The Whisky Blot
Journal of Literature, Poetry, and Haiku
Claudine could manage to give up red meat, egg yolks, dairy. She could even go without alcohol. But she could not fathom a life without coffee. “At your age and with your heart history, you should really switch to herbal tea,” the doctor advised. Claudine nodded perfunctorily, knowing full well that the next morning, she would cozy up next to her cat and sip the steaming, bitter liquid from a mug once emblazoned with some ironic quote, now so faded by years in the dishwasher that she could not remember what it once said. It was nearing the end of the week, so she needed groceries, coffee included. Hell, maybe she would even try some of that herbal tea the doctor had suggested. After a trip to the commode, necessitated by the coffee, Claudine shuffled to the closet and donned a striped shirt and a pair of elastic-waisted navy slacks. Her cane was waiting by the door, and though her pride balked at having to use such an aid, she knew she would not be able to make it down the three steps of her front porch without it. Claudine marveled at how a simple outing to the grocery had become simultaneously such a chore and the biggest thrill her week was likely to hold. Heave, one, heave, two, heave, three she said to herself on the way down the stairs. Out of breath, she paused at the edge of the driveway, wondering how these legs were the same set that once scrambled up mountains in her youth, the ones that took her up the stairs, in heels no less, to her job at the bank for thirty years. How were these the same legs that attracted two husbands, both now long dead, and stooped to pick up three children, all now grown and flown from the little town where she had raised them? Once she finally lowered herself into the driver’s seat of her silver Grand Marquis, Claudine could barely find the energy to crank up the car. She saw a fleeting image of herself, slack-mouthed and limp in the spring heat, being hoisted out of the car by some unfortunate men from the coroner’s office. They would note the coffee on her breath and announce, “That last cup o’ joe, that’s what did her heart in.” The neighbors would gather round to stare, not that any of them had ever so much as knocked on her door. Her kids would have to use their precious time off to fly in for a funeral where they would play a slideshow of old pictures, set to a song that would have made her cringe if she weren’t reduced to a pile of ashes in a brass urn, too far gone to be reached by a CD recording of “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” Done feeling sorry for herself and now slick with perspiration, Claudine started the car. She felt the sweet relief of air conditioning blasting in her face, the calming sounds of public radio journalism. As she drove past the familiar landscape of her town, she noted all the things that had changed. Downtown, the store where she once bought her daughter’s smock dresses and Mary Janes was closed, as was the bookstore next to it. Barkley’s Grocery was boarded up, covered with no-trespassing signs. Further down the road, the new fast-food restaurants started popping up, their signs promising crunchy burritos, crispy fried chicken, creamy milkshakes. Claudine rounded the corner past the auto shop and at last came to her destination. The new super store loomed large and blue in front of her, its sign boasting a one-stop-shop where she could get gas and groceries, gifts and guns. Claudine parked in a blue-lined space and prepared to step out, but an open car door to her left blocked her exit. Through the window, she could hear a mother pleading with her child, “Sweetheart, just let me get you out of the car! You can’t unbuckle the clip, and it’s too high to get down from there on your own.” The child’s emphatic reply, “No! I do it myself!” The mother noticed Claudine’s vain attempt to open her door. “See what you’re doing?” she admonished the little girl struggling in the car seat “We are blocking this woman in!” Realizing her pleas were making no difference, the mother pushed the car door nearly closed and edged toward the trunk, murmuring apologies to Claudine, who subsequently hoisted herself out with the aid of her cane. “That’s alright dear,” Claudine assured the woman as she sidled past. “She’ll give in eventually. Always do.” Claudine continued shuffling toward the door, noting every foot toward the entrance in her mind as if it were a marathon mile marker. As she passed the outdoor plant section, she pretended not to hear the man in the tattered t-shirt asking for change. “You are on a fixed income, after all,” she silently reminded herself. Entering through the automatic doors, she passed the gumball machine and another machine designed to tempt children into begging their parents for quarters with the slim possibility of grasping a stuffed lion with a mechanical claw. Finally, she arrived at the endless rows of carts. Time to make a choice. Claudine paused to assess the carts. She could continue trudging along, leaning over the blue-handled buggy as she passed through the store, or she could sit down on one of the three worn beige scooters and accept her infirmity. After a brief consideration, Claudine decided she could not bear the thought of strangers’ pitying eyes on her as she wheeled through each aisle, announcing herself with a loud beep each time she began backing up. She dropped her purse in the cart, leaning over it as she moved past walls of stuffed animals and pyramids of sugary cereal. Just as she entered the sparsely stocked produce section, Claudine realized she had left her list in the car. Cursing internally, she tried to remember its contents, but could only get so far as bread, those tasteless imitation eggs, hogwash herbal tea, and of course, a new bag of coffee. She resolved to walk through the aisles, trying to let the sights jog her memory. By the time she got to the final food aisle, she stood panting over a cart filled with overripe bananas, cream-of-wheat, canned vegetables, and a pound of chicken, the price of which nearly gave her a second heart attack right there in the meat department. Claudine began making her way toward the front of the store, each step a great effort. She glanced to her right and saw a display at the end of one aisle announcing a discount on her favorite brand of coffee. As she approached it, she saw that the caffeinated object of her desire was on the highest shelf, just out of reach. “Can I help you, ma’am?” said a young man wearing a blue employee vest. “No, thank you, uh…Trevor,” she retorted, glancing at his name tag, “I can do this myself.” Claudine let go of the cart, elevated herself on tiptoe and reached for the top shelf. As she did, she felt her legs give way beneath her, and she heard an involuntary scream emerge from her lips. This is it, she thought as she began to descend. Broken hip and a few months until they’re blubbering over me in some poorly decorated funeral parlor. Claudine’s fall, however, was stopped by the arms of the young man who had so recently offered her help. With some effort, he lifted her to an upright position, and she gripped the cart’s handle, her heart beating wildly. She felt eyes on her and looked up to see the crowd that had formed. Alarmed associates. Snickering teenagers. A haggard-looking mother pushing a cart, while her daughter sat in the front basket, eating a cookie and pointing at Claudine. “Mama! Dat old lady from car!” the child announced emphatically. “Honey, stop it! Don’t be rude!” the mother admonished, swiping down the child’s pointing finger and turning her cart in the opposite direction. As they walked away, Claudine caught the child’s gaze, seeing in her eyes a sadness, not of pity, but of recognition. Then, emerging from her shocked reverie, she called out laughingly, “What are y’all staring at? I’m just fine. Nothing to see here.” Leaning onto the cart, she trudged purposefully toward the front of the store, determined to complete her shopping trip as if nothing had changed. As she walked past the motorized carts in the lobby, however, Claudine knew that, indeed, everything had changed. The evidence of it surrounded her, even as she longed to hold onto a bygone existence. Recalling the words she had flippantly spoken to the mother in the parking lot, she realized they were true not only of the toddler’s inevitable capitulation, but also of her own. As she journeyed home, Claudine saw herself in all the shuttered buildings she passed on the drive. Dignity, vitality, all that once held her identity, were now boarded up shop windows, replaced by a woman who would acquiesce to riding in a motorized shopping cart, and to passing by the bags of coffee. After the Herculean effort of getting in the door, Claudine unloaded her plastic grocery bags. Tired from the day's events, she wanted nothing more than to sit down with a warm mug in her hand. She had purchased a few bags of herbal tea and knew she should start a kettle to brew this lackluster lemon beverage. Instead, she reached for the bag of coffee that had miraculously made it into her cart after her ordeal. Tomorrow, she decided, she could suffer through tasteless tea, but for now, she would savor one last cup of coffee. Sam Rafferty (she/her) is a Georgia native whose writing often explores the experiences of women, particularly women in the South. Her short stories are forthcoming in Avalon Literary Review and The Sunlight Press.
A loud bang jolted him awake. He looked around the room and was reminded of his reality: a nursing home, widowed since March, friends all dead, children and grandchildren all out of state, no visitors. But it was the thought of his stepdaughter, Jennifer, that really stung. She lived in town but cut him off after her mother died. I raised her, was a father to her, packed her lunch and walked her to school, took her camping in the Upper Peninsula, paid for her college, treated her as one of my own, he told himself again. I’m not blood, but still – how could she? Now, with her mother gone, Jennifer wanted nothing to do with him and his accumulating medical bills. He replayed their last conversation: “But you’ve known me almost your entire life,” he told her. “I loved your mother. I cared for her until the end.” “You know what I think? I think mom got Alzheimer’s from dealing with you, from dealing with all your drinking and flashbacks or whatever those bizarre episodes were,” Jennifer replied. “And I think it’s for the best that you stay there for Christmas. Don’t call me again, Richard.” He returned to the present and succumbed to another wave of fatigue, let his eyes close. Images soon took shape in the darkness: scattered bodies in the snow, frozen stiff. Then the roar of the flamethrowers, the screams, sounds of death. He realized he was dreaming again and fought his way out of it, shook himself awake. The nightmares never went away. The flashbacks eventually did, a long time ago now, but not the nightmares, even after 70 years. Korea, 1950, the Chosin Reservoir. They were deep beyond the 38th parallel. The battle, still vivid in his mind, felt like last week and a lifetime ago. Guns, blood plasma, morphine syrettes, corpses, water, earth: all frozen. When everything slowed down, death sped up, he learned. And there was the possibility that one of his bullets struck true and killed a man. Over the years the thought grew into dread, and started to haunt him as his own death encroached. We were all kids. We all deserved a future. He could only pray that he had missed. His mind returned to his three children. So far away now – California, Texas, Minnesota. He felt as cut off now as he did then, when his division was surrounded by 120,000 PVA soldiers. But Jennifer was the gut punch. You conned me for 37 years. You betrayed me for what? Greed. He looked around the room: a nurse typing away on a computer, another nurse dispensing medications down the hall, two more immersed in a phone, giggling together at some picture or something. He could still tell his story. It wasn’t too late. He could still remember everything. But none of these people cared to know, cared to know anything about him, cared to know about the Chosin Reservoir and the miraculous escape that occurred there. They didn’t forget about us – they just never knew about us, he realized. This is how my generation dies. Weariness and sorrow again overtook him, so he let himself fall back into a dream. When not grinding away at his day job as a psychologist, David can be found spending time with his wife and son and indulging in creative writing. He has published short fiction and poetry in various literary magazines over the years. It had been one of those shit days at work, and Nick needed a drink more than anything in the world. At 5:17pm, he was finally able to close his laptop, walk down the hall, grab a beer from the refrigerator and sit down in his recliner. His wife, Mandi, was seated in the other recliner with their 5-year son in her lap, playing video games on the television. “Shit, baby,” Nick said, holding the can up to his forehead, “What a fucking day.” “You made it though, baby.” “I know. I know. It’s just… Ron likes to crawl up my ass every Friday afternoon, you know. Gives me enough shit to make sure my weekend is ruined.” “Well, he’s not running this one, baby,” she said, reaching over and touching his hand. He smiled at her, then lifted the beer again and took a long pull. “No. Of course not. We ought to go to that aquarium tomorrow. I think Alex will really love it.” Mandi wrapped her arms around Alex and gave him a shake. “What do you say, Lexi? You wanna go to the aquarium tomorrow.” “Quarium,” he said not taking his eyes off the television. “I think that’s a yes. “I think so.” The beer went quickly. Nick threw the can away and opened a bottle of wine, one of the good ones, and poured two glasses. He handed one over to Mandi. “To… to everything,” he said. “To everything,” she repeated, chuckling. “Cheers.” They both took a sip. It tasted wonderful, well-earned. Nick sat back down at the recliner, sipped at the wine and watched the television. Alex was pretty damn good at the game. If only he could speak as well as he played, but that wasn’t his fault. Autism was a bitch. Something that a shithead like Ron would never understand. Just then, the man on the screen rammed his sword into a goblin, and Nick begin to fantasize what it’d be like to do the same. Soon, his glass was empty. He got up and poured a second, then brought the bottle over and set it on the table between them. When he sat down, his phone buzzed. It was a message from Ron. Of course it was. The data that you emailed to me seems wrong, it read. Well, that’s cuz you’re a shithead dunce who needs everything spelled out like a child, Nick thought of messaging back. “Who is it?” Mandi said. “Who do you think?” She rolled her eyes. “Ugh. You need to find another job.” “I know, baby.” Nick took a long sip, then set his glass down. He stood up. “You’re not thinking of answering him are you?” “Shit. I don’t know.” “Don’t baby, c’mon, let’s think about dinner.” “Alright, shit.” Nick sat back down, grabbed his glass. “What’re you in the mood for?” she asked. “Don’t know. You?” “Honestly, I’ve been craving burgers the last couple of days. I must be starting my period or something.” “Alright then. Let’s get burgers.” “Sweet.” Mandi set her glass down and began fiddling with her phone. Alex slid off her lap and stood in front of the television. He looked taller, as though he had another growth spurt overnight. That was good. He’d end up tall like his grandfather or his uncle on Mandi’s side, and weed out the short genes on Nick’s side. Nick had grown to 5’ 8” by fourteen years old. And, at forty-one, he was the exact same height. He had wanted to be a basketball player, but that dream failed by high school. Now, he was a spineless corporate data jockey, the kind he used to make fun of as a child. “Burgers ordered!” Mandi said. “Great,” Nick said, “I’m starting to get hungry.” His phone buzzed again. I’m also not seeing any updates on the analysis doc. “Goddamnit!” Nick said. “Not Ron again.” Mandi said. “Sunnuvabitch can’t let me go. He’s obsessed.” Nick drained his glass, set it down. “Maybe he’s into you.” “Shit, maybe,” Nick said, standing up. “No, baby, you’re not serious.” “I gotta. I won’t be able to relax otherwise.” Mandi sat back in her chair and sighed. “Alright then. I’ll let you know when the burgers are here.” “I’ll be done way before then.” “Sure.” “Potty!” Alex said, suddenly, pulling his pants down and waddling to the small plastic toilet by the fireplace. “You got this?” Nick said. “Yeah. Go ahead.” Nick returned down the hall into the bedroom. He sat at his desk in the corner and opened his laptop. The company chat board opened automatically, and there were the two messages he had read. Ron had an “Away Status” showing. Of course he did. Nick checked the data he had sent him earlier in the day. The numbers were correct. Then he checked the analysis doc. Columns J and K showed all of the updates he made in the last few days. He had even color-coded them to distinguish a data fix from a data enhancement. It was all there, everything he had asked for. So plain, so straightforward, a lobster could understand it. Staring down the messages, Nick thought of how to respond. He started typing. I’ve verified the data with the extracted report from… Delete. I believe Column J and K have those updates… Delete. Then, just for fun: Why the hell are you bothering me this late on a Friday? Nick sat back in his chair, giggling to himself. Delete. What are you stupid or something, fuckwit? It’s all there. He began to laugh out loud. Delete. You inbred, dipshit, son of a whore, I ought to curb stomp you until your brain works right. He laughed even harder, doubling over, holding onto the desk to stop from falling over. Once he gathered himself, he reached for the delete key. A loud splash came from the bathroom. Mandi opened the back door and looked into the bedroom. She was holding the bowl of the plastic toilet, now empty. “What the hell is so funny?” she asked. “Oh… nothing, baby. Just being stupid.” “Nothing out of the ordinary then.” “Nope.” “Well, hurry up, or I’ll drink the rest of the wine by myself.” “You ought to find yourself another husband then.” “Yeah, I ought to,” she said, laughing. “I won’t be much longer, baby. Everything looks good. Ron’s just a moron.” “Good. Burgers are on their way.” “Okay, baby.” Mandi walked down the hall. Nick turned back to the laptop. His last message was still there in all its glory. He let out another giggle, then pressed the delete key. It was still there. Nick’s eyes trailed down the screen. The chatbox was empty. His last message had been sent. He must have pressed the Enter key by mistake. “Oh, shit!” He scrolled to the chat bubble, clicked the triple dots in the corner, found the “Delete” trash can, and clicked it. This message has been deleted, appeared in its place. Nick sat back in his chair, exhaled. Then, looking up, he saw the little yellow “away” icon above Ron’s profile switch to a little green “ready” icon. Then a window appeared in the bottom right corner of the screen, and a familiar song began to play. Ron is calling… Nick slammed the laptop shut. He waited a minute for the call to end, then erased the app from his phone. He got up, staggered down the hallway, and found his recliner. Alex was standing in front of the television again. Mandi was pouring her second glass of wine. “Everything okay?” Mandi said. “Yeah… yeah,” Nick said. He held out his glass. “Can you top me off?” “You can have the rest, baby.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” She filled his glass to the brim, then set the empty bottle between them. Nick looked down into his glass, then up again just as Mandi was bringing her glass to her lips. “Wait,” he said. He held up his glass. “To everything,” he said. “To everything,” she said. They touched glasses, then drank. Nathaniel Sverlow is a freelance writer of poetry and prose. He currently resides in the Sacramento area with two cats, an incredibly supportive wife, and a rambunctious son. His previous publishing credits include Typehouse Literary Magazine, Divot: A Journal of Poetry, Right Hand Pointing, and Black Coffee Review. He has also written three poetry books, The Blue Flame of My Beating Heart (2020), Heaven is a Bar with Patio Seating (2021), and From One Fellow Insect (2023), and one prose collection, The Culmination of Egotism (2022). The howling grew distant. Elizabeth had only narrowly escaped. An abandoned rail handcar had saved her from a wolf chasing her through the land of nothing, the land of desert, of the Western frontier. She gasped, hoping, holding on to the rattling car for life. Somehow she’d known how to release the brakes, and the steep downhill tracks meant that she didn't need another person across from her to pump the handcar like a seesaw. The breakneck downhill speed seemed to have outpaced her predator, and she felt a safety ahead. A safety, if unknown. She had a cautious moment to regroup, the bolts shooting down her spine easing up. This was her dream. She had set out to conquer the West, against all female odds, against the judgment of everybody back home who had told her to stay small. And then she heard it. A faint howl, contorted by the distance she’d worked so hard to put in between her and her predator. She didn't dare to look back but stiffened when she saw the slope level out not even 200 feet ahead. The handcar rattled, then creaked to a halt. Her one advantage, the fast pace gravity provided, now at an end. The howling drew close. With sweaty hands slipping, she tried to pump the handle, fighting to put the car back into motion, in vain. Maybe she was just the powerless, measly female that they all talked about. Amid the pounding of her heart, she didn't notice the howling give way to an eerie silence. Just ahead of her, a person. A man not powerless, a man. Could she accept a man's help when all she stood for was her independence? Which was worse, man or wolf? She yelled, screamed for help, her tears and frightened bearing enough to gain attention. Was this real? A reflection of the heated desert floor? A ruse of nature, a supernatural ruse? The man jumped on, opposite of her, and pumped the handle. The fight or flight response prompted a unison having developed a tad too instantly. Elizabeth too trusting, too engrossed in maneuvering the escape to have her senses at hand. They were pumping, pulling, pushing, on and forth, into the unknown, into safety. A safety too alluring to deny. Elizabeth only looked up when she realized the howling had vanished. She studied her rescuer as they wordlessly worked together. And then she saw it. His sly eyes locking hers as they morphed into the shape of blood-orange almonds. His facial hair multiplying, sprouting from his pores. “You have lovely skin. I can’t wait to wear it,” he whispered. The bones in his hands cracked, shifting and transforming. He used them to muffle her screams as she realized that the man was the wolf and the wolf the man. Her last breaths gurgling through her dying lungs, she watched him trot away. Back towards his wild frontier intact, peacefully howling the song of death. Mona Angéline is an unapologetically vulnerable new writer, artist, athlete, scientist. She honors the creatively unconventional, the authentically "other". She shares her emotions because the world tends to hide theirs. Her work was accepted in Flash Fiction Magazine, Grand Dame Literary, Down in the Dirt, Viridian Door, The Machine!, and Academy of Mind and Heart. She's a regular guest editor for scientific journals. Learn about her musings at creativerunnings.com. "Happy birthday, Barbara," my favorite nurse, Ebony, calls to me as she snaps on the light and enters my room. I am propped on an angle in my hospital bed, which helps me breathe and sleep. I used to love birthdays. Now, they bore me. We celebrate someone's birthday or some other holiday almost every day here at Alpenglow. I guess today is my turn. I know the staff means well, and I always put on a happy face. But the truth is, I’d rather be with God. I am 95 years old. I can barely speak or move. I am either in constant pain or napping from the drugs they give me. I know it's not Christian to ask, but inside, I wonder: What did I do to deserve this? “We have a party planned for you” she changes my diaper and props me in my chair. I have changed many diapers in my life. First for my children, then my grandmother, and later, my grandkids and my mom. But I always hoped I would not suffer this indignity. It’s so hard—being treated like a baby but understanding everything. People wish you a long and happy life. A little shorter would have been okay by me. Each night, I pray I die peacefully and as soon as possible. She reaches into my closet and offers two freshly laundered cotton sweatsuits. “Green or blue?” Ebony asks. She is attentive and kind, not like Nurse Sharon. Sharon texts all day, and she passes gas right in front of me. So rude! I try to reply to Ebony’s question. My answer sounds like “Arrgh grrr.” "Green? Okay. Let's go with green to bring out your eyes," she decides. Ebony dresses me. She tenderly brushes my white hair and clips a sparkly butterfly barrette above my temple. I would never choose to wear such a childish thing. “Your family is coming with cake and presents,” Ebony’s voice is rich and honeyed. I must have dozed off for a bit after breakfast. My daughter Clem and her son Brian await as Ebony wheels me to the great room. “Here she is,” my daughter says. I feel foggy from the drugs. There are balloons. I express delight as best I can. It sounds like “Yaaarg.” My grandson Brian is handsome and clean-shaven. He wears a long-sleeved shirt to cover his arm tattoo. I don’t mind tats, but he somehow thinks I do. He also thinks he has hidden his from me all along. I allow him his secrets. I have mine, too. “Hi Bo-Bo!” he says. “Happy birthday, Mom!” My daughter's mouth is smiling, but her eyes are so sad. I know seeing me this way is taking a toll on her. I eye the cake box. They brought an expensive cake from Beth’s Bakery. It’s a dense chocolate cake with a fluffy buttercream. Chocolate is my favorite. They will put a little frosting in my mouth. I have dysphagia, so I eat baby food. The euphemism for the slop is “puree.” Who would ever choose to consume cake puree? It’s better than salmon puree, I can say that much. I take the energy I was going to use for self-pity and I try to divert it. I often pray for young people who have suffered all their lives. Never knowing what it feels like to run barefoot across the lawn on a summer day. Or to even have a private moment to dress and undress unassisted. I must have dozed off. I startle awake, my grandson clasping my hand while my daughter sings. The staff joins in. They bring me the cake, it has many candles, but they cannot light them—fire hazard. “Make a wish” Brian’s eyes sparkle. I see so much love there. But my wishes have been ignored. When I was first diagnosed, I wanted to go to Vermont or Oregon. I asked for death with dignity. The priest said I could not do that. My daughters sobbed at the mention. So, I smile and make a wish. My wish is the same as my prayer. I wish for an easy death—and soon. Sarah Gauthier Galluzzo is a freelance writer and recovering Catholic who lives in Connecticut and travels the world. Massachusetts Bay had God. The Chesapeake had tobacco. That was what John Boyse, the old gentlecove at the Dublin docks, had told him, and so the boy Garret had waited for a ship bound for the more southern colony. Then, when the younger lads had made for the Dove, the ship they said would take the poor and starving Irish boys to the eastern shore of Virginia, Boyse had bought Garret a lunch of greasy cod and warned him against rash action. The shore was the briny backwater of the Virginia Colony, Boyse had said, a strip of land that separated the great Chesapeake Bay from the vast yawn of the Atlantic, with acres and acres of tobacco fields cut up by mosquito-infested swamps. It was choked with English ambition and dangerous savages and was certainly no place for a boy like Garret, who seemed a good lad. “All the same, I think I’ll go to Virginia,” Garret had said, as he licked the grease from his fingers. He hadn’t much use for God, anyway. The old man had smiled into his handkerchief. “You’ll want an indenture, then,” he had said to Garret. Young boys, being smaller, were worth less to a Virginia planter, and so they would work the fields until the age of twenty four, when they might finally be of value. But Garret was seventeen, wasn’t he, and large for his age? A four-year indenture was what he could get, with Boyse’s help, and by the time he reached his majority, he’d be a landowner. Garret’s own Da had no land of his own. Were Garret to have stayed in Ireland, he would have spent his lifetime tilling an Englishman’s soil. What was only four years more of the same? At the end of his indenture, Boyse had said, Garret would receive a sturdy suit of clothes, a 25 pound bag of corn, a milking cow, and fifty acres of land. Boyse had found a quill, and with an unsteady hand, Garret had traded four years’ labor to put Ireland behind him. “Keep this safe,” Boyse had said, handing Garret one paper, and pocketing one for himself. “Without this, the captain might sell you as a seven-year indenture.” Captains were not to be trusted any more than any Virginian, who was as like to cheat a man as to look at him. Garret had been pleased to have found a friend. So it was a month later that Garret Sipple, once of County Wicklow, and the only Irish boy with an indenture aboard the Dove, found himself to be not only hungry, but thirsty as well. When he had first boarded the ship, the provisions were plentiful—to him, at least—and he had eaten with relish, only to find he ejected his food over the ship’s rail after nearly every meal. By the time his stomach had settled and he adjusted to the ceaseless rocking of the ship, the provisions had dwindled, and the bosun had begun to more carefully ration the rancid salt beef and stale biscuits. By the sixth week at sea—having spent nearly ten days in windless waters—the stores of drinking water had run dangerously low. Hunger was loathsome but familiar to Garret, and if he had only been hungry, he might have borne it. But the thirst in his throat, he told his young shipmates, was like to drive him mad. Garret soon began to see that the fresh water was ladled out according to rank. It was far scarcer for the boys and the men with indentures, while those with money—those big men who had bought their passage with true coin, and who had fine clothes on their fleshy bodies and in their endless stacks of wooden trunks—well, those men had water and even small beer to drink. Their faces were rosy and full, and their eyes as bright as their coins. Garret, and those like him, those poor villagers from Kildare and Meath, they grew thin and wan, their skin dried and their eyes sunk in their faces and their piss turned dark. The boy was closer to death than to land. He knew he must find more fresh water, and soon. The rain barrels were empty. He might have stolen a cask, but the bosun, wise to the sullen looks of the new servants, had locked the casks in the hold and slept with the key ’round his neck. One hot, lifeless day, Garret liberated an empty wineskin from a drunkard, and placed it in the small hands of Paddy, the youngest of the lads, pushing him toward the ladder. “Play the almsman, Paddy,” he said. ‘Beg us a bowl of beer.” He tried to spit-shine the boy’s face but found his mouth too dry. He hoisted the small boy up. Paddy scrambled onto the deck and peered back down into the dark. Then he was gone. But it was only a matter of minutes before he was back, hang-dogged and empty-handed. Garret pushed past him and climbed aloft. There he spied the captain, Pitts, playing at dice with three other men. An open cask of beer sat between them, into which they dipped their cups with astonishing frequency. Garret’s lip curled. He nearly tripped over some rigging as he made his way across the deck. “Captain, sir,” he said through cracked lips. The Captain paid him no mind. He tried again. “If you please, sir.” His face was nearly as red as his matted hair. Captain Pitts snatched the pair of dice off the crate with one hand. He did not look at Garret, but instead looked to the man at the ship’s wheel. “Mr. White,” he called, and the man at the wheel answered, but did not leave his post. “Aye?” “White, there is no wind. Permission to leave your post.” The sailor deftly crossed the deck and stood between Garret and the Captain. “Aye, Captain,” he said. “White, to your knowledge, does Bosun Tille continue to dole out the proper rations to the passengers and the company of this vessel?” The sailor scratched at his beard and looked at the Captain queerly. “Well?” “Aye,” White said slowly, “though those what works more and those what pays more are them what drinks more.” The Captain waved him aside, and looked at Garret, who stood barefoot upon the deck in his torn breeches. “There you have it, my young rogue,” he said. “The bosun allots you and your kind your proper portions.” “But those who—” “Those who work and those who pay have their fill,” he said, and shook the dice in his fist. “You are not a sailor. You are not a gentleman. Had you coin, or anything of value to any man on this ship, you could procure yourself an extra pot.” He cast the dice upon the crate. The other men leaned in to observe the outcome. Pitts looked one last time at Garret. “Have you anything of value?” Garret, angry, shoved his fists into his pockets. The right pocket had been torn through for several weeks, as he had no one on ship willing to mend it for him. His right hand felt empty air between his leg and the crusted cloth. His left hand, though, touched the smooth, folded paper that had been his constant companion since the day before he boarded the ship. His indenture, written in Boyse’s smooth hand, and signed with Garret’s crude mark in the shape of a coin. Free passage and board in exchange for four years’ labor in the fields of Virginia. This piece of paper pledged his labor to the bearer. He knew as much, even though he could not read the words. He also knew it promised him 50 acres upon the completion of his four years in the fields. Corn. A suit of clothes. Perhaps even a cow. It was the promise of riches due to him. And what was a coin—or better, a promissory banknote—but a promise of riches due to the bearer? Was this not just as good? He had never owned or held a bank note in his life, but he knew enough to know how it worked. Would he trade his future riches in the New World for a pot of beer? For the chance to share a cask with the boys below? He closed his eyes to think on it, and nearly toppled over. If he didn’t sate his thirst now, he wouldn’t make it to Virginia. He grasped the folded paper and yanked it from his pocket, thrusting it at the Captain. “This here’s worth 50 acres,” he said, his dull eyes beginning to look feverish. “And corn and clothes. And a cow.” Was the cow guaranteed? He was no longer sure. He continued to hold the crumpled paper before the captain, who remained sitting. One of the other men snorted. Captain Pitts peered at the paper. “Is that your indenture?” he asked. His brow rose. Another man slapped his knee and threw back his head in laughter. Garret looked confused, and his cheeks burned. “Aye,” he said, quickly stuffing the paper back in his one good pocket. “My money’s as good as yours.” “Aye,” the laughing man said, “but it’s not money, is it? It’s a note that says you owe the Captain for your passage. You’re a borrower, lad, not a lender.” Another of the men looked at him curiously. “Are you daft, son? You know you cannot buy goods with a note that says you owe another man.” He shielded his eyes from the sun. The heat in Garret’s cheeks was too much to bear. He was hot, and thirsty, and desperate. He began to mumble. “Decked out, burnt-arsed sons of whores…” When the captain turned, Garret lashed out with his right hand, aiming to land a blow upon the man’s gob, but he lost his balance and stumbled forward. The first mate was a bolt of lightning. He grabbed Garret’s arm and flung him to the deck upon his back, and in an instant had his boot upon the boy’s throat. He leaned down. “You have nothing of value,” he growled, “and whether or not you give away that paper, you owe four years’ labor in Virginia. You made your mark.” Captain Pitts waved his hand at White, who lifted his foot as Garret’s hands flew to his neck, and he gasped. The other men laughed and resumed their game. Ambrose White offered Garret his hand and pulled the lad to his feet. Garret stumbled to the rail. The men ignored him. His throat was both dry and bruised, and his mouth had a bitter taste. He had thought himself lucky to have had a four-year indenture. What a fool he was! To think the paper he carried safe in his pocket the entire passage had been worth not even a sip of small beer. He pulled it from his pocket and angrily tore it to little pieces, flinging them over the rail, and watched as they fluttered straight down to the still water and stuck to the unmoving surface. Worthless. Molly Moran has a bachelor’s in English Literature from the Catholic University of America, an MA in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio, where she teaches digital design. In 2003, she published her first short story in Crux Literary Magazine. She is returning to writing after a 20-year career designing award-winning technologies for the U.S. Foreign Service and four Secretaries of State. Johnny sat at the kitchen table, his right leg moving up and down as if someone had just dropped hot wax on it. He was an edgy person, a trait made more noticeable by his dark, darting eyes. He spotted his mother passing into the kitchen. He thought she noticed, so he stopped, hoping she wouldn’t say anything this time. He didn’t want to be bothered. He was thinking about his co-workers, a daily ritual for him each evening. He was trying to figure them out, since they liked giving him a hard time. Johnny smelled the pork chops his mother was preparing for dinner. Not one of his favorites, he thought. “We’re having your favorite meal tonight, Johnny,” his mother chuckled. “Unfortunately,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “One of the great perks of the day for my prince,” his mother said, popping a smile. Look at her mock me, he thought; she knows I can’t stand pork chops. He slid back in the chair, catching his shoulder blade on the edge. “Ouch, damn it, not my day,” he muttered. “What was that, Johnny?” his mother asked. He remained silent. His mother had dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. There was some gray, but she looked good for her age. She had a habit of using the kitchen table and countertops as storage space. Also, there were the pots she used for cooking, but also some old relics she had hanging from the walls for show. Johnny found the clutter annoying. They sat down for dinner. Johnny took a few bites and then toyed with the rest with his fork. He continued thinking about his co-workers. He figured they gave him a hard time because they were envious of him because he was a handsome guy and several of the girls at work were attracted to him. The painful irony was he was too shy to talk to girls and posed no threat to his co-workers. Couldn’t they see that? he asked himself. If they did, they showed no pity. They’d hover around his cubicle like paparazzi each day, waiting for the right moment. There were no cameras; their “weapons” of choice were words like “weird” or “crazy.” They didn’t call him that to his face. They used the words more indirectly during conversations they’d have, while smirking behind his back, so he’d catch on they were referring to him. They could’ve lashed his backside with a whip, and it wouldn’t have stung any more. He let it slip once that it bothered him, and he knew that was a mistake. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, he thought. It seemed that’s all they were there for sometimes, devising ways to get under his skin. He felt as stable at work as a feather in the wind. His shoulders were hunched and tense as he cut a piece of pork chop. Taking a bite, he knew the only pleasure he’d have today was dessert. He felt time moving fast but not his life goals. He was thirty years old and still living with his parents. Not that he felt ready to be on his own. He’d been coddled his whole life and was dependent on them. That was the problem though, which he secretly blamed them for. He looked at them and realized the disdain he had for his lack of independence. He felt trapped by it but too scared to do anything about it. They’d finished the evening meal and were sitting together in the living room. His father was there too. A large man, he usually peppered Johnny with questions about his workday, which typically went unanswered. Johnny felt cold, but that wasn’t unusual. I don’t know what’s worse, the chill in the house each night or the chill I get from the people at work each day, he thought. His father was the type of man who’d rather throw on a sweater than pay a higher heating bill, and Johnny felt he was in no position to ask his father to turn up the heat. Not at that rental price, a bargain in any century. “Why The Thinker pose? Those people bothering you at work again?” his father asked. “And why not put on a sweater instead of shivering like that?” Here come the questions. Not tonight, I’m not in the mood, he thought. His eyes drifted in another direction. He looked at the sofa. It had the plastic cover on it that came with it when they first purchased it. His father liked maintaining things in mint condition for as long as he could. Looking at it, Johnny was reminded of the plastic smiles of his co-workers. He chuckled, and his father looked at him oddly. He’d sit for another moment before retreating to his room, where he’d not have to discuss his problems with anyone. That was his plan, as it was every night. “Now, if you think you’re just going to sit there silent, night after night and not talk to either one of us, then I suggest you start looking for your own place to live, damn it!” said his father. Johnny was as unsettled by these words as he would have been in an elevator that malfunctioned on its descent from the hundredth floor. His father had always been so appeasing, but Johnny knew from his stern voice and piercing gaze that this time was different. It wasn’t only the paparazzi he had to worry about now. Being threatened with the possibility of being thrown out on his own put a scare into him like no other. However, he was ashamed to go into detail regarding his co-workers and had only vaguely alluded to them in the past. He found it embarrassing and painful to talk about. He hoped his problems would miraculously disappear so he’d never have to discuss them with anyone. Johnny gasped. Feeling his life converging on him, and with little choice, he opened up about it. Finally his father spoke. “People aren’t always going to make life easy for you. Why would your co-workers be any different? They’re so wounded in their own lives, which is why they treat you the way they do. You just need to navigate through it. That’s how to build character, not sitting back and feeling sorry for yourself,” his father said. “Look at it as if they’re giving you an education about yourself,” his father continued. “Some people call it the school of hard knocks. And don’t waste your energy wishing something bad happens to those people, or you just might end up like they already say you are.” “We just want you to be happy,” said his mother apologetically, “That’s why I said what I said in the kitchen earlier. Just trying to cheer you up, son.” He had never heard words like that from his father before, and it changed him, even if his co-workers would never change. He realized he didn’t have to continue playing the victim. He’d decide how he’d feel and not leave it up to them. He’d turn their jokes into his jokes and not take himself too seriously. Maybe he’d call himself crazy in their presence, he thought. They couldn’t bother him anymore. He was free. He realized now his parents were just trying to help him, and he’d been selfish with them in the past. That’s something, he thought. How being self-absorbed like that can make you dumb. Nothing needed to change at home; he just wanted to appreciate them, now that he had the chance. He’d tell them he loved them. This wouldn’t last forever, he thought, and it’d be sad if they were no longer here and he hadn’t. He yawned and then got up. It’d been a long day. He’d tell them another day. They’ll be here, he assured himself. He headed for his “bunker,” safe for another night. Don’t mind the paparazzi, he thought, strutting to his room. Frank Vallorosi holds a BA in literature from SUNY Purchase. He studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and appeared in several off-Broadway plays. Frank also studied writing with the Long Ridge Writers Group, now known as the Institute for Writers. He currently works as a compliance specialist in financial services. Three weeks ago, August 25th, just before the Labor Day holiday, my computer buzzed loud enough to awaken the household—Mr. Jimmy Smith, DOB—, SS#--, your EOL score has reached one hundred! Please read below and follow the instructions…. The news is blunt and painful, painful like a Band-Aid I should have removed in the shower but forgot. I feel well despite my slowly progressive neurologic illness, but the concept of “feeling well,” is not integrated into the Formula. The EOL (End of Life) Formula (this is an example): three points for pancreatic cancer multiplied by your age over one hundred, minus factors such as your BMI (body mass index), treatment possibilities, family history, and other variables depending on the minutiae provided in the Formula. Don’t worry about calculating your score, the Formula does it for you. On your 21st birthday you are “chipped” or “E-LODED,” as it is called. There are no exceptions, the scar on your upper right thigh is universal. Your score arrives on your computer the first Tuesday of every month ad infinitum until you reach the magic or tragic number of one hundred, when you are graciously asked to end your life for the good of humanity. Too many cars, too many people, too few hospital beds, too little food, too little potable water—a third of Medicare money, billions of dollars, is spent on our final six months of life—our way of life is unsustainable. The sticking point is numbers. Zero population growth is a laudatory but difficult goal. Begetting is inherent in our biological heritage, just like walking or talking. There is no need for instruction. Deciphering the tangled novels of William Faulkner or the plays of Tennessee Williams, contraception, religious exception to abortion, abstinence, anti-government beliefs, those need to be taught. The Formula plots the intersection between productivity and obsolescence. When the input (birthrate) is too high, the output requires adjusting. At a score of one hundred, societal support stops. There are no further medications or hospital care. Simple is the order of the day: a pinewood coffin, no formaldehyde, and a quiet farewell. There are small groups of deniers who hoard their medications and live off the land, but they are misfits and outcasts. They are not my kind of people. As youngsters, we had gathered in August after summer camps and summer jobs ended and lazed at beaches and in each other’s homes, boys slicking their hair, flexing their muscles, and eyeing the girls with their new bumps and curves. Now I sit on the deck soaking up the late summer sun as if it has a short half-life and reminisce about my past as the days bleed into the night. The sun and warmth hold while I fathom the reality of my coming death. Obituaries attest to dying peacefully in one’s sleep—I will soon discover the truth. I am chilled with the memory of my wife and our lost love and the need to finish our conversations that I trust will occur in the hereafter. It was my second year of teaching, school started in ten days, and my lesson plans were complete. Sandra, our new science teacher, who held up well to the scrutiny at teacher orientation day, attracted me with her confident smile. After we had made our introduction and the dissection of the weather and baseball, I asked her to join me for dinner. I’m the math teacher, I boasted, my room is across from yours and I’ll be there when you need common sense advice or for that matter advice about anything and being a math wizard, I can figure out the gratuity and the accuracy of a dinner bill without even needing a calculator. She gave me a nod and a half smile like someone recognizing the words of a favorite song—and it had been a long day and I appeared safe. We walked outside without urgency, the grounds were green and lush, the air fresh from a late August rain, and the late afternoon shadows making us a couple. I know a good Italian restaurant, Sandra said, and you won’t have to struggle with the math, they automatically add 18% to the dinner check. Months later, after dinners and picnics, and laughs, joyous laughs, I awakened one morning realizing that I didn’t wish to live without her sweetness and intelligence, but it was Sandra who whispered I love you so quietly it was as if she was telling me the time of the day. Sandra collapsed after the rupture of a brain aneurysm that had dwelled silently during our years of serenity. Her final Score made public—thirty becoming one hundred. The holdouts accused me of homicide as I arranged final plans. The groundbreaking, intrusive and irreversible legislation behind the Formula ignored the grief when arranging the death of your loved one. My computer overlooks the garden with the show-off rose bushes and the bird feeder that is inherently incapable of keeping the squirrels away but spreads enough seeds to attract the birds. I reflect on my past and assess the future, the latter sliding backward and morphing into the present. Blue jays, cardinals, robins, house sparrows, my garden is laced with the choir of late summer songs. The pre-Formula times offered hope with surgery and newer medicines for Sandra and physical therapy for me. But my enthusiasm for life has weakened. I only have enough strength to oversee the planning and benediction of my funeral. Old age mellows expectations and questions my dreams about the afterlife; although perhaps there is a teacher’s section up there or maybe I’ll find that love triumphs like in Brigadoon. I carry at least one disappointment in my old age: My piano skills are amateurish. I will admonish my parents—they should have made me practice more, but in my dreams, I play like Dave Brubeck. I don’t know why I only play the Beatle song “Hey Jude,” but maybe because it was easy and slow, and don’t be bad, don’t be afraid, and don’t let me down resonated with my life. Hanging on the wall to the left of my computer, but always in my sight, is Berenice Abbott’s black and white photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay wearing a jacket and tie. Vincent, as she was called, and I burned the candle at both ends in our youth. The first woman awardee of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1923, she was widely popular, reading her poems in front of packed audiences often picturing death as “the shutting away of the living hearts in the hard ground.” For rain, it hath a friendly sound To one who’s six feet underground: And scarce the friendly voice or face, A grave is such a quiet place. There is no further need to purchase lifetime warranties or hire a personal life coach when death will be several dry martinis away—and I understand now and with great certainty that it is best to leave before the candle becomes completely dark. Michael Ellman is a retired physician from The University of Chicago and a writer. His collection of published short stories, Let Me Tell You About Angela, is an Eric Hoffer Award Finalist. His novel, Code-One Dancing, is an Indie Award winner and describes the intersection between a resident physician and the Chicago mob. Lil’s like a daughter to me. Hate to see her grieving Cam’s passing so hard. All of us are grieving Cam. He was good man. When he decided to settle in Harlan and hang his shingle after law school, he could have had any girl in this town – every single girl at Powers and Hortons, for one. He’d come in whistling, say howdy to Polly at the register and she’d blush blood like a redhead will, and then all us salesladies would hush to hear his conversation over in the men’s section. We loved him in a Schlesinger’s worsted wool, that one with the blue pin stripe comes to mind. My heart breaks for Lil, all alone. In Bible study we kept her and Cam on the prayer chain for a child, but God must have other plans. Well, she’s not exactly alone, as we all saw at the viewing tonight. Those Eastmans are a sight! Lil’s oldest sister was standing in front of Delong’s Funeral Home smoking, wearing a cheap skirt five inches above her knees. Her runny nosed brood leaning on the back of that rusted truck, parked on the sidewalk by the way, making all of us tramp through the Cotton’s front yard to get into the parlor to pay our respects. What’s bred in the bone at Harlan Gas. Cam plucked Lil up out of there, gave her a better life. Must’ve been 18 years ago Cam posted the bans at church about his intent to marry Lil Eastman. First off, it was shocking he’d finally chosen someone, since he was already in his thirties. And then an Eastman girl! Barely twenty, working at the drugstore counter. (At least Lil’s daddy was the only one in Big Jim’s brood who didn’t spend time in the courthouse basement.) When Lil walked down the church aisle on her wedding day (her daddy wheezing because of the Black Lung) I pitied her. She’d worn her mother’s dress, long sleeved, and it was June, so the flush she had on her cheeks made us all hot. We grabbed for those pew fans and beat them something furious at the sight. I thought I saw a big yellow stain on her hem, but it could have been a reflection of the gold velvet pew cushions behind her. (Thinking back on it, she should have worn a slip underneath. White satin is a tricky material.) Lil picked cornflowers from her Daddy’s house as a bouquet, and they looked as sad as they do along the side of the road. Not a lick of makeup, her long auburn hair in a thick braid down her back. She wore black patent leather shoes. With a wedding dress! The rest of her clan looked like a pile of dirty laundry in the front pew. The young’uns were wailing. When Dr. McDowell started a prayer, all of them would raise their hands, saying amen out loud. (It’s just not the way of us Presbyterians. There’s no dunking, no hollering in our church.) At the end of the ceremony, Cam said, “I’m not leaving here without kissing my bride, Pastor,” even though that certainly isn’t something we do in the sanctuary, no sir. And then he placed both of his hands on Lil’s fine-boned jaw and brought her face to his like he was drinking the cup of salvation. It was too long a kiss for anybody’s liking. No need to parade around like that. I told him that after the ceremony. And Cam smiled real big and said, Haddie, no one will put me asunder from my Lil. Well, death will. When Lil moved to Central Street, I knew the most neighborly thing I could do was to help her wring that Eastman out of her. I taught her how to be a lady, just like I taught my Bonnie Reigh. First things first, I got Cam to set up an account for her at Powers and Hortons. That Regina dress she wore tonight? I ordered that special for her, for the fall. Dark blue, two-ply poly so it holds a shape, those gold buttons up and down the bodice with gold trim, like a uniform. Had Polly shorten the sleeves since it’s so hot this summer. I’m bringing over the raw silk sheath for the funeral tomorrow. It’s plain, so I’ll tell her to wear that strand of pearls and brooch Cam gave her for their anniversary, a sensible heel that won’t sink in the ground when she’s walking to the grave, it’s been so rainy. I went over to their house with a casserole the moment I heard about Cam. Dodo was already there, tending to everything for Lil, as a neighbor should. She said Lil was resting. I told Dodo, God placed something on my heart during my morning prayer, asked her to take me to Lil. Lil was a just a puddle in the den. I took a seat on the couch next to her, hugged her close, wiped her tears, held her sweet little hand. And I said, The Lord will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forever. Psalm 121, thanks be. I reached for her tiny chin, raised it, asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer with me. Lil looked me dead in the eye like she was searching for something, started wailing like she was a lost child. Dodo gathered Lil up, took her to the bedroom. She was so long in there with her, I had to let myself out. I didn’t get a taste of Cora’s apple stack cake, or a bite of Mabel’s fudge. And if that Eastman clan has the nerve to show up at Cam’s house after the funeral tomorrow, it’ll be like the plague of locusts. Nothing will be left except the taste of our tears. Bio: Meg Artley will have her first piece of fiction published in October 2023 by Flash Fiction Magazine. After taking full advantage of the excellent craft classes at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD, she was invited to study with Johannes Lichtman in the Jenny McKean Moore workshop at George Washington University in the fall of 2022. "Haddie Saves an Eastman" is part of a collection of short stories she is writing about Harlan, KY in the 1970s. There had been an autumn, years before, when Molly had been happy. Her hair had been beautiful then, and she quite often found herself thinking about how it had cascaded over her shoulders when she’d taken it down after work, how she’d so casually twirled it around her finger when she’d had a few drinks, how drunk men looked at it, and her, when she laughed at their jokes. She was sure there had been other times throughout the decades when she’d been happy, but she found herself thinking about that hair, and that autumn, more than anything else. It was raining in the real world as she grabbed her apron and keys, and she knew that once she opened her basement apartment door the smell of worms would flood her nostrils. It hadn’t rained during the autumn when she had been happy - at least not during her waking hours. If water had dropped from the sky, it must have been the slow, drizzling morning showers that artistic people love, because they’d never been loud enough to wake her. By the time she’d get up to put her hair in rollers, the clouds were always done crying and the worm smell was gone from the world. It had been the only time she’d ever desired to own her own house because she hadn’t been imagining the soggy, writhing chunks of worms that would slide through the yard. It was autumn now, in the real world, as Molly locked the door and began her march down the sidewalk. The smell of worms writhed its way into her inhale, just as she knew they would. Cosmic tears pelted her dollar store umbrella and she wondered if she would have to stop and vomit. The town no longer felt like one she knew – and hadn’t for quite some time – but the russet, water-logged leaves reminded her of an autumn a few years after the one in which she’d been happy. The Autumn of John, she thought to herself as she gagged at the smell and tried not to look down. A limited amount of people knew about her aversion to the smell, and those that did couldn’t understand it. Whenever she told anyone, an air of pretentious astonishment would overcome them. “How could you not love the smell of rain?” they’d ask. “It isn’t the water,” she’d respond, feeling herself leave the moment, feeling herself melt away into nothing. John had been different. John hadn’t laughed when she’d told him, on that stuffy September day when she’d been wearing the shorts that everyone seemed to like the best. The radio was on, as it always was when it was slow, and when the weatherman announced a chance of rain, she’d shakily shut the sole bar window. “It might get stuffy in here,” John had hiccupped from his stool, a minutes-old rum and coke nearly empty in front of him. “I don’t like the smell of worms,” she responded, turning around to face him, her long, thick ponytail slithering over her shoulder. John shrugged, finished his drink, and handed her his glass. “Whatever you want, Molly-Cat.” She’d had sex with him for the first time that night, after her own drunkenness had caught up to his following her shift. The whiskey had started an hour before she’d clocked out and had continued for three hours after, giving her the simultaneous fire and numbness she would need to enjoy herself. It was her first time sleeping with a customer and she thought regret would soon consume her, but it never did. It rained a lot that fall. After a few storms, John started getting up to lock out the worms before Molly had even realized the clouds were darkening. Three months of sweet rum breath, closed windows, and unwashed sheets went by slowly and easily. The warm weather lingered that year, something everyone but Molly seemed pleased about. It didn’t even threaten to snow until the day before Thanksgiving, and the first flake didn’t fall until after midnight. John was drinking and waiting as Molly was cleaning and stocking. She looked out the window, at the cascade of white and the blanketed road. “So you like winter?” John asked, his words starting to slur together. She gave him a questioning look. “Just wondering,” he shrugged. “No rain in the winter.” He took a sip. “No worms.” Molly could have sworn her heart stopped beating, only to begin again, pushing brand new blood through her veins. “Do you want to come to my aunt’s tomorrow?” she blurted, clenching her fingers around the rag in her hand. John’s face – red from the rum and puffy from the coke – melted into a slow smile. His eyes held their drunken glaze, and Molly wondered if they would have lit up had he been sober. “You asking me to come to your family Thanksgiving, Molly-Cat?” Later, when the bar was clean and the doors were locked, they kissed as the snow fell on top of them. They were going to drive separately and meet at her place, as John had insisted on going home to get his best flannel for the big day. “Gotta make a good first look,” he said, brushing flakes out of Molly’s hair. “First impression,” Molly corrected, realizing she’d never been this happy in her entire life. It didn’t last, as rain replaced the snow as soon as she got home. She stared out the kitchen window, her heart rate climbing as she told herself that the worms wouldn’t be able to penetrate the icy ground, that the crystals would stifle their smell and freeze their bodies. She closed her eyes and placed her head on the cool glass, repeating to herself that John would be there soon. When she looked outside again, the snow on the road had mutated into a gleaming sheet of ice. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… In the real world, Molly was so lost in the overgrown path of her memory that she didn’t recall a moment of her walk to work, only snapping out of her head when her hand collided with the metal door handle. She jumped, her eyes darting around the dumpsters and linen bags. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out her thermos and shook it. No slosh. She must have drunk it all on the walk, and, judging by the taste in her mouth, vomited it all back up. “Thanks to the smell of the worms,” she whispered to herself, gagging as she refused to breathe in through her nose. She hadn’t been scheduled to open today and started taking tables before checking if her coworkers needed any help. The twenty-something girl with hair like Molly had once glared at her as she greeted the twelve-top of deacons. “It sure is wet out there, eh Molly?” one of them asked. “It’s keeping things green,” she said with a closed-mouth smile. Her shift went as it normally did. None of the other servers spoke to her, and she begrudgingly told herself that tomorrow she’d have to do some side work. She figured that the twenty-something with bouncing hair and giant eyes would have no trouble convincing the owner to fire her, and that was not something she could afford. They ran out of hashbrowns at ten. The coffee machine threatened not to work at eleven. A man that looked like John ordered a tuna melt at noon. Molly bummed half a fifth from Ken the cook at one. At two, she hit $100. Later, walking home in the still-raining world, she wondered if she’d been wrong about the autumn in which she’d been happy. There couldn’t have been two of them, and she remembered being happy with John. But it had rained a lot, and she swore she recalled a stretch of weeks without the smell, could envision herself with brilliant hair and bright eyes and no worry over the worms. She stopped at the liquor store, her mind arguing with itself about when things had happened. She bought a handle for herself and a fifth for Ken. There could have been two autumns without rain, she thought as she left the store. She stopped at the trash bin at the end of the parking lot and held her head over it, opening her mouth and gagging. Nothing came out. “It rained the night John died,” she whispered as she stood. She knew his car had slid and spun and flipped, and remembered watching the rain ice the road as she waited for him. What year was that? How old had she been? She took a swig from the fifth. Ken wouldn’t mind. When she got home, she told herself, she’d look at the obituary. That way, she’d know at least one of the autumns in which she might have been happy. Lilia Anderson was named after a great-great-uncle she never met. Raised in the land of the lakes, her stories often center on stubborn people in stubborn towns. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado with a lot of books and a very handsome man. Her writing can be found in 86 Logic, Feels Blind Literary, Blood & Bourbon, and more. Travis listened to his wife Britany’s phone call. He winced. “DFS is visiting tomorrow. Now I got to clean this shithole tonight and go do laundry. That bitch social worker is gonna want to see we have some food in here,” she snapped after she hung up. Travis took a wad of rumpled one-dollar bills from his pocket and handed them to Britany. There goes my beer money, he thought. She counted all seven of them out, slamming the skinny stack on the battered coffee table. Britany glowered at him. “We need eggs, meat, fresh greens and some fruit by tomorrow, or they’ll take the kids to foster care,” she snapped. Well, maybe you should have used the EBT card for food instead of selling it for meth money, he thought. “I’ll get some meat tonight. Bowen will give me twenty bucks for tenderloins and backstraps,” Travis said, as he pulled on his Carhartt jacket and wool skull cap. “We can’t risk you coming back empty again. I’ll go get a quick fifty from Jimmy,” she said standing up. Travis flew across the small trailer living room, kicking his son’s toy truck from the boy’s hand as he lunged for his wife’s throat. His son pulled his younger sister away from the fray. Britany’s eyes widen as Travis firmly held her by the throat. “I ain’t no goddamn cuc for a meth whore. You go to him, you stay with him.” ## As the late afternoon sun painted the November sky streaks of burnt orange to the west, Travis drove down Old Mill Parkway. The road ran through a half dozen corn or soy fields then a stretch of woods along the river before it passed a new gated community of mini mansions. This close to rut the deer should be moving and some rich asshole might hit one on their way home, he reasoned. Within the first two miles, Travis found two mangled doe carcasses. Both were too old and had gone off. Travis turned onto County Road 22; he’d return to Old Mill after traffic hour in hopes somebody got unlucky on their evening commute. He knew roadkill would be harder to find out on 22, but he had a decent chance of running a deer down. Last summer, after he got probation for spotlighting deer, Travis reinforced the inside of his front bumper with steel plates he boosted from a construction site. Then he welded the bumper directly to the frame of his 1997 F150, turning it into a battering ram. Travis installed a extra bright LED light bar on his hood to “freeze” deer. Not allowed to legally hunt or own weapons, his truck was his only weapon to kill deer. Originally, Travis modified his truck hoping to run down bucks. Over his years of poaching, he had built up network of taxidermists like Bowen willing to buy buck racks, hides, and prime cuts of meat. He’d hoped the truck would provide him with stew meat and booze money. He sped through the straight section of the road that lined farm fields, knowing deer would see him coming. When the road began to follow the river, he slowed and clicked on the LED lights, hoping to catch a deer crossing. Nothing. Where the fuck are all the deer? He took County Road 34 back to the Old Mill Parkway. He spotted a buck on the shoulder, but his corpse had already gassed up. Travis pulled over. It was a decent 10-point buck. He took his Sawzall from the cab and cutoff the buck’s skull cap. Bowen will pay at least $15 for this rack, he thought. As he drove back down Old Mill Parkway, he prayed, Come on God, give me some meat. A few minutes later, he saw it; a freshly dead doe laid just off the road in a drainage ditch. Travis pulled off the road, grabbed his hunting knife, and went to work. It took him about 10 minutes to cut the backstraps, tenderloins, and hams and shoulders free, and wrap it all in a clean tarp in the bed of his truck. He’d skin the hams and shoulders back at the trailer. He texted Bowen—I’m headed your way with meat and a rack. Have cash. ## Travis left Bowen’s with $40 and two road beers, not counting the one he drank bullshitting with Bowen. He made his way to Kroger and picked up eggs, milk, potatoes, cereal, apples, greens, and a few staples. He had just enough cash left to stop at the gas station for a 40oz of Bud. When he pulled up the trailer it was dark. Britany’s beater wasn’t parked out front. Travis quietly opened the unlocked door and went in. In the glow of the TV, his son and daughter slept on a sleeping bag on the cold floor. He put the groceries away. Then went to cover his children with a blanket. As Travis bent over them, his son woke and hugged his neck. “Mommy went to Mr. Jimmy’s,” he said. Travis drew him closer. “That’s alright son, I got us a bunch of food… I got you your favorite cereal for breakfast. Go back to sleep.” Travis kissed each child on the head. He opened a beer and headed back to his truck. He took off his jacket despite the cold and went to work skinning the deer quarters. As he worked, he decided he’d make venison stew for supper tomorrow; he’d even offer a bowl to the DFS social worker. He’d ask his ma to watch the kids tomorrow night. It’s roadkill season, he said aloud. JD Clapp is based in San Diego, CA. His work has appeared in Micro Fiction Mondays Magazine, Free Flash Fiction, Wrong Turn Literary, Scribes MICRO, Café Lit, among several others. His story, One Last Drop, was a finalist in the 2023 Hemingway Shorts Literary Journal, Short Story Competition. I love simplicity. Life can be very complicated and stressful but if we made things simple, everyone would be happier. I have a flat with a subsidised rent; a steady job as a warehouse packer; my rent and bills paid by direct debit and enough money for a pint or two each week. I’m walking distance from work so don’t have to worry about commuting and I have access to all the books I need at the local library. I love routine. It gives me stability. There is an outdoor gym nearby and I go there every other day to keep fit and it doesn’t cost a penny. I can’t do as much as I used to mind you. I’m no spring chicken, but for my age I’m not too bad, even though I am small in size. I’ve got used to being without family so that doesn’t bother me anymore. They cut me off years ago. I don’t have any real friends but I don’t mind. I’m used to spending long periods on my own and who needs friends when you have all the books you can read; a roof over your head; food on the table and money for the occasional drink. This is what keeps me level-headed. I haven’t needed therapy or medication in years. Mind my own business and stay out of trouble. That’s what keeps me going. At least it did until I met Henrietta. We met in the park while I was resting after a bit of exercise. She just sat next to me on the park bench and started talking. I had seen her in the park a few times but never thought I would get to know her. She looked like she was in her late teens although it’s hard to tell these days. Young enough to be my daughter, that’s for sure. She seemed genuine. At one point she even rested her hand on my knee. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? She had a lovely, warm smile. We met in the park regularly and she offered to cook for me. I’ve never had a woman cook for me since I was a kid. I invited her to my flat and shortly after entering, after having a good look around, she used the bathroom. When she came out, she looked different. A bit nervous. The doorbell rang which surprised me as I never have visitors. Before I could react, she opened my front door and a group of young guys came in. Henrietta obviously knew them quite well the way they greeted her. They all seemed so tall. What are kids eating these days to make them so big? They were not friendly like Henrietta. They didn’t even acknowledge me. After a brief time looking over the flat, they started moving furniture around. I was confused and stunned into silence. As I was watching them do this, I turned to ask Henrietta what was going on but she had disappeared. I finally asked one of them what was happening and he was very rude to me. He used bad language and told me to go to my room and stay there until he said I could come out. He then produced a gun from the small of his back and told me if I said anything, he would shoot me. I don’t like violence. I know what the effects can be. I did what he said and went to my room. When he called me, he informed me that they would allow me to continue to live there but the flat now belonged to them. They would use it for business and I was to stay in my room at all times until they had all left. He warned me what would happen if I told anyone or decided to inform the police and I believed him. He made me give him my spare set of keys. His friends were calling him Topper. Things changed. They were no longer simple. I was still allowed to go to work, the library, the park and have the occasional drink, but I had to depend on Topper to know when it was ok to be in the flat. Even on those occasions, I had to stay in my room. Lots of people kept ringing the doorbell and drugs were being sold and consumed. I noticed the familiar smells. It was mainly men that came, but sometimes there were girls too. Often, when I was in my room and Topper was there with his friends, I heard lots of screaming and moaning. Sex sounds. Really disgusting. My whole life was turned upside down as I had lost control. I had been in bad situations before but I thought those days were behind me. That’s when I started to get headaches. I knew from the distant past what that meant but I was no longer on medication. I needed a release. I started thinking about coping mechanisms I had used before when I finally realised what I needed to do. On my day off work, at a time I knew Topper and his friends would not be at the flat, I took my favourite knife from the kitchen and checked it was still razor sharp. I remembered years ago, after serving 22 years, telling the parole board I had learned my lesson and had genuine remorse for the lives I took. They acknowledged I was a different person and no longer a threat. I know how to cut people. I’m very good at it. I know exactly where and how to cut to make the end come quickly for them. I’ll go in hard and fast. I’ll wait for Topper and his friends to arrive. My head is starting to clear. I’m feeling better already. Tom Matthews is a London based writer of short screenplays and short stories. His work has been published in Literally Stories magazine. Wrote the screenplay for short films The Spice of Life and The Right Candidate. Has won screenwriting awards domestically and overseas, including festivals in Berlin, New York and Los Angeles. Klea grasped the pot handle of her simmering meat sauce, inhaling the robust bouquet of lamb and beef with hints of cinnamon and oregano. Lungs filled with the scent of her spell, she burst out four chords of joyous, operatic song. Proper sound was often lacking in the cooking process and it was an essential ingredient to add, activating the potential of edible magic. Tone and volume were important, as were the emotions experienced while creating it. That would be her biggest challenge today. How could she simmer in joy with grief brimming in her heart? Klea preferred her spells to be pleasant, turning down clients who sought the darker side of her witchcraft. But her practice wasn’t a quiet one. The couple next door had once threatened to call the cops on their ‘crazy neighbor’ when Klea baked a raucous batch of cookies. Klea’s father often placated them: he always had a way with people. A subtle magic that wasn’t magic, a splendid thing to behold. Dad had jogged outside, his bare feet sinking into their neatly mowed lawn as the neighbor woman shouted over her picket fence with her grouchy husband at her shoulder. He dispelled the couple’s irritation with an easy smile and a horribly bad joke. Klea had watched from the kitchen window, cookies in hand, as the neighbors’ shoulders relaxed, anger stitched into their faces softening as they spoke with him. And now dad was gone. The lawn was overgrown, weed-ridden and more brown than it should be for early fall. Klea gripped the stainless steel handle. A solid anchor—something real in a suddenly surreal world. She set the lid on top of her pot, tipped to release whispers of steam, and turned to the tall windows framing the front yard. They should arrive any time. Despite the clear skies, the world outside was gray; color leaking down drains sliced into the gutters on the lane. A quiet lane lined with cottages and old oaks where Klea and her sisters used to play as children, pretending to cast spells as if they were simple words. Magic was far deeper than that; something dad had taught them with each gentle gesture and crooked smile. Barren street too much to bear, Klea turned back to the warm light in her kitchen. But it was uncomfortably empty. She should make some tea, keep busy. She whistled along with the kettle to give her beverage a touch of cheer, but her heart wasn’t in it. Hoping for a little comfort, she hummed to the jasmine leaves as they steeped in hot water. It took a moment to realize the tune she picked was a lullaby her mother used to sing. Tears threatened her numb countenance, and she choked them back, edging away from her simmering sauce. She couldn’t taint the spell she was cooking. Not now. Not when her sisters were finally coming home. Together again after so long. She needed to be there, warm and welcoming, to ease their melancholy. A unifier to their differences. But standing in the empty shell of their house, his house, she lost that battle, and salt trailed down her cheeks to join the jasmine in her teacup. Klea stared outside, trying to occupy her mind as she waited. Squirrels foraged with less enthusiasm. A wren that hadn’t flown south pecked weakly at the brittle grass. Even the breeze jostling the fanned leaves of the ginkgo tree did so half-heartedly. Brecka used to love climbing that tree. “Aren’t parents supposed to tell their kids to be careful? To get down so they don’t hurt themselves?” Klea had often asked her father. Dad had smirked, giving a shrug as he watched Brecka dangle high above them. “I think we both know that would only push Brecka higher up the tree.” As if summoned by a thought, Brecka’s car puttered down the lane. The black beater sang in Klea’s ears like a gentle staccato as it pulled into the driveway behind Klea’s pickup. Klea wasn’t going anywhere: she never did. Klea set her mug on the counter and rushed out through the kitchen door—the screen barely swinging open before a car door slammed shut. “Traffic is still terrible,” Brecka said, her mane of raven hair tangled up in the collar of her long black coat. “It’s a one-lane road.” Klea spread her arms and embraced her sister on the cracked driveway. “It’s less a matter of how many cars, but if you’re lucky enough to get stuck behind a slow one.” She felt Brecka snort against her shoulder before withdrawing. “How are you?” Brecka asked, sharp eyes searching Klea’s face. Klea forced a smile. “I’m getting by.” Brecka jerked the stiff screen door open and waved them inside the house as if she had never left. “Sure.” Brecka could sniff bullshit a mile away. “I’m a little better now.” That was true. Brecka stepped into the kitchen. “Well, enjoy the peace while you can. Once Morraine’s loud ass gets here, that’ll be over.” She inhaled and visibly relaxed, creases of strain vanishing from the corners of her eyes. “Smells good. What spell is that?” “You know the rules,” Klea chided. “Wait until we’re at the table before guessing.” But this spell had begun the moment Brecka stepped inside. Brecka didn’t bother pressing, striding across the open floor to the den, where the family used to gather each night after dinner. “I’m surprised you haven’t started the fire yet,” she called over her shoulder. “Feel free to do it,” Klea said, keeping her voice steady. She hadn’t touched the hearth since dad passed. It was the heart of his home, the gathering place, the place to swap stories. Now, she couldn’t bear to sit in the den alone. “How’s your practice coming along?” Klea called, continuing to glance out the window for signs of the others. Brecka grunted as she hauled a few dusty logs by the fireplace onto the grate within and opened the flue. “About what you’d expect. I painted a beautiful spell of protection for a newborn last week and finished a rather special one for a cancer survivor. Also turned away some crazy bitch who thought I would curse her ex-boyfriend with…bedroom deficiencies. What about you?” This meal was the first Klea had found the strength to cook since she murmured her last goodbye. Her kitchen now sat neglected where before she had lived in it. She could still hear dad’s gentle rumble as she baked Chel’s favorite shortbread cookies, infused with warm hums of homecoming. “If you keep sending her treats, what incentive does she have to come home?” he asked, watching her wrap them lovingly in a tin with a letter asking her to visit. As Klea opened her mouth to make an excuse to Brecka, another car door slammed outside. Brecka didn’t move, fiddling with the deep box of tinder and kindling by the hearth. Klea paced towards the door, but the screen was already opening to reveal Chel’s bony face, sprinkled with its usual dusting of glitter. A large prism dangled from a golden chain around her neck, swaying like a pendulum as she leaned forward. Despite being middle-aged, Chel never grew out of bedecking herself in sparkles. She gave Klea an airy smile, pale eyes distant and gentle. “Klea,” she said. “It smells otherworldly in here. What spell is that?” “If you tell her, I’m leaving!” Brecka called from the den. Klea chuckled. “You’ll find out at the table, same as always.” As Chel reached a bejeweled hand to pat Klea’s square jaw, water built behind her sister’s thick-rimmed glasses. Klea wasn’t ready to examine those feelings and turned to check on her sauce as she swallowed a lump in her throat. The kitchen door opened again. Fauna poked her round, dark face into the kitchen, looking as wild as the woods she lived in. “I can smell that from outside,” she breathed, wide eyes landing on the stove. “Now I’m hungry.” Chel turned to usher their youngest sister inside. “Don’t let the chill in.” “She’s fine,” Klea said, wrapping her arms around Fauna’s slight frame, the girl’s knotted hair catching for a moment on Klea’s earrings. “No friends today?” “Only two. I promised they could come,” Fauna said, her tiny voice thinner than usual. “Well, I hope they’re small.” Klea leaned over to check Fauna’s person. A pair of chipmunks peeked out from the right pocket of the young woman’s oversized duster. Their beady eyes stared up at Klea expectantly. “Tell them they’d better like peanuts,” Klea said. “That’s what I have.” Dad had always kept a jar around. He would toss them to the squirrels outside while he asked Klea what names Fauna would give them if she were still home. “I think that one looks like a Nutters, yeah?” “I don’t think she names them, dad.” While her younger sister whispered to the critters, golden light licked against the walls of the den as flames consumed kindling. Eyes shot to the fireplace, where Brecka stood with a proud grin. “We got time before dinner? I could do with a story.” Klea’s heart pounded faster. “I have a few more elements to add to the spell.” She ushered the other two sisters down towards Brecka. “Go catch up; I can hear you talking from here.” It was one of the best things about their family house—the kitchen was open to everything. “Morraine’s late as usual,” Brecka said, slumping onto a hand-carved rocking chair. A chorus of creaking followed as the other two sat on the worn couch, threadbare from many years of love. Klea soaked in the song of memory: banter from her sisters, the groaning of wooden furniture, the crackling of the fire. Father’s voice reciting stories about their mother, meeting her in the forest of Cevat where the wood nymph bewitched him with more than just her words. Those tales were all they had of her now. Klea turned back to her meat sauce and opened the lid to let in the ambient noises of nostalgia, tender and bittersweet. She was careful not to stand too close, unwilling to sour it with the ache in her heart. While the three sisters chatted about their practices and recited old stories about mom, Klea worked on her spell. She whipped up a bechamel with plenty of cream, adding in nutmeg and parmesan before finishing it with a few lines from a cheerful jig. Pasta got tossed in with the meat sauce and tipped into a casserole dish, bechamel topping the hearty blend. With a whisper of love, Klea sent it to bake. As she shut the oven, the screen door opened one last time, a booming voice reverberating off her cabinets. “Sorry I’m late!” Morraine said, spreading out her arms. “Forgot how horrid the road from the airport can be.” Red lipstick painted a little too thick, mascara a touch too dark, Morraine stood larger than life. Boisterous but loving in her own way. “Brecka, dear,” Morraine called, unable to wait a second longer to antagonize her sibling. “Didn’t daddy tell you to fix that dent in your driver’s side door ages ago?” He had. But as he deducted decades before, telling Brecka to do something was like challenging her to a standoff. Something Morraine never picked up on. “How do you even know that?” Brecka muttered from the den, refusing to leave her rocker. “I know lots of things.” Morraine paused, inhaling. “Oh, Klea, it’s simply divine in here. I can taste your magic in the air. Breathtaking.” Klea bent down and cracked the oven door, letting in Morraine’s sonorous tones. That was more important for the spell than perfect heat circulation. The meal was nearing completion, almost all the ingredients added now. Fauna joined them again in the kitchen to greet Morraine and snatch another handful of peanuts for her guests. Morraine clucked her tongue. “Fauna, when was the last time you combed your hair?” “Perhaps we can help lay the table,” Chel’s gentle legato cut over Morraine’s nagging. “Unless that’s a part of this spell?” She glanced at Klea. Klea gave her a coy smile. “That would be perfect. You know where everything is, nothing’s changed.” The banter continued, strained and strident following Morraine’s arrival. It felt almost normal. Almost. It was a lie. Something unspoken lay beneath the laughter, grumbles, and shrill critiques. Something quiet and empty, throbbing like a deep drum. The absence of a low, easy baritone. Her last ingredient. Klea leaned on the speckled granite counter to steady herself. Dad had been the sole rock in her life while her sisters drifted away like dandelion seeds out into the wider world, far from hearth and home. They sent word back occasionally, but their thirst for more kept them apart, never bonding the way Klea and their father had. The sisters inherited their mother’s wild blood, veins full of wanderlust. Klea inherited her father’s sense of duty. She could never leave home, leave him; it would be too much like leaving one of her arms behind. Or, more accurately, her heart. She had wanted to draw the others back together, but nothing worked. Nothing brought them all home at once. It was their father who succeeded where she failed. “I’ll bring them home,” he’d whispered near the end. “Death can be a great unifier.” Was that his final spell? A summoning. To give Klea this last gift. Had he died just for her? Klea’s throat swelled shut; she couldn’t hold back the guilt any longer and turned aside to hide her face. But Brecka could sniff bullshit a mile away. Ink-stained arms wrapped around Klea’s stocky form. “We’re here. We came,” Brecka croaked. “I’m sorry we were too late.” That was too much. A sob pierced Klea’s safe harbor of numbness, followed by another. And another. She tried to get away from the oven; sorrow would sour the meal. Brecka held her steady, the others joining the embrace in a circle. “Your sorrow is a part of this, Klea,” Brecka said. “Our sorrow. We may not have been as close to him, but a hymn of mourning unites us, too. Complete the spell.” “We aren’t even at the table yet,” Klea rasped. “You’re not supposed to guess the spell until we eat.” “We know you, Klea,” Fauna said. “You’ve been brewing up unity since we were kids. I sensed it the moment I stepped inside.” Klea realized the oven timer was beeping—how long, she wasn’t certain—but Morraine was already opening it. “Why don’t we skip the table, dish out this succulent magic, and eat down by the hearth instead?” Morraine said. “I think it’s about time that we told some stories about dad.” Klea stared down at the den, warm and welcoming, but absent of her anchor. She knew she needed to face it. To face his empty chair by the hearth, the seat worn from daily use. To wake each morning without the pungent scent of his coffee brewing on the counter. To live in a world without his horrible jokes and warm chuckle. But she found him still in the embrace of her sisters. His smile shone through on Brecka’s face, and Fauna had inherited his inquisitive eyes. Morraine could sweet talk almost anyone and no one told worse jokes than Chel. Klea nodded. Surrounded by her sisters, she would face this goodbye. “I’ll grab some plates.” Erin L. Swann is a lifelong lover of fantasy and space adventures. She’s an avid home cook and works as an art teacher, feeding the imaginations of others while fueling her own creativity. Her work appears in numerous publications including Factor Four Magazine, The Colored Lens, and Brigids Gate Press. You can find her on twitter @swannscribbles and on her website at www.swannscribbles.com. Soon Abigail would be coming up the street with her Husky. She’d be coming from the coffee shop. Not so long ago, when Abigail went for a coffee, she would stop and knock. She’d say Hey, did Rhonda want anything. Often, they’d gone together. Abigail had liked to walk arm-in-arm and talk about how to understand this year they had given to the mountains. Rhonda had come in June, Abigail in May, so she knew the ropes. This town was mostly a summer outpost, but it could be seen as a shrewd base camp, as skiing wasn’t far, and the rents beat the resorts. Abigail would have a latte, Rhonda a tea with bergamot. Sherpley would sit on the tiles with his head nearly to the level of the table, watching their conversation. The Sibe had a blue eye and a green eye and the white of his fur seemed blue like powder at first light. There was the question about the hike. They’d kicked it around the day before. Abigail had been ambivalent. She’d sounded put upon. She’d become critical of Rhonda’s moods. The problem with Rhonda, Abigail said, was that while she hailed from the suburbs of nowhere, she kept getting homesick. Rhonda went out to sit on the porch swing. Lights were coming on in the canyon. After all that awful wind, it was snowing again. The air smelled like cold mountain stones and grilled meat. In the fall, Rhonda painted the wooden slats of the swing red and yellow and orange because she’d been sad about her life here. Rhonda had intended to live an outrageously fun life before returning for a career. It’s not that it couldn’t be — hadn’t been — great. Abigail introduced her around and there’d been a backpacking trip early on with nearly a dozen others. But most everyone worked weird shifts. Coordinating a challenge. A lot of free days there was no one around. Sometimes it could be disheartening all alone on a trail out in the middle of nowhere. Abigail didn’t have to work as much. She’d become a reliable partner. And Abigail had been fun. She could make fixing a flat at tree line a big laugh where Rhonda would’ve been a big pain. But with fall came Donnie. He’d bought a place he’d gutted and hoped to renovate before things got busy with his work. He made good money, but the job required frequent trips out of state. Donnie was gentle and loving. He had sincere eyes. In those first days of Donnie, Rhonda imagined he would ask her about maybe a hike or ride. Then Abigail had looked after some task or other for him and suddenly they seemed on their way to becoming a thing. Now it was winter, and the narrow streets nestled in by these sheer rock walls a mess of snow and ice. All night and most of the morning the winds stormed the canyon, snapping at the conifers. Rhonda hadn’t slept well. There had been Abigail’s ambivalence. There had been what she said about Rhonda getting homesick too often. The worst part of it was that what Abigail had said made Rhonda even more sick for home and the life she used to know. Rhonda felt bewildered that wind could rush and whorl and crash like that, like it meant to scour the town from the canyon floor. Now the tiny crystals drifted down to settle gently as turning a page. Up the street came Abigail and Sherpley. Rhonda lived in a tiny unit on a short row of apartments built so close only the sidewalk separated the front steps from the berm of packed snow and ice left by the plows. “Hul-lew!” Rhonda said, wishing in the instant she hadn’t said it that way. She should have remained neutral. Passive. Calculating. Abigail looked surprised to see her. The Husky stared up at the snow falling. “It’s snowing!” Abigail said. “I know!” Rhonda said. A crow called from a rooftop. “I was just thinking about our hike tomorrow,” Rhonda said. “Should be epic now.” “Yeah,” Abigail said. “Not working out at my end.” Rhonda pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Abigail shrugged. “I just found out,” she said. “Donnie’s back tomorrow.” Everything now always about Donnie and how Abigail might stay on a while longer. About how Abigail might just stay. Rhonda’s landlord had already asked whether she planned to renew. He’d be raising rents. Something flared in Rhonda. “What if I took Sherpley?” she said. “Sherpley,” Abigail said. Rhonda heard herself breathing. “I mean, yes of course,” Abigail said. She bent down to the Husky to scratch his ears. “You’re always welcome to give Sherpley a walk. Why, isn’t that right, Sherpley? Yes, he likes a good hike, don’t you, boy?” “But I’m not sure about tomorrow,” Abigail said, standing. “It’s just that, Donnie’s been away for days,” she said. She made a sad face. “We’ve been missing him. “You know how it is when your man’s away,” Abigail said. “We’ve been climbing the walls, haven’t we, Sherpley?” Rhonda stood. The swing lurched away to bounce against the backs of her legs. “Maybe another time,” she said. “Maybe Donnie can walk Sherpley.” Rhonda crossed her arms. She wished Abigail would go away. Abigail sank down to her heels and pulled the dog in close and he licked her lips. “Oh, now!” she said, delighted. Abigail stood. She smiled. Abigail and Sherpley walked up the street to her place, the dog prancing along beside her. They went inside and it was quiet again but for a car coming down the canyon road and — closer — the scrapes of someone shoveling. Rhonda sat on the hideously optimistic porch swing and wished she had never come here. Chuck Plunkett is a Denver-based writer who directs a journalism capstone at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has previously published stories in Cimarron Review and The Texas Review. He has an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently at work on a novel he likes to think of as a literary thriller. He's worked in several newsrooms, including The Denver Post, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Springfields still echoed somewhere off in the growing distance as night fell. He awoke, engulfed in dark and smoke. With great difficulty, he drew for breath and it pained him. He pulled himself up against a lone, tall pine at field’s edge and, back against the tree, put his fingers to the holes in his chest left there by the Minié balls. He coughed a choking cough. Bright, red blood streamed from the corners of his mouth and the holes in his old, grey coat leaked froth.
Surveying the aftermath of the battle, he could recognize nothing resembling human life remaining. Here he sat, by all appearances, the lone survivor. The blue coats must have mistaken him for dead, an honest mistake, else he would himself now be dead. No matter, death would come soon enough. There was no field surgeon now and nothing that a good doctor could do for such wounds save numb sensation of body and mind with what barely passed for whiskey and, if so inclined, as oft good souls were, provide some company until the end. The soldier’s soul had been numbed long ago by pain of loss of country, his ancestral land, his family. Innumerable deaths were witnessed and replayed over and over in his mind. Once a devout man, he no longer feigned such, daring to declare that God himself had abandoned the South along with all the faithful therein. Between fits of coughing and the adamantine pangs of death, he reached into a coat pocket fiddling for his flask. It was not to be found. After battles, mostly victories, those now fewer and farther between, General would ration out whiskey to the men and celebrate with them. Occasionally, the whiskey would be a balm for mourning after a defeat. There would be neither such this evening. All of the men, even the good general, lay before him carpeting the battlefield a dead grey. What I would not give for one last taste of whiskey. It is funny what men think of generally but, perhaps, more so when upon death’s doorstep. And then his mind turned toward his wife, Sarah. This time of an evening, she would have finished up supper, said prayers with the children, and soon be tucking them into bed. He could not know that Sarah rarely slept these nights but, rather, spent them in a rocking chair in front of their bedroom window, curtains drawn, keeping watch over the path in the front yard for his return. Everyone knew that the war was drawing to a close and Sarah never lost faith that he would one day return to her. From another pocket, he took hold of his journal. He took pen to hand and, within its pages, described this, his last battle, under the entry “The Battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle.” He described the events of the day, as best he could, how the valiant men all lay dead, how hope was now all but lost for his countrymen, and then his mind wandered back to his home and to Sarah and the children. He lay there dying, a mere seven-mile ride by horse from his home in Athens. If only he could make it home to say his final goodbye. He would have to write it and hope that the words found their way to Sarah. Sarah awakened in the middle of the night. She had dreamt that her husband lay dying in a silent field, propped up against a long, tall pine, body riddled with bullets. He lacked all comfort save those to which he could recourse in his own mind. A man ought not die like that, especially a good man. How she longed to embrace and hold him, to comfort him in all the ways a woman can comfort a man. To wipe his face with a water-soaked rag…to put a swig of good whiskey to his lips. The dream was more vivid than the present dim and dull reality. She had seen him writing in his old, dirty, now heavily bloodstained leather journal and read every word until the end, feeling as having been there with him through it all and with him still at the very last. But she could not decipher that which he wrote finally—a single line of script. Try though as she may, she was wisped away from the dream to reality against her will, filled with the anxiety that only words unspoken, those impeded by the encroachment of death, can impart. She sprang up, drenched in cold sweat, feet to the hardwood floor of the old, two-story antebellum which creaked as her weight displaced upon it. She made her way to the antique, oak armoire and retrieved a dusty, crystal decanter and poured herself a glass of whiskey. It was still stiff and hot. She poured another, drinking it swiftly, as medicine for nerves burned frazzled. On edge, senses heightened from the dream, to which she was still trying to reenter, she heard a rustling noise outside. Someone was on the front porch and, at this hour, this could not bode well. From a drawer within the armoire, she carefully removed her husband’s Griswold & Gunnison .36 caliber six-shooter sliding it from its well-worn, leather holster. She crept down the stairs, walking to the edge to avoid alerting any intruder to her awareness of the situation. She was ready to kill a Yankee if she had to, or one of those bastards who refused to fight with the real men, and even boys, of the South. She took her French chemise gown in left hand and pulled it up as she glided silently toward the front door, black powder firearm in the right. A lone candle on the mantle cast just enough light. Back to the wall, she could clearly discern the shuffling of feet and heard the wooden planks of the porch creak. It was almost as if something were being dragged across it. Sarah inhaled a silent, but deep breath, slowly turned the key in the cast iron passage lock praying for no “click” or “clank.” She swung the door open and pulled back on the hammer, cocking the pistol and found herself pointing it toward a specter of a figure standing shadowlike in the inky darkness of the night. Sarah was terrified but she would not show it. “State your business stranger and make it quick! We are quick on the trigger in these parts!” He stood there in the darkness, silent. Or at least she thought it to be silence but then, at once, she could discern that the stranger was, in fact, speaking, rather trying to speak but so softly as to barely be audible over the cool, southern wind rusting through the magnolias. The man stumbled forward and it was enough that the candlelight illuminated his face. It was her husband. Before she could say his name, he fell toward her and as he fell, she quickly dropped the gun, catching him, falling to the floor alongside him. A hard breeze blew past them, the candle flickered, their eyes met glistening in the dim light accented by tears as precious as diamonds. She held him. She said his name over and over. She cried. She placed her hands upon his now gaunt, ashy, and bloodstained cheeks, fixing her eyes upon his, then closing them, and pressed her lips gently against his, red and salty from the tint of blood. She tasted death. He tasted whiskey. And then he passed from this life to the next, steadfast in her arms. The sun was soon up and shining morning’s first light in through the doorway. Sarah, lay there, still, having never let him go all the while weeping inconsolably through the final hours of night. It was by light of dawn that Sarah noticed the tattered journal protruding from underneath the flap of a coat pocket. She took it carefully to hand and turned through the stained pages and read, best she could, through a veil of saline. Remembering her dream, she turned to the last entry and read of the efforts of the valiant men in the battle for the trestle, moreover their homeland, and the subsequent tragedy of their demise. She had, indeed, seen from within her dream, or so it seemed to her, her husband write these very words. She read further…fond recollections of herself and of their children. And then, finally, she came to that last line penned by her husband within his journal on that fateful night…those words that she had tried so very hard to read in the dream before she was so abruptly divorced from that place and returned to the cold reality of her present life. It read, “Sarah, wake up.” Shane Huey, editor of The Whisky Blot, writes from his home in America's most ancient city. This story first appeared in The Chamber Magazine, July 30, 2021. As soon as I saw her car outside our family’s cabin, I knew this time my cousin Margo had gone through with it. She must’ve seen me coming up the driveway; Margo came out onto the porch and waved until my car settled into the space beside hers. I got out, and she smiled and hopped down the steps to give me a hug. “Patrick.” She wrapped her big arms around me. “I’m so glad you came.” My cousin was bright, bubbly. She was a new woman. Inside, she breezed through the kitchen, pointing out what she had just bought for the place: new utensils, a dish rack, a whole set of dish rags—all of it mixed in with what others had brought over the years. In the sunroom, her arm swept over the watercolor paintings she had hung on the wood-panel walls. “All local artists," she grinned. She led me to the bedrooms upstairs where I’d be staying. “Take your pick.” I pointed at the second room down the hall. She snickered and slapped my elbow. “I should’ve known. You used to hide everyone’s toys there. You had all your little stash spots, remember?” “Sure.” I went in and slid my duffel bag beneath one of the two dusty cots. “It’s weird,” she said. “It’s a different place without everyone else, without all the kids.” She was right. I was used to seeing the rich green of summer out the window and hearing the clamor of young cousins running around. That’s what the cabin was: a place where each branch of the family could come together and be together. Instead, encircled by the golden bloom of autumn, the cabin felt hollow. “Get settled,” she said. “I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen. I hope you didn’t eat yet.” She went to leave but stopped herself and touched my shoulder. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come.” “I could say the same thing to you,” I said. I had been planning to stay for the weekend and only packed a few things. Actually seeing Margo at the cabin though, I wondered if I should’ve packed even less. - I came downstairs to two fingers of butterscotch schnapps. Margo handed me the glass and tilted hers forward. “Just like grandma used to drink.” We each took down the liqueur in a single gulp, the syrupy sweetness coating my throat with burnt caramel flavor. I hated it when I was younger and hated it especially now that I was old enough to drink something else. Margo’s face contorted as she sucked the remnants off her teeth. “That never gets better. I had to keep with tradition, of course.” “Of course.” She put our glasses in the sink, then spun around and clapped her hands. “For dinner,” she began, a playful grin creeping onto her face. “We have beef tenderloin in the oven. Potatoes and asparagus. A nice red. White, too, if you prefer. If you’d like something stronger before, during, or after we eat, there’s bourbon right behind you. I’ve already dipped into that.” She picked up and wiggled another glass filled nearly to the brim with iceless whisky. “It gets my culinary juices flowing.” “Wine is fine for now.” I poured myself a glass and sat down at the table. Margo donned one of the aprons our Aunt Susan used to make each summer. One made of a rich blue cotton had come from a dress our cousin Bethany refused to take back after one of the children tossed it into the lake. Another used to be my old dog Maddy’s blanket, from the summer he ran away. The one Margo chose for tonight had bright orange polka dots, repurposed from a hideous blanket someone had left at the cabin hoping it would disappear. As she cooked, we talked. She asked about my work at the clinic, and I asked about hers at the restaurant. I asked if she had seen our cousin Michael’s newborn; she hadn’t but couldn’t wait. We made vague plans. Only when we exhausted chit-chat did she talk about why she was there. “How’d he take it?” I asked. Margo leaned back against the kitchen counter and smiled. “He knew it was over. I made it clear that it was over.” “What do you think he’ll do now?” She took a sip of her bourbon and threw her hand up. “Who cares. I doubt another idiot will fall for him, not now.” “You’re not an idiot.” She laughed. “I sure am. Staying with that abusive son of a bitch for that long… Jesus. I gave him my best years.” I let it be. When Margo had called the other week and told me what she was going to do, that she would finally leave her husband of twenty-eight years, well, it wasn’t the first time I had received that call. I didn’t really expect her to be at the cabin until I pulled up. We ate in silence. Margo had always been an outstanding cook. “A bad meal,” she had once said, “can ruin a friendship or even a marriage.” She meant it as a joke but cooked as if it wasn’t. After dinner, I cleaned up while Margo put on a record and shimmied around the kitchen, a fresh whisky in her hand. “I love Laura Nyro,” she remarked as she swayed back and forth with each twinkling riff. “Nightcap?” she asked once the dishes were done. “I’m beat.” “Suit yourself,” she said and topped off her glass. “I love it here at night. It’s peaceful in a way you can’t get anywhere else. Like you’re cut off, in some other place where all the BS can’t get at you.” I went upstairs and closed the door to my bedroom. The music still leaked in from below, and I could hear Margo da-da-da-ing to the song. I pulled my duffel out from beneath the cot and opened it up on the floor. Clothes, a toothbrush, a razor, a screwdriver. With the screwdriver, I crawled over to the air vent between the cots. The vent cover was ancient, with layers of paint flaking off, but it slid off the wall easily once the screws were out. I reached back into my duffel bag and pulled out a thin, nickel-plated cigarette case. I gave it a bounce on my palm and felt the weight of its contents shift, then I opened it just to make sure what should be there was there. There were no cigarettes in that case. That’s what Donny at work had discovered when he went looking for one. I had told him to keep what he found there to himself, but after that, I couldn’t have it near me any longer. When Margo called, I saw the chance to get away, to hide the case, to conceal my obsession. I pushed the case into the duct and around a bend then reattached the cover. Lying in bed later, I could breathe easily for the first time in a long time. - The next morning, I awoke to the smell of bacon and pancakes. “I want to take the boat out to Catscratch Island,” Margo said while we ate. “I don’t know, Margo. I was actually thinking of heading out early, maybe try to get up to Eastport before the afternoon.” There was nothing in Eastport, just an excuse. With the cigarette case out of my hands, I wanted to get away from it as quickly as I could. “Don’t give me that. No, no, we will not have Pussyfoot Patrick make an appearance. I like to think you’d’ve grown some balls by now. If you haven’t, lucky for you, the remedy is a dinghy ride over to the island.” Inside, I bristled at my old nickname. Margo stared at me until I sighed, resigned to the plan. “Does it still float?” “Sure does. Jenny and Darren used it last summer. We’ll have to deal with a few spiders but that’s it.” After breakfast, Margo packed a grocery sack with sandwiches and the bottle of bourbon. We walked to the shore. The boat was in a shed beside the lake’s edge, and I dragged it along a splintered wooden track until it tipped and slid the rest of the way onto the water. Margo stepped in and steadied herself. “See,” she said, giving the boat a wobble. “Seaworthy as ever.” I hopped in and took up the oars. The lake’s surface was a mirror, and the tiny craft skated along toward the overgrown acre of land we called Catscratch Island. “Do you remember why we called it Catscratch Island?” Margo asked as I rowed. “Something to do with Aunt Ronnie, right?” “No, Aunt Bonnie. One night I swear she downed a bottle of gin to herself and put on Ted Nugent as loud as it would go so she could hear it by the water. She started pointing to places around the lake and naming them. Said she was going to have all the atlases updated accordingly. The island became Catscratch Island, and over there...” Margo pointed to a rocky peninsula on the far side of the lake. “That became Wang Dang Point.” “Sounds memorable.” “She was so embarrassed every time the kids would bring it up. I don’t think she ever drank again except at my wedding. Looking back, I don’t blame her.” The bow of the boat scraped along the sandy shore of Catscratch Island, and we stepped out. Margo lifted the bourbon out of the sack and offered it. I had a swig; she had two. Then we hauled the dinghy out of the water and let it rest at an angle on the rocky sand. “Look at it,” she said, admiring the tangle of vines and woody bushes that filled the core of the island. “Same as ever.” We walked the perimeter, passing the bottle. “Can I ask you something?” Margo said as we finished our first lap. “Shoot.” “Do you regret your divorce?” I drank and studied the scene across the lake from us. It was midday, and the sun beamed on the orange-blasted trees ringing the lake. The sky just above the leaves was the same rich, clear blue as Bethany’s dress-turned-apron, and in the distance, on the closest section of shoreline, was our family’s cabin. Built, expanded, redesigned, and redecorated, it had never lost its bones. “I don’t,” I said and had another swig. “There were doubts at first, sure, but now I don’t really feel much of anything about it. If we had had kids, maybe it’d be different.” I gave the bottle back. “Do you hate her?” “No. Not anymore.” “Must be nice.” “We had different challenges,” I said. Margo was silent for a moment then stopped walking. “I want to show you something.” “Where?” “Here.” I looked at the wet slurry of sand and gravel at our feet. “Not right here. Up there.” She nodded toward the island interior. I scanned the brush and grass that filled the area. “It’s a mess in there.” “It’s not bad. There’s a trail. See.” She marched up toward a bush and bent her frame around it, disappearing behind spindly branches. “C’mon!” I followed her, and there it was: behind the bush, a thin trail wound inward. “What’s back here?” The island was small, two acres at most, and I felt like with any step, we’d emerge onto the opposite shore. “You’ll see. Here.” She passed the bottle back over her shoulder. I drank. Margo pushed aside a branch to reveal a tiny clearing. Really, it was just a tamped-down patch of dirt encased in shrubs. At one end was a stone, maybe a foot high, but taller than it was wide. Margo stopped and took the bottle back. “Here.” “Here? What’s here? Other than a bunch of ticks.” She drank and then pointed at the stone with the bottle. “This is where we buried him. Where we buried Maddy.” “Maddy ran away.” “No, he didn’t. Michael hit him with his truck when we were coming down the driveway. It was an accident, but we brought him out here to give him a proper burial.” “Is this a joke?” “No joke.” “What the fuck, Margo? What was I doing?" “I don’t know, but this was during your Pussyfoot phase, so we—you know—had to walk on eggshells.” I stared at the stone. “I know,” Margo said. “I’m sorry.” “I loved that dog.” We stood there watching the stone for another minute, then returned to the shore. Margo and I made two more loops around the rocky edge of the island. Occasionally, a stiff breeze would tear past us and break the glass surface of the lake, churning the water into a choppy froth. I wanted to be pissed, though whatever happened then didn’t mean much now. That was the thing about the cabin, all the good or bad that occurred there, it was just another layer. Still, I had loved that dog. - On the last loop, we worked our way across a stretch where rough stones tumbled down from the embankment above us into the water. We paused and sat, polishing off the bourbon until the sun dipped below the trees behind us. We got into the boat and Margo rowed back. Sitting in the stern, I watched the cabin grow larger. The boat smacked the shore opposite just as twilight bled into dusk. “We never ate our sandwiches,” I said as Margo tied the boat off to a post in the water. She laughed. “That’s alright. Throw them in the fridge.” Heading back toward the cabin, we meandered across the lawn, giving each other teasing pushes and laughing like kids. When we arrived at the front porch, I settled into one of the rockers. “I need to rest a moment.” Margo sat down in the chair beside mine. “Why did you wait to show me that? Why now?” I asked. Margo sighed. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want you to not know. Not anymore.” I watched the daylight fade like a flame out of air. For whatever reason, that answer felt right. - I woke up in the dark and found Margo in the kitchen reorganizing the cabinets above the sink. “Look who’s up,” she said when she saw me. “I don’t usually take naps.” “Rest when you need to rest. You’ll be happy to know I’m making my world-famous mac and cheese tonight. I have just about everything, but we need some milk and another bottle of wine. Do you mind running to town?” Margo didn’t mention me going to Eastport. “Not at all.” “Great, the corner store on Route 1 should have everything.” She put down a fresh drink and came closer. “I can’t tell you how much it means that you came,” she said. “You were always my favorite cousin.” I grabbed my keys. The bourbon had left me groggy, but after two wrong turns I found the store. Little had changed since when we were young: the same signs advertising cigarettes and lotto tickets at the state minimum still plastered the windows, and behind the counter a Bush ’92 campaign sticker hung above the clock next to the TV. It was as I was checking out that I really looked at the TV. The news was on, and a reporter was speaking live from outside Margo’s house in Portland. I could recognize it right away even though police cars lined the curb and an ambulance occupied the driveway. The sound was off, but I read the banner beneath the reporter: Portland Man’s Death Ruled Homicide. I blinked, hoping I could shake off some hallucinogenic side effect of bourbon on an empty stomach, but when I looked back up and saw my cousin’s face on the screen, I knew there was no confusion, no mistake. The picture police chose to air—yellowed even through the TV screen—was taken at the cabin. Margo was standing next to a man cropped out, his arm over her shoulder. She’s smiling. “You alright?” The pimple-faced young woman at the counter raised an eyebrow. My stomach had fallen into my feet, and an intense nausea began to creep up my throat. I paid and left. As I pulled up the driveway, the cabin was dark. Margo’s car was still out front, but by now everything was cloaked in moonless darkness. I turned on the kitchen lights and discovered everything in the cabinets poured out onto the floor in heaps of pots and pans and plates. The new utensils that my cousin had brought were scattered on the floor, too. “Margo?” I whispered. On the kitchen table, a bottle of bourbon was more empty than not. “Margo?” Moving into the sunroom, I saw the paintings stacked on one of the recliners; on the other, a shape. And on a table was my cigarette case and the polaroids that had been inside it. “Margo?” The shape squirmed and from under a blanket, my cousin poked her head up. “You’re sick. You know that.” I sat beside her on a stool. “Who are they?” she groaned and eyed the photos. “My patients.” “Why are they like that?” “They’re fine. They’re just sleeping. You shouldn’t have gone into my stuff. Why were you in the vent?” She rubbed her eyes with the blanket and let out a whimper, then tossed something at my feet. “You always had the best hiding spaces.” I picked it up and examined it: a Swiss Army knife, blood dried along the hinge, Hank inscribed on its side. She nodded toward the pictures. “Is that why you came here, why you really came here? To stash those?” I put the knife in my pocket. “It is.” “This weekend, this cabin, this was my last good thing. You know that?” “I do.” “You’re sick,” she said again. “We’re all sick, Margo.” My cousin pushed her face into the blanket and shook her head again. She was still for a while. When I went to stand, she grabbed my arm. “Be with me. Just be with me. Please.” I sat back down and wrapped my hands around hers. We sat in the quiet peace of the cabin, surrounded by artifacts of a treasured past, until the red and blue lights flashed in the distance around Wang Dang Point. Evan Helmlinger is a writer and editor living in Connecticut with his amazing wife, curious son, and lazy cat. He holds a BA in English and History from Syracuse University and has spent nearly a decade crafting, editing, and publishing work that sticks in the mind. Fascinated by the secrets we all keep just beneath the surface, Evan crafts his ideas while folding laundry or working in the yard, later putting them to paper. His work has appeared in Mental Floss, The Humor Times, and elsewhere. I tossed and turned throughout the night, unable to sleep. There was a long day ahead, but I would get all of the sleep that I needed soon enough, unable to resist sleep when the night comes. One misses so much while the eyes are open as it is. There is no one who, truly, fears not the stage. Whether fear or excitement, no matter. The effect is the same. The sun would be up in a moment and spill the soft rays of Nature's stage lights into my room, but I would rise before it today and begin my rehearsal in the darkness. Fitting! My best work now long for the shadows, as it were. I arose. I stretched. I washed. I arrived at the theatre. Dressed in my finest attire, the costume carefully chosen and laid out for me by a loving hand, with face tastefully decorated just so as to catch the light perfectly, capturing and preserving my every expression—a face known for its gesticulations. Today promised to be a very special day. The final act. The final performance. There would be no more encores. All shows, even the great ones, draw to a close. Knowing this made it nonetheless sour. The show had run its course and it is always better to go out on top, as they say in the business, than to overstay one's welcome. That I should go out with such a "Bang!" I would leave the stage with the same reverence with which I approached it, exiting stage right, no need of the old Vaudevillian hook to make the modest thespian of me. The stage is an altar, a place of belief and ritual and magic…movement and doing. There is celebration and there is worship. There is the cult, the performer a priest, the faithful congregation. There is love and there is sorrow, both real and imagined, but there is emotion, always the emotion...rising and crashing simultaneously upon both performer and audience in often unexpected waves. No performance ever the same nor its effects upon the souls of officiant and parishioner alike. One is fortunate to have lived as she would have chosen not otherwise to do. The summation of my career—my life—predicated upon sharing with others the experience of the entirety of the catalog of human emotion, from the depths of low to the peaks of high. Such a life one dare not dream of exchanging for the nightmare of not living life such as it is. Praise...critique...no matter, the show must go on, life must go on. This is the human condition. "Showtime!" I am informed. The butterflies launch from their perch in unison to begin their wild and aerialbatic dance. I feel them as always, perhaps more so now in this final moment of glory. I could never tame the wild little things. Peeking out from behind the curtain, a full house! I smile...no I laugh from the sheer rush of joy! Each and every soul here for me! Eyes upon me, the star of the show. I never dreamt that I might touch so many souls. I have been blessed, truly I have. And here they were now, waiting for me, and I knew that they loved me for I could feel the love burning in my heart as I drew nearer them and they to me. I, in turn, loved them with a fierce reciprocity. I was who and what I was for them and because of them. Curtain about to open...the butterflies now as though sparrows... I would miss the stage. I would miss my role. I would miss my fellow cast. I would miss my beloved audience. But I would savor every morsel of these, the final moments, of this encore presentation. I would give my very best! As Time is so prone to do when one is caught up in rapture—living in that singular moment where one feels amidst the sinews the truth that there is indeed neither past nor future—it passed, the show was over, and the curtain closed. But tonight, there would be no curtain call. No last exchange with the audience, no final bow. It was all over. Now I would have that long overdue sleep…the peaceful rest. As I closed my eyes for the final time that night, my last memory is of the taste of saline upon my lips from the lone teardrop that had fallen as I listened to the minister read my eulogy. It was such a beautiful monologue. And then I slept through the night. This piece first appeared in Raven Cage Zine, Issue 57 (May 28, 2021). People everywhere. Clustered in tight groups around the tall tables spread with precision throughout the room. Settled into banquettes along the terra cotta walls. Leaning against the glossy, dark wood of the bar. Coming and going from the facilities. Passing by on the sidewalk outside the floor-to-ceiling windows lining one side of the raised, corner stage. Leaning against the wooden frame of the inner, double doors. Servers flit between them all, balancing black circular trays laden with glassware in various states of use. Though I do not taste these elixirs, I know them by their scents. Guinness’s creamy chocolate, Smithwick’s malty caramel, Harp’s grassy yeast, Jamison’s peppery florals, and Magner’s apple-y bouquet. Together, they seem to alchemize this moment from a singular experience, to an eternal one. Glassware clinks, and a babel of pleasant chatter competes with the basketball game on the flat-screen TVs. The musicians in the corner seem oblivious to the din. Sitting in a circle on the stage, drinks at their feet, instruments in hands, they are lost in their own conversation. Guitarists strum chords in time with the bodhran’s steady rhythm. Fiddlers glide out notes, playing a lilting duet with the penny whistles and flute. An accordion drones and tapping feet emphasize the downbeat as the musicians fly through a reel. In the pause between tunes, the flutist stands, declaring time for a song, and calls me over. Unbeknownst to me, the other musicians do not share his enthusiasm. I am greeted with challenging stares as the musicians lay down their instruments and pick up their glasses. There is no microphone and the sounds of the pub suddenly seem loud to me. My heart beats swiftly as a flutter of nervous energy pervades my being. The flutist smiles and nods his head. I turn my back to the open windows and face the crowd, looking over the heads of the musicians in front of me. Ignoring their stares, I swallow my fear, take a deep breath, and open my mouth. Within three notes, a hush falls over the room. The servers mute the televisions, and time stands still. People stop mid-drink, holding glasses aloft. They freeze on their way to or from the facilities. They halt in, and by, the doorway. They stop on the sidewalk outside, and press into the windows. I sing on. The nervous energy gives way to something else. Something ethereal and incandescent. And as I look around the room while singing a tale of love and longing, I am aware that everyone here in this terra cotta space, the sports-lovers, the craic sharers, the casual diners, the musicians, the people now crowded into the open windows and doorway, the barkeep, the servers – all of us are held in some kind of magic, woven by the song. Together, we are in a sacred moment, a shared experience. Transcending time. In this exact instant, I know in my blood and bones, I am not alone. My body holds a power older than time itself and I am not singing. I am being sung. Sarah Dinan is a vocalist and author with a passion for storytelling and an abiding love for nature. She’s been a teacher, actress, martial artist, radio DJ, Turkish cuisine connoisseur, hair model, belly dancer, arborist, Celtic singer, and ropes course facilitator. She’s also an unofficial ambassador for hydration, and a fierce advocate for following your dreams. Her writing has been published in Ariel Chart Literary Journal and The Orchards Poetry Journal, and featured on Jericho Writers. Sarah lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, son, and battle cello, Tilda. That’s where my Dad was born: Whiskey Hill. It did perch on a hill, and local history has it that quite a bit of whiskey flowed down the hill into the valley below.
Then Prohibition came along, and the good town fathers (there were no women in government back then) changed the name to “Freedom”, as if somehow partaking of whiskey for so many years actually got you to Freedom. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. The road to Whiskey Hill is still there. It is a narrow path, cutting off of Freedom Boulevard, hardly wide enough for one car. I can only imagine old Model T’s puffing their way up the hill to grab a keg of that stuff, whatever it was. If you didn’t know the road was there, odds are you would never see it behind the massive oak trees and overgrown poison oak. My father’s cousin was the last of the family to still live on Whiskey Hill. He lived right across the Presbyterian Church that spewed its bellowing out over the whole area on Sunday mornings. Everyone congregated at that Church, there wasn’t much else to do on Sunday mornings on Whiskey Hill. By the time my father’s family left, a new access road to Freedom had been built, and a freeway connected all of central California, with the town center relocated to the respectable valley below. I became the mostly respectable librarian in Freedom. One day at lunch I sat at a counter next to a young man who was wandering the West. His eyes truly glowed as he told me how he took the freeway exit labeled “Airport Blvd/ Freedom.” He didn’t find an airport – that was on a different road entirely – and although he found Freedom, Whiskey Hill would have eluded him but for the happenstance meeting of a mostly respectable friend. MaryAnn Shank spent much of her life in the shadow of Whiskey Hill. She wrote of her unexpected adventures in the Somali Peace Corps in the historical novel "Mystical Land of Myrrh". Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications, and she is presently engaged in bringing to life the story of another historical figure. Find her at http://mysticallandofmyrrh.com. “There are people who are unable to think," Abbot Corby said, "and there are those who can't feel. And there are people like you who can't do either. No matter how much you teach them, it won't do them any good.”
These were the exact words Abbot Corby said to his pupil, the unintelligent Charles, who ten years later would become King of the Franks and of the Lombards and Emperor of the West. Charles remembered well the lesson the abbot had given him, and one day, after drinking from a bottle of intoxicating power, he ordered his teacher brought to him and, when he was brought in, bound hand and foot and gagged, Charles asked, "Do you still consider me incapable of thinking and feeling? And when the abbot was silent because he could not speak, Charles ordered that the gag be taken out of the teacher's mouth. “Answer!” “I still think I was right," answered the teacher. The King of the Franks and Lombards and the Emperor of the West gave orders to tie the abbot to a pillar of shame. Townspeople were commanded to throw rotten eggs and other foodstuffs at the old man. Two days later a new order came out: Untie him from the pillar and bring him to the throne room. “Do you continue to think as you did before?” the old teacher was asked by the Emperor of the West, the Lord of the Francs and the Lombards. The teacher said nothing, just nodded faintly. The Emperor of the West, the Lord of the Francs and of the Lombards ordered to hang the abbot. When he was already standing at the gallows with a noose around his neck, the emperor went up the platform and again asked if the teacher had changed his mind about his former pupil. The old man answered with his eyes: No. The emperor nodded to the executioner and the executioner drew up the rope. The old teacher's body hung in the air. And it seemed that even his dead legs, swaying from side to side, were saying: "I was right." Nina Kossman is a poet, memoirist, playwright, editor, and artist. She has authored, edited, translated, or both edited and translated more than nine books in English and Russian. She was born in Moscow and currently lives in New York. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Kossman It was a cold night in late March and the moon rose somewhere over Kansas. The wind screamed, the way it does over metal, sharp and unrelenting, forcing me to shelter behind my pack. I stuffed a t-shirt into my wool hat to cover my face and peered though it like a mask. I was bound for home and classes on a freight train out of Amarillo—almost broke, exhausted, happy.
The train stopped. I moved to the front of the car—an empty automobile carrier with sides like a guard rail rising three levels—and stepped down into the night. Fields still slumbered in dark winter, flat to the horizon where low stars and distant farm lights mixed. With luck, I’d ride as far as Chicago. After a two-year absence, I was eager to return to the university and finish my degree. But this night, in this cold place, I was having second thoughts. What did sitting behind a desk have to offer? I had floundered in one program or another, searching for answers, yet hardly knowing the questions to ask. School, I was convinced, was not going to bring out my best self, so I left to pursue what I thought a more worthy life. What’s the use of all that noise and money? asked the Tang Dynasty poet Han-shan, named for the place he lived, Cold Mountain. His words became my calling. Freed from the weight of expectations and a career track, I wandered, trespassed, dared—and moved in awe of a new world. On the road I felt at once both centered, and unhinged; there were no wrong turns. Not knowing in what railyard (or backyard), or under what tree or star I’d spend the night, I lived in the moment— a delightful anxiety—out of fear from looking past it. Happy, yet scared, seemed to be my lot in life. Of course, dropping out and leaving were easy; coming back whole, and having something to say, less so. Now the train’s brakes hissed, it shook and lurched, and I scampered back on. The swaying, windswept car made more conventional rides— bounding along in the cab of an 18-wheeler, for example, or sharing the bed of a flatbed truck in Mexico with a drove of pigs—appear first class. Wherever I kneeled—even lying down—the wind penetrated to my bones. The train moved with all the speed of a weather front. Until it didn’t. At a long and captive layover outside a small town south of Wichita—I followed the tracks on a road map—I slept much of the following day. Woke up, plucked a freeze-dried beef with potatoes from my pack, and boiled water on my small gas stove. This train apparently was going nowhere. Dozing, I missed the first eastbound that rolled into the deserted yard and waited until dark for the next. I was not alone on this one. Two Mexican teenagers, laughing and coatless, dashing and daring, jumped from a boxcar as the train slowed, beckoning me to follow them. I didn’t comprehend. “How is this?” I yelled. “Where to? Adónde?” “La máquina! La máquina!” The younger one shouted, pointing to a second locomotive at the front of the train, coupled back-to-back to the main engine. I followed their lead. We climbed the steps and made ourselves at home on the narrow floor. “Yo soy Marcos,” I told them. “Arnulfo,” said the younger boy. The older one seemed distant, yet at the same time watched me with a closeness that was unnerving. He wouldn’t tell me his name. Perhaps if I had had a mirror, I wouldn’t have trusted the person in it either. The two were cleaner-looking than me. Their hair was cut, their faces smooth—if indeed they were old enough to use a razor. I had a good beard going, and shoulder length hair. They were better dressed as well, however insufficiently, in shirts and trousers. I had on five layers, flannel and wool, a down jacket and rainsuit. The Michelin Man from hell. “Hermanos?” I asked. “Primos,” Arnulfo said. Cousins. Spanish was at least one course I had finished at school. Arnulfo said they hoped to find work and send money home. They had nothing to eat. I gave them a freeze-dried meal of something or other (they all taste the same after a while) which they tore into and devoured dry, like cereal. He said they’d hopped a train some days ago in El Paso and survived the frigid nights hunkering down in deserted engine rooms, drinking the potable water there. In the warmth of this new shelter, my sleeping bag now draped over the three of us, I would survive too. The train’s rhythms were riveting, even hypnotic from our uneasy berth, which at best was not unlike the rocking of a cradle. Or, at worst, the steady back-and-forth churning of a washing machine. And we were the oversized, unbalanced load that hadn’t set off any alarms. Yet. The train whistle (or horn) was loud, too, its frequency indicating the size of the town we rumbled through, and my heart skipped a beat—as it still does, to this day—listening to the unquiet wonder of it piercing the darkness. As we crossed the heartland, I thought of perhaps the first whistle I’d ever heard, alongside my brother a lifetime ago in an Iowa motel room near tracks, and of a train I’d been on too, a dateless journey into the night with my father somewhere near Niagara Falls. Trips I cannot put into context other than to say there was a train, night, a whistle, family. Plaintive sound—or bold warning—the sound of a train is more or less a wrinkle in time that announces the past is ever present, and the present—in the blink of an eye—is already past. In the middle of the night, as the train eased into a small yard in central Kansas, a man entered our locomotive, stumbled upon us and abruptly left. Spooked, the boys and I fled that engine at the next stop, literally hit the ground running, found an open door down the line and thrust ourselves into a dank and empty boxcar. At once, and in silence, we worked the heavy ironlike doors almost closed, leaving them open just enough to breathe in the bitter fresh air. The collective fear of being locked in and entombed in this bleak car needed no translation. Moving through the din and darkness of morning, staring through the gap in the doors at the tree line across the tracks, I had the improbable and magical feeling that wherever we were going, wherever we ended up, I’d been to. Trains can turn your world upside down like that. For much of my life I’d gazed longingly at tracks, steel rails that seemed to beckon and bend and dissolve in the heat, disappearing in a destiny of their own beyond anything I could imagine, and the sound of a coming train—the whistle in the air, the humming of the ground—was an invitation to jump aboard; a song I had to know. Looking back at that time and the wisdom of taking such risks, today I wonder if I had lost my mind—or was simply more willing to find it. Toward dawn we approached Kansas City, its bright lights spilling through the peephole of our boxcar doors, reminding me that I was one step—or yard—closer to home. The old desire to fit in, to be stamped and graded pulled at me as relentlessly as the wind had pushed. I wanted to be, well, wanted. Accepted. Loved. I was torn between Cold Mountain, Han-shan’s world, and the one chasing approval. I came to the understanding that the road away—painfully, joyfully—frames what home is and is not, as well as the people you run from, or to. The road back is merely one seeking acceptance, and I wanted to come in from the cold. As I would. Wearing every last shred of clothing I had, the sleeping bag again draped over our bodies, I thought of grabbing it and my pack and jumping from the train. Railroad security, however, would spare me that. Drifting in and out of sleep, I hadn’t realized that we had reached the yard. Suddenly a flashlight was in our faces. A second man barked his what-the-fuck at us. Forced off the train, they frisked, handcuffed and sat us down, like stones on a stone wall, guarded by one agent as two others searched one-by-one the remaining cars with their imposing Maglites. The great yard shook with life in the early morning. Tens and tens of tracks merged and straightened and curled like a sea of black snakes as cars of all shapes, tall as bulldozers and flat as dominos, were joined or uncoupled amidst the clamor of bells. The smell of diesel was thick like mud. Switchmen sprung up like jacks-in-the-box, jumping and hollering to rearrange whole trains with a whisk of their wrists and lanterns, their sharp cries splitting the frosted blue-gray air. I thought of Studs Terkel. Sinclair Lewis. Gary Snyder. Marty Robbins. In their tight blazers and pencil thin neckties, the two agents who busted us seemed out of place in this expansive yard teeming with workmen in coveralls. But they too had roles, and drove us to a still dark, modern brick building less than a mile away. One agent led the Mexican teens to another room and then went to search for the janitor who spoke Spanish, while the other interrogated me at his desk. He asked if I was carrying any drugs, and whether I had a Buck knife, which he clearly coveted. I had neither, and little else other than a few granola bars in my pack and some change in my pockets. He returned to his paperwork as I again thought of home—Michigan was another 600 miles east—and my time away from it. Whatever it is that young men search for, I was in the hunt, trying to find a life without adornment, blather and harm—and I was inexplicably drawn to trains. Perhaps the attraction was simple; the tracks led away from home, school and a predicable life. But tracks, of course, run in both directions; and home, as they say, is where your story begins. At times, telling mine seems within reach. The agent, finished with his report, took a phone call, then put the receiver down. “The highway is a few miles from here,” he said, nodding toward my pack. “You can likely find a ride there.” And I thought, it’s a weary thing, the simple act of holding your thumb out and relying on the charity of others. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I thought too of the teens, soon to be homeward bound themselves with the clothes on their backs and probably not much more. Just then I turned to the waiting room to see them enter and sit. The older, quiet one raised his cuffed hands and smiled at me through the glass. “Pablo,” he said, loud enough for me to hear. “Pablo from Magdalena de Kino. Vaya con dios, Marcos.” “They’ll be detained for Immigration,” the agent said, following my gaze. “You’re free to go. But I’m warning you: We have what we need to know about you. Do not ride the Santa Fe through Kansas again.” And I wouldn’t. Not in Kansas. B.L. Makiefsky was the winner of the 2012 Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook contest, for the short story collection Fathers and Sons. Among publications his work has been featured in (or is forthcoming) are the Detroit Free Press, Dunes Review, Thoughtful Dog, Pithead Chapel, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Fiction Southeast, Flash Fiction Magazine, Hypertext Magazine, Jewish Literary Journal, the Great Lakes Review, On The Run and jewishfiction.net. In addition, Makiefsky has written three stage plays, one of which (a one-act) was produced. Spring has returned to Long Island. I wake early and lace up the blue and silver New Balance walking shoes I bought a few weeks ago in anticipation of this year’s equinox. I’m hopeful that the exercise will strengthen my bones and jumpstart my goal to lose ten pounds. Waiting for the school buses and morning commuters to clear the neighborhood, I strap on the new Fitbit my daughter gave me for my 68th birthday.
The warmth of the morning is soothing. I wear only a heavy sweater over fleece-lined leggings and a worn pullover, removing my gloves three blocks into the walk. I round the corner on Anne Street and spot a man with a burly gray bread. His white robes are bellowing in the wind under a down jacket, and sandals expose his toes as he walks sluggishly down the other side of the street. We glimpse at each other with a brief curiosity and then walk on. I remember a movie I recently saw with Helen Mirren who played a woman wanting to learn to drive after her husband dies. She found a middle-aged man from India to teach her and after a few months, they had a loving but short-lived affair. I wonder where this man across the street hails from. Is he from India, Pakistan, or Tibet? Or is he wearing pajamas he bought at Kohl’s? That’s the trouble with the world, in a nutshell, assumptions. It’s like when I meet Asian people, I think they’re bi-lingual. Maybe I’ll see the man in the sandals again another day and I will speak to him and figure it all out. Returning to my house, and still looking for my husband’s Honda Civic missing from the driveway, makes a dent in my heart and I sigh as deeply as a lion’s roar. His death was too sudden. How long do I grieve? Is there a timeline for loss? After enduring a dark winter, I look forward to sunshine in the days ahead. Sipping a cup of mango tea, I think about what to plant in my garden. Then I consider baking a loaf of sourdough bread and tomorrow I can eat it for lunch outside on the deck, after my walk. The next day I lace up my walking shoes and head out. Walking alone each day becomes monotonous unless I have a diversion. I could listen to Spotify on my iPhone, but then I might miss a crack in the sidewalk and fall on the cement, only to break my hip or cause a head injury. Attempting to be mindful of the birds singing to each other, the luminous clouds in the sky, and the lovely homes with well-groomed lawns, my mind defies me. Stories and thoughts jump in my head and I struggle with this mindfulness matter. I survey the neighborhood as if collecting data for the census when actually all I’m hoping for is to spot the man in sandals. I turn the corner and see him across the street. We make eye contact and I smile, then we both walk in opposite directions. Today I am bold. It’s been nine months since my husband David died. The same amount of time as gestation, the phase needed to grow a life. My morning walks have moved from days into weeks and my fascination with the man in the robe grows. I close the door to my home, take a deep breath and walk on the same side of the street as he. I turn the corner and we meet head-on. When we are face to face, I stop short and say, “Hello.” His smile is broad when he answers, “Hello to you.” I hear the sharp /t/ and recognize a British accent. I bet he’s from India, but dare I ask. I continue the beginnings of a conversation. “It’s a beautiful morning for a walk.” “Indeed, it is.” The man in sandals introduces himself. “My name is Aakash Devi.” “My name is Barbara Fried.” After some hesitation, I ask, “Which way are you walking?” He tilts his head forward; his eyes are dusty gray. “That way, would you like to join me?” “Yes, thank you.” We continue walking half a mile exchanging niceties and comments about the beautiful weather. My curiosity takes over. “Are you visiting from India?” “Not precisely. I am from India, but I’m not visiting. I now live with my son, here in Huntington.” I’d like to know more about Aakash. I stop myself not wanting to overstep any boundaries, and so we walk a mile discussing neutral topics- the weather, local places, and music until we go our own ways. We continue to meet near Anne Street as if by coincidence but really on purpose. The spring is coming to an end and summer’s heat begins to encroach on our walks. We accept that our meetings are intentional and decide to meet earlier since the days are growing longer and so are our walks and conversations. I think it’s time for more personal questions. “Is your wife with you at your son’s house?” “No, she passed last year.” “Oh, I’m so sorry.” “What about your husband,” he asks. “Is he at work while you walk?” “No. he had a heart attack last fall and died suddenly.” I want to run home. I haven’t said that out loud in a while, especially to a stranger and to a man, no less. I feel naked as if I’m standing without clothes and at the same time my skin is longing to be warmed by touch. He slows his pace. “I’m sorry for you, too.” “Thank you. I think I’ll turn down this block, my house is near the next corner.” We part. I quickly walk home, pour myself a shot of Jameson on the rocks, sit on the couch and weep. My morning walks stop for the next few days, instead, I ride the stationary bike in my den. I’m too raw to walk in the wind and there is no amount of sunscreen that can protect me from nature’s rays. I wonder if Aakash will miss me on his walk or is he too feeling vulnerable and staying inside reading a book. It’s been a week now and my courage reservices on this lovely summer’s day. With my shoes laced up, I begin walking and spot Aakash at the end of the next block. I pick up my pace to meet him. His gentle gaze is comforting, and he asks, “Are you alright? I’ve missed seeing you.” “I’m fine. I was just tired.” We begin together at a slow pace. “Would you like to sit on the bench in the park?” “Yes, that’s a good idea.” I sit back on the bench and let the shade of the oak trees cool me from the early August humidity. The park is full of small children and their mommies and nannies. Looking out at the children on the swings, I’m optimistic and filled with hope that I too can be free to glide in the air, secure that gravity will hold me up. I ask Aakash, “Does your son have children?” “Yes, three. One is already in college.” “You must be very proud.” I’m an inquisitive person, eager to find out about things that may be none of my business. But then how do I build relationships if not by asking questions. “How long were you married?” “Forty-two years. I hardly knew my wife before we married. I only met her twice, after seeing her picture. Arranged marriages are common in India.” “I’ve read that in many arranged marriages, couples usually maintain a long and loyal relationship, learning to love each other by caring for a stranger. But I suppose we’re all strangers who become intimate in a marriage either by our choice or someone else’s plan.” “Are you a philosopher?” We laugh, and I’m happy that the man in sandals is becoming my friend. “What was your wife’s name?” “Pallavi. She was from Amritsar, in the state of Punjab. My family is from Punjab. We lived in Chandigarh where the University is. My parents were professors.” Aakash looks up at the cloudless sky and then continues. “In India, most women are groomed to be a wife and taught to run the household, care for the children, and keep things orderly, those responsibilities were deep-rooted in Pallavi. Then when our children grew, she wanted to study at the university and become a teacher.” “Did your wife become a teacher?” “No, she got sick. It was a genetic blood disease.” “That must have been hard for both of you.” I sit quietly for a few minutes. When I sense the heaviness lift, I continue, “I was like Pallavi, but the difference is I finished college before I married. I also raised my children and took care of the household. Then I worked as a teacher in an elementary school near my home.” After a pause. “What kind of work do you do?” “I’m a physician, what you call internal medicine, a family doctor. I worked in our city and retired before I moved here.” He turns to look at me. Looking back at him, intrigued by his delicate, defined features. Our boundaries are becoming blurred. I feel a twinge-like hunger that morphs into a cascade of nerves, I stand up. “Let’s walk.” The summer progresses and so do our walks and conversations. This morning when I leave my house, the sky looks threatening, and rain is predicted. I venture out anyway eager to see Aakash. We meet near the park. As we walk the rain begins, only a few blocks from my home. “Why don’t we walk this way,” I point in the southern direction. “We can stop by my house and I can make tea if you would like that?” “Yes, I would. You’re very kind.” We enter the warmth of my home and I guide Aakash into the living room to sit on the couch. “Please make yourself comfortable, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I return with a pot of honeyed Irish breakfast tea and a plate of cookies. I pour tea into matching mugs, give him the cup and sit on the loveseat across from Aakash. “Thank you. The tea is lovely and those cookies look delicious.” “I love to bake, It’s therapy for me.” I hand him a plate with three cookies. He bites into one but cannot resist putting the entire cookie into his mouth. “I’ve never tasted this confection before. It’s very good.” “They’re thumbprint cookies. The little dimple in the center is for all kinds of jam, but I use strawberry, my mother’s favorite.” “Are your parents still alive?” “No, my parents both passed away, but I have some of my mother’s recipes and this is one we used to make together.” Aakash sips his tea and then asks, “Are your parents from America?” “My father was American.” “What about your mother?” “My mother and her first husband were from Germany.” I pour more tea into his cup. Aakash sips his tea. “I always wonder where people are from who live in the US. In India, we’re from the same place for many generations, but that hardly happens in America.” “Well, during the war, my mother, her husband, and their little girl were sent to concentration camps. By the time the war ended, my mother’s daughter and husband were dead. She had nothing left to live for in Germany. A Jewish refugee organization helped her find relatives in New York and she came to America. She met my father and they married, and my older brother and I were born here.” “I’m so sorry for your family. War and hate are terrible. In India, Islam is the minority religion in Punjab. We’re always threatened, our mosques burned and people are terrorized and killed. Fortunately, my family and I were safe. But after Pallavi died, my son was worried about me and insisted I come to America and live with him. I also have a daughter also lives in the US. She’s in Massachusetts with her family.” “I guess we both have many stories to tell.” We smile at each other, a warm moment of connection. Aakash sits back on the sofa and crosses his legs. “My son is making a 70th birthday party for me in a few weeks. I would be happy if you attended.” “I would love that. Is it at his home?” “No, it’s at our mosque, in their party room.” At first, I’m uncomfortable not knowing what to expect. I’ve never been to a mosque, but I care for Aakash and want to accept his invitation. After a short pause, I respond, “Of course, I’ll be there.” The next few weeks rush by. I try to decide what’s appropriate for a Jewish woman to wear to a birthday party at a mosque. After going through many outfits from my closet and debating with myself about buying something new, I choose my navy-blue suit with gold jewelry accessories. On Saturday, I drive along Jericho Turnpike and see a sparkling green dome up ahead, shining like morganite. It’s the Islamic Center. I turn into the street with an impressive beige stone building and powerful pillars. Red begonias line the entrance. After parking in the spacious lot, I go to the side door which opens to a long hallway. Walking in the direction of the loud voices and aromas of Chicken Biryani, I enter the room. Aakash waves to me and walks over in his shinny brown oxfords, no bare feet today. “I’m glad you’re here.” “You look very handsome in your American clothes.” “Thank you and you look pretty in yours.” We joke and I immediately relax. Then he leads me to a small table where his son and daughter-in-law are seated. “This is my friend Barbara.” His family warmly greets me. During our meal of kebab with lime, green chutney, basmati rice, garlic mustard fish fillet, and roti, we chat. The meal ends with a silky sponge cake and Masala chai tea. Aakash and I excuse ourselves and walk out on the veranda. The evening breeze is soft. “I have something to tell you.” Aakash straightens his striped necktie. “My son is moving to Atlanta; he’s relocating because of his job.” The ease of our time together stops, as quickly as it began. “I guess you’re going with him.” I swallow hard to restrain my tears. “Yes. I have to.” There are no words for a few moments, as I process this news. “I’ll miss our walks.” “Me too.” “When are you leaving?” “The end of December, before Christmas.” In mid-December, a few days before Aakash leaves for Atlanta, I invite him to dinner. We relish the favors of roast chicken, braised asparagus, and baked sweet potatoes. We drink tea, eat chocolate ganache cake and talk about the similarities of our culture’s appreciation of food. I present Aakash with a gift of Marimekko Kukka stationery. He opens it. His even white teeth contrasting his silky brown completion, he says, “We can be pen pals.” “That’s funny. I remember in elementary school I had a pen pal in Ireland. I enjoyed reading about her bike rides on the mountains and writing back to her about movies I saw.” “I never had a pen pal, but I’d like to have one now.” The evening ends and it’s time to say goodbye. “It’s been special to know you and I wish you only the best.” I’m not sure whether I should hug Aakash or just shake his hand. When I lean in, it’s as if I have no control over my body, I hold him and he returns the embrace. We separate, and the hazy light of dusk is a backdrop to the intense look on his face. “The pleasure of your company has been important to me; I will not forget you.” He puts on his coat and gently closes the door. For the next few weeks, every morning after my walk, I check the mail looking forward to receiving Aakash’s letters. Writing back immediately about the neighborhood, news of Long Island, and my critiques of the documentaries on PBS. The last week in February his letters stop appearing in my mailbox. Nevertheless, I continue to write to him. In a couple of weeks in early March, when the daylight and the darkness are equal and the earth’s equinox is imminent, I receive a letter addressed in unfamiliar handwriting. I open it. Dear Barbara, I’m sorry to tell you sad news. Last week when my father was walking in the morning, he was struck by a car. He was taken to the hospital, but the doctors couldn’t save him and he died a few days later. I’m in disbelief as I re-read these sentences over and over again, my eyes moistening with each reading. I wipe my cheeks and continue. My father enjoyed your friendship and it gave him a pleasure to read your letters. The rest of the day passes by while I re-read all the letters Aakash had written to me, I saved them in a file on the kitchen table. The next day I drive to the mosque where we spent Aakash’s birthday celebration and give a donation in his memory. I’m also searching for comfort and for answers, which do not exist. When I sit in my car about to leave the mosque for an instant I forget how to drive. I take a deep breath, wipe my tears and resume the presence of life. In my weariness, I attempt to accept death as part of being human and experience my emotions as I comport with a renewal of the seasons. I miss Aakash when I take my morning walks. I opened up to make space available for new happenings and experienced a relationship that I wouldn’t have expected. Soon the Northern hemisphere will welcome springtime and I can consider which new trails I’ll take. Maybe I’ll join a gym, take a dance class, plant vegetables in my garden, and plan an al fresco cocktail party with friends late in the evening, as the sun sets. Edna Schneider’s previous writing experience includes two non-fiction books (Living Thin, published by Jason Aronson, Inc., and Sure, a self-published memoir) as well as numerous published professional articles. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Dramatic Arts from Emerson College, Boston, and a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology from C.W. Post, Long Island, NY. She has worked as a Clinical Specialist in Speech-Language Pathology at Rusk Rehabilitation/NYU Langone Health treating patients with stroke, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, concussion rehabilitation, and other neurogenic communication disorders. She was fellowship-trained at the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific in Hawaii. Prior to a career in Speech-Language Pathology, Edna was a professional puppeteer working with Jim Henson’s Muppets, FAO Schwartz, and marionette companies in USA and Belgium. 1956 ![]() “I don’t know, Goddamnit!” It’s the only thing Hank’s sure of, and he keeps shouting it at the cop. In the dark room, a spotlight is burning his eyes down to the sockets. It’s a basement of sorts, the ceiling a crisscross of piping and duct work, industrial grey and dark green. The spotlight sends streaks into his eyes every time the cop steps out of the beam. “What did you do last night? “I told you, I don’t know.” He’s struggling against the strap that’s tethering him to the chair. His hands are bound in cuffs on a tabletop. The cop punctuates each word with the smack of a nightstick against his palm: “Just— tell—me—what—you—did.” “For God’s sake, I don’t know.” “Maybe this’ll help his lousy memory,” the cop says to his assistant, handing him a belt. The assistant wraps it around Hank’s forehead, cinches it tight until the bones above his temples begin to creak. “Can’t I please just have some water?” His tongue is swollen, his throat so parched, he can barely mouth the words. The cop fills a glass with water, placing it just out of reach. He stares into Hank’s eyes, his face looming so close that Hank can smell his fetid breath. “Tell me what you did, and it’s yours.” He bangs a fist on the table with each word until the glass tumbles off and shatters on the concrete. Hank is sobbing now, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looks down at his fists on the table. They’re covered in blood, not tears. The cop is pressing the tip of a kitchen knife beneath his Adam’s apple. Hank stiffens. One wrong move and he’s a goner. “What did you do last night, Goddamnit?” Their eyes are dead level now. Hank blinks hard, trying to clear the spotlight streaks from his vision. When the face zooms into recognition, it’s not a cop. It’s his father, glaring straight down into him: “What the Hell did you do, you sonofabitch?” “Pa, I don’t know. Swear to God, I don’t!” He opens his eyes behind a wall of glass. His hands are in his lap, unbound. No blood and no cop. Just raw blades of sunlight streaking through a car window and the vague outline of a garage door: His. No idea how or why he’s out here, parked sideways in his own driveway. His eyes sweep the dashboard and the seats—his car all right. Whatever he did last night, he’s got one helluva hangover. His temples are pounding, his mouth a dry sponge. He flips open the glove compartment, fiddling for some aspirin, when he spots the half-pint of Old Crow right where he left it a year ago. Hair of the dog. It’s Louie’s favorite antidote for a hangover: “Another shot, and you’ll be good as new.” Hank turns the bottle over in his hand, puts it back into the glove compartment, snaps it shut. Not today. He’d left the bottle there as a reminder after his last binge: Never take another drink, no matter what. It was a little over a year ago, and he’d been out in the garage, tuning up the car, the bottle in his back pocket—what Lorraine didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. He’d been on the wagon for a couple of years by then, and it tasted so good that he kept driving back to the liquor store all weekend, buying one half pint after another. By Sunday afternoon, poor Lorraine walked out to the garage and caught the worst of his bad temper. All he remembers from that day is the screaming match just before she grabbed Jess and drove away to her mom’s. Must’ve passed out after that. Next thing he knew, it was Monday morning. He woke up, sprawled on the couch with a parched mouth, a piercing headache, and a black hole where his memory should’ve been. When he went out to the garage to look for her car, it wasn’t there. Just four half pints standing like soldiers on the windowsill—three of them empty. The rest was a blur. When Lorraine finally came back days later, he thought she was lying. But the welts and bruises told the tale. She always comes back. He loves her for that. Feels like shit afterward, vows never to touch a drink, and he means it. But after weeks or months, sometimes a year, the voices inside his head start cranking away: Go ahead. Just one drink. You can handle it. Then another. And another. It’s not the booze exactly—it’s the things that drive him to it: his dad winding the screws down on him at work, bitching about about every little thing, until something snaps. Next thing he knows, he wakes up empty as a shot glass, no sign of his family. He racks his brain, trying to reconstruct yesterday. It was his last day at the chemical plant—he remembers that much. Pa had sent him out there almost a year ago to design the piping and duct work for the new annex they were building. Yesterday at quitting time, old man Mueller called him into the office and poured him a glass of Seven Crown to thank him for for his good work. He’d walked out of there feeling like a big shot, stopping off at Frank’s bar for a boilermaker before heading home. Kenny Myers was there, shooting his mouth off, as usual. He’d won a wad of money at poker, and he lined up five shots of whiskey on the bar. “Ten bucks to anybody who can drink all five of these in under a minute,” he’d said. Hank took him up on it. Downed them all in fifty-two seconds flat. Last thing he remembers, he was stumbling around the parking lot, looking for his car. And now, here he is behind the wheel. Must’ve passed out. Whatever he did, Lorraine’s gonna be pissed. “Jesus Christ.” His eyes flash at his watch. Due at Mrs. Curtin’s in fifteen minutes and still in his dirty work clothes. No time to change. He stumbles out and heaves the garage door up. His heart stutters. No sign of Lorraine’s car. Calm down. It’s Monday. She’s probably driving Jess to school—which means she saw him passed out in the car. Christ. He’ll concoct a story later. First, he needs to get to work, try to fix his splitting head. He’s streaking down Saint Paul’s Street when he glances at the gas gauge: Empty, shit. He pulls into the nearest gas station. He’ll duck into the john while Eddie pumps the gas. Eddie saunters out of the garage, a free tumbler in his hand. Lorraine’s collecting them. He’ll bring it home tonight, a peace offering. “Hey Hank. What’ll it be? The usual?” “Yeah. Two bucks, ethyl. I’m gonna use your can, okay Eddie?” “Sure thing.” He walks to the bathroom, throws open the metal door. The smell of urine mixes with the nausea brimming in his gut. He pees forever, then turns on the faucet, running water into his hands and gulping it down. He splashes his eyes, slapping himself hard in the face with both hands. “Wake up, asshole—Goddamned house calls,” he says to no one. Eddie’s hanging the handle on the pump when Hank slides into the front seat. “Two bucks,” Eddie says, holding out a palm. Hank reaches into his back pocket. No wallet. What’s left of his stomach lurches as he fishes around in the car seat. “Jeez Eddie. I musta left my wallet home. Can I pay you later? I’m running late.” “Sure thing. Just bring it whenever.” Eddie hands him a tumbler with rainbow stripes. He drives to the shop. No sign of Pa, thank God. He runs to the back room, grabs some washers and a roll of plumber’s tape then barrels out to the car, puts them in the trunk, and heads down Fourth Street. He knows why he’s on the house calls and Louie’s at Mueller’s’ today. Must’ve been the job offer that riled Pa up. Six months ago, old man Mueller called him into the office. “We’re very pleased with your work, Hank.” Through his thick German accent, Hank could hear the admiration in his voice. The Muellers were rich as thieves and nutty as bed bugs, but the smartest old Germans he’d ever met. “Just doing my job, Mr. Mueller.” “No, Hank. You’ve done a lot more than your job.” He’d been their jack of all trades, designing the intricate routing plan for the piping and fabricating the supports and flanges from Mr. Mueller’s sketches. He could weld a pipe, fix a sputtering motor, and climb to the top of a tall smokestack for repairs in the same day. “You see, Hank, we need someone with your skills for another plant we’re opening, and we’d like to offer you a position.” He pictured the look on Pa’s face at the mere mention of leaving the business. “I appreciate the offer, Mr. Mueller . . . but . . .” “We’ll double what your dad’s paying you and give you retirement benefits.” The only benefit he ever got from Pa was a halfhearted hint that he’ll inherit the business when he finally kicks off. Sonofabitch will probably die in his work boots. “Well, that’s certainly tempting Mr. Mueller, but my dad depends on me.” “I understand Hank, but we’re opening a new plant in California, and we could use someone with your skills. Think about it.” At the mention of California, Hank’s heart had jumped. He thought back to his army days in Fort Ord.: the girls with picnic baskets beneath the cypress trees, his walks down Cannery Row—Steinbeck country. He’d borrowed the book from a guy in the next bunk. They were the best two years of his life. Lorraine was not convinced when he told her about the job. She fidgeted with her wedding ring. “I don’t know, Will—your father’ll have a fit.” “I know.” He could already feel the heat of Pa’s rage. “And what if they laid you off for some reason? You could never go back to your dad.” He pictured himself, hat in hand, begging Pa to take him back. “Yeah. Probably a bum idea. Nice to be asked though.” He tried to keep the offer a secret, but somehow Pa found out. Goddamned Louie probably told him. “So, I heard you’re jumpin’ ship here. Signin’ up with Mueller.” “Where’d you hear a thing like that?” “Never mind. I just know.” “Aw it’s just gossip, Pa. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you.” His dad squinted sideways at him. “Why would somebody make that up?” “Damned if I know, Pa. Honest to God.” But his father had his number, and today’s the proof: He’s on the house calls, and Louie’s at Muellers, finishing the job that was supposed to be his—Louie—not even a blood relative. He turns onto Chambers Street, pulling into the Curtins’ driveway and cutting the engine. He pulls his toolbox out of the trunk and walks up the sidewalk. He’s still steaming about the house calls when he spots a Jack o’ lantern on their front porch. Suddenly, the image of a smashed pumpkin and a butcher knife flashes before his eyes. Did he carve a pumpkin for Jess last night? More flashbacks, firing like gunshots: Someone banging on his front door. Lorraine running to answer it. Jess on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. It’s coming back in bits and pieces now. He pictures himself running out the back door, his feet slipping on wet grass. He’s running from something—or someone, spots his car lurched in the driveway, opens the door, slinks way down in the seat. The images begin to darken, fading—slowly—into black. “I’m so glad you came, Hank” Mrs. Curtin is standing in the doorway in a bathrobe and pin curls, a seat wrench and a paper bag in her hands. She’s muttering about how her husband bought all these parts at the hardware store, and now the tub faucet’s leaking worse than ever. He shakes the images out of his head, gathers himself. “Pete didn’t try to replace the seat, did he?” He turns the seat wrench over in his hand. “No, it’s the bathtub faucet, not the toilet seat.” He looks into the bag: a couple of washers and a brass faucet seat. Leave it to a do-it-yourself plumber to strip the old seat and turn a five-dollar job into a fifty-dollar mess. “Don’t worry Mrs. Curtin. I’ll take care of it.” He walks down the hall. Just as he thought, no access door behind the tub. Bathtub’s a hundred years old. Seat’s probably stripped and stuck in the corroded threads. He’ll have to cut a hole in the plaster to get out the old faucet, install a new one, and make an access door. A half-day’s labor. Pete will have a fit. He opens his toolbox and fishes around for a flashlight to look at the old seat. He pulls out a hacksaw blade instead. He turns the jagged metal over in his hands when more images flash out of nowhere:—a butcher knife—Lorraine’s hands—his—the knife gripped between them. He’s trying to wrest it out of her hand or something. Please let this be a nightmare. His stomach churns. He slams the toolbox shut, hurrying out to the kitchen. “Sorry, Mrs. Curtin, but this is turning out to be a bigger job than I thought.” “Really? Pete said the parts only cost about a quarter.” “Well, I think the old faucet seat’s stripped, and I’m gonna need to saw a hole in the wall to get it out from behind and install a new one” His mind’s exploding now. He pictures Jess on the couch, Lorraine at the door, somebody outside in the porch light. A cop? Did Lorraine call the cops? Got to get home! Now. He collects himself, “Mrs. Curtin, I’ll try to give you a fair price, but I really do need to go out and get some supplies before I know what everything’ll cost. I’ll come back later. Promise.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. Grabs his toolbox, barreling down the front steps and into the car, squealing tires all the way down the street. Houses and cars blur past on Gun Club Road. Was Jess hurt on the couch? Was he was hiding from a cop in the car? By the time he careens into his driveway, he’s starting to talk himself out of it. Probably just that nightmare coming back—the knife and the blood, the cop. Just a crazy hangover dream. He checks the garage. His stomach tightens. Still no car. He walks around to the front, opens the door, steps into the living room, spies the blanket on the couch. Lorraine’s not the best housekeeper. Nothing wrong with a blanket on the couch. When he veers into the kitchen, he knows it wasn’t a dream. There’s a smashed pumpkin and a butcher knife lying on the floor, chairs tossed all over the place. The back door ajar. It looks like the scene of a bar fight. **** Dark now. He sits on the couch with his head in his hands. Been there for hours. He gets up, walks to the front door, checks again for Lorraine’s headlights. Just the dark driveway. No sense calling her mother’s again. He called a dozen times before she finally answered. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” She slammed down the phone. He feels the familiar blackness creeping up. This time it’s real, not just the dark scenes in the nightmare. He opens the front door and steps outside then walks to the car, opens the door, and sits in the passenger seat, as if waiting for someone to drive him home. He glances in the rear-view mirror, praying for a glimmer of headlights. Nothing. He sighs, snaps open the glove compartment, lifts the bottle, twists the cap, taking a long draw. He’s already screwed. What the Hell? Susan Hynds is a professor emerita and former director of the English Education program at Syracuse University. Before that, she was a middle-and high-school teacher of English, speech, and drama for almost a decade. She has written or co-authored seven nonfiction books and an international literature series for middle- and high-school students. An emerging fiction writer, she has narrated her short story “Cinema Noir” for The Strange Recital fiction podcast and was a featured essayist in Listen to Your Mother, a national event featuring live readings by regional writers on the topic of motherhood. MORE THAN THIRTY years ago an old man stood on a street corner, hat held to his chest, as I passed by in a long black car. I have no idea what kind of hat it was, beyond a notion it might have been the kind detectives wore in the forties – a homburg; a fedora? – and even less whether it was new, an item purchased for the occasion, or something more routine and every day. It was black, I remember that much; so was his overcoat. As the man stood there, breath pushing out into winter cold, his hand trembled against the brim.
Not a month goes by that I don’t think of him, and that grasped, nameless hat. Not a week. **** I was eighteen, in my first term at university, and green as a fresh stick lopped off a branch and tossed onto a smoky fire. The quad was attractive in the dim light – beautiful, even, with its flat baize lawns and manicured flower beds, arches and mullions, worn staircases branching away into history beneath the mellow stones of the chapel. By day, charming fops and teddy bears walked its gravel; by night antiquarians poking through cobwebby tractates or dislodging the wrong chunk of mortar. If I squinted my eyes, I could almost see myself there. But coming to, the JCR was crammed with braying Henrys snapping open the Times on lacquered sticks or chortling over faux pas and mugs of weak tea. They knew the routine of Hall and battels, who could be ignored and who respected, when to break out a crammer and when to properly engage. I never saw one in the library, or the English faculty, come to that, yet they seemed to sail around the quad like galleons on an unseen wind, their fathers’ hands on the tiller, eyes on the merchant bank or the next round of Pimms. In my top-floor room, curtains closed against the spires, I made cottage cheese on toast and hated them one by one until I fell asleep by the fire. **** ‘Hello? Granda?’ I hadn’t much credit on the phone-card, but mum said I needed to call right away. As the connection went through, a flat lady robot came on to inform me – politely – that I’d only a minute left. ‘Eh? She’s what? No – no, of course not. I think so. Yes. I’ll bring it with me, don’t worry. Alright. No, up overnight. I can pack a bag and go straight from the coach station. Yes – okay. See you tomorrow, then. Bye – bye.’ It was almost eleven when I stepped over the high bottom of the gate back into college. Though the light was still on in the library portico, I knew it would wink out soon enough. In the next quad the sounds of oiled merriment tumbled from the Buttery, but here it was cool and quiet. Even the night-porter was out of his booth. I had a quick look at the clock on his wall, realised I still had time to get the midnight coach – if I didn’t mind letting down all my pals, that was, or the line of eager young women stretching out of the door. When I came down, he was back in the booth: the jolly one, high colour in his cheeks, a single chubby finger marking his place in a book. I waved as I passed, lugging my sports bag over my shoulder. It was stuffed with books on Hopkins – monographs, biographies, chunky critical heritages – and got jammed up in the sides, so I had to rive it back and forwards a few times till it came free with a fat rasp. The door finally closed, and remained closed, behind me. **** There was space on the night-bus, and after a quick visit to the machine I had enough for a ticket and a big cup of takeaway coffee. ‘You studyin?’ the driver asked me, hefting my bag into the belly of the coach. It slid right to the end, between two wooden struts, and struck the wall with a bong. ‘Maybe.’ I took a sip. ‘Hopefully. Yeah – going home.’ He nodded, and after sliding in the cases of the other three passengers, pulled open the door to let us on. I settled down a few rows back, keen to watch the city unwind and the country begin. I sipped my coffee and waited for the engine to fire, then slipped the lid back on to save a bit for later. No stewardesses on the night coach, but no overpriced snacks, either. Finally, the door closed and the driver sat down and got himself situated, adjusting the rear-view mirror, lowering his seat. ‘Alright, then,’ he said. It was apparent by the time we reached the outskirts of Oxford – no one got on at the final stop, by a darkened pub, the driver barely kissing the layby before pulling back out – that the journey would be a long one, as well as quiet. I listened to the gears crunch and the engine hum, a woman sniffing somewhere in a distant row, the last pattering of suburban tarmac. But on the motorway the tires began to sing and we each found our level. I brought out Hopkins from my pocket, tried to absorb a poem or two under the feeble spot angled above my seat. With a lot of effort, I ground around the housing till it gave up a dollop of pale light the size of a wagon-wheel on the page, but the words swam in and out of focus if I didn’t squint, and I knew if I carried on, a headache would barrel in my direction along with the road. Instead, I closed the book, clicked off the light and leaned my head into the faint, cool thrumming of the glass. **** I’d only made the trip a couple of times, but already it was familiar: Oxfordshire fading to the Midlands; the suburbs of Birmingham, then into the city’s heart and back out of the other side after a quarter of an hour’s stop; picking up motorway again, and the dim, unspooling road with hours and hours of England still lying in wait. Even with the coffee sloshing round inside me, I didn’t get out at Digbeth, and half an hour later we slid back into dark. The cool, vibrating glass turned cold in the rushing air, and I slipped out of one sleeve of my coat, bundling it up like a pillow under my ear. Now I looked like a child peeping out from a hastily-built fort, but who cared? The ladies, sleeping in the back, had turned off their spotlights, and we hadn’t picked up anyone else in Birmingham. I had the place to myself. After an hour, I learned the full rhythm of the road: bump and hiss, as we crossed the joins in the motorway surface; black, black again, then dirty sodium orange – a row of lamp-posts heralding an intersection – and a forest of reflectorised green and white, the junction sprouting cat’s eyes as the slip-road dwindled away like the underside of a spaceship rising in the dark; then the end of light, bump-and-hiss resuming, the whole slow-motion slide slow punctuated by the driver’s cough, the tiny crackling of his starchy sleeve, a mumbled apology to no one in particular. I wasn’t happy having to make the journey, but oddly wasn’t unhappy, either. In the shrouded dark things began to make a kind of sense. If I peeled back the layers of college – perhaps myself – and took up a position at distance, like the great wave of divinity rearing behind Hopkins’ shipwrecks, or the sun peeping over the cold stripey stones of the library to warm its windows, I could find a way forward. The place was soaked in books, after all; built from books, caked like fields and ditches with them, after a heavy snow. What did a few Hooray Henrys matter, after all? I almost smiled till I realised we were halfway there, and the coming dark dropped like a blanket around my shoulders. **** When we got to Middlesbrough it was six in the morning. The streets were busy with buses, full of pale, miserable faces shrouded in November steam, and it wouldn’t take long to get one to granda’s. I waited till the driver pulled out my bag on the end of his hooked pole, then thanked him and went into the terminal. I was putting on my coat, stowing my wallet and zipping my book back into the sports bag when I felt a hand on my arm. There he was, no smaller than when I last saw him, but more concentrated, somehow, his face beaming out from under a flat cap. I felt the force of his grip through my sleeve. ‘Come on, son – we’re just across the way.’ I smiled, turning to follow. Even frazzled with worry he was already out of the door. On the way to the car he filled me in: diagnosis, initial treatment, not wanting to worry me –university, and all – but going downhill. He’d talked to both sets of parents. ‘Did you bring yer study materials?’ He nodded at the bag. I was walking lop-sided, lurchy as a wolf who’d downed half a sheep. On the scuffed bottom of my sports bag, the lone remaining stud struck the pavement now and again like a fingernail catching on chipboard. ‘Yeah – Gerard Manley Hopkins, mainly.’ He nodded again. ‘That’s good. You should have time to read.’ As we made our way back to Stockton, he didn’t say much else. I was exhausted, my brain still tangled up in Oxford and the choppy cinematic stills of the journey. My bag sat in the footwell, its weight resting on my feet, and I dropped off into a thin dream of running along a jetty but being unable to jump off. I looked around, frustrated, my feet already cutting through the water but stubbornly sticking to the planks, and woke to granda knocking on the passenger window. ‘We’re here.’ Outside, the last splinters of the jetty blew away and I got out of the car near the fresh pinkish brick of the garage. Granda had already gone inside, so I left my bag for a minute and wandered around. The place was much the same as I last saw it, at least from the front – small turning circle, four similar bungalows around the curve of the cul-de-sac – but behind it looked different, pinched somehow, and not just because autumn had begun and winter wasn’t long in the offing. The tiny greenhouse was stippled with condensation, and had a strong, reedy whiff; he’d left a spade leaning against the back fence, streaks of mud welded to its blade, and an empty spot in the soil, hollow as the socket of a tooth, spoke of some project started but abandoned without much thought. Their bedroom window, too, was closed, the curtains drawn across to their full extent. I didn’t stay long. **** There were all the usual jobs – cooking, hovering, tootling around Safeway and down to the newsagent’s for the papers, the corporation for the gas bill – but without her there, walking about in broad daylight in a familiar place, no smell of the stacks in my nostrils, was strange, disorientating, peculiar. Granda, I sensed, was on autopilot, making sure there was no time to think about the next thing while he saw to the current one. At first, he wouldn’t let me come to the hospital, left me with a stack of books and a longhand-pad in a chair by the window. ‘You know where the kettle is, don’t you,’ he’d say. ‘Bread and butter, biscuits and whatnot?’ I nodded. ‘When d’you want me to come?’ ‘Oh – you know. Soon.’ Before his voice could trail off, he smiled and put on his cap, pulled the door to behind him. A few days later it wasn’t a matter of choice. The evening before, he’d come in silently and taken off his coat, hung up the cap at a funny angle, turned on the TV. News at Ten was starting, and he clicked up the sound with the remote. ‘D’you want some tea?’ I closed the Collected Poems. Even though Hopkins was an Oxford man, who might even help me push on through when I got back – as well as the sort of tortured soul whose life wrung out of him the kind of knotty poetry in which I exulted – he took some getting used to. I was grinding through ‘The Wreck of the Eurydice’ for the fourth time in as many hours and needed a break. ‘Granda – tea?’ ‘Eh? Oh, er – go on then.’ The thin smile he offered didn’t reach his eyes, and he sipped the tea long beyond the cooling point, a chocolate hobknob untouched. When the news ended, with the usual bongs and clarions, he put down his mug. ‘I think you’d better come tomorrow.’ ‘Alright,’ I said. I didn’t need to ask. ‘Alright.’ **** From the fifth room window of the hospital, I could see everything: a row of trees lining the car park (granda’s blue Renault saloon sitting neatly in the middle of a bay), the estate opposite, its gardens rather sad and depleted, as though beaten down by the rain, a road stretching round the corner in a series of speed bumps, a pelican crossing. A child pushed out his scooter wheel as I looked away. She was in bed, smiling and holding granda’s hand. I hadn’t said hello as we came in; it felt like an intrusion, somehow. But now I dragged up a metal chair to her bedside. She smiled again, took my hand, but still didn’t say anything. It was the one without the drip spiked in the vein, and I could feel the bumps and hollows of her bones, cold to my palm. I remembered her sitting in her high-backed chair when I was a child. The living room was warm; hot, really – she always claimed she had no circulation. ‘Look,’ she said, taking hold of the skin on the back of my hand. It lifted, changing colour briefly, then snapped back into place, the chubby flesh around the webbing of my fingers moving with a ripple as it fell. Then she took her own hand and did the same. The skin puckered up, much the same; she’d given it a good pinch. But this time it stayed up for a moment – like playdough thumbed into ridges, or a wave stalled out at the top of its curl – before subsiding slowly into the back of her hand. ‘Why?’ I’d asked. ‘Oh, you’re young,’ she said, ‘you’ll see.’ I went out on my bike and forgot all about it. Now that same hand lay inside mine, unmoving. I wasn’t so young, not anymore, but still I didn’t see. Perhaps I should look up from the books once in a while. I clasped her knuckles in both my hands and smiled as hard as I could. I wished she’d speak, nod or raise her eyebrows; anything at all. But her fingers sat bunched and inert between mine, and she smiled on in silence. I looked at granda. Before he could speak a nurse came in and checked something on a chart, then bent to the IV and clicked around a dial. ‘She’ll sleep, now,’ the woman said. She was about forty – gigantically, impossibly middle-aged – but had a kind face above a reassuring shelf of bosom. Her upside-down watch clung on like Harold Lloyd to its cliff face. She gave us a brief smile, turned almost inappreciably towards the door, then shook her head. I never saw either of them again. **** Things went on, for a while at least. Shopping was done; meals were cooked; dishes washed, stacked, put away. The TV came on for the news at lunchtime, now, when we got home from another task. We visited the council offices, to amend records, and the registrar’s, to create another. I heard granda on the phone with a thousand different people, getting arrangements made. I felt useless – just a mouth, a few flailing limbs – but at least the house wasn’t empty. Now and again, I thought about my tutors, but left the sports bag zipped. On the morning of the funeral, he brushed off the spots from my interview suit, gave my only tie a sponging. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Are you alright?’ He looked around the front room, through the door to the kitchen at the wan light breaching its long window, grandma’s chair. ‘No, not really. But I might be.’ Then he stood back, eyes glittering, and shook my hand. ‘Let’s go, shall we.’ **** I don’t remember much of it – the dark smudge over the building, from the last service, presumably, dampened by a light rain and spreading out into the trees. The rose garden where we scattered her, the chilling rattle of the rollers as the screen came up and swallowed her coffin. Egg sandwiches and tea. But as we passed out of the gate, spread over three cars, there he was, hat in hand. An old man, I recall, but not so old – in his mid-sixties, maybe; seventy at a pinch. We had swung round the gentle final curve of the driveway, where it tacked away from the entrance road, and no one seemed to be paying much attention, but as the driver pulled out into a gap in the traffic, I noticed him. Had he been walking away, and heard the low respectable hum of the engines, all three slipping into gear and waiting to pull out? Did his usual route – for a paper, or a pint at lunchtime, now his wife had passed away, or to pick up his Jack Russell from the vets, where they’d been administering ear drops for a nasty infection – take him down this way, past the crematorium? Why was I interested? As we passed, he stood stock-still, hat removed, one hand dropped smartly to the side of his overcoat, the other gripping his hat brim and pressing it close to his collar. His head bowed till his chin touched the top of the hat, making a soft divot in the cloth. Though I couldn’t see his face, I watched the slight tremble of his fingers in the cold, the curls of his breath puffing out, fading into nothing. It felt wrong to wrench around in my seat and watch him as the car sped up, so this figure is all I have: small, partial, a man with no face paused at some moment in his day as a group of strangers in a hired limousine drove by. But I think of him often, fingers trembling on the brim. **** When I got back, I got the bollocking of my life. ‘Where were you, last week? I got Costello’s thoughts – marvellous, as usual – but not yours, and the office has no record of you.’ After I explained my tutor relented a little, explained I should have left word with the office of my whereabouts. Wouldn’t have been a problem, he said; could have accommodated a week, made up any lost ground, he said; then he said nothing and lit a king-size Rothman’s to calm himself down. ‘Come on, then – let’s have it!’ ‘Eh?’ ‘Your thoughts. On Hopkins.’ ‘Now?’ ‘Why not? I assume you did do some thinking, wrote down a bit, did you?’ ‘Well – yes, I did. D’you want to hear it?’ The Rothman’s dipped in silent command, so I pulled out my notes and gave it to him. Back in the library, where the fug of old paper, the faint striplight-buzz of my favourite alcove pulled me back into their embrace, I mulled things over. Not bad, he’d said when I finished. Now what about next week? I still wasn’t used to this week-to-week determination of the next essay but thought I might do something Gothic. Across the quad, a pair of foppish Henrys staggered into view, their scarves long and ostentatious, steps a little uncertain, even though it was well shy of noon. I rolled my eyes and made ready to give them the finger, but then thought better of it. I pushed up the gossamer hat on my brow, instead, and walked on knightly legs down the mean streets of the stacks. James Roderick Burns’ novella and story collection, Beastly Transparencies, is due from Eyewear Publishing in spring 2023. He is the author of four collections of poetry and a short fiction chapbook, A Bunch of Fives. His work has appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including The Guardian, Modern Haiku, The North and The Scotsman. He can be found on Twitter @JamesRoderickB and his newsletter offers one free, published story a fortnight at abunchoffives.substack.com. When I moved to the Bowery in the 70’s, bums still sprawled on curbs and in vacant doorways, empty fifths of Ripple and Cold Duck nestled in their arms. The bars offered cheap beer and watered-down whiskey. The higher-end popular ones served super sweet, rich and creamy concoctions like Pink Squirrels, Pink Ladies, Tom Collins, Golden Cadillacs and Grasshoppers. Creme de Menthe was considered a choice of the privileged, whereas The Rolling Stones in their 1972 American tour, were fueled primarily by Tequila Sunrises blended with cocaine.
New York City is a fine place to live if you are a drinker or a self-professed connoisseur of alcoholic diversity. There are only 10,000 bars within the city limits. No human could possibly do a night crawl of them all, not even within a year’s time. In the East Village, crowds proliferated on weekday nights, as well as the regular weekend binges: a steady stream of other-borough visitors: compulsive financiers, bored uptowners, belligerent winos, bands of well-cologned men and women looking for love or a lusty screw. In those days, before weed became the preferred intoxicant, unabashed social drinking was the only choice for a majority of Americans. Middle class parents who lived in suburbs and were raising families no longer pursued pub crawls but observed and indulged in cocktail hours at home. My father’s pride and joy in our house was his man-cave in our finished basement, where he’d built a fifteen-foot-long wooden bar with revolving stools we kids used to spin on when he wasn’t around. The mirrored wall behind the bar was lined with glass shelves and liquors with intriguing graphic labels. I would sit and stare at them, trying to figure out why I liked certain ones more than others: an allure of bottle shapes, images, fonts and descriptives; perhaps an early indication of what would become a visual career. When family visited or friends stopped by, my father loved nothing more than playing bartender to the men. It was a gender selection that no one questioned. The women all stayed upstairs with my mother, although not without pre-mixed drinks in their hands. As a young teen, I accepted drinking as a ritualistic bonding element that all my adult relatives engaged in. I appreciated its helping make them less demanding and serious, apt to ignore whatever mischief we kids were up to, and often inspired hilarious behavior on their parts that kept us well entertained. My older sister Lynn, delivering a tray of drinks to the clamoring aunties outside, once ran straight through the patio’s mesh doors, leaving a perfect imprint of her body in the screen. Aunt Rose, a large, heavy-set woman, lowered herself into our backyard hammock and began to swing. At the height of one thrust, the hammock broke and she was launched skyward only to land face down on the lawn. My mother chased us kids away (howling at the classic pratfall we had seen only in cartoons), before breaking down in laughter herself. Inebriated uncles tried to play pool (on the professional table positioned directly across from the bar). They dropped their cue sticks, scraped the green fabric or skipped balls clear off the table to bounce loudly across the floor. My brother and I had developed fine motor skills and aim from practicing after school most days; we were wildly amused by the crudity and clumsiness of our tottering relatives. It would be years before I began to drink; I did not discover the pleasures of wine while at Pratt. But I was somehow lured into the world of whiskey, particularly Jack Daniels. My roommate and good friend Mia Wolff and I would frequent local bars in Brooklyn and order one shot apiece. I was still a bit of a grungy, possibly homely girl, but Mia—with her gleaming blonde hair and upbeat, casual manner—always managed to attract men. We would chat and joke and invariably, they would buy us second and third shots of Jack. At some point, I transformed into a witty conversationalist. We would regale them with stories or as ace art students, dash off fierce likenesses on napkins. After downing our fourth and fifth glasses, even the bartender was impressed and treated us. We never left with anyone, just slipped away on our own and went back to our dorms, many sheets-to-the-wind and still babbling. One night, I left Mia in conversation at a bar on Willoughby and headed back on my own. I didn’t get far—three blocks away—which is where she discovered me an hour later in deep discourse with an abandoned washing machine at the curb. “Whaddareya doing?” she asked (and I noted she had to lean against its lid as she spoke). “Lissen”, I whispered, patting it. “We’re both going through cycles. I’m telling it about this painting I started and why I may just dump it.” Over the years, I’ve dated men who preferred beers or bedtime globes of cognac, but I married a whiskey fanatic. Besides his British/Scottish roots and choices of smokey, single malts, I loved the calmness with which he nursed a glass of stunning amber every night. The color and odor enchanted me. When we clinked, he’d hail my clear flute of gin and tonic with a signature wry smile. I like that kind of tolerance in a man. These days, I rarely indulge in anything except wine, my palate and preferences having been nuanced over time. Since moving upstate, my desire to drink diminished, perhaps due to a geographic removal from the sizzling energy and clamor of city life. I mostly toast myself now through writing: the fluid art of ink to page, a penning of worthy remembrances. Karen Gersch grew up as a tomboy but also an avid reader, writer and visual artist. She spent 25 years running around circus rings with a woman balanced on her head, and is still prone to juggle a multitude of artistries and contemplative journals. This is an excerpt from her memoirs of traveling with the circus and living for 38 years on the Bowery. |
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