SUMMER 2018

I cleaned up after work on Wednesday, shaved, and put on the only sport jacket I owned, which didn’t quite fit right.  It hung on me like a loose robe, like I was a kid wearing his dad’s hand-me-downs.  I had picked it up in a thrift shop, and it was the best I could find, but now I had this weird feeling and obsessive thought that the suit might have once belonged to the old wino who had lived and died in my apartment, as though he still inhabited the walls and by some gravitational influence I was tumbling into his old life-pattern, even to the point of going out and finding his old clothes. 

I picked up a bottle of white wine, and red just in case, a little pint for later, and a loaf of fresh French bread, and I drove the old familiar road feeling more like a ghost than ever.  The jumping nerves were firing in my stomach.  I parked a little ways up the street and smoked a cigarette to calm down.  I kept flipping through the radio stations, looking for the right song to propel me into the evening, but I couldn’t find one so I shut it off.  Then the thought occurred to me, I can go in, or I can leave.  It is a simple choice.  And the effect of that choice on all of our lives might be infinitesimal.  Then again, who knows the different pathways small acts travel through the fabric of other people’s lives, the choices not even considered yet made, the butterfly launching whole lifetimes of regret or even, perhaps, happiness?  Now could be one of those moments.  And I would never know.  Not really.  Or, the Big Moment might have occurred long ago, long before even this particular life, setting in motion things I just can’t see or change.  And crazy possibilities hover just ahead, the unseen door waiting to open, weird dreams we inflate and fly into.  How can I know but to go through as I am, pushed by some invisible force or imagining it just the same?  Enough. 

I climbed out of the car and strode up to the house, the yard I had once worked, though it looked better now (not a good sign for my return), and I knocked on the back door, forgetting the front because I had never used it when I lived here. 

Carol answered the door, and I couldn’t say a word.  “Hey, come in, come in,” she said and embraced me, and I felt the urge of an old life I could never re-inhabit.  There were tears in her eyes and I felt my own eyes begin to burn, and we looked at each other for a long moment across an unbridgeable gulf of time.  She didn’t look any older, though her red hair was cut short, just above the shoulders.  She wore a light blue dress I had never seen before.  She was beautiful.  But I was acutely looking for something, evidence that she still knew my life, because she felt now like someone I had never seen before, which made me feel like I no longer existed. 

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I said, and I smiled.  I went in, and the kitchen was full of the rich smell of a meal that could save a man’s life.  I looked around at the pictures on the walls, the family, their family, and I straightened out the arms and the front of my uncomfortable jacket.  The place was brighter, freshly painted, better again than I remembered.  But I felt none of my old presence there. 

“Come on,” she said, and she took my arm and led me into the living room. 

They were all there, the whole family, dressed I could tell for company.  Up close now I could really see them, the faces of my two children, and I was overcome by a wave of vertigo.  I could barely stay afoot.  I was shot back within myself, and I had a hard time pulling out of a close focus on their faces and playing my role, or finding my role, and hearing them and knowing how to act.  And I was introduced like a stranger: “Here’s your father,” standing there like a partially materialized ghost. 

“Hello, Stephen,” I said, shaking his hand like my own from a past I had yet to live.  He was nervous with a terse smile and a narrow gaze, hanging back, trying to figure this stranger into his world.  And I met my daughter, shaking hands with her.  I was aware of the desire to hold her coming out of a self I thought long dead, but I knew I couldn’t do that.  I wanted so much, but I was too far away now. 

I shook hands with Don.  He seemed like a nice man, though he dressed like my grandfather, wearing a golf shirt and belted shorts, white socks and leather sandals.  But I felt no animosity towards him, feeling so dispossessed of my past that I knew my claim on this life had run out.  We all sat down, waded through some awkward silences.  Carol brought me a beer. 

“So what kind of work are you doing?”  Don asked me, trying in his way to head up his family, present himself, and this was the only question he could think to ask. 

“Well, Don, I work in a place that does some parts manufacturing for planes.  We’re out by the airport.  It’s a nice little operation.  I help manage the painting division.”  I looked around the room at the unfamiliar furniture, a seascape painting with bad water, more photographs of the family at summer get-aways and birthday parties. 

“Is this for commercial planes?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“The parts?  Are they for commercial planes?” 

“No, small planes.  Private.  Some military.” 

“Management, then.” 

“Sort of,” I said.  Stephen wouldn’t return my glance but kept his gaze firmly toward the window.  I caught Melissa’s eyes a few times, and a brief little smile. 

Another awkward silence.  I drank half my beer, then stopped. 

“Would you like to see some pictures?” Melissa said. 

“Sure.” 

She got up and went out of the room. 

“He doesn’t want to see those,” Stephen shouted after her.  “All she draws are fish.” 

She came back in with a scatter of crayon drawings, all of fish.  They were quite good.  “These are wonderful,” I said.  “I love them.  You like fish, don’t you?” 

“That’s my guardian spirit,” she said. 

I looked through the pictures of green-sided salmon with white spots, all of them in motion, all of them drawn inside flowing blue lines of water. 

“You can have one,” she said. 

“You know,” I said.  “My brother is an artist.” 

“He is?” 

“Yes.  He would love these.” 

“You can take one for him, too.” 

“Okay,” I said, and I picked out two pictures, folded them carefully, and put them into my pocket. 

“Say,” Stephen said, “Didn’t I see you the other day?” 

“What was that?” I said. 

“You were walking on the street.  I was playing basketball.  That was you, wasn’t it?” 

“Yeah, actually, it was,” I said.  I knew I couldn’t lie, and if I started now who knows where it would end. 

“So you’ve been by the house,” Don said.  What an expression of worry he had, and I saw him direct a cool look at Carol which was attached, I was sure, to a whole session of conversations they had had in which I figured prominently and not as the hero. 

“You should have stopped,” Stephen said. 

“Yeah?” 

“Sure.  I would have introduced you to my friends.” 

Don laughed and so did Carol, a little, but it was a strange, nervous laughter.  Then silence.  Then Stephen said, “So what was prison like?” 

“Stephen,” Carol said, “Give him a break.” 

“No.  No, that’s all right,” I said, and I could tell Don wasn’t too happy about the way the conversation was going.  “It’s a good question.”  And I looked at Stephen directly.  “I’ll tell ya.  It’s a terrible, terrible place.  You never want to go there.” 

“Believe me, I won’t,” Stephen said.  And then, as if he couldn’t help himself, as though he’d had this thought a long time and finally found a way to let it out, he said, “I definitely don’t want to turn out like you.” 

“Stephen!” Carol said sharply. 

“No, that’s okay,” I said, “You’re right.  You don’t want to follow my lead.  You’re a smart kid.  I can see that.  And you know, Stephen, I made some bad choices, I admit that, and I know it hurt you guys—” 

“It didn’t hurt me.” Stephen said.  “Besides, it’s a little late to start preaching, don’t you think?” 

“Woah,” Don broke in, and I heard him say quietly to Carol, so that I wouldn’t hear, though I did, “See.” 

“Stephen,” Carol said, “What has gotten into you?” 

“He’s right.  He’s right,” I said.  “He’s just being honest.  And I respect that.” 

“Don’t fucking try to defend me,” Stephen shouted, “say you respect me!”  Then all hell broke loose.  Melissa went to the couch and sat down and started rocking back and forth. 

“That’s it, Stephen,” Carol said, “I can’t believe it.” 

“Well what the hell is he doing here?  He can’t come in and pretend to be our father.” 

“He is your father.” 

“He is not.  He’s an ex-con who stopped being anybody’s father a long time ago.” 

“Come on, Stephen,” Don put in.  “He hasn’t done anything.”  But I could tell he thought differently. 

“I love the way you make my point for me, Don,” Stephen said, shooting a hard glare at him. 

Melissa was crying.  She didn’t make a sound, but I saw tears going down her cheeks as she sat on the couch across from me, her hands held tightly between her knees, her pictures next to her.  And behind her, on the wall, was a family portrait of the four of them, looking every bit the perfect family.  There were no signs at all that I ever existed except in the face of my son who now looked at me with the purest expression of hate. 

I stood up.  “Look, maybe I’d better go.”  Don stood up, ready to show me the door. 

“No wait,” Carol said, holding her hand up.  Then she turned back to Stephen.  “I want you in your room, now!” 

“What?” 

“You heard me.” 

“No way!” 

“Now!” 

And he stormed off.  Carol turned back to me.  “I’ll be back in a minute.  I’m going to have a quick talk with him.”  Then she left, and Don and I stood there awkwardly silent.  What was there to say, now?  Don tried, though.  He said, “You know, it’s hard for him, a kid his age.  He’s already becoming very independent.  He doesn’t even want to listen to me.  It’s just all the time you’ve been away, all the emotion he’s bottled up over the years.  Would you like another beer?” 

“Thanks, Don, but I really should go.  I didn’t mean to disrupt—” 

“No.  No.  Wait till Carol comes back.” 

Melissa snuffled, and I looked down at her and said, “I’m really sorry, Melissa.  I didn’t mean to…” a whole host of wrongs jammed up in my mind. 

“It’s not your fault,” she said.  “He’s an asshole.  You didn’t do anything.”  I knew she wasn’t supposed to swear, but who would scold her now?  “Please,” she said, “Don’t go.” 

“What about Stephen?” I said. 

“He doesn’t mean it,” she said.  “I know.”  She looked at me, and her face held some secret. 

“You really want me to stay?” 

“Yes,” she said, and when I looked into her eyes I almost broke down, seeing there such a depth of sadness that all I had ever suffered or thought I had suffered seemed like fantasy and self-pity. 

“All right,” I said.  “I’ll stay.” 

I sat back down, and Don brought me another beer.  I could barely drink it.  Then Carol came back in.  And I felt so bad because she looked so distressed, but Melissa had put a hold on me so deep, even sitting across the room, I couldn’t move. 

“Well,” Carol said, “I think we should eat.  The food’s about ready.” 

“What about Stephen?” Don asked. 

“He’ll come out when he’s ready.” 

And so we sat down to an enormous meal of baked chicken and fresh steamed broccoli and sautéed apples and wild rice.  Don opened one of the bottles of wine I had brought and lit a dining candle, and then I recognized the linen tablecloth and napkins Carol had received from her parents for our wedding.  I looked at her, and she smiled.  I wondered if Don knew.  The food was delicious, but I had to force myself to eat.  My stomach was a rock-hard knot. 

“So,” Carol finally said, “How’s your family?  How’s your brother, Joe, doing?  You mentioned him, earlier.  That got me wondering.  I can’t remember the last time I saw him.  Way before the kids were born…” 

I said, “Well, I haven’t seen him for a while.  He’s living somewhere in the valley, but he doesn’t have a phone and we haven’t really stayed in contact much.” 

“Why doesn’t he have a phone?” Melissa asked.  “Everybody has a phone.” 

“Well,” I said, taking a big drink of wine.  My face felt hot.  “My brother’s a strange character.  He has a hard time in cities and crowded places.  He’s a little…unusual, I guess you could say.  He’s always had a strange way of seeing things, but he’s good at heart.   Although, there was one time…do you want to hear?  I’ll tell you a story about him from when we were kids.” 

“Yeah, I do,” she said. 

So I went on, “I was a bit younger than you are now, and I suppose this is kind of a cautionary tale, too, now that I think about it.  Anyway…and so we were playing up in the attic of our house, and Joe found my father’s rifle and it was loaded…and he pointed it at me, right, and pulled the trigger.  Click!  But it didn’t fire.  It was in perfect working condition and it was loaded, but it didn’t fire.  Strangest thing.  And he said he knew it wouldn’t fire, that he just wanted to scare me.  He said he kept it from firing because he was magic.  What do you think about that?” 

“Wow,” said Melissa, “Weren’t you scared?” 

“It didn’t even seem real at the time,” I said.  “Kind of like a dream.” 

Don didn’t look too pleased with my story, and he and Carol looked at each other for a moment with a whole host of meanings and those previous conversations passing between them even though they didn’t say anything, then Carol asked me, “And your father?  How’s he doing?” 

“He’s still up north,” I said.  “I don’t hear much from him, either.  Did he ever check in on you guys?  I asked him to check in on you.” 

“No,” Carol said, smiling a little.  “No, he didn’t.” 

We ate for a while in silence.  I drank some more wine, and now I could eat a little more, but I had no appetite.  I heard music coming from Stephen’s room, and I found myself wondering what his room looked like since my memory of it was of a little boy’s room full of stuffed animals and legos and cars and posters of dinosaurs. 

Melissa just watched me, smiling at me.  I asked her questions about her friends and her drawings.  She gave me short, nervous answers.  “What grade are you in?”  I asked. 

“Fifth.” 

“What’s your teacher’s name?” 

“Mrs. Poston.” 

“Is she a good teacher?” 

“I guess so.” 

Then she asked me, “What are the people at your work like?” 

“Well,” I said, “There’s one fellow named Raphael, and he’s seven feet tall and he sings arias.” 

“What’re arias?” 

Don cut in, “It’s a kind of opera music.” 

“Right,” I said.  “Opera.”  I stopped.  What could I really tell her about myself, about my life?  I took another drink of wine.  I nodded.  “Seven feet tall, and he sings opera.” 

Stephen never came out, and I said my goodbyes and got out quick and drove west to the docks and parked and breathed and took out my pint bottle and had a guzzle and looked at the dimming sky and shook my head and laughed. 

I sat in my car for a while, smoking, thinking.  Going back had been a mistake.  I took out Melissa’s drawings and looked at them for a moment and then put them in the glove box.  I watched the lights of the freighters as they moved in the distant black.  Stars twitched overhead.  I drank the last of the little pint I had bought and tossed it in the back seat.  I couldn’t see myself going back to work.  I couldn’t see myself going back to my apartment.  I suddenly remembered that I had missed my check-in with the parole officer, which put the paranoia on me, stunning me into a new awareness of my surroundings as I scanned for police cruisers.  I got up and collected the bottles from the back seat and carried them over to the trash can.  They made quite a clatter as I dropped them in.  I looked around.  A few people were standing over by the food stand, but nobody seemed to notice me.  Now it was night.  A streetlamp nearby glowed with a little halo of light projected on the ground beneath it.  I went over to it, stepping into the halo of light.  I reached into my pocket and found Thane’s card.  I turned it over in my hand.  Then, I called.  He answered.  I said, “Hello, Thane?  Yeah, it’s me, Tom.  Yeah.  I’m in.” 

Douglas Cole has published four collections of poetry and a novella. His work appears in anthologies such as Best New Writing, Bully Anthology, and Coming Off The Line as well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Chiron, The Galway Review, Red Rock Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Slipstream. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, and has received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry, judged by T.R. Hummer; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway. His website is douglastcole.com. You can also reach him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/douglas.cole.372  and Twitter: https://twitter.com/theshadow_man

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Rear Admiral Jack Covington, Commander US Naval Bases Japan, regarded himself in the full-length mirror brought into his office for the fitting.  He considered the reflection of the Japanese tailor behind him, tape measure draped about his neck, recording his measurements. 

“Very slim, sir.  Strong,” the tailor said.  “Will be nice fit, look smart.” 

Pivoting before the mirror, the gray-haired admiral liked what he saw. 

He smiled broadly–nice teeth.  “Who says these people don’t know what they’re talking about, Kevin?” 

Lieutenant Kevin Cole, the admiral’s aide, had watched the sartorial proceedings. “Yes, sir,” Kevin said.  “Your new suit will look great.” 

“I told Sammy I wanted his best man for this job,” the admiral said.  His soft accent gave evidence of his Alabama forbearers.  “Sammy doesn’t do any actual tailoring these days, you know?” 

“Yes, sir.  I guess he has too many irons in the fire.” 

“You can say that again, Mr. Cole.  He’s involved in just about every business there is.  He’s a pretty savvy fella; and a real friend of the Navy.  Loves Americans.” 

“Yes, sir.  He has quite a reputation.” 

Not everyone was as taken with Sammy as was Kevin’s flag officer boss. 

Nonetheless, a long line of senior officers embraced the admiral’s perception that tailor-cum-businessman Susumu Nakamura (everybody called him Sammy) loved Americans.  Good old Sammy was their guy, a true friend of America, staunchly anti-communist, and plugged into the local business and political community.  If you wanted to know what was going on outside the gate, just ask Sammy.  Want a nice dinner, he would arrange it; want a little female action; you could count on Sammy. 

True, Sammy’s origins were a bit obscure but what the hell; he’d been running his tailor shop on Gate Two Street since Christ was a corporal.  Had every suit and shirt custom made, with guaranteed quick delivery and nothing but the finest material.  “Sir, you gotta look your best and that’s what we deliver,” he told his top brass clientele.  And you couldn’t beat the special prices for his American friends. 

Oh, the admirals and captains protested such munificence, but invariably they yielded to the notion that you didn’t want to tread on the sensibilities of such a staunch friend of America.   That’s just the way they do things out here, they said. 

Base hangers-on like Sammy flocked to installations at home and abroad like birds to a feeder. They and the military leaders they cultivated appeared to be made for each other, whether back at a base in Florida or here in Yokosuka, Japan.  Sammy possessed a VIP base pass and an honorary membership in the officers’ club.  There were few dinners or receptions for a visiting congressman or DOD officials from which a beaming Sammy didn’t emerge in a group photo hoisting a glass to alliance solidarity. 

Lieutenant Cole held the admiral’s uniform coat while his boss slipped his arms into the sleeves.  As he did so, the admiral glanced out his second-floor office window, his attention arrested by a crowd of anti-base activists chanting at the main gate: Hantai. Hantai. Yankee Go Home.  Whistle-blowing unionists and drum-beating Buddhist monks contributed to the racket.  Provoked by the recent rape and murder of a sixty-year-old housemaid walking home at night from the base, the demonstrations had become particularly virulent. 

The admiral’s ill-chosen–indeed, stupid–words had contributed much to that virulence.  His comment to a newsman that the victim should have been more careful in choosing her route came across as crass and offensive.  His subsequent explanation that he simply intended to promote the safety of base employees rang hollow. 

“I sure as hell wish we could muzzle that bunch out there,” he said. 

“Yes, sir.  It’s pretty annoying,” Kevin said.  “Some of the wives are afraid to leave the base.” 

“Don’t mistake my meaning,” the admiral said.  “I’m not for letting our boys off.  But these people use any excuse they can to chant their damn slogans.  They just want to jerk our chain.  Plenty of crimes out there don’t involve Americans.  But they only focus on us.  Hell, Kevin, this was a Navy town before we came.  Shame things like this happen, but they ought to be used to it.” 

Kevin nodded.  “Yes, sir.” 

“Another thing, Mr. Cole.  You and I know that the communists are behind all this agitation.  Just the other day Sammy told me he knew for a fact the demonstrators are paid directly out of the Party treasury.” 

“Yes, sir, that’s what the Intel types say, too.” 

“You want to know something else, Kevin?  Those trouble-makers are a real minority.  Most Japanese folks know we’re here protecting their freedom.  Sammy says that, in fact, there’s a reservoir of goodwill for us.  Yes, sir, a reservoir of good will.” 

How could people not love us?  We stood for untrammeled virtue, Christian values, liberty … No doubt about it, in a black and white world, we were the good guys 

The admiral sat down at his desk.  “I have to say, Kevin, Sammy is a lot like some of the people back home–a true supporter of the military services.” 

Responding to the aroma of coffee brewing on a hot plate, the admiral gestured for Kevin to fetch him a cup.  Cradling the mug, the admiral lolled back in his chair, apparently caught up in a wistful trip down memory lane. 

“There was this wealthy couple in Mayport,” he said.  “They’d do anything for those of us in the military–dinner parties, football tickets, you name it. Great hosts.  You could just tell they appreciated what we did for the USA.  And it didn’t hurt that the wife was a good looker.” 

The admiral winked and Kevin nodded.  Rumor had it that in the company of such glitterati, the challenge to connubial fidelity had proven too much for the admiral.  His wife had not accompanied him to Japan, but he seemed to be compensating.  The familiarity he displayed toward his female driver, Petty Officer 3, Emily Hudgins–and she toward him–had grabbed Kevin’s attention early on. 

“You know, Mr. Cole, I have to tell you, some of these fine people here in Japan are a lot like the good people in Mayport.  Good friends of the American Navy.” 

“Yes, sir.”  Kevin said, “Yes, sir” a lot. 

—– 

Later that day, stationed at his desk outside the admiral’s office, Kevin rose smartly to his feet as the base commander, Captain Jack Gibson, strode past yeomen and secretaries busy at their typewriters and phones.  Tall and gray-eyed, Captain Gibson was a tough, sea-going officer everyone knew chafed in this shore assignment. 

In addition, Captain Gibson was bright and ruggedly good looking, characteristics that did not endear him to the admiral.  The admiral was uncomfortable around people who made him feel inferior, especially those who were junior to him.  Not exactly an original thinker, Admiral Covington had made his way to the top by following orders, pleasing superiors, and holding individuality to a minimum. 

“Tell the admiral I want to see him,” Captain Gibson said to Kevin.  He seemed to be fuming. 

When Kevin ushered the captain through the door, the admiral signaled him to remain in the room; perhaps he needed a witness. 

Captain Gibson got right to the point.  “Sir, my security people say your Chief of Staff told them we should reopen Gate Two.  With all due respect, we have our hands full with the demonstrators at the Main Gate.  Is this something you really want?” 

The admiral fixed the captain with a frigid glare.  “Yes, Captain, it is something I want.” 

“Could the admiral tell me why?” 

Captain Gibson balanced on the edge of disrespect.  He obviously suspected why the admiral had issued the order; Sammy the Tailor has asked him to do it. With Gate Two closed, few customers made their way to Sammy’s shop or to the stores and bars of his fellow businessmen. 

“Well, it occurred to me it would be easier for people who have to leave the base to use that side gate,” the admiral said.  “Less conspicuous; less attention.  Those communists are all out at the front gate, anyway.”  Then, seemingly as an afterthought, he added, “I understand folks in the community think it will help business.” 

That confirmed it.  Captain Gibson knew immediately who the folks were.  Gibson was no fan of Sammy.  Indeed, he had complained to the Admiral when Sammy offered Gibson and his wife an all expense paid trip to Taiwan.  He reckoned Sammy a self-promoter at best.  “Sir, I don’t think we should…” 

The admiral displayed a flash of impatience. 

“I want that gate opened.”  Then, after an unpleasant pause, the admiral added, “I expect you’ll provide the necessary security.” 

“Aye, aye, sir.”  Captain Gibson wheeled and marched out of the office. 

The admiral stared after the captain with undisguised irritation. 

Four bells: 1400. The recorded ringing of a ship’s bell, like that on a vessel at sea, divided the headquarters day into neat segments.  The admiral believed the bell provided a nice nautical touch. 

—– 

Gate Two swung open at 1500.  As the first vehicle rolled out, a serpentine column of demonstrators launched an immediate effort to funnel into the base.  Pell-mell, twenty or so of them penetrated to just inside the fence where a line of baton-wielding, helmeted police held them at bay.  Within moments reinforcements arrived; they expelled the demonstrators and slammed the gate shut.  But it had been a near thing.  Captain Gibson ordered the gate permanently secured. 

Sammy phoned the admiral to say he’d heard about the fracas and that he “understood” the base commander’s decision.  Still, he declared, the demonstrators’ behavior provided another example of why the Japanese government needed to crack down on the leftists. 

—– 

At 1700 the Intelligence Chief, Captain Fitz Pemberton, and the Legal Officer, Commander Evan Wyatt, entered the admiral’s office.  They knew the admiral wouldn’t like what they had to say.  But they agreed he must be told Sammy might be more than another glad-handing friend of America; that perhaps he represented something more ominous. 

In a prior meeting, they had softened their presentations out of deference to the admiral’s friendship with Sammy.  Consequently, their cautionary words were met with derisive dismissal for “smearing the image of this fine man.” 

As the officers stepped into his office, the admiral gestured for them to be seated.  Alerted by his aide, he said, “I know why you are here.  And I just don’t believe it. You know and I know Sammy’s a fine fellow; he’s been a guest in my house many times.” 

“Yes, sir, admiral.  But there are credible reports that Sammy has some sort of relationship with people who have ultranationalist ties.  Sir, those people are as hostile to us as the communists.” 

“I’m willing to bet the communists are behind these so-called credible reports.”  The admiral narrowed his eyes and his words came laden with withering sarcasm.  “Do you want to know what I think?   I think the Reds realize Sammy is a US friend and a Japanese patriot. And they’re trying to discredit a good man who stands up against them.” 

“Yes, admiral but…” 

“They know he’s tipped us off about the bad apples in the base workers’ union.  I suspect, gentlemen, these reports are based on nothing more than lies and innuendo.  I know this man.” 

“Yes, sir, we all know Sammy.  But you have that Congressman coming to town next week, and we thought you should be informed, so you could…” 

The admiral scowled.  “So I could what?  Rumors, nothing but rumors.”  He punched a fist into his palm.  “Don’t come back to me about Sammy, unless you have something a lot more substantial.” 

—– 

His sedan parked next to the Fleet Activities helicopter pad, the admiral lounged in the back seat smoking a Chesterfield.  He had come to meet Congressman Wilford Landis.  A week had passed since the Gate Two confrontation and, despite sweltering August weather, the demonstrators continued their daily show at Gate One.  The admiral wondered how the Congressman would react. 

Representative Landis, a member from Missouri’s 14th Congressional District, had just completed a four-hour VIP tour aboard the aircraft carrier Oriskany off the coast of Japan.  A ruddy-faced man, with longish gray hair and outfitted in a tropical weight suit; Landis looked like somebody’s grandfather.  He prided himself on being the master of bonhomie, be it with the Elks, the Rotary, or the Chamber of Commerce.   His back-patting, hand-shaking ways had so far rewarded him with six terms in the House.   He was at ease in his home district; “happy as a pig in mud,” he said.  But now he found himself in a foreign country, uncertain of the ground rules. Accompanied by his senior aide, Otis Larimer; an embassy escort named Paul Emerson; and a Navy protocol officer, he’d flown aboard the ship by helicopter early in the morning.  “It was,” he told the ship’s skipper, “a thoroughly delightful experience.  Made me proud to be an American.”  The sun pounded down and the oily stink of the harbor washed over them as Landis and his party climbed out of the helo.  The admiral shook hands with Landis and his aide.  He then hurried the party into air-conditioned cars for the five-minute motorcade to the admiral’s hilltop quarters and a lunch with staff members.  As the admiral’s driver swung under the portico of the large house, like an unruly welcoming committee, a murder of crows perched in the trees riddled the air with cawing.              “The crows are famous.  Been here since it was a Japanese base,” the admiral said.  Then, to Kevin, who was seated next to the driver, he said, “What is it Sammy says about those birds?”             “Sir, he says the Japanese consider crows to be the messengers of the gods.”             “That’s it.  That Sammy; he’s a regular fountain of knowledge.”             Unaware of whom Sammy might be, Landis said nothing. 

As it always did, the view over the port elicited impressed comments from the Admiral’s guests.  Two carriers, destroyers, amphibs, a cruiser in dry dock, workshops, barracks, offices, and more, all set off on three sides by sparkling water crowded the scene beneath their eyes.  Across the bay in Chiba, greenery traced a narrow band between the water below and the flat, white clouds above. 

“Ranks right there with Subic Bay, doesn’t it?”  Landis was learning a bit about East Asian geography.             “That it does, Mr. Landis,” the admiral said, “that it does.”               Chief Steward’s Mate John Giford, the admiral’s cook, had prepared a fiery Indian curry.             Like the VIP cruise earlier in the day, the lunch, if not the curry (which made his eyes water), gratified Landis.  He beamed, in good spirits, confident, he told the admiral, his visit would play well back home; a resolute Representative Landis out on the front line, as it were, of the Cold War.             Over lunch, Admiral Covington extolled the importance of the base and its ship repair facility to Seventh Fleet operations             “What about all this anti-base activity?  I saw those people at the gate when we drove in this morning.  It seems to me the Japanese Government should be educating its citizens about how they benefit from our presence.”             “Yes, sir.  You’re right on the mark,” the admiral said.  “Of course, this anti-base hullabaloo is all the handiwork of a disaffected few.  Just the other day I was playing golf at Tama Hills with Sammy the Tailor–terrific guy, he’s been tailoring uniforms for us ever since right after the war.  Speaks great English.  Knows everybody. You’ll get a chance to meet him this evening.  Anyway, Sammy pointed out what heartfelt support we enjoy here in the business community.” “Good to hear, good to hear,” Landis said.  But he seemed puzzled as to why his embassy escort produced such a bemused expression at the repeated mention of this fellow, Sammy.               After lunch, the guests spilled out on the verandah for a different view of Tokyo Bay.  Standing apart from the others, Admiral Covington said, “Just between us, Mr. Landis, I can’t understand why those two sailors attacked that woman in the first place.  After all, they could have paid for the services of any one of a hundred whores out there the bar district.” 

Landis appeared taken aback. 

“Are you suggesting that sort of standard should apply to the behavior of our boys?” 

“Well, no, what I meant was…”  The admiral wished he could snatch back his words, but they had completed their transit. 

Just then Captain Gibson approached them.  “Mr. Landis, our car is standing by for your base tour.” 

As his guests drove away, the admiral took a deep breath.  He knew he had a penchant for saying wrong things; he hoped he hadn’t blotted his copy book. 

—— 

Admiral Covington had arranged for Sammy to host a dinner for the Congressman, the guests to include the Yokosuka mayor and members of the business community.  The admiral billed it to Larimer as a chance to experience the genuine local support the navy enjoyed.  And later there would perhaps be an opportunity to expose Landis to “a little Japanese culture,” the reference to culture delivered with a wink.  The wink concerned Larimer; his boss was pretty straight-laced. 

Congressman Landis, a devotee of down-home cooking, felt apprehensive about confronting a menu featuring raw fish, or something akin to raw fish.  But when he learned the dinner would take place in a western style restaurant in the Kanko Hotel, he declared himself reassured. 

That evening as they walked into a private dining room, a pianist offered up a version of the “Missouri Waltz.”  “Nice touch, don’t you think?” the admiral said. Unfortunately, he did not know Landis disliked the song, associating it with former President Truman, a person he disdained as much as the song. 

Susumu Nakamura extended his hand.  “How do you do, sir.  I am Nakamura, but everybody calls me Sammy.  We are honored to have you.”  Although thickly accented, his English came easily. 

A man of perhaps fifty-five, Sammy exhibited a wide grin.  He seemed a jovial fellow, effusively greeting, “my good friend, the admiral.” 

Taller than his Japanese contemporaries, Sammy had close cropped black hair going to gray.  Set in a fleshy face beneath thick eyebrows, his heavy-lidded eyes lent the impression Sammy might be about to doze off.  With a gushing voice and a contrived laugh, he came across as simultaneously obsequious and palsy-walsy.  This was Sammy the Tailor. 

Tuxedo-clad waiters passed drinks, Sammy made introductions, the participants exchanged bows, and then twenty or so Japanese guests and members of the Landis party seated themselves at tables arranged in a U shape. 

“They’re all local big shots,” the admiral said. 

Landis and the admiral flanked Sammy at the head table.  Gazing about the paneled room, at the crystal, the china, the silver, the western art work; Landis whispered to the admiral that he could as easily have been a hotel in Washington, DC or St. Louis, except for all those round Japanese faces, black hair, and dark blue suits.  They both chuckled. 

A meal centered on Kobe beef nicely presented left Landis mollified and relaxed.  During the evening, attendees made short speeches, and exchanged kampai toasts to Japan-US friendship and to Congressman Landis. 

In his own remarks Landis applauded the community for its welcoming attitude toward the US Navy and emphasized the common interest of the US and Japan in deterring aggressive behavior by Russia and China.  It was all boilerplate delivered with boilerplate sincerity. 

Unctuousness sprung to life, for his part Sammy declared how much honor the Landis visit bestowed, bubbled over about the contribution of American forces to Japan’s defense, warned of the communist menace lurking over the horizon in Russia and China, and praised the virtues of American leaders, notably the virtues of Admiral Covington. 

Predictable propriety characterized the event, and boredom soon set in. 

“Thank you, Mr. Nakamura, it’s been a fine evening,” Landis announced.  “But now I must return to my quarters.” 

“Oh no, sir,” Sammy said almost plaintively.  “We must have a second drink; it is the custom.  We can go to a nearby ryotei.” 

“What’s that?” Landis asked. 

“Oh, it’s a kind of tea house,” the admiral said. 

“Well, Mr. Emerson here from the embassy said maybe we should just head back after dinner.” 

“Why would he say that?”  The admiral glared at Emerson as if he was an alien who’d insinuated his way into their midst. 

“Well, he said I might not enjoy the entertainment or music.  Is this going to be what they call a geisha party?” 

“I suppose you could call it that.  I’m sure Sammy has gone to a good deal of trouble.  He told me he promised some local politicians they could meet you.  You don’t need to stay long.” 

Unenthused, but willing to be a good sport, Landis said, “Okay, but I’ll only be there long enough to satisfy whatever the custom might be.” 

—– 

Navy sedans delivered them to the Blue Tree Tea House.  With Sammy leading the way like an ersatz tour conductor, they passed down a narrow alley and into a lantern lit garden. The lanterns gave lambent illumination to dark wood walls and a tile roof.  It was, indeed, the sort of place where geisha performed.  A sliding door rattled open, and they stepped into an entryway.  The kimono-clad woman who managed the place and a maid bid them welcome.  Irrashaimase. 

The men removed their shoes, for Landis something of a struggle.  “I’m still not sure about this,” he muttered to Larimer. 

They trailed the woman down a polished wood corridor.  As they passed one room, the door briefly opened, revealing a dozen men drinking and singing with a cohort of female entertainers.  The mama-san guided them down a side corridor and slid open the door to a tatami floored room. 

A dozen Japanese men seated at low tables applauded when Landis appeared.  Although a maid delivered a backrest, Landis found sitting of the floor awkward and uncomfortable. 

The admiral sought to reassure him.  “You’ll get used to it.” 

Meantime, maids in kimono shuffled about on their knees pouring hot sake for the guests. 

“These cups are mighty small,” Landis noted, but quaffed one down, only to find it immediately refilled.  Following welcomes and thank yous, the room buzzed with chatter and laughter.  Soon the atmosphere thickened, jackets came off, ties were loosened, and faces reddened. 

Landis smiled dutifully as an elaborately costumed and wigged geisha performed a stylized dance accompanied by a three-stringed samisen, as another played coquettish games with various men, and as still another sang in what Landis complained to the admiral was a whiny voice.  By now, Landis had exhausted his willingness, as he’d put it earlier, “to take one for the team.”  About to get up, he said, “It’s time to go.” 

But suddenly everything changed.  A rambunctious covey of girls, eight or ten of them, flowed into room and distributed themselves among the men. Hired from the nearby Red Lantern cabaret, individually and collectively they were very drunk. 

Before Landis could struggle to his feet, a scantily clad young woman dropped onto his lap and threw her arms around him.  Shocked and embarrassed, the Member from the 14th District tried to push her away.  She fended him off and tried to kiss him.  It only got worse as the girl thrust her hand into the Congressman’s trousers to the delight and laughter of her companions.  The Japanese men might be used to this sort of thing; the admiral might be used to this sort of thing; but Landis was not.  His face reddened with offended propriety. 

“Get her off me,” Landis shouted.  “Get me out of here.  Now. For God’s sake, now.” 

—– 

The following morning, the admiral hurried to the Yokosuka rail station to see Landis off for his return to Tokyo.  Standing on the platform their conversation was brief, very brief.  Outraged by all that had happened, the Congressman said so. 

Admiral Covington struggled to explain.  “I had no idea, Congressman Landis.  I can assure you, no idea.” 

“That you had no idea is itself to your discredit, Admiral.  That place was a bad choice to begin with.  Whether you or your friend was responsible for what happened I do not know.  It doesn’t matter.  He took us there, and you are the one who recommended him.” 

“But, I’m sure Sammy intended to…” “Frankly he struck me as untrustworthy from the outset.  In retrospect, all this makes your endorsement even more unwarranted.  Were you complicit or simply naive?” 

“But, this was totally out of character for Sammy.” 

“That’s hard to believe.  Never have I been treated in such an inappropriate and embarrassing manner.” 

“He’s always been a thoughtful and decent host-” 

“Really?  It was a moment of absolute Bacchanalia.”  Landis glared at him and the admiral smiled weakly. 

“Sir, Sammy told me those women had been hired by someone else for an event in another room.”  The admiral foraged for words. 

Landis cut him off.  “Whatever your indiscretions, Admiral Covington, they are not mine.” 

The admiral could not erase from memory other times Sammy’s evenings out had ended up just as raucously–to the unabashed delight of VIP visitors.  But on this occasion, in an elephantine blunder, he and Sammy had misjudged Landis. 

“You’ve not heard the end of this, Admiral Covington, by no means,” Landis said.  “Sir, perhaps you are a great ship driver or whatever it is you do, but your social and political sense leaves a good deal to be desired.” 

Ignoring the admiral’s salute, Landis and his party climbed into the waiting coach and the train rumbled out of the station.  The admiral felt sick. 

Still reeling from the Congressman’s scathing remarks, Covington didn’t need to confront another problem involving Sammy.  But he encountered just such a problem. 

He found Captain Pemberton and Commander Wyatt waiting for him.  Pemberton spoke first.  “Sir, there are troubling new reports about Mr. Nakamura.  We thought you’d want to know, especially because of the unpleasantness in that geisha place last night and…” It had not taken long for the scuttlebutt to spread. 

“Reports?  What sort of reports?”  The admiral experienced an unremitting case of jitters. 

“Well, sir, the naval attaché says there are strong indications Sammy might be connected with some right wingers who are planning a coup.” 

“A coup?  Sammy?  I find that difficult to believe.”  But the starch had gone out of his voice.  After the teahouse incident, the admiral inclined to believe almost anything.” 

“Admiral, with all respect, sir,” Commander Wyatt said, “it might be a good idea for you to distance yourself from Sammy.” 

“That business last night was an unfortunate misunderstanding.  I’m sure we’ll be able to walk it back.” 

“But, sir…” 

“Thanks for the information.  I’ll take it into account.” 

When the officers had gone, the admiral told Kevin, “No visitors.”  Then behind his shut door he sat shaken and silent. 

That he should distance himself from Sammy had long been a signal in the air, but a signal he’d picked up too late.  The damage had been done.  He’d been caught up in a web-like relationship Sammy had spun for him.  Political and disciplinary ramifications loomed large.  Admiral Covington experienced a frisson of intense worry. 

It occurred to him that, should Sammy be in trouble with the authorities, he too might be in trouble.  Things that once bothered the admiral not at all now bothered him greatly.  He thought of the two duty-free cars he had imported and which Sammy helped him sell at a nice profit.  He recalled the girls Sammy had arranged for him in Atami and Hakone.  And he worried about the tax-free booze Sammy had acquired from the Enlisted Men’s Club 

His ethical missteps clinging to him like barnacles to a destroyer’s hull, the admiral’s mind twisted on itself.  Perhaps he should return the fine Japanese sword Sammy had presented to him “to symbolize the eternal bonds of friendship between our countries.”  Captain Gibson always frowned when he looked at the sword in its glass case.  If only he had… 

How had all this happened?  How?  A trained navigator, Admiral Covington knew the answer: he had failed to tend his moral compass. 

But it happened that no longer mattered.  Two days later a tersely worded BuPers message relieved him of duty.  The communication ordered him back to Hawaii on an administrative assignment pending further inquiry into his conduct during the Landis visit, his politically damaging handling of the rape-murder, his possible association with anti-government persons, and a host of unethical, if not illegal, activities recently brought to light.   In addition to all else, feeling spurned, Petty Officer Hudgins paid a visit to the Naval Investigative Service office.  It was as if searchlight had swept the headquarters, illuminating embarrassing or questionable activities in every corner. 

The planned coup turned out to be nothing more than chatter among unreconstructed nationalists and Sammy’s connection tangential.  Nonetheless, following the Landis imbroglio and the full-blown revelations that surged to life in its wake, Sammy no longer received dinner invitations; he no longer appeared in VIP visit photos; and he no longer held a club membership. Captain Gibson barred him from the base.  Maybe Sammy still loved Americans.  Who knew? 

Kevin mailed the admiral his new suit in Hawaii. 

Minnesota resident Lawrence F. Farrar is a former Foreign Service officer with multiple postings in Japan and Washington, DC. He also served in Germany and Norway, and short-term assignments took him to more than thirty countries, from Iran to China and Tanzania to Venezuela. Prior to his diplomatic service, Farrar spent five years on active duty in the Navy, including three years in Japan. He has degrees from Dartmouth and Stanford. Farrar’s stories have now appeared seventy times or so in literary magazines. They often draw on his military and diplomatic experience. A common theme involves a protagonist encountering the customs and values of a foreign culture. His Twitter handle is @northoakswriter.

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The weak, dry sound of Dad’s breath faded and his chest stopped moving. He lay on the narrow bed, the sheet pulled up to his neck, his head uncovered, his eyes closed. He was 83. His hair wasn’t mussed, but he needed a shave, a little under his nose and at the sides of his mouth. A nurse entered the room, took the wires and tubes off him, and wheeled the equipment out. Her shoes squeaked. 

“I didn’t know he would eat it!” Mom sobbed. Maxie put her arms around her, rocked her, moaned “Oh, oh” in her ear. It looked awkward because they were sitting side by side. My sister Maxine, she was always closer to Mom. Maybe it was a woman thing, or because she was the first-born. Since Dad got sick I let her take care of Mom while my guts twisted and I handled the insurance papers. 

He used to throw me on his shoulder and run around the yard. I was already in kindergarten then. I must have weighed fifty pounds. Stout, he called me. “A strong, stout, little man.” 

Another nurse glanced in and kept walking down the hall. Soon they’d ask us to leave, put new sheets on Dad’s bed, assign it to someone else. 

My hands itched to find the shaver. Make him look better, protect his dignity. Maxie was too quick. She’d packed his things in her matching, designer shopping bags. Flowers and cats. Cheerful artwork. They stood by the door. I could stick my hands in and feel around for his toiletry kit. But I couldn’t move. 

Mom twisted toward me. She startled me and I flinched. My turn. She grabbed my arm. “I killed him.” 

“Mom! Cancer.” Maxie’s face, behind Mom, was gray and exhausted. 

“I made him lasagna with delicata squash in it, like he likes, but I forgot to skin the squash. It was too rough for him.” 

“He ate it?” I asked. He hadn’t swallowed a thing in the last two weeks. He had intravenous. 

“He asked Mom to put it on his tongue,” Maxie said. 

“He wanted to taste it,” I said. 

“I killed him.” Mom repeated, her head hanging down, her chin on her bulging chest. She must have doubled in size in the last six months. As he stopped eating, she kept cooking and she ate his portion. Feeding him by proxy. 

I touched her cheek. Her green blouse with the oak leaf pattern that Dad liked so much had pulled open in front, uncovering the white skin over her stomach. I gestured to Maxie. She buttoned Mom up, sat back in her chair, closed her eyes. Mom let go of me and sank into herself. 

I reached under the sheet and took Dad’s hand in mine. It weighed nothing. I held it anyway. I didn’t want his life to be over. He was still part of me. 

Then it was like waking up after a meditation. There was an emptiness around me. The room was too quiet. I slipped Dad’s hand under the sheet. Mom was leaning forward, looking at her knees. Maxie was leaning back, her eyes closed, yoga breathing. 

I called Karen and muttered, “Dad passed.” Would she gain weight if I couldn’t eat, and find some way to blame herself when I died? Our marriage was close like my parents’. 

“Should I come to the hospital? You’re still there, right?” she asked. 

“Hold on,” I said. 

“Come to my house,” I invited Mom and Maxie. “Karen will make us dinner.” 

Mom’s eyes turned to me but I couldn’t tell if she saw me. Maxie nodded yes. 

“Broccoli lasagna,” Karen said. “I just put it in the oven. I’ll make a salad.” 

Mom let me help her up. She cried down the hall, into the elevator, and out to the parking lot. I couldn’t see to open the car door. I noticed I was crying with her. 

Maxie drove. Mom collapsed into a huge lump beside her. I took the back seat. 

Last week he weighed 92 pounds. With six pallbearers it would feel like the casket was empty. 

He wanted to taste her cooking one more time. 

Did he care if his shave needed a touch-up? 

Karen had set the table in the kitchen. Mom spilled red sauce down her blouse. Maxie tried to wipe it off with a wet paper towel. Mom pushed her away and kept forcing in another loaded fork, like it wasn’t too late to change what happened. 

Karen stroked Mom’s head and said, “You must be tired. Do you want me to help you to bed? Here, in our guest room?” 

Mom didn’t answer. Karen and Maxie cleared the table and whispered to each other at the sink. They left together and took Mom to Maxie’s. 

I stood in the shower for a long time. Put on fresh pajamas. I wanted to hold Dad’s hand. The spirit hangs around, and maybe he missed me. We shouldn’t have left him so soon. I went down to the kitchen, ate the rest of the lasagna. Four portions. Fell asleep with my face on the table. 

He used to carry me upstairs and tuck me in.

Teresa Hommel is an emerging writer of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in Rosebud, SLAB, and Santa Fe Literary Review. She is also working on a memoir. She grew up in Missouri and now lives in New York City.

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I always take him with a few grains of salt.  Not too much.  I mean, dude’s always been on the rotund side, and he’s got a heart condition, for Christ’s sake.  But don’t take everything he tells you at face value.  You just can’t.  Don’t get me wrong: I love Bubba to death.  Known him for almost ten years now.  Together, we’ve caught rivers of fish, travelled the world, and even started our own construction business.  He’s the type of dude you don’t mind loaning money, the sort of fellow you toss your housekeys and ask to feed your dog while you’re away, and he’s absolutely the type of dude you want at your back in a barfight.  Still, when he called me one day and said he spent the afternoon on his front porch with a Playboy Bunny, I said the first thing that came to mind. 

“Bullshit,” with the proper three syllables that such a statement truly deserves. 

Of course, he starts swearing on his mama’s grave and Holy Jesus that he’s telling the truth.  But come on!  Dude lives in a one-stoplight town in the ass-crack of South Texas.  Although the population sign says 3,435, I’m pretty sure three quarters of them are inmates at the prison, the town’s only employer.  And my left butt cheek has more resemblance to Hugh Heffner’s mansion than his ratty old trailer.  Even the word porch needs a few shakes of salt, to hell with his damn heart.  Step is a more accurate description. 

I’ll be damned if the ol’ boy didn’t prove me wrong.  Again… 

. 

Before you start calling me a straight-up asshole, you’ve got to understand how we two met.  Bubba and me, that is.  I ain’t losing any sleep over what you may call me.  I’ve been called worse.  A lot worse.  Today, even, and the sun ain’t even up good yet.  Still, how we met says an awful lot to how we’ve put up with each other so long.  It says a lot about what makes us tick, how we view the big wide world around us. 

Hard to believe, but there was a time—not terribly long ago—that Bubba and me hadn’t said word one to each other yet, despite having been on the on the same jobsite for going on six months.  I’d seen him around a couple times, but that was it. 

Simply put: We worked different crews in different trades.  He’s a framer, which is lot like a carpenter for any of y’all never worked a building crew before.  The big difference being that most carpenters work exclusively with wood—cabinets, finish trim, that sort of thing—a framer may do a little woodwork, but mostly, he deals in steel and drywall, the preferred mediums of modern commercial construction.  Me: I’m an electrician.  We follow along right behind the framers to put in everything electrical.  We’ve got the drywall guys behind us, the tape-and-float guys behind them, so on and so forth, through every trade—pipefitters, plumbers, HVAC, concrete, finished floors, roofers, windows—it’s one big line, one after another, until we’re done.  We finish ahead of schedule, there’s bonuses; works with penalties, if we’re behind.  It ain’t just your part held up.  The crews behind you are legion, and they’re all juggling schedules, trying to keep their guys working every day and the whole project moving forward.  Nowadays, too, there’s no telling how many different crews you may get at a single site or what language they all speak, so they talk dollars.  Everybody understands dollars. 

It’s kind of an unwritten rule on a construction site: You don’t fuck with other crews and they won’t fuck with you back.  Makes everything a hellova lot easier, most days.  Probably don’t need saying for most us, but if I learned anything in the years I put in, it’s this: I work around all sorts of people in a day’s time, the kind of work I do.  You might be dealing with honest-to-God, real-life fucking geniuses one minute and talking at people that don’t even know the words coming out of your mouth the next, so you don’t ever assume shit on a job.  Gabe Shorter, the fella that taught me this trade—you caught it, too, huh?  An electrician named Shorter—well, ol’ Gabe put it to me like this: You know what happens when you assume something in this line of work? 

How ’bout y’all?  Y’all ever hear this one? 

Hell naw!  It ain’t got nothing to do with asses. Where do you get shit like that from?  Sicko… 

No, you assume something—kind of work I do—somebody winds up dead.  Electricity don’t give a shit how ashamed or ass-like anyone feels.  Jump to hasty conclusions without double and triple checking simple facts first, it’ll smooth cook you from the inside out, and it don’t give a damn who else it might take out when it does. 

But long story short, were it not for landing on the same floor that afternoon—and that dumbass kid—I doubt we ever would’ve said word one to each other, ol’ Bubba and me. 

Every crew has its dumbass.  That kid was theirs. 

I’d seen hands like him a thousand times: This fresh-out-of-the-box, know-it-all little prick who couldn’t keep his yap shut if you paid him.  He knew every obscure fact about how the Martians built the pyramids and how his piss-ant wages were single-handedly funding the welfare system—I know this because he told us, all morning long—but somehow in all his expertise, he hadn’t yet mastered the fine art of working a tape measure. 

Not by a little, like he hadn’t got them fractions quite yet.  No.  Every stud he touched ran shy by at least an inch—up to and including five—inches, that is, shy of the wall he was building.  Gets downright irritating, believe me.  Make you plumb lose your mind.  I’ve seen plenty who did.  But not Bubba.  No sir.  He drew that kid in close, tucked him right under those big ol’ dragon wings of his. 

“Gaawlee,” I heard Bubba say, not long after lunch.  “This one’s coming up short, too.” 

He sounded as perplexed as that kid must’ve been, standing there, squinting and biting his lip.  There wasn’t an ounce of meanness in it, nothing Bubba said, just a kindly observation offered in the sweetest granddad baritone.  Ol’ Bubba played it, too.  He doffed his hat, scratched his big shaggy head.  Would’ve thought he was working out astrophysics the way he seemed he was thinkin’ it all out.  He even busted out a pencil, started working something out in longhand in the rafters, way up there. 

“Boss is gonna be awful mad if we keep going through studs like this,” Bubba added in that same sticky sweet drawl.  Even from across the building, you could see those words take all the wind out of that poor kid.  His shoulders slumped.  Feet shifted.  I almost felt sorry for the little bastard. 

Bubba had him right where he wanted. 

“I know,” he said, stroking his beard like it dripped answers.  “Yeah… That’ll fix it.”  His eyes flashed across the room.  “Go grab that ratchet with the big, orange handle out of my box over there.” 

The kid lit right up, pranced like a baby deer clean across that whole floor.  Spent the next several minutes with his head in that box, skinny ass in the air.  Meanwhile, Bubba climbed down and started measuring out the correct dimensions needed for his walls. 

“Orange handle, you say?” I heard the kid say, echoing inside the box. 

“Dadgumit! That’s right,” Bubba said.  “I loaned it to the electricians earlier this week.  Why don’t you go grab it from them?  Tell them I sent you to get my board stretcher back.” 

That kid trotted right for me.  “Don’t suppose you might know who borrowed Bubba’s board stretcher, do you?” he asked. 

I ain’t gonna lie.  I had hard time keeping a straight face.  Bubba’s doubled over laughing back there in my line of sight didn’t help.  “Let me see,” I said, imagining endless checkout lanes, crippled puppies, webcam hemorrhoid surgery footage—anything at all, really—to keep that shit-eating grin off my face.  “I think Larry did, sometime earlier this week.  You ought to check with him.  I think he’s on the… sixth floor today.  Yeah, go ask him.” 

Now, let’s ignore the fact we’re in the basement and I just sent this kid up seven flights of stairs.  Let’s ignore, too, that Larry remembered Chuck using that board stretcher last, and sent him back down another six flights.  Or that Chuck, upon hearing why he needed such a fool thing, decided another fellow had an even better tool for the job: “Go find Jamal,” he’d told him.  “He was the roof yesterday, but he’s the only one who has what you need.  Tell him Chuck said to let you use his a 14-inch pantalón snake.”  Then he grabbed him by the shoulders, got right in his face and looked him dead in his eye.  “This part is critical,” he said, not even a hint of a smile.  “It’s gotta be the fourteen-incher.  Anything smaller just won’t do.” 

That kid spent the better part of the afternoon on this snipe hunt before the big boss finally sent him home.  He gave us all a stern talkin’ to at the next safety meeting—the dangers of pranking somebody on a jobsite, or some such—but by then, Bubba and I were becoming fast friends. 

. 

“Ever heard of the Gorgenheim Girls?”  I wasn’t sure if I had.  But that’s the first question he sprang on me to defend his good name on the whole Playmate thing.  If his intent was to throw me off by asking such a random question, it was working.  He had a knack for stuff like that.  A natural born conman, if ever there were.  Of course, this whole Playboy thing came up on the tail end of what turned out to be a two-and-a-half-hour-long phone call.  He had a knack for stuff like that, too: Blabbering on and on about not a damn thing until you physically needed a nap.  But I was driving back from one of our recently finished jobs out West Texas way.  I was captive. If nothing else, I suppose, he made those dull ass miles pass a little quicker. 

“They were this cabaret act back in the vaudeville days,” he tells me.  “Used to be pretty big up north.  Chicago and New York, places like that.  I had to Google them, myself…” 

“You did what to them?” 

“I’m getting to that—holy shit, man.  That’s that chick I was tell you about who lives down there on the corner—you remember—good girls bend at the knee and bad girls bend all night?  Well there she is man… Damn!” 

“You do realize I’m talking to you on the phone, right?” 

“Your loss, man,” he said. 

That’s another one of Bubba’s knacks: I don’t care if she’s seventeen or seventy-five, he’s gonna gawk.  And I don’t care if he’s writing a eulogy or telling you delicate details about passing his latest kidney stone—a chick walks by and he’s a Labra-doodle spotting a squirrel. 

“Anyway, my neighbor had this big garage sale over there where that fine ass chick is bent in half right now.  Man, you gotta see this shit!  I do believe that chick’s an exhibitionist, man.  She regularly opens all her curtains when she takes her showers.  Pisses her ol’ man off something fierce.  I know.  I’ve got binoculars…  What was I saying?” 

“Googling Gorgenheim Girls.” 

“Oh yeah—sorry, I get distracted—anyway, they had this big garage sale last weekend. You know that sumbitch made seven thousand dollars from that one day?  I been thinking about having one myself, get rid of some of Momma’s old stuff.  You know, all them angels and doilies and crap.  Probably wouldn’t bring seven grand, but it’d get it the fuck outa my house.  Still, I don’t wanna pay that goddamn city permit fee.  Can you believe this little shit town makes you get a permit to have a garage sale?” 

“Holy shit, dude!  Does this story have a point?” 

“Good things come to those who wait, man.  I think that’s in the Bible.  Besides, you forget: I grew up out there.  You told me where you was wallago.  I know there ain’t shit for at least another 30 miles.” 

“Won’t make that mistake again.” 

“So, yeah, I thought I’d mosey on over there, see if they had anything worth looking at.  Found me some great fishing tackle—got us a good long handle net, a whole bucket of weights, even a couple of Penn reels I’m gonna tinker with and see if I can’t get them back up and operational…” 

“Cool,” I say, hoping he finds his way back to the beaten path again soon. I can’t help thinking back to that dumbass kid, all those years ago.  ’Ol Bubba’s got me right where he wants me. 

“…So while I’m there, this little old Blue Hair walk over from down the street.  I figure she’s the new neighbor.  Saw all sorts of moving trucks and such over there a few days back.  I keep on rummaging about, but I figure this will be as good a time as any to make my acquaintance…” 

Now me, I could probably go days without saying a word to another living soul.  Just the way I am.  Not Bubba.  No sir.  He could be lost in the Mojave and somehow find the only other bastard in a hundred miles, strike up a conversation, and suddenly know their whole life story, especially if she has tits. 

“…So, she walks around a while, looking at this and that, and spots this exercise bench—sorta like a weight bench, without the weights—it’s got this place to put your feet to do sit-ups and such.  You can even adjust the height, you know?” 

“Yeah,” I say, not even half listening at this point.  I slow down and honk my horn at a circle of buzzards on the road.  Looks like somebody smeared an eight-pointer the night before.  From the looks of it, they probably needed some body work after that one. 

“…So, she starts talking to the fella holding the sale, drops a few bucks, and starts trying to drag this big ol’ bench back down the road.  Well, you know me.  This is my opportunity to make my hellos.  I ask her: You need a hand with that?  Sure, darling, she says, so I walk on over and pick it up.  It ain’t heavy at all.  In fact, I feel right off that the wood on the underside of this thing is almost completely rotten.  He must’ve had this thing sitting out his yard or something ’cause it’s totally gone.  Well, we’re chattin’ it up as we go—she’s telling all about her recent move and how nice it is to finally be back near where she grew up—but I can’t take my mind off that rotten ass wood on the bottom of this thing.  Finally, I flip it over as we walk along and see the wood’s even worse than I imagined.  I can literally flick it apart with my fingernail…” 

“Really?” I could say damn near anything at this point and he’d never be the wiser. He lost me somewhere about garage sale, but once he gets going, it’s a lot easier just to let him talk.  He gets all ass hurt if you try for the Readers’ Digest version of any story he tells. 

“…So, I show it to her and tell her I can fix it.  She lights right up, but starts saying oh, no, I don’t want to put you out in anyway.  Well, I can’t have it falling apart underneath a little old lady.  She’s liable to break a hip or something.  It’s no big deal, I tell her, so she finally agrees to let me fix it.  She points out her house—right where all the moving trucks had been—and says she’ll be back in a day or two to pick it up…” 

“Mmm hmmm…”  I check my truck’s navigation.  Fourteen more miles to the next pit stop.  Hope I have enough gas to make it. 

“…So, I take it in my shop, pull the cushions and get to work.  That wood was completely rotted out, man.  Let me tell you.  I toss that hunk of crap in the burn pile and look through my wood for a good replacement.  I find this gorgeous piece of pecan wood about three inches thick.  I had planned to use it as mantel piece at some point, but it’s almost the perfect size for this thing, you know?  So, I take me a couple measures and start trimming it to size.  It’s gonna add some weight to it, but it definitely ain’t gonna break on her.  Hell, she’ll be able to will this damn thing to her grandkids, if she wanted…” 

Finally, the gas station sign approaching.  Thank God! 

“Sounds good. Look, I gotta go. I’m running on fumes, and that’s the last gas station for a hundred miles.  Talk to ya later…” 

“I see how it is.  You don’t wanna hear my Playboy Bunny story.  That’s alright.  See if I ever— 

“Yeah OK, dude.  I’m out.  Bye.”  Click. Finally.  I flick on my blinker, glad I’ll finally get to stretch the ol’ legs. 

. 

I pull back on the highway with only two hundred fifty more miles to go.  I’ve got a full gas tank, empty bladder and a fresh cup of coffee.  I can already feel the sheets of my own bed calling me.  Took us seven months to finish that last job—a full month ahead of schedule—and I’m looking forward to a few days of down time before we start it all over again, someplace else.  I flip through the radio stations—Tejano, Tejano, Jesus, Tejano—not a damn thing on in this part of the world.  And if I listen to that George Strait album one more time, I think I’ll jump out of the truck.  No wonder he chose to retire. 

I switch off the radio.  Silence it is.  I adjust my rearview, set my cruise control and take a long, slow sip off my coffee.  About the time I set back down, my phone rings. 

“B&B Construction.  How can I help you today?” 

“…So, I get it all cleaned up and put back together, better than if it was new, and I carry it over to her house,” Bubba says, as if he’d only paused for a breath rather than said a whiny farewell forty-five minutes ago.  Despite traffic being scarce on the highway home, the entire Texas population was gathered at that last stop.  It took forever to pee and buy a cup of Joe. 

“…I knock on her door and I hear her shuffling around in there. Her head pops up in the curtains. She recognizes me and moves to the door—man, she must have like a billion locks because all I hear is thunk, cachunk, click, swip—well, anyway, she sees me and pushes open the screen door.  Come in, come in, she says.  I never expected you so soon.  I barely get the bench wedged in the door and she’s already halfway across the room, holding this enormous goblet of wine…” 

I grab my coffee cup and slump back in my seat, arm draped over the top of the steering wheel.  Silence ain’t in the cards for me today. 

“…You care for a nip, she calls back to me as she disappears around the corner.  Well, shit man, it’s barely ten o’clock in morning, but I don’t want to seem rude.  I haven’t even said anything yet, and I hear her pouring me glass already.  Sure, I tell her.  She’s already coming back, two big ol’ glasses in hand.  I drink me a bottle of wine every day, she tells me, sometimes I even have more than one.  Keeps you limber, she says, and kinda winks at me, handing me a glass—I didn’t think much of it then…” 

“You don’t say,” I reply, back on my play reel of useless responses. 

“…Now it’s kinda dark in this room I just got in.  I told you she moved like a week ago, right?  I was kinda expecting boxes and shit all over the place.  But no.  It’s like she’s lived there all her life.  She’s got magazines spread out on her end tables, books and knickknack’s all over her shelves, and pictures hung on every wall.  Hell, I don’t have that much shit about, and I’ve been in my place for 25 years now…” 

“Hmmm.” I say, taking another sip. 

“…Next thing I know, she sets her glass down, grabs that workout bench from me like it’s a box of Kleenex and hauls it off it off to another room.  Make yourself at home, she tells me from the other room.  Have a seat… 

He pauses there.  Sounds like he’s still trying to finish that glass of wine she gave him two days ago.  He ain’t much of a drinker. 

“…Now I’m still standing by the door, kind of floored she took that bench off as quick as she did.  That pecan plank I used probably weighed a good sixty pounds by itself.  Well, I figure what the hell, and I start making my way a little deeper in the room.  Like I said, it’s kind of dark in there, so my eyes are still adjusting from outside.  But that’s when I start noticing these pictures she has hanging all over her walls.  It’s literally a who’s who of celebrities in there, a lot of them even have autographs on them…” 

“No shit?” I say, finally not feigning interest.  He knows I’m a history buff.  “Like who?” 

“…There’s one of Mickey Mantle.  Charlton Heston.  Sinatra.  Johnny Carson.  The Beatles.  Trumann Capote.  Even LBJ and Nixon.  Plus, a shitload more I couldn’t make out.  I mean every wall in this place is got somebody famous on it, and there’s dozens of pictures on every wall…” 

“Wow.” 

“…Yeah.  But that’s only half of it: In every one of these pictures is this drop-dead gorgeous woman.  I’m talking pinup girl quality.  Just waves of blonde hair, perfect tits and a smile you’d die for, and she’s not wearing much more than a tiara in most of those shots.  I’m just standing there staring at all of them when that old lady appears out of nowhere behind me.  I see you’ve spotted my pictures, she says…” 

He pauses again, right when this finally got interesting.  “And?” I say. 

“…Well, I didn’t hear her walk up.  I kind of jump a little because she surprised me, and I hear her laughing at me.  We’re just gonna have loosen you up a bit there, sonny.  And she gooses me…” 

“No shit?” 

“… Yeah, man.  Serious to God!  I’m talking full on palm to ass cheek.  Now she’s really laughing at me because she may have made me jump when she surprised me, but I’m pretty sure I come clean off the floor when she goosed me.  You want to make a fat man move, just goose him real good one day… 

I couldn’t help but laugh. 

“…Yuk it up, buddy!  I’d like to see how you would respond when some old broad decides to make you her Man Candy for the day…” 

“Man Candy,” I say, when I finally catch my breath.  “That’s rich!” 

“…That’s Mister Man Candy, to you…” 

. 

Over the next several miles, Bubba filled me in on the woman’s history.  How she got her start with Gorgenheim Girls in Chicago when she was only sixteen.  How that launched her modeling career and landed her in New York City.  How she wound up meeting all the famous folk she had on her walls.  How she even started pulling out albums with hundreds more pictures than her walls could hold. 

“…I was quite the dish, wasn’t I? she asks me.  I can’t let her down, and honestly, she really was.  Hell yeah, I told her, her eyes just glittering.  I’m trying to be polite and all, but this ol’ gal keeps climbing up on me.  I’m starting to get a little nervous, you know?  I don’t wanna be rude, so I figure I’ll finish my drink and suddenly remember I left my stove on or something…” 

“Right…” 

“…Well, I’m flipping through these pictures and come across one that looks like the same chick on the walls standing next to this dude in a smoking jacket with a cigar.  Is that Hugh Heffner? I ask her.  Oh yeah, she says, from the next room. She was working on another wine cork and walks back out with a fresh bottle.  I was a Playboy Centerfold through most of the seventies, she says.  I lived at Hugh’s mansion for several years…” 

“No shit…” 

“Yeah.  Well, I’m listening to her tell her story and what-not, but the whole time she’s talking she keeps throwing all these innuendos my way, you know?  Nearly everything she says has two meanings—aww, what’s the word I’m thinking?—” 

“Double entendre.” 

“Yeah, that’s it.  ON-Tonder…  Well, she keeps tossing it out there, right?  And she keeps filling my glass.  I finally ask her—you know, you never know how to go about that sort of thing with an older lady—but I ask her outright: How old are you anyway?  You know what she tells me?” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“Eighty!  She just had her eightieth birthday up in New York before she moved down here.  Now I’m really floored. I wouldn’t have put her a day over 60 myself.  I mean, she gets around so well and she has this—I don’t know—worldly way about her, I guess, that you don’t expect from somebody that just turned eighty.  And like I said wallago, all that ontonder and what-not.  Like when she took the album from me.  I wasn’t halfway through it yet and she reached over and grabbed it out my hands.  Mind you, almost every photo in that thing has her standing there naked as the day she was born.  I better put this up before something comes up that it’s gonna take us all afternoon put back down, she says, staring me down with this wicked little grin on her face.  This chick is laying it all out there, man.  I mean she really wants some—” 

“What the fuck is she doing living there?” I interrupt. 

“That’s the thing,” Bubba says.  “One of her daughters wound up marrying one of these ranchers around here.  She lived in New York for a long time, but she’s getting up in years, and got diagnosed with dementia a few years back.  She’s still in the early stages of it, but she decided to move a little closer to her family, just the same…” 

“Hmmm.” 

“…Well, anyway, this chick wants me, man.  And she keeps putting it out there, the whole time.  She even offers to give me a tour of the place, wants to show me her bedroom, which she says everyone should see at least once.  And I tell you, man, I don’t know if it’s the wine or what, but I’m looking at her—she’s wearing one of those swishy, old lady jogging suits, but ol’ girl’s still got her shape.  I just can’t get my head around the fact she eighty…” 

“Come on, dude!  Take one for the team!  When’s somebody like you ever gonna say he got to bed a Playboy Bunny?” 

“What you trying to say there, buddy?” 

“Well, what happened?” 

“I was a gentleman.  I finished my glass and went back home.” 

“Yeah, right.  I’m calling bullshit once again.” 

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” 

. 

It took about another hour to get him to hang up, but with San Antonio steadily approaching in my windshield, I finally managed to part ways.  He knew I hated driving in that town, so he finally agreed to hang up.  At least the radio offerings got better for remainder of my ride.  All the way, though, I couldn’t get over this bullshit story he tossed at me for the bulk of my drive home.  The things that dude thinks up sometimes… 

Like I said: It takes a bit of salt. 

Despite having talked with him for nearly the last four hours, I still somehow managed to keep a lid on the one surprise I was carrying.  Because we finished the job a month ahead of schedule, the contractor awarded us a ten thousand dollar bonus, all cash under the table.  I figured I’d swing by Bubba’s place and drop off his share before I got home. 

As I turned onto his block, my jaw felt like it had come unhinged. 

There, sitting on the steps of that ratty ol’ trailer of his, was a little old lady, bottle of wine in one hand and massive wineglass the other.  Bubba waves at me with this big grin as I step out of the truck.  “I’d like you to meet my neighbor, Susanna Scott.  Susie, my business partner and best friend…” 

The old lady reaches over and pats him on his thigh. 

“Oooo!” she says to Bubba, eyes glittering like diamonds.  “You didn’t tell me it was gonna be a ménage á trois.  No worries.  Not my first…” 

She holds out her withered hand to me. 

“Call me Susie,” she says. “I’m the Playmate I’m sure you’ve heard all about by now…” 

Bobby Horecka is a final year graduate student at the University of Houston-Victoria and adjunct English instructor at nearby Victoria College, but mostly, he’s a recovering journalist, have covered the real backroads of Texas for the last quarter century. Aside from countless news pieces written for newspapers, magazine, TV and radio, he remains unknown as a fiction writer, having just begun submitting to various literary magazines and journals in late January 2018. He hopes publications like these will allow him to emerge, as it were, a writer of different sort. Find him at https://outlawauthorz.com,  https://bootsbarsmotorbikes.blogspot.com, and https://www.facebook.com/HeadOutlaw.

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The car had come from Hawaii. She herself had not. She herself hadn’t been anywhere, not counting Florida (twice) and Niagara Falls—and that had been only the once back when she was just a baby.  But the car, a silver Subaru Outback, had come from Hawaii. She knew because Bryce, the salesman at Midwest Used Auto, had told her. He hadn’t exactly offered this information up as a selling point, but Janie had taken it as one anyway. The rear bumper still touted the state inspection sticker. Hawaii Vehicle Inspection, she read now, running her fingers over the small raised lettering.  There were other signs of the car’s origins too.  She found traces of white sand beneath the floor mats and along the ridge of the trunk. And the paint on the tail gate was scuffed. Maybe, Janie thought, the car had belonged to some lithe, brown surfer, and the wear on the tailgate came from him stashing a surfboard in the trunk on his way to and from the ocean. 

Did surfers stow their boards in the trunk of a car? Was that how it worked?  Janie didn’t know. She herself only used the trunk to stow groceries from the Jewel Osco. There they were now, a whole host of white plastic bags, shuddering before her like living, breathing things. Janie plucked the bags from the trunk and hung them on the posts of her arms, the strained handles biting into her soft flesh. She had liked Bryce, she thought, shutting the tailgate and starting up the stairs to her apartment. He was young—younger than her—and had a horse face and golden hair that curled over his ears and around the nape of his pale, skinny neck. And he had sided with her about the Subaru Outback, even though Dietrich had wanted her to get something more economical, a Honda Civic, maybe, or a Nissan Sentra. She didn’t want a Honda Civic or a Nissan Sentra. She wanted an Outback. An Outback from Hawaii. She wanted a car that could take her places. 

Yes, she had liked Bryce. She liked his face like a horse and his name like a national park out west. Bryce, she said now, out loud, juggling the groceries and her purse as she fitted the key into her apartment door and pushed her way inside. The apartment was quiet and had that stale, shut-up smell that came from routine abandonment. Janie unloaded the grocery bags onto the table and went to the window to open the blinds, although there was precious little daylight to let in this late in October. The security lights in the car port were already on, bathing the Subaru in a warm glow. When had it gotten so dark so early? It was now only quarter past five. Dietrich, she knew, would still be at the gym. She had another half hour before she needed to leave to pick him up. 

Dietrich, she said so softly that it was little more than a whisper. She had liked his name once too—his name and his face with the deep-set eyes and dramatic cheek bones. He had seemed foreign when they first met. Exotic, even. Except that he wasn’t foreign. Dietrich was from the same town she was, so, basically, he was from nowhere. They had met at the gym of all places, back when Mr. Anderson had first plucked her from the dozen other customer service reps to serve as his administrative assistant. “You’re the kind of gal who’s going places,” he had said, and she had ignored the condescending “gal” and taken up occupancy at the front desk, proud to be, in essence, the face of the company. The gym membership had been a perk, a benefit reserved for the execs in the front office, an elite group to which she now, nominally at least, belonged.  Dietrich had wanted her to quit the job, had encouraged her to find a line of work that wouldn’t compromise her “integrity.” Dietrich had been all about integrity back then, had opposed a whole host of things on moral grounds: the war in Iraq and Walmart and high fructose corn syrup. His moral outrage extended to most types of employment. He didn’t want to do any kind of work that would insult his intelligence. Back then, Janie had admired this about him. Regarded him as noble, even. Courageous. Dietrich, she had told her father, wasn’t a sell-out. 

Janie, despite Dietrich’s moral outrage, had stayed with the company. She had been there now for ten years. A whole decade. She had seen Mr. Anderson through a divorce, a hair transplant, and a nasty battle with prostate cancer. The truth was, Janie didn’t mind being an administrative assistant. She liked manning the front desk: orbiting the inner circle of executives, answering the phone in a pert, professional manner, flirting harmlessly with the Fed Ex guy and the man who came to deliver the filtered water.  It was a soft, plush job— the kind of job that paid more than the work was worth, because somewhere along the line Mr. Anderson had come to think of Janie as indispensable.  His health, wife, and hair had all jumped ship, but Janie, by virtue of not going anywhere, had tricked him into believing she was the one thing he couldn’t do without. 

Come to think of it, Janie couldn’t remember the last time Dietrich had objected to her job on any grounds, moral or otherwise. And he had yet to find work that was worthy of him. But why should he work? Janie’s salary wasn’t exorbitant, but it was enough to pay the bills and, she thought, glancing out the window, to buy an almost new Subaru Outback. Janie gave the luminous car one last proud look and then opened the fridge, pushing aside the arsenal of Muscle Milk on the bottom shelf to make room for the groceries. The Muscle Milk, of course, was Dietrich’s. Janie herself hadn’t stuck with the gym. There had been a time, in the beginning, when she and Dietrich would stake out adjacent treadmills and run beside each other, upping the speed until Janie tasted blood at the back of her throat. Back then Janie had been surprised at her own ambition. Her own sheer will. Of course, Dietrich’s advances had been more surprising still.  Not only could he bench press twice his own body weight, he was half-way through a bachelor’s degree in psychology.  She could not believe someone could be so academic and so athletic at the same time. She told him as much once. They had just worked out and were standing in the gym parking lot, one of those prolonged, pleasurably painful goodbyes that had been so common back then. It was raining—misting really—and she was wearing an oversized sweatshirt that was pulled over one shoulder, revealing the strap of her sports bra. Dietrich had reached out and traced the arc of her exposed collar bone with his finger, an intimacy that had, perhaps, encouraged her confession. “A smart jock,” he said, parroting her.  Then she had stood there in the misting rain while he prattled on and on about the ancient Greeks and mind-body connection. 

Mind-body connection. Had she widened her eyes when he said that? Arched an eyebrow ever so slightly? 

No. She hadn’t. She had smiled—a pitiful, guileless smile—and then taken Dietrich back to her apartment for the first time. 

It wasn’t long after that that he had moved in with her. Dietrich, a self-proclaimed feminist, objected to marriage. Marriage, after all, was the only form of slavery still permitted by the law. Janie’s mother was skeptical. “You don’t believe that,” she had said. “Of course you want a wedding. Marriage. Children.” But then Janie’s mother, a frequent and fervent user of the expression “living in sin,” was always going to be a tough sell. “You’re giving the milk away for free,” she had said on multiple occasions—still said, in fact, when Janie had the stomach to call home. Janie did her best to dismiss her mother’s criticism. She didn’t care for the bovine reference, and, besides, she didn’t believe she was giving anything away. Or, at least, that’s what she wanted to believe.  Living with Dietrich had felt, if not terribly progressive, at least declarative. She, Janie, would not be enslaved. She, Janie, would not be beholden to anyone. She, Janie, would not be used. 

Janie finished putting the groceries away, stashing a bag of Cheetos behind a box of bran cereal in the cupboard.  She wasn’t, she told herself, ashamed of purchasing the Cheetos. She wasn’t hiding them.  And it wasn’t like Dietrich himself was a complete health nut. He did count calories and work out with a kind of religious ferocity, but there was that time he had taken up smoking. Camels. He had smoked Camels. It was around the time he switched his major from psychology to philosophy—a decision that pushed his graduation date out another year and a half. He carted a pack of Camels in the front pocket of his thrift store shirts, spouting hot air and philosophical mumbo jumbo. The smoking wouldn’t have bothered her as much if he hadn’t been so casual about it. So cool. As if he wasn’t the same guy who had previously fretted about “increased lung capacity.” But when she called him out he had only offered up some vague reference to moral ambiguity. 

“Moral ambiguity,” he had said, and then gave her a smile that was as crooked as a lie. 

Dietrich had, finally, finished his bachelor’s degree and was now working, somewhat aimlessly, on his master’s. What should have been only a two-year program had now dragged on for nearly twice as long, a subject which Dietrich displayed a rare sensitivity to, so Janie didn’t bring it up. Not anymore. 

Janie consulted the clock. How was it already time to leave? She headed for the door, and then, in a moment of weakness or defiance or both, turned back to the cupboard and tore into the bag of Cheetos, funneling a handful into her mouth. She didn’t, she thought, stepping out into the dusky darkness, especially feel like picking Dietrich up tonight. It wasn’t her fault he didn’t own a car. It wasn’t her fault he cared so deeply about the environment. And how, exactly, was her carting him around reducing his carbon footprint? Hadn’t she done enough already? Didn’t she haul their recycling to the plant every week? And then there was that year, that long, humiliating year, when she hadn’t flushed the toilet after urinating, because Dietrich had wanted to conserve water. 

Conservation, Janie thought, bitterly, starting up the car and heading for the gym.  Sheryl Crow was on the radio and the car, was it pulling to the right? She took her hands off the steering wheel for a moment and watched as the car drifted across the lane toward the sidewalk. Was something wrong with the suspension? Had Bryce lied to her? Maybe the car hadn’t been owned by some lithe, brown surfer after all.  Maybe it had belonged to some obese Islander with legs the size of palm tree trunks and fat, meaty hands. Someone named Akoni or Hanale or Kalani. Janie shuddered, thinking of the sheer weight of the man. No wonder the alignment was out of whack— it would have to be, after lugging that whale around. 

But no. Bryce wouldn’t have lied to her. Not Bryce. Maybe it was all in her head. Of course it was all in her head. The car was fine. No—the car was perfect. She readjusted her hands on the steering wheel, centering the car in the lane.  “The first cut is the deepest,” Sheryl Crow crooned at her through the radio. “Baby, I know, the first cut is the deepest.” Janie liked Sheryl Crow.  In fact, Janie had a few of her albums in the CD case stashed behind the passenger seat. She considered, briefly, rifling through the thing and popping one of them in the player. But then, what would be the point? She was almost to the gym and Dietrich didn’t like Sheryl Crow. Once Strong Enough had played on the radio when they were together. They were in the kitchen of her apartment and she was cooking something—fajitas, maybe?—on the stove.  “This is the only song of hers that’s bearable,” Dietrich had said. And then, as if he couldn’t resist, he pulled up the sleeve of his thrift store shirt and flexed his bicep at her. He said, “I’m strong enough to be your man,” and she—had she really stepped away from the stove and curled her fingers around his upper arm? 

Yes. She had. She had been so proud then. Dietrich was strong. And she was going to lose the weight. Go to school. Get that career. 

Janie came to an intersection and braked for the light.  Straight ahead was the gym. “Lie to me,” Sheryl Crow had sung that day in her apartment kitchen, that day when Janie had stepped away from the hot stove and pressed her hand to Dietrich’s arm. Was that what she wanted? For Dietrich to lie to her? Had Dietrich lied to her? Because she hadn’t lost the weight. Gone to school. Nabbed that career. She hadn’t gone anywhere. 

The light would turn green soon. Already the white man on the crosswalk had been replaced by a flashing red countdown. The light would change and she would cross the threshold of the intersection and then she couldn’t listen to Sheryl Crow anymore. Not with Dietrich in the car. He would switch the station over to something loud. Something violent. His preference in music baffled her. What reason did he have to be so angry? So outraged? 

The numbers on the crosswalk sign blinked at her. 20 . . .19 . . .18 . . “Philosophy majors make the most money of any liberal arts degree,” she had told her father.  Oh, how she had defended Dietrich. Fought for him, even.  Now, with startling clarity, she recalled that day in the apartment kitchen, how she had clung to his arm and then how he had carried her to the bedroom, pinning her own shapeless arms down against the mattress, and how the dinner on the stove had burned, filling the whole of the apartment with an acrid, hateful smell. It had been what she wanted, hadn’t it? But then why did she feel, when she remembered that moment, not that she had given something away, but that something had been taken from her? 

Ten years had passed. A whole decade. And she herself was still stuck in the same soft, shitty job and the same soft, shitty body. Only the car was new. Her foot hovered above the brake pad, a flighty, restless bird. 10 . . .9 . . .8 . . . Aloha, she said to the transverse traffic. The gym loomed in front of her, pretending at inevitability, but the car, the car could take her anywhere. Not Hawaii, of course, but somewhere. She could go right now, she could turn right now onto I-80 and head west, toward someplace wide and open and honest.  Or, better yet, she could simply slam on the gas and plow into the crossing cars. She imagined the force of impact, imagined how the windshield would shatter and scatter little glass grains across the black pavement, fine and perfect, like sparkling sand. 

Janie felt a terrible heat rise in her chest, a horrible, smothering burning, and then she spied the red flashing numbers on the crosswalk sign. 6. . . 5 . . .4 . . .Her foot on the brake became a stone.  She didn’t have to decide anything right now. There was still time. 

Kim Karras has received a degree in English from the University of Utah. She is the author of Accidentally Me, a YA novel from Cedar Fort press. Her short fiction has appeared in the Apalachee Review.

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One 

Cancer—it’s a crab-shaped constellation found in the sky between Gemini and Leo. It’s the fourth sign of the zodiac. Cancerians, those born under the sign, are reported to be nurturing people devoted to both caring for and propagating family. The Tropic of Cancer is an imaginary line around the Earth. The line represents the northernmost point at which the sun can be directly overhead. And cancer is what they found in Fred Sissons’s left lung. Doctors removed the lung and poisoned Fred with radiation and chemicals. At the end of the treatment, he would be cancer-free and much reduced. 

Two 

It was mid-July, and the weather was sunny and hot. Fred shivered slightly, though, because his wife May, perpetually warm these days, had the air conditioning working overtime. 

Fred sat in his living room and looked around as a stranger might. It was his first time in this room since the Emergency Services workers had rushed him, gasping under an oxygen mask, out the front door and into the waiting ambulance. He was still using oxygen. A tank of it was attached to the back of his wheelchair, and the gas made a faint hissing sound as it passed through a clear plastic line and into a small nosepiece held in place with a skin-toned elastic strip that ran from his nose around the back of his head. Fred squinted as the afternoon sun poured in through the two-story windows. 

The house smelled of roasting beef. May, his wife, and Terri, her sister, were getting Sunday dinner ready. They spoke in Pilipino, but Fred, though he’d been married to May for nearly four years, could pick up very little of it—mostly the Spanish-based words, and few of those. 

May emerged from the kitchen with a tray of sushi and set it down on the coffee table next to Fred. Her long, black hair was pulled back and tied with a pink elastic. Her face was carefully made-up. He found her as beautiful as ever, even given the almost comic awkwardness that comes when a tiny woman has reached the final term of pregnancy—and she was pregnant with twins. 

“Here you go, Fred, a little something to nibble on while the dinner finishes cooking. But don’t eat them all. W.T.’s coming too, you know.” 

Fred smiled at the mention of his friend. 

May returned to the kitchen, and Fred stared at the sushi. After a minute or two, he took a piece, held it, looked at, then leaned forward and dipped the edge into some green chile sauce. He bit the piece in half and chewed it tentatively. The sauce burned his mouth, ignited little jets of steam that penetrated his nasal passages and emerged through his tear ducts. He swallowed too quickly and choked. He coughed so hard, little lights exploded in his eyes. 

“You all right?” May called. 

“Fine,” he sputtered. 

More coughing, but finally, the food cleared. 

It was Terri who answered the door and let W.T. in. He carried a telltale brown paper bag with the prominent “Don’t Drink and Drive” message printed on it. 

“Always with a bottle or two, W.T.,” Terri said with only a tinge of admonition in her voice. 

“Thank God,” Fred called out from the living room. 

“It’s champagne,” said W.T. “If ever there was a day for toasting good things, this is it. Fred’s first visit home after all that nastiness in the hospital, and, of course, the impending arrival—arrivals, I mean.” 

Fred sat by himself in the living room and listened to the other three in the kitchen. They organized flutes and found an ice bucket and some ice. Fred finally heard the welcome pop of the cork, followed by screams from May and Terri as the bottle evidently overflowed on something—the floor, a foot, something. Soon the four of them were together as they had been so many times before. They charged their glasses, drank to May and the babies, drank to Fred and his health. 

Two days later, husband and wife were both in the hospital. Fred to continue his convalescence; May to deliver Fred’s two baby sons. 

Three 

The trouble between Fred and his daughter, Lynda, went back to an exchange that took place between them over breakfast one morning months before Fred’s marriage to May. W.T. remembered opening his door and knowing at once from Fred’s expression that things had been contentious. Fred was flushed, and his eyes were watery, as though he had cried—or worse, from W.T.’s perspective, that Fred was about to cry. 

“I’m just guessing here, but things didn’t go well with Lynda?” W.T. said as Fred thundered past and headed for the kitchen. He went straight for the cabinet where W.T. kept the liquor. Fred winced as he reached up for a bottle of single malt. 

“Goddamn it. I don’t know why you can’t put this stuff within reach. Your boys are grown up. Unlike my daughter.” 

“So, she didn’t take to the news with much enthusiasm?” 

“Well, let’s see. It all depends upon what you mean by ‘enthusiasm.’” 

He found a clean glass in the dishwasher. 

“Her response was certainly energetic. ‘May?’ she said to me. ‘Your little Asian whore is about to become my stepmother? Is that what you’re saying?’” 

“Whoa.” 

“Then she went on to describe me as an ‘over-sexed, dirty old man.’ She said that May’s only a dozen years older than my grandson, and that of course makes me a ‘virtual pedophile.’ So, no, I don’t think it went well, and I don’t think she’s planning to come to the wedding. Even a card seems unlikely, though a letter bomb may be possible.” 

Fred poured a drink, and, forgetting about the splash of water and the single ice cube that were usually an important part to his scotch ritual, downed the scotch in a single gulp. He shuddered slightly and poured another. 

W.T. sat at his kitchen table. Fred paced. 

“It’s the money,” he said. “It’s the goddamned money. She’s afraid she’ll get shortchanged on the inheritance. Like the only function remaining for me in this life is to guard the fucking estate, die as soon as possible, and pass the whole thing into her nasty, grasping hands. 

“I told her that May and I are selling and building a new home in Cider—Cider whatever…” 

“Ridge.” 

“What?” 

“Ridge. Cider Ridge Estates. It’s where you’re building.” 

“I know that. Anyway, I told Lynda we’re building there and she started shrieking about how ‘that Asian whore’ and I are selling her house—her house. That’s the problem with this, you know. Lynda’s already got me dead and buried. And probated. She didn’t even grow up in that house. It’s my house. My house. I built it. I paid for it. It’s mine. Drink?” 

“Nice of you to offer, but no, never before ten.” 

“‘What’s wrong with being a grandfather, just loving your grandchild?’ she asked me, and I said, ‘Nothing. I love being a grandfather. Todd’s a great grandson. That doesn’t mean I have to live alone. It doesn’t mean I can’t be a husband, too.’ And then she says, ‘Yes. It does. Your grandfathering days are over. Do you have any idea how hurt Todd already is over this little tart of yours? I can only guess how upset he’ll be to find out she’s his new grandma.’ And then I said, ‘If he’s going to be upset, it’s because you’ll have manipulated him into it.’ 

“Okay, maybe I went a little too far with that last one. But, honestly, she got me riled. She’s one deeply selfish woman.” 

With that, Fred poured more scotch into his glass and slumped into a kitchen chair opposite W.T. Fred pulled a well-used tissue from his pocket and wiped his forehead. 

“What a mess,” he said. 

“Yes. A mess.” 

Four 

W.T. hardly knew Lynda Sissons, Fred’s only child. Margaret and Fred’s wife, Lois, had been close since grade school, and when Fred and Lois moved back to Edmonton from Toronto, and Margaret and Lois resumed their friendship, both families’ children were already grown. Lynda stayed in Toronto to finish her degree, and when she eventually moved to Edmonton, it was into an apartment of her own. 

W.T. and Fred had been drawn together through their wives’ friendship. The two couples would golf together spring, summer, and fall. In the winter, it would be bridge twice a month—an occasional play or symphony concert added in. But the men never saw one another apart from their wives, and conversation was kept light, superficial. It wasn’t until after Margaret’s final stroke, and Lois’s death from cancer the following year, that Fred and W.T. began a friendship of their own. It was during this time that W.T. met Lynda and her son, Todd, one afternoon at Fred’s. It was brief—W.T. was arriving; daughter and grandson were leaving. There were introductions, handshakes, smiles. 

“Now don’t you boys get into trouble. I don’t want to be having to post bail for anyone,” she’d said to her father and W.T. with a laugh. The boy hugged his grandfather. He and his mother left. That was it—the full extent of W.T.’s acquaintance with Lynda. 

“I’m scared to call her, W.T.,” said May. “She hates me. Last time I tried to talk to her, she called me all kinds of loathsome names.” 

They were sitting in a waiting room at the hospital. They’d been told that Fred had lung cancer. He required surgery. It would be performed within days. Given Fred’s age, there was an elevated risk to a procedure that was already risky. Someone had to tell Lynda. Reluctantly, W.T. accepted the commission. 

He phoned her that afternoon, and felt a guilty sense of relief when the first call he made to Lynda’s number went unanswered. He left a message giving his name and a short reminder of their one and only meeting. He asked her to call. He debated about whether or not to leave additional information, but decided against saying anything that would alarm more than necessary. 

“I’m phoning about your dad. Please give me a call back when you have a moment.” Innocuous, he hoped. Perhaps too innocuous, because hours later, and finally relaxed in his own family room, he’d still not heard from Lynda. He stared at his cordless and knew he had to try again—but not before he cleared the dishes from the coffee table, loaded the dishwasher, wiped the counter. Then he remembered the violets in the living room. They must need water. He went to his computer and checked his email. One message carried the subject line, “Big News.” Clearly, it had to be opened and read. 

“Do you want you’re dick to be in million of womens screensaver?” it began. “Your tiny penis is dissolving in her. With Penis Enlarger Patch you penis won’t dissolve anymore.” 

“Tempting,” he said to the screen. He wondered what the patch contained, and where and how it might be applied. 

Then, there was a “confidential” email from a banker in Nigeria who apparently needed W.T.’s help dealing with the dormant bank account of an assassinated government official, and if W.T. would just agree to pose as a beneficiary and receive the proceeds of this account, the Nigerian banker would give W.T. sixty-eight million dollars as a reward. W.T. had received similar requests for help before. This time, he read the whole email carefully. 

When W.T. could think of nothing else that needed his attention, he picked up the telephone’s handset, looked at it for a long moment, and then punched in Lynda’s number. This time she answered. He could tell she had call display; she was cold. Icy. 

“What do you want?” 

Again, he explained who he was. She said nothing. 

“Look,” said W.T., “your father is quite ill, and I thought you should know.” 

“I see.” 

“He has cancer. Lung cancer. He’s going to require surgery. Emergency surgery sometime in the next few days.” 

“What do you expect me to do about it?” 

“Well—um—nothing. I guess. I just thought, you know, since you’re his daughter, that—um—you should be told. That’s all.” 

“Fine. You’ve told me.” 

“He’s at the Grey Nun’s…” 

“Look, are you expecting me to do something—to visit or provide care or something?” 

“The only expectation I had was that you might want to know. Maybe that expectation was misplaced.” 

“Yeah. It was. What happened to his chink whore? Isn’t she by his side, standing with her man—her very best customer—in his time of trial? And, for that matter, why isn’t she calling me? She’s supposed to be my stepmother, isn’t she?” 

“You know, having spoken with you now for what seems like an eternity, I’m not at all surprised she didn’t call you. Good evening.” 

The phone rattled slightly as W.T. put it in its cradle. He was shaking. “Time for a drink,” he said to himself. “A couple of drinks.” 

Five 

“I keep having this dream,” W.T. told Terri. 

“Do you yell and hit people?” 

“No. Not that dream. Another dream.” 

“Well?” 

“I’m out somewhere—some public place—with Fred. Maybe it’s a department store or a shopping mall. Someplace like that. He’s using a walker, and he’s very slow. We’re being jostled by people. It’s like walking underwater, we’re so slow. Then, he tells me he needs to use the washroom. He wants me to take him. Suddenly the dream flashes forward to a toilet stall. There’s no room for his walker, so we leave it outside, and he leans on me while I try to maneuver him to the toilet. He isn’t helping, and he’s so heavy I can hardly move him. He’s anxious. He keeps telling me to hurry. He can’t hold it much longer. I finally back him in, get the door closed behind us, start helping him take his pants down, and I realize to my horror that he’s wearing a diaper. My friend is wearing a diaper. It’s not like I haven’t seen diapered adults before. Margaret was in a nursing home for years. But Fred. And then another shift; we’re in some kind of nursery. The room is all white, and the light’s so bright it hurts my eyes. Fred’s on this big change table. It’s as though the thing is designed for some giant, mutant baby. And I have to change Fred’s diaper. I peel back the sticky tabs, and start pulling off the diaper, and as soon as his penis is exposed, he starts spraying, just like a baby boy sometimes does. Only this is a fire hose. I mean, the stuff is going everywhere. With one hand, I’m trying to protect my face. With the other, I’m trying to cover him up again. Stop the flow. But I can’t. I can’t get him covered. And I’m getting soaked. The whole room is wet. And I’m telling him—‘Fred. Stop it! Stop it!’ And I’m still struggling with that stupid flapping diaper. And I look at his face. I need to make contact. And he’s just looking back at me. It’s an empty, resigned look. Like this was some minor unpleasantness that we just had to accept. ‘Stop it,’ I say to him. ‘Fred, stop it.’ And then I wake up. Drenched. In sweat, I should add. 

“God, Terri. He’s my friend, but sometimes he just disgusts me. Is this it for all of us? Is this where we all end up? Lost to ourselves—without a grain, a tiny fleck, a hint, even, of dignity?” 

His voice caught. He looked at her. He looked in her eyes. 

“You should run, Terri,” he said, “run. Run fast and far.” 

“Is that what you want?” 

“Yes.” He paused. “No. I want…I want less horror. I want less despair. I want less fear.” 

“I love you.” 

“I can hardly let myself believe that. But I love you, too.” 

Six 

Fred and May Sissons are proud to announce the arrival of 

Frederick Xavier Sissons 

Five pounds, 6 ounces 

and 

William Emilio Sissons 

Five pounds, 8 ounces 

July 20, 2001 

Fred and Will are little brothers to Lynda Sissons 

and little uncles to 

Todd Sissons LeClerc 

Seven 

Chrome was a quiet bar, edgy, cool—the sort of place you could go and actually have a conversation. It was contemporary. Low couches. Stone floors. Glass. Leather. Designed lighting. Chrome, of course. A place to meet. A place where people of the right age could arrive alone, but expect to leave with company. Not a male server or bartender in the place. 

W.T. had been to Chrome a couple of times. People of his vintage could be there, in the early evening, and not feel too conspicuous. He was surprised, though, when Fred suggested they meet there at five for drinks. First, Fred wasn’t a meet-you-for-drinks kind of guy, and second, when Fred went out, he leaned toward the kind of place where “hot” described the coffee, not the patrons. 

W.T. spotted him right away. He was perched on a stool at a tall table by the window. There were two martinis on the table. 

“I ordered for you. Hope you don’t mind.” 

“I do mind. It was presumptuous of you. I had planned on having a nice glass of milk.” 

Fred moved to take W.T.’s glass. 

“Touch that glass and I’ll tear your arm off.” 

When W.T. raised his glass to Fred’s, he noticed that Fred’s eyes were a little glassy, and he appeared just a bit flushed. 

“You did say five, didn’t you?” 

“Absoloootly. I did. And you’re as punctual as ever. That’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you, W.T. It’s your punc-tu-al-i-ty. It’s one of your many fine, fine, fine qualities.” 

W.T. could swear that Fred was tearing up. 

“Fred, did you get here perhaps a little early?” 

“Yes, I did. Being early is the next best thing to punc-tu-al-i-ty.” W.T. noted that Fred was pronouncing this word with what seemed to be a great deal of care, precision even. 

“Fred, this isn’t actually your first martini of the evening, is it?” 

“Absoloootly not. No, my friend, I’ve had,” he paused here as if performing a complex calculation, “several. No, I must be more precise about that. Precision is very important. It’s right up there with punc-tu-al-i-ty. I’ve had three. Big ones.” 

“I see,” said W.T. This, he thought, is going to be a long, long night. 

“Well, it’s like this: I was a little hungry when I got here, and I thought some olives would really hit the spot. But it seems the only way you can get a serving of olives around this joint is in one of these drinks. So, what’s a fella to do? I ask you.” 

“What, indeed?” 

“You know, W.T., you’ve been a truly great friend to me through these last couple of years. So much better than that stuffed shirt you used to be when we first met.” 

“Thanks. I think.” 

“No, really. You’ve been such a big help to me, to May. And Terri thinks you’re great. She’s completely in love with you, ya know.” 

Sure. Up to a point, thought W.T. 

“I think some food might be a good idea, Fred.” 

“Not hungry.” 

“Miss?” 

The server arrived. She was put together to appeal to every appetite, and W.T. immediately worried about Fred’s current lack of inhibition. 

“What will it be, gentlemen?” 

“More martinis,” said Fred. “And kisses. Lots of big, juicy kisses.” 

“No. We’re fine for drinks. And kisses. Bring us a side of beef.” 

“Pardon?” 

“Sorry. My friend here really needs food.” 

They settled on an appetizer platter. W.T. finished his drink. The server brought two more. 

“You did want another round, right?” 

“Sure,” said W.T. “Why not?” 

Each for his own reason, both men fell on the drinks as thirsty desert wanderers would grasp a tin cup of cool water. 

“So, Fred. Where’s your car?” 

“Home. I believe in responsible drinking. It’s as important as—” 

“I know. I know. Punc-tu-al-i-ty.” They pronounced it in unison. 

The food came. They ate. W.T. ordered coffee. Fred made his way—carefully—to the washroom. W.T. took out his cell and called May. He needed to let her know they’d be late, and that Fred would arrive home perhaps a little too relaxed. 

When May answered, she sounded congested. 

“May. Everything’s okay. Just wanted to let you know I’m having drinks with Fred. Well, I should say Fred’s has had a few more drinks than I have. But I’ve got some food into him, and I’ll get him home soon.” 

“He didn’t tell you, did he?” 

“Tell me what? May?” 

“It’s back, W.T. The cancer. It’s back, and it’s everywhere.” She began to sob into the phone. “What are we going to do? Please bring him home. Bring him home now.” 

W.T. watched Fred emerge from the men’s room at the far end of the bar. Fred’s face was red. He was a little stooped, a little unsteady. He concentrated as he moved among the tables. He reached theirs, smiled at W.T., and climbed carefully onto the stool. 

“Back,” he said. 

THE END 

Since 2001, Donald McMann has worked as a professor in the English department of McEwan University. Before that, he worked as a communications practitioner, which involved everything from copywriting and editing to directing campaigns. He has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Wales: Trinity St. David, as well as an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. His short story “Strip Malls Can Change Your Life” appeared in the inaugural issue of the Lampeter Review in 2010. In his spare time, he sings (badly) and golfs (also badly), and he’s an unapologetic car nut.

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The first thing he does is make sure the phone is off. Not in sleep mode. Off. Completely. Notifications kill stealth. Without stealth, he’s just like everybody else. He doesn’t want to be mapped or located, leave a record of presence. The Find My Phone setting is ridiculous to him. He’d rather lose the phone. 

He has never been caught. 

His name is Cornelius, although one of Cornelius’ favorite sayings is never offer your real name ’cause it only gets in the way. He’s on the descending side of middle-aged. Time has been kind. Give him a shave, put him in a suit with a crisp open-collar shirt, and he’s a silver fox. Cornelius, however, prefers the low-key comfort of jeans and sweats. 

It’s past midnight. Overcast. The spill of freeway lights flush the clouds dirty orange. No breeze. The air wants to stick. When it was liquid, some of the humidity was hot dog water. 

It’s the back-end of the French Quarter near Marigny. Cornelius is wearing a black track suit and he’s on the roof of a three-story row house. 

If the commercial and tourist trade now dictates the streets of the Quarter, the roofs are the last of old New Orleans. Generations of paint peeling from hand-milled woodwork, layers of shingles and tar, slipshod repairs, spits of glue and caulk, the roof line neither linear nor uniform from one building to the next, instead a jumble of interconnected peaks, slopes, and valleys. 

And skylights. The skylight is the next best thing to a front door key. Old or new, it really doesn’t matter, although Cornelius favors the new ones. Wired with an alarm, too. Such a skylight is not a deterrent, it’s a tell. It says something valuable is inside. 

Crouching to maintain a low center of gravity, Cornelius is keeping an eye out for access points while nimble-toeing from one roof to the next. His curiosity is piqued by an old stained-glass skylight. It’s unwashed and opaque from years of city exhaust but with patient eyes the shape and pattern of a fanned peacock appears. 

He surveys the building. The front half facing the street holds a PR firm on the ground floor, and two stories of condos above it. The skylight belongs to the back half of the building – a three-story home. Ivy chokes the wrought iron railing on the upper floor veranda. The ground floor is a garage and an entrance opening to an alley. No light slips from any windows. 

Cornelius clears a spot on the skylight and spies the inside. The room below is used for storage. Boxes stacked, and furniture draped. The wallpaper has lost luster. Cornelius observes for ten minutes, detects no sign of movement, then opens the skylight with a bent stretch of wire and shimmy bar. He drops silently into the room. The air inside is older. Cornelius maintains his landing like a gymnast ending a parallel bars routine. 

He hop-skips to a wall, creeps to the closed door, presses an ear to it, and remains there until his ear begins to sweat. Nothing. He turns the door handle, with slow precision, safe-cracker like, and opens the door in an even slower manner to prevent creaking getting any louder than a sleepy murmur. 

A hallway. And the top of a staircase. Some of the wallpaper is unglued and flopping over itself. Carpeting. Once plush and bright with pattern. Now, like everything, shadowed by dust. Cornelius resumes his slow steps towards an ajar door. A bathroom. Unused for some time, a rust stained sink and claw-foot bath tub collecting dead moths and cockroaches. The next room’s door is open. Another bedroom. Smaller, with a single bed. A guest room, no personal items. At the end of the hallway, a closed door. Cornelius again presses his ear against it and holds it there. Nothing. After opening the door in slow motion, he finds the master bedroom. Very ordered but dust given carte blanche. Chandelier and sconce lighting. Antique furniture. A four-post queen-sized bed. Undisturbed linen with sharp corners. There is a pocket watch, cuff-links, a tie pin, and a few hundred dollars on the dresser. Cornelius leaves them, for the time being. 

Cornelius won’t steal just anything. It’s nothing to do with resale value or taste. Rather there’s a righteousness with his acquisitions. Providence is key. If a high-carat diamond ring, passed from generation to generation with tales of smitten love presents itself during a burglary, Cornelius won’t steal that ring no matter how big the sparkle. But if that same ring is inside a condo that belongs to an oil executive who purchased it from Sotheby’s as a present for his mistress – bingo, that ring is a long-gone daddy. 

On the second floor, Cornelius walks through the kitchen. Dead plants on a window sill. A fruit bowl that once held something. A loaf of bread turned to brick. A refrigerator that doesn’t look inviting, more like a disinterred coffin. The air is less dank, though. A draft infiltrates under a swing door. A soft light accompanies it. Cornelius hears a window air-conditioner unit switch on. A more pronounced draft shifts the door slightly open. He stares at the peeking light and maintains a staring contest for ten minutes. The light never blinks; no shadow breaks it. 

Opening the door, there’s a dining table, old mahogany, ringed by high-backed chairs. Running along the length of a wall is a sideboard with a triumph of tarnished silverware. Stretching above it, an ornately framed but cloudy mirror reflecting light from the adjoining parlor. 

In the parlor, a single bulb from a lampshade, and next to the lampshade, someone sits in a leather recliner, back turned, with only the top of a head visible. It appears a poorly fitted wig rests on the head. 

Cornelius freezes, as if freezing renders him invisible. 

The air-conditioning clicks off. 

Cornelius listens for five minutes and only hears his breathing. He then breaks his freeze and casually walks into the parlor. 

The person sitting beside the lampshade is dead. Dead for a long time. The dead is wearing a red smoking jacket over a waistcoat and an ascot. A book sits on the dead’s lap: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. 

It’s not a wig. Just a dead comb over on a dehydrated head. The corpse is mummified and well preserved, as if the skin went through a tannery. There is no smell of rot. Hanging onto the face are half-moon spectacles. Arms are balanced on each arm rest. The recliner’s is extended but the dead’s left foot has fallen to the floor, detached at the ankle where the tendon decayed and skin thinned too much. 

Cornelius sits opposite in the matching recliner and takes a hard look. Died with mouth wide open. Cornelius has never been with a corpse outside a funeral home, but he doesn’t show any surprise. Surprise is losing cool and control. 

Look at that mouth, thinks Cornelius. The dropped bottom jaw pulled by tightening skin, exaggerating an overbite. It reminds Cornelius that he, when sleeping, is a mouth breather. A snorer. Cornelius thinks about dying in his sleep, his mouth overhung, airway struggling. He mirrors the corpse’s profile to see how it feels. 

Cornelius is single. His last affair was with a young lady twenty-five years his junior. An English Literature grad. She insisted he sleep with a mouth-piece designed to cut snoring. He did, and she still left him. 

Cornelius has no children. No siblings. He has an aunt who drools in a Florida nursing home. 

Cornelius’ closest friend is his fence, Maurice. Technically, Maurice is a fence of a fence. Although Maurice has fenced for Cornelius close to three decades, and they’ve shared a few late-night revelries and drinks, Cornelius has never met Maurice’s wife or sons, or stepped inside Maurice’s house. 

In Cornelius’ hard look at the dead in the recliner, he reflects a likely future. His profession’s discretion and secrecy has come at a cost. He, too, could die like Smoking Jacket and no one would know. Cornelius thinks how weird it would be to be struck by a heart attack at this very instant. Two forgotten corpses. 

“You look thirsty,” says Cornelius, and acknowledges the bar in the corner of the parlor. “I think we need to get ourselves a drink.” 

The bar is also old mahogany, maybe the same tree as the dining table, with carvings of a wandering vine rolling around its front. Behind the bar, an impressive stock of liquor, heavy with cognac and single malt scotch. Cornelius picks a bottle and reads the label aloud. “Gleg-gorang-whda-nal. Wedy-nal. Gleg-gorhend-wed-nal. Gleg-gablah-blah-blah.” He turns to the corpse. “My, my, friend. I can’t pronounce it, but I bet this eighteen-year-old liquor has aged another fifty in this here bottle. Am I right?” Cornelius pulls drawer handles and finds a bar towel. He whips the dust off the bar, blows clean two brandy snifters, then pours generously. 

He returns to the corpse. “Here, let’s get that gone,” and Cornelius removes the book from the dead lap and places it on the side table, the back-cover photo of Ayn Rand facing up. Cornelius places the corpse’s glass on top of it. 

Cornelius sits in his recliner, rolls the whiskey around his glass, and pokes his nose into it. “Hot damn,” he says and takes a deeper inhale before pulling the glass away, his eyes stung red. Raising the whiskey to the lamp, he admires the hue. Cornelius announces, “Yes sir, this here is Scotland!” After savoring a small sip, then another longer one, he sinks deep into the recliner. 

There is an inherent sadness of dying unnoticed. Cornelius ponders this. It usually means that the life was unnoticed, too. Alone. If a tree falls on a desert island. Dead before you’re dead. What kind of life is that? More isolation than life. 

Cornelius searches the room for distraction from these glum thoughts. Bookshelves filled. Wood paneling. Oil paintings of antebellum romance. At the end of the room a pair of closed pocket doors. Cornelius stands, walks over, and slides the doors open. 

“Jay-sus, Mister.” 

A billiard table awaits. Switching on the overhead spotlights, the vibrancy of the felt verdants the room. He racks the balls, then goes back to the bar and refills with a different bottle of scotch. As he pours he sees the stereo. He dials the volume knob to zero before turning it on, then raises the volume slowly. It’s already tuned to a jazz station. “I like yours taste,” Cornelius says over his shoulder to the corpse. He dances back to the billiard table with the glass in one hand and bottle in the other. 

“Straight pool, dollar a ball. Any objections?” 

Cornelius sharpens the pool stick with chalk, lines up for the break, pulls the stick back and forth in rhythm to the music then drills the cue ball. A puff of blue follows the shot. A ball falls in a pocket. 

“Before I continue,” says Cornelius as he decants more liquor into his glass, “a toast to yours hospitality. You got fine digs.” He raises his glass, tips his head, and sinks the scotch in one gulp. 

Cornelius plays pool for an hour, sometimes pauses his game and dances with the cue if the radio strikes the right tune. He starts practicing trick shots, pushing spin on the cue ball to increase angles and reverse potential but the drink slowly turns his game sour. Cornelius retires to his recliner with bottle and glass. 

“Man, that’s a gorgeous table.” He attempts to recharge his glass but discovers the bottle is empty. “Say, looks like you ain’t drinking,” and Cornelius takes the corpse’s glass sitting on Ayn Rand’s face, then nestles into the recliner, extending the leg rest. 

Books line the shelves; shelves coil the room. Pottery and framed photos intermittently interrupt the book procession. The photo nearest to Cornelius shows a flaring peacock in front of someone sitting in a rickshaw, smiling at the camera. The color in the photo was made in the 1960s. 

On the side of the bar, there’s a bull-whip hanging from a hook. A fez and a matador hat roost on a stand. 

In the far corner, in a small alcove, is a shrine consisting of a crucifix, a statue of a five-headed elephant, spent incense, and an old, well-thumbed gris-gris. 

“You know, and I bet you agree,” says Cornelius to the corpse, “the best way to die is in your own bed, with wife and children and grand childs standing around you, looking down with teary eyes but also, at the same time, smiling. Tears ’cause goodbye’s sad. Smiles ’cause they’re thankful and proud that you were in their life. That’s honor and respect and love. Imagine that as your last earthly feeling. The very last! That’s the best way to go. No doubt.” 

The air-conditioning switches on. The radio announcer is talking about Miles Davis’ second great quintet. 

“Not everyone dies like that,” acknowledges Cornelius. “Some die far worse. Sitting on the can. Or lying in a gutter. Gunshot to the gut. Thrown down a well. Buried alive. Like them folks in Pompeii. That’s a tough deal, man. That’s far from the ideal. 

“But friend, look at you!” Cornelius waves his arms around the room, the remainder of whiskey flung from the snifter. “You died a good life. There’s satisfaction in that. Could be worse. Far worse.” 

Cornelius folds his recliner and stands. He expresses solemn appreciation to the host and bows near a right-angle. While facing the floor, Cornelius rediscovers the corpse’s felled foot. He picks it up, attempts to re-perch it to the ankle but the foot finds no balance and falls. Cornelius tries again, this time engineering Atlas Shrugged and the empty scotch bottle as bookends, bracing the foot in between. It successfully stands. Satisfied that it will persist, Cornelius lets himself out. 

Rich Perin was born and raised in Australia, the son of Italian immigrants. In 1994, he escaped to the USA and has been on the run ever since. After several years based in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, Rich is currently holed-up in Portland, Oregon. A ghostly presence of him can be found at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/rich.perin) and he has staked a claim on damnintellectuals.com

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         For Jo-Anne 

Mom warned me not to watch The Wolf Man. She said it would give me nightmares. I argued that it was just a movie. Make-believe. There was no such thing as a Wolf Man. I weakened her resistance with my flawless logic, but I needed to whine some to close the deal. 

“Okay,” she surrendered. “Okay. But don’t blame me if you get nightmares.” 

My father was a cop, working the graveyard shift that month, so Saturday night was just me and Mom and the monsters. It hadn’t occurred to me that my mother might be afraid of getting her own nightmares. 

It was 1960. I was ten-years-old. Movie monsters scared me, but I could almost always put myself in their shoes. Except for Dracula. I couldn’t relate to him at all. He didn’t seem to have a good side: he chose to be evil. But the Frankenstein monster didn’t ask to be stitched together from grave-robbed body-parts. He didn’t ask to be wired with electrodes and sparked and jolted into being. He had no idea what to do with himself. And Larry Talbot: The Wolf Man. He was thrown into his situation by the unexpected bite from a gypsy werewolf. It wasn’t his fault. 

I had seen all of the Universal Pictures monster movies—two or three times, each. In those days, television aired all sorts of great movies, with relatively few commercials. Some of the movies were mistakenly billed as monster movies, even when there were no monsters. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example. Quasimodo, the hunchback, wasn’t a monster; he was a tragically disfigured human being, with a human soul and a remarkable sense of morality and courage. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was another monsterless monster movie. Dr. Jekyll was a man, not a monster. Mr. Hyde was also a man—albeit an eviler and uglier version of Dr. Jekyll. Monster or not, Jekyll and Hyde scared the bejabbers out of me. He/they confused me. Dr. Jekyll was supposed to be a “good man,” but he chose to become the evil Mr. Hyde, so he could do horrible things to a pretty barmaid. I was doubly confused, because I adored Spencer Tracy movies: Boy’s Town; Captains Courageous; The Old Man and the Sea. Spencer Tracy convinced me that he was Father Flannigan and Miguel and Santiago. I wanted to be the mayor of Boy’s Town. I wanted to be the Cuban boy helping the Old Man before and after his bout with the great fish. But Jekyll and Hyde left me uneasy and worked on levels beyond my ten-year-old reach. Those very things I didn’t understand, I pondered the most. 

The Wolf Man contained just a couple of incongruities: 1) Claude Rains as the biological father of Lon Chaney, Jr. and 2) Lon Chaney, Jr. getting an attractive girlfriend. I could somewhat reconcile the first incongruity: with the supposition that Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) could have inherited his size and bloodhound looks from an ancestor. But the second part was impossible to swallow—Chaney becoming a werewolf was far more credible than his stab at a romantic lead. 

My mother turned on the extra light in the family room as the opening credits rolled for The Wolf Man. The leading actors were introduced with snippets from the movie. I was by now familiar with the standard spooky music leitmotifs, recycled in all Universal monster flicks. I could tell by the musical warning system when something frightening was about to happen. But this time, I promised myself I would not close my eyes during the scariest scenes. 

The movie takes its time before getting to the werewolf shots, but you know you’re in for it when Larry Talbot’s feet begin growing hair. The camera follows his en pointe feet walking through ground fog and into a graveyard, where an unsuspecting gravedigger lights his pipe and pauses to listen to a bloodcurdling howl. The next shot introduces the Wolf Man: his close-up face covered in thick hair and his bottom jaw jutting with long nightmare fangs. Before you can catch your breath, the Wolf Man lunges out and sinks his teeth into the gravedigger’s jugular vein. 

During a commercial break, I went to the kitchen to fetch a handful of Ritz Crackers. As I was about to return to the family room, I turned off the light and looked out the window over the sink. A full moon took the upper-right corner of the window and a Wolf Man’s face slowly rose from the bottom-center. I was paralyzed with fear. My first attempt at calling out produced only a faint whisper: “Help.” The sound didn’t travel. I filled my lungs and tried again, but my second attempt came out at the level and tone of a relaxed conversation. 

“What?” my mother called from the family room. 

“Help,” I repeated as before. 

“I can’t hear you. Come in here.” 

The Wolf Man ran off. 

“HELP,” I finally shouted, and my mother came running to my rescue. 

“What is it?” she said, startled and panicky. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?” 

When I told her I had seen a werewolf, she got an I told you so look on her face. “That’s it for the Wolf Man,” she said. “Let’s see what else is on TV.” 

It took some doing, but I eventually convinced her that I had indeed seen a face in the window, and it looked to me like the Wolf Man—she could draw her own conclusions as to who or what it was. She was by now a little frightened. She called the police station and asked the dispatcher to contact her husband. 

Dad came by about ten minutes later and quizzed me like any cop. Then he and I went out to the backyard to look for clues. He shone his flashlight under the kitchen window and discovered fresh footprints. The prints were smaller than Dad’s but they were definitely big enough to have been left by an adult male. “Well, they’re not paw prints,” he said. “I think you saw a prowler. There’ve been reports of a prowler in the area.” 

“What’s a prowler?” I asked. 

“A weirdo who likes to look in windows,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Let’s not tell Mom about this. We don’t want to scare her. I’ll drive by a few times tonight and make sure everything’s okay. Next week I’ll buy us a big dog.” 

“Oh boy.” 

Dad had connections at the Pound and was able to bring home a good-natured, full-grown German Shepard-mix. I renamed the dog: Larry. As soon as we set Larry loose in the backyard, he began marking his territory, strutting around like a conquering hero. (He also left a few items that would become my daily responsibility to remove.) Larry was welcomed to our family, and he basked in the attention. 

Saturday night The Invisible Man was scheduled to air. I made a plea to watch it. 

“Your father won’t be here,” my mother said. “And you remember what happened when I allowed you to watch The Wolf Man.” 

I was prepared to counter her objections. “This is different,” I said. “I can’t watch someone who’s invisible. How can I be afraid of something I can’t see? And besides: Larry will protect us.” Case closed. 

I suggested we have popcorn with the movie. Jiffy Pop was the latest gimmick, appealing to the no fuss, no muss school. I’d seen the TV commercials in which a “handy” disposable frying pan is shaken briskly over a burner while a disk of tinfoil blooms up like the dome of a hydrogen bomb detonation. I just had to try this thing out. 

I followed the instructions to the letter but it didn’t work like it was supposed to. The dome grew less than half the size of the commercial demonstration, and when I pierced the foil with a steak knife, fumes of burnt popcorn filled the kitchen. “Rats,” I said. 

The telephone rang and Mom answered. She had a habit of holding the phone’s receiver about two inches from her ear. This made it possible for me to hear the sound of the caller’s voice, but I could never make out the words. “Hello,” she repeated. I expected to hear Dad’s baritone but heard instead a thin, raspy voice. Mom looked worried. “Who is this?” she demanded. Larry stared at her, cocking his head in that comical way of dogs. “How do you know my name?” she said. The timbre and rhythm of the caller’s voice made me sick to my stomach. My mother lost all the color in her face; she looked terrified. She hung up the wall phone. Her hands were shaking as she lifted the receiver back up and dialed the operator and asked to be connected to the police. 

We were relieved when Dad got home. Mom whispered in his ear the disturbing words of the caller (spelling things out would no longer work with me). 

“Did you recognize his voice?” Dad asked, as cop and husband. 

“It sounded familiar, but I was too upset to concentrate.” 

I could tell by the look on my father’s face that he was imagining punching the lights out of the faceless caller. But his prime concern was to comfort my mother and play-down any real threat. 

“He knew my name,” Mom said. “How did he know my name?” 

“The phonebook,” said Dad. “We’ll get an unlisted number next week. That’ll take care of it.” 

“But the phonebook lists me as missus. It doesn’t give my first name.” 

“There’s nothing to worry about. An unlisted number will put an end to it. These guys are almost always harmless little cowards. It’s just some weirdo getting his kicks.” 

“Like the prowler?” I asked. 

“What prowler?”  asked Mom. 

The following week Dad was off the graveyard shift and we were able to go places on the weekend. Saturday afternoon we went to Woolworth’s to shop and have lunch. In 1960 there were only about two-billion souls on the entire planet, so we would inevitably run into people we knew when we were out on the town. As soon as we entered Woolworth’s, we spotted Wally, our 

Helm’s Bakery man. He had just made a purchase and was about to exit but he took time to exchange a few friendly words with us. Wally was a funny and kind man, who looked just like Victor Mature—he could have been his double. Wally showed my mom the perfume he’d bought for his wife and then he and Dad marveled over Willy Mayes. Before saying goodbye, he gave me the “shake-too-late” shtick and I laughed—as always. 

We had BLTs at the lunch counter and then split up to shop individually. I was told to meet at the checkout in twenty minutes. I didn’t have any money, so I went to look at the fish tanks. I was off in an underwater kingdom when Dean Lewis, a classmate, tapped me on the shoulder. (Dean was double-jointed and could whistle real loud.) He asked me did I see the latest Twilight Zone. 

“Execution,” I said. 

“Yeah. That was neat, huh?” Without waiting for my response, he went on to explain that the episode begins in the 1800s, in the Old West, when a murderer escapes from being hanged— right before the trapdoor falls—because this twentieth century scientist captures him with a time machine and brings him to the future. The murderer then murders the scientist and then he is murdered by another crook, who gets into the time machine to escape but is instead sent back and hanged on the same scaffold that was built to hang the first murderer. 

“Yeah. That was neat.” 

Dean’s mom called him away and I went to look at the model airplanes I couldn’t buy. A little later I met up with my parents and tried to persuade them to give me the money for a “Flying Fortress” but was turned down with their favorite cliché: You think money grows on trees?   

Outside the store, we met Dr. Conway, our dentist. He looked strange without his white jacket. He was nervous and seemed in a hurry, but he mussed my hair and said to me: “Stay away from those gumball machines, you hear what I’m saying?” His face changed, as if he’d suddenly remembered something, and he quick-marched into the store. I looked at my mother and saw the same look of terror she had as when she got the phone call from the weirdo. 

“It was him,” she said, amazed. “That’s the voice.” 

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Our dentist—the man I had trusted to jab a giant needle into my gums—was the cowardly monster who had said horrible things to my mother.

“What do you mean?” asked Dad. 

“Dr. Conway is the caller.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m positive.” 

Dad started to head back in to Woolworth’s but Mom caught him by the sleeve.  “Don’t,” she said. “Please.” 

“Hey, Conway,” Dad shouted at the door. “Come back out here. I want to have a word with you.” 

“Please don’t. Let’s just get out of here.” 

On the drive home, Dad pounded the steering wheel at every stop. At one stop the steering wheel made a cracking noise. “Oh, that’s great,” he said. “Just great. Now I need to get a new steering wheel—and a new dentist.” He was shaking his head. “That son-of-a-bitch. That mealy-mouth son-of-a-bitch.” 

“Please calm down,” Mom said. “This isn’t helping.” 

“Why don’t you arrest him, Dad?” I said. 

“I can’t arrest him. I don’t have any proof.” 

“He’ll get caught,” said Mom. “He won’t be able to get away with it forever.” 

“That slimy bastard is a Scout Master,” said Dad. “A member of the Elks.” 

Mom turned to face me. “You’re not joining the Boy Scouts,” she said. 

“I never said I wanted to.” 

“I should just wring his goddamned neck,” Dad growled. 

I thought that was a great idea, and I said as much. 

Mom said: “‘Revenge is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’” 

Dad clammed-up. I couldn’t see his face. He was staring straight-ahead, gripping the steering wheel as if it were a barbell. 

I understood what Mom was saying. I was learning right from wrong. Many years later, I would learn to pray for the serenity to accept the things I couldn’t change. But my ten-year-old self was imagining a scene in which a noble hunchback tosses Dr. Conway from a belfry—the wretched dentist screaming all the way down to a hard-landing at the foot of a tall cathedral: face-up, stone-dead, lying in a steaming puddle of molten metal. 

Timothy Reilly had been a professional tubaist (including a stint with the Teatro Regio of Torino, Italy) until around 1980, when a condition called “Embouchure Dystonia” put an end to his music career. (He gratefully retired from substitute teaching in 2014.) He has published widely, most recently in Superstition Review, Saint Katherine Review, and Able Muse, and in 2017, he received a Pushcart nomination. Timothy Reilly lives in Southern California with his wife, Jo-Anne Cappeluti: a published poet and scholar.

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Harley leaned over the tiny balcony’s railing. What would happen if he fell into the Bourbon Street horde? Would they catch him like a crowd-surfer from 1992? Or would they watch him splat and revel on? The possibilities tugged Tanya toward two conflicting positionalities—the clinical, objective Ph.D. candidate researching her Anthropology dissertation, and the protective sister who had always stopped Harley from walking in front of buses and driving off piers. 

Let it play out. A scientist strives not to alter environmental conditions and cause/effect situations. That was true. 

Stop him before he breaks his neck. He’s your brother. You love him. And that was true, too. 

Harley sloshed a little Jack and Coke onto himself as he saluted the Mardi Gras revelers. Then he downed the drink in one gulp and belched. He wore a Black Keys concert t-shirt, jeans, motorcycle boots, not one but two necklaces with bullet-shaped pendants. On his right arm, a green snake tattoo wound from elbow to shoulder, the last third of it hidden under his sleeve. The runes from Led Zeppelin IV marked his left forearm, a black-and-white hellhound his outer bicep. His black hair hung two inches longer than seemed practical for a recent and unemployed college graduate. 

Tanya uncapped her pen and wrote Subject ignores self-preservation instincts during mating displays in Notebook #4, which, like the first three, was filled with sources and field observations. Later, she would organize and incorporate the material into her diss, tentatively titled Show Me Something, Mister: the Sociopolitics of Mating Behaviors of Urban White Males in the Southern United States. 

Their parents were professors at the University of Tennessee and had wondered aloud to Tanya—as if she had any say in it—when Harley might put his degree to use. He still lived in Knoxville and played guitar in a country bar band. Tanya kept a tiny Garden District apartment while she finished her graduate work at Tulane. She had invited Harley down for the last days of Carnival and had sprung for the room to maximize his immersion in these specific environmental conditions. He had no idea she was studying him for her New Orleans chapter. 

Harley set his cup at his feet and grabbed the bag of beads. He pulled out a fistful—deep green, pink, purple, some pea-sized, some as big as key limes. Tanya edged in beside him. Below, the crowd surged and receded, surged and receded. They danced in spaces too small to breathe. Most drank. Three girls in Louisiana State University t-shirts spotted Harley, raised their arms, and squealed. 

Throw me somethin, mister, one shouted. Her companions whooped like howler monkeys. 

Harley mimed taking off his shirt. The girls giggled and shrieked and shook their heads. Harley nodded and mimed again, holding the beads out, shaking them like a maraca. Two of the girls doubled over in drunken laughter. The third one lifted her shirt. Bare, perky breasts bobbed in the night air, nipples erect, areolae pink and small. Harley whistled, gave her a thumbs-up, and dropped the beads over the side. 

Tanya stepped back. In the anonymity of public spectacle, she wrote, subject solicits uninhibited sexualized interaction. Female subjects respond, bartering their bodies for trinkets. What does this indicate about situational self-image and social mores? 

Harley grinned. She smiled. It had always been that way between them—their parents in class or locked in home offices where they wrote articles and graded papers, Harley making mischief and looking for Tanya’s approval, Tanya giving it so that he would not pout or ask her to play some dumb video game, where you responded to all stimuli by shooting something. Despite their progressive politics, her parents had left her to nurture and caretake while her little brother hunted trouble and gathered nonsense. Patriarchy in practice. 

Harley howled at the moon. Many voices answered, screaming Fuck yeah, dude and Throw me somethin. Harley beat his chest like Tarzan and howled again, leading the crowd now, fists raised above his head. 

Consciousness-altering substances combined with public accreditation charge any expostulation with import. Reflects the call-and-response patterns of certain religious ceremonies. Conflation of sexual and spiritual ecstasy, or pure Hedonism? 

Harley leaned against the rail, eyes closed. Tanya shut her notebook, went to him, and pulled him backward by his shirt. 

* * * 

Harley stumbled inside and sat on Tanya’s bed and held on to the mattress’s edge until the world stopped spinning. Fiery whiskey sloshed in his gut. He bent over, elbows on knees. Gotta eat. 

Tanya scribbled in one of her notebooks. New Orleans, Mardi Gras, bodies and booze everywhere, and she had barely looked up. What would his psychology professors have said? Conceals true self behind façade of scientific objectivity. Of course, for all he knew, she could be drawing porn—a big cock wearing a Carnival mask and wrapped in labia that clung and folded like a frock coat. 

Once, they had been close, their defense against the times Mom and Dad forgot to make dinner or dueled over poststructuralist reception theories when they could have just watched Finding Nemo like everybody else in the theater. Then Tanya went to graduate school. Every time she came home, she seemed a little more distant, clinical, bloodless. No time for Harley, like he had moved and left her alone with the ghosts in that house. And now she kept staring at him and writing, as if he were a bug on a pin. 

His open suitcase sat on his bed, pants cuffs hanging out, his dirty clothes tossed in the corner. Tanya had folded her laundry and slipped it inside a hotel dry-cleaning bag. Exhibits anal-retentive, perhaps even obsessive-compulsive, organization and ritual. She leaned against the wall, one arm tucked under the notebook, rather than disturb the diorama on the desk—keys, purse, spare notebooks and pens and Post-Its, everything arranged in neat geometrical lines. She’s a nerd, and not a cool Felicia Day type, either. Another distant academic, well on her way to becoming their parents. 

Or maybe he was just drunk. 

He got up and poured another Jack and Coke, plopping in a few cubes from the bucket. Tanya wrote. He drank to the tune of street jazz, of voices raised in Dionysian ribaldry, of thousands of feet clomping on pavement and asphalt and broken, scattered beads. When he poured a second drink and handed it to Tanya, she set it on a lampstand and sipped bottled water instead. 

Man, he said, I can’t believe New Orleans liquor stores deliver to your hotel. 

Uh huh, she mumbled. 

So. How’s the dissertation coming? 

Not bad. 

Okay. Don’t talk my ear off or anything. 

Mmm-hmm. 

Anybody special in your life? 

Define special. 

The room’s on fire. There’s a rat in your hair. Your breath smells like burped-up broccoli. 

Okay, then. 

He sighed and closed the balcony doors. Hearing all those people just made him feel lonely. When Tanya suggested the trip, she had seemed eager, excited. Now, she looked about as enthusiastic as your average barstool. She’s always been scared to cut loose. She used to keep one eye on me and one on Dad’s study door, like he might kick it open and whip the shit out of us for having fun. Now this ultra-seriousness, the refusal to engage, the dodging of the relationship question—is she emulating Dad, or am I just part of a whole thing she’s rejecting? 

After a while, Tanya said, You hungry? 

Yeah. 

She dropped her keys, her pen, and the notebook inside her purse. 

Subject’s lack of intimacy suggests an overdeveloped ego. He finished his drink and grabbed his wallet off his bed. 

* * * 

In the elevator, Tanya leaned against the back wall as Harley jabbed the buttons. They needed the lobby, but he selected the top floor and then half-leaned, half-fell against the side of the car. Hands in his pockets, he hung his head. Tanya opened her notebook. The intoxicated white urban male exhibits symptoms typical of other groups in similar circumstances, such as loss of fine motor skills. By the time she finished that sentence, the car had stopped at the top floor, and Harley’s chin rested on his chest. 

The doors opened. A woman in her mid-twenties stepped inside. She wore a low-cut denim blouse, tight shorts, and stilettos long and sharp enough to impale you. Deep tan, blonde hair, overdone smoky eyes, dark red lipstick, breasts like jumbo scoops of coffee ice cream. She punched the lobby button. Harley nearly fell over trying to get out of her way. The woman stood next to Tanya. Harley grinned like a fool and waved at them. 

Upon the appearance of a sexually mature female, the male ceases to exist as a person and becomes a neon sign that flashes I have a penis and would like to stick it in you. 

Harley rocked back and forth, humming something. The doors stayed open for what seemed like an hour. When they shut and the car moved, Harley turned to the woman and said, So. Mardi Gras, huh? 

The woman shrugged. What about it? 

It’s, uh, pretty wild out there. 

Uh huh. 

Inhibitions break down in inverse proportion to an inflated sense of self-worth. However, male’s mating call elicits little response. 

Where you headed? Harley asked. 

Out, the woman said. 

Cool. 

The car settled on the first floor. When the doors opened, the woman fled as if shot from a cannon. Harley gave chase, hoping he would see her later, maybe they could get a drink, she should be careful because of all the assholes out there. Then a skinny man with greasy brown hair waved her over and took her hand. Harley stopped so quickly that Tanya could practically hear brakes squealing. The couple stepped outdoors, where the crowd absorbed them. Some frat boy carrying one of those two-foot-long tourist-bait Hurricane goblets bumped into Harley and spilled half the drink on him. Harley turned back to the lobby, his arms held out like a gunfighter’s, looking at his soaked abdomen and crotch as if wondering how a world could exist where such was possible. 

Subject abandons seduction attempt only when another male asserts prior claim. Behavior reflects learned patterns in patriarchal society—women’s bodies as public spaces, male agency, female’s status as property or prize. 

Harley approached, dabbing at his soaked clothing with cheap brown paper towels from the lobby bathroom, grumbling under his breath. He glanced at Tanya and blushed. 

Come on, she said. Restaurant’s over there. 

Yeah, he said. I’d like some boiled crawfish, with corn and new potatoes. 

Like that time Mom and Dad brought us to the conference at the Marriott on Canal. 

Right. 

I mostly remember us watching cartoons on one bed while Mom and Dad read books on the other. Research for some article. 

He winked. They were always writing in their notebooks and shit. 

Her face burned. She closed her notebook and capped her pen. Got it, she said. 

No worries. I just want you to have a good time. 

The hostess stood behind her podium, a laminated seating chart and a grease pencil in hand. The restaurant hummed with conversation. Servers dashed about with trays of drinks and platters. Harley inhaled and smacked, patting his belly. The hostess smiled, but she looked tired. Her calves and feet probably hurt from hours of standing in high heels. Her on-the-bigger-side-of-B-cup breasts were pushed nearly to her throat, her black dress split high enough to see her garters. 

Harley ogled her like a cartoon wolf, lacking only the eyes that bugged out with an ah-OOO-gah! and the Valentine’s heart beating out of his chest. The hostess calculated his angle of vision, her cleavage its terminus, and looked resigned. Female service industry worker’s dress reflects a bird’s courtship rituals—raised crest, breast outthrust. Given the unlikelihood of female’s interest in patrons as sex partners, display suggests management’s strategic attempt to conflate sexual desire with hunger and women’s bodies as means of public satiety. 

Wow, the joint is really jumping, Harley said. How do you keep up? 

Party of two? the hostess asked, looking at Tanya. 

Yes, Tanya said. 

The hostess consulted her chart and grabbed two menus. Right this way. 

They dodged servers and drunken revelers and people who stepped out of their booths without regard to foot traffic. The hostess stopped at a table approximately the size of a checkerboard and perhaps five steps from the kitchen doors, which servers and busboys banged open every few seconds. She set the menus on opposite sides of the table. The top six inches of them overlapped. How could you order anything larger than a cup of soup or a side salad without stacking plates vertically? 

Yancy will be your server, the hostess said. Enjoy your meal. 

She hurried off. Harley watched her ass swaying in her tight dress. Urban females seem inured to peacocking. Harley examined the menu. He was handsome in a goofy kind of way, like a younger and grungier Jim Carrey, right down to the overlarge mouth and bright teeth. He had always had girlfriends, but he was batting 0-for-2 tonight. 

Yancy the server arrived—mid-forties, with receding brown hair and deep lines around the mouth, suggesting a lifetime of smoking. What would y’all like to drink? he asked, talking like Janis Joplin sang. 

Two whiskey sours, Harley said. And whatever she’s having. 

Just water, Tanya said. Double lemon. 

Be right back, Yancy said. He zoomed away. 

Harley studied the menu, even though the boiled-crawfish-and-fixings dish was marked in its own little box as a house specialty. You’re wound too tight, Sis, he said. You aren’t in AA. Let go a little, or you’ll squeeze yourself to death. 

Paternalism replicated in sibling relationships. 

When Yancy returned, Harley ordered the boiled crawfish platter. Tanya selected a cup of gumbo and blackened snapper. When the drinks arrived, Harley drained one in a gulp. Tanya sipped her lemon water and watched Harley’s eyelids droop. 

* * * 

Several cocktails later, Harley stumbled out onto the streets. Had Tanya paid the check? Had he? Had they finished eating? He felt full. No pressure in his bladder, so he must have visited the restroom at some point. His mouth tasted sour. Had he barfed? He held one of those frozen drinks in a plastic souvenir glass that could double as a lance, should he find himself charging a knight on horseback. No idea where it came from. He took a sip. Hurricane, of course. What else did tourists drink in New Orleans? 

Music floated from every open bar—lots of jazz, rock riffs, country songs metamorphosed into lounge numbers you might hear in a joint where a hot woman in an evening gown sang on top of a piano and everybody chain-smoked and drank Old-Fashioneds. Clusters of drunks sang songs that seemed disconnected from the music. Harley’s head spun. He could feel the Earth’s rotation, the angle at which he stood in relation to its tilt. He could see in every direction, like a camera panning three hundred and sixty degrees. Perhaps he was dancing. 

Tanya hugged the hotel wall. She was writing again. Three feet from her, a guy ralphed all over the sidewalk while a buddy patted him on the back and laughed. My own fate if I can’t stop spinning. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. But the dance had disengaged from Harley’s will. Soon enough, he fell hard on his ass, the impact rippling from his coccyx to his medulla oblongata. Somehow, he kept hold of the drink. Tanya wrote, glanced at him, wrote. A gaggle of college-aged kids walked by. One offered Tanya a cup of something. She shook her head without looking up. 

Just like Mom and Dad. Stick so far up their asses they could probably taste it. Would take research to the Super Bowl. 

Harley stood up, legs wobbling as if he were on stilts. Someone bumped him and set him spinning again, but this time he kept his feet. He drank and looked about. People as thick as summer grass, the musk of thousands of armpits caked with long-failed deodorant, half-heard conversations and cackles of maniacal laughter fit for comic-book villains, sweaty flesh pressed against his bare arms. A redhead in blue jeans and a tight Best Coast t-shirt caught his eye, made her way to him, and kissed him, her tongue deep in his mouth. He closed his eyes and felt her taking his half-empty drink and did not care. Then she was gone. 

He looked about and saw the hotel, now half a block down the street, Tanya nowhere in sight. Probably went back inside. She’s usually in bed by ten. Another gift from Mom and Dad. Make straight A’s in first grade and seal your fate. Up before dawn, school all day, two hours of homework, maybe half an hour outside with friends, dinner and dessert and then flashcards and quizzes and goddam reports on current events like we lived in Social Studies class, thirty minutes of TV, bath, prayers, bed. I should have been older so she could learn my secret—never bloom until college. Solid B student, middling expectations. Once you’re too old to ground, then show your true self. But Tanya’s the older model, the original, the Golden Child. She’s the perfect amalgam of Mom and Dad, all the Terminator single-mindedness and none of the human inefficiency. She never had a chance. 

This train of thought lasted two blocks. Had he walked, or had the crowd carried him like a leaf in a stream? Didn’t matter. Somehow, he had gotten another drink, beer this time, a clear plastic cup, dark stout with a half-inch head. He might have stolen it. 

Nearby, a crowd surrounded something on the sidewalk. He pushed through, excusing himself, grinning at strangers who paid him no mind. In the center, a man sat in a lawn chair, his legs sprawled out. A woman knelt between them, her head bobbing up and down. The man’s head hung over the back of the chair, his eyes closed, mouth open. A sign made with cardboard and Sharpie hung around the woman’s neck and down her back. It read, Free Blowjobs. 

Huh, Harley thought. 

Everyone filmed them. 

She could suck a golf ball through a water hose, someone said. Titters from the crowd, even though the line was older than dirt. 

Conflates sexual contact with intimacy and self-worth. Oral fixation. Shit like that. 

He downed his drink and let the cup fall and sat down on the walk. The crowd buzzed as he stared through a forest of legs. Blue jeans and loafers. Sneakers and sandals. Bare shins and calves, some hairy, some tan. Dress hems. Flats and high heels. Why would anybody wear heels in this crowd? Or ever? 

Socialized that way. Like us. Tanya and her notebooks, just like Mom outlining articles on the beach. Or the time we asked Dad for tickets to Disney on Ice and he took us to a lecture on Mediterranean art. Now Tanya, always working. These women, their moms probably put them in skirts and three-inchers by sixth grade. Like a bunch of mini Scarlett O’Haras ready to debut on the Big House’s staircase. I bet their feet hurt like fuck. Gender whatchamacallit. Stratosphere. Stradivarius. Stratocaster. Goddammit, what’s the word? 

He closed his eyes. 

When he opened them again, he lay on the walk, people circling him. His back and ass felt wet, his crotch warm. He looked down. The woman with the sign had his penis in her mouth, down to the hilt. 

Had he agreed to this? What was he lying in, and how long had he been there? 

He really needed to pee. 

Everyone held drinks and phones. Some grinned. A few wore that brand of expressionlessness that sets in after the tenth or eleventh cocktail. One guy looked furious, as if he wanted to kick the woman’s teeth in, or Harley’s, or both. 

Get you some, boy, somebody said. 

Uh, said Harley. Excuse me? Ma’am? 

Someone squealed. More laughter. And then everyone vanished. Three cops arrived, demanding that people act like human beings, goddammit. One pulled the woman off Harley, jamming her arms behind her back and cuffing her. The other two yanked Harley to his feet. His pants and underwear fell to his ankles. Cameras strobed. 

Sick jackass, said one of the cops. 

No, fellas, Harley said. I didn’t mean to. 

Right, said the cop, cuffing him. You just tripped on the curb, and your dick fell in her mouth. 

I think I passed out. 

Sure. You’re under arrest— 

Harley projectile-vomited on the second officer’s shirt. 

The man looked at his uniform, spattered with sour alcohol and half-digested crawfish and corn kernels. Son of a bitch, he said. Get this fucker outta here before I accidentally stomp on his head eight or ten times. 

* * * 

Tanya fought her way to Canal and Rampart and got an Uber. She had left her notes in the room. She did not want to lose them. 

The cops had hauled Harley away, strings of puke dangling from his lips. What would they charge him with—indecency? Public drunkenness? Stupidity? 

Needing connection, the urban white male trends toward excess, heedless of consequences. 

Central lockup, huh? said the driver, a man in his early thirties. He wore a plaid shirt, a goatee, hipster glasses, a porkpie hat. 

Yes, she said. 

Happens a lot this time of year. 

Tanya had never meant to let it go so far. Harley had been drunk and staggering, but so had half the crowd. When she lost sight of him, she had stopped in a doorway to make some notes. Then the cops rushed in, and there lay Harley, erect penis bobbing like a divining rod. The cops stood him up and let his pants fall as they read him his rights. Tanya had chosen him as her research subject because he seemed, in so many ways, a typical man—intelligent and motivated, sure, but basically a big kid who wanted to get laid—and she had tried to maintain her scientific objectivity. But he knew nothing of her project and had probably expected her to pull him back from the edge. As if her responsibility for him, born in their isolated childhood, would only die when one of them did. That look on his face as he shuffled to the squad car, like a trapeze artist who, falling, realizes that someone has stolen his safety net—bewilderment, fear, a dawning sense of having been betrayed in some fundamental way. 

Outside the car, nighttime New Orleans—streets full of headlights, identical lampposts flickering by, humanity on the walks, bright doorways where homeless people sat and talked to themselves. Or maybe they heard voices, like she did when she researched. 

They’re Mom’s and Dad’s voices. His when he explained to us that Phoebe on Friends could never afford a decent New York apartment on a freelance masseur’s salary. Mom’s while she told us Simba’s assumption of Mufasa’s throne just reinforced patriarchal stereotypes, that the film owed much of its plot to the Fisher King legend, that Timon and Pumbaa’s hakuna matata philosophy meant they had accepted the jungle’s hegemonic class system, and while aristocratic Simba would go back to eating gazelles one day, his proletarian buddies would always dig for grubs. 

So who’s in jail? the driver asked as he fiddled with the radio and settled on something that sounded like Coldplay. Friend or family? 

Family, she said. 

Can’t live with em. Can’t shoot em. 

You sure can’t. 

They turned a corner into a traffic jam, cars snarled everywhere, turning left on red lights and lingering in intersections. The walks nearby were dark and filled with people, shadows bulging together and pulling apart like saltwater taffy, all of them somebody’s child, somebody’s sister, somebody’s true love, but also just themselves, individuals trudging through the night, trying to find their way. 

One of those shadows broke away and reeled into the street, weaving among the cars, stopping here and there to put its hands on a hood, eliciting angry honks and raised middle fingers. Then the figure stepped into her Uber’s headlights. It was a man in his mid-twenties, blue polo shirt befouled with some dark liquid, knee-length shorts pumpkin-orange. He locked eyes with Tanya, squinting against the lights. He put both hands on the hood and made a humping motion. 

The driver honked and yelled, Get off my car, you asshole. 

The man spit on the windshield and staggered around to Tanya’s window. He bent and looked in, eyes glazed. He said something she could not understand and then straightened, dropped his pants, and pressed his genitals to her window, rubbing them up and down, side to side, penis limp and flopping, thick black pubic hair waving like seaweed in the shallows. 

Subject attempts to attract mate by baring its undersized primary sex organs. 

God, said the driver. I’m callin the cops. 

Tanya photographed the man’s gyrations. By the time she cropped and filtered the picture, he had moved on, but she barely noticed. She wrote a caption: a dying grub on top of a Chia Pet. Where was Pumbaa when you needed him? The car lurched forward as she texted the picture to Harley. He would not see it until after she freed him and he sobered up, but then his eyes would widen, and he would look at her, and they would laugh and laugh and laugh. 

Brett Riley is the Pushcart-nominated author of The Subtle Dance of Impulse and Light (Ink Brush Press) and the feature-length screenplay Candy’s First Kiss, which won or placed in five contests. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as The Baltimore Review, Solstice, Folio, The Evansville Review, and many others. His nonfiction has appeared in Role Reboot, Rougarou, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Wild Violet, and Foliate Oak Magazine. He lives in Henderson, Nevada, where he teaches Creative Writing, American Literature, and Composition at the College of Southern Nevada. He likes animals more than most people. Contact him: Twitter and Instagram: @brettwrites   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrettRileyAuthor/Website:http://officialbrettriley.com andEmail: officialbrettriley@gmail.com

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The missile came crashing down to the earth in a huge plume of sand and dust, skipped twice through an open field, and slammed into the concrete barricade. Mussa and Abdelfatah remained motionless on the opposite side with their arms still over their heads, expecting any minute it would go off and kill them both. 

But nothing happened. 

Mussa, the brave one, was first to lift his head and take a look. 

“Today, we are the lucky ones!” he exclaimed. 

There on the other side of the concrete was a sleek, tan-colored, air-to-surface missile, its nose dented, its long delta wings bent like the blades of a blender. It was still simmering from the heat of its flight. 

Abdelfatah rose too. “Praise Allah,” he said, looking at the long, cylindrical device. 

For a moment, they studied the missile. The boys had seen older Soviet-era rockets before, but nothing like this one. This one was space-age in appearance, and it had numbers along its side and the writing, which was in English. 

“Is it NATO?” Abdelfatah asked. 

“Maybe,” Mussa said. 

“What should we do with it?” 

“We must take it.” 

“Take it where?” 

“Back to the compound.” 

“To Shinabah?” 

“Yes, to Shinabah.” 

“What if it goes off?” 

“Then we die.” 

Abdelfatah did not answer. 

Mussa leaped over the barricade and took hold of the missile’s nose and he strained to lift it. “It is a gift from Allah,” he said. “Come on, help me! We must take it.” 

Abdelfatah reluctantly climbed over the barrier and together they tried to lift the rocket, one on each end. But the device weighed nearly four-hundred pounds and they could barely budge it. Mussa joined Abdelfatah at the tail-end of the rocket and together they were able to lift it off the ground. They dragged it around the end of the barrier and began to drag it down the street. 

“Is it okay? It will not go off?” Abdelfatah asked. 

Mussa looked back at the rocket, its nose having left a squiggly white line on the asphalt. “I don’t think so.” 

“What if it does?” 

“Then we won’t have to worry anymore.” 

They stopped periodically to take deep breaths and rest their arms. And they admired their newfound treasure. What few victories the rebellion had known had been celebrated exuberantly, generally in the form of machinegun-fire from the beds of pick-up trucks and the rattling off AK-47’s indiscriminately into the sky, and the screeching out of the ancient Arabic battle cry——an oscillating sound made by forcing air through the windpipe while simultaneously flapping the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Now Mussa envisioned a victory celebration of his own. In a city besieged by rockets and sniper fire where NATO war jets screeched through the sky every morning and where CNN news coverage was filmed on a cell phone, coming close to death was an everyday occurrence for two fifteen-year-old boys. But it was not everyday that a weapon of considerable strength was delivered to one’s feet. Now he thought of how he could use it. And he thought of the Soviet-manufactured T-72 tank, a forty-ton monster which had been raging havoc in their neighborhood. It had recently shelled the marketplace where his mother bought bread and had destroyed the apartment building where his brother lived, nearly killing him. This rocket was just the weapon he could use to destroy it, he thought. If only he could figure out how. 

He stopped again to take a breath and rest his arms. He looked over into Abdelfatah’s eyes. “We’ll use it to destroy Gaddafi’s tank!” he said. 

Abdelfatah didn’t know how to reply. He simply nodded, “Praise the Rebellion.” 

*** 

The main rebel meeting room was lively with discussion and strategy when the loud thud of the missile being dropped turned everyone’s attention to the door. Nouri Shinabah, the self-appointed leader of the ‘Martyrs Company,’ turned his eyes to Mussa and Abdelfatah, who stood there in the doorway light. The air-to-ground missile was resting at their feet. Mussa was straddling it, his right leg pressed firmly against it. 

“What is it?” asked Shinabah. 

“It is a missile,” Mussa said. 

“I can see that. Where did you get it?” 

“It crashed into a barricade.” 

“But it missed us,” Abdelfatah said. 

“What?” 

“We were behind this wall when we heard something whistling down from the sky. We could hear it coming down fast and when we looked up, we saw this silver streak coming straight at us.” 

“It came out of the air?” asked another man. 

“Like a spear,” Mussa said. 

“Down from the heavens,” Abdelfatah said. 

The men in the room exchanged doubtful glances. 

“We ducked behind the barricade and covered our heads. We thought we were dead.” Abdelfatah was rattling now. 

“But it didn’t explode,” said Mussa. 

Shinabah stared at both of them, as did everyone else in the room. But slowly all eyes turned back to Shinabah. It was he who formed this rag-tag militia, consisting of students and bakers and craftsmen and lawyers and mechanics and businessmen. They all stood there, dressed in all kinds of different clothing, some in traditional garments, others in western-style suits, and others in combat fatigues, waiting for him to speak. 

Shinabah said nothing. He walked silently over to Mussa and Abdelfatah and knelt down beside the projectile. He studied the device, running a hand along its side. Then he tilted his head and read the numbers and writing on it. 

“It is NATO,” he said, “an AGM-65 Maverick. It will be useful in the rebellion.” He rose to his feet, took off his cap, and looked around the room until his eyes found a stout man with a large moustache. It was Hakim Audin, their ordinance expert. “What do you think?” 

Hakim came forward and looked at the missile. 

“Can we launch it?” another man asked. 

“No,” Hakim Audin said, “but we can remove the warhead and use it. It’s a blast-fragmenting warhead. We can use it as a mine or make some kind of road IED of it.” 

“Yes, of course,” Shinabah said. He stepped aside and Hakim leaned in and wrapped his big fingers around the nose of the missile. Shinabah waved a couple other men in to help him, but before they could step forward, Mussa held out a hand and spoke loudly. “Wait! We have plans for it.” 

Shinabah looked at him, waiting for further explanation. 

“It is ours,” Mussa said. “We found it and dragged it back here. It belongs to us.” 

“It belongs to the rebellion,” said a voice among the men. 

It was young lieutenant Haftar, a twenty-five-year-old who had recently joined the group from Benghazi. He was from the Senussi tribe, an elite political-religious order whose Libyan blood was considered stronger than the other tribes in the region; much stronger than Mussa or Abdelfatah. 

“It belongs to us,” Mussa cried. “It fell from the sky into our lap. That we were not killed by this device, that it came to use like a gift from the heavens, is divine providence. It belongs to us.” 

“It is nonsense,” the young lieutenant said. 

“It is not nonsense. It is Allah’s will and we will not give it up.” He straddled the missile in a protective stance, turned back, and looked to Abdelfatah for support. Abdelfatah only offered a shrug. 

“You are both correct,” Shinabah then said in a calm voice. “It is divine providence that this fell out of the sky and did not kill these two. That is a miracle in itself. But it also belongs to the rebellion, like every one of us, and all that we own, and all who we are, and the air and the wind that we breathe, and the life that we love.” He looked at Mussa. “Tell me… what is your plan?” 

“The tank in the city center, the one that destroyed the port shipment last week and that destroyed the apartment where my brother lived——” 

“Yes.” 

“It is a coward. It kills and then hides beneath the palm trees.” 

“Yes.” 

“I want to use this missile to destroy it.” 

“How?” 

“We will bury it in its hiding place when it is gone and blow it up when it returns.” 

“Is it possible?” one of the men asked. 

“Yes,” Hakim Audin said. 

“Then how will they detonate it?” the young lieutenant asked. 

Hakim Audin, who was still on one knee, held his thick fingers over the grey circle at the tip of the missile. “A simple shot from a rifle,” said. “It has a contact fuse in the nose. One bullet in this area will detonate it.” He looked up at Shinabah, who nodded his head in agreement. 

“Then it is done,” Shinabah said. 

“They are children,” the young lieutenant objected. “Let the men handle it.” 

Shinabah ran a careful eye over Mussa and Abdelfatah, measuring them up. “There are no children in Misrata,” he said. “Only men. And we need all the men we can get to win this war.” 

The young lieutenant, Haftar, shrugged his shoulders. “If it is your will?” 

“It is my will,” Shinabah replied. 

“Then so be it,” the young lieutenant said. 

Shinabah knelt down beside the missile and cupped his hand over the grey-circled tip. He looked into Mussa’s eyes. “One round here.” 

Mussa nodded his head. 

“It is yours, then.” 

Mussa smiled widely and looked back at Abdelfatah, who smiled back, nervously. 

“But if for some reason your plan doesn’t work, you must bring it back here and we’ll decide another use for it.” 

Mussa nodded. 

*** 

When the meeting finished, Mussa and Abdelfatah dragged the missile back to Mussa’s apartment, to his mother’s disapproval. After a short argument, they took it from the apartment and hid it in a vacant building across the street. 

The next morning, they scouted the place where the tank parked each day beneath three palm trees. It was cater-corner to a little café, which the crew frequented. They found a large oleander bush on the other street corner and hid in it. They sat and watched the tank. 

The tank had flipper-like armor panels and a 125mm gun. It was a leftover from the Afghan war, but still a powerful weapon against unarmored street-fighters. For the past three weeks it had been targeting small factories and apartment buildings, and the shops on Tripoli Street where Mussa’s mother bought bread and women stood in queues for hours at a time waiting for flour, sugar, and pasta. And it had been targeting the marina too, where storage sheds kept the munitions and water, which were the lifelines of the revolt. He knew he could always rely on the tank being gone at night, out for its nightly runs, shelling and refueling, and back in the morning, to hide beneath the palms during daylight. 

For the entire day they watched the tank. It did not move, but men with machineguns came and went from it to the little café. In the afternoon, they saw the tank Commander. He came walking past them with a young soldier. They knew it was the tank Commander because he wore a tank Commander’s helmet equipped with a microphone and earphones. It had a pair of goggles strapped to the top of it. On their return trip, the two men stopped near the oleander bush, not more than a few feet away. 

“Rebel bastards,” they heard the tank Commander say. “Scum of the earth, ungrateful for what has been given them. Ungrateful for what the great one has done. And they will all die for their ungratefulness. 

“They think the world will care,” he laughed. “The world does not care. The world only cares about money, and oil.” 

“They are nothing but idiots,” the young soldier said. 

Mussa looked up through the oleander leaves and he could see the Commander’s dark face, half-shadowed by the helmet. There was a military insignia on his sleeve and a portrait of a woman pinned to his lapel. The Commander unwrapped a stick of gum from a pack he had in his hand and offered it out to the young soldier, who took it. Then he unwrapped another stick and tossed the wrapper, which floated down into the oleander bush and settled near Mussa’s foot. Mussa looked at Abdelfatah and put a finger to his lips. 

“This war will be over soon,” the Commander said. 

“Finally, these rebel pigs will all die,” the young soldier said. 

They walked back across the street, climbed up the side of the tank, and disappeared inside of it. 

Mussa felt the blood rise in his veins. They will see, he thought. They are cowards who hide beneath palm trees! 

Another couple hours past before the long shadows of late afternoon stretched across the street, during which time Mussa thought about the rocket and how best to bury it beneath the tank. 

“We’ll leave the nose tipped up,” Mussa said, “so that we can put a bullet in it. We’ll cover it with something. Maybe some grass or a palm leaf.” 

It made sense, Abdelfatah thought, looking over at the tank. “Yes, of course.” 

They were both still watching the tank when the powerful V-12 engine first came on and they saw diesel fumes spew out the back. The tank remained idling for twenty minutes, maybe more, while the early evening light faded. Then it moved forward, slowly leaving the dirt shoulder and clanking onto the pavement. It stopped for a moment, then came rolling past them, its huge revolving tracks slapping hard against the asphalt. They could feel the earth vibrating beneath them. The shear size and power of the thing made them feel small. 

“Where is it going?” Abdelfatah asked. 

“Don’t know. Different night, different target.” He turned and looked into Abdelfatah’s face. “Last target.” 

Abdelfatah smiled. “Yes, last target.” 

They stayed hidden in the oleander bush until the tank completely disappeared down the street. Then Mussa sprung to his feet and hurried across the street to where the tank had been. Abdelfatah followed. 

Deep in the dirt were the track marks. They could see where the tracks had come and gone many times. They could see an oil stain in the sand where the belly of the beast had rested. They could see where it entered the street, the deep lines carved into the asphalt. 

Mussa looked up into the foliage above. He could barely see the darkening sky through the fanning palms trees. 

“Right here!” he said, pointing to the place in the long shadows where the belly of the tank had rested many times. And looking around, he saw a white cardboard box lying in the street. “And that!” he said, pointing to the box. “We’ll use that to cover the tip of the rocket.” 

He ran over to the box, picked it up, examined it carefully, and holding it out before him, tore open one side. Its shape and size was perfect, he thought. He carried it back and set it down near the base of the palm trees. 

An hour later, the boys were struggling in the dark. It was no easy task dragging a four-hundred-and-fifty-pound rocket four blocks with a shovel strapped to it and a blanket over it. But the boys were strengthened by their faith and desire for freedom, and the cleverness of their plan. They were full of gallantry, which always makes such a task simpler than what it is. 

When they arrived back at the palm trees, they were happy to see the street-lamps were off and the café was closed. There was no moon, which was good. The Arabian night was pitch black and speckled with stars. They dragged the rocket to the far side of the palm trees and hid it behind the trees. Then, with the shovel, they began their work. They took turns digging, piling the dirt carefully to one side so as not to disturb the tracks. 

“It is like digging a shallow grave,” Abdelfatah said. 

“A long and narrow grave for a big monster,” Mussa replied. “We will be the heroes after this.” 

“Yes.” 

After a long turn shoveling dirt, Mussa stepped aside and let Abdelfatah dig again. He sat quietly at the base of one of the palm trees, leaning against it. He felt a jubilant elation, confident that their plan would work. As the pile grew, he stared at the dirt. Once again, he imagined a victory celebration of his own and he smiled inwardly. It was the earth of his father and grandfather, he thought. It was the sand of all his ancestors; the birthplace of all his generations, and would be the birthplace of his descendants. It was the good Libyan earth, in which his forefathers rested and in which he would rest one day. 

The ditch formed nicely, angling deeper at the backend so that the tail of the missile would be deeply hidden. When the hole was ready they dragged the missile around the base of the trees, rolled it into the hole, and covered it carefully, spreading the dirt and sand so that it looked as if no one had been there. They carefully swept away the drag mark and their footprints with a palm leaf. Then, with the long stem of the palm leaf, added lines in the dirt which closely resembled the original track lines. As planned, Mussa took the box and set it on top the protruding missile tip. But it looked too big, so he tore off a piece, folded it with a crease down the center, and carefully laid it back on top. Then he stepped back and considered it. 

“It’s perfect,” he said, confidently. It looked like a wind-blown piece of cardboard which had just settled there accidentally. 

“I think so,” Abdelfatah replied. 

Abdelfatah took the palm leaf and evened out some irregularities in the surface and covered the remaining footprints. As they walked back onto the asphalt, he tossed the palm leaf off the side of the road. They found a perfect place down the street, behind a stone wall, from where they could get a clear shot at the cardboard. It was some fifty meters away; far enough for their presence to go undetected and close enough for them to make the shot. Then they left, back to Mussa’s mother’s apartment for some tea and bureeks, and flatbread. 

They could not sleep, nor did they want to, and timed passed. 

In the early morning hours, before the sun rose, they returned, now each armed with a Kalashnikov AK-47. And to their grateful surprise, they saw the tank had returned and had parked perfectly along the roadside beneath the palm trees in the same exact spot, its belly, presumably, resting squarely above the piece of cardboard. 

They took their position behind the small stone wall. They positioned their rifles above the stone, and they waited. It was still too dark to see the piece of cardboard clearly. They could barely see a vague grayish thing beneath the outline of the tank. 

As the light increased and the tank took form, the turret facing them, the grayish thing beneath it remained obscured. Despite the coming light, the cardboard was difficult to see because it was in the shadow of the tank, which was in the shadow of the palm trees. 

“Can you see it?” Mussa asked. 

“Barely, but I can feel it,” Abdelfatah said. He leveled his rifle. 

“Not yet,” Mussa said, wanting to wait for more light. 

A few more minutes passed. Now they saw the front armored plates and its running gear, and the machinegun on top the turret. 

“It is my shot,” Abdelfatah said. 

“Who is the better shot?” Mussa asked. 

Abdelfatah turned and looked at Mussa. “I can hit it.” 

“Who is the better shot?” 

“We’ll shoot together,” Abdelfatah then said. 

Mussa nodded. “Okay, we shoot together, on my count, when I say so.” 

“Okay.” 

With the accelerating light of daybreak, the piece of white cardboard came into focus. But it was farther beneath the hull than they had anticipated, and at this distance, it was impossible to see the circular grey nose of the missile. 

Mussa looked at Abdelfatah. “We can hit it,” he said. 

“I know.” 

“Just hit the cardboard.” 

“I know.” 

Mussa pressed his cheek against the wood stock of his rifle. Abdelfatah did the same. And with both barrels pointed over the top of the stone wall, they each centered the blurry grey thing in their circular sighting apertures. 

“Ready?” Mussa asked. 

“Now?” Abdelfatah replied. 

“When I say ‘go.’” 

“When you say ‘go’?” 

“No, on three.” 

“Okay, on three.” 

Mussa took a deep breath. Then he began to count, slowly; “one, two…” and on “three,” they both pulled their triggers. Their rifles bucked, and the bullets careened off the side of the missile and ricocheted and pinged off the belly of the tank. But nothing happened. Mussa shot again, quickly. And again, and the bullets continued to careen of the side of the missile and smack against the front armored plates of the tank. Then they heard the tank engine come on and saw a puff of smoke come out of the rear exhaust. 

Mussa flipped the rifle’s switch to fully automatic mode, held the stock tight to his shoulder, pressed his cheek firmly against it, and pulled the trigger again. The rifle spit out a fierce, rattling folly of rounds, hitting the dirt before the tank, ripping the ground beneath it, shredding the cardboard, and ricocheting off the gilled-armored plates. Abdelfatah did the same, both rifles now rattling in fully automatic mode, the bullets ripping through the air, pinging against metal, uprooting dirt, and obliterating the cardboard. But still nothing happened. 

Before they knew it, the turret began to move, ever so slightly, as to center in their direction. The boys exchanged horrified expressions. 

Mussa sprung to his feet, as did Abdelfatah. They both ran with all their might toward the café, the tank’s 125mm cannon following them, its turret turning diagonally. Just as they reached the sidewalk, the building above them exploded into a fountain of pebbles and smoke. The entire structure was in a large ball of flames and smoke. Mussa was hurdled off his feet, as was Abdelfatah, and they were both buried in an avalanche of plaster and brick and boards and splintered wood. 

There was that moment of time lost, when one doesn’t know what happened or how long ago it happened. When Mussa awakened, he heard nothing, only a loud humming in his ears. He pulled himself from beneath smoldering boards and plaster. He saw Abdelfatah beside him, also rising from the rubble. His body felt numb all over. He had cuts and bruises everywhere. His shirt was torn and smelt like burning sulfur. 

Through the haze of smoke, both boys saw the tank. It had come out from beneath the palm trees and was stopped now in the center of the road. Its barrel had come around again. They could see the tank Commander’s helmeted and goggled head protruding from the turret. They could see him shouting commands and pointing in their direction 

Mussa tried to move, but his limbs didn’t seem to work. Or maybe it was because of the weight of rubble on him. It didn’t matter. It was as if time stood still. And now he could see the barrel of the tank’s cannon fully upon them, pointing squarely at them. He could see the black hole at the tip, which he knew would soon flash white. 

Then, suddenly, there was a loud screeching sound from above. Mussa looked up, as did Abdelfatah and the helmeted and goggled head of the tank Commander. Two laser-like beams streaked downward through the early morning light, and, in the same instant, the tank vanished in a huge white flash of flames and smoke. The turret flew skyward and a high-arching geyser of fiery debris reached above the tops of the palm trees. A second explosion engulfed the entire roadside where the tank and had been and took out the palm trees as well. At the same time, the roar of jet engines sounded overhead as two NATO F-16s screeched away toward the Mediterranean. 

The shock waves had smacked against the two boys. They had involuntarily flinched and ducked below the rubble, which already covered half of them. Swirls of dust and debris were still settling around them when they lifted themselves a second time. They pulled themselves from the rubble, dusted themselves off, and looked at one another, not believing what had just happened. In the same moment they thought their lives were gone, they had emerged virtually unscathed, except for the bruises and scratches and ringing in their ears. Meanwhile, what was left of the tank was a burning plume of black smoke that rose high into the bright morning sky. 

Mussa let out an involuntary yell. Abdelfatah did the same. Their faces shined with elation. They both grabbed one another and hugged tightly, as brothers do, and before they broke their clutch, a beat-up old white pickup truck came careening around the corner at the far end of the street. The truck rushed down the street and came to an abrupt stop in front of them. Clinging to the fifty-caliber machinegun in the bed of the truck was young Fathi al-Kharaz, a fellow soldier of the Martyrs Company. 

“Get in,” he yelled. 

The boys leaped into the bed of the truck and, as it zoomed off down the street, Fathi al-Kharaz began yelling jubilantly and he pulled the trigger of the machinegun, sending useless follies into the sky. He had very clean, white teeth and he showed them generously now in the morning sunlight. “You did it! You destroyed Gadhafi’s tank!” 

“But our missile did not destroy the tank,” Mussa said. 

Fathi al-Kharaz looked at Mussa. “Maybe not. But you brought it out of hiding so the jets could kill it!” He pulled the trigger of the machinegun again and it rattled indiscreminately into the sky. “You are the victors!” He fired again. “We are the victors!” He fired again. “Tonight, Gaddafi sleeps with one less tank!” 

Then he let out the long, oscillating, Arabic battle cry. 

The truck careemed around a corner into a plaza where stood two dozen rebel soldiers of the Martyrs Company. They were all holding their AK-47s triunphantly skyward, shooting rounds off into the air. Shinabah stood in the center, waiting. 

“Tank killers!” he yelled. “We greet you and celebrate your victory!” 

Young Lieutenant Haftar, the elite-blooded Senussi, stood beside him. His eyes looked to Mussa. His head nodded. “Yes, you are men of the rebellion,” he yelled out. “You are soldiers of the revolt!” Then he raised his rifle high. “To the tank killers!” 

The machinegun in the bed of the pickup truck spoke loudly again, pounding off rounds into the blue Libyan sky. And when Mussa looked around he realized he was surrounded by an army of men celebrating a victory that was his; that was theirs. All around him was the rapid cracking of gunfire, and the loud chorus of tongues, flapping out the old Arabic battle cry. 

“We have won, Brother!” Mussa said, looking over at Abdelfatah. 

Abdelfatah nodded his acknowledgement. His face was bright and proud too. “Yes, we have won, Brother!” 

Together, they watched over the many rifles pointing skyward above many heads, wasting rounds triumphantly into the blue Libyan sky. Then Mussa tilted his head back, filled his lungs with the warm desert air, and let out a long victorious war cry. He felt the warm air rushing through his throat as his tongue flapped rapidly against the roof of his mouth. Abdelfatah did the same, and their battle cry rose in a crescendo with the others, over the sound of the rifles, into the blue Libyan sky. And it was taken by the warm, desert wind. 

Frank Scozzari lives on the California Central Coast. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, his short stories have been widely anthologized and featured in literary theater. Reach him at his Author page: http://frankscozzari.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FrankScozzariAuthor  and Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScozzariFrank

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THE black circle was printed on heavy, off-white cardstock. In West Virginia, the paper had been thin and waxy. The clinic in Charleston had straight-back chairs and windows so high you couldn’t see the sign from the Chinese restaurant next door. But the Thomson Clinic in Chicago had wide leather chairs aged intentionally to look antique. It had a wall of windows and a coffee bar. It smelled like handpicked lemons, not synthetic like lemon air freshener. Annie breathed easier as her father, William, took the test, confident they had made the right choice in seeking a second opinion. 

“The circle is a clock,” the clinician said, intruding on Annie’s thoughts. “Please write in the numbers.” Annie watched the woman start a stopwatch and take a seat beside her, facing William’s back. William dried his hands on his pleated khakis before beginning the test. Annie remembered thirty-five years ago when he was on the team to build the New River Gorge Bridge. Six months into the bridge’s construction, he was hauled up the rust-colored sides in an oversized bucket. During the ascent, she’d watch him dry his hands on his thick, worn jeans, removing the only physical sign of his nerves. 

This was the third time he’d taken the clock test to evaluate the level of his mind’s deterioration and each result veered further from normal. It always started the same way. Fill in the numbers. William could get that part easily. He was a mechanical engineer. Making things work was part habit, part calling. William tapped his pen on the table. Annie remembered science projects he’d built for her, including a hydrographic activator. She recalled a music box reworked to play “Heart and Soul” after she learned to play it on the piano. Drawing a clock shouldn’t stymie her dad. He could fix engines, design a drainage system, build a bridge 876 feet tall. 

William pressed his fingers to his temples in an attempt to Jedi mind trick the simple information. He scratched his palms and looked around, but the room was shucked free of distractions. William started to write, the pen moving so aggressively the table wobbled. The writing was a slow and agitated scratch. The clinician peered over William’s shoulder. William swatted absentmindedly as if she was a gnat. The woman reset the clock and Annie exhaled, feeling certain William had passed the first portion. 

“Now, draw the minute and hour hands at ten after eleven,” the woman said, her voice echoing against the walls. William sighed loudly, exhaling exasperation. 

This was where trouble typically arose. Her father’s brain, once able to calculate the area of concrete in his head, now confused ten after and ten ‘til. Annie couldn’t stop her mind from whirling through all the things he’d taught her. She helped him install a shower once. His rough, calloused hands capably connecting and conjoining smooth silver pipes. His mouth puckered in a whistle. Because of him, she knew how to change a tire, install a garbage disposal, apply wallpaper. She knew how to bait a hook, pushing on the worm’s midsection so the head swelled before piercing the slimy creature behind the swollen band. She could determine the best docks for bluegills at Plum Orchard Lake. Annie once thought this was what a man should be. She adored him through lost years. Years when he embarrassed her. Years when they had little if anything in common. Years when he thought his prayers could absolve her sexuality. She defended him despite his disapproval of her life. She loved him but feared she didn’t know him. 

Annie remembered the expression, A son’s a son until he finds a wife, a daughter’s a daughter all of her life. It was an odd thing to remember because it wasn’t William’s expression but her mother’s nasal voice, weighed down with her accent and the Marlboro Light propped at the edge of her mouth. Her mother, Samantha, who could make gourmet food, occasionally rolling out puff pastry dough that would envelop steak, allowing the rich aroma of Beef Wellington to float seamlessly through the one-story house. Her mother, who never worked outside their home, preferring the sanctuary of her prize-winning hydrangeas. Her mother, who thought traditional values meant submissively backing from an argument to flip her father off in the adjoining room. Her mother, whose car jumped a guardrail in the middle of a sunny June day, killing her on impact when Annie was twenty. 

Samantha was full of these colloquialisms, and they played on a tape in Annie’s mind. The day before, Annie had told her son, Georgie, she was going to slap both eyes into one because he was too big for his britches. She had stopped to look around, expecting her mother to appear with a shit-eating grin and a cigarette needing to be ashed. 

The clinician, her hair twirled into a tight bun, snapped Annie back to reality as she clicked off the stopwatch. She retrieved the page from William and scribbled notes directly on it. Annie stole a peek, could see her father had gotten the minute hand correct but there was no hour hand. A few of the numbers on the edge were missing. Knowledge her father had for sixty years had evaporated. 

*** 

Annie and William hadn’t seen Dr. Travers after the testing but as she drove them home, she imagined what the doctor would say, stroking his slim moustache. The dementia is progressing quickly. He needs routine. Annie shook her head, trying to free the doubt that clouded it. She navigated into her parking spot, sandwiched between a smart car and a red VW Beetle. Annie carried in an oversized briefcase brimming with manuscripts and balanced a sack of groceries on her hip. William cracked his knuckles, fixated on his own thoughts. He didn’t offer to help. As they scurried into the townhouse, Annie tossed her keys on a lacquered console and started unloading the groceries. She wanted to focus on dinner and playtime and work but she couldn’t shake the test from her memory. Annie hoped the decisions she made for her dad were best. 

Her father was Appalachian, as much a part of the mountains as the soil, the maples Annie used to scale, the bluegills she and her father threw back in the lake. He never wanted to leave, even as the disease chewed through his central nervous system, but Annie and Georgie wanted him here. Annie wanted to take her dad to Millennium Park and stand beneath the Bean’s mirrored surface, smell the metal, and admire the Chicago skyline, the architecture. She wanted him to taste the kick from the peppers on a Chicago dog at Weiner Circle. She wanted him to help Georgie catch a foul ball at Wrigley Field. She needed him to understand why she left. She needed him to see that somewhere else could be home. Somewhere else could produce the siren call West Virginia had, could seduce you, nurture you, love you. She needed him to see this even if her dreams were filled with the oranges and golds of the trees in autumn, her ears consumed with the high-pitched train whistle that hugged the mountain curves, her mouth filled with the taste of deer jerky from Whipple General Store. 

Again, her mother’s voice rattled against her, taking her to the day her mother and father hugged Annie when they were leaving her in Morgantown. Her mother with deep mascara lines gliding towards her chin, kissing both Annie’s cheeks, sliding Annie’s auburn hair behind her ears. You have to wave goodbye. Children always wave goodbye. That felt like both a lie and the truth. Annie had left West Virginia but she couldn’t rinse it from her. Her mother had left this earth but she could be conjured. Her father was still here sometimes, still himself in the quiet but displaced moments. Annie didn’t want to wave goodbye. 

She tried to focus on the papers splayed across her L-shaped couch as Georgie and William built a tall Lego tower. They alternated wide green and blue bricks at the base; the upper layers were all red. Annie watched the two of them as their construction progressed. She loved Georgie’s curved spine, the way his brows formed a straight line when he concentrated. With his blond hair and cowlicks and one dimple—just one—on the right side, as if someone declared, cute enough—one more dimple might throw things off balance, Georgie looked like William. Georgie kicked over the Lego tower with a grunt that was burrowed in his belly. William avoided the plastic shrapnel and started collecting the blocks in one wide hand. “Samantha,” he said, looking earnestly at Annie but mistaking her for her mother. “Annie has the worst temper.” 

They sat in the silence that followed. William looked down at his exposed toes and blinked twice. He’d always recognized his family. The slip, mistaking Annie for her mom and Georgie for Annie, was momentary. It could have been shrugged away as old age, but Annie committed it to memory, recognizing how lost her father truly was. 

Georgie snuggled into William’s arms. “Georgie,” her son said, pointing to his skinny six-year-old body and making Annie laugh. Georgie allowed the prickles on William’s chin to tickle his neck as they sat transfixed, looking at nothing. They lingered that way, folded in a slumped L, until it was time for dinner. Annie thrust chicken nuggets and French fries and too much ketchup on a plate. Georgie taught William to use the nuggets as a ketchup shovel. Both had stains on the cuffs of their shirts but Annie reveled in the dinner and in the ease Georgie’s constant prattle produced. 

“You never shut up either,” William said at one point and Annie only nodded, unwilling to wade through her childhood as the dementia amputated her father’s future. 

From there, Annie felt William deteriorating further each day. He didn’t get lost, didn’t meander into traffic, or think his underwear was a hat. He didn’t do the silly things you think happen in the early days of dementia. It was more about his inability to place himself. As Annie drove along Lake Shore Drive, William read the billboards aloud. 

“Don’t text and drive,” William said in a booming voice, startling Annie whose mind was wandering to the cookies she needed to buy for Georgie’s class. “Nightlife included, Pure Michigan.” 

William’s eyes were staring out the side window, his fingers tracing the outline of a billboard they were about to pass. “You are beautiful,” he said. It was written on a plain white sign in oversized black letters. The font was simple. It advertised nothing. William’s voice sounded low, meticulous, and romantic. A soothing strum mingling with his traditional baritone. The change in his tone frightened Annie. He picked up her hand from the gearshift. “You really are, Samantha,” he said and kissed her palm, allowing his pursed lips to linger above Annie’s pale freckled wrist. She wriggled her hand free from his firm grasp, awkwardly fingered the split ends of her hair. 

“It didn’t mean anything,” he said urgently. “She wasn’t you.” 

The gridlocked traffic buzzed around them. Horns blared as they progressed slowly. Annie focused on sliding her foot from the brake to the gas and back again. 

“Daddy,” she said trying to focus on the ebb and flow of traffic but yearning to reach out and touch his shoulder, rub his back, a gesture that felt familiar to their relationship. She wanted to hug him like he had hugged her when she fell from her two-wheel bike. To support him as he had when her mother died—Annie’s back clad in a wool dress that itched, a dress she chose because she never wanted to wear it again, a dress she picked so she could bury it in the bottom of a Goodwill donation bin. 

“Daddy,” Annie repeated. “You know I’m Annie. I’m your ….” 

She was going to say daughter. 

“Squirrel,” he said, filling in her blank with a nickname he hadn’t called her in years. Not since she came out to him. 

Annie was nineteen when she told her parents. Her first girlfriend had been a petite blond named Kim who wore button-downs secured at the collar and bracelets that moved rhythmically against one another in a cacophonous symphony. It was Christmas break, and she was home from school. The air was tight with the prospect of snow and the smell of pine needles. Samantha had baked an apple pie, and the smell and the nerves together turned Annie’s stomach. Her father built a fire, stoking the embers with a long iron poker. 

“I met someone at school,” Annie said, her voice shaking against the words. William didn’t stop. The wood made a loud grinding clatter. 

“That’s nice, Squirrel,” he said, distractedly. “You going to bring him by? Maybe for New Year’s?” 

“It’s a she,” Annie said, softly. 

“What’s that?” her mother asked, shuffling into the room in flimsy slippers and sitting the pie on the coffee table. 

“I’m dating a woman,” Annie repeated stiffly, nervous her parents would call her a homosexual, which felt clinical and forced and overwhelmingly p.c. 

“Maybe don’t bring her for dinner then,” William replied with a quick chuckle that felt dismissive and comforting simultaneously. Annie didn’t know if she should overreact, maybe shove the pie off the table or stomp upstairs. Everything felt trite, so instead, she flipped through Southern Living. William watched the fire overtake the wood. He dried his hands on his pants, ignoring the chill emanating from the stone floors. He sat on the bench in front of the fireplace and ran a hand through his hair, exhaling as if trying to catch his breath. He stared in the glow of the fire for so long that, for a moment, Annie was sure he would throw himself into the flames. 

“She’s a nice person,” Annie said, her voice a wobbly incline. The truth was Kim felt wild and adventurous and a little dangerous, like standing in the middle of the New River Gorge Bridge while coal trucks zoomed overhead. Like sipping Jack and Gingers instead of studying.   

“We’re just … surprised,” William said. He wouldn’t look at her. Her mother cut the pie in fat slabs and went to stand behind William. Annie felt like they were a group of statues strategically placed so the aromatic cinnamon could swirl between them. 

“I don’t want you to be lonely,” William said, his eyes soft. 

Annie felt taken aback and confused and expectant. How could she be lonely? She had just told them she was dating. Her mother crossed the room and stood near her. She didn’t hug her but the shadowed presence felt like support. Annie inspected her nail bed, paying close attention to hangnails in an attempt to suppress tears. 

“Let’s talk about this later,” William said, poking the fire and avoiding eye contact. Annie didn’t argue. 

That evening, when they assumed she was asleep, Annie listened to them talk in the hushed whispers of intimacy. She stood outside their door like a child. There were muffled sobs Annie would connect to William. Her mother’s voice claiming it might be an experiment, a phase, an act of rebellion. There was hope behind the phrases. She heard her mother tell him it was okay. Annie was still Annie. 

“Normal,” her father said, hiccupping slightly. “All you want for your kids is a nice normal life. She won’t get that now. Not here at least.” Annie swished this back and forth in her mind. To her father, she was abnormal. 

On Christmas, a thin snow fell, and Annie rode with William to the New River Gorge Bridge. It was their tradition, the only time Annie really saw her father admire his work. They sat under the broad beams and watched two hawks circle the area, disappearing behind the gray sky only to reappear lower on the horizon. When she was young, Annie thought the bridge was a consistent rainbow, its underside a perfect arch and its sides gnawed on both sides by the mountains. The top, where cars passed, was the line in the horizon she looked for. The bridge’s rusted beams pronounced against clear skies. Even in her dreams, Annie could hear the rapids below. The water clawing across the rocks and battering the yellow rafting boats. 

“I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” William said. “What with your secret.” Icy breaths released in a thin stream in front of him. 

“I’m still me,” Annie said, crushing a frozen piece of bark back and forth with the toe of her shoe. “Still Squirrel,” she said, hopefully. Her father looked her over. 

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like that now.” Something in his voice cracked. 

The moment drained away, neither of them knowing what should be said next. Both of them silent and resilient and stubborn and alone. 

Annie had other girlfriends, but she found her way back to Kim. They had a civil ceremony in Chicago. William walked her down the aisle. She wore a lace gown and Kim wore a tight mermaid dress that accentuated her thin frame. Annie kissed her dad at the end of the red carpeted aisle at the cheap Holiday Inn, but William wouldn’t look at Kim when he released Annie to her. He didn’t ask Kim to dance. He left before they cut the cake. When Annie and Kim decided Annie would carry Georgie, William expressed his relief that she was “the woman in the relationship.” Following the insemination, when she was wide and ripe and glowing, her father was most at ease. He built her a rocking chair from an old oak tree in their back yard. Deer and rabbits, a bear and a cardinal were carved in the head, and the chair cradled Annie and Georgie during three o’clock feedings. 

Four years later, when Annie got divorced, William’s ease was palpable, a loosening in his shoulders. A spinster daughter was acceptable. A lesbian was harder to explain. 

Annie thought of all the times he’d called her Squirrel. When he bought her books and wrote it in the upper left hand corner, a reminder of who the book belonged to. When she was scared of swimming and he coaxed her into the deep end with the promise of ice cream sandwiches. The list of times he’d spoken the word was both too long and too short. She’d ached for the name without realizing it. 

Now, as the car idled on Lake Shore Drive, the word was heavy. It felt like a beating heart vibrating on her dashboard. 

“Daddy,” Annie said. “I’m not Mom.” William nodded but didn’t respond for a few moments. Horns blasted in the background. 

“You remind me of her, Squirrel.” 

Annie bathed in the praise, in the name. 

“What would you say if she were here?” William asked. 

Annie rolled her earlobe back and forth between her thumb and forefinger as the cars picked up speed. “I don’t know. What about you?” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice softer and steadier still. “I cheated on her.” 

Annie momentarily wanted to cry for her mother who’d been undoubtedly hurt but her father garnered her sympathy too. That was a long time to carry so much guilt. 

“Just once,” William said, staring into his lap. “Not much consolation.” 

“No,” Annie said. Her eyes bore into the license plate in front of her. It was from Iowa. William was looking out at the lake as rain beat the sand into mud. The boats clashed with the wooden docks like cubes in a cocktail. The view was lovely and tumultuous. They passed another billboard but William didn’t read it aloud. 

“I cheated on Kim once, too,” Annie said, remembering a redhead and an office party and too many salty margaritas. She remembered the guilt that came afterwards like a bucket filled with icy water. She remembered imagining what she would tell Georgie. “Did Mom know?” 

“Yes,” William said softly. “She resented me for a long time. I never thought we would get through that. Then she died, and I just had myself to blame for all of it.” 

Annie looked out the window. Life was messy, she thought. Her mother was here and gone. Her father was here and gone. Her son was beautiful and smart and loved and he came from a syringe. Her best friend was her ex-wife. She wanted to be here. She missed West Virginia. 

“Daddy,” Annie said, the name almost a question in itself. “Should we go home?” 

William’s glance turned into a stare. Annie felt his eyes singe her cheeks and wiggled in the seat uncomfortably. He placed his hand on hers, rubbing his thumb back and forth the way he had a thousand times before. The gesture was an answer itself, a kindness that couldn’t mend but eased her apprehensions. 

Annie tried to make the move but obstacles—her job, her townhouse, visitation schedules with Kim—stood in the way. William asked about leaving. He watched Mountaineer basketball, March Madness, on the big screen in her living room, reciting names he remembered to Georgie. When he forgot players’ names, he reincarnated players from the past. Willie Akers. Hot Rod Hudley. Jerry West. People Annie recognized from the days when she watched with him, sandwiched on the couch between he and her mother, as William did loud play-by-plays. At night, when Georgie went to bed, William filled the kitchen with the aromatic smells of chocolate-hinted coffee. 

“Daddy, you should rest,” Annie said, sitting in one of the mismatched kitchen chairs. She folded her legs underneath her. 

“I don’t want to talk in my sleep,” William said, running a finger around the edge of his oversized, chipped mug. 

“Why not?” Annie said. Georgie wandered into the room, groggily rubbing his eyes. He curled into William’s lap. 

“I don’t want to lose anything else. When I sleep, more of the junk I used to know leaves.” 

Annie thought of their moment in the car and the return of her nickname. The way the words had calmed her, even following her father’s confession about his infidelity. She understood why he would force himself to stay awake. To focus. To be here. 

“When you told me you liked girls,” William began, breathing harshly. Georgie flattened his hand on William’s cheek. The action appeased him. “I felt betrayed because I thought I knew you. You told me and I was shocked. I mean, if I missed something that big, I had to have overlooked you. I didn’t mean to.” 

Annie settled her hand over Georgie’s. It was too late for all of them to be up and the darkness shrouded every part of the townhouse except their small corner. 

“We love you,” Georgie said in his too-loud, childish tone. Annie nodded, unable to move closer or further from them. They sat that way for a long time listening to the sound of taxi wheels against asphalt. Finally, as Georgie began to doze, Annie carried him to his room and slid him between his Justice League sheets. He snored lightly, spittle forming a small bubble at the corner of his mouth. 

The next morning, Annie woke and couldn’t find William until she looked outside. He was splayed on the grass in the courtyard in just tighty whiteys, his legs caked with the straw-like texture. Skivvies: the word popped against Annie’s brain. It’s what her mom called underwear when Annie was a girl with pink chubby rolls that cascaded down her thighs and puckered at her ankles. Her father still called them that when referencing Georgie’s Underoos, the ones with Superman insignias and a red cotton waistband. The mowed lawn clung to her father’s calves, green freckles dotting tan limbs. Blue veins merged with the blades of grass and snaked along his kneecaps. 

“What’s going on?” Georgie asked, his sleep interrupted by William’s odd personality shift. William spread his limbs wide, up and down and up again. 

“Snow angels,” he hollered with a mania Annie didn’t recognize. A wide grin was plastered across his face. It looked prosthetic. 

Georgie scurried towards the fun, shedding the white t-shirt, the too long blue flannel pants. His body was thin, having just lost the last layer of baby fat but not yet achieving the muscles that t-ball and riding a 2-wheeler at the park would surely produce. The things he loved still had a babyish quality, though he wouldn’t admit it. He clung to his tattered blankie and lullabies and the story Goodnight Moon. He liked to throw big fistfuls of change into the fountain at the mall. Quarters and pennies and dimes chinking together. 

The two romped as the morning sun wicked away the last of the dew, naked except for their skivvies. One man old, wrinkled, memories seeping from him like oil expelling itself from a used car. There but not there, not all there. The other gaining something, picking this moment up like a toy, shiny and new in the cellophane wrapper. Committing to memory the time he and William made snow angels in the lawn as the sun lightly tickled their waxy skin. 

Annie gazed out at the day. Men wheeled rickety recycling cans to the curb. They glimpsed towards her family then averted their eyes swiftly. But Annie refused to look away, preserving the playfulness that radiated from her father, the tangible happiness from her son. 

“Squirrel,” William called, waving rapidly. 

Annie smiled and returned the wave. 

Cathryn (Katie) Sherman is a freelance journalist and author who covers fine food and parenting—two things rarely related—in Charlotte, NC. She has an MFA in fiction as well as an affinity for Southern Gothic literature, cider beer, Chicago, and morning snuggles with her two daughters. Katie has published a number of stories in literary magazines across the country and is working on her debut collection. She can be found on Twitter @KatiePSherman and Facebook @KatiePiccirilloSherman44.

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It’s late afternoon and time to call it a day, so I pack up my tools and come in from the porch. Jodie’s still in her corner of the couch where, when she’s not there, there’s a Jodie’s-ass-shaped dent in the cushion. The screen door claps shut behind me and I walk past her to the kitchen. I’m sure we’re both wondering what I’ll say. The TV’s not on and the house is quiet, but the sickly buzzing of the highway comes in through the window along with the clanging of Jodie’s bamboo chimes and birds pecking at the hanging feeder, chirping their disapproval at the low quality of the birdseed. Sorry birds, I want to say. But what are you gonna do? 

It feels like the air keeps going out of me. Like I can only exhale. Even after a few hours out on the porch, trying like hell to think of something to say to her, there are still three mowers I haven’t gotten to. But they can wait. Grass doesn’t grow that quickly to where a day makes much difference. I sharpened some blades, gapped spark plugs, and cleaned out a gummed-up carburetor, the whole time wondering: will we get through this? After scrubbing my hands raw under scalding water, I walk with real difficulty in my knees over to where she’s sitting, avoiding my eyes. 

Jodie, I say, the words as unpremeditated as I feared, I can’t have this anymore. You hear me? I’m amazed that I sound as calm as I do, but of course I don’t let on. Because it’s not like me to confront her like this, without anger, but I’ve had enough and my foot must come down. She needs to know that this time it’s not anger—I’m past anger, into something more like tiredness. 

It’s been anger before, and at those times I have regrettably yelled and stormed out and drunk myself in a bad way, and returned hours later or even the next day, surprised to find her still there. The last time was bad, when she set fire to my new shed because she didn’t like where I’d put it. She said it interfered—interfered!—with her view, and burned it down when I went to the post office. She even took my tools out and laid them on the grass, ratchets arranged by size, screwdrivers by handle color if you can imagine such a thing, to let me know it was deliberate. The fire department came, ditto the cops, and I had to talk Andy Nagle out of arresting her, and the whole time that I was talking with him, explaining it away, she just sat there in the house rolling cigarettes. She wouldn’t even come outside. Afterwards, when the whole mess was finally resolved, when the neighbors tired of clucking about my heap of soggy cinders, I yelled and stormed around and still she sat rolling cigarette after cigarette, not smoking them, just making these perfect little cylinders. I kicked a hole in the drywall and threw that big creepy porcelain doll of hers out the door—its limp arms twisted in flight reminding me of something painful for which I was sorry and for which she stupidly forgave me. But she just kept rolling cigarettes, so I left and went to Nolan’s Pub. I stumbled in the next morning at the exact moment she was sliding a ham omelet onto a plate for me. Now how can you plan a thing like that? I asked her how, and she just told me to sit down and eat because I looked like I needed it. 

But this time I’m unable to go on with things the way they are. This time I have got to let her know that things are different. So there’ll be no mistaking it. And then what, afterwards? I’ll go outside and sit with the mowers while she does what? Packs her things? Do I really want that? Will I come back inside to find an omelet waiting for me? 

She looks at the corners of the room, at my mother’s chipped credenza, the stain on the carpet shaped like two kissing bears, at anything but me. She nudges some lint with her red toenail. Her legs are long in her tight pants and the sweatshirt that’s too big for her she’s got pulled down over her ass like a girl even younger than her 23 years. Her unwashed hair is tucked behind her ears, greasy and dark next to her face which glows so pale sometimes that you can see the blue mesh of veins at her temples. And me, tired and closer to her father’s age than her own. But good teeth. Not a single cavity, not ever. A house and truck owned outright. On her best days she gives me something unexplainable and wild. Other times, well, the other times is what we’re meant to be discussing now. I can forgive her—my capacity for it has seemed boundless at times—but even forgiveness must have a limit. A flexible limit maybe, but still. 

I want a drink. I want one badly. But instead of bourbon I tell myself water. I walk back to the kitchen and notice how the plants over the sink sorely need watering. For days they most likely haven’t been watered. I reproach myself for not thinking of them as I’ve gone about my chores while they’ve just hung there helpless and thirsty. This suddenly strikes me as unbearably sad and I want to ask the plants for forgiveness. I know it’s ridiculous but it’s nevertheless a thought that passes through my head. Quick and painful. She continues saying nothing as I fill up a glass for the plants. The water sinks into the dusty soil and I wonder if they can still be saved. I run the faucet for a minute to let the water cool and then fill up another glass for myself. It tastes like metal. The three mowers waiting outside will cover us the rest of the month if I can just get through this. 

I look out the window and think that it might rain. I should throw a tarp over the mowers. The clouds move fast against the sky. I walk back into the living room and stand in front of her and say, Jodie, what’s it going to be? I look at her and wait, but don’t cross my arms pretending to be some father that I am not. Neither of us wants that. I only wait and look around the room, noticing many small piles of dust. She’s stopped toeing the carpet. Now she’s holding a pillow over her stomach, squeezing it across herself like it’s something she lacks, unwinding the gold tassels. 

The place is a mess, she says, I should have cleaned. My scalp is itching something awful and when I scratch at it she finally looks at me and says that I should have gotten the refill on my medicated shampoo already like I was supposed to. She says she can’t stand to see me itching all the time. I don’t answer her about the shampoo because it’s not what we’re supposed to be talking about, but she’s right. The itch is back like fire. I’ll finish here and then go to the Drug Depot for my refill. Then maybe back to the mowers if the weather holds. 

Up the road I hear Dan Holcomb weed-whacking his strip of driveway grass. The whine of his machine sounds to me like money. He bought one of those gas-powered whackers last year, the nice ones that the Mexican landscapers use, but has no real need for it and does nothing to maintain it. He pulls out more and more trimmer line and thinks that’s all there is to it. He puts gas in it but doesn’t give a thought to oil—you can hear it in the way the thing runs. Soon that $200 whacker of his’ll seize up and I’ll say to him, Dan, what did I tell you about the oil? But I can make it hum again for $60. 

Suddenly it gets darker. I should turn on a lamp, but I don’t want to walk away from her when I’m owed an answer. I’ve done enough walking away when I’m owed answers and I hope she knows it. She’s still squeezing the pillow, but then reconsiders and lets it go. It falls to the floor and she pushes it away with her foot. 

Rob, why don’t you sit down, she says, patting the cushion next to her with a small hand with those ragged, chewed nails. I won’t sit down next to her and give her the advantage of curling up tight and sliding herself between my arms and legs, putting an end to the conversation. This has worked before but not today. She nudges at my boot with her toe and I take half a step back, which is not a retreat. 

Jodie, I say, don’t do that. Do me the favor of looking me in the eye and telling me what it is you still want here. Do you need the roof over your head, is that all? Go on, tell me. She pulls her feet up on the couch and hugs her knees. She looks away again, suddenly finding the molding very interesting. She’s shrinking, trying to become a little speck I won’t notice. 

Across the street, I hear a mower firing up with two pulls followed by a kid’s laughter. It’s Bob Gordin and that puny, wonderful little cancer kid of his, Toby. God, just the thought of it. Bob takes him to the carwash on Sundays and lets him stick his giant bald head—it looks just like a grape on a toothpick—right up against the windshield of their Bronco so he can watch those big brushes come down on their robot arms. I’ve seen them there, and you can hear the kid squealing like an overjoyed little piglet all the way in the parking lot and it just about breaks your heart. I fixed that mower for him after those mongoloid-looking Phelps twins threw it in the creek for a laugh, and Bob was just so grateful to have it running again and not needing to buy a new one or having to neglect his lawn, which he and Toby mow together every week. I told him it’d be $50, and he asked could he pay in installments. I said okay because of him needing to pay for his kid’s cancer, obviously. And the next morning there’s a $5 bill taped to my screen door and he’s out across the street again just mowing away and Toby’s with him, over the moon with joy. And me? Total waterworks. Even though it was only 9:30 in the morning, I had to go back inside for a drink when I saw the two of them out there like that, just laughing and mowing with pure love in their eyes. And the thing was, even though everyone knew it was the Phelpses who’d wrecked the mower, when Bob asked their mother to pay the $50 for the mower she started yelling at him—at him!—because how dare he accuse her little angels of something like that. So, he shrugged and walked back home. Sometimes you just have to suck it up, he told me later. What are you gonna do? 

Now it’s darker still and a truck pulls up. The bamboo chimes clang. Rain’s definitely on the way. Bob had better get a move on with his lawn. It’s a newer Toyota pickup at the end of the driveway, the kind that never sees any real work, and a guy about my age gets out. He takes a rusty Lawn Demon push mower down from the bed, a sorry old thing that seems out of place with the truck and the nice shirt he’s got on. There’s also a younger guy that doesn’t budge from the cab. Scowling down at the floor mats. My knees ache with the thought of rain. I do want badly to sit down next to Jodie and to forget things, even if only for an hour or two. I want to sleep. I want a hot tub. A trip to China. Ten thousand dollars cash. The guy’s pushing his mower up the driveway and I think: how’d he hear about me? It’s rusty enough that I wouldn’t need to bother with a tarp if it rained. I could leave it out there for a year and it wouldn’t be any worse off than it already is. His truck makes me think he’s got a landscaper who comes twice a month or that he wouldn’t bat an eye at dropping $300 on a new mower at the SmartMart, so why pay me to get this piece of shit up and running? 

I walk outside and tell him, Hey. 

Afternoon, says this guy and nods at the mower. Think you can get her running? 

Couldn’t say, I tell him. You been mowing the bottom of a lake with it? 

We both chuckle. 

Oh, you know how it goes, he says. Got time for a look? 

Why not, I say. 

I open the gas cap and smell nothing but varnish. I doubt it’ll run again. This guy standing here in a clean pressed shirt driving a city truck? Even though he’s bringing me business, I hate him. I could quote him my rate and in a day or two tell him the engine’s seized, tell him I did all I could but that she was gone long before he brought her to me. Still collect $30 just for telling him I tried. But for the first time in all the years folks’ve brought me their broken down mowers I’m disgusted by the transaction: they bring me some neglected and ill-treated thing, a tool not cared for and then taken to another man to recondition. They pay to ease their consciences for letting it get this bad, hoping that I’ll work a miracle. And usually I can, but right now the fact of it makes me sick. 

Afternoon, miss, he says. 

I turn around and Jodie’s looking out through the screen door. She looks past him, past me, at the scowling guy in the truck. She turns away. 

Pretty lady, the guy says. 

I tell him, Yeah, well. 

It occurs to me what this is about. 

That your kid there in the truck? I ask him. 

Yeah, well, the guy says, shrugging. 

Now I don’t know what to think of this guy. Is he here out of concern for his kid? Does he want to feel things out? See whether or not I’m the kind of guy’ll do something violent? He’s probably worried, trying to look out for this kid he’s raised whose actions he’s not entirely responsible for anymore. Wanting to know if there’s someone out there looking to do him harm. I think about it and wonder: is there? This guy, well, he’s just doing what any father would. My gripe’s not with him. I’m just so damn tired. 

Hell, I say, leave it here. I’ll see what I can do. $30 to look, no guarantees. 

Sure, the guy says. 

The same deal as the rest: he’s been careless and now he feels bad. He gets to pretend it happened by accident, or that it was inevitable. I get to pretend there’s something left to fix. And that it’ll be worth my while. 

I tell him to stop by in a day or two, but we both know he won’t come back. He pulls a $50 bill out of his wallet. Sorry, I say. I can’t break that. 

Keep it, he says, holding it out. Afternoon. He walks back to the truck, reassured, and drives off. I push his mower, that shallow prop, over to the others. Bob Gordin and his cancer kid are finished up across the street. He looks my way and points me out to the kid, who waves at me like a goddamn lunatic, grinning so hard his cheeks might burst. I wave back, the $50 still in my hand. It’ll rain soon. I realize that I missed my chance. This garbage kid, he was right there and I couldn’t even do anything. I could have at least gone over and yelled, kicked a dent into the door of the truck. They must be so relieved to know I’ve got no spine. It feels awful. And worse, my revenge will be inadequate: I’ll use their mower for parts. 

I pull the tarp over the other three mowers and go inside to Jodie, who’s back on the couch. Jodie, I say, please talk to me. 

You think it’ll rain, Rob? she asks, turning her face up to mine. And even in the darkened room, even unshowered, even after all this, she looks the way you hope that a woman who says she loves you will look. 

We should close the windows, she says, shouldn’t we, Rob? 

I ask her, aren’t you going to talk to me at all? 

She says, I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I? You always think we’re not talking. 

Her saying this makes me regret so much. I stand there waiting for rain, thinking she’s right, that I should go close the windows, especially in our bedroom at the back of the house because the wind’s coming from there. Jodie unwraps her arms from around her knees and pats the couch again. Up the street I can hear the Phelps twins running around their gravel driveway screeching like a bunch of assholes. Their mother’s shouting for them to get inside before it rains. I wonder suddenly, what does Jodie’s mother think of me? 

Rob, come sit with me, she says. 

I want to but I hope she won’t ask me a third time, because then I surely will. If she asks a third time, I’ll sit and forget and sleep and, in the morning, I won’t be able to find the strength again to stand here. 

Don’t do this, Jodie, I say. I don’t deserve this. 

Listen, she says, it’s starting to rain. Can you hear it? 

I do hear it, a few drops falling tentatively on our roof. Soon bigger, more assertive drops are exploding above us. I can hear the rain hitting the gutters and mailboxes and cars with sharp metallic pings, the dirt and the gravel and grass with muffled thuds. Before a minute goes by the smell of wet pennies comes in through the windows. It’s really coming down now, beating the scent out of the ground. Our bedroom is probably soaked. The kitchen’s getting wetter and wetter. I shouldn’t have bothered to water the plants because now they’re getting water enough through the open window. But they were so brown. How could I have left them like that even another minute? 

The Phelps twins have finally gone inside. I can hear their mother yelling, giving them hell because they’re soaking wet. I actually respect her for it. I go to the kitchen to close the windows but Jodie says, No, Rob, leave them open please. 

Water is pooling on the countertop. I take my wet hands off the window and walk back to the living room. I hope that maybe she’ll start talking to me since I’ve done this for her. I stand there for a moment, waiting, but she doesn’t say anything. Then I turn and throw the living room windows open as well. In comes the rain. I pull the door open and watch as the wind whips Jodie’s hair around. Puddles start to form on the carpet, swelling it, watering our house, leeching over our things, mixing with the dust to create a filmy paste. I wonder if I’ve made my point. I wonder what my point could possibly be. Of course, I should shut the door and the windows, start drying things off before everything’s wrecked, before the house fills with water, before we’re swimming in it up to our necks. But then I think: let it all go. Let something better grow here. 

She sits there, expressionless, letting the wind and the rain dance over her. Through the open door, I see the rusted mower. Now outside, the rain washes over me warm and heavy. I twist the gas cap off again and pull a book of matches out of my pocket and hunch over trying to light one. Finally, I manage. I throw it into the gas tank and step back waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. I strike another and another, with increasing difficulty, throwing them all into the tank. Still nothing. I’m soaked to the bone, not even capable of setting a lawnmower on fire, and I realize that what I thought earlier must be true. I’m simply at the end of things. 

My shoulders are heaving and there’s some sort of noise coming from my chest. It’s all mud now. My back’s to the house and I wonder if she’s watching. Does she see what a fool she’s hitched her wagon to? She’s probably not looking, though, but I won’t turn to find out. I just stay there, my boots sinking in the mud. Then behind me I hear the squish-suck of footsteps. I turn and there she is, barefoot still. Her face is wet with rain but to me it looks like tears. It’s the rain making the supplication, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. I put my arms around her and we say nothing as the rusted mower is overcome by mud bubbling up all around it, pulling it down. Soon it’ll disappear and one day even the memory of it will be gone. It’ll just be a lump in our yard, something to occasionally stumble over and look down at, shaking our heads. 

Andreas Trolf‘s fiction has been published, or is forthcoming, most recently in Juked, Joyland, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and has been collected in the anthology Life and Limb (Soft Skull Press). He is the writer/co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Sanjay & Craig, which appears on Nickelodeon, and is writing a new series for Adult Swim, which will premier in late 2018. His film, The Opposite of People, premiered at The LA Shorts International Film Festival in 2017. He holds degrees in creative writing and literature from New York University and was a recipient of a 2014 fellowship from the Screenwriters Colony. Contact him via Twitter at @AndreasTrolf

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Walter 

Walter sat up and listened attentively, his part was coming. The attorney coughed and cleared his throat. 

“And lastly, to my caretaker, Walter Medlin, I leave the contents of my garage, except for the Volvo, which I am donating to Meals on Wheels.” 

Walter’s gasp broke the silence in the stuffy room. Mrs. K.’s family sniffled and avoided eye contact with him as they shuffled out. The oldest son, John K. the Third, took a downcast Walter by the arm. 

“I’m so sorry, Walt. Mom lost it in the end. I wish I could do something for you,” he said, hurriedly shoving an arm into a coat. “Whatever you don’t want in the garage, just take to the dump. We have to clean it out anyway for the new owners. We’ll pay you your hourly rate. Will that do? And by the way, we need the clean-up done by the end of the week.” John K. the Third looked at his gold watch. “That’s in two days. Right? Thanks, we will be in touch.” 

Walter slumped to the parking lot behind the office building and got into his truck. He rolled down the window; November’s cold air slapped him awake. God damn sons of bitches. He didn’t know who was worse: stingy, ungrateful, demented Mrs. K. or her equally rotten, I’m-a-Big-Shot son. What did he know about anything? He hadn’t paid a visit to his mother in years. Walter had been the only friendly face, consoling her when she sat on her porch and cried. And this is what he got in return? 

He rolled up the window, turned on the engine, waiting for the heat to come on. In his mind’s eye he made a tour of the garage’s contents and familiar smells: the rust of garden tools; oil-soaked cement where the tractor had been parked for years; soggy cardboard boxes filled with ancient board games; old pine shelving; seawater-soaked blankets; and a brand-new walker, ordered by Mrs. K.’s doctor, still in a box. A gift of a thousand dollars would have paid off his debts, or paid for them go somewhere nice, as Joyce had hoped, but the garage was filled with nothing except worthless shit. Whatever fit in his truck he’d take to the dump. They could fucking clean the rest of it themselves. He never wanted to see that fucking house again. The unfairness of it all sucked the life out of him. He had barely enough energy to drive home, let alone face Joyce. 

At first their ten-year age worked to their benefit. Walt, in his twenties, needed someone to look after him and she needed to escape an abusive husband but, after ten years, their attachment was beginning to fray. He discovered his dependency shrinking and her neediness, stemming from an anxiety condition, increasing. Thanks to Mrs. K, and other odd jobs, he spent most of his days at work. Up until now it had kept him away from home where Joyce and her should-have tirades never failed to greet him at the door. 

Joyce said Walter should have never have taken the job at Mrs. K.’s; even she knew it would be a disaster. He should have never lied about his criminal record and gotten fired at Walmart. He should have never let his brother take his family’s house in Union. On and on until she got tired and, without saying another word, put his dinner on the table. He’d eat in silence, each bite sticking in his throat, as if she had served up truth. And then later, alone on the couch, he’d have his usual dessert: a nice bowl of what-ifs. 

Sometimes they were light and fluffy, like, what if he won the lottery? What if he had more hair? Lost twenty pounds? Or a girl at the grocery store winked at him? Sometimes they were heavy, sticky, hard to digest, no doubt like tonight’s would be. What if he had been born John K. the Third and not Walter Medlin, the son of divorced parents, shuttled back and forth between homes where love was worn thin, handed down like old clothes? What if they had not let him fail so miserably, drowning in the high waters of self-doubt? What if he had not taken that stupid dare and stolen a car in high school? 

Walter pulled out of the parking lot and took the long way home on Route 17 through Warren. The sun had set at 4:00. He drove into the infinite winter darkness, inky and deep, as if the sky and sea had traded places. It was hard to see where he was going, but it didn’t seem to bother him tonight. What if he kept driving? What if something else, another life, was out there, waiting? 

Woods 

When his father broke his hip, Woods moved in to take care of him. Not so much out of love, but because Woods didn’t have any other place to go. His year-long disability payments had ended; he couldn’t afford to stay in the house he had been sharing with some of his “bad” high school buddies, the “rowdies.” They had supported his plan to fake the accident at the cement factory so he could collect disability. All he needed, Woods said, was a little time off, to figure out what to do with his life, because he had spent too many years not thinking about it, like everyone else. But instead of putting a plan together, he fizzled the months, and his payments, away. All he had left was the excuse of needing to move home to take care of his old man. 

His father lived in a trailer park, having sold the family home a long time ago. Getting around a trailer was a matter of a few feet, but the old man insisted Woods do everything, like fetch his glasses from a nearby side table; turn the TV on and off, even though he could have used a remote; and practically feed him in bed. Both the blankets and his old man’s nightclothes were spoiled with food stains and smelled sour, like milk gone bad. The worst was having to drag his father into the small, plastic bathroom, soaked in the old man’s piss. Woods felt like all of this was some kind of vengeful payback for his reckless teenage years. Woods gave Marian an edited version of the past. 

He and his father had never gotten along. Join the Coast Guard, like I did, his father said. No, the ocean makes me sick. Then become a law enforcement officer, like your brother. No, my brother makes me sick. Of course the ocean did not make him sick, and his brother only did sometimes. No, what made Woods sick was the feeling of being stuck. Woods explained things got worse when his mother left them. After that his father stopped talking to Woods at a time when Woods, a teenager, needed him to care. Now, ha-ha, Woods wanted to yell at his 75-year-old father, you need me. But the role reversal gave Woods no satisfaction. 

“I have to get out of there,” he told her. “He is driving me crazy. He can’t hardly do anything without me.” Maybe he’ll slip, hit his head and die, but Woods kept that part to himself. 

“Why don’t you get him a walker?” Marian suggested. “He can learn to get around on his own.” 

Woods brightened. He liked Mar’s idea; it gave him hope. She worked as the Head Gardener at the Seacrest Retirement Community and knew a lot about these things. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the bucks to buy one. That is when he got his own idea. 

Woods decided to go to the dump in Rockland; he occasionally “shopped” there to save money. To his amazement, there, in the middle of the Larger Items section, was a walker, its long legs sticking up in the air like a dead spider. Woods jumped out of the car and took a better look. The walker was in almost perfect condition, except for a dent or two that looked like someone might have just thrown it in there. Woods inspected the walker more carefully. He noticed a small, blue sticker: BetaCare, Dual Release, 5″ Wheel, Specialty Model, $960.60. Who in their right mind would throw a piece of equipment away with a $900 trade-in value? They must have been blind. Or stupid mad. 

Woods had a bit of a challenge figuring out how to collapse the damn thing—it seemed more complicated than it should be—but finally got it in the back of his car and hurried home. The dump had only been open for twenty minutes. Sometimes timing is everything, not believing his good luck. He knew he’d need just as much to get his father to use it. Woods took it home and presented the walker, trophy-like, to his father. 

“What the hell is that?” he grumbled. 

“It’s a walker, Dad. It helps you get around on your own. You’ll be a real whiz.” 

“Take that damn thing back where ya found it,” he snarled, adjusting the pillows on the bed. “And stop looking so doggone pitiful about it.” 

Woods was crushed but wasn’t going to give up. 

“Look, Dad, see how it works?” He wheeled it from one end of the trailer to the other. The front wheels glided easily over the floor. 

“It don’t look anything like a walker. Carol next door has one. Hers has little yellow tennis balls on the ends. This thing has wheels. Looks dangerous to me,” he growled. 

“But, Dad,” Woods continued his testimonial, weaving the walker around the crowded space. “It has brakes. Brakes are good, not dangerous. You can stop yourself from falling. See?” Woods clutched the two blue levers on each side of the aluminum arms. The walker came to a sharp stop. “This is better than Carol’s. It cost more than nine hundred dollars!” 

“That’s ridiculous. It looks as cheap as hell.” 

“Come on, give it a try.” 

“If you like it so much, why don’t you use it?” he smirked, pleased with his joke. 

“Because I don’t have a bad hip and arthritis,” Woods smirked back. He watched his father’s eyes narrow. 

“Yeah. You are perfectly healthy, healthy enough to go get a job and stop hanging around pretending you are taking care of me. Some excuse, boy. You just sit around all day and watch TV, except when you are out with that dirt-digging girlfriend. She pays for everything, doesn’t she? Shame on you.” His father took a deep breath, his face hot and flushed. 

Woods felt his teeth grinding their way into his jaw. 

“Dad,” he said in a flat, calm voice. “I want you to try it.” 

“All right, all right, you sure know how to make me crazy.” 

He sat up and swung his legs slowly over the side of the bed. Woods moved the small side table out of the way to make more room. His father leaned over and gripped the arms of the walker. He stood up and took an awkward step forward, his loose robe trailing behind him. 

“See?” Woods beamed. “Now you can get to the bathroom by yourself. Next, the kitchen! Next, the grocery store!” 

“Ha. I’ll end up just like Carol. Her son got her that walker, and she hasn’t seen him for a month. You just want to get out of here. You just want me dead.” His father grunted and took another tentative step. Woods reached out with an anxious hand to guide him. 

“Wait, Dad. You have to keep your hands on the brakes, on the brakes, the blue levers,” Woods yelled. 

“You think I’m deaf? I know, dummy.” He jerked his arm away. The walker, weighed down on one side, tilted and fell over. His father flew forward, out of Wood’s reach. His head struck the side table with a loud crack, his body folding on the floor. 

Woods panicked. He didn’t know what to do first, call 911 or try to help him. He rushed to his father’s side. His body was heavy and limp but Woods managed to turn him on his back, his face turned to the ceiling. Woods kneeled and stared into his father’s face, searching for, praying for a sign of life. Accusation and blame stared back through cold, dead eyes. 

Marian 

Marian loved working at Seacrest. She believed it was her job to keep its residents healthy and happy by creating well-tended grounds filled with beautiful and colorful plants. She took it personally if one of the old ladies died. Her mother saw things differently. 

“That’s ridiculous, Mar. You can’t help them. Those ladies are ancient, on their way to the grave. You’re just a gardener, if that is what you are calling this latest job. Too bad you weren’t smart enough to become a doctor.” 

Her mother, like a prize fighter, lashed out with cruel jabs and killer looks, like the one she gave her daughter now in their pristine kitchen. In the past Marion avoided center ring, having discovered the futility of fighting back at an early age. But all that was changing; a new voice was emerging. She was sure the gardening job had something to do with it: the feel of warm soil in her hands, the smell of the ripe, wet earth, the perfume of rejuvenation. 

“Mom, imagine lying in a small room, too old or too sick to move. And all you have is that one, small window, four panes of clear glass. But it’s more than that. It’s a frame, a painting of flowers, a picture of hope: spring bulbs, peonies in bloom. Summer annuals in their peak. Healing colors and smells.” 

Her mother rolled her eyes and shook her head as she grabbed her purse and dashed out the kitchen door. Marian knew her response lacked punch but at least had integrity; she didn’t compromise herself with silence as she had before. It hadn’t been easy, growing up in the big house, left largely to fend for herself by a mother at war with her own misfortunes. Marion had struggled to find her way, taking one unrewarding job after another—sales clerk at Renny’s, waitressing at Maine Street Grille—until, thanks to a neighbor who needed help with her garden, she had finally discovered her calling, found her way. 

This would be her last day of the season at Seacrest; most of the fall clean-up was done. She planned to stop at Plants Unlimited on the way and get a few more tulip bulbs to put in before the freeze. White for hope, red for love, and yellow for friendship; for the ladies to see from their windows, read them like a living poem. 

She couldn’t discount Woods for the positive change taking place in her life; he did have something to do with her newfound spirit. Last summer he had followed her because she left her water bottle at the counter of the South End grocery store. He said it was going to be a hot day and she would need it, later telling her that was almost the truth. The truth wasI he thought she was neat and different-looking, wearing those funny pants with potholders sewed in for knee pads. Of all the so-called boyfriends she ever had, he was by far the most kind and gentle, even if he did seem pretty restless most of the time. When she told him how sensitive he was, he laughed and told her if only she knew. 

“I’m different around you,” he confessed. 

“Me too,” she confessed back. She liked how they took care of each other: saying nice things, listening to each other’s tales of woe. She imagined they were like two wounded animals licking each other’s wounds, giving each other advice and encouragement. 

“Don’t be down. You are the lucky one, Mar. You live in a house with two incomes, and you don’t have to take care of your mother,” he said with a weak laugh. 

“No, not really. My mom is never going to let me forget I was mistake and ruined her life. But I’m not going to let her ruin mine. Someday things will be different. I’m patient. Gardening teaches you that. To be patient.” 

That conversation popped up in her head as she drove to work, so she was surprised to find Woods in the Seacrest parking lot. Small, white puffs preceded him as he paced back and forth by his car. She saw a walker on the sidewalk and wondered what it was doing there. Woods tossed the cigarette on the ground as she parked and climbed out of her truck. He looked pale, tired. 

“Woods, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?” She zipped up her parka and hugged him. He pulled away, shivering, and held her at arm’s length. 

“Let’s sit in my car. There’s something I need to tell you.” 

“OK,” she replied, climbing in the passenger side. A large suitcase and a duffel bag sat in the back seat. 

“Going somewhere?” she asked, trying to lighten his obvious dark mood. She had seen him like this before. She rubbed her hands together and blew on them. 

“Mar, my father’s dead. I killed him.” His voice was barely audible. 

“What? Impossible,” she whispered, leaning toward him. 

“That walker.” He pointed. It stood alone on the sidewalk like an obedient child. “I got it for him. He didn’t know how to use the brakes, he fell, hit his head. By the time the ambulance got there, it was too late.” 

Marian put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. “No, it was an accident,” she protested, gently patting his back. 

“No, you don’t understand. As I watched the EMT guys put his body in the ambulance, all I could think was that I willed it to happen. I wished him dead.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Woods shifted away, indicating she should retrieve her arm, which she did. 

“I can’t stay here. I’m leaving, Mar,” he said stiffly. 

“When are you coming back?” She shivered. 

“I don’t know. Walt, my friend from high school, he and I are going together. I sold my dad’s trailer. Walt sold his truck. We’re driving west until we run out of money.” Woods shrugged. “We’ll see what happens. We both want to make a new start.” He paused. “You could come with us, you know.” 

Listening to his plans, she had pictured her own suitcase next to his in the back seat, felt the warm, westerly winds blowing on her face even before he mentioned going with him. Saying good-bye to her mother, leaving behind a trail of “you’ll be sorry’s,” would be easy enough. The hard part was Seacrest. The ladies. Her plants. The garden. 

“Woods, I understand, given all you have been through, but I can’t come with you. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m getting somewhere. I like my job. I want to find a place of my own, put down roots. And you are trying to find them,” she added quietly. 

He leaned over as if to kiss her. Mar offered her lips but he brushed her cheek instead. She reached a hand to the spot where his cold lips had been, as if they had left a mark. Woods placed both hands on the steering wheel. 

“Would you do something for me?” he asked, staring straight ahead. 

“Sure, Woods,” she gulped, a breath catching in her throat. She felt like she was going to cry, not because he was leaving, but because of the sorrow in his voice. 

“Get rid of the walker. Throw it away. It’s cursed. Someone must have thrown it away for a good reason,” he grimaced. 

He turned on the engine and slowly turned his head to look at her, like it was painful to move. She took his silent smile as a parting gift. He was already gone. Marian sighed, got out of the car, and shut the door. She stood on the sidewalk next to the walker, the two of them saying good-bye. Woods rolled down his window and leaned out. 

“Take good care of yourself, Mar,” he said. He quickly shut the window and backed out of his spot. 

“You too,” she called as he pulled away. She watched his car turn out of the property and drive out of sight. 

It had snowed a few days ago, a light dusting, a harbinger of winter’s blast; most of it had melted. The garden areas were soggy and splotched, black and brown spots where the sun hit and white patches of snow in the shade of the buildings. The staff had cleared the walkways, but it was too chilly for the ladies to come outside and talk to Marian as they did in the summer months. She missed the eager questions and conversations, the scent of Wind Song competing with the hydrangeas and Echinacea, the carefully combed white hairdos, but more so the unconditional admiration and appreciation, as if Marian were a flower herself. 

Last summer, on Fridays, she and Woods would go to Crescent Beach after work. They both liked to watch the sunset and listen to the beach rocks rolling back and forth, raked by the retreating tide. She thought about going anyway, like a farewell to Woods, but she decided against it. The beach would be too cold and dark now. Besides, she didn’t need any more dates with sadness. 

Marian walked across the damp grass toward the back of the property, bringing the walker with her. Next to the utility sheds, where they kept all the tools and tractors, she had built two compost bins this summer beneath large pine trees. The bins gave her a place to put what she had cleaned out of the garden; cuttings, weeds, even plants that didn’t make it found a home there. It’s the plant dump, Marian had joked to one of the ladies as she carted away a wheelbarrow full of green and brown stuff. 

Marian, instead of tossing it to the wilds behind the bins, decided to plant the walker. She dug the aluminum legs deep into the loam. As a gardener she had learned that nature would put it to good use. In the spring a vine will grow, small green shoots will find their way. 

Louise Turan’s fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared in over a dozen print and online journals including Superstition Review, Forge, Diverse Voices Quarterly, the dap project, and Existere. Her short story, “Foreign Lands,” was listed in the top five percent of submissions to the Whitefish Review’s 2018 Montana Award for Fiction, judged by Rick Bass. Louise posts frequently on Instagram where she had garnered more than 7,000 followers. Born in Ankara, Turkey, she is a former singer/song writer, prep cook and nonprofit executive. Louise lives and writes in Philadelphia and Owls Head, Maine. Read more of her work at: www.louiseturan.com, or on Instagram: @louiseturan.

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When Laurie Weber was eight, her father decided to build her and Joel a tree house. Since he was a doctor, she worried he wouldn’t know how. He wasn’t like other fathers she knew who’d built tree houses, who also played golf, read the sports page every morning, and said bad things about President Kennedy. He was different and Laurie thought he should stick to what he was good at, which was cutting into people. 

Her mother asked, “Do you know what you’re doing? Isn’t it supposed to rain?” She was worn out, not for any reason. 

Her father said, “I’ve got blueprints.” 

Her mother shrugged and went back to ironing, so Laurie said, “I always wanted a tree house!” She hoped she sounded cheerful, so her father wouldn’t feel sad and just give up. 

Joel asked, “Can I help build?” 

“I want it to be a surprise,” her father said and then went out to the garage, where he kept his tools. 

Seeing Joel’s face, their mother put down her iron and hugged his shoulders, then leaned down to kiss the top of his head. Laurie wondered why Joel didn’t know how to talk to their father the way she did. Then she looked for a glass in the cupboard, so she wouldn’t have to see. 

“When’s he going to build it, Mommy?” Joel asked. 

“Maybe it’ll be finished when we get back from Cleveland,” she said, like she didn’t think it would be, and also like the air she breathed was sadness. 

Laurie’s mother had grown up in Ohio, which was another state, and she was taking Laurie and Joel back to her nephew’s wedding. Laurie would have been happier if her father was going, even if that meant she and Joel had to stay behind with Aunt Hannah, who smoked. 

Laurie’s mother was the only one in the family who came from somewhere else. She knew what it was like to walk to school in the snow. She called Coke “pop.” She was different from them, far away even when she was in the same room. It made her glamorous, like a movie star, and also hard to see, float-y like a ghost, half in one place and half in another. 

“Is Milton Stern going to be at Jimmy’s wedding?” Laurie asked. 

Her mother didn’t look up from the slip she’d gone back to ironing. “Oh, no. He doesn’t know them. He was my friend. My dear, dear friend.” 

He was, Laurie knew, the man who had asked her to marry him, a long time before she had married Laurie’s father. He had gotten down on one knee and was too poor to afford a ring. Her mother cried when she said no, and he said, “Well, I had to take a shot.” The picture of him in her mother’s album was taken at an amusement park. Milton was holding cotton candy. On the edge of the yellowing black-and-white photograph, he had written, I’m ready! Are you? “Were you?” Laurie asked once—only once—and her mother had sighed and turned away. 

Laurie wished she was more like her mother, beautiful because of her name—Belle, which even meant “beautiful”—and the smells of laundry starch and lipstick, and the way she laughed at I Love Lucy reruns, and how she hummed along when “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” was on the radio. And also because two men had wanted to marry her, which meant she had figured out exactly the right way to be. 

*** 

In Cleveland the trees had soft, green leaves, and the heat took up all the space, so it felt like there wasn’t any air. Laurie climbed into the backseat of Uncle Arthur’s car and missed California, where it was easy to breathe and the red seats in her father’s old Imperial were cracked and felt soft under her thighs. 

At dinner Aunt Elsie sat at the head of the table. She was twelve years older than Belle, with orange hair and a bent nose pointing down. After their parents died of flu in the same week, Elsie had gone to live with Great-Aunt Tilly, and Belle was sent to an orphanage because Tilly didn’t have room. 

An orphan. Another way her mother was different. And Tilly not wanting her—no one wanting her—was something Laurie couldn’t think even think about, like the part in The Incredible Journey when she was sure Bodger was dead. 

Dinner was served by Rosalie, the maid. Laurie didn’t know anyone at home who had a maid. Rosalie wore a uniform and held the silver tray of meat down low with her brown hands so Belle could pick Laurie’s piece. 

After dinner, in the room with two beds where she and Joel would sleep, Belle took Laurie’s nightgown and Joel’s pajamas out of the suitcase. “Get ready for bed and Rosalie will play cards with you.” 

Laurie didn’t know how to talk to a maid. “Why can’t you play?” 

“I’m going out.” 

“With Aunt Elsie and Uncle George?” 

“No, they’re going to the rehearsal dinner.” 

“Why aren’t you going to that?” 

“That’s just for people in the wedding. I’m going out with other people. Friends.” She zipped the suitcase closed. “Rosalie is loads of fun. You’ll see. She’ll play cards with you.” 

Joel yelled from the bathroom, “I hate cards!” 

“Well, then you can watch TV.” 

Laurie said, “I still don’t see—” 

“Oh, Laurie.” Her mother was achy with wanting to be somewhere else. “Come on now. I have to get ready.” 

Laurie watched her swishing skirt as she left the room. 

“What friends?” she called out, but not loud enough to be heard. 

*** 

She and Rosalie sat at a card table. Joel sat on the floor watching Rawhide. When Rowdy Yates shot someone, he whispered, “Pew! Pew!” and his fingers shaped themselves into guns. 

Rosalie balanced a Lucky Strike on the edge of a glass ashtray while she dealt the cards. “Look for runs or three-of-a-kinds. You know what those are?” She put the cigarette between her lips and sucked in. “It’s hard to play with just two,” she said, smoke gushing from her mouth and nose like a dragon. 

“I can watch TV,” Laurie said, trying to please, to be small. 

Rosalie looked at her hand, squinting through the smoke. “Come on now. Show me what you got.” 

“Then how can I win?” 

“This is practice. Don’t worry ’bout winning.” 

A relief. They played for three hours, even after Joel fell asleep on the floor and Rosalie stooped to shake him awake and walk him to bed. Laurie thought Rosalie would tell her to go to sleep too, but she came back to the TV room, lit another cigarette, and dealt a new hand. They played through Route 66 and The Twilight Zone, barely talking. 

Once Rosalie said, “Your mama sure looked nice tonight. Where’s she going?” 

“Out,” Laurie said. “She used to live here. She has a lot of friends.” Then she held her breath, waiting for what Rosalie might say. 

But all Rosalie said was, “Uh-huh.” And then, “Your mama is a nice lady. Very friendly.  Courteous.” 

Later, lying under the bedspread in the strange darkness, Laurie tried to think about her mother as someone other people knew and had opinions about. Was she nice, friendly, courteous? To think of her being those things meant thinking of her as a person and not a mother. 

She tried hard to stay awake until she heard the click of Belle’s heels on the hallway floor but she couldn’t. Just before she slept, she hoped that other people weren’t trying to pretend her mother was someone she wasn’t: a person who had nothing better to do than be courteous to everyone and go to parties and not pay attention to her real life, which had people in it that maybe other people didn’t even know about. 

*** 

Laurie and Joel were eating pancakes the next morning when their mother entered the dining room and poured coffee from the percolator. 

“You look like someone on TV,” Joel said. 

She laughed, something she almost never did so early. Or ever. “Well, thank you, sweetheart.” 

Aunt Elsie came out of the kitchen, followed by Uncle George. They were dressed in tennis clothes and looked sweaty. 

“Belle, you’re not wearing that?” Elsie said. 

“I’m just having breakfast with the kids.” 

“We’re leaving in an hour. We can’t be late. George, tell her about the traffic on Fairmount.” 

Uncle George said, “There’s traffic on Fairmount,” and winked at Laurie. 

Her mother laughed again, took another sip, then gave her cup to Rosalie, who was setting out a platter of eggs. “Thank you, Rosalie. The coffee was delicious.” 

She was so sweet, remembering to be kind to Rosalie, leaving the room gently. Laurie’s heart hurt with loving. She stood up, pushing her chair backwards. 

Her aunt winced. “Oh, honey, the parquet!” 

Rosalie said, “Don’t you want to finish your pancakes, Miss Laurie?” 

Remembering her mother, she said, “They were really good. Thank you for making them. But I have to get dressed too.” 

“Well, honey, what are you getting dressed for?” Aunt Elsie was buttering a slice of toast at the sidebar. “You and Joel are going to play in the pool today.” 

Laurie’s face burned; she hated when her mistakes were noticed. “I thought—” 

“The wedding is just for grownups. And we have the pool, and it’s such a pretty day.” She nudged George aside as she reached for eggs. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?” 

*** 

By the time she reached her mother’s room, she had swallowed the tears that had begun to clog the back of her throat. She pushed on the door without knocking. “Why aren’t we going to the wedding?” 

Her mother stood in a white slip and nylons, unzipping the green dress hanging on the back of the closet door. Without turning around, she said, “You and Joel? It’s too much sitting for you.” 

“Why did you bring us? Why did we even have to come?” 

Her mother slipped the dress off the hanger and stepped into it. “Because I thought it would be fun. The airplane ride, Aunt Elsie and Uncle George. The pool. A little trip.” 

“We could have stayed with Dad!” 

Belle turned away from the mirror and knelt in front of her. The shoulders of her dress slid down her arms. In the mirror Laurie could see her unzippered back and the hook of her white brassiere. 

Belle grabbed her hands. “Listen, Laurie. I want to talk to you about something important.” 

Laurie pulled her hands free. “I want to talk to Dad!” 

The main thing: not to let the words come out of her mother’s mouth. 

Laurie could tell she wanted to keep talking, but Belle sighed and flipped her wrist over to check her watch. “If he’s working on the tree house, he might not hear the ring.” 

She was right: No one answered at home. It wasn’t even 8:00 in California. Her father liked getting an early start. Not like her mother, who could take a long time—maybe even years—to figure things out. 

*** 

After they all left—snapping at each other, hunting for keys, smelling like Chanel No. 5 and White Rain—Rosalie said, “You children want to swim in the pool?” 

Joel shook his head up and down fast, being funny. Laurie said, “I guess.” 

“Well, now, you just wait ’til I make the beds and then we’ll go outside. Go on now. Get in your bathing suits. And go to the bathroom!” she called after them. “No peeing in Miz Elsie’s pool!” 

By noon the air was thick with heat. Laurie splashed her way to the deep end. She hoisted herself partway out of the water and let her upper half rest against the hot cement. 

“They must be married now,” she said to Rosalie, who sat at a table under an umbrella, smoking and reading the Plain Dealer. 

Rosalie nodded without looking up. “I expect so. I expect your mama and your auntie been doing a lot of crying by now.” 

“Do you know them?” 

Rosalie closed the newspaper on her lap. “Who, Jimmy and Annie? I know Jimmy since he was two years old.” 

“Do you think they’re in love?” 

“What kind of question is that?” 

“Do you think they’ll stay married?” 

Rosalie peered at Laurie as though she were a speck in a tin of flour that might be a weevil. “Married people stay married. Don’t you know that?” 

“Not always.” 

“Me and Mr. Grant been married twenty-eight years now. Had some hard times, like everybody. Still married, though.” 

“What kind of hard times? 

Rosalie glared at her for a moment, like she was mad. But then she said, “You just stick it out, no matter what. The two of you. Just you two. No matter what comes.” The phone was ringing; she stood. “Now you children get out of the pool until I answer that.” She watched as Joel flopped into a deck chair and Laurie pulled herself all the way out of the water, then smashed out her cigarette and slid the glass door open. 

Laurie lay on the edge of the pool. She watched a droplet of water sizzle and disappear on her arm. She was almost asleep when she heard the door open again. “Who called?” 

“Someone for your mama.” 

“My dad?” 

“Nope,” Rosalie said, sitting back down, picking up the paper. 

Laurie slipped back into the water. She floated on her back, squinting at the blue-blazing sky, feeling the tiny waves lapping against her ears. She forced herself not to think about arguing in her mother’s room, how the bed was perfectly made before Rosalie said she was going to make it, the spread pulled hard across the mattress, tight, un-slept-in. 

*** 

She and Joel, limp and bored, red-eyed from chlorine, were watching TV when the grownups crashed through the afternoon quiet. Her mother and Uncle George were laughing like crazy people, and Aunt Elsie said, “You two,” and then, “How’s dinner coming, Rosalie?” 

Rosalie said something Laurie couldn’t make out that sent her mother hurrying out of the room. “Not much for us, Rosalie,” Aunt Elsie was saying. “Just do a couple of cutlets for the children.” 

Laurie rose from the floor and stepped into the hallway. She put one foot carefully in front of the other. 

“I, for one, would like one of Rosalie’s cutlets,” Uncle George said. 

She tiptoed down one hall and then another, coming to a stop outside her mother’s closed door. She could hear her voice but not most of the words she was saying, except at the end when she asked, “You’re sure?” and forgot to whisper. Silence, the click of the phone being hung up. And then something else: the bed creaking and sobs being shoved into a pillow. 

*** 

On the drive home from the airport, she watched her parents carefully as the night whizzed by. They talked about the wedding, how hot it was, Rosalie’s cooking. The twinkly lights of towns made shadows crawl across their faces. She wished her father would reach over and hold her mother’s hand, but that wasn’t how they were, and she tried to like that nothing was different. 

*** 

The next morning her father woke her up early. He was dressed for work. “Want to see the tree house?” 

It was down a hill, under fluttery leaves. A real house, not just pieces of wood hammered into some branches. It was small but it had a roof and a deck running all the way around. Cut into the deck, a trap door to be pushed from underneath, and a ladder from the ground to get to it. It had window holes with shutters that could be pulled closed and a door that swung open and shut. 

She loved how the tree branches were like a mother’s arms, carrying everything important, offering home. “It looks like a house in a coloring book,” she said. 

He laughed. “How ’bout we sleep in it tonight?” 

“All of us?” 

“Mom probably wouldn’t like sleeping on a hard floor all night. But you and Joel and I can use our sleeping bags. How’s that sound?” 

She said it sounded fine. 

All day she thought about sleeping in the tree house. Joel packed a bag with stuffed animals, a pretend hammer, and a plastic fireman hat. She decided not to bring anything, knowing her father would take care of the flashlights and whatever was important. 

Just before he came home from work, she found her mother in the kitchen, sitting at the table. She was staring out the window at the old loquat tree shading the hot side of the house. 

“What are you doing?” Laurie asked. 

“Cooking dinner.” 

Laurie sniffed to see if she could figure out what they were having. 

“In a minute,” her mother said. 

Laurie went to stand next to her. She had been staying away, afraid her mother might want to have the talk she had started in Cleveland. But her voice—shaking from excitement and too much happiness that day—was back to flat now. 

Carefully she put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “You could sleep in the tree house with us.” 

Belle shifted out from under the touch and rose from her chair. “Camping’s your dad’s department,” she said. 

Laurie watched as she went to the refrigerator and stood before the open freezer door. She pulled a package of lamb chops off the frosty shelves. And then stood there, in front of the open door, not moving. 

“Can we have them with applesauce?” Laurie asked. 

Her mother stood there a few more seconds and then closed the door. She set the chops on the counter and pulled a pan out from one of the cupboards. “I waited too long.” 

Only after she held the lamb chops under hot water at the sink did Laurie understand that she meant the meat was still frozen. 

*** 

Joel had a fever after dinner, and Belle made him go to bed. He refused and lay on the living room floor, sobbing and kicking. Laurie saw looks pass between her parents—her father’s like begging, her mother’s like no—and then her father said, “You and I will do it next weekend, son.” Joel cried harder because thinking about something happening wasn’t as good as when it happened now. 

She and her father carried sleeping bags, flashlights, and a bag of marshmallows down to the tree house at dusk. Under the trees the light disappeared: she had to concentrate on the dim, wobbly beam thrown by her father’s flashlight to know where to put her feet. She followed him up the ladder, through the trap door, and onto the deck, already dirty with leaves and acorns. And then into the house itself, which was just one room, and empty. 

Once in her sleeping bag, the taste of marshmallow still on her teeth (which she had brushed up at the house and which now felt stained and filthy), she tried to sleep. She liked the smell of the wood that had just been cut, but she tossed and turned on the hard floor. She heard paws on the deck and then on the roof, and acorns falling, and once, a barking dog. 

Finally, late in the night, she woke her father and asked to go back to the house. They rolled up their bags and stepped out onto the deck. Her father flipped on the flashlight and held the trap door so she could ease herself down the ladder. Then he threw the bags to the ground and followed her. 

“I’m sorry,” she said as they made their way up the path. 

“It’s all right,” he said, still half-asleep. That was how he was: He never fought for his way, never minded anything. It was like a knife going through her. She almost hated him. 

She knew he thought she had to go to the bathroom or was afraid of the dark or wild animals. But it wasn’t any of those things. And it wasn’t that the tree house was flimsy, ramshackle, not as perfect as she thought at first. 

It was wrong, the way they had divided themselves up. 

She was the only one who could see it. Right then she knew they would always need her to be the one to spot what was almost invisible—tiny cracks, splinters where it was supposed to be smooth, shards of shattered glass: all the brokenness—and prop up what sagged, all the neglected, tumbledown parts. 

In her own bed at last, knowing that, for now, she had done everything she could and didn’t have to be responsible for what might or might not come, she finally slept. 

Gina Willner-Pardo has written short stories published in Berkeley Fiction Review, Pleiades, Origins Journal, The South Carolina Review, Summerset Review, and Whetstone, which awarded her story “Accident” the John Patrick McGrath Memorial Award (1999). She has also written seventeen books for children, all published by Clarion or Albert Whitman. Gina’s book Figuring Out Frances won the 1999 Josette Frank Award, presented by the Bank Street College of Education. Gina has a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has studied with James Frey and also enjoys running, hiking, and kayaking.

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I hid the coiled spool of sepia film in the back of a desk drawer for years, years after I left the job, years after I moved from Michigan, years after I moved from the next state and the next. The desk was a family heirloom with Queen Anne’s legs that had grown increasingly wobbly over the years. The wide central drawer—where I kept the film—was deep. I came across the reel occasionally when digging for a pen or a paper clip. I usually uncurled and stretched out the strip, then held it to the light. The captured images were stored in a distant corner of my memory, but I kept the film to remind myself that I had tangible proof. 

In my mid-twenties, following a difficult divorce and a few years of struggling—a dangerous ex-husband with a substance abuse problem and trying to raise a child on my own—I moved from Ohio to the town of St. Joseph in Michigan, to be closer to my parents. I needed a new start. I didn’t plan to stay long so I took a job as a waitress at a place called the Cove, a restaurant that had a popular bar with live music at night, usually folk singers stationed near a circular central fireplace. I was quickly promoted from food server to cocktails, where the tips were bigger and the loads lighter. My co-workers were similar in age and fun to be around. We often went to Silver Beach on Lake Michigan in the late hours after work. We sat in the dunes where we shared a bottle of wine or a jug of sweet kahlua and cream that the bartender concocted for us (free of charge) after closing while we watched the tail of the moon shimmer across the metallic waters until sunrise, my young son asleep at my parents’ house. Summer turned to fall, then winter: fewer tourists, smaller tips. I decided to extend my stay in Michigan and needed a more serious job. 

Because I became a single mom in my early twenties, I was not yet a college graduate the summer I arrived in Michigan. After my divorce in Ohio, I worked as a reporter for a weekly newspaper while attending classes at Kent State. I wanted a similar job in Michigan so I could attend school at night. However, the daily newspaper in St. Joseph only hired college graduates full-time. I did some freelance writing and worked for about six weeks as a switchboard operator, providing answering services for local businesses and connecting ship to shore calls. So I was excited to interview for a full-time writing position at a family owned local radio station. I had a long interview with a man in his late forties (one of the family scions); he smiled and joked and asked questions that I knew verged on inappropriate though the exact nature of them has slipped from my memory. I squirmed in my chair, clasping my briefcase to my chest. The case contained a resume and tear sheets that he never asked to see. At the end of our meeting, he told me that the station didn’t hire divorced single mothers. Since he had learned my status early in the interview, I was angry. I knew that the policy was unlawful. But what could I do? He was probably in the same social circle as my parents. Besides, who knew what had happened except for the man and me. His word against mine. I had no proof. St. Joseph was not a large town and I would not benefit from accusing one of the prominent citizens of unprofessional behavior. 

I thanked him and left. 

Considering my options, I felt fortunate to land a position as an account executive/copy writer for a small advertising agency. I enrolled in night classes at Western Michigan University, a long drive from St. Joseph across flat, often icy, roads to Kalamazoo. In school, I felt I stood out among the younger students. In the daytime, I felt like a professional: composing copy, writing reports and making cold calls. Most of our clients were small. Our largest client—the one who paid the bills—was a frozen pizza company that had recently transitioned from local to regional, and is now a well-known national company. 

The agency employed only six full-time people, including the secretary. Given our agency’s size, we were often required to assist in projects outside our regular purviews. I was particularly excited the day I was to be photographed for a brochure for the pizza company. I was young and attractive (maybe part of the reason I was hired at the agency without a degree) and had on occasion filled in as a model at the newspaper back in Ohio. Still I was flattered to be the star of the shoot. I also liked becoming a more involved member of the agency. Usually my position was solitary, sitting at my desk writing or talking on the phone. 

I took extra care that day with my hair (thick and curly, swinging well below my shoulders) and with my make-up. I weighed thirty pounds less than I do today, but would have been called full-figured because of my large breasts. Although the catcalls and whistles I often received during that decade made me nervous, I remember walking with confidence during the shoot. I wore high heels (something I seldom did then and never do now). I even remember the texture of my button-down blouse, silky, and cream-colored beneath a pale gray hounds-tooth pattern, a little clingy, but appropriate for my position. 

The shoot took place at a grocery store with the head of the art department, whom I’ll call Ned, and another man, who—along with an occasional freelancer—constituted the entire department. I had never clicked with Ned. A thin dark mustache rode his upper lip, the kind worn by villains who tied women to train tracks in old black and white films. In his mid-thirties, he wore pointy boots and tight jeans and constantly groused about his ex-wife and child support. His smirks and snide remarks made me uncomfortable. There seemed to be a meanness right below his surface, a coiled snake ready to spring at any wrong move. Though I did not receive child support, I think my status as a young divorced mom touched a nerve. The other person on the shoot, Ned’s sidekick, whom I’ll call Harold, was a pudgy guy about my age with a blonde bowl cut and a talent for drawing almost anything, particularly cartoons 

Harold wielded the camera while Ned barked directions.  Yet Ned seemed unusually cordial to me that day. I felt like an equal, a member of the team—not that any workplaces in those days promoted the idea of teams. They were hierarchies and Ned considered me well beneath him. He viewed Harold as a trusted valet, a guy who was elevated or demoted according to Ned’s mood. Either the butt of a joke or ready to laugh at one. But that day, we three were a team with me at the center: 

Me walking down an aisle. 
Me leaning into the frozen pizza case to make a selection. 
Me, smiling, proudly holding our client’s round cellophane-wrapped frozen 
             pizza next to my face so that the label was prominent. 
Me repeating all of the above, over and over. 
The shoot took longer than expected but I felt good about it, good about a day away from my desk, especially good about my new camaraderie with the guys. 

During that time, Ned and my immediate boss, Tera, were dating. Taller than me by a few inches, Tera had short reddish hair and wore outfits that always seemed in movement, long flowing scarves, silky blouses and trailing jackets and vests. She smiled in such a way that her mouth seemed to open more in the corners than the center, like a flat figure-eight on its side. Tera was in her forties and in my estimation, superior to Ned, more sophisticated, more intelligent. Though I thought it must be difficult for older single women (back then, forty seemed ancient to me) to find partners, I believed she could and should do better. Her relationship with Ned was volatile with frequent break-ups. Ned was from north central Michigan. Tera had grown-up and worked in Chicago, done public relations at large agencies and for Playboy in its hay day. She and I had a few personal conversations over lunches but given her ranking in our tiny hierarchy, those moments were infrequent. 

Months after the shoot, Tera came into my office and closed the door behind her. 

“I have something for you,” she said. “Use it any way you want, just don’t say where you got it.” 

She handed me the reel of film and left. 

For the first time of what would be countless times over the years, I unwound the spool and held it to the light. The film contained a few frames of me that had been used in the pizza advertisement. The rest of the pictures were close-ups of my breasts. 

My headless chest coming down the store aisle. 
My breasts straining at the buttons of the blouse as I dipped into the freezer. 
My blouse opening a bit, revealing a hint of cleavage, as I made my pizza  
              selection.  
My breasts proudly displayed center-frame as I held up the pizza—only the tip of my chin and the bottom curve of the circular cellophane-wrapped pizza visible in the frame. 

I had been decapitated, only my breasts remained. 

I can’t remember all of the emotions that swirled inside me as I looked at the film. Who had seen it? The three men at the agency? Others? Why would anyone want pictures of breasts that were covered by a blouse? Why did they do this? How much of the shoot was spent on my breasts? How much of my day had been given over to that? Did they hate me? Were they making fun of me? What could I possibly do with the film? Could one sue for such a thing? Would I have to face Ned in court? Was it “just boys being boys.” I wasn’t actually hurt, was I? If not for Tera, I wouldn’t even have known they had done it. In fact, if not for the vast number of panels containing only the expanse of my breasts—particularly in comparison to the few photos that contained my face and the pizzas—I would have thought the breast shots mere mistakes, moments when the camera slipped. 

In the end, I did nothing. 

After I left the agency, Tera and I became lifelong friends. She told me of the time in Chicago when she and another account executive took a client to lunch at a club that turned out to be for men only; instead of suggesting an alternative, the men went inside and left Tera in a lounge area that allowed women to wait. She was the primary executive on the account. She also told me that if I wanted to succeed in my career, I needed to put my job before my son, before family, before everything else. I listened to this advice but did not take it fully—I wish I had taken it even less than I did, though it was undoubtedly accurate at the time. 

The day Tera gave me the film, I slid it into the back of the desk drawer at home. With the possible exception of later discussing it with her, I do not recall mentioning the film to anyone until now. I had a boyfriend then, whom I later married and later divorced. I did not tell him. My parents lived nearby. I did not tell them. I do not think I told any friends. I was ashamed and embarrassed that Ned and his sidekick had thought so little of me. What had I done to deserve this treatment? I was even embarrassed that my breasts were so large. How could I show the film to anyone? The agency later moved and disbanded. I don’t know what happened to Ned. I heard, though I can’t verify it since I don’t recall his last name, that Harold hung himself. Regardless, they both vanished from my life many years ago. 

Yet I kept the film for at least thirty years. I kept the film as it faded to a light amber color, dried and stiffened—would probably crack if folded in the right place. 

During my most recent move, two years ago, I gave the ancient desk to Goodwill. I don’t remember if I poured the contents of the center drawer into a box or into the trash. I still have a dozen or so unpacked boxes. I might come across it; I might not. For a long time, I didn’t know why I kept it. Far worse things have happened to me, and the bad things that have happened to me are minor compared to indignities others have suffered. But I needed it. As proof, yes, but proof for what? It’s not like I’m about to bring a suit against them—even if I wanted to, the agency was defunct years ago and the statute of limitations has surely run out—but I needed it for myself. Proof that even though I didn’t know what was happening at the time, it did happen, it happened to me and no one could say it didn’t. 

Garnett Kilberg Cohen has published three collections of short stories, most recently Swarm to Glory (Wiseblood Books). Her awards include two Notable Essay citations from Best American Essays, the Crazyhorse National Fiction Prize; the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review; and four awards from the Illinois Council of the Arts. Her essays and short stories have appeared in American Fiction, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, The Gettysburg Review, The Antioch Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch, Black Warrior Review, Brevity, and many other journals. A professor at Columbia College Chicago, Garnett co-editsPunctuate, A Nonfiction Magazine.  Find her at this address: https://www.colum.edu/academics/liberal-arts-and-sciences/english-and-creative-writing/faculty-detail/garnett-kilberg-cohen.html.

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Show-and-Tell 

At the age of ten I was run over by a tractor. I bear the scar to this day—a dent the size of a Kennedy half-dollar on my left leg, just above the knee. As tractor accidents go, I got lucky. No broken bones, not even a limp to carry into old age. For two days I rolled around in a wheelchair, took a crutch with me back to school. I didn’t need it (the crutch), could walk just fine without it, but what’s the point of getting run over if you can’t show it off to your friends? 

Crushed muscle, the ER doctor said. In the weeks following I repeated this blunt diagnosis for the benefit of my undented siblings, in part to register the permanence (you can’t un-crush a muscle) but also as a form of self-adulation. I was proud of my new scar because it out-did anything they’d ever done. When he was nine my older brother contracted one of those rare, polysyllabic diseases that strike terror into the hearts of parents. I was too young to visit him in the hospital, but I remember reports of noxious medicines and foot-long needles, doctors whispering in the hallway as test results rolled in. Not a fun time, to be sure, but no lasting disfigurement that I’m aware of. 

My little sister caught a pencil in the cheek once. I don’t recall which one of us threw it, but whoever did had impeccable aim. The point had been recently sharpened so the pencil stuck like a dart and dangled there for a couple seconds before falling off. Today if you lean in real close you can see the gray, freckle-sized stain marking the spot where the tip bore in. It’s a decent little blemish (points for originality) but doesn’t hold a candle to my tractor dent. 

The ground was sponge-cake soft that day after a heavy rain. Good thing, too, because on harder, compacted soil the damage could have been much worse. The offending tire was the chubby left rear—a Goodyear with a five-foot diameter and deep diagonal treads. When he gets the chance my uncle likes to proclaim, with considerable flourish, that a fluid-filled tire of that size would have torn the leg clean off, spitting my twisted body out the back end to bleed out where it lay. “Crushed muscle, my ass,” he crows dismissively. I wish he’d mentioned this before. My schoolyard pals would have been much impressed. 

The tractor in question—a 1958 Ford 871 ‘Select-O-Speed’—would by modern farming standards classify as a medium-small machine, not much bigger than a compact car. Of course it felt a lot bigger back then, considerably so as it rolled over my leg. But nowadays when I scrutinize the old tractor I feel a twinge of disappointment—the monster I remember now shrunken, defanged and docile, long past its prime, sulking in the barn stall like a dog kicked outside for bad behavior. It still runs okay (Ford tough, indeed), and despite our troubled past I will operate it on occasion when the mood strikes and duty calls. In our official dealings I’m careful to treat the 871 with utmost respect, one pesky survivor paying homage to another. 

My younger brother was driving when it happened. It was his turn that day to mow the ten-acre field just north of the farmhouse, leaving me to my own devices back in the barnyard. I can’t blame my mother for wondering, even now after all these years, what prompted my grandfather to hand over the keys. Weren’t her boys a little young to be manning a machine of that size? But this was rural Illinois in the mid 1970s, and my brother and I, at nine and ten respectively, were hired farmhands doing a job that needed doing. Back in the suburbs you lug your dad’s lawnmower around on the lookout for shaggy yards and lazy neighbors. But out here in the country we scored our summer bubblegum cash dragging a double-blade bush hog through the wide-open fields. It was dreamy, duly compensated work requiring decent hand-eye coordination and, depending on the field’s size, a fair amount of patience. Minimal risk, really, as long as you pay attention. 

And don’t goof around. 

* 

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi 

This trip to the hospital would be my second. At five I went in for a tonsillectomy, spent two nights in a Catholic hospital where nuns in rumpled habits muttered Latin prayers as they tucked you in. I’ve been told that today’s pediatricians think twice before ordering up this particular surgery, but back then it was as common as cornflakes. In fact, my little brother had undergone a similar procedure just one month before. I remember chafing at this insurrectionist move on his part. As the older sibling, didn’t I have first dibs? Wasn’t I supposed to get my tonsils out first? 

Still, I had high hopes for this inaugural venture, had preloaded the event with all kinds of storybook fantasies. Day one: ice cream sundaes and raucous board games with all the new friends I’d make on arrival. Day two: pajamas and popcorn, an endless stream of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Like a birthday sleepover, in effect. But I was sadly mistaken. By nightfall, day one, I felt abandoned and homesick, desperate to be back in my own bed. There were two other boys in the room, but we never became friends, never shared so much as a word, let alone a bowl of chocolate-vanilla swirl. My pillow was already soaked with tears when, at lights out, one of the crabbier nurses paused in the backlit doorway. “Knock off that silly crying and go to sleep,” she said, closing the door. In English, not Latin. 

Really I was in for an adenoidectomy. Similar to tonsils, which hide out in the back of the throat, adenoids live in the soft, fleshy roof, behind the palate. The surgery is often a two-for-one deal, both gland sets nabbed at the same time, especially if the patient suffers, as I did, from vicious earaches brought on by chronic adenoid infections. Those earaches almost always induced terrible headaches followed by dizziness and severe nausea. I remember long stretches of disembodied writhing in bed interrupted by brief interludes in the bathroom, on my knees, puking. 

One remarkably vile headache came in the aftermath of the ‘family fender-bender,’ so named because all of us (Mom, Dad, five kids and Tia, our aging Great Dane) were packed into the Chevy Kingswood when Dad, looking to cheat a green light, blindsided an unsuspecting Datsun hoping to beat a red. The woman in the other car suffered a dislocated shoulder, my mother a sprained ankle. Everybody else made it out unscathed, more or less, but the real trouble hit a few hours later when my father, anxious to put the whole thing behind him, proposed a backyard barbecue to lift the mood. It was a noble gesture, I guess, but in my case that sudden jolt back in the station wagon—the crunch of metal on metal, the jarring lash of momentum halted in the seam between two drivers’ conflicting intentions—put my head in the mood for a very different kind of revelry. 

I’ve often wondered if my slow pivot to vegetarianism started that evening. To this day I associate the stench of charred beef with that headache, those hours spent inside, in bed, playing mind-body cutup games, the toilet’s periodic flush a steady reminder of the role I’d been asked to play in this agonizing family drama. 

What really hurt was the loneliness, that kid-mind sense of missing all the action. It’s not everyday you’re an eye witness to the vehicular mishaps of distracted adults. Not everyday the pat routines of suburban life peel back to reveal what happens when the principal homemaker, ankle wrapped and elevated, takes a well-deserved sick day, leaving Dad holding the apron and spatula. Worse yet I felt responsible somehow for my absence, my expulsion from the post-accident party a kind of penalty for missing the post-accident party. A tortured logic, yes, but perfectly reasonable to my aching brain. 

At that age one doesn’t look for explanations. Five-year-olds don’t ask why me? We simply endure, wait it out. We deal with a kind of innocent, untutored stoicism. Adults learn to say things like, this too shall pass. Little kids are still stuck on this. 

* 

Risky Business 

My mother was right. Tractors are dangerous, sometimes deadly. But this is true for all age groups, not just wily ten-year-olds. In the state of Illinois, between 1986 and 2016, 851 people died in farm-related accidents, more than half (fifty-six percent) involving tractors or other farm equipment. Other notable causes included electrocution, grain bin and manure pit accidents (falls, asphyxiation), and animal confrontations (trampling, kicking, etc.). Two-thirds of the victims were forty-five and older, while kids fourteen and under account for only seven percent (fifty-seven) of all farm fatalities during that thirty-year span. 

As for fatal tractor accidents specifically, the numbers break down as follows: death by overturn (199); crushed by (9); fell off and run over by (49); run over by while originally on ground (34). My own accident, which was not fatal, occurred a full decade before the University of Illinois Extension Program’s Agricultural Safety and Health Department started keeping records. But while crunching the numbers I couldn’t help but notice stories similar to my own. In 1987, for example, a twelve-year-old boy drowned when his tractor slid down a hill and tipped into a pond. The following summer (June 1988) a fourteen-year-old boy fell off a tractor and sustained fatal injuries when the rear-mounted mower ran over him. In July of that year a ten-year-old girl met the very same fate. In December of 1989 a twelve-year-old boy got snagged by the tractor’s PTO (power take-off)—basically the double-knuckled driveshaft that powers attached implements, such as mowers. That same year a fourteen-year-old was crushed between a tractor and a hay bale. Ten years later, winter 1998, a twelve-year-old boy riding shotgun on a tractor died from head injuries after falling off. Ditto for December, 1999. And finally, in April, 2001, when I was celebrating my thirty-seventh birthday, an eleven-year-old boy, helping out in the fields, fell off a tractor and got run over by the massive rear wheel. 

The good news is it’s been much quieter since the early 2000s. This according to Dr. Bob Aherin, program director at the UI Agricultural Safety Department, who reported by email that we’re witnessing a “significant downturn” in farm fatalities, here in Illinois at least. Perhaps parents and grandparents are heeding the advice offered in Dr. Aherin et al’s “Developmental Stages of Children and Accident Risk Potential,” which I found posted on the UI Extension website. The authors caution, among other things, that ten- to fifteen-year-olds have a hard time processing information fast enough to avoid danger. Teens also demonstrate a weak perception of mortality and a pronounced need for experimentation. Combine that with a strong tendency to show off, and there you have it: a recipe for heavy equipment disaster, the farm kid equivalent of boarding the gateway drug train. 

My own accident, in fact, was no accident at all but a reckless experiment in backyard tomfoolery. To this day my brother wants to blame himself, despite my attempts over the years to convince him otherwise. Truth is, he was the only one to exhibit any info-processing alacrity when, after I’d already mounted the moving tractor, I decided to leap off (with hardly a wink at the potential danger, let alone any tangible fear of my own “mortality”) before he had powered it down. If you ever get a chance to operate a 1958 Ford 871 Select-O-Speed, you’ll find three foot pedals, two on the right (controlling front and rear brakes) and one on the left (clutch). When I jumped off, my right foot caught the clutch pedal, which sent me tumbling head first into the path of the left-rear tire. The next thing I remember is the mower’s steel hull digging into the flesh of my right thigh as the tractor slowed to a full stop. 

We’ve been over it a dozen times, my brother and I, but he refuses to budge. As the driver, he was responsible. But for what, I always ask, my egregious lapse in judgment? His failure to dissuade me from climbing on in the first place? As if he, the younger sibling, had any say in the matter? Because here’s the plain truth, brother mine: Not only is it not your fault, but your timing, intentional or not, may have saved my life. If you hadn’t hit the brakes when you did, I would have been pinned under that big fat tire—either that or yanked back into the mower’s gaping maw. Bottom line, you handled the crisis just fine, whereas I simply fucked up, my middling teen brain pretty good at gauging lift and loft but lousy at calculating potential risk. I got away with a crushed muscle, a dented ego. As the numbers show, other kids haven’t fared so well. 

* 

No Hard Feelings 

My parents were out of town when it happened, which means by the time they arrived at the hospital they’d already crafted their lead question. I’ll never forget my mother standing there, white knuckles kneading the bedrail, the look on her face a compelling blend of maternal worry and perturbed dismay when she asked, “What the hell were you thinking?” 

Not much, according to the brain scientists. At the time I had a notion, a rough vision of future success, a daredevil’s roadmap printed on the warm summer breeze. And then I went for it. The whole experience—my decision to jump, the actual leap from the tractor, an odd moment of ‘near-death’ tranquility down on the ground (more on this later)—lasted maybe three seconds, the bulk of which transpired in a brain still learning how to exercise some cognitive control in the face of tantalizing impulses and potential rewards. I remember lying there speechless and ashamed before my mother’s pointed question, but now I have an answer: I wasn’t thinking at all, I was seeking new experience, and to a healthy ten-year-old there’s a world of difference between the two. 

As any parent can tell you, the teen brain is very much in flux, a work in progress during those early double-digit years. While the limbic system (controlling mood, instinct, basic emotions, drives) tends to peak at puberty, the prefrontal cortex (controlling impulses) isn’t fully developed until the early twenties. What we get growing up, then, is a long stretch of mismatched cerebral development, a brain working hard to fine-tune its own synaptic timing, preferably before a moment of rotten timing messes it up for good. As Jay N. Giedd writes in the “The Amazing Teen Brain,” one salient feature of the prefrontal cortex is the ability to create “hypothetical what-ifs” as a guide to future outcomes. At twenty and older we start to run better “simulations” before committing to potentially dangerous situations. As adults we look before we leap. Ten-year-olds just leap. 

It’s the boys, too, who take the biggest risks, which may help explain the gender disparity in my sad fatality survey above. One study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence concluded that males ages ten to twenty-five exhibit higher levels of “sensation-seeking” and lower levels of “impulse control” than females in the same age group. Thus, a “window of vulnerability” opens up in most boys (and some girls) and doesn’t close until the winds of limbic change stop blowing. All of this jibes with my own experience. By age twelve I was siphoning Jim Beam from my father’s liquor cabinet, kept a secret reserve of warm Stroh’s hidden under my bed. I not only smoked the occasional cigarette but, for some reason, curated a large ‘cigarette collection’ stashed away in my bedroom closet. My friends (mostly guys) and I played a fun little game we called Cracker Jack: see how long you can hold a lit firecracker between thumb and forefinger before the damn thing blows up. Tame stuff, by some standards, but you get the point. Impulse control? No way. I’ll take my sensation straight, thank you. 

* 

Going Under 

The first poem I ever wrote captured its subject matter in a one-word title: “Death.” My guess is a lot of first poems explore the same theme, second only to young love, perhaps, or sports or puppies. For me it was a perfectly fitting debut. After all, I was a tractor accident survivor, and having just celebrated my eleventh birthday, I figured it was time to get serious and start recording my thoughts on the human condition. 

I’ve never told anyone what I saw that day, sprawled out on the rain-soaked earth, the weight of the big world bearing down on me. To be honest there isn’t much to report. I remember the typical time-standing-still part, the third of those three seconds dragging on forever. More than anything I remember submitting my body to the will of the Goodyear. The amazing ten-year-old brain may be lax when it comes to risk assessment, but as soon as my big toe caught the clutch pedal, I knew I’d made a grave mistake. I assumed the 871’s indifferent mauling would be quick if not entirely painless. I understood the end was near, and with that understanding came complete surrender, a breathless moment of pure capitulation. Giving in and letting go. And not a lick of pain (that would come later, with the icepack). The image stored in my adult brain is of the big tire’s languid rotation, those black rubber treads ribbing out against an enormous blue sky. The first thing I recovered, in the moments just after, was my voice: “I can move my legs,” I cried up to my brother, as if, having failed to pre-assess the danger, the least I could do was get clear on the damage. 

I held on to that poem until my early twenties, at which point I euthanized the poor thing with the help of a nearby dumpster, along with all my other crappy juvenilia. I couldn’t stand the stuff anymore, couldn’t stomach my kid brain’s reckless, and ultimately trite and pointless, literary experiments. What a relief, finally, to be rid of it. Besides, with all those hypothetical what-ifs up ahead, it was time to put my what-the-heck days behind me. 

I felt pretty lucky, too, to be hanging out on the lip of that dumpster, so utterly embarrassed by what I had just dumped in but perfectly aware of what it meant to be there, on the edge of it all, dumping. I was alive—and suddenly gifted with a new perception, some grownup retrospection. Nor was it a rash decision, that twenty-something exercise in scriptural purging. I knew the risks, I recognized the potential danger. I had run my simulations. This was a very different kind of letting go, in other words, and as we adults know, such moments of cognitive control can be quite satisfying. Within limits, of course. 

Bill Marsh is a writer and teacher based in Chicago. His work has appeared in Writing on the Edge, EOAGH, The Last Vispo, Sidebrow, and The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, among other journals and anthologies. In the early 2000s he curated the Heretical Texts book series (Factory School) featuring poets and writers from the U.S. and abroad. His books and chapbooks include Plagiarism: Alchemy and Remedy in Higher Education (2007), Recycler’s Handbook (2001), and Making Flutes (1998). Bill can be reached on Twitter (@buzzcampo) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bill.marsh.3705).

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Wrapped in the comfort of an afternoon nap, a thick wool sweater and a metaphor of scratchiness that might have been God, I barely noticed the thermostat throwing down at eighty-one degrees. The front door was wide open. The TV was on. There were six other beds besides mine. I was the only man home. 

But Bob could come through at any time. There were no locks on our doors, making it easier to chase someone down when they got shitfaced, nodded off, or OD’d. This wasn’t common, but we knew Bob was watching. That was enough. 

“Jim, this is Fred,” said Bob. “His brother is alumni.” Bob oversaw twenty-five men across four adjacent properties. He also gave a lot of tours. 

I jumped up, dazed, to greet yet another new face. But this man took the lead, offered his left hand, leaving no choice but to follow with mine. The other rules fell into line, the shaking, the smiling, but his presence cut straight to the heart, like breath. He brought it all into question. I don’t remember much else except Fred pointing to the shelf over my bed, then smiling. He moved in the next night. 

This was my fourth week at Shaniah House and I was two months sober. The original plan, six months of rehab at the Salvation Army, had been derailed because I was “a sinner in Jesus’ eyes.” This was a gift. How could a program of full time work and three church services a week, offering only one anger management class, one group therapy session and one twelve-step meeting in exchange, actually bring any healing? The night before this surprising expulsion I drifted asleep with one question. “Where is the recovery?” A voice out of nowhere, I know it was God, asked me the answer I needed. “What are you putting into it?” 

Relapsing seemed stupid after this third recovery attempt in five years and one thing I had never tried was living in an SLE. Convincing my family to front a motel, I researched Sober Living, cashed out my retirement, and began my journey of working through hell. 

Touring a few unimpressive properties that read more like mortgage schemes, I received a call back from Shaniah. Once we arrived Bob turned on the charm, his tone full of shit but the message was hope. I had no clue how to read him. He mentioned a waiting list. I liked what I felt and wrote the check for deposit. 

At night I prayed for those ahead of me to find their way, the subtext was relapse, and the call came a week later. I moved into ‘09 just before Christmas. The second of four properties, 4409 was unsurprisingly known as Animal House, mostly important for its two-car garage repurposed into a smokers’ den with carpeting, couches, a pool table, and ping pong. Every flat surface still held the littered remnants from the holiday party Bob bragged about a week before. I played dumb and asked Jamie, my new housemate, when it was. 

“Two weeks ago,” he said. I scanned his stained sweats, worn in commando, before watching him squint through each long drag of his smoke. I stubbed out my Parliament Light and crossed into the house. He quickly fished for the snipe. I carried my belongings to the double room at the back of the hall. Glancing around my single bed with its clear foot of space, a carpet of clothing covered the rest of the floor, a bizarre tumbling of shoe boxes everywhere. 

Jaime scuttled behind me a few minutes later. “This is the best room,” he said. The other double, tiny, cradled two beds into the narrow space of a furniture 69, while the triple, though bigger with a private bathroom, also increased the chances for unwashed ass and errant snoring. 

“Who’s my roommate?” I asked. 

“Nathan. He works graveyard, or something.” Or something… 

I was there over a week before officially meeting Nathan, though I felt his presence whirling through at odd moments in the middle of the night, finding him passed out fully dressed, drooling across piles of laundry the next morning. If it wasn’t for Nathan I could have fully isolated. Instead I had no choice but to adjust, and by adjust I meant lying in bed every morning, listening for a quiet moment to get up and shower, and then sneaking away without crossing anyone’s path. 

I explored this new city of Santa Rosa on foot. Three miles to downtown and seven miles across, I went to 12-step meetings everywhere, up to three times a day. I’d leave for a nooner at ten, taking detours through various neighborhoods before winding around until things became familiar. Returning, I might trail the bus routes back to the mall before chain-smoking my way home for an afternoon with my housemates. 

During my most awkward moments I’d smoke silently in the garage attempting to drown out the voice saying I didn’t belong, while knowing the thread of addiction was more than enough to be my one thing in common. I didn’t really want it, but I wanted it more than what came before. 

I learned to take naps, drink water, and eat food, the metaphorical equivalent of learning to change my own diaper. The subtext was spirituality. But I’d get squirrely by dark and leave before the shuffle of frozen pizzas and Taco Bell got too pervasive, weaving a new path to a new evening meeting. I found a sponsor. I took a commitment. I would do the work as suggested. Every so often a crew from Shaniah would show up, surprised to see me. 

“You want a ride home?” they would ask. 

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m walking.” They didn’t understand; they thought it was strange. They called me The Walker behind my back, but on my better days I would dance, too. 

Through the rumor mill I heard I was high. I went straight to Bob and offered to piss. He knew I was clean. At the next house meeting, at the end of group sharing, Bob called me out with a gaze over his glasses. It was the first time I spoke to this roomful of men. 

“I’ve been on meth for three years. Of course, I’m still sketchy. It’s called habit.” A few obvious bodies shifted under the weight of their gossip and accusation. I appreciated not looking them in the eye. I glanced back at Bob and he thanked me, but all of a sudden, I interrupted his final reflection. I rallied against the house’s persistent use of the word gay. 

“As if gay is pejorative. All those fucking movies you watch on full volume are so pretty because faggots were involved.” They had no idea I was so strong, nor did I. 

“Discomfort.” “Invisibility.” “Assholes.” My tirade lasted long enough to push the meeting past 10:30. People became uncomfortable, not because I used the word faggot, but simply because it was time to leave. 

Avoiding the obligatory post-meeting smoke, I snuck out the back to skulk my own drags around the block until curfew. I returned and the house fell silent. They said that they liked me. They said that they cared. I wasn’t sure if they knew me at all. Apologies continued for the next several days, with every slip of a tongue; it’s called habit. I finally belonged. 

Nathan was next. Two weeks after New Year’s and his secret, popping pills and buying tennis shoes with stolen credit, finally caught up with him. He only confessed after his piss tested dirty, denying it even as Bob watched him drain into a cup. He left for three days before his “Vote Back” on Wednesday. House rules. 

The room became mine, and for the first time since arriving I could nurture a semblance of privacy. Vacuuming under beds that had never been touched, windexing, dusting and scrubbing down walls so neglected that the paint rubbed off too. Crumpled tissues, crusty socks, a range of hazards hidden in odd spots by young men exploring new lives while barely changing old behaviors.  The intimacy of sharing this bed with the ghosts of men before me. 

On one quest around town I stumbled upon a local rug warehouse offering used samples. The random pieces of red shag catching my eye were trivial enough that the salesman just let me have them. I cut them to cover my night stand, to border the front edge of my dresser, to line the long bookshelf running over my bed, where I hung gold Christmas ornaments every four inches from thumbtacks around its ledge. Unlike the dusty thrift store decor and inspirational posters wilting from the walls, my tiny corner of the house offered a tinge of distinction within a beige situation. Every few days an ornament might drop to my bed, spurring a hunt for the thumbtack to restore safety to my nest, a training to tend to small things. 

Wednesday night, Nathan’s Vote Back, turned so contentious it ran twenty minutes over. Stuttering through the details of his relapse, he explored his assets and liabilities then faced a line of questioning from brothers clearly nursing a lode of deep betrayal. 

“Why didn’t you reach out?” 

“Why didn’t you confess?” 

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You think this is cute?” 

Angered sensitivities and muddled allegiances, Nathan was not voted back. The earnestness was comforting, like something in life might actually be real. 

He was gone by midnight and Fred showed up for his tour the next day, that time we first met and he shook my left hand and turned all the rules on themselves. No surprise the night after to find Fred scrubbing and vacuuming behind his new bed. 

“Look what I found,” he said, presenting a well-stretched lobe now loosely plugged with the orange cap from a rig. “I wish I brought my test tubes. I hang them like vases.” I laughed at this new man, more unexpected to shake me awake. 

“Did you inject?” I asked, unloading my pockets onto my nightstand’s red rug. 

“I loved speed balls,” he said, now flipping the mattress. 

“I never shot up. It might have been next.” With a decade of dabbling in powders and shards I never absorbed the drug culture. I avoided all knowledge as my source of denial and didn’t know speed balls were actually a cocktail of heroin and coke and had nothing to do with my personal poison, speed. “I smoked meth every day. I didn’t sleep that last year.” 

“You were crazy.” His laugh proved deep and dry with more knowing than most people carried. Back to his bed, he finished his cocoon for his first week without heroin. 

“This place is nasty!” he said. I got the sense that he liked it. “Go pick a movie. We’ll watch on my laptop.” It was the first friendly moment proposed by a housemate. 

“Do you want some tea?” It was the first friendly moment by me. 

The water to boiling, I rummaged beneath the plates and wrappers cluttering the front room. Scanning the assortment of new release DVDs already weeks over due I remembered my second week, being cajoled to Blockbuster by Jamie, if only because I didn’t yet have a delinquent account like everyone else. I returned with The Da Vinci Code and two mugs. 

“It’s licorice mint,” I said. 

“I hate licorice.” 

I laughed. “So did I.” 

Spreading across the narrow valley of floor between our two beds, we watched the movie for about ten minutes. As music filled plot holes, we started chatting as well. 

“Do you always shake with your left hand?” I asked. 

He dropped his head back in a quiet, exaggerated way. “I do it to fuck with people.” He always led with his left, unexpected, a détournement. He wouldn’t have called it that; there was no theory with Fred. But he lived to challenge the system, shedding new light with a playful new set of permissions. 

He mentioned my passport, sleeved by my wallet. People like us noticed everything. He brought his out, too, bursting with its extra insert and wild, bated-breath stories about skirting borders into Israel, Thailand, Afghanistan. They seemed to imply trafficking. “I used my twin brother’s if they knew me too well.” I failed to ask any follow up questions, believing that mystery offered a more thrilling truth, or rather protection from sharing my own deeper truth in kind. 

We covered his childhood, constantly moving with his mother and twin compared to my suburbia and three older sisters. I turned a bit jealous of this built-in best friend and imagined two little boys easily underestimated, always overwhelming, making trouble in each new town. 

His dyslexic dropout to my Ivy League. His sleeve of opium poppies to my puzzle piece. His missing father, my absent one. I spoke of regrets. I came out as gay. 

“You boys fuck the way straight boys dream,” he said. 

“Finally, the respect we deserve.” And we laughed. 

I was safe. As his story continued I realized he wasn’t that ravaged, and any mysteries I conjured turned far more practical. Spiritual bankruptcy brought me to my knees, but I bet the law was bringing Fred to his. His last journey home to the States was in August. “I was in China and had four days to get back for Burning Man.” 

“I’ve always wanted to pull my shit together for that.” 

“It’s magic,” he said, before noting my shelf. “Like those gold balls. You wouldn’t think they belong there, but they do.” A great secret felt seen, my own sense of beauty given permission to be shared with the world. 

“You’re right,” he said. “This licorice works.” 

Falling asleep that first night I imagined this man stirring fitfully nearby. Still swimming within the residue of drug-wrenched paranoia, my stories turned in on themselves and carried me to unbridled fear. A raid, moving shadows, laser guided rifles sweeping through our house. I became collateral damage as the Feds hauled his ass in. I caught hold of this anguish, prayed for relief before the dreams turned empty for rest. 

The next morning, into the garage for my first breaths of a smoke to find Fred well-wrapped in his comforter, siphoning heat from the dryer into a carefully constructed fort. I didn’t say anything because his eyes said everything, in a glance. I had seen enough movies romancing this hell. Fred never complained. 

* 

The days of our weeks were turbulent yet non-descript, full of unnecessary cigarettes, repetitive stories that were mostly untrue, and sinks full of parentless dishes. The more interesting moments were punctuated with Rock Star fueled knife fights over 3:00a.m. poker, illegal tattooing and Jamie nicking his scrotum with hair clippers. After twenty minutes of drama, he still didn’t tend to his wound and was afflicted with MRSA by the end of the week. I knew it was hell, from experience, and couldn’t imagine such pain on my balls. The house looked the other way as Jamie got dazed on extra pills, but then he cleaned his wound at the kitchen table and left his used, puss-filled gauze on the counter. I lost it. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Fred simply laughed at it all, then intervened. I avoided the outcome and went to buy yet another pack of infinite smokes and returned to the faint smell of bleach. 

Shaniah was small before Fred arrived, with small stories. Santa Rosa was the big city for most of these men, down from Mendocino or leaving Rohnert Park for the first time. It was not hard to assume vast difference between these men and myself, but Fred bridged me into the house with new promise. Just another guy, like us all, but a master of mirroring back as a way to ground the familiar. He would do the same with me, but his earliest reactions were never quite right, or I was too hard to reflect if only because I was still out of focus. No one else noticed, maybe Bob. 

* 

Fred became everyone’s favorite. He could do anything. Bob commissioned art to the meeting room walls. Using dozens of spray cans, Fred asked me for help. At first I said no. 

“I’ve seen your drawings,” he said. I guess I did have a flair. Having calmed down with the walking, I would frequently perch around town, sucking down lattes, drawing abstractly with sharpies. I had two distinct styles in my sketch book, and one involved lettering. 

I started on scale in my notebook, measuring and outlining wide empty blocks spelling RECOVERY. But I kept doubting my math and wouldn’t graduate to the wall. Almost finished on his side, Fred painted an urban-scape with twelve randomly sized buildings underneath two recovery symbols piercing like wormholes through space. He pulled off his mask and laughed at my math. “Teacher, it won’t be perfect if you don’t start.” 

I made my best guess and started masking off “Y” with blue tape. I inched to the left but by “V” it was clear my calculations were off, forgetting to add the width of the tape. I planned to start over but Fred intervened. 

“Just arc the RECO. Let it hang like a dick.” He traced his hand over the path and then moved to start painting the Y in green. He ran out after VERY and did RECO in red. 

“It reminds me of that song ‘Rico, Suave’,” I said. 

He laughed. “We spelled it right.” 

* 

In March Fred turned thirty, like me, but I didn’t fight for his attention, rather invited him to yogurt the next weekend. We strolled the four blocks and stumbled upon a warehouse for estate sale rejects. Fred scampered over the heaps of these items, digging around for at least an hour. I joined for a while then stood outside smoking. I ran out and went to buy more. When I got back he was wearing a trench coat. 

* 

Spring lengthened to summer and more housemates rolled in and rolled out. People like Jamie were gone, replaced by updated versions of the exact same problems. It was 2007 and most of these young men, barely twenty, arrived worshipping pills. At their best they were momma’s boys. Fred trained them all. 

“Stop eating those 99 cent frozen burritos and you won’t smell so bad.” 

“You’ll never get laid if you don’t brush your teeth.” 

“Laundry is free. Maybe you could use bleach on those cum stains.” 

He nailed them with the basics, and since girls were always stopping by to sit on his lap they believed everything he said. I was just happy to come home to an empty sink after teaching summer school all day. 

And it was a kind gesture because the sink didn’t matter to Fred. The only thing Fred ever dirtied was his spoon, a beautiful spoon, which he nestled protectively in his back pocket so that no one would mistake it as theirs. He knew every inch of its long pencil thick handle and round silver head, tonguing gobs of peanut butter straight from the jar or scraping pints of cottage cheese clean. This was all that he ate. 

“What’s up, anorexic?” I asked. 

“Gotta look fuckable for Burning Man.” 

“That’s news.” And I thought about this, and it left me unsettled. My belief of this festival said it was saddled with drugs. “You already look pretty. Don’t you get bored?” 

“I get one cheat a week. I love pizza.” 

In spite of these rules, coaxing Fred to join me for lunch with my parents at some posh little spot in Sonoma took very little effort. Fred was everyone’s plus-one. 

“Are those California poppies?” my mom asked about his arm, clearly quite curious about this “bad-boy” at the table. 

“Good eye,” he said. 

I laughed because I knew he was lying. But that was his magic, to make everyone feel right. My father was not impressed. Anyone not conforming to my father’s version of a high and tight attitude was a disrespectful slob. His grimace showed his disgust, and I smiled. I knew Fred would save me from the tropes of being their youngest child. 

“Fred’s going to Burning Man this month.” 

“I’ve heard about that on the radio,” Mom said. I was never surprised at her cultural cache, even with her conservative gilding. She’d spend hours wearing headphones in the garden and kitchen and would have been a hippie had she never met my father. 

“Is it all people like you?” I don’t think she meant to sound so rude, or specific. 

“My mother has gone. Everyone goes,” Fred flirted. “Even a woman like you.” 

I never understood straight courtship, but with Fred’s words my mom blushed just a bit. 

Lunch ended as expected, with trained smiles. My mom remembered a basket of lemons in the car which Fred duly accepted. We thanked them, I hugged them, before skirting away. We hopped though thrift stores on the way back home, Fred scouring women’s clothing for costumes that balanced between sensibly warm yet worthy of Fiona Apple. I was far more predictable, landing at the register with my dysfunctional preppy wares. Standing in line I broke the news that someone in our chrysalis was about to spread his wings. 

“You’re leaving me!” he joked. He knew I would make it personal, but he didn’t know the truth. “My new job… and I just don’t want to deal with Matt.” Matt, a recently arrived pill head, stayed up until dawn and blamed his flat feet for his stomping. His doctor said he couldn’t be drafted for war, which somehow made him a pacifist, which somehow meant we should be more accepting to the noise. It made no sense, and that wasn’t the truth. 

I was starting to realize my annoyance towards Fred, and by annoyance I meant having skeptical feelings concerning his upcoming trip. I didn’t like thinking he might go and relapse. And if I found out he did, I’d be trapped between turning him in and keeping a secret from the house. But Bob gave him the pass, so it wasn’t really my business. I wondered how much of a friend I could be since the subtext was actually jealousy. So, I decided to move instead. 

But only to 4417, into the smaller double with drawers under my bed, two longer shelves, and only one closet with no space for me. It happened the week Fred was gone. I left the red carpet and gold ornaments behind. 

My new roommate, Brian, hung his computer over his bed, slept fully dressed and wore three pairs of socks. He laid there most days and must not have known that he smelled. Another housemate was clearly on meth, either never sitting long enough for anyone to care, or I was the only one who noticed. The other men in this house, a bit more mature, still rippled with undercurrents of alcohol. The front porch as our smoke stoop, these divorced fathers and tradesmen with furrowing brows perhaps went to meetings, perhaps watched TV, before going to sleep, to do it again. 

Somehow, I missed these boring details when I chose this new house, or wasn’t listening, or somehow convinced myself delusion was a better choice than staying with Fred. I started feeling alone, and it felt normal again. It was a bad trade. 

Fall bringing the darkness, one Saturday evening I swung through the empty garage of 4409. I once believed loneliness was an attribute, to not feel so sad for being alone. Back then I had drugs. Fred soon emerged for a smoke. 

“Where are your babies?” I asked. “Broomball,” he said. “Let’s go to a movie.” Back then Google would message when you sent it a text. I mentioned a re-released Blade runner and Fred turned rather giddy. 

“What do you mean, never seen it?” He spread jocular shame so thick that I had no choice but to pay for the tickets. We were the only two people there. 

* 

I turned a year sober in November and Shaniah celebrated with cake after the house meeting. Fred bought me a scarf that weekend and wrote a rough note. “I got in on clearance, just how you like it.” 

“Let’s watch a movie,” I said. “Pizza’s on me.” 

4417 was quiet. I pulled out my sketchbook to draw as we watched some quasi-biblical horror flick called The Reaping. My rules for coloring allowed me six sharpies, to be used in very distinct ways. But the drawing proved beautiful before I was done and I knew I should stop. But my inner “good-boy” could not be controlled. There was still one more rule to follow. 

“You fucked it up,” he said, from his end of the couch. 

* 

After the start of the New Year I added two education classes on top of my full-time teaching. Losing sight of what mattered, rapid currents basically pulled me through my weekly routine with quick glimpses of Fred. I somehow stayed afloat with loose tethers. One late night during midterms after way too much coffee I spun into bed and found a gift on my pillow. Picking up this gold Christmas ball, I knew what it meant. I took a long soulful breath and then dashed two houses over to give that fucker a hug. 

* 

I then leveled up to the Shaniah three-quarter house just down the road. Not wanting to run away too quickly from this system that saved me, I appreciated its relaxed structure. No curfew. Fred followed suit, arriving after another meander through Burning Man. 

“I got my GED,” he announced. He rarely reported achievements since actions always proved his best skills. 

“Where?” I asked. 

“Black Rock High School.” At Burning Man. “I’m starting at the JC.” 

I knew enough not to doubt it, yet still held faint suspicion. Together we kept a clean, quiet ship in our two-bedroom condo, living a certain urban lifestyle within this largely agricultural county. Game nights at the AA clubhouse, dancing amongst wafts of patchouli, perusing steampunk octopi and the early adopter ambush of succulents at holiday craft fairs. Flight of the Conchords worked well on those odd Sunday nights when we both stayed closer to home. I quit smoking. 

One night he gifted me an odd metal sculpture. “My first weld,” he said, pointing out all the things he still needed to learn. But it wasn’t un-pretty. It made a quick home on my altar, nestling behind my one Christmas ball, near the mirrored box holding my Gita. 

“Why welding?” I asked, imagining a full life for Fred where owning his original art would bring rewards of “I knew him when.” 

“My buddy needs help building a small replica of the Golden Gate.” The story continued and held all the sadness behind such a memorial bridge. But there was more. After finishing his welding sequence Fred left for underwater certification at a marine diving tech in Santa Barbara. I stayed local, but finally moved out on my own. 

That March a calendar alert reminded me of his birthday. I sent a text but wasn’t surprised when I heard nothing back. He called later that year. 

“Bet you never thought I would be valedictorian of anything,” he said, right after I answered. I wasn’t surprised he was top of his class. Our call ended short because it was time for his speech. He said he was nervous to read from his cards. 

“You know they all love you.” 

* 

The next year I texted birthday wishes and he actually replied. 

“Where are you?” I sent. 

“I’m a trained seal in the Gulf.” He explained fetching wrenches whenever they dropped from the rigs, and spending time underwater in a compression apartment. I knew he had practice with close quarters. 

“What about living on land?” 

He sent a photo of his life in the South. 

“Who’s that behind you? He looks hot.” 

Another pic followed, one of Fred with a shit-eating grin embracing this kid over his shoulder. The caption read, “wish you were fucking.” 

* 

Dumb luck somehow carried his birthday reminder from cell phone to smart phone. I kept texting each year. He never replied again. But we hung out one final time, early summer. He had moved back to Shaniah and not because it was a cheap place to live. I still didn’t ask much, assuming I knew more than enough. But what kind of friend was that? 

I mentioned lining up my first trip to Black Rock City. I imagined running into him there, which was somehow more interesting than spending time with him then. 

“You never reply to my texts, old man,” I said. 

“I hate spelling,” he said. I had forgotten. 

There wasn’t much left to say. The best subject as memory, and the subtext of relishing fondness, for sadness, that letting go often requires. 

I texted this March, on his fortieth birthday. I didn’t know it was in vain. 

I texted last March on his thirty-ninth birthday. I didn’t know it was in vain. 

The rumor mill told me Fred died in the bathroom, at a National Parkin early 2016. It didn’t quite sound like the stark, final moment one might have expected. It felt like a man who was managing his shit. He was camping. Perhaps he was functioning. Perhaps it was any other day. But the subtext was fentanyl. And Fred was a junkie, well-steeped in drug culture before the pharmaceutical diaspora of today. 

And I want to hate the youngsters, the Jamies and Matts, and the doctors with their glut of lazy prescriptions kicking back through the stultified marketplace. I want to find fault but I don’t want the feeling of blame. I don’t want the feeling. 

The last proxy sighting of Fred was by Wood. Wood was a sweet, mellow chick who we met at a barbecue our first summer. A decade our junior, Wood seemed to get sober out of elementary school, told saltier jokes than most inappropriate men, and drove me to a school one night so we could be two freaks on the swings. Fred and Wood hit it off too, but not in any way where she started stalking him like the others. She’d take us to meetings and show us how to have a good time in the back row. Fred spread the word of Burning Man and she has gone ever since. 

“I saw Fred at 8:30 in 2015,” she told me this summer. She didn’t mean the time 8:30, but rather the place because time is a place in Black Rock City. “He was with some girl and he called, ‘Hey, are you Wood?’ and I said ‘yup.’” There wasn’t much else to report. 

Not that I hadn’t tried to find him myself. Seeing it perched all over the city, I chased down the Golden Gate Bridge my first couple years. Circling with my bike and peeking around, I never found anyone responsible enough to ask where Fred was. 

* 

When I first met Fred he led with his left hand. He said it was to fuck with me. I didn’t ask the next question, the “where did it come from?” It might have been because he was left handed and it just happened one day. Maybe it hid his track marks, when he forgot to cover his arms. We all have truths that lie for us in other ways. 

And when they found Fred, I’m not sure which arm it was in, if he looked peaceful, covered in vomit or blood, or what color the wall might have been. The story won’t change, how we laid back in our room that first night. 

James Metzger lives in the space of translation between coincidence and serendipity. Recent literary work magnifies the details just beyond explicit understanding, where nothing is personal yet everything is, while his current theatrical work with Eyezen Presents strives to elevate the stories of queer ancestors. His writing has been published online, in print and anthologized, but his best work often takes place on the dance floor. Links to additional writing and creative projects can be found at edwardbutcher.com. FB: James Edward Metzger. IG: @0ftaway.

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In Richmond in the 1980s I lived next door to Kent, a Baptist missionary who was off for Tanzania soon, “Bringing the word of the Lord, just testifying.” One afternoon I heard a bit of that in the backyard after birds had comprehensively soiled his laundry, sheets and shirts splattered by what must have been a truly Hitchcockian flock. “Bastards… 27 pieces, got 21. Son of a bitch….” This went on for a while, addressed to nobody, and I was impressed. For a missionary, the man could curse. 

I don’t know why such things are often more interesting than being spoken to directly. I’m probably not any snoopier than average, although being a writer might make you that way (or vice versa). I’m certainly avid for ideas I don’t have to come up with myself. And I’ve gotten some good ones by listening to what isn’t, strictly speaking, any of my business. 

I don’t do it as an eavesdropper. Technically that requires you to stand in an yfesdrype, Old English for “the place where rainwater drips off the roof,” which is likely to involve muddy shoes, legal action and, at least where I live, firearms. But it’s simple enough without all that. I keep my ears open, I’m extremely temptable from productive work, and I have the concentration powers of a fruit fly. So I hear things. 

The words back me up. German for “eavesdrop,” lauschen, is cognate with both “loiter” and “lurk,” two of my favorite activities, and with the Dutch for “delay” and “linger” (ditto), and even with the Gothic for “mislead.” Somebody’s been doing this for a lot longer than we’ve had names for it. Journalists and gossips aren’t the only ones curious about what they’re not being told. 

In any case it’s hard not to overhear. It’s unavoidable now. People sprout phones like derringers from coat sleeves to yammer in restaurants and elevators, on trains, at ball games and movies, and for all I know at funerals. The cellular revolution has altered, along with much else, what counts as private. Somehow the act of speaking in public with a person who isn’t there, once the surest sign of madness, frees us from old prohibitions against airing dirty laundry, or even the most mundane personal particulars, among complete strangers at volumes appropriate for hailing a cab. 

I’m a little too private to feel so free myself, but I’m as interested in people’s stories as anyone, so what’s curious is how little attraction most such conversations hold for me. I like the kind with a touch of mystery and a clear and present listener, someone who isn’t me. There’s none of that in a one-sided, half-shouted discussion of lunch plans or what Ted said at the shareholders’ meeting. 

We all live for stories, though, live by them. And for me the word-snatches that separate themselves from the noise, leaping out of the rhubarb — a word I’m told actors say in crowd scenes (along with “watermelon”) to sound like conversation — provide a story in embryo. A website called Overheard in New York invites city dwellers to send in their favorites, and the first two I looked at were: 

Italian dude: So, are you interested in men? 
Coffee house chick: I’m only interested in alternative lifestyle karaoke characters. 

Guy looking at books, to no one in particular: I don’t want to hear or see anything about the devil, demons, voodoo or big hairy black guys. 

Admittedly these could be made up, who knows. The temptation to embellish, at least, must be strong. But if you hang around humanity long enough, loitering and lingering, this begins to sound like people you’ve met. 

It’s funny though. Whether overheard or not, just talking to people other than yourself or God (or as with Kent, possibly both) doesn’t render you more honest, less filtered, or suddenly fascinating. Another curiosity, then, is why I ever find such conversations interesting. But I do. In Boston once, from the other side of a hedge (an organic eave), I heard a construction worker tell his friend, “Sox gonna take dat dive anyway. Don’t mattah how fah they out, still gonna take dat plunge.” Nothing very illuminating, especially if you were a Red Sox fan in the ‘90s, but it delighted me anyway. As did hearing this between two women at a mall, on a stone bench screened by potted plants: 

I had the heart-to-heart talk of my life last night. 

With Roy? 

No, with some guy I met in the Jacuzzi. You can tell someone anything if you’re never gonna see them again. 

Maybe the fragmented nature of these stories (and, like it or not, our life stories) makes us eager to fill in the blanks, connecting to clearer narratives than our own. I think one reason we read, and especially reread, novels is to experience a story from before the beginning to after the end, something that involves considerably more guesswork in real life. 

Or maybe it’s just fun, especially when we get things wrong — as when I once heard my brother say from the next room, “I think I’ve found a way to use my obsession with sex to my advantage.” It was actually “sets,” but I don’t believe I’m the only English speaker who would have made that mistake. “Sets” makes for a very unlikely sentence, unless you know my brother. And besides, “sex” is one of those words we seem programmed to hear even when we’re not listening. I taught in college for years, and more than once I quieted an unruly class by saying “sex” with no more emphasis or volume than all my politer cues (“Time to get to work, people… Let’s settle down”) but with drastically different effect. Students ceased the rustle and chatter and looked around, vaguely confused, not sure why they’d stopped. 

I know this from the other side of the eaves, too. One university where I worked had a large Asian population, and conversations on the shuttle bus flowed over me in Japanese, Chinese, Korean — I never knew which, ignorant of all — without my understanding a word. I didn’t listen (why would I?) but my brain evidently did, trying to make meaning out of rainwater. One afternoon I was startled to hear a young man in conversation behind me say “Niggaz is hard.” It yanked my head up from the magazine the way my name would have, or a sudden modulation from normal voice to a whisper, something that also pricks up our ears. I couldn’t ask him what he’d really said, of course, and I didn’t want to. On the same bus the day before, an Asian girl across the aisle referred abruptly to a “marijuana shit dome,” which made my morning. Brains are strange things. Mine, anyway. 

I’m always pleased to find I’m not alone in this, whether it’s mishearing song lyrics or trying to force meaning from a foreign utterance like some linguistic lemon squeezer. In a bar in Wales I once found myself leaning toward people I didn’t think I was even paying attention to, my brain trying its damnedest to shape words from the English-ish welter of Welsh. The British slang for elaborate nonsense, “All my eye and Betty Martin,” derives from a sailor overhearing, in some Catholic corner of empire, the Latin prayer Ora pro mihi, beata Martine (Pray for me, blessed Martin). The happy fact that Saint Martin of Tours is the patron saint of innkeepers and reformed drunkards doesn’t alter the lesson at all, since I walk around half the time word-drunk, as most of us do from an early age. Before we can read or even speak, we listen. And the mystery of human speech, once solved, fiercely resists recoding. We make meaning any way we can, sometimes carving the puzzle pieces to fit. 

The mystery, I think, is what finally appeals: that intimation you aren’t meant to share, the half-heard story you’ll never complete. I once found in a used book (The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, of all things) a 1968 drugstore receipt from Modesto, California with a handwritten name and an Rx number and price. Nothing earthshaking, but did Nancy S get relief? Did Dr. B make the right call? Was it worth $1.60? (Those were different times.) A more enigmatic message awaited me in a library book — it really should have been the Holmes — in the form of a scrap of paper scrawled in trembling ink: Prof. and Mrs. LeClerc: The repairman could not     You don’t have to be unusually impressionable to hear the intrigue in that. What couldn’t the repairman? And why not? I still wonder. 

Last words, famous or not, have always struck me as the ideal category of this. Not ones that strike the ear as scripted and rehearsed (Anna Pavlova: “Get my swan costume ready”) or the undoubtedly apocryphal, or even the perfectly apt but slightly early. Oscar Wilde, for instance, did say the legendary “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do,” but it was about a week before he passed. At the end he was murmuring a shred of Catholic prayer. My favorites are those that seem addressed not to a deathbed audience or posterity but to some version of Professor LeClerc, whether earthly or divine. Henry David Thoreau’s bedside exchange with a priest is often cited as a classic of the form, and rightly so, particularly as it seems to have actually happened. 

Have you made peace with your God? 

We never quarreled. 

Aren’t you concerned about the next world? 

One world at a time. 

His final words, though, like Wilde’s, came later. I suppose this disappoints lovers of witty repartee, but how many of us will really be in the mood for epigrams with our last breath? And besides, I like his true farewell better. Those gathered around the muse of Walden Pond as he expired heard him say “Now comes good sailing,” followed after a moment by the single words “moose” and “Indian.” It’s a good picture, one that gives you a little room to move. I also like Steve Jobs’ valedictory “Oh wow, oh wow” and Thomas Edison’s “It’s very beautiful over there,” which might have referred to the view out his window or might not. There are things I like not knowing, and that’s one of them. 

For chillingly appropriate endings, it’s hard to beat Robert Louis Stevenson’s. The godfather of Mr. Hyde fetched a bottle from his wine cellar and, uncorking it in the kitchen, cried out to his wife as a blood vessel burst in his brain, “What’s the matter with me, what is this strangeness, has my face changed?” This prompted Nabokov to remark: “Sometimes the destinies of authors follow those of their books.” 

For Dante’s sake I hope this is true, because for my money he has the last word in last words. He composed the final line of the final canto of the Divina Commedia less than an hour before he passed, so his “last recorded words,” according to translator Robert Durling, were l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele: “the love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Whoever might be listening, we could all do a lot worse. 

David Raney is Chief Editor at the Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta, where he lives with his wife, kids and Cooper Mini-sized Labrador retriever, who together provide all the inspiration he needs. His work has appeared in about forty books, papers and journals, most recently bioStories, Gravel and Compose. He can be found on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/david.raney.585 and LinkedIn.

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On our son’s birth certificate, father’s place of birth is listed as “Remainder of the World.” 

“It indicates that the system which generates these birth certificates is using a set of assigned codes for places of birth. The father was born in a foreign country for which the system had no code assigned, and to which was therefore assigned the code for “Remainder [of the] World.” (Roots Web) 

Mike’s own birth certificate lists his place of birth as Ancon Canal Zone, Panama. Gorgas Army Hospital. His father was in the army working on the canal expansion, saving ships wishing to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean 7,872 miles by allowing them to cut across the isthmus that is Panama instead of sailing the southern route to Tierra Del Fuego around Cape Horn through waters known as The Sailor’s Graveyard. There are some who still choose that southern route for the beauty and the danger. Yachtsmen call it “rounding the Horn.” 

When we first married I hoped, of course, that we would be wed forever and meld into the coupling of two that we see in those who have endured both the joys and frustrations of marriage over time, a marriage not perfectly or falsely harmonious, but one in which the discordance gives way quickly to resolution. But I knew it was possible that he would fall into darkness as he had done for a time during our seven-year courtship. I had lived with it for a year or so, and then left him until it subsided. I didn’t recognize it as a depression then, but as a prolonged state of vitriol, absent understanding or resolution or kindness. It was a state that demanded perfection from those around him, from me, perfection that I could not attain because it was defined by him alone. The only clear parameter was that he was right, and the rest of the world was wrong or bad or stupid or ugly. When we married, it seemed to have disappeared. But I knew that if our marriage were to fail, it would be because I was not willing or able to live with his darkness should it arise again. I did not consider that he would kill himself, leaving a residuum, a remainder. 

I asked my mother-in-law, Frances, what it was like living in Panama. What she remembered most was that it was so hot and humid that she had to bake bread every day. If left overnight, it would mold. Anything not kept in the icebox would spoil in a matter of hours or be eaten by giant bugs. I asked her about the culture. I wanted to know what it was like to live in another country and to get to know the people. It was unsafe, she told me, to venture off base. 

West Indians recruited with promises of wealth and success confronted a very different reality upon arrival at the Isthmus. The dense and untamed jungle that covered the 50 miles between coasts was filled with deadly snakes. The venom of the coral snake attacked the nervous system, and a bite from the ten-foot Mapana snake caused internal bleeding and organ degeneration. The rainy season, which lasted from May to November, kept workers perpetually wet and coated in mud. (“The Workers” pbs.org) 

In an article I read recently, the author argued that suicide is not selfish, and that only those who have suffered depression have the right to pass judgment. The author claimed to have suffered a suicidal depression, but her assertions seem somewhat suspect, considering she wrote the article. I don’t know whether suicide is selfish or not. I don’t care to define it one way or the other as though we are talking about a kindergartener’s refusal to share a toy. What good does it do to assign motive to one who is not present and no longer able to tend to the detritus left behind?  I suppose, though, that the discussion of selfishness is better than the trite adages about suicide that are made and repeated by people who have never met suicide, or they would know that there is no permanent solution and there is no temporary problem. In their effort to compartmentalize suicide, understand it, and put it away, they reduce the muddy, tangled knot to its lowest form. 

I asked Frances what Mike had been like as a child. He was difficult, she said. Defiant. But smart, very smart. He read their entire set of encyclopedias before he was in high school. She told me that every time she left the house, he would take something apart — her toaster, the radio, even her sewing machine — to see how it worked. She didn’t mind, she said, except there was always one part left over. And her appliances were never the same. 

A few months before he killed himself, Mike gave Scott a box containing his medical school class ring, his Air Force medals, the watch he got on our honeymoon, the wind-up toys that used to line his desk at work, replicas of the characters from his favorite book series, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and other precious remnants. 

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!” can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. (David Foster Wallace)  

What is left after the simplifying — that is real. That is the remainder. 

What is left after the dividing. What is left unclaimed. What is left after the bullshit. What doesn’t fit into any even amount. Remains. 

After Mike died, I decided to go back to school to study linguistics. I took a writing course as one of the requirements. In that first writing classes, we were asked to make a list of things we would not want to write about and would not show anybody if we did. Among the items on my list were suicide, love, and closure. 

In a moment of strength and clarity, I had insisted Mike get some help from a psychologist. Mike saw Ellen for only a short time. I went occasionally before he died and then a few times afterward. At our first appointment, she encouraged me to keep a journal and I did so, though it seemed silly. I had kept journals before, some helpful, some not. They all had a formula: write a gratitude list, write an inventory of my wrongs for the day, write only positive observations, write problems with the intention of solution. This new journal seemed pointless, too small for the issues at hand. It seemed to be just something that a psychologist might recommend; pro forma. The first entries were no more than doing what I was told: a daily list of my thoughts and actions. Early on, I wrote, “I know we all get angry. I just can’t live with anger as a state of being.” “I miss the peaceful times.” Then, a lament of grievances, the sum of my discontent: “Mike was not at the hospital for Scott’s surgery.” “Ellen says he is bullying me. Maybe she is right. He criticizes Scott and me compulsively.” “It is his love.” “I don’t want to hurt him.” It was of little use, it seemed, and the litany of complaints did not yield any valuable insights, but merely reinforced what I knew. I knew only what I did not want. 

Cape Horn lore is extensive, full of fear and fascination—summed up in the sailor’s motto “below 40 South there is no law, below 50 South there is no God.” Over the past four hundred years, the Horn’s cold, tempestuous waters have claimed more than one thousand ships and fifteen thousand lives. Since the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, there has been no need for most commercial ships to run the risk anymore, though adventuring sailors and yacht racing enthusiasts continue to test their luck. (libweb5.princeton.edu)  

My later journal entries were more poignant. “Ellen suggested that I would be honoring myself and Mike more if I were honest with him about what I want. What is it that I want?” When my mother died just four years before Mike killed himself, I grieved in such an honest, deep, unrestricted way. I could cry until my tears ran out and my chest was lead and my face was chapped raw, red, and swollen. Now, I can laugh when I’d see Imodium at the store because I can hear her saying, in her Southern accent, that she had to take her I-modium with the emphasis on the “I.” And I giggle when I see those little toe cushions for corns because she was forever cutting those up and putting them on her toes. Twelve years later, I still take out my phone to call her before I remember that I cannot. I feel warm and familiar when I look at my hands — wrinkled, veined, spotted, looking older than they should for a woman of my age — because they are my mother’s hands. Only good remains of my mother because, when she died, there was only love. She knew I loved her and I knew she loved me and there was nothing else. Even if there had been leftover hurts or resentments, they would have disappeared with her passing because our love for one another made any discord so trivial as to be nonexistent. 

Suicide is different. Discord is not resolved; hurt is not assuaged. Every vestige of discontent festers, swirling in memories as what-ifs and I-wish-I-wouldn’t-haves, memories I play over and again, searching for different endings. What if I had been more patient, more assertive, more or less or different somehow? What if I had been more insistent that he be hospitalized? What if I had never asked him to move out? Could I have been more understanding? What if, when he told me he could not live without me, I had believed him? Sometimes I can delight in seeing Mike’s eyes or hearing Mike’s laugh through Scott because they remind me of the naïve and blissful days, and even of the ordinary days when Mike was okay. 

The sad thing is this: Suicide doesn’t end the pain. It just passes it on to someone else. (Kim Kirkup, psychotherapist and mother)  

My sister called one of our closest friends, Karen, as soon as we knew that Mike had killed himself. She was at my house immediately, preparing food and my home for the inevitable onslaught of company. She was angry with Mike the very night it happened and for some time afterward. “He was trying to hurt you and he did,” she said. She is also a pastor and gave the eulogy at his burial. I expected a traditional sermon with touching and funny stories that completely ignore shortcomings. Instead, she addressed the reality of him. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I do remember that she mentioned his struggle with mental illness and the pain it caused him and those around him. But she also said that he didn’t get the help he could have. What I thought I wanted was someone to tidy up the painful, noisy mental chaos. Now, I can see that her honesty was far more healing than the lies she could have told. Anecdotes and sentimentality — even in his eulogy— would not have relieved anything anymore than a Band-Aid relieves a broken arm. Recognizing the rippling devastation wrought by his depression took away any chance that I may have had to believe that my difficult journey had ended with his death when, in fact, it had really just begun. Karen also prayed that he would be at peace — that we all would. 

“I hope you don’t blame yourself” people say. I thank them for their concern, but what I think is, Of course, I blame myself. Of course. If I had made different choices, there would have been a different outcome. I know that the choices I made leading up to Mike’s suicide did not give him solace, and his pain had to have been great enough to overcome the human desire to live. I was hurt and angry and confused by his behavior. I was unkind, frightened by his ire and unpredictability. I retreated inward behind an emotionally vacant façade. It’s not that I didn’t have feelings, but it looked and felt that way to Mike and he told me so. In an attempt to be kind, I smiled a fake smile and offered shallow support so transparent to him that he begged me to show some genuine emotion. Where I had once been completely vulnerable — honest without restriction, love and trust seeping from me — I created a barrier so solid there was nothing he could have done or said that would have weakened it. Now I wonder if it was my coldness that made him go to such extreme in an attempt to break through. 

“The Remainder Theorem is useful for evaluating polynomials at a given value of x, though it might not seem so at first blush. You don’t have to understand the proof of the Theorem; you just need to understand how to use the Theorem. The Remainder Theorem points out the connection between division and multiplication. For instance, since 12/3 = 4, then 4 x 3 = 12. If you get a remainder, you do the multiplication and then add the remainder back in. The Remainder Theorem says that we can restate the polynomial in terms of the divisor.” (Purple Math) 

In that same writing class, we were asked to write about one of the things on our list of things we would not write about. This is what I wrote: “Closure is a myth perpetuated by those who have not suffered trauma and those who seek to run from trauma they find too difficult to bear. The very idea brings to mind a Tupperware container into which you put knick-knacks and tuck away in the basement next to the old clothes that no longer fit. Any situation that would bring out the word ‘closure’ is more significant than that. By trying to box away the worst moments in our lives, we deny their importance in our development as human beings. We cannot exorcise these terrible events from our core. Without these events, we are like adolescents. We see what life is but experience it only peripherally. 

When one person says to another: “You need to find closure,” they are really saying, “I want things to be the way they were. I want you to be who you were for me. This is awkward and uncomfortable. Can we please pretend this never happened?” But, our obligation to each other is not to stay the same, it is to grow and encourage others to grow — even when it’s not pretty. It would be a better choice to say: “I don’t know how to help you.” or “What can I do to help you heal?” or “How about a cup of coffee?” or “Ya wanna rent Airplane and eat a whole box of Capt’n Crunch?” 

We want life to be neat and tidy. Life is glorious. Life is wonderful. Thankfully, life is much more glorious and wonderful than it is tragic. Yet, we try to lock away the bad and then say that we are not victims of our circumstances. By doing this, we think we are stronger and can ‘go on with our lives.’ Whether or not a person becomes a victim is a choice. It is also a choice to become stronger. We cannot become physically stronger if we lock our free weights in the basement, and we cannot become emotionally stronger if we lock our circumstances away in the basement. Our lives will go on either way, but if we seek closure instead of solace, it will always elude us. We should seek an end to the daily pain, the return of true joy, and, finally, acceptance and a new normal. We cannot close the door on our past, and we will get weak trying. We can, however, open the door to our experiences – the good and the bad. Invite them in, learn from them, and go out into the world whole human beings.” 

The Yaghan people constantly had a fire stoked to keep themselves warm; they even chanced the demise of their transportation by starting fires within their bark canoes, providing warmth while they traveled the chilly waters. The very name of this region, Tierra del Fuego (meaning “Land of Fire”), was inspired by this group of indigenous peoples. (Adventure Life) 

Ancon Canal Zone no longer exists as what it was, who owned it, the name the Americans gave it. But the canal exists, the city of Ancon exists, Panama exists. Mike no longer exists physically, but as a presence, a vestige. He exists in Scott’s mannerisms, in his looks, in his heritage, in his identity. He exists in my struggle to reconcile. He exists in my memory, recollections sometimes made more grim or more beautiful or more clear because of his passing and the passing of time. 

For several years after Mike’s passing, I kept our house exactly as it had been when he was alive. Even our bedroom was the mostly same. His clothes were gone, except for some old ties that hung in the closet, old t-shirts in his drawers. A picture of him in his Air Force dress uniform, one of us when we first began dating, and one taken through the stained glass at our wedding looked back at me every morning. Then one day, with no precipitating event, it was just time. I painted, hung new pictures, and removed those things that had become merely nostalgic, but didn’t bring me great joy. 

On a hilltop of Horn Island, a monument to the memory of the mariners lost in the waters off Cape Horn keeps watch. The interior outline of its facing steel sheets form the image of a wandering albatross in flight; a nearby marble plaque is inscribed with a Spanish poem by Chilean Sara Vial: 

I am the albatross that waits for you 
at the end of the world. 
I am the forgotten souls of dead mariners 
who passed Cape Horn 
from all the oceans of the earth. 
But they did not die 
in the furious waves. 
Today they sail on my wings 
toward eternity, 
in the last crack 
of Antarctic winds. 

Eventually one has to rise and accept that what remains is not inherently deficient. The remainder can be multiplied and added back in to the whole. It can be restated. My deficiency was not causing the death of my husband. My deficiency was what I had made of myself or had not made of myself. The deficiency is the lack of what should have been. The remainder was mine to make whole. 

I recently ran into the psychologist. We hugged, Ellen and me, in a way we could not when I was her patient – tightly, as friends. I asked about her and she asked about me, how I am doing, what I am doing. I am grateful, I told her. Content, happy, impassioned. I study writing. I write. I write about Mike and Scott and me. And through that writing I find as many questions as I do answers, but I also mine bits and chunks of clarity and understanding. I eke out truth and madness and peace. I give voice to my life. 

It is hard to brave a passage without imagining what lies beyond the isthmus, but I must brave one passage or the other. I must move forward. I cannot float in the gulf of the aftermath of suicide. There, I will only meet the constant tempest of guilt and unanswerable questions. The simplest route is through the isthmus, but that confining space gives no answers, it belongs to another country, another people. The confines of the canal repel me and force me around to the bottom of the world, through the Sailor’s Graveyard. And I wonder if the journey will ever yield the brave explorer’s triumph or if I will succumb to the thrashing of the waves. 

Jennifer (Jenni) Wilson holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. She works full-time as a Sign Language Interpreter and part-time as a college English teacher. Her work has been previously published in Hippocampus. She lives in Southern Illinois with her 18-year-old son, Scott. She can be reached at: jswcommunications@gmail.com.

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Turkey vultures are back again, wheeling like drunk cyclists. 
Are they constant or a jealous intermittency, whiffing flesh, 
a high-smelling cache of bats, of seldom porcupines. 
Few Augusts left, and I’ve escaped most harm– 
an unfriendly thistle drawing blood, a squashed baby toad. 
Things netted, dried, date back to the brash summers here, 
long explores and the shimmering residue in pails of ghost crabs. 
Gull girls have married into the blue, leaving a faint trail 
more durable than meat decaying whitely in the sun, 
the prey of Cape buzzards and persisting fat flies. 
The dog clings to my shadow, noses scrubby pine. 
At the old cemetery, there’s a smell of sanctity. Though 
maybe only mushroom rot or the draggled, gem-like moss. 

Carol Alexander‘s books include Environments (Dos Madres Press, 2018), Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press, 2017) and Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press, 2013). Her works have appeared in many anthologies and journals. Her Twitter handle is Calex212. 

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Rob Carney is the author of four previous books of poems, most recently 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2015), which was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, as well as the forthcoming collection The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press). In 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Foundation Award for Poetry. His work has appeared in Cave Wall, Columbia Journal, and many others, and he writes a regularly featured series called “Old Roads, New Stories” for Terrain: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments. He lives in Salt Lake City.  

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Fifty-two times I’ve stepped out 
from the red door, each time 
promising to wave back 
and I do until there’s no one to wave to. 

Fifty-two times I’ve clasped hands 
small fingers around big 
until my hands changed places 
became big around small and smaller. 

Fifty-two times I’ve cut and washed 
my hair.  Locks of pomegranate. 
Curls of the passion fruit.  Age 
adding their own thin white strings. 

Fifty-two times my feet tramped 
down the concrete, avoiding the sentimental 
cracks.  The saxifrage, the puddles, 
the persistent trail of black ants. 

Fifty-two times my thoughts clouded 
mountains, fell like rain 
up on the parched plains where few seeds 
would grow or germinate. 

Fifty-two times. Too soon for the spring 
migration.  Too late for the azalea 
bloom.  Let them come like wildflowers, 
as they must, and let me keep count. 

Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places but now calls North Carolina home.  Before setting out to teach at Coastal Carolina Community College, she wakes up before sunrise and writes until she hears the first bird song of the dawn chorus.   The author of No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and  Floribunda, some of her work has recently appeared or will soon appear in Barbaric Yawp, Mudfish, Pinyon, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and Wild Violet.

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Jeff Fearnside’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including The Fourth River, Permafrost, Blue Earth Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (University of Washington Press, 2016), an anthology of writers who have been awarded residencies at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest. His chapbook Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land (Standing Rock Cultural Arts, 2011) won the Peace Corps Writers 2012 Poetry Award. He lives with his wife and their two cats in Corvallis, where he teaches at Oregon State University. https://www.facebook.com/Jeff-Fearnside-Writer-687303601286263/ 

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Fuchsia only really works for flowers, 
aaaaaaaaaaaa like the crepe myrtle blooming 
outside my dining room 

window in August, when the lease began. Before we hung 
aaaaaaaaaaa  the string lights, the mandala tapestries. 
Most days I listen to make sure no one 

is in the stairwell before I leave. Avoidable 
aaaaaaaaaaaa interactions, so what I do 
with my eyes doesn’t factor then. 

We meant to get a water filter, to unpack 
aaaaaaaaaaaa the boxes. Instead, stressed 
over leaving, or not 

leaving. Some passive aggressive note 
aaaaaaaaaaaa about the assemblage of trash 
on another third floor balcony. Or 

remnants of the shattered 
aaaaaaaaaaaa beer bottle in the fridge. 
The dehumidifier, constantly running. 

Our northern window 
aaaaaaaaaaaa overlooks the parking lot, 
shells 

people use for moving 
aaaaaaaaaaaa (if it’s really moving). From behind 
closed doors, no one can know 

if the yelling is scripted. The neighbors though, 
aaaaaaaaaaaa I can still hear leaving. 

Taylor Fedorchak lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. In 2016, she received her BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Salisbury University. Her writing has been published in journals such as Gravel, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, decomP, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Red Earth Review. She will begin her graduate studies in poetry at New Mexico State University this fall. 

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Christa Forster’s poetry has appeared in anthologies, print and online journals; her feature-length work, in national and regional publications; her performance work, onstage in Houston, New York City, Austin, and New Orleans. While earning her MFA in poetry from the University of Houston, she served as poetry editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.  Also an educator, Christa has taught poetry workshops to adults, teens, and children through Inprint, Writers in the Schools, and The Hines Center for Spirituality and Prayer. She teaches high school English at The Kinkaid School in Houston, TX. Reach her @xtaforster on Twitter and Instagram. 

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Hovering viewers 
sip or hurry on, 
a hungry swarm. 
The basket of calla lilies 
on one museum wall 
tells its story, murmurs low 
so one must draw near, 
drink deeply of this frozen specimen 
under glass. Dead stop of time 
like the mummy museum in Guanajuato City, 
his birthplace, where a plaid sock 
is stiff and the long wavy “O” 
of a Munch mouth cries out, 
“I’m not dead! Unbury me!” 
forever. 

His stamens thrust up 
in golden fertility from sweeps 
of white waxiness, 
for all time young and ready, 
singing, aquiver 
with that first pluck 
of finger on taut readiness. 
Each holds ripe magic, 
a wand to sprinkle pollen dust, 
his arched bridge to clarity 
of light.

Carol Hamilton has recent publications in Southwestern American Literature, Paper Street, Cold Mountain Review, Common Ground, Calliope, Louisiana Review, U. S.1 Worksheet, Birmingham Literary Arts, Sandy River Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Haight-Ashbury Poetry Review, Homestead Review, U.S.1Worksheet and others. She has published 17 books. The most recent is SUCH DEATHS from the Purple Flag series at VAC Press of Chicago. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. Visit her website http://www.carolhamilton.org. 

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Alyssa Hazel is a graduating senior studying English in Creative Writing at Salisbury University, where she was the fiction editor on the student journal Scarab.  Find her on Twitter @AlyHWrites. 

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His job, he said, was to follow me closely 
the way a cat in the frozen field 

stalks the shadow of shivering breaths 
measuring hunger in victim time 

as fear changes contentment’s eyes 
from a hue of blue to unspeakable black 

and claws strip tomorrow’s fur 
off yesterday’s brittle bones. 

From a nest woven tight as a drag queen’s wig 
the sky was seduced by a feminine hymn, 

a raptor’s alleluia. The holy wet his pants, 
and still I was followed closely. 

In the stalker’s gospel of stumble and save 
he watched me fall then raised me up 

from the tip of the world as the runway roared 
and angels applauded me bloody. 

Daniel Edward Moore’s poems have been published in journals such as: The Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, New South, and others. His poems are currently at Mandala, Lullwater Review, december Magazine, The Big Windows Review, Natural Bridge Literary Journal, Scalawag Magazine, Sweet Tree Review, Tule Review  Hot Metal Bridge and Fire Poetry Journal. He has poems forthcoming in Weber Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, Hawaii Review and Blue Fifth Review. His book  Confessions Of A Pentecostal Buddhist can be found on Amazon. He lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. Visit Daniel at Danieledwardmoore.com 

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Terry Persun has been writing and publishing since the early 1970s. His poems and stories have appeared in many small and university magazines including Wisconsin Review, Kansas Quarterly, Riverrun, Rattle, Hiram Poetry Review, Drop Forge, Bluestem, NEBO, Cirque, Eclipse, Bacopa, and many others. His poems have appeared in six, single author chapbooks and four full-length collections. Terry speaks at writers conferences and universities across the country. Visit him at  www.TerryPersun.com 

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(for Anne Sexton) 

“Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away” Anne Sexton, Rapunzel, pg 35, Transformations, 1971, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 

They are bent over their work, these Mother Gothels; each finger is a hook made for crocheting shawls from morning dew. Each one owns her own tower. Each one remembers a violence in the body – a meaty hand over the mouth. Each old bod is a patchwork quilt of scars. 

The towers are feats of engineering, high and intricate as wedding cakes. Each one was built to house a young maiden, who grows her hair long, so that her mother can shimmy up to grab a kiss and a hug and to feed delicacies of the forest into the bird-like beak of her daughter. 

The young women’s songs are living birds that soar over the canopy, the fields, to find the waiting ear of a young man or woman, someone possibly strong and able, who will pursue the song back to its origin, with more dedication than a musicologist or an ornithologist. Each young maid is a rebel in a turret, longing to earn her own wounds, to grow old and be as capable as a mother. 

The old women are an impenetrable hedge of thorns that has done blooming. Each one holds a heart, soft and delicate as clam’s flesh, sorrow-salted. At day’s close, the mothers are climbing the hawsers of their daughter’s braids. 

Some nights the girls collectively dream of stitching all the mothers up into a giant winding sheet, and tossing the bundle in the river, to be done with the ache of the scalp from so much hair used as rope and the solitary confinement. In the heat of the sun, the towers are sweat boxes and they wilt at the window for the breeze and in the winter, the darlings nearly freeze. 

The mothers have no inkling a revolution is brewing; for they have forgotten their own revolts. Princes and princesses are coming to sow seeds in the girls and that knowledge will be more dangerous than any random dandy. Once the girls start reading, it will all be over. 

Lucy Simpson is wife of one and mother to two children in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, WordWrights and Natural Bridge, among other publications. She has work currently in Poetry Quarterly. Matchstick & Bramble, her first chapbook, is available from The Broadkill Review. She hates Brussels Sprouts and sometimes has nightmares about them. She can be located virtually on Facebook. 

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