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Kelley White E. P. Allan Dorothy Bates Duane Locke Janet I. Buck Rochelle Hope Mehr Tom Sheehan Katherine Challoner Lee Michael Ladanyi Raymond Niemi J. Kevin Wolfe Summer Lopez Bradford Shimp Raleigh D. Meadow    Correspondence by Kelley White I write to a poet who sends books and candy I write to a poet who makes his own cards I write to a poet who uses mad laughter I write to a poet who cries three alarms And three alarms aren’t enough to wake us Poets aren’t heard in this kind of world I write to a poet who’s dying of cancer I write to a poet who’s burning with rage I write to a poet who’s dead of aloneness I write to a poet who changed her last name And then changed her first name and then her religion But person and struggle stayed just the same I write to a poet who’s doing life in prison I write to a poet who paints on his stamps I write to a poet who used bad language I write to a poet who waits on death row Who’s waiting and waiting, each night is the last one Each night is the last one, when you’re on death row     Loaves and Fishes by Kelley White Come One Come All to the BLOOD- COVERED CHURCH OF CHRIST All-you-can-eat Fish Fry Friday $3.60     Walking Stick, Tug Boat, Frida Kahlo by Kelley White on your tote bag she is mesh with yellow skin and I like the fierce brow but it folds around your camera and a bag of corncurls; I am old as the quilt on my bed, my skin might as well be moss, you are a flowering plant, a staff of my autumn breath, carve me a little support with your anger, carry me to the stone shore, let your bumpered nose push me at last into my heavy resting berth and I will be there unburdened  Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         blame by E. P. Allan those trees are wrong the leaves should not be so dark a brown                but a brighter sort of frost burnt orange i know its all my fault those buildings too are looking old       their paint flaked into sad smiles of eccentric longing or the president and his greasy monkey smile gloaming over bombs and oil              and burnt babies with blackened skin melted eyes and take away heads proving once again that precision taxation is good for global economy my fault the fact that your tennis shoes are too tight           the blister on your sister's lip        the old man hobbling across the street while a throng of blue uniformed girls                          giggle the fact that the cream in your coffee is ten days old or that you didn't wash your socks last night the mozart concert where one violinist screwed up the intro to eine kleine nachtmusik with an gsharp where it should've been an f (yes he was looking at me) the icecream that fell off that 4 year old's cone the fact that starlink corn abducted your enchilada or how old underwear after load after load of washing turns a delicate shade of dejected grey yes i admit it it was me                 i called by myself all of that misery and like a demented pizza   boy          i've delivered only anchovies     Oliver Wendell Holmes' Singing Barn by E. P. Allan The grass is brown as a dead cow, the wind pushes the snow onto the barn which speaks the snow's words, "Oh no, not this again," before moving toward the house.  The corn inside is cold and shivers in its ears. Oliver Wendell Holmes walks in the snow, into the barn that is moving towards us singing, "Oh no, not this again." As it moves away Oliver slips on a corn ear, tumbles into a snowman striped with mud his mustache streaked with grass and snow. The corn stalks move farther away and Oliver breathes in blackness while the barn slides towards our window singing, "Oh no, not this again." Oliver continues rolling in muddy snow caked with handfuls of death and corn. "Oh no," says the barn as these handfuls of darkness and violins take Oliver Wendell Holmes' cheap neck-tie to swing him around by his neck. The barn starts to dance—a leap of corn singing, "Oh no, not this again," as Oliver's face turns purple then white as the snow. Oliver Wendell Holmes is dead and his barn is still singing, "Oh no, not this again." But wait—who is in that falling snow? Can we take handfuls of darkness, old mud thick with the droppings of cows, and rebuild Oliver Wendell Holmes?  But his barn is still moving closer singing that damn song. But who is Oliver Wendell Holmes with that cleft in his only visible ear, can he stop the barn from advancing, its front gate open and caked with blood, can he stop the corn stalks from singing, or is he just a blind sailor drowned in the snow as the darkness in him sings, "Oh no, not this again." Our hands take up palmfuls of snow and paste the dead in Oliver's eyes.  What can he see lying there like a mistaken snowman? Does he see the darkness that moves the barn, does he see the snow, or does he see nothing, not even the corn that lies forgotten? Oliver Wendell Holmes is dead, we cannot see him, cannot see the little houses of night that hold back the snow falling on his corpse, we cannot see the barn that moves towards our house singing its monotone song in our ears of corn. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         The Forces of Nature by Dorothy Bates Outside my apartment window on a rusted metal gaspipe a mourning dove has made her nest of broken twigs. Patient and still, she will not move until the pale gray eggs burst open with her brood. Perhaps beneficent Nature has cast a spell                     transporting her, entranced, deep in some verdant forest, before the brute Machine laid waste to leaf and bough. There she will rest, midwifed by butterflies and bees                                                                                                                                                            until the chicks sprout wings and all fly safe away.   My daydream ends here.  A gang of ravenous pigeons swooping   down like bombers, tears the tiny bodies from their fragile shells. I close the blind.  My black tea is bitter and the toast is burned. I lock the door and go out—into the killing ground we humans call  the World.     The New Romantics by Dorothy Bates The old poets brewed  a precious stew    of gillyflower, rose and rue of starry nights and dappled shade of lightfoot lad  and  winsome maid They sang of nightingales in Spring              they sang of splendor in the grass but  now, when lovers do their thing He sucks face  and she kicks ass. Hey nonny nonny,  rooty toot tooty! When cool Corinna  goes a Maying Booty is truth  Truth, Booty Y’know what I’m saying?     Blue Daisy by Dorothy Bates I went back once in the well of my mind to a dirt road in Arkansas and found her sitting in an old swing made of an auto tire and some heavy rope. Her bones seemed to peep out of her body. She looked up and saw me there and said hello lady you want to swing? Thanks, I said, I’ll just rest here in your yard if it’s alright. Yes Ma’am, she said. You kin have summa my bread’n butter and sugar if you want some.  I got it from my gramma. She’s mean, but she don’t know no better. Where’s your mother?  I asked. She’s workin.  In the dress store. Then she comes home and puts on her blue eye shadda and the red lipstick and smokes her cigarette and then she goes out to the road house with the salesmen.  Sometimes she brings me a little horn that blows or a cupie doll. What’s your name?  I asked her. Well, it’s kinda ugly.  It’s Dortha Lee. But could you call me Blue Daisy? Sure, I said.  I might even take you with me someday, to the Big City where I live.  Would you like that? She swung a bit and thought about it and then she pushed her foot into the dirt and stopped swinging. I don’t know, she said, my gramma says those places is scary.  She says the livin’ is so hard there it could just make you want to die! I would never let that happen to you, I said. Last night, at the subway flower stand, I saw bunches of daisies for sale. I bought some blue ones and put them in my window beside a white candle. Flowers for the dead. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         My Miserable Childhood by Duane Locke Near a cluster of Australian pines And their black lace shadows on shore sand, I watched her movements. She looked like someone from the nineteenth century, Immaculate and unmarred. She put a finger in a puddle Put on shore three days ago by a storm To stir the white water. Small white fish swam to touch her fingers. I asked her how did you come to exist In this age of indifference and cruelty, In this age of the tattoo and pierced bodies. She looked at me, her face as precious As if her face had been painted by Vermeer. She said, “ I don’t exist. It is impossible For me to exist. I’m only an apparition, A figment of your imagination, An imagination that was given you the power To create beauty and an imagination Derived from and created by the events Of a miserable childhood. “     Elegy by Duane Locke Someone, not too far away, Is stealing flowers from graves To sell at a Flea market. I look at her name etched dark On light gray marble, See tear drops on the marble, Tear drops drying to oblivion, The tears shed by her young husband Who put the bottle of vodka In his back pocket, and a few moments ago, Staggered away. I recall when we were together In a bathtub in Montepulciano, Drinking Vino Nobil. Her hair was as bright as the brightest light. Red wine trickled over her To add a reddish tone to her Pale blonde, freckled skin. But her body had the sadness of a Chopin etude. And I had the sadness Of an Egyptian slave Carrying heavy stones To build his own tomb. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Confucius at the Summer Lake by Janet I. Buck We headed here, to slate blue calm to ground our ghosts for the naughty children they were in a world of baying trees and silver minnows cutting through chill. No CNN, no radio, no bills to open but a prayer. Moonbeams on a dragonfly for passing light. No arguments, just chipmunks scrambling for a nut. In lapping aprons of a wave, water writes a diary much closer to a sacred poem as kindness pours a cup of tea and jetting planes don't shake a bird nest from a branch. No telephones, no honking cars, merely the gossiping wind. No frowns, just righteous setting suns that speak of ripened fruit. On winding trails, footprints of our absent gods. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Om by Rochelle Hope Mehr Is there nothing left to write? No animus? No angst? No abounding symphony Of histrionic Pang(s)tellar Nobler Battles still to come? All I want is peace All I want is Om... Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Whence Lily Pond by Tom Sheehan November leans on the water and the wind’s a hooded skater across the starry glaze. At night, disputing from shore to shore, the ice rumbles in cannon cracks. The white field is hard put down in the black woods, and an owl questions who walks alone under his high retreat. I see a star triangulate his eyes, hear a thin voice of emptiness fall down through trees. My boots, my sleepless bed, have brought me here, to hike about the pond, know the rejoice of comfort, to walk there on water, to be the godlike promise of yield.   The Slow Sleep, The Time of War by Tom Sheehan A time of nervous commerce in ’43, reclaiming lost Fords, Chevies gone astray with rusting, Desotos and Hudsons and Packards before they merged with Reos and Grahams waiting on them. We lacerated seat cushions for cotton batting and lost coins, tearing our finger flesh on inner springs, drawing good American the way newsreels would not show, piling the white matter for conversion to olive drab fatigues, bell bottom blues my brother wore, costumes children donned those days of infamy. On June mornings, covers slipped from our sleep, stretching out our lost sunshine, hearing pigeons in the last eaves of departing darkness, forgetting the mail that had not come the day earlier, unknown what the fires of hell were on what island sands, whose brothers were with whom where, we rose, made our skimpy lunches for brown bags and went to war on old car cushions.  Salvagers! Into ranks we went, Salvagers!  Marching off we went, through Saugus Center chilled and quiet and gray, down behind Riverside Cemetery our ghostly column of the day.  Salvagers en route, massed, we young infantry of someone’s brothers, out of mother’s linen, out of young hands at crotch before those thin hairs began to curl, out of touch with the slow, languorous sleep given over to the voice of the enemy, his picture at newsreels, the odd face, the strange misshapen helmet he wore, that godawful bayonet raised a bloody Lucifer sword. Christ!  How we’d rip and tear at cotton tough as roots, pile dense handfuls for the mill’s penultimate loom, dig out Liberty dimes old pockets gave up, picture our brothers all suited up, scarred but coming home, all across the Pacific the parade coming the other way. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     locust summers by Katherine Challoner Lee you bring out the             nervous mother on a hot day with a baby in tow in me. the hand ringing, bead sweating rocking shrew in an unscreened porch with mosquito nets on my face. the same as that             woman I loathed on those stickier days with searing asphalt on a driveway oil slick. the same as that             blinking eye that watched us play in the canyoned street             with the trees that shone when they were stretched with humidity. when those black locusts buzzed in the branch             nearly goosing my windowpane with the peeling oldest paint and the fallen insects in between glass and shield. you bring out all the             old ones with frizz-hair and thin skin that try to sing             and I get stuffed with their songs and thick lenses. get caught in magnification with it all brought out low             in the road-shimmer on the two hour way to Chicago.   N'Awlins by Katherine Challoner Lee noir sarsaparilla epitaph ingrains the yard of N’Awlins streets. the voodoo nightingales chant in the bags and the visionary shopping cart ladies spew unfounded knowledge into the gutter sputtering lamps strobe the cobblestone remedied ways, bringing segmented night to the hybrid flats. a botched rendering of ancient dynasties— a caramelized etching of a misfit heaven.   bag man by Katherine Challoner Lee He was crouched, huddled in the archway of Rockefeller One bag of a man with no real importance, And all the suited men tipped him a buck For, sitting on their art-deco stairs, keeping them warm, For he reminded them where they stood in Business. When they saw him, they fondled their slick pockets Fingering cash and change, tossing him a smirk Or two— And he returned to his banging of his hat on the ground, A man had dropped it, careless— He recycled it kindly. (And spruced it in his own time) He had everything he wanted…blanket, cash and can. Married twice.  Women were not his breed of bag. He thought they were too full of merchandise. But he held the time worn opinions which the suited men treasured. Sometimes on secret nights, the suits slipped into the bag’s corner— His acrid breath blew wisdom into their minds— When to buy, when to sell, when to live, when to die. The suits had studied stocks, but their minds drew too many parallels, Too many planned deceptions, too many men dreaming. So the bag whispered trades, whispered deals, whispered and whispered. Until— The suits had success. They no longer stopped for acrid secrets. They no longer tossed a smirk or a buck. They tossed nothing. The bag stooped on the art-deco stairs. He couldn’t warm their empty granite. He couldn’t conjure any more whispers. The one bag of a man crumpled on the steps of the Rockefeller. When a new suit passed, he was filled with joy at the illustrious bag. He knelt next to his pile of crumpled cash: “Tell me the acrid secrets, tell me the way to the pinnacle.” He waited And waited. The bag did not stir. He had gone to the land of idealists and dreamers. He had abandoned his post on the art-deco steps— And he missed the smirking suits terribly. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Apple and Rose Endings by Michael Ladanyi February is bleeding in elliptical stages, a frigid red dawn clutching thin corners of a folded paper sky. Below, people are pressed close like small letters on yellow pages, onto cold gray concrete layers that seemingly move on their own, shifting their shuffling occupants to same locations.  On panhandle corners there are always old men, speaking slow with crooked hands, whispering of known things as if they were kept secrets, their small eyes lonely like old women married forty years to men they hate. Around chipped brick corners that lead to empty grass covered lots, laughing children dance with shadows of what they have known before, scents of rose, apple and honeysuckle, coming to them as past memories, not knowing that what they have been told are growing pains, are actually small endings of former selves penning greater truths.     She Is Beautiful by Michael Ladanyi Along dim halls in hollow mornings, quiet with ambient weight of steady rain that seeps through long curtained windows of large bedrooms, she shuffles, arms straight down, slim hands loose, gray shadows crawling across her palms like small prayers on a child's lips. Her memories are wooden planks with small spaces to peer through, catch glimpses of her children in early years, the softness in her husband's eyes. And then there is cancer's pain, its quick voice like a well dressed liar at her front door. What she does not realize is that she is beautiful, the shell of her only a shell, life lingers as shifting ghosts that swim her heroic eyes in purposeful ways. In her square room, empty sound drifts from a small television, settling around her as purple dreams, the rain falling through it like yellow sun on tall grass. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Cold Solstice on a Southern Gulf by Raymond Niemi On a water plain tagging horizon and land, wind with power raises waves that attain half a man's height at its edge, odd for the body. They climb with more forward motion, like planes, then roll when tops outrun the rest, and crash two or three times coming in. Aftermath tumbles on at a dozen angles, like a stream crossing rocks. Shells of random strength make final reaches five times a minute, above remnants sliding out beneath. The first slope reflects for seconds once ebb halves leave and liquid settles between grains. Past the high tide line, it's firm when pressed, like a memory of dampness, lightens to native white. Dune sand cradles the sole, accepts a heel a few inches. Heads of grass plants are tall as adults, a sparse, badland wheat-scape for a horror show or atom war. Four men from the Latin Quarter took a lake boat and found, after warming air from the prairies, it's cool enough to kill in six hours. Heat robbed as fast as a gale as they floated at night two miles out, walking distance to their homes growing up. Their spirits can pause inbound at the place of change between where life held them and let go and see the nature of each step before los abuelos y los tios las madres y las esposas gather, shake heads and close eyes, then all move on.   Dukon Belt Girl by Raymond Niemi The seller of belts is slender, first, all up and down, a girl of vertical lines. Blond strands divide left and right, dive till tips graze waist band twenty-some inches around. Ribs on fabric curl under cuffs after travels in parallel. Clothes hold close to her surface, always a match for eyes, clear sky. Beside indoor palms and lily spathes, kiosk is a cart; rims arc past handles, lathed, as if for draft beast. Pegs suspend belts by tens of dozens, cascade of hide, a few out loose like uncombed hairs. Mothers fold their purses while daughters examine by hand. College pal on cell hold, she watches, step from a smile, notes copied features, faces and hair, almost cloned, equal in height, not weight. Her own reel nears the frame, a final burst, girthwise. In some short years, a spouse at her hip will sweat beer yeast stewed by late day sun and body heat, burn lines in beef like small jail bars. She'll recall gazes drawn when she was the longed for date, conjured in restless fantasies, the quaver in sleeping eyes; in those dreams, entranced with lids half down her own, shallow set. Glutes were curves on short radii before pearing, overripe. Buying a belt will bring up smile's advanced scout. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Bosnian Coffee by J. Kevin Wolfe Grind beans to graphite. 'Not fine enough' Mensura says Mohammud's chuckle rumbles  Roast half-a-minute in the pot. Gilded handle arches Pot smalls at the brim  A teaspoon heap for each half-demitasse. 'Refuge tore the shirts off our backs This ritual of coffee is all we could carry'  Add half-a-pot of boiling water.  Stir. A froth tans the surface 'Blood's not this thick'  Add the other half. Mohammud lights a Drina It demures in his hand  Secrete blackvenom into thimbles. The oil's skin rises into a rainbow of indigoes  Don't let it sit. 'Bean ghosts grow bitter' His laugh thunders It frightens the Drina's smoke  Place two sugar cubes beside each. Sockheads bombed his house They missed his laugh  Dip the diamonds.  Nibble. War gnawed Sarajevo His dirty jokes kept them sane  Swig the silt.  Repeat at 4pm. Specks pepper the bottom and haunt the cup —from The Year of Purple Lawn Furniture ©2001 by J. Kevin Wolfe Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         If You Want to be Free by Summer Lopez lick these lips like sugarcane and candy kisses nibble freedom from these fingertips as if my hands could grant you what you need in your Camaro blue like you I watch you leave with that straight nose I love to see peeking out from under sheets at me but whatever hole you need to fill needs more than just my fingertips and slippery lips to make it whole and that is all I have to give to you   The One I Want to Be by Summer Lopez I will be the one you think of when you see the pyramids but I want to be the one you think of when you see yourself in the mirror in the morning the torn up part of you that laughter pins together for just a little while like a touch that almost missed you but turned out to be the healing softness you didn’t know you didn’t need Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     Winter Weight by Bradford Shimp When January came, bringing white geese, clouds of snow dust, and ice, there was still a light in your eye. We retreated from porch to couch to blanketed bed, cold toes touching, reacting, trying again. Outside the trains sang the same lonesome song, yet it sounded more distant, felt like cold steel. Darkness fell early, and we basked in yellow light, warm, baggy sweaters, heavy socks, reading, waiting. You spoke of snowmen, sledding. I broke off ice cycles, salted frozen steps. Yet, you did not, could not, venture out. The wind picked up, blew the months by, snowfields became snow banks, ice collected, on our roofs, on our roads, in our bones. Even the children stayed inside. Most nights, we would conserve our heat, hoarding what little we worked up. Slowly, you grew quiet, alone, aloof, a snow angel left to melt away. I watched, through frosted window, as winter carried on. Snowmen sagged some days, only to be refrozen, but not rebuilt.  The dark cold became a reflection in your eyes. Your movement became sparse. Your silence was the echoes of a night train gone by.  I thought we could hibernate, winter the cold, hold our own. Your soul was not made to be shut down. Your love of winter died, looking out at it, shivering from within the worn wood siding of our first home, never meant to be a winter cave.  I hoped for spring, for you.  Maybe you could melt a little, and I could rebuild you, snow angel. Perhaps a renegade sun would still come, to melt the ice off your heart. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Windowpain by Raleigh D. Meadow The little ones huddle by the window, noses pressed firmly against the glass, longing to invite themselves into the world. You however understand, that the snowflakes are not confetti, and the season is ever winter. Of course their exuberance wins out, and you soon find yourself making ready... layers, boots, mittens, scarves like pretty bows, wrapping them up neatly, like packages to place under the tree; your own gifts to the world. And as they dance upon a frantic globe, you watch, huddled by the window, a nose for the cold beyond the glass, longing to invite yourself into their world. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

 

   

• You Look Like Gold to Me  Richard Meyers

• On the Road  Mike Mellish

• Swaying in the Wind  Shannon Cruickshank

• The Man with the Broken Crutch  Tom Sheehan

• The Box  M.A. Haarhaus

• Reach  Alvaro Rodriguez

---

 

 

You Look Like Gold to Me                              

by Richard Meyers                                                                          

t the north end of Ackland Street in Melbourne looms a huge figure of a clown whose wide-open mouth is the entrance to the all but abandoned Luna Park, a tawdry amusement park and a popular haunt for family outings some time ago.  Children had been amused by or frightened of the giant clown.  My Australian host's boys called it the "boogie swagman" or more amicably, "look at me mates, no worries."  Lying on the grass under the old wooden roller coaster, a voice reached towards me:  "My God, you're here too."  It was Sweet William who like me had journeyed to Australia from America for the grand family reunion.  All of us would gather in a few days on French Island, south of the city, an ecology farm reserved for the week's occasion.  William had come from Austin, Texas; others had come from Rochester, New York, and Hawaii and England and France.  Most of us were Northern Californians.  Hosted in our spiritual families' Melbourne houses, we awaited the long-anticipated train and ferry journey to the island.

"You made it," William said.  "It's magic, this family of ours.  I saved, I prayed and imagined this, Australia, 2003.  It's a party."  He looked around and gazing up at the Ferris wheel and palm trees, added, "It's a circus, an international circus." 

For my birthday and as a gift to my spirit, I took this journey down under.  On my way in Thailand I bought a T-shirt with a colorful image of Ganesh  who I adored in the aspect of the destroyer of obstacles.  The elephant god said to me, "No worries, mate."  Here every Aussie said it, on the street, on the trams, after every thank you, at every encounter.  Australia was a gift, the way travel often is, and once I accepted its expense and occasional ordeal, the world took me in.

I glimpsed the details of this anomalous continent.  It had a subdued inclusion, never an assimilation of ethnic variety; I glimpsed its Victorian yet rugged amalgam of suppression and vigor, its brusque casualness as well as its terrain of novel, unadulterated mystery.  The incongruous and ordinary were swallowed together.  My friends, all part of a divine movement, a family, inspired by our Bengali teacher, had all been born here and adapted with that uniquely terse and sardonic humor to the character of this young continent.  Their lives grew up in this unusual environment and absorbed into it as though swallowed up by that snickering and gaping mouth of the clown at Luna Park.

The grass whispered under my body.  The afternoon wind had brought those tenacious flies to my mouth and ears.  The constant need to wave away those menacing, buzzing insects was a common gesture known locally as the Australian salute.  The world slipped amusingly over the glassy rounds of my eyeballs with images sparked in crystal spheres.  Flowers were suns in fiery spots of sky strewn over the beach and park in St. Kilda.  Birds, magpies and parrots, flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted lake of heaven.  An early moon hung low in the sky.  Its shadows seemed on the wrong side, its shape, veiled in its waning, appeared reversed.  Yet that seemed appropriate, I thought.  At night I beheld entirely new galaxies.  Orion's belt tumbled beneath the falling warrior as his head tipped down towards the bridge that spanned the harbor where ferries glided off in the night towards Tasmania.  It made a kind of sense.  After all, I was at the very bottom of the planet, down under. 

I sat on a bench feeding some doves the remains of my curried steak-and-kidney pie when I caught sight of three dark and wild-haired men.  It was a shock suddenly seeing these swaggering and heavy-limbed men.  They laughed while passing to one another bottles of hard liquor.  The men walked past me.  Not far behind them, walking in a stupor, weaving back and forth, were their women, squat, round, black limbs in shabby pants.  One of them extended a plump and tattooed arm to me and said, "I am Pixie.  This Doria Woolangu and sister Nori.  We are aborigine.  You don't see our kind here in Victoria, do you?"

"I am American," I said defensively.

"Ah, he is Yank," Doria said to the others.

"Yank?" Pixie replied playfully, slapping Doria's wrist.  "Well, I tell you, he looks like gold to me. Yes he does, like gold.  We are meeting our family here from the bus from north.  We are going back home.  Westland Yakadangang.  You want some drink?  Join us! Yank man?"

"No, thank you," I replied nervously.  "I have an appointment.  I must go meet some people."

"Family?" the one called Nori asked.

Hesitating for a moment, I replied, "Yes, family."

"Family best.  Always best!" Pixie asserted.  Her eyebrows were arches of penciled black under a mane of dusty and tangled hair.  Doria was thin with a mouthful of crooked teeth protruding from wide gums of smeared lipstick.  Nori's face was cavernous and scarred.  The three of them had huge bony heads, which made them appear misshapen, somewhat lion-like.  I felt uneasy and timid in their presence and wanted to pull away.  I saw the men, loud and drunk, stumbling back in our direction.  They joined their women and staggering together spoke wildly in their language.  Theirs were deep and untamed voices and I was uncertain whether it was quarreling I was observing in their excited and frenzied pitch.  Pixie pulled on one's sleeve while the sisters rifled through the bundles the men had carried over their shoulders.  Pixie turned to me and said, "Watch, Yank.  We can show you something!"

I replied fretfully, "I have no money.  Honest.  Really, I don't."

"Nobody talking money.  Come, drink with us.  We can show you the dance, our family dance."  The bundles they had carried were spread upon the grass and much wild talking back and forth went on.  Pixie turned to me and said, "Don't you worry, mate, you watch this."  The men talked among themselves with voices rising and falling, searching their bundles and pulling out things.  Pixie and the sisters smiled at me while the men continued fumbling through their things.  I was on edge with their every movement.  I watched one of them pouring water from a bottle into several coconut shells which contained what looked like mud of different colors.  The men smeared each other's faces with the ointment and the women rubbed it over their limbs.  It all happened quickly.  The shouting was muffled and slurred by the whiskey drinking that accompanied the swaying of bodies in the dance they performed.  The dance was clumsy and brief.  It was the oddest thing.  The women clapped as the men swirled and circled before me on the grass.  Above their arms tossing and their heads gyrating, I saw again in the now darkening sky that lopsided moon.  The sight helped me avert my eyes from the dancing and the garrulous women.  I was embarrassed and had no idea of what might be expected of me.

Almost as soon as it began, the dance ended and I paused and then looked with bewilderment at Pixie.

"Thank you but I must go.  I'm late.  Sorry, people are waiting.  I must go."

"These people?" she asked.  "Who these people?"

This time the words quickly came to me.  "My family," I answered.

I ran off along Fitzroy Street in the lights of the cafes and past the tables of the outdoor restaurants.  Smoke and lights slanted out of bars and voices crackled amid the sound of clinking glasses.  My heart was pounding but I was hopeful of the relief that my escape from the aborigines would bring.  I rushed away under the buildings of Victorian facades and wrought iron latticed balconies.  Waiting for the light to change at the crosswalk at Grey Street, I looked behind me.  In the distance, I could see them, crossing Ackland Street, walking away from the clown at Luna Park.  There was no doubt that they were following me.  I cursed them.  Worried and frustrated, I wondered what they wanted of me.  I couldn't imagine.  Did they think I owed them something?  I hurried further towards The Espy Hotel and Pub.  The traffic noise blared.  It was just another street and I would arrive at my destination, the birthday party for Kalki.  The entire Melbourne family would be there.  Some were coming down from the country north of the city.  Others were driving up from the southern coast.  Much of the Australian family would be there.

Ahead of me I could see glimmering in the twilight the marquis of the The Espy, announcing music events for the night.  "Kalki's 32nd Birthday" was happening on the 3rd floor in a nightclub called The Fish Bowl.  At the columns of the hotel, I looked back again and could see them still advancing, the men and their women.  I thought I saw Pixie leading the group and waving her arms, perhaps shouting at me.  I mounted the long flights of stairs.  At the entrance of The Fish Bowl sat two young women at a table collecting an entrance fee.

"Five dollars, please," one said.  I paid.  "Do you want your hand stamped?"

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Your hand.  Do you want it stamped?  You know, so you can leave and come back.  Not be charged again."

"Yes," I said, distracted.  I considered warning the women that I was being followed.  By a pack of aborigines, I would say.  It all seemed too absurd to even mouth the words.  I didn't hear their footfalls.  I walked rapidly to merge in the anonymity of the crowd. There were two crowds, the drinkers at the bustling bar and the dancers swirling to pounding disco rhythm on the dance floor under the balloons and flashing lights.  I saw but could not hear the voices of my friends.  I was hugged and then abandoned in the roar of clamoring music.  I ordered a brandy and drank it quickly.  Behind me, stretching the length of the dance floor, was the window that from the hallway outside The Fish Bowl the activity inside could be viewed.  There was no sign of Pixie and her group.  I swallowed a second brandy and turned my eyes to the dance floor.  Some family dancers beckoned me forward to join them.  The disco throbbing sound waned as the lights went on.  There was a pause from the loudness.  The streamers and balloons glided along the ceiling.

There was the stir of anticipation.  Then came the announcement.  It was time for Kalki's performance.

As Kalki walked into the spotlight wearing her glittering costume, there came a prolonged roar and applause and laughter, pierced occasionally by a scream.  Kalki began her dance.  Encircling her feet were nine hoops.  As the music built, she maneuvered her ankles and calves to start the hoops twirling about her.  Amazingly, the hoops spun wildly up her body, a few at waist level, others around her neck and several about her arms.  The music increased its tempo and the performer gyrated wildly, adding the remaining hoops.  Hands were clapping; arms were hugging me as the loving crowd cheered on the birthday girl.  A kiss was planted on my cheek and when I turned to see who it was, I saw gazing from behind the window the faces of the aborigines.  Through the murky light of the smoke-filled nightclub their faces looked diffident, almost furtive at first with their broad heads pressed against the glass.  I was shocked at their sudden presence.  The music grew louder, the applause increased.

I could see a change come over the aborigines’ faces that now reflected the enjoyment of the celebration.  Pixie's wide eyes and expansive nose pressed against the glass; her mouth was all teeth and smiling.  I don't know if she saw me, but a few people caught a glimpse of her and the others.  Pointing at the window where the group was peering in was Pixie, raising her arm above her head showing the V-shaped peace sign.  The others followed, imitating her gesture.  I felt awkward and bemused.  Goosebumps and shivers of delight encircled me like Kalki's hoops, overcoming my reticence.  Kalki was dissolving, it seemed, my entire unease and apprehension as she twirled and spun, ravishing the crowd in a momentum of rapture.  Casting my eyes again at the pleased, even ecstatic faces of the strangers at the window, I saw a violet shift of light moving across the nightclub, across the ceiling of balloons and streamers and the shadowy dance floor.  It was an arc of light that reached into the beam of my imagination where I saw the rose-colored premiere of a new picture.  In it were ships landing with white men upon a new continent and embracing its indigenous people.  The vision of harmony rushed past any images of dominance and land grabbing or rabbit-proof fences or genocide.  It was a brief glimpse into a promising world of miracles.  With eyes closed, I languished in its spell.

My eyes opened again to the last movements of Kalki's wondrous hoop dance.  The colored rings began to unfurl from their dizzying circles around her body, from legs to hips to arms.  The music stopped; the lights went on.  Kalki bowed as the crowd roared with applause.

I walked through the swarm to the exit where the two women still sat at the table.  Pixie and her group had already started down the stairs.  They apparently had watched the dance from the window; they never entered.  Pixie turned around and looked at me at the top of the stairs.  "Yank," she yelled, mounting the stairs like a round, lumbering animal.  I felt like a child in her robust presence, both amused and a little scared as though she were  the giant clown at Luna Park.  She smiled and reached for my hand; it disappeared in her dark fleshy paw.  "You watch our family dance," she said contentedly, "now we see yours.  Family, best.  Number one.  We go home tonight.  Peace to you, Yank.  Family is peace.  Yes."

The men and the two sisters were descending the staircase staggering in a laughing swell of drunken revelry.  Pixie continued to hold my hand.  She looked at my hand and said, shaking her gourd-like head, "I want something from you.  Then we go west.  I want to have the tattoo on the hand like you."  Pixie walked over to the table at the entrance to the crowded nightclub and held out her hand.  The young women looked in confusion at one another.  Hesitantly, the one with the stamp pressed the black ink symbol to Pixie's hand.

"Good," Pixie shouted, descending the stairs and waving her stamped hand for her family below to see.  "We go home now, Yank. Good!  Peace to you, mate."

                                                    
                                                    

 

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On the Road                                                                

by Mike Mellish

                                                                                                                                              

he Graves family, or what was left of it, hopped in their badly bruised Taurus and began heading south, the two boys in the back seat worked into an absolute frenzy at the prospect of living near beaches, boats, and sunshine.  Their father had tried hard to instill in them his hatred of the snow and biting cold that North Dakota produced nine months out of the year.  He adjusted the rearview and smiled at his jubilant offspring.  He was looking forward to heading south, towards warmth, and east, towards civility.  There were things in the far northwest, savage ways and savage people that Sonny Graves didn’t want his children to know. 

 “We’re outta here,” screamed Marshall, the youngest, and turned in his seat to see his old building fade into the snowy white scenery.  He waved goodbye to it the same way someone less innocent would’ve flipped it off.  “Bye-bye old ’partment!” 

Dylan, the oldest, sat in his seat with a big smile, trying to mask his regret by mimicking Marshall’s gung-ho enthusiasm.  He was eleven, just old enough to have developed good friends, connections with the places he grew up in.  That, and the boy had secretly enjoyed parts of every North Dakota winter.  Making money with his buddies by shoveling off walks and driveways.  The feeling of being boxed in by huge snowfalls, of being sent back to the Stone Age for a while, forced to rely on candles and wood stoves and, when it got really bad, water melted from snow in pans.  He always cherished the first snowfall, taking long walks in the woods behind his father’s back.  Dylan told Sonny while they were packing that he didn’t completely hate it here, that it was okay.   His father said it wasn’t okay.  He said that Dylan wasn’t old enough to understand the place yet, that there was nothing worse than this place after a while.  With a bit of practice Dylan had trained himself to look forward to the trip to Maryland, to put a twinkle in his eye when his father mentioned the move.

The Graves family was moving because Sonny had finally found a job that didn’t somehow embarrass him.  He took the job because of the pay, and because he could avoid taking another of what his father, the lumberjack, would’ve called “sissy jobs.”  Mailroom clerk.  Proofreader.  Short order cook.  Stay-at-home husband.  Newsstand manager.  Jobs that didn’t make the hands callused.  But this one would.  Demolitions, they called it.  He whispered the words “for myself” to remind him why he took the job in the first place.  Not for his ex-wife, not for his recently deceased father, not for any old bullying ghost or half-remembered insult.  This job was for him, for the boys, for the start of a new life in a new place, far away from a past the boys couldn’t understand and Sonny couldn’t explain.

They got off at the first interstate exit and settled in for a long drive as the world opened up before them like an ever-growing painting, the periphery filling itself in the faster they went.

Nighttime, the kids asleep in the back seat, Sonny tired but not ready to pull off and find a hotel just yet.  He was making great time on the empty highway and was deep in thought, fantasizing about what his new job would be like.  Demolitions.  Sonny liked the way the word felt coming out of his mouth, liked the way it sounded when his new boss had said it to him for the first time. He wished he could say it to his father, to the ex-wife, blindside them with it like an invisible sledgehammer.  Not that his father would’ve been completely proud of him anyway.  Real man would’ve found a way to do it where he was raised, the old man would’ve grumbled.  Give something back to the place that made you what you are. 

Not that it would’ve pleased his ex-wife either.

He turned on the radio, low volume as to not stir the kids.  He was getting a headache from the constant velocity of highway travel and he thought some music might distract him from his discomfort.  Found a good station, played all female country singers, their voices dripping with longing, hurt, the promise of wonderful sex in return for the attention of an honest man.  Sonny listened, sang along with parts, decided to drive straight through to morning.

Mid-day the next day, they had already gone south through South Dakota, Iowa, east through Illinois, Indiana, into Ohio.  For the last twelve hours all the scenery had looked the same.  Lonely flat browns and yellows, tufts of barn and silo growing wildly from the diseased landscape, herds of suicide-eyed cattle lounging next to newly erected apartment complexes, horses caged by morning mists and barbed wire.  Marshall hollered grouchily, “When’re we gonna stop? We’re just goin’ in a big gay circle!”  Sonny told him not to use the word “gay” and said that he too would’ve sworn they were traveling in circles if the road signs hadn’t been changing.  But they were.

“We’re in Ohio, and we’re stopping just as soon as I find someplace,” Sonny explained, realizing for the first time that Dylan hadn’t said a word since they had left the Dakotas.  It left him a bit unsettled and he decided they could all probably use some rest, some real food, some fresh air.

The first motel was a sty, a complete hole-in-the-wall.  Lumpy mattresses, questionable sheets, no reception on the t.v., no hot water.  Cockroaches scurrying for the darkness when they flipped on the lights.  “Like turds with legs,” Marshall giggled, and Sonny told him not to say “turd.”

“But they do,” Marshall whined, and Dylan told him to shut up, unsure why his father had brought them to this shithole in the middle of nowhere.  They were kind of poor, but could afford better places.  Dylan began wondering if maybe his father hadn’t gotten himself in some kind of trouble in North Dakota.

They stripped the sheets off the bed and tossed them in the closet.  Sonny got sleeping bags from the car to use instead.  Marshall and Dylan in one bed, kicking and squirming and pinching and punching, Sonny in the other, rubbing the outsides of his nose up to the corners of his eyes with his thumb and index as if trying to hypnotize himself.  Didn’t work.  After the kids were asleep Sonny locked up the room and headed downstairs to the bar, took a seat in the shadows.  Ordered an Old Grandad on the rocks.  Practiced blending in, minding his own business, appearing inconspicuous.  Didn’t work.  From behind him a voice, gruff and scarred by an endless chain of cigarettes and bourbon shots.

“Buy you a drink if I can confide something with you, bud?”

Sonny thought about saying no for a moment, then invitingly kicked a chair towards the stranger.  Why not?  The guy was short, stocky and muscular, sweating, his eyes nervously darting, two days of stubble like coal dust on his face, his dark hair pulled back in a greasy black ponytail.  Dressed in some kind of uniform, a blue Mets jacket pulled over it.  Ordered another Old Grandad on ice for Sonny, sighed, lit up a smoke.

“Pall Malls,” Sonny commented. “Don’t see many of them anymore.”

“No.  You don’t.  Whaddaya go by, bud?”

“Lance,” Sonny lied. “You?”

“Name’s Morris Turk.  Whaddaya do?”

“I, uh, salesman.  Traveling.  Floor cleaners.  You?”

“Emergency Medical Services.  Clean up the aftermath.  Can I ask you something, Lance?  Cut straight through the typical b.s. and right to the bone?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

My wife, Sonny thought without hesitation, in grainy 35mm resolution, the camera shaking, one in her mouth, one in her ass, one furiously pumping underneath her.  All of them shiny with sweat.  Mask she’s wearing comes off halfway through the show, by the end she’s on her knees in front of all the guys and you can guess what happens then.  They call it a money shot, and it’s a close-up on her face.  Sometimes when I look at my kids, he thought, especially Marshall, I can see parts of their mother’s face and that scene is all I can think about.  The mother of my two kids, close up on her face.  Money shot is what they call it.

“The worst thing,” Sonny meditated.  “Had to bury my father a few months back.  Couldn’t stand the sight of the body,” he lied.  He hadn’t minded the sight of his father in a casket at all.  It had been a relief.  “Yup,” Sonny repeated, “couldn’t stand the sight of the body.”  Morris let out a high titter of laughter, slammed vodka.  Sonny would’ve bet his new friend was probably more than a little bit insane.  If he were a betting man.

“The sight of the body,” Morris said, shaking his head, “hard to get used to, but once you do…well, that’s the trouble I’m in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell you in a minute, but right now you gotta tell me something.  The real truth about your worst thing.  Something darker.  Everyone’s got something just indescribable.  I want the low-down dirty truth.”

Sonny’s nerves began to rub raw with every word Morris expelled.  He couldn’t tell him the low-down truth.  About his ex-wife, legitimate airline hostess by day and nighttime wild-child, about the phone numbers programmed into her cell, about the drugs, about the beating he took from a man who showed up on their doorstep claiming she owed him money, about receiving that awful tape from, of all people, his own father.  There he was, now alone in a bar with a stranger, in the middle of nowhere, nothing to lose, and still he couldn’t speak of her to anyone.  Couldn’t speak of the night he was ready to do it, walked into the bedroom with a butcher’s knife and she just laughed at him, smiling her demon smile.  The kids asleep downstairs.  “You’re a small man, Sonny,” she had laughed, indicating his size between her index finger and her thumb.

Sonny moped back downstairs, put the knife away, crumpled to the cold kitchen tiles where he wept, then slept.  Dylan woke him up in the morning, pushing him with the arm not holding Marshall, then a baby.  “We’re hungry,” Dylan said, “and Mom’s gone.”

No, he couldn’t speak of that.

But maybe he could tell him about what his father had said to him after she had left them, after he had watched and burned the tape. “Your own fault you lost her,” his father told him in the living room of the house he had grown up in.  “She was wild.  Undisciplined.  And you’re nothing but a big pussy.  Gotta know when to lay hands on a woman.  When wild is too wild.  Your mother left us because she thought I was too harsh, and now you know what happens when you ain’t harsh enough with a woman.  You lose her anyway.”  He sniffed loudly, inhaled on a cigarette.  “Every man’s got a right,” he’d said, looking Sonny right in the eyes, “every man’s got a right to do what’s in his heart.”

After a long pause, Sonny repeated his father’s advice to Morris:

“Well, I really don’t know what ails you, but my father once said that every man’s got a right to do what’s in his heart,” he offered, knowing the statement held some level of universality and hoping it would somehow ease whatever pain Morris was so apparently drowning in.  Morris looked at Sonny in wonder, as if his mind had just been read.

“Don’t I know it,” Morris half-whispered, focusing on some crumb or drop of liquor left on the countertop. “Don’t I know it.  So here’s my worst thing.  Probably my worst thing, gotta get it off my chest.  Saw this body today, suicide case.  Beautiful young girl, chased all these pills down with banana liqueur.  God knows why.  When I get to the scene I’m all alone with her, the first one there.  She’s laying on her bed, arms at her sides.  Teddy bears lacing the whole scene.  I send the sniffling parents out of the room and try to get a pulse.  The body’s still warm.  I check to see if maybe her vitals slowed down to almost nothing, see if maybe we could revive her.  But she was dead as dead.  And I get to thinking.  She’s a few shades paler but still warm.  Still flexible.  I see dead bodies all the time, every day, but never one like hers.  No bruises or rips.  And beautiful.  You could make her pose any way you wanted.  She could be whatever fantasy you wanted.  God knows I need a bit of fantasy,” Morris choked, halfway between crying and laughing.  “I’m a lonely man, Lance.  Lonely.”  Sonny stared at the man, who looked up at him through teary eyes and repeated the word “lonely.”  Sonny realized old Morris was quite a bit more intoxicated than he had originally assumed.  Probably quite a bit more insane, too.

As Sonny turned to leave, mumbling excuses about being tired and worried about his kids, Morris spun and kissed him hard on the side of the mouth.  “Please,” Morris begged, his breath heavy and wet with booze and strange passion.

Sonny erupted from his seat.  When Morris clutched onto his shirt and promised him a few more drinks Sonny shoved him to the floor and ran back out of the bar, back to his room and his boys, hearing the EMS worker bleating behind him, “but I didn’t do it, I didn’t actually do anything…”

Another item added to the long list of things Sonny could never talk about again.

Sonny and the boys on the road again.  Now in Pennsylvania, heading South on 79 towards West Virginia.  Then east again.  Sonny’s had no sleep for 72 hours, beginning to hear the kids saying things when they weren’t, beginning to develop muscle twitch, shakiness of the hands.  Maybe I should’ve taken 80 all the way east, Sonny thought, and Dylan said “what?” from the backseat and Sonny realized he had said something out loud.  He needed sleep. A few minutes later Dylan said something else, and he figured he should probably listen hard as the boy had said so little during the trip.

“What’d you say, Dee-bo?”

“I said, why was North Dakota so bad?  This trip seems so long.  It’s ridiculous.  Why couldn’t we just stay at home, deal with things?”

“Well, it’s a hard thing to explain exactly why.  It’s a bad place because it doesn’t forgive.  It’s savage.  If you make one mistake there it doesn’t go away.  You have to leave the place behind or else all your mistakes will pile up and you’ll start to hate everything.  And you can’t just hate everything.”

“What do you mean, ‘mistake’?”

“Things were just bad there for me, growing up and even when I got older.  Sorry.  I mean, I know you had friends there, but I want a different life for you.”

“No.  It’s not that. You know Mm’s back there somewhere and she got you in trouble with someone.  Like that guy that came around that day and hit you.”

“That’s not true, D.   I don’t know where your mother is.  And I’m not in trouble.  I just want you guys to have a different life.”

“But I don’t want a different life.  I’m moving back when I’m sixteen.”

“Eighteen you’re an adult.”

“Sixteen I can drive.”

Marshall slept happily through the entire conversation.  Dreaming of sand and sun, Sonny assured himself.  Staring uncomfortably out the window, watching the dull blaze of deciduous scenery, Dylan questioned for the first time if his father was a good man, and the answer hit him like a harsh beam of light, an epiphany at that young age.  The idea that good or bad didn’t matter in the equation.  His father had certain rights, the same ones all fathers had.  Dylan became aware of a gray area for the first time in his life.

Sonny kept driving, positive Dylan had just started to despise him and that the feeling would only intensify with time.  He remembered when he first began to despise his own father.  He was the same age, but he’d had different reasons.  Sonny rolled down his window to cure the stuffiness in the car, to taste the quality of the new air.  At random he remembered what Morris Turk had said about posing the body any way you wanted.  Suddenly Sonny felt claustrophobic, like he could really use a walk to stretch his legs.  Ten more minutes and they were pulling into a West Virginia state park camping site.

There was a world of difference in the April climate of North Dakota and the April climate of the Virginias, so they slept outside on the campgrounds.  Nestled together but in separate bags, lined up like individually wrapped cigars in front of the smoldering embers from their fire.  The kids both kept waking Sonny up, scared of animal noises, of the rumors they’d heard (even at that young age!) about what happened to hapless campers in the West Virginia wilderness.  “Get it in the butt,” Marshall smiled in the darkness, having only a faint idea of what his words indicated.  Sonny told him not to say that and to go to sleep.  “In the butt, in the butt, in the butt,” Marshall cried joyfully while Sonny thought about reaching over and laying a smack on him.  But he wasn’t the kind to raise a hand to a child.  He knew better, knew what it was like.  Sonny’s sleep-deprived brain pitched and reeled.  Pretty soon he could hold out no longer and was shackled to a dreamless sleep until morning.

The next day, highway screaming by in a grayish blur, Sonny bent behind the wheel and still tired, body tight and sore from sleeping on natural ground.

“Dad’s a bitch!” Marshall yelled from the back seat with an amplified degree of self-fulfillment at being able to use insults he knew were reserved for grown-ups only.  Sonny told him not to say “bitch.”  Asked him if Dylan taught him that and Dylan asked why that question couldn’t be asked directly of him.

“I’m right here,” he said.

“Bitch,” Marshall giggled.

They had left the campsite four hours ago and were now only about thirty minutes outside the Maryland state line.  They were there but not really close to their new home yet.  They still had to travel almost all the way to the coast.  Their new trailers were two hundred feet from the shore of Haley’s Cove of the Chesapeake Bay.

“You guys are going to have your own trailer, a private place to sleep.”

“Sounds great, Dad,” Dylan said, arms crossed, his brother asleep next to him, drool gently soaking into the car’s upholstery.

They stopped at one of those convenience store-gas stations, got some fuel in the car and in their bellies.  The kids played around the yellow grass of the rest area while Sonny snoozed on a picnic bench.  Had dreams of maps that opened up big enough to fill rooms, red and blue lines intersecting and intertwining.  As if the world had been skinned and Sonny was let in to what was beneath the hide. Parts of the map began to boil.  Others began to pulse like palpitating hearts.  Jolted awake by Marshall tugging on his arm.

“Find him and get him,” Marshall instructed Sonny matter-of-factly.  His eyelids were fluttering but he wasn’t crying.  Sonny almost swallowed his tongue as he realized Marshall was dazed due to a big gash across the side of his head.  A trickle of blood slithered down the tiny hill where the corner of his jaw met the pale skin of his upper throat.  Nothing should be touching there, Sonny thought uselessly.  Dylan was behind him, breathless from running.

“Somebody tried to take Marshall.  Hit him in the head,” Dylan said, pointing to a pony-tailed man in a blue Mets jacket running towards a rusted red truck.  Sonny began to mumble something.  He couldn’t move.  The truck sped off.  He tended his son’s wound in the rest-stop bathroom, didn’t need stitches, thank God.  He herded his shocked children into the old Taurus. They hit the road again.  They had to get somewhere very permanent very quickly.

After a while, “You don’t love us anymore.”  Marshall was crying and was the one who had said it.  Dylan couldn’t even look at his father, who had let the greasy man get away.  Had looked at the greasy man like he’d feared him since birth.  The boy watched passing scenery blur into itself.

“Daddy, I said, you don’t love us anymore.”  Marshall crying.

“Yes I do love you,” Sonny growled impatiently.  He didn’t know what to say.  Couldn’t tell them the truth.  That Morris had followed them for days, probably hid in the shadows of the woods in West Virginia, probably trailed him by only a few car lengths down the highway.  Sonny knew he’d been too tired to pay attention to that kind of detail.  So this wasn’t his fault.  How could the blame fall on him for something this bizarre, this unexpected?  For the first time in months he felt like he needed a cigarette.  He kept a one-handed grip on the wheel and focused his impatience on the radio tuner, blazing from station to station.  He wondered when they’d finally get where they were going, prayed he wouldn’t keep on driving when they got there.

                                                    
                                                    

 

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Swaying in the Wind                                    

by Shannon Cruickshank

he rough hairs of the rope around her neck made her shiver.  An ominous wind dragged light brown strands of her hair across her eyes, which were alert, jumping from face to cold face that filled the ocean of people below her.  The crowd was restless.  A myriad of glares were ready to greet her steady gaze.  She tried to look down, to deprive them of the satisfaction of seeing the screams that she choked on bounce off of the walls of her brain.  Yet their faces refused to leave her vision.  She was certain that they could see everything within her, that her heavy dress shielded nothing, her skin transparent to their hungry eyes.  In this moment we own you, their imperious faces told her.  You are nothing but property we wish to throw out. 

The wind brought the frigid voice of a priest to her ears.  Her head twitched to the side to see the old man wearing black, contrasting his sharp white head.  The priest stood at the edge of the wooden platform, speaking to her yet addressing the growing mob.  In one hand he held an open bible.  The other he used to dramatize his words, as if he were spitting the prayers into his fist and then throwing them at her.  "May God have mercy on your soul, child.  May you be delivered into his grace."

God has never been with me, she thought. I have lived and will die alone.

She wondered why she held her head so high.  Her neck hurt but it wouldn't go languid, as if held up by the palpable hand of a dignity that hadn't left her throughout her past days spent in the damp, frozen prison cell.  When she had walked from the cart that had delivered her to the town square to the doomed platform, pride had hidden in her shadow.  As the rope had been placed around her neck and shouts of, "Witch!" had reverberated in the air, pride had seeped into her back, keeping her spine straight, her shoulders leveled, her head high.  The sight of her had disappointed the audience, for no tear dampened her cheek and no cry would part her pale pink lips.  The hangman had to reach up in order to place the rope around her neck for she would not bend down. 

There was a sudden silence and the crowd shifted, creating a ripple of movement that she followed from one end of the square to the next until her eyes landed on the side of the platform where the priest had previously stood.  The spot was empty now.  The priest was gone.  It never occurred to her how sturdy the tiny wooden stool she stood on had felt.  Now her feet clung to the small square of wood that held her above the pit of death.  A warm presence stood behind her, coming closer, and she knew the man with the black mask was approaching her. 

"You are a coward," she said, throwing her last word into the air, hoping it would slap the face of the hangman, while at the same time her eyes aimed it at the sneering, dirt smudged faces before her.  By the anxious circles their eyes had become she knew that the reach of death was near to her and she felt its fingers slid quickly up her arms, an icy caress that burned her flesh.  She closed her eyes, the rise of her chest gradually turning into heaves, and her chin was pushed even higher. 

The stool was kicked from underneath her.  She felt herself drop and then jerk upwards, towards the sky, the hold of the rope around her neck like that of a firm but rough lover.  Her body shook but eventually went slack, succumbing to the grasp of the rope.  The crowd cheered.

                                                    
                                                    

 

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The Man with the Broken Crutch                          

by Tom Sheehan

t was where the Dark Forest runs out of breath and the river, pretending to be thief, steals much of daylight’s silver.  It was here one morning the man with a broken crutch came out of the forest and came along the river gathering its coin.  He wore a cap for the weather and a jacket time had touched roughly.  And he limped.

The limp was a serious limp, almost twisting the man’s frame.  The object foot had a dragging stutter to it and the boot was greatly worn.  The man promised to topple easily.  And need or want moved in the air about him.

The single crutch at his left side was a crude apparatus, bound in places where it had been broken with wire tightly coiled.  Avershaw the blacksmith, from his porch, saw him first, noticed how he leaned to one side.  “Melba,” he called, and his wife came onto the porch.  “We will have another for breakfast I am sure.”  Her apron was gathered in her hands and she looked at the stranger and said, “I am sure we will.”

Avershaw, a big man with red suspenders and heavy pants, stood and hailed the other man.  “Would you stand for coffee and a biscuit, sir?  We do not have abundance but we have sufficient.  Eggs would be another matter.”  Again Avershaw noted how the man leaned almost to the point of falling.  Then he noted the kindly face, the clear blue eyes, the way the man held his chin.  And his hands!  His hands were delicate and smooth and did not look as if they belonged with the crutch or had much employed the crutch.

“You are too kind, sir,” the man with the crutch said.  A slight smile wore on his face.  “We are in luck for I have two eggs here I found last evening in the forest, and no place to cook them.”  From a pocket of the worn jacket he brought out two brown eggs that could be yet idling in a nest.  “If the lady of the house would oblige, she may do as she wishes with them.”  His hand held out the two brown eggs and Avershaw called his wife.  “Melba, we’ll have biscuits dipped in eggs today, just the way you like them.”

Then Avershaw pointed to a chair and said, “Rest easy while the biscuits get dipped and fried.  We’ll have our coffee here where the sun comes first.  If I were a woodsmith I would fix that crutch for you, but my iron would be too heavy for you.”  Then Avershaw said, “By what name are you called, sir?”

“They call me Stick.  They have called me Stick for a long time, for so long I know no other name.  So Stick I will be.  It is not uncomfortable.”

They had their biscuits with a small mound of butter and a sweet syrup.  And a second cup of coffee.

“Do you have far to go?” Avershaw said, as he finished his coffee.  “We could put some lunch in a kit for you.”

“Not far,” Stick said, “not far at all.”

When the coffee was gone Stick said thank you and went on his way.

Just before noon, still where the forest runs out of breath and the river steals daylight, Stick was hailed by another man in his front yard.  The man had seen that serious limp in the heat of the sun.  “Stranger, would a bit of shade and a small bite of food aid you on your journey?  We do not have much but we will share.  I am with my two daughters.  Today is a day without meat for us.  We have but few pennies left from what bread we could buy.”

“Such a lucky day it is,” Stick said.  “Last night in the forest I came upon a deer who had shortly before impaled himself.  I came away with some venison.”  From deep in his jacket pocket he drew out a small parcel wrapped in paper.  “However your daughters choose to cook it, be it done.”  The daughters danced away with the venison.  Soon the aroma climbed on the air in the middle of the day.  There was a sauce to go with the bread and the four of them dipped their bread and ate the venison.

“My name is Rastoff and I teach music,” Rastoff said, his big teeth showing as he talked.  “If I could work with wood I would make you a new crutch to aid in your journey.  But I have no knowledge of wood.  Nor what its grain is or where its strength lies, except here.”  And with that he drew a violin up from below the table and played songs for Stick and his daughters.  After a while, Stick said, “I must be going.  But I do not have far to travel.”  He left with his thank you as soft as music on the air.

Stick was not far away by the close of evening.  A young boy came up to him and said, “My mother saw you coming for a long time from her window.  We do not have much but you are welcome to be at our table.  We have soup.  It is thin but it will be warm.”

“Young man,” Stick said, “tell your mother we are in luck.  Just last evening, in the middle of the Dark Forest, where there was a small patch of late sunlight, I found two potatoes, two beets and two carrots.”  He dug deep into his jacket pocket and brought out the vegetables.  “Tell your mother to thicken the soup with these.”

The boy nodded with delight and ran off to give the vegetables to his mother.  He soon came back and said, “She thanks you a great deal.  If my father were here he could fix your crutch for you, but he is away in the Great War that moves around the world.  We hope he comes back soon.  He is a carpenter and could fix your crutch easily.”

At dusk they ate the newly thickened soup with the potatoes and the beets and the carrots cut up in it.  The soup was delicious soup and the boy soon fell asleep on the porch of his house while the mother cleaned the dishes.  Stick said goodbye.  “I have to keep moving.  You have a fine boy.  I hope your husband gets back soon.  War is a great separator but often not the final one.”

His way took him along a stone wall for a few miles.

The river had nearly given up all of its daylight when Stick was walking past an old farmhouse sitting like a deep shadow.  Not one window had a light in it, nor was there any smoke coming from the chimney.  A voice hailed him from the darkness in front of the house.  “If you have no place to sleep, sir, we could put you up, but you must be able to do with the darkness and the cold.  We do not have any light or any kindling to start a fire or any matches for the matter.  I am afraid that my children will not be able to do their reading this night and they might also catch cold.  The edge of the moon says it is going to be cold.”

“You are most kind, sir,” Stick said, “but fear not.  Last evening in the forest I found some flint and stone in an old pouch on a tree stump.  We can start a fire with them.”

“All well and good,” the man in the darkness said, “but we still have no kindling to get the big logs burning.”

“Ah, but we do, “Stick said, as he slammed his broken crutch over a large stone in the wall and splintered it for kindling.  The sound crackled so harshly in the night it frightened the man.

“But how will you walk on the morrow?” the man said.

Stick had no hesitation.  “You will make me a crutch tonight,” he replied.

“I have been unable to work for a long time,” the man said.  But all night he worked hard on some pieces of wood he found, knowing that before this stranger came he would not have even looked for such wood.  Light came from a good fire and warmth filled the house and the children were asleep after reading their lessons.  In the morning the man handed Stick a shiny new crutch that caught the early morning sun all along the shaft.  The crutch was smooth and had a lacquer finish on it and a pad on the top where it fit under Stick’s arm.

That sun was barely up over the horizon when Stick walked away in the early slant of the sunlight, down past the fields he went, past the stone walls, to where the river again was catching up all the daylight it could grasp.  Once he waved back at the man with his new crutch.

That evening all the people had gathered in town and were talking about the man with the broken crutch.

“I am glad that we were able to feed him,” Avershaw said, his thumbs hooked on his red suspenders.  “We gave him breakfast, a royal breakfast, a meal to begin the day with.”  He paused, hooking his suspenders a little higher.  “As my mother used to say, ‘A meal to touch the backbone.’”

“And we gave the poor man his lunch,” Rastoff said, “with venison and thick gravy.  A meal also fit for a king.”  He smiled proudly, his large teeth showing.  “We even played music for him to soothe his vagrant soul.  If there were a place for that poor man to live, this would be it.  We all did so much for him.  All taking our turn with a stranger.”  Those around him nodded in agreement.

The boy’s mother, not to be outdone, not wanting to be left out of a share of goodness, took her turn.  “A most splendid and thick soup we gave the man.  Thick as can be, with potatoes and beets and new carrots.  A treat for any beggar on his rounds.  The kind that sticks to one’s ribs.”  It was a kind of punctuation when she added, “And he ate a goodly share of it.”

The others nodded in agreement again, seemingly all of one mind.

They were satisfied with themselves, but a voice from the edge of light, the man from the darkness, said, “Do any of you know what he gave to us?  Why do we continually wrap ourselves up in our own gifts?  Why do we tie up our own ribbons in such a manner?”

“Well,” the boy’s mother said, “what did you do for him?  It was near dark when he left my house.”

“What fools we are, “the man answered.  “It’s not what we did for him.  It’s what he did for us.  He took care of us.  Me, a useless man for years, I made a crutch for him.  I haven’t worked like that in a long time and I guess we all know that.”  For a moment he hung his head.  “That’s one of the reasons he came here.  The man needed a crutch to get on with.  And he saw to it that I made it for him.  We did not really do for him.  He did for us, but we are afraid to say it.”

The next morning, on the other side of the river, where the mountain comes to stand up and the field stops breathing, a man with a broken crutch came limping out of the forest ready to lean on some more people.

A man hailed him from his porch.

                                                    
                                                    

 

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The Box                                                                                      

 by M.A. Haarhaus

he pain begins in the middle of the chest, travels down through the stomach and stops at the base of the spine.  It then travels up the spine, spreads along the arms to the fingertips.  It branches off from the base of the skull and radiates through the head and lands solidly in the back of the eyes.  The eyes begin to tear to relieve the pressure, but nothing falls.  The pain bounces back into the head and travels back down to the heart where it builds a house with bars on the windows, locks on the doors and no key.

Emma followed the pain through her body and waited for it to lock itself firmly in her heart.  There it was safe and could not get out.  If it were ever to get out, she knew that it would kill her.  She wouldn’t die, but she would be dead.  Nothing would feel again, nothing would sound sweet or look magical or taste salty.  Emma stayed still as the pain found its way to her heart.  She waited for the house to be finished and the windows barred and the doors locked before she allowed herself to feel the physical pain that started this whole thing.

The day had begun like any other summer day.  She and her four brothers had to finish breakfast and get out of the house before Mother found some work for them to do.  She and her brothers inhaled bowls of Corn Flakes, washed the dishes quickly and quietly and bolted out the door.  There was a large box waiting for them in the playground and it was going to be a perfect day.  It had rained the night before and the dirt in the playground was laying still.  The sun was out and there were plenty of sticks to be found.  The boys ran to the box and began fighting over who was going to be “it” as Emma selected sticks.

They had spotted the box the day before; a discard from the people across the street who had just moved into the military housing where Emma, her brothers and mother lived while her father was out to sea.  The boys had waited patiently for the people to go inside so that they could retrieve the box from their yard.  They sat on the top of the slide and plotted exactly how and who was to retrieve the box.  It was a great prize.  The kids on the other side of the playground had to be beaten to the punch or the box would be lost. 

As the boys sat on the top of the slide (keeping everyone else from using it), Emma sat on the swing waiting to see which one of them would fall off first.  She watched the kids on the other side of the playground creating their own plot of how to get the box.  The problem for those kids was that they weren’t from the same family.  If you were all from one family, the oldest or the largest was the one in charge and everyone else knew it.  If you were from different families, you first had to decide who was in charge.  By the time this decision was made, the prize was sure to be lost.  The boys were well aware of this and paid no attention to the kids on the other side of the playground.  They could wait until they had to defend the possession of the box before they worried about them.

As Emma thought these thoughts, her brother Jack fell off the top of the slide and all plans were interrupted until everyone was certain they didn’t have to involve Mother in the decision that Jack wasn’t really hurt.  There wasn’t any blood, so he was deemed to be all right.

It was decided that Tim, the smallest and fastest of the boys, would leap down the slide, run past the swings and fling himself over the fence directly in front of the yard where the box was laying.  He was to haul the box back to the fence as fast as he could, where Ryan, the largest of the boys, was waiting and together they would throw it over the fence to the others.  Jack and Felix, the oldest boy, were to then drag the box to the larger of the two big cement pipes placed in the playground as climbing apparatus and shove it inside.  By the time they got it to the cement pipe, Tim and Ryan would be back across the fence and stand at each end of the pipe to protect the box from the other kids.  Felix, the mastermind of this escapade, had decided that Emma was to remain on the swings as a lookout.  After all, she was only a girl.  Emma stayed on the swing and watched the rain clouds gather.

The sticks were a very important part of the game.  She and the boys had thought up the game when they had first seen the box.  Someone was to be “it.”  That meant they were to put the box over their heads and try to avoid being tagged by someone else.  The person with the box over their heads was the monster, and everyone wanted to be the monster.  The sticks were to be strictly controlled.  No throwing, no sharpening the ends on the sidewalk, and they were to be no longer than your arm.  They could be used to tag the monster so that you could be “it.”  As usual, not one of them remembered what happened when sticks were added to any game they played:  someone always got hurt.

The next day had begun like any other summer day.  Emma and the boys had to finish breakfast and get out of the house before Mother found some work for them to do.  The boys ran to the box and began fighting over who was to be “it” as Emma selected the sticks.  Each stick had its own pluses and minuses.  One was too long, one was too pointy, one was too whippy, and one had too many branch knobs on it.  Emma carefully selected the stick she would use.  She never involved herself in the “I’m it,” “No, I am” arguments the boys had.  She sat back and planned how to be “it” next.  It really depended on who was “it” to begin with.  If it was Tim, she had to be fast, if it was Jack she had to be strong; he didn’t usually relinquish his position once he got it whether he was tagged fairly or not.  If it was Felix, she had to be very devious, he was smarter than the others; and if it was Ryan, she had to cheat.  He cheated all the time and the only way to tag him was to cheat better.  Emma was good at planning, running and cheating; it was the only way to survive the games.

Tim was “it” first.  They ran and screamed and hit the box with the sticks.  Time-outs were not allowed unless you were bleeding or crying.  So, of course, there were several time-outs due to the boys crying or thinking they were bleeding.  Emma never cried.  The next hour or so was spent convincing the injured party that it wasn’t worth going in to see Mother about; he wasn’t bleeding enough or the lump was actually not that big.  They usually spent more time discussing the injuries than playing the game.  After Tim had been tagged by Jack and the ensuing injuries discussed, Jack was “it,” it was nearly lunchtime and Emma was getting hungry.  It was turning out to be a hot day and the dampened earth was drying out and blowing dust in everyone’s eyes.  None of them really wanted to go in for lunch.  If you went in, Mother would find that you had done something wrong and needed to be punished, or she would find that something had to be done that minute and one or more of them had to stay in to do it.  This ended the game, as everyone had to be present to make it fun.  They decided to have one more turn before going in and whoever was “it” at the end of that turn would get to be “it” when they all got back out.

Emma picked up her stick, the perfect stick—no one actually noticed that it was a little longer than her arm— and was determined to be “it” next.  Felix was the current monster in the box and the others fanned out to get a good shot at him.  You had to be very careful with Felix, he could outsmart all of them, or at least was very convincing when telling them that he had outsmarted them.  As he was being attacked by the others in a gang-type lay-out, Emma began sneaking up behind.  Felix must have sensed that there was one missing and he began to turn and duck at the same time.  Tim saw this as an opportunity and cheated.  He threw his stick.  That’s when it happened:  Tim threw, Felix ducked, and Emma caught the stick square in the eye.  The pain was excruciating.  Lights flashed inside her head and the wind was knocked out of her as she fell flat on her back; someone screamed.  She remembers Felix leaning over her with such a look of concern on his face she was sure she must have died and he was afraid to tell Mother.

There isn’t much Emma actually remembers about what happened next.  But the story goes that she was rushed to the military hospital on base and a doctor put some drops in her eye that stopped the pain.  She eventually was sent home to sleep and to be brought back the next day to see how things were progressing.  No one took the injury very seriously; the doctors and the nurses treated her rather matter-of-factly, the boys were left home and Mother was banned from the emergency room as usual.  Mother was useless in an emergency.  She passed out at the sight of blood and became enraged at an injury that required stitches.  Emma could only imagine how this was going to go when she got home.  There was no blood, no stitches, no broken bones, just pain, and lots of that.

Emma was being as good as she could be.  She didn’t complain any more than was necessary, and that she did as quietly as she could.  She kept her tears behind her eyes where they belonged.  She doesn’t remember the ride home or being put in her room.  She remembers only the pain.

The next day did not begin like any other day.  It began with pain for Emma.  The noise from the other room was loud.  Every thump, bang and spoon hitting the side of a dish was like someone pounding with a sledgehammer directly inside Emma’s head.  Time passed, pain remained.  No one brought breakfast, but that was okay with Emma, the thought of eating just hurt her stomach.  At around lunchtime Mother came in and made Emma get up to go to the doctor’s.  The pain she felt as she lifted her head from the pillow nearly made her scream.  The look on Mother’s face stopped her.  She dressed and made it to the car.  At the doctor’s, they put more drops in her eye that stopped the pain in her eye but did nothing for the pain in her head.  She heard the doctor tell Mother to keep Emma’s head immobile and the room should remain darkened for some mumble… mumble… mumble time.  All Emma wanted to do was to go home and go to bed.

The ride home was no better.  She went to bed, Mother placed a towel around her head and Emma slept.  Later that evening, Emma woke to the noise of the boys doing the dinner dishes.  The smell of the food was making her hungry, but every time she moved her head, the pain overwhelmed her.  She figured Mother would bring her something soon anyway, so she stopped trying to move.  But Mother didn’t bring her anything, no one did, no one came into the room, no one stopped by the door and whispered, no one seemed to care.  Emma was stunned; it was as if she didn’t exist.  How could this be?  At the very least Tim should come into the room and apologize for hitting her in the eye with a stick.  It was clearly against the rules:  no throwing, they had all agreed.  The noise from the other rooms had settled down, so Emma supposed they were all watching TV.  She was getting really hungry now, but couldn’t move her head, she couldn’t call out— it hurt.

The next day did not begin like any other day either.  The pain was still there, but not as intense.  Mother came into the room and gave Emma some orange juice, a rare treat.  Such a rare treat, in fact, Emma couldn’t remain angry that she had not been fed yesterday.  Maybe there was some order by the doctor that she didn’t know about.  That had to be what it was about.  She sipped the juice and waited for Mother to tell her what she could have for breakfast.  By now, she was starving.  But Mother didn’t tell her what she could have for breakfast; she had come into the room to tell Emma that the boys were in school and she had to work that day so Emma would be home alone.

“You know the rules about being home alone, Emma:  don’t answer the door, the phone or leave the house,” Mother said.

Emma could only whisper her reply and Mother left.  Mother had not even asked her how she was feeling.  Emma was alone.

The pain began in the middle of her chest, traveled down though her stomach and stopped at the base of her spine.  It then traveled up her spine and spread along her arms to her fingertips.  It branched off from the base of her skull and radiated through her head and landed solidly in the back of her eyes.  Her eyes began to tear to relieve the pressure, but nothing fell.  The pain bounced back into her skull and traveled back down to her heart where it started to build a house with bars on the windows and locks on the doors and Emma threw away the key.

                                                    
                                                    

 

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Reach                                                            

 by Alvaro Rodriguez

he powder-blue Chevette was overheating.  Canela kicked herself for not checking the coolant before leaving town and heading out here to the sticks, the rancho of her upbringing, where service stations were like lost oases in the desert.  All of them had Coke, all of them had beer, but so few of them had fan belts or square, yellow jugs of antifreeze.  Her eyes danced between the road before her and the needle inclining steadily toward the Day-Glo orange H.  How far was it to the next home visit?  Three miles?  She lifted the clipboard from the passenger seat and scanned the dot-matrix printout it held.  Peña was next.  New case.  Referral.  No telling whether he might be able to help with her feverish car.  But he’d have water, and that might be good enough to keep her rolling until the next gas station.

She turned from the main road onto the caliche, the smooth rush of sound as the car sped along replaced by the tiny but persistent pit-pit-pit of small, white rocks hitting the underbelly of her car.  The windows of the Chevette were down now, air conditioner off, to keep the small car running as long as possible.  She assured herself it was closer to Severo Peña’s than to turn back now, and she didn’t want Old Blue to leave her stranded out here in this incredible heat.  Even with the rush of wind generated by her 30 miles-per-hour speed, it was more than uncomfortably warm in the car.

Canela had been making home visits like these for the last eight months, ever since she had taken the post as outreach officer for the county health program.  That meant organizing cholesterol and glucose screenings at the VFW Hall in town, for example, and driving out to those members of the extended community for whom a trip to the doctor was a luxury.  Peña, the next stop on her list, was just such a person.  The referral was for a diabetes screening and general health talk, and she could easily do the latter and arrange the former on this visit.

The address might have proved vague and unfindable to an outsider, but without having stood there before, Canela knew the place, generally speaking.  Peña lived in an old camper overlooking the arroyo, down an unused, rutted path that broke from the caliche road like a dried stem off a thin branch.  Maybe she had seen it before.  Yes, she was sure of it now, she had seen it, but never connected that ashen trailer to anyone’s habitable space.  As the Chevette hissed to a halt, it seemed to Canela incongruous that any creatures other than rattlesnakes or field mice made their home in that place.

Maybe he wouldn’t have running water.  A well?  Was that possible?  Did people still have handpumps, jutting from the ground like a rusted tree trunk?  She couldn’t see one.  Maybe it was out back, behind the camper, she hoped.  Then again, maybe he would have running water, and everything would be okay.

She turned off the ignition.  The car continued to rattle and hiss with an unsportsmanlike swagger.  When it stopped, it lay silent for a moment before almost silently farting out one last, angry exhalation.  Canela eyed the small camper through the haze of her dusty windshield.

It was a scape of some elusive kind, she thought, its elements refusing to coalesce into recognizable parts, not allowing themselves to become palpable.  The pieces played tricks on her eyes and she wondered if they would all still be there when she stepped from the car and saw them face-to-face.  When she did, she recognized something new.  She hadn’t seen it until now, but there it was—a small, squat doghouse the same dried-earth color as the camper.

It was hotter, she realized, standing outside, than it had been in the car.  Best to get inside.  Sooner started, sooner done.  She walked to the door.  She knocked and, as if in a horror movie, the door creaked open, but without the heaviness of solid wood.

The waves of scent and heat hit her simultaneously, and forced her a step back.  He wasn’t home, she assured herself.  He couldn’t be.  Not in the camper if it was that hot.  Nothing could live—

Then she saw it.

And seeing the blood, she quickly traced its source.  It was gray flecked with white, beautiful; it looked like a wolf but she instantly knew it to be a common ranch dog, and likely a good one.  The dog’s head was an angry mess of pulp and shattered bone.

She willed herself to step forward then, through the open door of the camper.

The man she presumed to be Severo had sat up in his bunk, back of his head against the small window, placed the shotgun on his tongue and pulled the trigger.  The force of the blast had sent the flat of his skull through the glass.  The top of his head had disappeared, leaving only a slack lower mandible from which the barrel of the 12-gauge still drooped.

She stumbled backward, hands flying to cover her mouth but arriving too late.  The sound of her vomit hitting the dry earth was a cushioned echo of absence, a wet whump.  Then nothing came but parched heavings, gutteral straining to epiglottal, her throat constricting in sharp, pushing seizures.

All she wanted to do was get out of there, all she wanted to do was get out of there.

She wobbled to the car, unlatched the door and fell in.  Her sobs came fast and heavy, wracking her body, and she lay that way a hot minute.  When she had her breath, she sat upright in the driver’s seat and reached for the keys.  No, she couldn’t drive now.  The engine was too hot.  Damn Old Blue to hell.

How long had he been dead?  A day?  Only hours?  It occurred to her she hadn’t seen any flies on the body, not really, and the stink of putrefaction had not yet effervesced.  The scent instead was of warm blood and buckshot, one she associated with dove hunting, just as she’d done with her father and grandfather and the .410 Savage that had been her first and only shotgun.

Another thought formed in her mind and made her bite her tongue.  Severo had shot his dog before shooting himself.

That wasn’t important now.  What she needed was water.  There would be water in the camper.  Water for her, water for her car.  Because Christ, she was parched.  There was nothing else to do but go back in there.  She would get water and then she would drive to town, to the police station, and report the old man’s death.  It was the right thing to do.  Save your strength, she said to herself.  Save your strength.

She went to the camper.  When she came back in, she stepped left into the tiny kitchen without looking at him.  Two clear gallon jugs sat on the small countertop.  One had just a little water; the other was near full.  She took the heftier one to her lips and gulped warm water that made her stomach spasm.  She bent over in the small space, trying to keep her head low, trying to breathe, when she saw the money.

It was in a cardboard box in an open cabinet under the small sink.

She rose up, too fast, and retched the water into the basin, swearing as it hit the metal that she heard it sizzle. When she was done, she knelt down, took the box from its hiding place and stared at the green bills inside.  There were hundreds of them, maybe more, mostly 20s, some 50s, and a lot of 5s and 10s.  When she was done counting, there was $13,565 in the box.

Without looking at the body, she went to her car and popped the hood.  The car had stopped hissing but when she put her hand on the radiator cap she drew it back quickly, the tips of her fingers scorched red.  She filled the reserve and found it wanting, so nearly emptied the second jug as well.  She splashed her face with what was left, and wetted her lips.  She slammed the hood shut and the sound was swallowed by the heat.

It would be okay now.  She would go now.  The box of money was in the floorspace on the passenger side, covered with the clipboard.

She edged the key into the ignition and turned it.  The car responded with a tiger’s growl, fierce and furious, and Canela laughed in relief.  Everything was going to be okay.  But the tiger became a sick mare whinnying, then nothing at all.  No, she thought.  Sooner started, sooner done.  She turned the key again but got only a wasp’s buzz for a reply.

This is not happening, she said.  Not now.  Not here.

She got out of the car and walked around to the rear of the trailer.  Here they were, the flies.  They skirted and danced along the red paths that streamed and dried down the side of the camper from the broken window where Severo’s head had hit and bled.  Nothing useful at all.  She would have to walk.  It couldn’t be that far.  She would leave the money in the car, take a few bills of course, maybe $100, but she would leave the rest and come back for it later.  She would go now.  Sooner started, sooner done.

She walked a long time, until she could not see the camper behind her.  She was feeling okay, she told herself.  She was feeling okay and she would be on the main road soon and someone would see her and pick her up.  She would ride into town and go to the police station and—

It was a mistake.  What was she, stupid?  The police would conduct an investigation.  They always conducted an investigation when there was a death, even an apparent suicide like Severo.  They would see something wasn’t right.  She left something behind in that place, something telling, something damning.  Of course, she was a suspect.  Of course, she was.  Then they’d look in her car.  Why would they look in her car?  They’d look in her car because it was at the scene of the crime.  Suicide was still a crime, wasn’t it?  It was a sin, she knew that.  An unforgivable sin.

She would go back.

She would go back and take the money out of the car and put the money back where it was.  Back where she found it.

She pivoted like a dancer and went walking back in the direction from which she had come.  She glanced at her feet.  Where were her footprints?  Wouldn’t they be here, reversed, a path to follow?  Had they turned into breadcrumbs, eaten by the birds while she had her back turned?  She was angry now.  Why had she turned back?  The money was safe.  There was no reason for the police to look in her car.  Her car was her car.  Her car was not part of the crime scene.  Severo Peña had never, not once, laid his skinny ass in her car, or anywhere near her car.  She didn’t even know the man, for crying out loud.  She turned again.  Had it been a full 180 degrees?  Where was she going now?  Her mouth was dry, her eyes were dry, her nostrils flared and burned.  The sun had made the sweat on her brow evaporate and she could only feel the trickle of perspiration running from her armpits, soiling her yellow blouse.  Why had she worn yellow?  It reflected the sun, brightly, back into her face, her eyes, and made her sick.  She was so thirsty.

A cloud of dust rippled in the distance and she saw the legion of Indians on horseback on a faraway ridge. What was the name of that tribe?  The one that used to be indigenous to this land in the last century?  Caca-something, she thought and laughed, the sound a cracked cackle that made her lungs ache.

But here they were, the remnants of a vanishing tribe, galumphing their way under the hot sun toward her position.   She could begin to make out their faces, strong and angular, not altogether unlike her own, or her father’s, or grandfather’s.  She remembered how, when she was a girl, the last, feeble stragglers of the tribe would come looking for peyote, these people who by all rights should have been flushed from the face of the earth by the blind progress of white men.  They would come to the little store her father had owned—

Now he would have had engine coolant.  Crates of it.  He was prepared for breakdowns along this stretch of empty road.  He was a good man.  And gas.  And water.  And candy.  Bubble gum.  When you chew gum after the sun goes down, it turns into the bones of the dead, her father had said when they were children.  And she believed it, too, being a good Catholic.  It seemed as plausible as transubstantiation, even sweeter.  Her brother told her Papi was just saying that so she’d stop taking gum from the store, but she never chewed it again, not after dark.

But there was no transformative miracle here, in this heat, except that—she now saw—she was disappearing.  No, that wasn’t it.

She was rising.

Her feet found less purchase on the earth.  She could feel the moment when her soles were no longer touching the ground but walking on a thin layer of dust, fine as silt, and then on an ever-expanding cushion of air.  She was not disappearing.  She was ascending.

God had done this for her—to save her from the stampede of Indians.  God was carrying her to his bosom.

What had she done, she wondered, to afford this blessing?  She had just stolen money, lots of it.  She wasn’t like the Blessed Virgin, without sin.  She lied.  She did it all the time.  She had impure thoughts, mostly about Fidel, her supervisor, who was married with three kids, but just as often about a hot, young actor on the latest telenovela.

But she was sorry for it now, sorry sorry sorry, Jesus forgive me, ten piedad de nosotros, danos la paz.  Please, God.

Her true penitence was working, because she was ascending.  The Indians on the ground fell from their horses and pointed at the sky.  She was riding an exclusive escalator to Heaven.  It would not stop and she would not get off until she was seated at the right hand of the Father, next to the Son, in a little rocking chair made of clouds and starlight.

    
                                                    

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Arch	Oliver Buskin

 

 

The Road to Yellow

Deborah Eddy

  

 

Oak—Arana Ranch

Deborah Eddy

 

 

Cardoza Ranch from Harkins Slough

Deborah Eddy

 

 

Salinas River with Dunes

Deborah Eddy

 

 

The Companions and Golden Hills

Deborah Eddy

 

Untitled

Andrew Penland

 

 

Crying Girl

Alexander Chubar

 

 

Interior #3

Alexander Chubar

 

 

Interior #7

Alexander Chubar

 

 

Judith and Holofernes

Alexander Chubar

 

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[Editor's Note:  I wrote this poem in 1961 when I was 15 or 16.  Sadly, the wars continue.—PB]   The Cross                                                 by Pamela Boslet Buskin I could not go one other step, My head dropped more and more, My aching legs would soon, I knew, Be stopped forevermore. And yet the roar of cannons went While bullets flew o'erhead; I was afraid unless I stopped That I would soon be dead. And then to the muddy ground I dropped, And prepared to say farewell. But I would be grateful wherever I went, For this war was worse than Hell. Then out of the brush there came a man; It was dark—too dark to know— If this man that now knelt by my side Was a friend or was a foe. He gave me some water, and wiped my brow— And to this day I see— That never have I had a better friend Than this man, this enemy. Then he dragged me into the brush— Where I asked him "friend or foe?" "It matters not," he said to me, "But now, I must go." But I grabbed his hand, and in it put An object covered with mud, 'Twas a cross, which he put around his neck; A cross, stained with my blood. And then he was off in the black of night, As I heard voices of our men. I rested a day or two before I was back in the battle again. 'Twas another dark night as I fought with my gun, And realized I'd shot a man. And wanting to salvage his rifle and knife, Quickly to him I ran. I took his knife and I took his gun— And then said a prayer for the dead, But as I felt round his neck for his i.d. tags, I touched something else instead. This thing I touched, this thing I felt, Was an object covered with mud. 'Twas a cross he had around his neck, A cross, stained with my blood.                                                            —1961  Return to Contents Return to Top of Page