in rows: four rows of four identical figures. On looking closer, she saw that the figure was a spreadeagled female body, the wrists tied to what looked like chain-fencing; this background covered the whole page. Between the spread legs of each figure poked a bloody flower. The pistil of each of these was a tiny head, madly laughing. None of the spreadeagled bodies had a face. They had just a neck and a chin that pointed to the heavens.

With shaking hands, Francesca snapped the notebook shut. A ribbon of graph paper fluttered to the floor. She picked it up and unfolded it, expecting to find another pencil drawing.

Instead, it was a note, written in her father’s spiky, preternaturally vertical hand. The paper looked new—white, uncreased. She had most definitely not seen it the day before.

It seems you must be feeling better? Scouting secrets? Better to ask me anything you want to know. Takes the guesswork out of it.

Think of the times when a wrong guess can be fatal.

Her knees went spongy. She backed up to sit on the bed. How could he know her movements? Her eyes scanned the walls; there was no sign of a camera, a blinking light. Would they be lining the corridor? In the years she had grown up with him in this house, she had never known him to do anything like this.

Once when she was about eight years old, she and her father had spent a long Saturday at the country home of one of his old friends, and by the time they were to leave, she had fallen into a groggy half-sleep in an easy chair. Her father hadn’t tried to rouse her; he had gathered her up without a word and carried her in his arms to the car.

That was her father—decisive, protective. She would never forget the feeling of being cradled, like a precious thing. She would reserve it to call to mind whenever needed: her arms around his neck, face crushed to his chest, the papery smell of his crisp linen shirt.

There were people in public life who called him a monster because of the evildoers he had defended: the wife-killer, the mad bomber, the abusers of the public’s trust. She knew that his thirst for fame and fortune had led him down paths most would eschew.

But most were not haunted the way he was by some mysterious anguish. She knew he was in pain by the way he’d pace his bedroom late at night and by the sharpness of his tone as he whispered to himself in the breakfast alcove in the morning.

Had someone hurt him? She didn’t know. He talked so little about the past. She’d never known her grandparents on either side. She only knew his family hadn’t been rich. They had been small-time ranchers, devout Christians. He had a younger brother and sister he rarely saw; they had stayed closer to the family ways. He had been the oldest—the odd one, a light-eyed changeling: too solitary, too brainy, standing always apart with a twitchy smile.

In college, he had chosen to study law over science. But he had never told her the rest: the reasons he came to specialize in defending the truly terrible. Now that she too was an adult, couldn’t she guess it? Couldn’t she guess that he was drawn to other changelings, others who loved mysteries, others who loved to try to reveal that which was kept hidden, by means of complex, long-running, live experiments, manipulating everyone around them?

Her mind racing, she made her way back to her room still clutching his note. At one point as she wound through the corridors, she thought she heard the creak of someone else’s pace several steps behind her, but she was too preoccupied to turn around. It was probably just a member of the help staff, and she didn’t know all of them well.

Through the window, the workmen caught her distracted eye. The windows were closed against the heat, but she could make out the dumbshow of Marco patiently showing the newest crew member, a boy who looked no more than fourteen, how to maneuver the wheelbarrow over bumpy terrain.

The stocky foreman was always impatient with such displays. She could see him striding and snapping.

She kept watching, today, as up the path came a lanky young man with a clipboard in hand: a canvasser, by the looks of him. Not a common sight in this neighborhood. He must be a brave one.

Marco held out a hand to the young man. The canvasser, startled, almost dropped his clipboard. Then he recovered his equilibrium and handed it over, and he and Marco conversed solemnly over it for several minutes, with Marco finally taking out a pen and writing on the page, as his crewmates stopped eating and stared. Eventually, with many nods and smiles on both sides, the canvasser retrieved the board and made his way up to the road.

Francesca could see the other men laughing, and Marco gamely joining in, and the foreman getting up in Marco’s face, doubtless yelling at him to stop getting distracted.

He’s beautiful, she surprised herself by thinking, as her eyes followed Marco’s tall figure, the womanly bun on his head in poetic contrast to his broad shoulders and flexing biceps.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had gotten pleasure—let alone lust—from looking at anything or anyone. She could recall a time when she had laughed at herself for ogling men. She didn’t do that now. No laughing. She observed the feeling—the throbbing, the happy yawn that engulfed her torso.

Somewhere, though, she heard someone else laughing—a cackle. She couldn’t tell where it came from. Miss Clara from next door? It didn’t quite sound like a noise she would make, and the windows were closed anyway. But it must be her.

When it was time for dinner with her father, she emerged obediently, having changed out of her sweatpants into a blouse and pencil skirt and the stiletto pumps she had always worn so gracefully. In the pocket of her skirt this evening, she carried his ribbon of graph-paper note.

At the dining table, she watched him—the peremptory flick of his wrist as he rapped a spoon against the side of his water glass to summon Carmelita to remove their plates.

There was a thread of iron in him. He was staring at her now—his big, imperious face—as if he knew what she was thinking. She lowered her eyes to her plate, feeling the heat of his gaze on her cheek. She had seen him smiling his intimate smile, the one that said he could wait until you figured it out, the secret you both were in on.

Monster, they called him. Was he her monster?

Carmelita came in, well-disciplined with her blank expression. It was a relief for Francesca to have her to look at. But she was gone again inside half a minute.

“You’re quiet tonight,” said her father.

She gave a small smile. “Am I usually so talkative?”

He flashed a grin in reply. It was so quick that perhaps she had imagined it.

“The fountain is coming along,” she observed.

Her father took a sip of his coffee, catching her gaze briefly above the rim.

“It makes me think of Mom,” she said. She felt the blood surge to her cheeks. But why shouldn’t she know more about her own mother? “What would she say about it if she were here right now, do you think?”

Her father’s mouth was spreading in another grin, unreadable. “I must say I have no idea. Your mother was always a quiet one. I’ve told you that.”

“I suppose,” she said. “Do you know—today I happened to find an old art notebook of hers.” She looked him square in the eyes. “The images are quite disturbing.”

He studied her, still grinning. “Perhaps another subject,” he finally said.

“You never told me she made art,” Francesca persisted. You never told me what made her so unhappy, she didn’t add.

“I don’t know that I would call it art,” observed her father.

“Would you call what I make, art?”

She knew she was skirting risky territory. Indeed, her own art—the painting and ceramics work she used to do, before she stopped feeling like doing anything—had already been a bone of contention between her and her father. During the initial planning phase for the statement piece, a year before, she and her father had discussed how she might contribute her own work to it. But after a while, his emails about this had stopped, and eventually she had grown tired of her father ducking her direct questions. She supposed he had thought better of involving her, had decided that the statement piece was worthy only of professional contributions.

She had been disappointed at first, frustrated. Now, she didn’t really care anymore.

Lord knew, it was hard to sustain any strong emotion in this exhausting room, its walls hung with gilt sunburst ornaments and lit by Tiffany lamps, centered on the heavy table with its sticky wood. The maroon silk drapes over the French windows were pulled back to let in the last sultry rays of sunlight. The reflections of the crape myrtle bushes just outside the window wavered prettily on the opposite wall.

The bushes would survive the grounds-renovation project, but beyond them the soil was dug up for the planned poppy terraces. The house was surrounded by rutted earth; to enter at the side doors, one had to walk across plank bridges the crew had set over the ravaged ground.

It was like she was cast on a desert island with him.

 “I swear,” he said suddenly—it was the daughter’s turn to startle now, hearing his velvety drawl—“that if someone could get you to laugh, I’d give them your hand in marriage.”

She tried to arrange her face into an appropriately ironic smile.

“My hand, Daddy? You have my hand to give?”

His lips parted slightly. He could wait till she understood the joke they both were in on.

Then he said, “You never do see anyone. Would it be terribly old-fashioned of me to suggest that all this could be cured by some healthy romance?”

“What do you mean by all this?”

His smile turning sly. “What should I mean by it?”

Now was her cue. She drew the crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and put it on the table between them.

He favored it with one raised eyebrow.

“I found this,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Are you having me followed?”

“Am I—” he began, then stopped himself, and now she was a witness for the prosecution whom he was grilling, and humiliating, in court. He turned to throw a disbelieving smile in the direction of an invisible jury, then back to her. He furrowed his brow in a look of staged pity.

“I know that depression is a disease,” he said. “I understand that.”

“Daddy,” she said, “you wrote me a note. This is your note.”

“Daughter,” he replied, as if to match her syllable for syllable, “I did not write that. I never saw it before.”

“Oh please. I know your handwriting!”

He rocked his head back and settled upon her a long, expressionless gaze. He was beautiful and mean, a bald-headed snake with those emerald eyes. She would have said she was prey for him to mesmerize but for the surprisingly chilling thought that she was too far below him even to eat.

Still, she willed herself not to look away.

“It’s a shame,” he said at last, “how you’ve let yourself go. You had a sharp mind. Maybe not the most original. But you were sharp. It’s a shame.” He paused. Tapped the glass with his spoon. “Well,” he said. “Dessert?”

That night, she slept even more fitfully than usual. Through her unquiet brain flickered creek-side sprites with pointy breasts and a shack that stood on chicken legs next to a rushing river that she kept trying to swim across. At dawn she finally fell into a deeper doze. When her eyes next opened, she reached for her phone and saw to her surprise that it was noon. Had she slept through Carmelita’s knocking?

Groggily, she sat in the window, hugging her knees. Outside, the workers were back. The weather today was heavy, the sky a moody gray. The heat was a miasma. Reports on her phone said a storm would come tonight.

One could see that it was getting to the crew. The men kept peeling off their shirts and tying them around their waists and then stopping and retying them around their necks. Even the foreman seemed too sluggish to rage with his usual gusto.

Down the driveway, Francesca saw a familiar, gliding figure: Miss Clara, from the property next door.

Miss Clara looked the same as she always had: the girlishly thin, long-legged figure; the green jumpsuit, the wispy gray braid that hung over one shoulder. She had been a widow as long as Francesca had known her, living in the bungalow next door.

In this neighborhood’s terms, the family were the local charity case. The talk was that when Miss Clara died, the property would be sold and the modest three-bedroom house razed.

Now, Miss Clara wavered at the gate, and then, with a mild nod as if accepting an invitation to dance, began to pick her way up the drive.

The workers didn’t notice until she was almost abreast of the fountain. “Ay! Senora!” they cried. “No, Senora. You will hurt yourself.” A couple of them moved gingerly toward her; she, meanwhile, held out a hand to each one.

“No, no, Senora. Not forward. Back.” Politely, each of the men had taken one of her elbows and were trying to guide her back up toward the road.

The foreman stood in the drive and roared at the sight. “Will you let go of that crazy old bitch right now and get back to work! We are behind enough today as it is!”

“What was that? Say that again!” It was Marco, his meekness suddenly gone. He got around in front of the foreman. He said something else Francesca couldn’t hear, holding his arms tensely by his sides, his hands in fists.

The foreman gave a bark of a laugh. He said something that ended in, “your mother?”

“No, she is not my mother. But she is someone’s,” said Marco. Then he took a step backward—as if he were about to land a punch or maybe just to get out of the foreman’s path. His intentions would never be known for sure, because before he could do anything more, the foreman bellowed that he was fired.

“Get out! Don’t you stay behind to grab your things—they’re ours now—get out!”

And Marco did. He turned to walk down the drive and passed Miss Clara, who had suddenly grown more definite, standing in her flip-flops glaring at the foreman. “Son of a whore!” she said, in the high, distinct voice she might have used in happier times at tea parties.

“It’s all right, Senora,” said Marco. “Let’s go.”

Francesca closed the window, feeling troubled. Should she tell her father? Then she realized that she had no idea what connection he had, if any, with the hiring of the grounds crew.

But she felt too on edge to stay in her room. Through her head flashed images of Marco’s arms around her, punctuated with those bulbous fetuses she’d seen in her mother’s notebook. Her head, her body, felt full, the way she used to feel back in the days when she made art, when something needed to billow out of her, and she would go to the ceramics studio and work it through the wheel’s thrumming.

No studio here, but perhaps she could find a pad and charcoal pencil. She slipped into ballet flats and out her door and began to pad down the hallway, peering through the just-ajar doors into all the bedrooms: the long-unused ones with furniture covered in plastic, the ones that had been renovated last year and that were supposed to be open again when the landscape project was unveiled.

But her mother had died in one of these rooms. Had she not? Her father had never told her details. She wasn’t even sure of the manner: Hanging? Pills?

She opened a door at the end and walked up a short flight. A gloomy vista, this corridor. She headed for a room at the end, a smaller room that she vaguely remembered about fifteen years ago being something like a study for her father. It had been modest, dusty, with stray cardboard boxes in the corners. She hadn’t stepped foot in it since she was eight.

As she moved toward it, she heard a rumbling in the atmosphere. The storm was coming sooner than predicted.

She tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge. Tears sprang to her eyes. She felt bereft. She wiped her hand on her pants, like she did when she was working to open a tightly sealed lid, took a breath, and tried again, doing her best to be slow, patient. Could she jiggle it? Was it just stuck? The varnish so thick on every surface of this place, outside of her own room … and then it gave. She turned the knob and opened the door.

On the far wall inside, seeming perfectly natural, was an old woman standing over the desk at the window with a feather duster. She was tiny, her back bowed double, and dressed in an old-country style unusual for help in this neighborhood: gray shawl and brown corduroy skirt, checked kerchief over wisps of hair.

“Oh, hello, ma’am. I’m so sorry.” She was ready to give up, go back to her room.

“No, please, dear,” said the old woman in a strangely silken voice, youthful-sounding to be coming from this bent body. (What labor laws must her father be breaking to employ this sibyl-in-a-jar?) And Francesca felt herself drawn in, as if an unseen hand took hers and directed her to a seat on the molded wooden chair.

“Do you work here, ma’am? I don’t remember ever seeing you here before. My apologies—I’m the daughter of the house.”

“I know, dear,” said the crone. “I’ve practically watched you grow up.”

As she spoke, she moved away from the window and around the side of the desk. Francesca could see her more clearly now. The woman’s hair was tightly pulled back to reveal a face just like a beak: a forehead that proceeded into the nose in almost a straight line and small eyes on either side like fish-eyes; Francesca didn’t know which one of them to look at. The face was a checkerboard of wrinkles, so that one might expect a toothless mouth, but the mouth was in fact full of long, white, snaggle-teeth. Beneath a brown smock that covered her body, she tottered on a pair of stick-like legs.

“Oh my God!” murmured Francesca. “How is that possible? I never saw you before! Does my father know you—”

“Your father—oh, psh!” snorted the otherworldly-seeming creature. “Master Christopher is guaranteed to know nothing of me. I am not one, my dear, who has to do with fathers. I am all about the mother.”

Francesca could feel her breath coming rapidly. “Please don’t come any closer.” She was gripping both armrests of her chair. Somehow, she didn’t think to stand up.

“My dear, I don’t hurt anyone who doesn’t give me reason to,” said the crone, but, obligingly, she stopped where she stood.

“What do you mean that you’re all about the mother? What do you know about my mother?”

“I know much about your mother,” said the crone, almost singing, her voice so almost obscenely lovely, melodic, and Francesca wondered if she would have to resist being hypnotized. “Your mother brought me with her from Poland. She wanted to leave me behind, but I insisted.”

Of course, her father had never said anything about an old woman accompanying him and Julia on the journey from Warsaw. . . .

“I flew with her in a bottle in her suitcase,” said the crone as if she had heard Francesca’s thought. She spoke with a faint Slavic accent that sounded like a real babushka. “At first,” she went on, “she seemed not to need me, so I stayed back, and perhaps for a while she believed that I was gone. But then, when it became clear that her joining with Christopher had been a grave mistake . . . well.

“Your mother’s problem, my dear, was that she was too uncertain a soul. She was weak, timid—and even after she had you, that didn’t change. Oh, she tried to be kind. She tried to reform Christopher through kindness, but the effect was pathetic. Like giving a dictator a goldfish to try to soften his heart. Into a vacuum, stronger spirits will step, and I am sorry to say that at the end she made it a battle between me and Christopher, which she would never survive.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” whispered Francesca around the lump that had begun to rise in her throat. “I never knew anything about how my mother died.”

“I was with her when she died,” said the crone, and never would Francesca forget the smooth nursery lilt of that phrase as the crone spoke it, the uptick on with, the flat straightaway of when she died. “I was with her in the pool—when she drowned. Her dying was the most definite thing she ever did. You know that she did it on your parents’ wedding anniversary?”

“No—no! Of course I never knew that—”

“Well, it is so. I was with her then. I closed her pretty eyes, so they wouldn’t stare so wide and scared. Pretty eyes just like yours, dear, and you should not look so scared yourself. Please, my dear . . . .”

But Francesca had found her feet. The back of the chair clattered to the floor, and somehow she managed not to stumble as she backed away, into the hall, and then turned to run, crashing down the stairs, making for the kitchen, where Carmelita and her helpers would be. She would have called Carmelita’s name if she’d had a voice. But they would be there, the familiar faces, just past the swinging door to the kitchen.

She hadn’t noticed how dark and cool the house was. Now she saw the kitchen in shadow. She saw the cutting boards stacked, untouched, in the corner of the prep counter. She heard the cuckoo clock, sounding its warning rattle that brought all the blood to her head, and then its four clacking calls—with that vomit-rattle between each one.

Just then, the thunder rumbled again, shaking the windows, and immediately the rain began, in true Texas fashion, an instant, raging sheet.

But she could not stay in the house. In her panic, she at first couldn’t remember which exits were the ones with the makeshift bridges, but then the first one she thought of was all the way on the other side of the house, nearer the covered port where she and her father kept their cars parked. She spun in confusion. Another crack of thunder sounded, and then she heard another series of thuds, she didn’t know if it was just more thunder? or steps, from upstairs—world-shakingly heavy steps, and so now she just had to get out, it didn’t matter how, and the closest exit she knew was the front door, and she ran out down the center of the cavernous lobby and threw herself on it, and it actually gave from inside, it wasn’t bolted or barricaded, but as soon as she got it open, the world was rushing black water, and the next thing she knew, she was airborne and then submerged in it. She choked, inhaling mud. She flailed.

She had landed in a makeshift moat, and it was deeper than she’d ever have imagined, or maybe it wasn’t but it was only that she couldn’t stand up, and she couldn’t see. She whirled, in a prone position, from side to side, grabbing, and only felt more mud. Oh, it was all she had ever been able to do. She was a useless creature, dropped into a world in which there were none but useless parts to play.

The mud oozed and flowed through her fingers, but now something was grasping her ankles and pulling her from behind. Touching her. Outrageous. So, now she fought. She would not be a weak soul. But it tugged with a grip on each of her ankles now, and it had too much force and knew too much what it wanted, and without even the energy to give a cry of despair, she gave up, she let go of the fight.

And then she was curled in a ball—on solid ground, although still being pelted with rain. And she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and she screamed, by reflex, but then she heard a familiar voice, “Senorita, no, no, por favor,” and she opened her eyes enough to see Marco standing over her.

He was laughing as he helped her struggle to her feet, as he raised an umbrella over her head. “Come, come. Please, miss, come,” he was saying in English. “Come to be dry. I am sorry I laugh.”

“I know some Spanish,” she said, “un poco—it’s all right.”

They stood, sheltering, under Marco’s umbrella. “But, senorita,” said Marco, “what are you doing here? We thought no one was supposed to be in the house today. My aunt’s friend, Carmelita, she told my aunt the whole staff had been, just this morning, given a paid day off. She said that that had not happened in almost twenty years—a paid day off on a day that is not a holiday. She said that the last time it happened . . . but I am rambling on.”

“That is strange,” she said. “I know nothing of that. But I can’t go back in. It’s impossible. My father will be home soon—or maybe he won’t. I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s all right, senorita.” He squeezed her forearm.

“I’m called Francesca,” she said.

“Francesca,” he repeated. “And”—touching his chest—“I am Marco. I tell you, it’s not a problem. We can go next door. Miss Clara’s son and his wife are there with Miss Clara.”

“You know Miss Clara?”

“Of course,” he said, and he caught her eye and started to laugh again, his nose crinkled and eyeteeth bared. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her into him, and she stood under the drenched umbrella, smelling mud and wet hair.

And it was like that, by the half-finished fountain, that the staring, recessed eyes of the Bentley’s headlights caught them as it pulled in through the gate and crept slowly up the drive.

She didn’t think to move. A scene with her father was necessary—inevitable.

With the same slow deliberation, her father lowered his window. He kept his head inside, safe from the rain.

“Well, well. And what have we here?” He wore his spreading grin. “Looks like the one about the daughter who ran off with the hired hand?”

“Oh, that’s funny, Daddy. Well, you did say I was unoriginal.”

He made a pouting face. “No matter, dear. It’s an overrated quality—in women in particular.”

She had no idea what that meant and wondered if he did either. It was like all his jibes: a line thrown out for effect. She thought of the looks he would cast toward the invisible jury when she was talking to him. His strutting, his mugging, his everlasting pacing and self-scolding: oh God! she suddenly thought—the poor man. He was never not on trial.

“I’m sorry, Daddy!” she cried. And for the first time in months, she made a move of her own volition in the presence of her father, pulling Marco away from the car, in the direction of the property-boundary fence and the house next door.

She was in Miss Clara’s house, working to get dry. Miss Clara’s daughter-in-law had ushered her into one of the bedrooms and brought her one of Miss Clara’s housedresses to change into out of her muddy shirt and sweatpants. Francesca had drawn the shades over the windows, which looked out onto a back garden.

So snug and bright was this little house. It was hard to believe that the castle-like home she’d forsaken was only a few yards away on the other side of a stone ledge.

Was forsaken too strong a word? She didn’t know yet.

“Don’t worry,” Marco had kept saying. “You’re safe.”

“I know! I really owe you,” she assured him.

Through the closed bedroom door, she could hear him, conferring in a low voice with Miss Clara’s son and daughter-in-law. He was like her father in that he seemed to be used to people listening to him.

She could smell cornmeal and beans, cooking in the kitchen. The house was adorable—so tiny, after the expanses she’d been used to. But what was she doing here, really? She’d loved his comforting arm around her shoulders, the way he’d taken charge. But Marco’s life had been something she had watched through a glass window.

(The way the crone had watched her—?)

And where was Miss Clara? This was, at least nominally, her house. Of course, she wasn’t capable any longer of taking care of it, so, in practice, it was her son’s. Her son and daughter-in-law had made the sacrifice of letting her live out the end of her days in her own house rather than relegating her to a memory-care ward.

As if on cue, she heard what sounded like a sigh. A sigh of female impatience, she would call it, although not bad-tempered. It seemed to come from outside. Miss Clara, flitting around the garden? The rain had stopped, but Francesca imagined that Miss Clara’s family would probably want her back inside.

She raised the blind, raised the sash above her head. “Miss Clara?”

Suddenly, the screen was filled by the face of the crone.

“Oh, God help us,” gasped Francesca, startled. She backed away from the screen. “How did you get inside the fence?”

“My dear,” said the crone, “if you haven’t yet grasped my nature, then I suppose I must put on a show-and-tell.” And then, a hiccup in the atmosphere, and the world went black for several seconds. The wings of some massive creature seemed to beat the window glass—perhaps even broke it, for Francesca felt battered, herself, by draughts of air.

And then her vision returned, and she was in a dark corridor lined, as in a gallery, by the spreadeagled bodies she’d seen in her late mother’s notebook. They seemed to be behind glass screens, yet these were close enough to touch. She saw the chained wrists, the bloody flowers sprouting from between their legs. Their chins were still pointed skyward; she still couldn’t see their faces. They were broken, headless rusalki.

But now, come to life, they were no longer silent. As she passed each one, she heard a screech like a barn-owl’s, trailing from a desperate peak to a hot and panting echo that seemed to pass up through her and braid itself with her own entrails.

The sound was horrifying. But if her first instinct, earlier, had been panic, her impulse now was anger. Why must the crone always be looking to trap her?

“Mother!” she cried, furious—and she didn’t know if she meant Julia or the crone.

“Motherrrr!” She felt her voice trailing off, the tears rising. She looked, in vain, for something she could lean on.

But just then she heard another noise: the busy, fussy trilling of that familiar Texas warbler, the mockingbird. The thing was hovering in front of her face, its tail feathers trembling. It looked toward the screens of rusalki and then back at her, urgently repeating the same phrase.

She couldn’t help herself. Her face cracked in a laugh. It was the sheer incongruity.

You laugh! said a trilling voice. The sad girl laughs.

“Yes—yes, I’m laughing,” said Francesca.

Then the spell is broken. Do you feel it?

“I don’t know.”

Obstinate girl. Now do you? Another blink, and the gallery was gone, and she was back in Miss Clara’s spare room, conversing with a mockingbird that hopped along the sill.

You’re a nervous little one, said the trilling, but you’re not your mother. Go now!

“You mean leave?”

Yes! This is just a waystation. You won’t find rescue here.

The little bird was singing, fit to burst. The noise itself drove her from the room.

She found herself weaving through the kitchen, speaking words of reassurance. She was just popping back to her own house, she told them, now that the rain had stopped—so that she could get dry clothes of her own. She reached up to give Marco a hug. They would keep in touch, she told him; she would make sure he got rehired or maybe even help him get set up in business. There would be time for all of it—for whatever he wanted, whatever she decided.

And she meant it. She could reason with her father, the sad monster. Her mother’s nightmares were not her own.

She let herself out the little house’s front door, still chuckling.





BIO

Cara Diaconoff is the author of Unmarriageable Daughters: Stories and a novel, I’ll Be a Stranger to You. She has taught writing and literature as a Peace Corps volunteer at Russian institutes, at Southern Methodist University and Whitman College, and currently at Bellevue College, near Seattle.







The Best Detective There Was

by Leila Alliu


            The name “Richard Strong” until recently was never that popular as far as detectives went. It was a gradual growth of interest, however, when three years ago, the publication of Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes as well as the Whitechapel murders in 1888 gave the British public a sort of morbid fascination with crime. I found more and more people became familiar with Detective Strong (the name I go by) as everyone wanted to know the whereabouts of everyone in their circle. I will not complain — I find keeping a job to be rather convenient, thank you very much. It was only in the past year where I received an influx of new customers.

            Like Holmes, I am a private investigator. I do not associate with organisations. Therefore what you will see is the product of my intellect alone. I begin my story with the introduction of a woman known as Mrs. Frederica Barker looking for her husband, who had gone missing.

            “Are you Mr. Strong?” She asked at my doorstep. The poor girl was young, around two and twenty, and in such a state of fright when I first beheld her. She was clutching her handkerchief to her heart in a shaking gloved hand.

            “That is certainly the name on my postbox,” I responded with a slight grin. “May I ask who you are?”

She introduced herself, and I received her into my home and had her tell me every bit of information she could give.

            “He works with Scotland Yard,” she said as she gently dabbed her eyes with the  handkerchief. “About five days ago, George told me he would only be gone for a little while. I pressed him that he might tell me where he would be off to, and after such a long while of my begging, he told me he was after some murderer. I asked nothing more after that, only that he may be careful. And now he’s gone!” She let out a quiet sob “He said he would be gone for three days at most and I still haven’t heard from him! Oh, Mr. Strong, please help me find where my George is!”

            I gave her a reassuring smile. “I will do my best, my dear. All I need now is some time and a confirmation that you have told me everything.” I glanced down at my notes to make sure I had everything she told me.

            “Yes, that is everything. Quite everything. I’m so sorry I haven’t anything more to tell you, but I couldn’t ask where he may be — I didn’t want to know about it.”

            “Completely understandable,” I assured.

            “Can you really begin an investigation with so little information? I’ve told you barely anything. And if George is in danger…”

            “You musn’t worry about such things, Mrs. Barker. Bad for the health. I’ve solved investigations with much less evidence before.”

            “Oh, thank you, Mr. Strong! Thank you!”

            “You’re very welcome, my dear.” I led the trembling girl to the door. “I will write to you should any breaking event occur. In the meantime, rest assured that a professional will be looking for your husband.”

            She smiled- a gentle, graceful smile, and left with a little more confidence in her step.

            A week passed from this meeting until I met with her again, to my surprise. You see, I hadn’t asked her to visit, but the girl took it upon herself to come back and ask herself! I swallowed my anger allowing her in, and attempted with all my might to keep my impatience in check. I admit I might not have been very good at it, because as we spoke her demeanour slowly changed from excitedly asking about how far I had gone in the investigation to becoming more shy, reserved, and might I say, frightened. I almost said it served the girl right- she had no right to barge in on such pressing matters.

            “Have you any other clients you are assisting?” She asked, eyeing me.

            “None at all. Your case is all I have at the moment, and I am working with all due diligence.”

            “But again, Mr. Strong, you haven’t told me what you’ve found.”

            It was at this moment where I almost, and I say almost, snapped. However, I managed to only take a deep breath.

            “The information I have gathered at the moment is not fully conclusive, and I don’t wish to give you any false hopes.”

            “Oh,” she said, almost sinking into herself. “If that is all then. And I forgot to say, I’ve been speaking with the colleagues of my husband at Scotland Yard, and they have also looked into the circumstances into his disappearance. Nothing has been found yet, but how wonderful is it that we can have more help?”

            This was it- the moment I have had enough.

            “That was not necessary whatsoever, Mrs. Barker, not necessary at all,” I firmly stated. Her face fell. “I have told you time and time again that I require no assistance, and that I will inform you of anything in the case, and yet you decide to show up unannounced anyway! I must bid you good day, Mrs. Barker, before you take it upon yourself to continue the investigation yourself.”

            She cocked her head, her eyebrows furrowed.

            “I haven’t-”

            “Good day, Mrs. Barker. You know the exit.”

            She slowly rose and led herself out the door like a child after a chastisement. But after recklessly intruding on my investigation, I suppose I had to say such. I listened to the door quietly shut and reveled in the silence to follow.

            I did not hear from Mrs. Barker after that. It was easy to guess she was not happy with the work I had done with her case, and turned to Scotland Yard. I dropped the case entirely and decided that Mr. Barker was dead.

            A few more days passed from that fateful meeting. I continued with my work, accepting new clients as time moved on. To lose one was a disappointment, I admit, but not the end of the world. There always seemed to be someone going missing, therefore a detective such as myself would not be out of work for long.

            There was a part of me that was tempted to go to Scotland Yard and ask after that case. I wondered if they had gotten any farther. I thought it impossible, though stranger things have happened. I decided not to, however. I mean it once more that I do not enjoy associating with organisations such as that one, and I was not planning on beginning over a singular grieving widow.

            I was sitting in my home and reviewing a case when I heard a knock at the door. I can still hear that knock.

            Upon opening the door, I found a constable with an officer behind him. The grave faces on the both of them could have silenced a party.

            “Mr. John Coleridge,” the constable announced. “You are under arrest for the murder of Richard Strong one year ago, as well as Mr. George Barker and several other victims.”

            You see, I had never stated my name was Richard Strong. It was easy to get rid of him and take over the business- he had no one living with him and no acquaintances close enough to recognize the change between us, poor man.

            But therein lied the question of how people would go to me to solve their disappearances. I had underestimated the amount of people in need of a detective. Therefore, I may as well do the work I had done before with Mr. Strong, and bring the clients towards me. No one seemed to recognize the fact that every person that had gone to me left with the knowledge their loved one had died.

            One man “fell off his horse” as he was travelling a great distance, and I was the one to inform his grieving sister. Another “was caught in a fire,” I am afraid, and your son, madam, did not make it.

            I had no regrets for my work; a man is to make a living. But when a certain second-born nobleman who shall remain nameless went to me to do the same thing I have been doing to people for months, then I decided my wages could be far better made. More and more people of rank came to me with their “problems,” and I would be the unfortunate detective that would discover that, oh dear, your poor brother has drowned! Yes, sir, it is an unfortunate tragedy, and without an heir besides yourself as well! No one would question them, and when I walked away with my payment, I forgot their face and name entirely.

            But it was that girl. That nosy, irritating girl that had ruined it all by having friends with the police. I should have been angry, infuriated, out for blood, and in a way, I was. But I could not help being impressed. After all this time of my creating my own disappearances, she found me out herself.

            And now here I was. Caught.

            “Gentlemen,” I said with a cool smile growing over my face. “You will witness no resistance from me.”



BIO

Leila Alliu is a history enthusiast, focusing on fashion history, who has spent years studying and making her own garments of the past. When she is not doing this, she is usually reading classic literature and writing stories inspired by novels of that genre. After six years of short stories, poems, and even a novel of her own, she wrote this story as an acknowledgement to her love of history and the gothic mystery genre. Leila has also been published in the Copperfield Review Quarterly with her short story “Suffragette.” She can be found on Instagram @victorian.historian, where she displays her works of historical fashion and discusses and posts about her favorite books.







Selling Out the Nation

By Stephanie Daich


I stared at the bank foreclosure. “I’m sorry, Dad.” Four generations had successfully farmed my land. Not only did I control the largest farms in the Midwest, but I also owned a legacy. Of course, I didn’t have to lose it. The government made that clear with its deceitful proposition. But could I ruin our nation to save my farm?

I picked up a handful of miniature microchips about the size of a strawberry seed.

My daughter Grace entered the kitchen, and I quickly stuffed the microchips into my pocket. She had prominent bags under her eyes, dark and sorrowful like a middle-aged man would have, not a young girl in her prime.

“Is this my last day at school?” she asked behind sniffles.

I couldn’t look at her. Tomorrow, the police would escort us off our property. If I didn’t team up with the corrupt government with their plan, that was. I put my hand in my pocket and fingered the little microchips.

“Please, Dad, tell me you found a way to save our home.” She bent forward into my face. Her long hair draped over my shoulders.

“Grace, let’s go,” my wife Samantha said as she walked into the kitchen. She looked more emotionally wrecked than Grace.

“Please, Dad, tell me you found a way to save our home.”

“He could save it if he just went into business with the government.” Samantha opened the cupboard, pulled out two glasses, then slammed the cupboard shut. I jumped. “But he has too much pride. He would rather lose his great-great-great-granddad’s land than go into business with anyone.” She banged the glasses on the cupboard.

She didn’t know what the government intended to do. She believed it was just a partnership, an expansion.

“Such pride.”

It tore me apart to see my family so unhappy.

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

Grace threw her arms around my neck. “Really, Dad, really?”

I couldn’t look at her or Samantha. They didn’t realize what they were asking of me. Selfishly, I would save our home, but I would screw the nation.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Samantha said as she filled the cups with orange juice. She didn’t hug me. We had way too much tension between us for that. She handed a cup to Grace and with her free hand, grabbed her keys.

“Let’s go,” she said with a much happier tone.

“Thanks again, Dad,” Grace said as she left the kitchen, blowing me a kiss.

I ripped up the foreclosure letter. I thought it would bring satisfaction, but it didn’t. I called Josh from the Government office. “Fine, I’ll sign,”

“I knew you would come to your senses.”

I hung up on him.

I pulled the microchips out of my pocket. Within the year, these would be enlaced in all my produce. I would keep a section of my farm untainted, only for Samantha, Grace, and me to eat from. And within the year, the rest of the nation would succumb to ultimate government control.

But at least I saved the farm.



BIO

What transpires when Stephanie Daich observes life? She creates stories. What happens when you read her stories? Your imagination explodes. Stephanie Daich works in corrections and writes for the human experience. Publications include Making Connections, Youth Imaginations, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Kindness Matters, and others.







The Scarecrow Cross

by Erik Priedkalns

 
           Along Shuka River’s edge, around Nishinomiya, Japan, solemn stone walls coldly sit on either side of the narrow river’s flowing waters. The walls cast shadows on the grassy strips, separating them from the river. Above the walls and river, the town sits. On the east side, across from the stores, apartments and houses, there is a red dirt path that runs the length of the river. On the path, walkers walk, runners run, and bikers scoot up and down.

            On weekends, in the unbearable heat and humidity of the summer months, families pitch little tents and eat and drink, throw balls back and forth, swim, and enjoy the time.

            On rainy days, the water picks up speed as it comes down from the mountains above the town. There are cute little cartoon signs that warn children of the danger of flood waters. They show screaming children in their baseball hats and school backpacks fleeing a torrent of roaring water.

            Along the path you come across the occasional park bench, tree, shrubs, or wildflower gardens. Sometimes you find old stone markers, statues, or signs. Nothing really explains why things are where they are. They are just there.

            On a certain day last July, if you were on the path, just a kilometer or so from the Shukugawa train station, you may have seen her; an old Japanese lady, not an inch more than four feet tall, shuffling her way to a certain spot.

            The lady is about eighty-five years old. You probably notice the strange roller coaster rise at the top of her back and realize she can barely look up, so she just looks down at her feet. Her gray hair is tied back in a bun. She wears grey, light cotton pants that stop at her calves, and a grey jinbei top.

            The old Japanese woman, her name is Mayumi, gets passed on the path by a mother on a bicycle. The mother on the bicycle politely rings her bell to let Mayumi know she is passing. Mayumi steps to her right, and the mother on the bicycle does a quick bow of her head.

            The mother has auburn red, dyed hair and is in her thirties. She wears a white, cotton, short-sleeved blouse and a flower covered, black skirt that goes down to her ankles. Her name is Chie.

            Chie has a newborn baby, about five months old, in a pouch on her chest. The baby’s body and face are pressed against her chest. A little straight-haired, four-year-old boy wearing a yellow baseball cap and red shirt is on the back seat. Mayumi hears them talking in serious tones. Mom speaks to the boy without mocking baby talk.

            Mayumi smiles and says out loud, to herself, “The baby will soon get a seat on the bicycle, but the press of the body will stay on mama’s chest.“She remembers her mother telling her that she spoiled her little girl too much by showing too much affection and protection. “They need to be taught to stand alone,” her iron-stern mother said.

            Mayumi watches the mother on the bicycle until she disappears into the line of the horizon.

*          *          *

            Chie breathes heavily. Her puffy white knees pop out of her long skirt’s front slit each time she pedals. She tries to cover her legs because she does not want them to burn. Chie slows a bit because the rays of the sun are burning her face. She stops and pulls an orange baseball hat from her purse.

            Chie is careful not to bounce the little baby on her chest because she is asleep. All my padding is still left from when she was born, Chie thinks. Time for a diet.

            “Why did we stop? asks the little boy.

            “I’m putting on my hat, don’t you see? You ask silly questions.”

            “Oh.”

            Chie’s beliefs are old. She feels bad for scolding the boy, but he needs to learn how to pay attention.

            To her right, Chie notices a black, wrought iron fence around a marble, grey stone statue. The statue is about two meters high and is pentagon in shape. The black fence bars are each speared at the top, and the black color of the bars is dull and peeling in places. This is the first time they have ridden the bike this far up the river.

            Just beyond the statue, there is a growth of three gnarled, knotted trees. The trees are hunched over. Their leaves are dark green on top and mint green underneath. Under the rough shadowy circle of trees, tall grass and wildflowers are growing. The grass and flowers all lean in towards something pink.

            Chie starts to walk with the bicycle towards the trees. As she gets closer, she thinks she sees a little girl in the middle of the tree circle. She sees a pink flowery summer top, a yellow straw brimmed hat, and a baby-blue skirt. The wildflowers surrounding the feet are red, orange, and purple.

            Chie moves closer. She sees that the figure is not a little girl, it’s just some clothes draped on two sticks, one vertical, and near the top the other is horizontal, like a Christian’s cross.

            Little girl scarecrow, Chie thinks. She says a quick prayer. The trees are watching like loyal dogs.

            “What is that?” asked the little boy.

            This time the Chie does not respond. She studies the figure, looking for a reason as to why it is here.

            She notices a small bottle of soda and dead, dry flower stems at the foot of the cross.

            “What is that?” asks the little boy again.

            Chie gently shushes him. “A little girl,” she says in a half-whisper.

*          *          *

            As Mayumi moves along, she shifts her bag from her left to right hand. The little red purse she brought jiggles around the inside of her bag. She sings a made-up song in her head, the same one she used to sing to her daughter.

Make sure your daughter is pretty,

cute like a little doll,

cute shoes, cute tops, cuteness all because of love.

*          *          *

            “Mama?”

            Chie hears her son but does not respond. She studies the kaleidoscope of flowers surrounding the girl’s little skirt. A zinging coldness springs out of Chie’s stomach and spreads through her entire body. Her throat tightens and fills with sadness.

            What’s wrong with you? She asks herself. It’s probably just a child’s robot, or imaginary friend. But the thing stuck in her throat won’t swallow away. At the corner of her eyes, and along the bottom rim, she feels sharp nips as tears start taking shape. Silly woman, she scolds herself, don’t blink.

            She can hear the river. It is so small and slow it barely makes a noise.

*          *          *

            Mayumi takes a break and sits on a bench. She watches all the children running up and down the trail and splashing in the water.

            She thinks about the thigh-high child she saw wandering alone in the store today. He was a little boy about four years old. He was wearing rubber sandals, a blue baseball shirt and blue shorts. She asked him his name, but he wasn’t paying attention because he was talking to his hands. As Mayumi was about to ask him where his parents were, she heard a woman’s voice call a name from across the store. You could barely hear the voice among all the other voices, but the little boy looked up and started walking towards the sound.

*          *          *

            Chie nudges her bike up to the iron fence. She takes her son out of the seat. He grabs the iron bars with both hands and rocks back and forth.

            “Is she a scarecrow?” he asks.

            “Shush,” says Chie, “do you see any crows?”

            “Maybe she scared them away,” says the little boy.

            Chie just stares at the figure. Her son starts walking around the fence surrounding the stone.

            “Lift your feet up when you walk,” Chie says absent-mindedly.

            Each time he passes, his hand brushes the back of her legs just above the knees. His touch is electric and bounces her breath each time.

            Where was she going? Chie wonders. She turns and looks to the river below. It’s only about four meters wide, and maybe two meters deep. The rocks in the river are covered with moss and are very slippery. Chie shivers a bit, turns away from the river, and looks back to the stone and the little girl.

            Her son’s small hand brushes the side of her leg as he makes another pass. The touch pulls all the strength from her legs.

*          *          *

            Mayumi gazes at the water. It is so calm today, she thinks. It is calm almost every day of the year. She closes her eyelids as the sun’s reflection skips off the water.

            Mayumi remembers that day with her daughter. It was at a spot just up the river a bit.

            “Stay close,” she had said to the little girl, “I just need to get some bread.”

            “Yes,” her daughter promised. She was four and had a bad memory. She had straight, black hair that was cut to the base of her neck and hung in a razor straight line just above her eyes.

            Mayumi watched her skip/run towards the river. The river was loud and fast that day. There had been heavy rain during the last week.

            “Not too close,” she shouted to the little girl.

            The girl turned and said something. Mayumi couldn’t hear her over the sounds of the cars and water. She turned towards the store. It was getting close to sundown, and she needed to hurry to get home and make dinner. As she opened the door to the bakery, she heard the little bell on the door tinkle. She gazed at the pastries, buns, muffins, and bread behind the glass. Mayumi still remembers exactly how the bakery smelled that day.

            Mayumi gets up off the old bench and starts walking. Not much further she thinks.

            She sighs. She can remember the bakery smell, but she has started to forget her daughter’s smell. Before she left the house this morning, as she was busy gathering up the incense sticks, chocolate pieces and the little red purse, she pulled out one of her daughter’s old shirts. She had to be careful, because it was so old it felt as though it would crumble under her touch. She put it near her nose, but the smell was gone.

            Mayumi knows her daughter had a smell, a little sour and a little sweet, but she could no longer bring its details to memory.

*          *          *

            Where was the little girl going? Chie wonders. Was she wearing that hat?

            The baby wiggles a bit but stays asleep. Chie feels her puffy cheek rub her breast. She rubs the baby’s tiny back.

            The little boy runs back and forth on the trail.

            Chie looks down to the river and frowns. She knows that occasionally it swells and runs violently down this bed. On those days, she doesn’t let her son go to the river, even though some of his friends get to go.

            Maybe the sounds of the river and world killed the mother’s call? Chie thinks. Nonsense. You don’t even know if it was the river. Stop this thinking.

            Chie is struck with a strange feeling, like a warning, and looks around to find her son. She sees his red tee-shirt disappearing up the trail. “Jiro,” she calls, but he doesn’t stop. She sighs, gets on her bike, and starts peddling after him. She catches him not far away.

            “You should never leave me like that, and when I tell you to stop, you must stop,” she says sternly.

            “I’m sorry,” he says.

            “Let’s sit on the grass a little. Mama is tired.”

            The boy sits next to her and lays his head on her thigh. She feels the weight get heavier as he gradually falls asleep. She puts her palm on his warm, red face. The little baby wakes up briefly, tilts back her head, and looks at Chie with tiny, groggy, brown eyes. A smile materializes from the little face. She smacks her lips and falls asleep again. Chie bows her head down and kisses the top of the baby’s head. A milky sweet smell fills Chie’s nose.

            She looks over to the little girl. Through an opening in the circle of trees, Chie can see the figure clearly. She closes her eyes for a moment and then opens them. She sees a bent over, old woman, with a bag in her hand, walk to the trees and to the little girl. It’s the same woman Chie remembers passing earlier.

            The woman puts down the bag and wipes the back of her hand across her forehead. She takes out some incense sticks, puts them in the ground and lights them. She then reaches into her purse and pulls out some little, shiny objects and scatters them around the base of the little girl. Finally, Chie sees the woman take out a little girl’s red purse and put it on the horizontal stick.

            The old woman puts down the bag and touches the palms of her hands together in front of her chest. She stays like that for a long time.

            Chie understands.

*          *          *

            Mayumi stares at the little pieces of silver-wrapped chocolate at her daughter’s feet.

            She remembers the exact moment her own spirit vanished. It was gone after thirty-two minutes. She remembers the instant the sun went down and her hope for a good life disappeared. After thirty-two minutes of searching, she knew everyone could stop. The line from her heart to her daughter snapped, and Mayumi knew what that snapping meant.

            And at that exact moment. . . .

            Mayumi walks over to a park bench, as everything comes back once again. She sits with a heavy drop. The bench creaks.

            At that exact moment, she thinks. She has tried to put it in words for forty years.

*          *          *

            Chie sees the old woman walk over to a park bench and sit down heavily. From afar, the rise at the top of the woman’s back seems to be pushing her body down, and it looks as if the woman is about to topple over.

            Suddenly, Chie feels the weight of her son lift off her leg. She sees his head pop up.          “Look mama, the woman.”

            He springs up and starts to move to the woman. Chie’s hand shoots towards him. She grabs his arm, and feels her fingers and nails sink into the flesh.

            “No,” she says firmly. “Why do you want to bother the woman and the little girl?”

            He looks surprised, and his eyes water a bit. Chie loosens her grip, just a little.

*          *          *

            Mayumi sees the little boy in the red shirt start to get up. The young mother’s hand catches him.

*          *          *

            Maybe it would be okay if she let the little boy come over, thinks Mayumi.

*          *          *

            Chie wonders if she should let the little boy go. No, she thinks, he will just make it harder.

            She turns back to the river and stares at the cold stone wall across the way.

*          *          *

            Everyone had tried to get Mayumi to stop coming here, but she was stubborn. She would never leave the place that brutalized her every day. Even her husband tried to make her give it up. He tried for years, and it made her so angry. “Heartless one,” she’d say. Then he died, and she couldn’t tell him sorry.

*          *          *

            The little boy sits down next to Chie and takes her hand. He puts his face into her palm and nuzzles it with his little nose. Chie feels the warm breath, and the tickle of his nose on the most sensitive spot of her palm, where the lifelines meet and cross.

            She jumps a little when she feels the tips of his bangs move lightly across her wrist.

            She sees the crescent indentations of her nail marks on his arm.

            She feels like a fool when the clinging tears finally drop.

            “What’s wrong?” says the little boy.  

            He gets no response.

*          *          *

            Mayumi sees the little boy take mama’s hand and touch it with his face.

            She sees mama’s head bow to the ground.

            Chie looks away and turns to the river.

            At that exact moment, she thinks.

            For forty years, every single moment, down to the second, has felt like a 5 p.m. on a Sunday night in January, when it gets so dark, cold, and lonely, and nobody is around, and you try to think about getting through another week, while you sit in your house and feel like everything is crumpling around you into pure pitch black, and you cannot go to sleep because there is so much time left in the day, and you wonder what the rest of the world is doing, you look outside, but you cannot see anything outside and all you see is you and the room you are in and it looks like a faded picture from a photograph in a magazine, and your only thought is “my god, morning will be back again.”

            And you bargain with whatever god will do the trick. You plead for the little one to keep living on. And every day your prayers and grief pour out.

            Mayumi built the little girl on the cross ten days after it happened. She remembers how they all watched her with sorrowful eyes as she put the stick into the ground, tied the cross-stick at the top, and hung her daughter’s picture where the two sticks met.

            And every day for forty years she has begged the little stick figure girl to come alive, fill up the clothes and get off.

*          *          *

            “You’re spoiling her,” Mayumi imagines her mother would say. “For forty years, that’s all you have done.”

            At that exact moment.

            Mayumi hums her daughter’s song.

            For forty years every day, she’s hung her life on the Little Girl, Scarecrow Cross.



BIO

Erik Priedkalns is an attorney (non-practicing by choice) who grew up in Thousand Oaks, California. He graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in English with a creative writing emphasis. Currently he lives in a small farming town on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan with his wife and dog. He hopes to one day become a farmer himself. His extremely limited Japanese gives him motivation to write, and say everything he wants to say to the people around but cannot. He has found endless writing material in the country, writing about the people and the surrounding countryside. He believes everything here has a story, and that the forests, trees, rocks, and streams all speak if you listen closely enough.







A Cat in a Box for Mom

by Joe Cappello


The Zabretti family stood in front of the coffin staring at the body of their mother. She was dressed in a pink, shift dress with a hodgepodge floral design, resembling a mini tornado that touched down below her waist. She wore a white head band with the words “Peace and Love” printed on it in blue letters next to the outline of a dove. Strands of white hair stuck out over the top of it.

Marion Zabretti shivered from the air conditioning that made the viewing room colder than it had to be. The sickly-sweet scent of flowers and sight of her mother looking like a hippy manikin turned her stomach. But as the oldest Zabretti, she felt she should be the one to say if her mother’s coffin should be opened or closed for the viewing. Her younger brother, Salvatore, (“Torre” for short) and youngest sister, Luce, had other ideas.

“I say we vote on it,” offered Torre. He leaned over to get a closer look at his mother’s head band. “Did people actually wear stuff like that in the 60s?”

“That and love beads and they stuck flowers in the hair, flower children they called themselves.” Marion shook her head. “Mom was a piece of work alright.”

“So, are we going to vote or what?” Luce folded her arms rubbing her bare arms with the palms of her hands. She wore a sleeveless black dress and matching low heel pump shoes. Her brown hair hung in curls around her face giving her a slight retro look. “Because if we are, I vote to leave it open.”

“Are you serious with this dress?” said Marion ignoring her. “It barley reaches her knees. And that headband…” She leaned over the coffin carefully as though coming too close would soil her pricey high-waisted trouser pants and snow-white blouse.

“Don’t rag on me,” said Luce. “Mom wanted to be buried in the dress she wore at that Democratic Convention in Chicago ‘68… ‘stickin’ it to the man’ as she liked to say.” Marion bent over the coffin getting an even closer look, her parted black hair falling in front of her face which she quickly brushed away.

“Let’s stay focused, Marion,” said Luce. “We’re supposed to be deciding if we should leave the coffin open or not. I vote yes. How about you, Torre?”

“I don’t care one way or the other.” Torre shrugged. Marion frowned as she took in her brother’s appearance. His wrinkled gray trousers and navy-blue sport coat didn’t quite match. She winced at the sight of a multi-colored tie around his neck, which she considered most inappropriate for a funeral. She turned down his collar to cover the exposed tie and centered the knot on it.

“Thanks, mom,” Torre said, beaming a child-like warmth that made Marion crack a smile.

“Never mind.” She patted his cheek, then turned away abruptly.

“Okay. I vote we close it,” said Marion.

“It’s a tie.”

“Not really, Luce. Tie goes to the oldest. We close it.” Luce opened her mouth to say something but Marion cut her off.

“Look at this carpet. What was the color supposed to be…maroon? It looks like dried blood from a crime scene.” She scraped at it with the sole of one of her leather ballet shoes. “And these shit-colored, brown walls and those things passing for drapes in front of the windows look more like burlap sacks. Did you have to have the wake here?” Luce rubbed her arms more vigorously.

“Baldoni’s has buried Zabretti’s as far back as I can remember,” said Luce.

“Did you ever think it might be time for a change?” Marion’s dark eyes narrowed. She lowered her voice. “Did you ever consider cremation? We could have sprinkled her ashes over the marijuana plants she had growing in the back yard. Mom would have loved that. Honestly, I wish you would have checked with me before you did all this.”

Johnny Squitera, Luce’s husband, a short man with a barrel chest, drew closer to Luce and Marion. He cleared his throat.

“Marion, we had to make decisions,” said Johnny, “so we did the best we could, we—”

“Hey, you all remember Beth, right?” said Marion cutting off Johnny and rubbing the shoulders of her partner standing next to her. A wisp of a woman with curly blonde hair and brown roots, Beth smiled slightly. “Show everyone the picture you brought with you.” Beth reached into her purse and produced a six by nine, color photo in a flat black frame. It showed Mary Zabretti standing on a boardwalk, her back to a sandy beach with white-capped ocean waves behind her.  She wore a tie die shirt, granny glasses and a wide brimmed straw hat. Two rainbow colored peace symbols hung from her ears.

“She looks great, doesn’t she?” said Marion. “Compliments of my Bethy over here.” Marion grabbed Beth’s cheeks and smooshed out her lips. “Where did you take that again, my little talented photographer?” Beth strained to speak through her scrunched lips.

“Jersey shore. Seaside I think,” she blurted.

 “Well, you are terrific at what you do even though you hardly make any money at it,” said Marion. She placed the photo on a pedestal next to the coffin in front of a bouquet of flowers. Her cell phone rang.

“Hello?” She lowered the phone. “Gotta take this call. Be right back.” She brought her face close to Beth’s ear. “Let me know if little sister over there brings up the will.”

Marion hurried back to the viewing room. She paused at the entrance to give her eyes time to adjust to the darkness that now hung over it like a dark cloud. She could see the curtains had been drawn to ward off the hot July sun. She sat next to Beth in the front row.

“Any news?” she asked.

“Nothing about a will,” said Beth. “Torre was just here talking about the house he is renovating in Pennsylvania. I didn’t know he moved to PA, did you?”

“No,” said Marion. “I thought he still lived with mom.”

“Not for a long time, he said. How come we didn’t know that?”

“I can’t picture the man leaving mom, never mind Jersey City, New Jersey.” Beth’s eyes widened as she pointed to the back of the room.

“Oh, and your sister, Luce, is back there, giving the funeral director hell.” She turned her body around indicating the back of the room.

“Mr. Baldoni, this light?” Luce indicated the light mounted on the podium at the entrance to the room. She pulled the chain repeatedly turning the incandescent bulb on and off.  “Did you buy it from Edison himself? I told you people who come to pay their respects will be old.” Mr. Baldoni’s bald head turned red and his jowls sagged lower than an old hound dog.  “They need a bright fluorescent light so they can see to sign the register. I paid for a podium with a bright light and that’s what I want.”

“Was she always like that?” asked Beth.

“Luce? Oh, yeah,” said Marion. “She was always little Miss Anal. Has to control everything. She not only dots I’s, she crosses T’s then nails people to them.” The old man shrugged.

“And when you’re finished with that, Mr. Baldoni,” continued Luce. “There, see? Back there.” She pointed to a row of chairs. “The third row. A few of the chairs are out of line. I said three perfectly straight rows. So, when you come back, I expect you to make that right.” She ran her hands over her bare arms, then placed her hands on her hips. “And turn that damn air conditioner down. Its colder than a morgue in here.” She took long, quick strides toward Marion and Beth and sat down with a huff.

“How many Zabretti’s has he buried? You’d think he’d know the drill by now,” she said.

“So, Luce, when did Torre move out of mom’s house?” asked Marion.

“I don’t know, years ago.”

“Okay, so you’re still around the corner form mom on Piersall, right?”

“No, we moved down the shore six years ago.”  Luce took a deep breath and pulled her black skirt over her knees. “So, when are you two gonna get married?” Marion and Beth exchanged glances.

“We are married,” said Marion.

“You’re kidding. When did that happen?”

“Three years ago,” said Beth. “At the bowling alley where we met.” She clasped her hands and squealed with delight.

“You know how Beth loves to bowl,” said Marion.

“No, I don’t and you actually had a wedding at a bowling alley?” Johnny and Torre heard the word “wedding” and instinctively joined the three.

“Did you say wedding? Who’s getting married?” Johnny sat next to his wife.

“These two,” said Luce. “Only they’re already married.”

“Oh,” said Torre, looking at Marion.

“Alright, look, we didn’t invite family, okay? Just a few friends,” said Marion.

“And my bowling team.” Beth’s eyes widened. “We bowled afterwards. Shot a 150. My personal best. Say, after this maybe we can all go bowling, Luce. I see there’s an alley here in your old neighborhood.”

“No thanks,” said Luce. “I haven’t been in that bowling alley since they found out the guy handing out shoes was a pedophile. He’s probably still there.”

“I remember him,” said Marion. “He was creeper than a graveyard at night.” Just then Johnny held his ears and began screaming.

“Ahhh.” He stood up rocking from side to side.

“Marion, what is wrong with you.” Luce grabbed Johnny’s wrist. “It’s all right, Johnny, everything’s okay, look at me…look at me,” she said, her voice thin and panicky.

“Sorry, Luce I forgot.” Luce placed her forehead on her husband’s while still holding his wrists. Their heads swung back and forth in unison. “It’s okay,” she said. “The bad lady said the bad words it will pass.” She turned on Marion. “You know he has a reaction to idiomatic phrases.”

“I…I…remember now, it just slipped.” Beth turned to Marion.

“What’s going on?”

“A crazy story,” said Marion. “Johnny works construction. About five years ago they were demolishing a small building. They were finishing up inside. As you can see, Johnny is a short guy. When the foreman went to do a head count, he missed Johnny. He must have been bending down or something, who knows. Anyway, they blew the damn thing up with him still inside.”

“That’s terrible. Was he hurt?”

“Minor injuries, except they noticed a little later that he went berserk if anyone used an idiom or expression like the one I just used.”

“That’s strange,” said Beth.

“Tell me about it. Doctors still can’t figure it out. He’s a rock star in the unclassified mental disorders community.” Marion noticed Johnny seemed to calm down. Luce started leading him by the hand to the exit.

“Wait a second, Luce.” Marion intercepted her sister. “Hate to bring this up but what about…you know…mom’s will?”

“We’re not talking about any will until the priest gets here.” She turned to go, then wheeled back on Marion. “And watch what the hell you say around my husband.”

The wake got underway at 2pm as scheduled. By two thirty the family was seated in the first row. Marion looked back at the three long rows of chairs made straight as an arrow by the cowered Mr. Baldoni. At that moment a woman entered the room. Bent over, strands of white hair barely covering her head, she pushed along a walker with four shiny chrome wheels and matching chrome hand brakes. An oxygen bottle sat in a bracket mounted on the walker’s left side; a clear plastic tube attached to the tank split into two smaller tubes visible in each of the woman’s nostrils. An “Eat my Dust” sign hung from the front seat.

 A large man with a perpetual grin followed the woman as she made her way to the coffin. She closed her eyes and mouthed a prayer. She placed her hand on the coffin then made her way to the Zabretti family who were now all on their feet.

“Hello,” she said stopping in front of Luce. “I’m Bernadette Cosimano, an old friend of your mom’s. So sorry.” Luce put her arm around the old woman.

“Thank you,” said Luce. Marion pointed to the sign.

“Nice sign,” she said. “Really cute.”

“Comes in handy.” Her eyes twinkled in an old cute person sort of way. “Especially when I have to haul ass for somethin’ I did at the home.” Luce laughed uncomfortably. Torre came to the rescue.

“Thanks for coming. How did you know our mom?”

“Oh, me and Mary go way back. Went to St. Paul’s on Greenville Avenue together. We were in the same class.”

“How sweet is that,” said Beth unconsciously massaging her bowling arm.

“Yup. Mary and I made our first communion together…sang in the choir…received confirmation…”

“Adorable,” said Luce shaking her head.

“Snuck our first cigarette in the girl’s bathroom. Nun smelled the smoke but couldn’t figure out who did it. She was madder than a pissed-on chicken.” Johnny fell back in his seat and instantly assumed a fetal position.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Cosimano,” said Luce as she went to Johnny and began rubbing his temples. “Relax…relax…it’s okay,” she said. Mrs. Cosimano laughed.

“He looks like 90 percent of the people back at the home. Anyway, where was I?” She looked back at the large man, his hands folded in front of him still grinning.

“Smoking in the bathroom,” he said.

“Oh, right. Let’s see, we had our first drink together…” Luce stood up.

“Really, Mrs. Cosimano. That’s enough…”

“…And our first refer…”

“Don’t stop her, Luce, she’s on roll,” laughed Marion.

“Must have been 1966 or 67. Hell of a year, did lots of pot. Lots of cute boys were around then.” She smiled as she leaned over her walker. “We did them too.” Torre stifled a laugh. Beth swung her harm as though throwing a ball down an alley. Luce gave up and fell back on her chair.

“Well, sorry again for your loss. She was a great gal, kind with a sense of humor that would make a stone sculpture crack a smile.” Johnny moaned as he dropped his head in his hands. She pointed to the large man behind her. “He’s my ride. Gotta get back. I promised a gentleman caller I’d do him a favor.”  She winked at the group. “I’ll probably have to take my teeth out for that one.”

The afternoon wore on and only two more visitors showed. One was a woman who worked with Luce at the local motor vehicle agency. She brought a card signed by her other co-workers. Marion remarked to Beth that was much easier than actually showing up at the wake.

The next-door neighbor, a man in his 50s who mowed the lawn for Mary, stopped by to pay his respects and let everyone know he would no longer be cutting the lawn.

“I mean, who’s gonna pay me, right?” he remarked. Marion laughed mechanically as she gently shoved him out of the room. She shook her head as she sat down next to her brother.

“So, Torre, still working for that construction company?”

“No, I’m a sales associate for a lumber yard.” Torre unbuttoned his suit jacket, his large belly spilling over his belt. “But that’s only temporary. I got this idea.” He leaned in to her, his breath coming in short heaves. “I got an idea for a TV show on one of those home improvement networks.” He patted his stomach. “The name of my show…” He raised his hands in the air and looked between them as though reading a sign that had suddenly appeared there. “…My Gut Feeling.” Marion raised her eyebrows then frowned. Torre continued.

“Tagline…Your Gusty Home Improvement Guru.” He slapped his knees. “The graphic is a tool belt around my gut. What do you think?”

“Sounds like another show about flipping houses,” said Marion.

“Yeah, but I can provide insights from my wealth of construction experience.”

“But weren’t you usually the guy who directed traffic at road construction sites? Not exactly useful info, if you ask me.” Marion regarded him for a moment and slowly nodded. “How about coming to work for me?”

“You know I ain’t got those kinda’ credentials,” said Torre.

“But you got a contact…me. How you think I cracked the good ole boy investment banking network?”

“You had your fancy NYU MBA.”

“No guarantee. But I was smart. I joined a tennis club where a lot of investment bankers were members. Played in high school, remember?”

“Yeah,” said Torre. “You used to beat the hell out of me in front of my friends. Embarrassing.”

“And I beat the snot out of them until one of them said someone as aggressive as me should be working for him. That’s how I made the jump to Wall Street.” She leaned in confidentially. “I could be your jump.”

“Forget it, Marion. I don’t need my big sister to rescue me.”

Marion looked at her watch and was about to say something to Beth when a young woman entered the room. She paused letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. 

“Over here.” Marion smiled as she and Beth rose to meet the young girl. They each took an arm and led her to the group.

“You all remember our daughter, Juanita. Juanita, you remember your Aunt Luce, my sister, and her husband, Johnny. And my brother, you’re Uncle Torre.”  Juanita’s long black hair draped over her cell phone, her dark eyes fixed on it as she texted. The pecking sounds made by her fingernails filled the abrupt silence.

“Say hello,” exhorted Beth. Juanita grinned as she looked up for a moment and waved with one hand, her other hand still texting. Beth pulled Juanita into the seat next to her.

“Wow. I haven’t seen you since you were a little one,” said Luce. “How old are you now?”

“She’s 17,” said Beth as her daughter continued texting. Marion grabbed her phone.

“Sweetie, can you stop that please? Its rude.” Juanita’s head bobbled back and forth as she spoke.

“How come it’s not rude for you, mi querida madre?” She looked at the others. “She talks on that phone all the time…even when she sits on the toilet.”

“That’s enough, Juanita.” Marion cleared her throat. “Juanita’s attending an art sleep away camp for the summer.” She patted Juanita’s head. “She fancies herself an artist. Beth and I think it’s a great hobby.”

“It’s much more than a hobby,” said Juanita looking up from her phone.

“Never mind,” said Marion. “You’re here to pay your respects to your grandmother.”

“Okay,” she said as she rose. Halfway on her way to the coffin, Juanita stopped.

“Oh, by the way,” she said turning around.  “I forgot to tell you. My roommate at camp got COVID.” Marion and Beth exchanged glances. Before Juanita could say another word, they pounced on her, dragging her back and pinning her down in one of the seats.

“Where is your mask…get me a mask,” said Marion. Beth reached in her purse and took out a blue surgical mask. Beth grabbed her arms as Marion stretched it across her face and hooked the loops to her ears. Juanita jumped up her words pulsating as though trying to break through the mask.

“What are you doing, you two locas? You didn’t let me finish. That was three weeks ago. I don’t need no mask.” She attempted to take it off. Marion held up her hand.

“No, you should keep it on,” she said. “It’s for your own good.”

“Huh. You mean for your own good. After all, I might make you sick, you might have to miss a day of your precious work.”

“Calm down, Juanita.” Beth went to touch her arm but Juanita batted her hand away.

“Sure, mia madre, don’t I always?” She rolled the mask up in her hands and placed it in her pocket. “I’m going to the little girl’s room, then I’ll be back to say goodbye to my abuela.” She lifted her index finger in the air. “And just so you know, I’m not going to college in the fall. I’m going to art school.” Juanita resumed her texting a she turned and exited the room. Marion smiled weakly at the others.

“Teenagers. She’ll calm down.”

“Sounds like she wants to go to art school,” said Torre.

“I’m already a patron of the arts with this one,” said Marion, jerking her thumb at Beth. “She’s going to college. I want her to take care of herself, make money.” Just then, a man appeared in the doorway and peered into the room.

“Oh. The priest is here,” said Luce, getting up and motioning for him to enter. “Everyone, this is Father…uh…”

“Kerala…Father Onka Kerala,” the priest said, rolling his mouth around each syllable of his name like it was a giant marble.

“Sorry, Father, I had a momentary lapse there.”

“That’s okay. It’s an Indian name,” he said nodding to the group. “Sometimes hard to remember. Please…just call me Father Onkar.”  Marion whispered to Beth.

“That doesn’t sound any easier.” Beth shushed her.

Father Onkar walked slowly to the coffin, his black cassock making whooshing sounds as it brushed against the tops of his shoes. A shock of black hair stuck out form the top of his head held in place by a noticeably greasy hair tonic. He clutched a bible to his chest like a shield. He stopped, bowed to the coffin, then turned toward the group.

“Now before I say a prayer and give a final blessing, I thought it might be comforting if any of you would first like to say a word d about your loved one.” He continued rocking back and forth. “Anyone?” he said.  Juanita appeared in the doorway and spoke as she entered the room.

“I just want to say my abuela was a great lady, always nice to me. Gave me money every time I went to see her. She knew I was saving up to see my father in Guadalahoorah, Mexico.”

“That’s …jara,” said Beth, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Guadalajara, Mexico.”

“Whatever,” shrugged Juanita. “Anyway, she was sweet and I’m gonna miss her.” She sat down and resumed texting.

“Thank you, young lady. Anyone else?” Torre raised his hand. He held it there.

“You’re not in school,” chided Marion. “You don’t have to wait to be called on.”

“Oh,” said Torre. “Okay, I just want to say that she was a good mom.” Torre sniffed hard as he reached for a handkerchief in his trouser pocket.

“Thank you. Anyone else?” asked Father Onkar. Luce, Johnny, Marion and Beth avoided his stare.  “No? Okay, then, let us pray.” Father Onkar opened his bible using a red cloth bookmark. “Father, we commend the soul of our dear sister, Elizabeth, into—”

“Mary,” shouted Luce. “Her name was Mary.” She buried her face in her hands. Father Onkar looked at his sheet of paper.

“But here it says the name is—”

“It doesn’t matter what your paper say, Father Oshkosh or whatever you name is. Her name is Mary.” Marion turned to Luce. “Were did you find this guy?”

“Knock it off, Marion.”

“No, I’m serious. Is he saying the Mass tomorrow? Better make sure he has the right address for the church. Who knows…he might show up at a synagogue.”

“I said, shut up, Marion.”

“While we’re at it, who picked out the coffin?” Marion stood up and gestured at the coffin like she was throwing something at it. “It looks like Dracula’s day bed.”

“Enough, Marion. Enough!” Luce jumped up, the chair rocking back and forth in response. “Excuse me, Father.” She turned back to Marion. “I’ve had it with you. Think you can waltz in here and take over? Yeah, I picked out the coffin because you weren’t here. Just like you weren’t here when mom was sick, or she needed a ride to the doctor, or needed her diaper changed. Too busy with your life, so much so we haven’t seen your daughter in years, you didn’t know I moved or that Torre lives in Pennsylvania. Hell, you got married never told anybody, moved to a fancy house in the Hamptons that none of us have ever seen and now you come back here and have the nerve to criticize? All I ask is that you sit there, show some respect for mom and most of all, shut up.” Johnny straightened out her chair and led a shaking Luce into it. Marion sighed.

“Chill, Luce. So we’re a little dysfunctional,” said Marion.

“You have to first be a functioning family before you can be called dysfunctional,” said Luce, her voice quavering with each word. Johnny put his arm around her. Father Onkar cleared his throat as he looked down at his bible. He looked up suddenly and with a wide grin on his face addressed the family.

“Let us say a prayer for the peaceful…,” he raised his index finger, “…peaceful…repose of Mary’s soul.”

“We all here?” Luce stood up and looked at everyone. “Okay. So’s you know. Mom’s will is going to be formally read at her lawyer’s office in a couple of weeks. Mom wanted me to read a letter she wrote, you know, so you’d have an idea what’s gonna be in it and all.” She waved the paper she held at Marion. “So, Marion. The moment you’ve been waiting here. I think you should read it.”

“Oh.” Marion retrieved a pair of reading glasses from her purse. She put them on and, taking the letter from Luce, stood in front of the coffin, facing the group. She cleared her throat as she began to read.

“If you’re reading this, I’m probably stuffed in a coffin at Baldoni’s (don’t let the cheap bastard talk you into something made out of crappy wood).” Marion looked around to make sure Mr. Baldoni wasn’t in ear shot. She continued.  “I want solid steel enveloping my ass.” Marion continued reading.

“Overall, I’d say I had a good life. Your father was a good man who died way too soon, but that couldn’t be helped. You were all pretty much good kids. Drove me crazy once in a while, but you may have noticed I had small bottles placed in strategic locations around the house. ‘Mother’s little helper,’ as Mick Jagger put it.  Anyway, since this is my last hurrah, I’m gonna tell it like it is (like we flower children used to say in the 60s after taking a toke and passing the pot along).

“Marion, Torre, Luce…I love you dearly, but I am so disappointed in you. Like so many people in this country, you claim to be a family…family values and all that. But when was the last time you spoke to each other.? Or visited each other?” Marion looked up at Luce and Torre who were both staring at the floor. “Marion, seems like you’re way too busy making money. Torre, there’s’ more to life than getting a show on HGTV (who the hell wants to watch a show called ‘My Gut Says.’ Especially one featuring your gut.)

“And Luce. Instead of organizing yourself into oblivion, why not pop out a couple of kids? It might give you and Johnny something useful to do.

“As far as my will goes, I know I’m expected to leave what I have to my family, but the three of you haven’t behaved much like one. The only one who’s acted like family is Juanita. Dear, sweet Nita.” Marion’s words actually made Juanita stop texting for almost 10 seconds. “She’s the only one who makes time to visit me and well she actually taught me how to text.”  Juanita smiled as she held up her phone.

“Just sent her one.” She read from her phone. “Miss your already, grandma. You don’t have to answer. LOL.” Marion continued reading.

“I know Marion and Beth love her and have given her a good life. But I can tell she needs more, especially from Marion. She needs a real mother, not a money-making machine in designer pants.” Marion frowned as she looked at Beth, then at Juanita. She refocused her yes on the page.

“Regarding my estate, it will be split equally among my three children: Marion, Torre and Luce. Finally, now that you’re all here, there is one thing you can do for me. I want to be buried with my cat. I know you all think that’s pretty creepy, but that’s my last wish. And by the way, I got one last question for you all. Is my cat really dead?

“Chew on that for a while. In the immortal words of Porky Pig…Duh Duhh, Duh Duhh, Duh Duhh…That’s all folks.” Marion frowned as she folded the letter in her hand.

“What cat?” asked Marion.

“Oh,” said Luce a she reached into a shopping bag next to her seat. She retrieved a small, white box tied with a gold ribbon in the shape of a cross and held it up. “Say hello to Schroeder, mom’s cat, and the one she has chosen to share eternity with.”

The family sat quietly as Mr. Baldoni opened the coffin and gently placed the cat’s ashes at her feet. Luce jumped up.

“No, Mr. Baldoni. She’d want the cat up by her arm.” Mr. Baldoni turned around and raised his hands up to his head as though shielding himself from a blow. He shrugged, then did as she asked.

“Why, so she can pet it?’ Torre grunted a laugh.

“She did seem to think it was alive.” Marion shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “What the hell was that all about anyway? I mean, it’s dead, right?” Luce sat sideways on the chair as she faced Marion.

“Funny thing about that. The cat was looking pretty sick a few weeks ago. I get up one morning and it was dead, lying next to her. I took it and buried it in the backyard. Mom was pretty out of it by then and she kept asking for it. Next thing I know, the dead cat’s in her arms.”

“How did that happen?” asked Marion.

“The crazy dog dug it up and brought it to her. He’s a retriever, that’s what he does.” They all stared blankly at her. “Retrieve.” Luce took a deep breath. “Anyway, I buried it deeper, but the dog dug it up again and brought it to mom. This happened a couple of times until I finally decided to cremate the little twit. Next time she asked for him I gave her the box.”

“Not really very sensitive there, Luce,” said Marion.

“Yeah, but it seemed to work. I swear she sat there petting the box and cooing at it like Schroeder was still there.” The group grew silent.

“But what did mom mean when she asked if her cat was really dead?” Marion stroked her chin as she stared at the coffin. Johnny leaned forward in his seat.

“I can’t help but think of that cat in the box thing.,” he said. “You know, the cat is in there but if no one actually sees it, it’s technically alive and dead at the same time.”

“Well, I saw the cat and it was definitely dead,” said Luce. “Like that Monte Python dead parrot sketch.”

“But mom saw the cat as alive,” said Beth. “And in that Monte Python thing, Michael Palin insisted the parrot was alive.”

“Yeah, but like I said, I saw that the cat was dead,” said Luce. “I mean, I buried it.”

“But the dog saw it as alive,” insisted Marion. “Because he dug it up and brought it inside.” Luce couldn’t help raising her voice.

“Then I took the cat…saw it was dead…and cremated it so the stupid dog wouldn’t keep digging it up and bringing it in the house.”

“So, if we put the cat’s ashes in the coffin, we are declaring that it is indeed dead.” Torre rubbed his fingers over his lips.

“Along with mom,” said Marion. “But we can’t see inside the coffin. Does that mean the cat…” She slapped her forehand. “Never mind. I…I still don’t know what this all means.” Juanita stopped texting suddenly and stood up. She smiled, revealing a row of white, niblet-corn teeth.

“We can’t be family if we don’t see each other now and then. When we’re out of touch, we’re like grandma’s cat. We don’t know who’s alive or dead. I’m gonna text that to grandma. She’ll like that.” Juanita sat down and began texting with a vengeance.

A deafening silence filled the room. All eyes were focused on the coffin and the picture of their mother on a pedestal next to it with her hippie clothes and granny glasses smiling like a cat who just ate a bird. 



BIO

Joe Cappello lives and writes in the picturesque desert country of Galisteo, New Mexico. His short story, “The Secret of the Smiling Rock Man,” won first place in the National Federation of Press Women’s 2022 Communication contest, short story category. A memoir, “Once Upon a Midnight” received an honorable mention in the 2022 Southwest Writers writing contest. His one act play, “Monarch,” won the Susan Hansell Drama Contest 2022.







The Best We Can

By William Cass


My parents told me about my mother’s affair, if it could be called that, when we met at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco just after I’d turned thirty.  They’d come out from Pittsburgh and were staying there for one of my father’s last business conventions before his retirement.  I’d flown down from my teaching job in Juneau, Alaska, to see them and stay with an old friend from college.

Their room was on the thirty-fourth floor.  They sat side by side in tall, elegant armchairs separated by a small table.  I stretched out against the headboard of their bed across from them.  It was about 4:30 in the afternoon, and through the big windows behind my parents, the late October light had already begun to fall over the city.

When I’d first arrived, my father had made us all vodka tonics.  We’d caught up on my brothers and sister, how my father’s keynote speech had gone the night before, and the progress on the retirement home they were building in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Then he simply said, “Your mother has a bit of news.  She’s slept with her old boyfriend from high school.”

The room was still for a long moment until my mother said evenly, “‘Slept’ is an exaggeration.  We were in the backseat of his car at a park.  It was over like that.”

She clicked her fingers.  They both looked at me blankly.

I shook my head slowly.  “I don’t know what to say.  I can’t believe it.”

“Neither could I,” my father said.  He took a long swallow from his drink and held the glass on the top of his knee. 

My mother sighed.  “It was just a ridiculous, impulsive thing.  One time.  Never before.  Never again.  I was in an emotional state.  It was when I was up there in Connecticut to move your grandpa into the convalescent hospital.”

I sat forward and blurted, “The back of his car?”

“He’d heard I was there to move Daddy’s things.  It’s a small town.  He came by the house one night.  We went for a drive.”

She shrugged.  They both continued to look at me intently.  It seemed like they were waiting for me to pass some sort of judgment.

Finally, I asked, “Do the other kids know?”

My father shook his head.  “You’re the oldest.”

I extended my gaze over their heads at the dwindling light against the tops of the city’s buildings and wondered why my mother had told him anything about it at all.

I looked back and forth at each of them and asked, “So what happens now?”

My father pursed his lips.  “I don’t know.  We don’t know.  No current plans.  The truth is…”  He shook the ice in his glass.  “The truth is I’ve ignored your mother for some time…her needs.”

I’m not sure what it was I saw on my father’s face at that moment, whether it was fear or vulnerability or something else, but I know I’d never seen it there before.  The rock-solid stoicism I’d grown to simply accept as his persona – the star athlete, the successful corporate executive, the stern family patriarch – was gone.

“We haven’t been emotionally available to each other for some time,” my mother said.

“Whatever it’s called,” my father mumbled.

I watched my mother lower her face, then turn it away from him toward the hotel room door.

I ended the awkwardness shortly after that by contriving excuses to leave.  We made vague arrangements to have brunch together the next morning before they flew home.  But before the elevator had even reached the lobby, I knew I would break those plans.  I had nothing more to ask or say to them about what they’d told me and couldn’t imagine making small talk about anything else.

~

I relocated to Seattle a couple of summers later and met the woman who would become my wife at an orientation for teachers new to the district where we were both hired.  After the wedding, we were able to buy a small, older home just up from Lake Washington on the eastside, and worked together fixing it up for the next few years until our son, Ben, was born.  No one could have prepared us for that.  He was severely disabled with a smorgasbord of developmental, physical, and neurological problems.  He spent the first six weeks after birth in the NICU where the dymsorphologist who treated him there told us that kids like Ben rarely survived more than a handful of years.  He was in and out of the hospital thereafter every few months for pneumonias and surgeries.  It was during one of those admittances when Ben was seven that my wife announced that she’d become involved with another teacher at her school.  She said they were moving together to Madison, Wisconsin, to enroll in a graduate program in art history, a subject in which I’d never known her to have any interest. 

At the time, we were sitting in a little ante-room in the med-surg wing at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital waiting for Ben’s surgeon to come let us know how the procedure to insert a feeding tube into his stomach had gone.

She said, “I’m done being a martyr.  I need to take care of myself.  I have a right to be happy.”

“But,” I stammered.  “You never said a word.  I didn’t know…never had the chance…”

She looked at me coldly.  Her eyes narrowed.  “I can’t worry about your feelings.  I can only deal with my own.”

The surgeon entered the room, still wearing his scrubs and operating cap.  He smiled and said, “Everything went well.  Everything is going to be all right.”

She nodded earnestly in that way she had when listening to someone.  It had the effect of making the speaker feel immediately connected, acknowledged, and respected.  So, the surgeon directed the rest of his comments to her.  I sat numb and didn’t hear a word he said.

After my wife left, Ben had to stay in the medically fragile center of the hospital for better than a year because the first fundoplication had gone bad right away and the doctors decided upon a very gradual and careful titration of his feeds with the new feeding tube.  He stayed on a continuous twenty-hour drip for seven weeks before they were finally able to slowly increase his intervals to greater bolus volumes.  Towards the end of that time, he had a tracheostomy to help manage his secretions and then two additional surgeries to move his testicles down their canals closer to where they would have normally been.  The customary recovery time was involved after each, so it was several more months before I could begin trying to arrange the contract home nursing needed to have him discharged.  In the end, I was able to find nursing to cover my work hours, but overnight shifts only three times a week, so had to manage the rest myself.  His care needs were round-the-clock, so I didn’t have a lot of time for much else.

~

My parents made a yearly visit my way to Seattle for a week each spring.  Over the ensuing years after that afternoon in San Francisco, nothing much changed in their relationship that I could see.  It seemed to me that they had fashioned their mutual co-existence with something between bewildered acceptance and silent resignation.  In retirement, my father’s countenance and self-reliance gradually deflated like a balloon left behind a couch, and this became exacerbated as his hearing loss worsened, even with the most technologically advanced of aids.  His golf games dwindled from four or five a week to once or twice a month, a decline that accompanied the degree to which my parents associated with friends.  More and more, their days involved long periods of time sitting in separate blue recliners in front of the television reading sections of the newspaper, while my father kept one eye on whatever sports show played and my mother shouted tidbits to him from articles that caught her fancy over the volume’s din.

Their collective general health slowly deteriorated.  After my father’s second heart attack and my mother’s first, we convinced them to move closer to one of the kids.  They finally sold their retirement home and bought a cottage in a lovely graduated assisted living community on the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon, near my sister, Beth, and her family.  That made sense because she was the youngest and still had two small children with whom my parents planned to help.  Although that assistance never materialized, Beth or her husband could take them to their medical appointments and lend a hand in managing their other affairs as needed, so it was an improved arrangement.  However, shortly after arriving, my father began waxing nostalgic for Hilton Head, claimed that we forced him to move, and bitterness began to invade the shell that quickly became his final internal retreat. 

On their last visit before my father died, my mother brought some old photographs to give me.  She said she’d chosen a batch for each of the kids because they’d otherwise just sit untouched in a box in their attic.  I looked through them that first morning as we ate breakfast together at my dining room table.  It was already warm, so I had the French doors to the porch open.  Ben sat in his wheelchair in the doorway where he could feel the sunlight across his lap and squawk when he heard the birds.

The order and arrangement of the photos seemed to be completely half hazard.  There were some of my parents as far back as their days together at the University of Connecticut and then snippets of various family members – mostly different combinations of my four siblings and me, and later of our own families – over the years at holidays, vacations, and special occasions.  Because they were so scattered, I found myself arranging them chronologically and, in so doing, watching us all grow and age in rapid succession.

I laid two photographs of my parents that struck me side by side on the table. They were both engrossed in their newspapers and didn’t even glance over.  One snapshot was black and white from their honeymoon.  My father had his arm around my mother, squinting with one eye into the sun behind the camera.  They were leaning against a railing in front of a waterfall: handsome, robust, their serene expressions full of confidence and promise. 

The second couldn’t have been taken too long beforehand.  In it, they sat side by side at the little wicker table on their screened-in back porch in Hilton Head picking crab from shells in a bowl.  It must have been among their last crabbing outings there, which was one of their only shared pastimes.  They’d walk down under the bridge below the lagoon behind their house, and my mother would toss a chicken neck tied to a eight-foot string out into the brackish shallows at low tide.  When a blue shell crab approached and began to follow the bait, she would slowly recoil the string towards the bank where my father waited with a long-handled net to try to snatch it up and drop it in a plastic bucket.  On a good day, they could coax seven or eight crabs into the bucket in a couple of hours.  I knew that it reminded them fondly, as it did me, of our crabbing and clamming excursions years before on the Connecticut shore or Cape Cod.  In the picture, my father wore a startled expression and my mother grinned with her fingertips on his knee.

Somewhere in between those two photographs, they’d raised a family, our family, and tasted whatever satisfactions and disappointments life had in store for them. 

~

Two things happened when Ben turned twelve that were significant.  The first occurred on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the late fall.  I took him to the IMAX theater at the planetarium to see a new movie that had opened about the Annipurna Sanctuary in Nepal where I’d trekked when I was younger.  The theater had a small disabled seating section off to the side for wheelchairs with a couple of folding chairs for companions.  A woman about my age already occupied one of the chairs.  She was pretty.  In the wheelchair next to her, a man was tilted back ready for viewing.  His tongue lolled out of the side of the mouth.  She wiped the drool off his chin with a blue paisley bandana that was tucked into the collar of his shirt.

I arranged Ben in a similar fashion and sat down in the chair next to her.  When I glanced over, she was smiling gently at me.

“I’m Alice,” she said.  “This is my husband, Paul.”

I shook her hand, introduced Ben and myself, and we talked a bit before the show started.  She asked me about Ben’s prognosis.          

I said, “Undiagnosed genetic syndrome.”

“From birth then?”

I nodded.  “Paul?”

She sighed.  “Car accident a year and a half ago.  We were coming home from our daughter’s high school graduation.”

I swallowed and watched her look at him, then take his hand in his lap.

After the movie, she asked if I’d like to get coffee, and that started us doing things together with Ben and Paul every couple of months.  It was nice to spend time with a person with whom I shared similar circumstances.  Of course, that was as far as it could go.

The second thing was that, for the first time in his life, Ben hugged me back.  It may well have been just an unintentional reflex of some kind because it had never happened before and hasn’t since.  But that doesn’t matter…for a handful of seconds, it did.

~

Ben’s mom asked to see him again not too long ago, eleven years after she left.

As far as I know, she never married her lover, but they’d stayed together, and she called when they were passing through the area.  They drove over, but he stayed in the car, parked down the street.  I don’t know how to describe the way I felt when I answered the door – a cacophony of emotions, I guess, followed by emptiness.  Much as they had with me, the years had taken their toll on her.  She held herself with a cordial and dignified removal, but I saw something in her eyes that told me she was still the girl I’d married.

I brought her into Ben’s room where he was propped up in his bed in the middle of a feed. 

“Benny-boy,” she whispered and kissed his forehead.  He looked past her at whatever it was that he always gazed at. She rearranged and propped the pillows around

him, and I felt the old, painful, instinctive twinge of never doing things well enough for her.

She didn’t ask, but I gave her a summary of how Ben had been doing while we both looked at him and she stroked his hair.  Then we were silent.  I wondered what more it was that we could really talk about.  The motor on his feeding pump made its soft whee-whir.

“I’ll give you some time with him,” I said and left the room.

I busied myself in the kitchen, unloaded the dishwasher, rinsed out the coffee carafe, threw out the grounds.  Then I went into the sunroom, sat on the couch, and tried to grade some papers.  At one point, I thought I heard her reading aloud to him from one of the picture books on his shelves.  It may have been a book she bought for him; it probably was.  After a while, I was sure that I heard her singing softly to him a lullaby that had been a regular one for them when he was an infant.

I looked out the window at the picket fence we’d built together just after we bought the house and before Ben was born.  The climbing roses we’d planted on either side of the gate had grown over the arbor into a tangle of red bursts and green foliage that nodded now in the small breeze and sunlight.

Perhaps ten minutes more passed before she came to the front door, gave me one of her familiar, sad smiles, and said, “Thank you.”

I watched her go down the steps, through the gate, and up the sidewalk to where the car was parked under a tree.  I could just make out his figure behind the wheel in the

shadows.  Ben’s pump began to beep, signifying that his feed cycle had finished, and I went to turn it off.

~

Not long thereafter, my mother was diagnosed with a relatively mild case of Alzheimer’s disease.  She was about to turn seventy-six and had become increasingly forgetful the past few years, so we weren’t surprised.  Neither was she, though she was frightened by how debilitating the disease had become at the end of her own father’s life.  Her neurologist put her on a medication that he said might slow the process and directed her to be as active mentally, socially, and physically as possible.  She’d moved into an apartment in the lodge after my father’s death and already had a fair amount of acquaintances there.  With the diagnosis, she increased her canasta games to twice a week and began to take more meals in the dining hall with other residents.  She also joined an exercise class and got a subscription to a monthly word search magazine.  So, she did all right.

She still came here for her most recent visit.  Only a short, direct flight was involved, so there weren’t any travel problems.  But during our last phone conversation, my sister had expressed some new concerns about the dangers of her being on her own much longer.  Beth said that not too long before, she’d found a stove burner left on overnight when she went over to the apartment.  There was another recent occasion when they’d had to take her to the ER after she’d confused some of the medications she’d taken.  We both wanted her to maintain as much dignity and independence as possible, but Beth was wondering if the time wasn’t approaching when she’d need to move upstairs into skilled nursing, especially in light of her own family’s likely move to another state because of a pending work transfer for her husband.  Beth asked if I could talk to her about it; I said I would.

After we got home from the airport and settled, she did appear to me a little more fitful, more methodical.  Maintaining her daily routines seemed especially critical to her:

counting out her pills in the morning, taking care of her ilioscopy bag and all that entailed, fixing her tea and crustless toast for breakfast, pouring endlessly over the

newspaper, watching her afternoon talk shows on television.  She shuffled everywhere, and complained more about how she was always cold, how she couldn’t keep any weight on, about the blue veins in her legs and her sleeping troubles.  The glass rarely seemed half-full.

That first day, we walked up the street with Ben to a little café she’d always liked for lunch.  After our meals arrived, she told the waitress that her soup wasn’t hot enough and sent it back to be reheated.  She commented that the potato salad was all right, but not as flavorful as her own.

I finally said, “Tell me something good, Mom.  Something good that’s going on with you.”

“Well,” she said.  She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose before replacing them.  I could see that she was trying not to smile.  “Warren Marshall has been calling.”

“What’s that?” I vaguely remembered the name, but couldn’t place it.

“Warren.  My high school boyfriend.”

I thought of that afternoon in the St. Francis Hotel.  I said, “How? When?”

 “Well, he phoned me after he heard your father had died.  And he’s called several times since.  Just to check on me, he says.  We don’t talk about much.  I don’t think his marriage is a very happy one.  I’m not sure if he’s even married anymore.”

She took a sip of soup, it seemed to me, to hide the sparkle in her eyes.  The spoon trembled a bit in her hand.  I sat back and shook my head.  Who knew how many years she had left?  I thought about how much of life hinged on those things we could control and those things we couldn’t.  I thought about how we go about trying to fashion our truest selves.  I thought about how we all just do the best we can.

I heard myself say, “Why don’t you find out?”

She shrugged.  She looked out the window and set her spoon down.  “The last time he called, he talked about taking a trip out this way.  He has a grandson who goes to college in Portland.  Said he might rent a car and drive down to Bend.”

When she looked back at me, her lips were trembling a little, too, her eyes full of hope and fear and uncertainty.  She looked so small and frail.  In that moment, I knew there was no need for the conversation about skilled nursing; when the time came for that, I’d move her up to live with me.  I reached over and put my hand on top of hers.  I smiled, and she made a thin attempt to do the same.

After a while, she looked over my shoulder and said, “This is a nice place.  It doesn’t look new.  We should have come here before.”

I squeezed her hand and said, “You’re right, Mom.  We should have.”

Originally appeared in Conium Review (2013)



BIO

William Cass has had over 290 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as decemberBriar Cliff Review, and Zone 3.  He won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. A nominee for both Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net anthologies, he has also received five Pushcart Prize nominations. His first short story collection, Something Like Hope & Other Stories, was published by Wising Up Press in 2020, and a second collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, was recently released by the same press. He lives in San Diego, California.







A Letter from the Batcave

By Charles Joseph Albert


Dear Alfred:

I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. But you know how I said things were getting dicier with Bruce? Well, it’s gotten worse. I think it’s depression. He never goes out any more. Not even in the Batmobile, which would be so easy—it pretty much just drives itself, you know. 

I started noticing this about two months ago. It started with a Bat Signal one night. (You know they quit shining a spotlight, right? The alerts come through on the Bat Watch, now.) We suit up and fly the Bat Copter to an address we’d been texted, and sure enough, there’s Joker in the middle of a robbery. Or his henchmen are—they’ve blown a hole in the bank wall, and they’re loading bags of money into a Transit Rideshare van. Joker’s only directing. He’s got Parkinson’s pretty bad these days, you know. Says it’s our fault, from all the times he’s taken a punch to the head. Did you know there’s even a lawsuit?

But let me stay focused. When we get there, the henchmen all start shooting at us, of course, and I run up and clobber them through the usual hail of bullets. That part’s pretty standard and you’ve seen me do it a thousand times. I’m by myself still—Bruce has gone back to the Bat Copter make sure he locked the door. He catches up with me in a minute, which is fine—I mean, it’s not a problem. I’m wearing bullet-proof armor and I have the new skeleto-suit anyway. I can do the whole thing solo. It’s actually easier without him. 

Which I think is part of the problem. I mean, he’s fifty-three. He’s slowed down a lot. And he forgets stuff. I know that kind of bugs him.

Anyway, we knock out the henchmen, and Bruce goes over to get Joker, gets the Bat Cuffs out and all, and they’re doing that repartee thing they do, and Bruce is like, “I’m going to feel these bruises tomorrow,” and Joker’s all, “You know what kind of lousy medical care there is in jail?”

Out from the hole in the bank’s wall comes this teenager. All face paint, purple suit, the whole bit. Bruce and I are like, “Wait, what?” And Joker’s like, “Dudes, meet my son Jack. Jack of Spades.”

Well, I’m still cuffing henchmen, but I’m keeping an eye on this, right? Cause, I mean, the Jack dude is mean-looking. Scrawny, but you could see something off in his eyes. Also, he’s moving jerky. Stumbles on his way through the hole, and when he jumps toward Bruce he shoots way past him. Which means he’s got a skeleto-suit, too. You can tell when someone is wearing one, ‘cause when they walk, they’re all bouncing around like they’re in reduced gravity. Super hard to control, too. And this Jack dude still hadn’t gotten the full hang of it, right? I mean, Bruce should take him, easy. Easily, I mean.

But Bruce isn’t quick enough. Jack tries again, and this time he gets a good right cross to Bruce’s jaw, and down he goes. I make a move to go help, but Bruce shoots me this awful look—it’s pure fury, Alfred. Hatred, almost. I’m trying to not take it personally, because he doesn’t want some younger guy taking down the kid who beat him to the punch. Literally.

So I back off. Let him redeem himself. Only that’s when Joker lifts up one of his crutches, and it’s an RPG. And he points it right at Bruce’s head.

I swear, if you could have seen the expression on Bruce’s face (I mean in his eyes, ‘cause that’s all you can see, right?) it would have just broken your heart. I mean, we’re used to Bruce being it, you know? You and me, we were his crew, and he was Top Dog. But this look in his eyes are anything but Top Dog. It’s utter terror. Like, he is not in control. He’s more like someone who’s about to lose his shorts. And also sad, in a way, too. You know? Sad, like, shoot, I should have disarmed Joker first. I mean, Cardinal Rule, right? Disarm the villain… then repartee. 

Bruce starts to react, but Joker has the drop on him, you know? So Bruce has, like, no hope.

Except I’ve already popped off a shot with the Batarang, knocking Joker’s RPG sideways. His shot goes wide, and instead of blowing Bruce’s head off, all that happens is a burn on his lips from the rocket fire going past. His mask protects the rest.

Well, I take out Jack, which is a piece of cake—the kid doesn’t know the first thing about real fighting. And he has the disadvantage of Joker’s physique—kind of squirrely. Next I have Joker disarmed and cuffed. So everything’s wrapped up neatly and I’m trying to usher Bruce back to the chopper.

But he shrugs my hand off of his shoulder, like, don’t touch me! 

OK, I figure, he just got burned, and maybe he’s a bit sensitive about forgetting to disarm Joker. So I back off. Again. 

But then I make the mistake of heading for the driver’s seat of the copter. Bruce gets all, “What’s the matter? Don’t think I remember how to fly this thing?” And there’s that look in his eye again. 

I shrug and walk back around to the passenger seat, and I can see that he’s in pain from the burn, but he’s obviously trying to make a point here, so I just pretend I don’t notice. And we head home. 

At the wrong altitude. 

We’re flying to Wayne Manor from the west, which means we need to be at 1500 feet, not 1000 feet. The thousands are for aircraft coming in from a north-south axis. Five hundreds are for east-west. And I’m starting to freak, right? I’m imagining some kind of mid-air collision, instant death in a fireball, like what happened to that guy, Hawkeye. Get your elevation wrong, you’re screwed. 

I can see the lights from an incoming craft, and I’m bugging. But how to bring it to Bruce’s attention? I mean, A, he’s in a really foul mood. And B, he just got beat to the punch by some Joker-in-training-pants.

The plane is heading straight for us, but there’s still time to maneuver. So I blurt out, “Hey, Bruce, the altitude—” 

And then, Whoosh

The Bat Copter goes into a spiral dive, and it’s only thanks to Bruce’s spectacular flying skills that we stabilize. You might think he’d be proud of himself for saving our cans, but now he’s all pissed that he was flying the wrong altitude. And he knows I know it, too. And he’s all, “Goddamn it, Dick, why didn’t you say something earlier? Could have fucking lost our shit right there!”

You know things have gone south when Batman swears.

“Trying not to piss you off,” I grunt. 

Boy, does that clam him up. The rest of that flight home is more awkward than a Justice League/Avengers joint picnic.

He goes straight to the shower when we got home. Doesn’t say another word to me. Or to Mr. Mitzumi, who was waiting with a hot sake and a terrycloth robe. (He passes on his regards, by the way.)

That’s where we’ve been, ever since. I handle the next three calls we get by myself. I do it my way, too, like I’ve always been saying I would: I bring the Bat Bots and I set up a perimeter using Siri and Alexa. 

I kept thinking maybe Bruce just needed some time off, or something. But each time I come back from a call, he’s even deeper in his funk. He’s already drunk through half of the Bat Cellar, and he’s binge-watching COPS. I can hear him late into the night, throwing popcorn at the detectives and calling them names.

The other day he happens to overhear a call I didn’t even go to, I just sent the Bat Bots without me. I was watching them on the monitors, and he leans over my shoulder and goes, “Holy Drone Strike, Robin! Did I not teach you anything?” 

And I try not to take offense, so instead I go, “Check it, B-Man! I just nabbed a purse-snatcher remotely!” 

And he goes, “That isn’t real crime fighting. You need a human there, not a machine!” And he staggers off. Trips on a stalactite on his way back to the Bat recliner. 

I’m kind of at my wit’s end, Alfred. If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears. I can’t imagine leaving Bruce after all he’s done for me, but things are getting real. For the past week, he hasn’t even gotten out of his Bat Underwear. And if he catches me looking at him, he gets all, “What’s the matter, junior? Don’t you have some TikToks to watch?”

Hey, maybe we can ask Clark to invite him to the Fortress of Solitude. Ever since he moved it to Florida, Bruce has sounded more interested in going to visit. 

I’m also thinking about filling out that application on the Avenger’s page. I know, I know—they’re Marvel, and we’re DC. But guys have crossed over before. Look at Hawkman. Or Captain Marvel. And yes, I don’t have any mutant powers. But I hear they’re still trying to fill Iron Man’s suit. 

Yours as ever,

Richard



BIO

Charles Joseph Albert is a metallurgist in the Bay Area and the author of 13 books of poetry and fiction. His latest is An IQ of 84: A Gaijin Chronicle. His stories and poems have appeared around the internet, most recently in Short Edition and Another Chicago Magazine.







Six Steps to Good Sleep

by Ellie May Mandell



Gideon read an article: children who were disadvantaged within the family have chronic and serious health troubles in later life. Great, she thought, something new to worry about. Her mother, who had been of all things a family therapist, had surely read similar articles and maybe even written some. In moments of weakness, middle-aged Gideon imagined her wealthy mother might bequeath her some money in a final act of redemption. Must beat that down, she told herself. Must prepare myself for one last punch in the face. Gideon’s favorite movie line was by Ramsey Bolton in Game of Thrones, “If you think this story has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” The maladies listed in the article and the prospect of disinheritance pressed on her.

Gideon’s father hit her. Too hard, too often, and for invented reasons, Gideon thought then and still, fifty years later. Had he resented the moral injury the child inflicted on his wife? Gideon had poor stamina and became startled at sudden noises. Maybe she offended him as an imperfect creation. Or, the darkest explanation, he did it because he wanted to and saw she was alone in the world. When grownup Gideon woke at night, memories of his habit and her mother’s blankness prevented her from sleeping. Probably lack of sleep was the root cause of the health troubles of all of those least-favorite children, she thought. She decided to write an article herself, in the form of a list: “Six Steps to Good Sleep.”


Step One: Read ten books and forty articles about how to get better sleep. Compile a list of the one hundred or so recommendations. Add “Eliminate the following unacknowledged neuro-disruptors: smoked foods, non-organic foods, medications, and gluten.” Implement all.

When Gideon grew breasts, her father stopped hitting her. Instead, he scratched or jiggled his penis and balls while wearing running shorts near her and he let his towel drop when leaving the bathroom after a shower. He told jokes, any one of which would have cost him his job at the university in a later time. When she was fifteen, Gideon worked in a sandwich shop. One evening she sat in the car of a boy who had given her a ride home and smooched with him for a while. The next day her father told her she had to move out of the family home and into the garage apartment, a dingy and foul-smelling cash cow he usually rented to his female graduate assistants. “Your mother and I agree that you are the kind of person whose fundamental arrogance is damaging to their family,” he said. The apartment gave Gideon a headache. After three nights of sleeping badly from the moldering carpets and cheap furnishings and waiting for her older sister, Ruth, or her mother to visit her, she left her hometown on a Greyhound bus and landed, down but not out, in a small town in western Massachusetts.

Now, grownup Gideon and her husband of three decades lived in the same small town. Their house, which her husband had inherited, sat high on its foundation among smaller houses. It had a western extension with the kitchen on the first floor and, on the second, a bedroom with windows on three sides. Too big of a view, Gideon thought, especially west to the Berkshire foothills. She kept the blinds closed except to the north, where a shaggy privet hedge and a rootbound maple formed a comforting shield.

The west wing bedroom had a bed next to the north-facing window, a side table nearby, and a chair for lounging at the far side of the room. On this morning in early April, Gideon lay face up with her heels on the windowsill and her palms open, in an attitude of acceptance. She waited for the truth to come to her.


Step Two: Consider where, within the objects and surfaces that you eat, touch, or breathe near, there might be any of the three hundred thousand industrial chemicals whose effects on human health, in isolation or in combination, have never been tested or measured. How can these chemicals not disrupt your neurology and therefore your sleep? Eliminate suspicious exposures. This will require major lifestyle adjustments.

That mothers love their offspring equally is only one lie of many told to children to make them behave in ways supporting a civil society, Gideon thought. When the lies grow to be too huge or too numerous, society cracks open and reveals its inner corruption. A sort of reckoning was coming regarding the biggest lie, a lie of omission, as it happened. This lie was amorphous, difficult to describe since its primary components didn’t have a proper vocabulary. The lie had to do with the true costs of the three hundred thousand, as Gideon thought of them, although of course every day more were created, churned out through computer aided design and tweaks to existing ones.

Gideon had unusual insight into these insufficiently-regulated catalysts of profit. Her childhood lack of physical wellness had calcified, through a series of mysterious and violent health upsets, each one requiring years of imperfect recovery, into heightened sensitivity to the toxins around her. Even now, with her health on a slow upswing, she often felt inexplicably low and she avoided leaving her house. When she considered the faulty newborns, compromised young people, and cancer-ridden adults around her, Gideon knew she was witnessing a slow-motion cracking open and revealing of the hidden costs and scale of this one big lie. Her illness was the harbinger of a coming collapse. Her life exemplified, in accelerated and exaggerated form, what was happening to everyone else, only they didn’t know it.

Gideon began to lie on the west wing bed for a few hours every day, looking at the sky and composing her listicle in her head. One day there was a tiny crusty turd on the windowsill where she intended to rest her feet. She dislodged and disposed of it with a damp piece of toilet paper, then washed her hands carefully. So the house did have a bat this year, she thought. She leaned her elbows on the windowsill for a while, watching the birds in the yard, then lay down again.

A few years earlier, Gideon had pulled back the blankets to get into bed and a bat lay snuggled on her pillow. “When did you last wash your hair,” her husband said in more of an accusation than a question. “She must enjoy your musky odor.” To keep things simple, the two of them assigned each new bat a random gender. Another time, one of the tiny brown cooties visited Gideon in her home office daily for several weeks. Of all the rooms in the house he could have explored, he chose the one where she was sitting, each day flying at her face first, then making repeated circuits of the room as she cooed at him. “You are just adorable,” she said over and over. “Come visit me any time.”

One winter evening Gideon and her husband were watching a movie in one of the third-floor bedrooms. From the attic above came the sounds of a party or maybe a fracas. At least two but maybe many soft bodies scrabbled and flopped toward each other and then away again, bound to the attic floor for once rather than to its roofbeams. Back and forth, shuffling and scratching. Then a pause, then more shuffling and scratching. Gideon turned off the movie and tried to discern the mood and motivations of the creatures. They seemed to be dragging each other back and forth. She imagined or maybe she actually heard through the ceiling the multilayered squeaks of their conversation.

“Don’t flinch when they fly at you,” she told her husband after yet another evening of sweet-talking a bat into leaving the house through an open window. “They know exactly where you are, so there is no way they’ll hit you. They just want to look into your face.”

“Easier said than done and you’d better stop playing with them,” her husband said. “You’ll get a nip and we’ll have to take you to the ‘mergency for a round of rabies shots.” “I would never reach for them and they have no reason to touch me,” she said.


Step Three: It might take as long as ten years for your neurology to fully manifest the results of Steps One and Two. Stick with it.

I know you can change life’s trappings, Gideon thought, lying on her back again under the high ceilings of the west wing bedroom. But can I stop having the same dreams? Traveling with difficulty across an unfamiliar urban landscape, or in a nighttime city I knew long ago, but that is now altered so the streets don’t go where they should and the busses don’t come. Or a bus arrives but I fumble with change so I can’t get on. Finally arriving at my home but it has become derelict. When Gideon told her husband about the dreams, he said it was only her brain offloading garbage, but Gideon knew the dreams were witness marks, echoes of long-ago family sorrows. I want to wake up in the morning with a sense of contentment, she thought. I want to have dreams where I am sitting in a beautiful and expansive room, watching filtered sunlight play on a warm pastel wall. This is the change I want for myself.

Gideon’s maternal grandmother, Florence, had changed her own life in her fifties. Gideon, looking at the high ceiling of the sky through the new buds on the maple tree, older than the house, opened herself to Florence’s voice. She imagined Florence telling her story, beginning with the death of Gideon’s grandfather in the early 1940s.

#

My husband died in the war and I sought consolation. I loved seeing myself reflected in mirrors inside fancy restaurants and in shop windows. I began buying colorful tweeded suits and dresses, and shoes made in Italy out of soft leather. I wore the clothing and shoes on outings to buy more of the clothing and the shoes, and I had lunch or dinner in sparkly places with other women who bought and wore these things. I kept myself trim and fit and put myself into a happy sleep each night with memories of my own tidy ankle and slender calf, looking like a soft-focus movie shot. Silk hosiery, fragrant and rubbing softly against the silk crepe lining of a suit skirt, where the lining was sewn to the hem tape with tiny stiches, and the hem tape was sewn to the tweed in yet more tiny stitches. The shoes that were themselves as soft as silk.

After my parents died, I inherited my mother’s button collection. I was thrilled to unwrap the strings of finely-wrought multiples, each cluster a testament to my own virtue. There were cardboard and cloth tapestries of sewn-on buttons, called collector’s cards, like cathedral windows but telling of domesticity and family rather than the turmoil of the biblical stories.

I began searching for buttons in antique shops and at auctions. When I found special buttons, I felt that the craftspeople and merchants of the past had saved them for me, who deserved them more than other buyers because I alone could discern the stories they told of thrift, endeavor, industry, and the embrace of a personal and tightly-held beauty. I began to see how one or another shipment of buttons from Paris made its way to the communities throughout my state. I savored the scraps of cloth and the twisted threads attached to used buttons as well as the images and typefaces on the cards of unused sets. I discerned, in the notations on the cardstock of the collector’s cards, the intertwined lives of the women who saved them and traded them. I saved and traded them myself, to complete certain sets, or to make up cards that reached for what I felt was a true homage to their spirit. Buttons express the ideals of their time and the amasser of buttons internalizes these ideals. I was changed by the hours and years I spent with them.

At first, I had doubts about how long these joys would last in my heart. But as the years turned into decades, I knew that wearing the beautiful clothes and buying and sorting buttons could bring me a lifetime of happiness. Then, when I was in my early fifties, something changed in me. I no longer felt I was building something. I felt I was chasing something. I wrapped the suits and the dresses in tissue paper and packed them away. I stuffed sachets of cedar shavings into the toes of the Italian shoes and stacked their boxes high in the backs of my closets. I took a class in oil painting at a nearby community college.

#

During her late teens and into her twenties, Gideon tried to repair the relationship with her family. Her father agreed to send her the amounts her university charged for tuition, room, and board, so she went to college. She made up the difference between what her father sent and her actual expenses by working parttime during the school year and fulltime plus during the summers. She traveled to her hometown twice a year when Ruth was also visiting, staying in a motel rather than at her parents’ home.

One year, while she visited with her parents and Ruth on Christmas Day, her father picked a fight with her over a box of family snapshots, worked himself into a foaming rage, and accused her of theft. As Gideon fled the house, Ruth said she would come by Gideon’s motel. Gideon waited for Ruth, reluctant to leave the motel in case she ran into her father on the street or missed Ruth’s visit. The following evening, Ruth came to Gideon’s motel room with a high school friend in tow, both of them dressed for a party. Ruth asked Gideon if she could borrow her diaphragm for a couple of days. Gideon had become increasingly ill-feeling from the stale air in the motel room. As the three young women stood in the depressing room, Gideon understood that she and Ruth were fundamentally different. Ruth, whose mother loved her, could afford to move through the world heedlessly. There was room for her to be whoever she wanted to be. Gideon’s world was precarious. Forces within it troped toward chaos and loss. Gideon turned Ruth down, unable to conceptualize her diaphragm being used by someone else’s body. Ruth told Gideon repeatedly with minor variations, more loudly each time, that she Gideon was the kind of person who was a real asshole.


Step Four: To reduce agita, learn not to care how you appear to others and don’t look at yourself in the mirror. When pressing your naked body against your loved one, inhale deeply and then exhale through the column of warm joy that your torso has become.

After the disastrous and final Christmas visit, Gideon’s mother wrote her occasional cards with news about her garden plantings or her work. These cards, in their imagery and what hints at provenance Gideon could discern from the printing on the backs, suggested travel to European museums and gift shops. Gideon was unable to stop herself from opening them because in each one she hoped to find a declaration of true regard. Every few years she came across a little pile of the cards and threw them away.

One day Gideon’s mother telephoned to say that Florence had died. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” Gideon’s mother said, after wondering out loud why she and Gideon weren’t close. “Some few, like you, see the world only in black and white. Most, like me, see shades of gray.” Gideon, surprised, said that they hadn’t spent time together in many years. “Are you criticizing my life decisions?” her mother seemed genuinely perplexed. The two women spoke past each other and interrupted each other, both of them confused and miserable. Gideon’s mother seemed to be talking to a character in a play. Mercifully, the flow of notecards ended after this telephone call. Gideon never talked to or saw her mother again.

Several months after Florence died, Ruth called. They had sold the contents of Florence’s house, including her closets full of clothing and her various collections, for a single sum to an antique dealer. Items deemed not valuable, including many, many boxes of what Ruth called crap buttons, they had put on the curb on trash day. Florence had made a practice of giving away her finished oil paintings to libraries, municipal buildings, hospitals, and other non-profits throughout her region, so there weren’t stacks and stacks of art to dispose of. Ruth didn’t quantify Florence’s wealth, which, she did say, had grown during her lifetime.

“I wish you hadn’t argued with Mom,” Ruth said. “She’s very upset. Her mother just died. You are the kind of person who is very inconsiderate when times are hard for other people.” Ruth’s tone became harsh, as though she was distancing herself according to a plan she had made before the call. Gideon understood that she was about to lose something that she very much wanted to keep. In the crevasse at her feet, she saw that Ruth was ready to be rid of her.

A few years after moving to the big house, Gideon started buying buttons herself, on eBay. It calmed her to search for them and it calmed her to clean and sort them. Her favorite era was from about 1880 to about 1940, during which some portion of society’s collective joy and delight had been channeled into the design and production of buttons. The Industrial Revolution had provided the initial means for experimentation with new materials and techniques, and a creative impulse, perhaps even a mania, had settled on buttons as an expression of aspiration, culture, and technology. Of course there were lovely and interesting buttons from before 1880 or after 1940, but for these sixty years the sheer volume and exuberance of disparate types, designs, materials and themes made for a golden age. They must have been over-produced, or perhaps suppliers were responding even then to the hoarding instincts of their customers, because vast quantities were still available, many unused, on the eBay button markets.

Now, Gideon and her husband had been living in the big house for about ten years. Each spring Gideon chose one of the large rooms, then spent the fair weather detailing the woodwork, restoring the sash windows, and painting in a light and cheery color. How can I free myself from the burden of my feelings for those people, she asked herself while scrubbing ancient grime from lead-painted window sills and scraping smears from wavy panes of glass. Once a duckling has been imprinted, can they ever love anyone else properly?

Gideon had developed the ability to discern from the overall texture in the grainy eBay photographs whether or not a particular lot contained buttons from manufacturers who had truly tried to make them as delightful as they could. She wondered if her grandmother’s collection, which she had never seen, was swirling through the eBay listings. Maybe she had unknowingly acquired some of Florence’s buttons already. Perhaps the boxes discarded in front of Florence’s house had been salvaged and some of the buttons inside had appeared in the mixed lots Gideon tended to bid on. She didn’t buy the more refined and expensive individual buttons but often acquired highly-crafted ones among her rough and tumble batches. When she died, all of her own buttons would enter the swirling stream again, the most valuable picked out for individual resale, the rest photographed in loose piles for small money.

Gideon came to intuit that most collectible buttons had not been produced as practical objects. There was such excess, both flowing through the marketplace and temporarily settled in the homes of middle-aged women such as herself and Florence. So many were delicate, or unlaunderable, or both. Instead, they were an expression of animal craving for small and inherently useless objects of beauty and joy. Having lost her original tribe except for a faint connection to her sister, she felt a shadow of kinship with other button fanciers, whom she only knew through the bidding wars.

“I can feel my heart expanding to include all the new batches I get in,” she said to her husband as they lay in bed together one morning. “I can’t explain it.” Her husband laughed at her. Gideon reached and cupped his quiet fruits, feeling their gentle weight. “These are going to make me happy soon,” she said. The soft and discretely hairy mass began twitching in her hand.


Step Five: If you have chronic bad sleep, you are a wounded animal. The world is not kind to damaged creatures. Develop the habits of a careful person and stay home as much as you can.

Gideon decided to make the rest of the warm weather a repeating cycle: check the button markets, lie in the west wing or look out its north window, play with buttons, get a good night’s sleep. No painting this year. Maybe if she rested deeply for long enough, she thought, she could find a way to cast off her sorrows.

Gideon’s thoughts kept returning to the one family member she sort-of still had. When they were both young, Ruth used to hit her sometimes. Fair play to Ruth for the way she acted toward me, Gideon thought. It was every elder sister’s job to treat the younger like a little shit. But maybe not into adulthood, as a touchstone affirming your own state of grace. Gideon in turn watched as Ruth’s two marriages imploded, seemingly from a shortfall of practical empathy. She came to understand that their parents’ treatment of herself had taught Ruth, by example, the negligible value of day-to-day kindness.

“Thank you for your last letter and for the ones before that,” Ruth wrote on a postcard when they were both in their late thirties. Ruth was cagey about family news in written correspondence and during the sisters’ occasional visit together, but Gideon found enough clues to piece together their mother’s story. After Florence’s death, Ruth and Gideon’s mother had changed her own life in ways she must have been waiting years to implement, so immediate was the transformation. She gave her ill-tempered husband a large chunk of Florence’s cash to mollify him. She subsidized Ruth’s expenses so both of them could maintain flexible and lightly-scheduled careers. She embarked, with Ruth, on decades of foreign travel and the shopping that makes foreign travel extra-special. One of Ruth’s postcards was from a wildlife refuge in Brazil that led boat tours to see the great macaws in their natural habitat. Another was from a vineyard in the South of France offering summer cooking courses. Over the decades Gideon got a handful of snapshots of happy, happy, happy Ruth with scenic backgrounds and dressed in expensive hiking or skiing or dining outfits, looking at the photographer who was her lifelong and best friend. Like Florence had and like Gideon was trying to do, Gideon’s mother had designed and executed her own rebirth after a long period of quiescence.

I never begat a child but at least I never wished my child gone, thought Gideon. Her uterus was dormant, now a shriveled plum only to be watched in case it metastasized and tried to kill her. It isn’t death I’m worried about so much as illness, she thought. Fuck death. Serious illness is the real bastard. Was there any way to find out if it was her own ill health that had concentrated her family’s disregard? Perhaps Gideon had had an early illness that severed her mother’s attachment to her. Her father, who for all of his self-centered posturing and testiness sometimes told a relevant truth, surely knew what had happened. Were there any of his words, deciphered and recast, that explained her loss of her mother’s affection? If only I could be young again and pay more attention this time, Gideon thought. I could discern their flaws and steel myself against future disappointments. I could understand my illness from the beginning and prevent its escalation. Maybe they foresaw my understanding of their failings and that is why they were so desperate to be rid of me.


The Sixth and Final Step to Good Sleep: Resolve the mysteries and losses of your past. Anticipate and mitigate those to come.

In June the first of the monarch butterflies arrived in the yard. Gideon, checking the markets, came across the leavings of a once-mighty collection. Like the bleached and scattered skeleton pieces of a great whale, the debris told a story only recognizable from afar by a practiced eye. She peered into the grainy photographs. There were piles of collector’s cards with notes on materials, theme, or era, cards from which the best buttons had already been harvested. There were small plastic bags of loose buttons. There was a heap of buttons that needed cleaning. There was a rubber-banded bundle of small tan or logoed envelopes of spare buttons for special articles of clothing. Gideon thought she recognized Florence’s tidy cursive on the top envelope, “brown wool suit, $195, 1962.” She took note of the seller’s location and stared for a long time at the photograph that included the sharpest image of the rubber-banded bundle.

By the time Gideon found the listing, its simple bulk had already attracted a dozen watchers. The auction was scheduled to run at night in a time zone a few hours later than hers, so Gideon planned to stay up late to monitor the bidding. She told her husband she had become convinced of the listing’s provenance. “I can’t tell if they’re left over from the nice ones sold to the antique dealer or if they came from the boxes that were put on the curb, but it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Dig deep,” he said. “You know what to do. Don’t let them get away.”

When the large box arrived, Gideon rummaged for the bundle of spare buttons and took it into the west wing. She hoped her grandmother had notated most of the paper packets, and she had. Gideon pried the little flaps open and shook the buttons out. Some were shell, or plastic imitating horn. She placed these aside. The rest were made from garment remnants stretched over tiny metal or wooden molds and then crimped closed in the back. The colors of the self-fabric buttons reminded her of paintings by Claude Monet.

Gideon picked up a tweed button in shades of pink and fuchsia with speckles of blue and yellow. She lifted it until it was framed by the light peach walls of the room. “Davidoff suit $350 1961,” her grandmother had written. The button looked like Rouen Cathedral at sunset. Another, “green tweed $195 1965,” with its dusky olives and bright red slubs, was a field of poppies among shaded rolling hills. Heavy silk crepe the color of hay, “shirt $95 1968.” Gideon tried to remember the last time she herself had spent close to a hundred dollars on an article of clothing.

Even as she compared her life to Florence’s, she knew the story she was trying to read in the buttons wasn’t about money, exactly. It wasn’t that her grandmother had mortgaged Gideon’s happiness by going shopping. Yet Gideon saw a strong and straight line between the tweedy and silky nubbins, each one an electric and outsized presence in her minimally furnished room, and her own life’s losses.

Gideon turned away from the array of spare button packets and leaned on the north-facing windowsill. Two catbirds gathered small sticks and wisps of dried grass and took turns flitting into the deepest part of the privet hedge. She watched the birds and the monarchs come and go for a while.

When my mother was a child, she lost her own mother to vanity and trinkets, Gideon thought. She only ever had enough love for one child. Whether the catalyst was an early illness or not, there is no one to tell me. My mother will never give me any of her money and I can no more change this than I can rip her from my heart.

The catbirds had tucked themselves into the hedge and the yard was finally still when the sun set behind the foothills to the west. Gideon padded down the hallway to her home office and started her computer. She composed an email to Ruth. “The relationship between you and me has never been a healthy one,” she wrote. “Any future contact between us will only cause me pain. Even if you have big news, do not write or call me. I’m done.” She sent the email.

There was a wispy flutter in the hallway outside her office and a soft impact as if finely-woven cloth had brushed against a wall. Gideon looked up from her computer and saw a shadow flicker in the hall. She turned away from the screen and rotated her chair toward the center of the room. She sat up straighter, waiting. It is possible to make your own luck, she thought.

The tiny brown bat flew into the room, made a wide circuit near the ceiling, and flew out again. It came back for another pass and flew directly at Gideon’s face. What kind of person is she, I want to know, I must know, the little bat thought. I want to see into her eyes, I want to smell her breath. There are two types of person. If she flinches, I’ll have to fly right at her face again. If she looks at me and makes the booming murmurs, I’ll be all set. I’ll come back and let her song flow over me every day, every day, every day.



BIO

Ellie May Mandell was an accountant most of her working life. She lives with her husband of thirty-plus years in a small town in New England. She is working on a series of stories about a cast of characters whose lives interweave over several decades. The stories revolve around themes of family and love, illness, moral injury, and redemption.





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