|
Prose
|
|
The
Importance of Being Tammy R. Kitchen |
|
Young
African Girl Janet
Butler |
Mirror, Mirror P. E.
Boslet
|
The Importance of Being Tammy R. Kitchen
"No" Dirk van Nouhuys
Martha's World William Gladys
Accent Saskia van der LindenHuman Nature David Brown
Johnny of the Sleepwalker Jerry Vilhotti
One Sharp Sting Robin Evans
Time Changes Sarah Nowell
by Tammy R. Kitchen
red stares at his watch. It's one of the good kinds, not one of those digital ones. Those are too easy. No thinking involved. This one is better. He found it in a dumpster and it's perfect. It has a plain white face with dots instead of numbers. Time creeps fast on it. The second hand always jumps from the five dot to the fifteen dot in one swoop. Plus, it has one of those springy wristbands that pinches the skin and pulls the hair. Pain is good. Keeps a man alive.
The Amtrak is coming soon. Fred checks his clothes. The coat is too big. Its shoulders hang three inches below his. Under it, he can see only the muddy frays of his jeans covering his six-year-old black Reeboks. Satisfied, he moves his fingers over the dusty counter and wipes his face with his sweat streaked hand. The ground shakes under his feet and the whistle belches its warning to the cars. He moves to the edge of the platform and waits. The train is coming fast and Fred vibrates with excitement. Look down. Don't move.
The train stops with the third car in front of him. Perfect. The doors open and the people come out with their dopey eyes and sleep hair. They slump around greeting their peppy long losts.
—Oh my god, Roger, you look great!
—How was your trip?
—I'm so happy you came.
—Why couldn't you just take a cab? You know I'm busy.
Keeping his head down, Fred crosses the crowd to the end of the platform and steps off. Almost there, almost there. He keeps walking as he counts the cars. Six, seven, eight. This should be good. Without looking, he slips between the eighth and ninth cars and pulls on his new gloves—slick brown leather with grip pads on the palms and fingers. His stomach flops as he climbs up the ladder and slithers onto the top of the car. He pulls himself along, looking for a hand hold. Nothing. It's smooth as a bullet, but Fred is not one to give up. Not on something this big.
He looks through the scratches on his watch. Almost time. He slides his hand along the front of the car. Nothing.
The train starts moving, clanging along the tracks. No freaking way I'm getting off, thinks Fred. He wraps his palms over the edge and squeezes hard as the train chugs faster on its way out of town. Hanging on for life with his coat slapping the sky, he lifts his head in the wind and yells, "Wooo-hooo! We're flying now!"
Return to Prose
by Dirk van Nouhuys
e said, ‘No’”
The speaker was Sigrid Warner, a woman in her late 30’s both voluptuous and severe, her straight blond hair gathered in a bun and wearing a mauve, tailored suit over a high-necked white blouse. She sat with rounded back on the edge of her chair in a bright living room furnished with moderately priced antiques. A picture window lit the room and viewed neat, stucco houses boxed next to each other across the street and beyond them a wide field of new snow marked calligraphically with black stems and leaning fence posts. Beyond that stood woods seen through a chill mist as if through frosted glass. She was telling her story to her father, Soren Erling, an alert, middle-aged man with a salt and pepper walrus moustache wearing a tweed jacket and a worn, tweed cap with a visor. He sat opposite her on a couch. The child, Little Kurt, who had said ‘no,’ was her son.
A woman in a blouse with frilly threadwork, with salt and pepper hair in a braid down her back and an abundant pleated skirt, entered from an interior door. It was Mary Erling, Sigurd’s mother. She glanced at her husband and daughter to indicate she wanted to know what was going on.
“Little Kurt didn’t come tonight because he would not wear a suit,” Soren explained.
“A suit?” his grandmother Mary asked.
“He’s 12 now. He has a suit,” Sigrid said.
“I didn’t know that,” Mary Erling said.
“I went to him,” Sigrid continued, trying to justify herself, “a few months ago. He was in his room building railroad out of toothpicks and modeling clay. You know how he works the clay into pea-size pellets and uses them to join the toothpicks into fantasy constructions?” Soren nodded. “He had run a spidery railway from his dresser to the window. He was sitting in the window light holding pea of clay to pierce for the next tie. He did not look up; he had that look of angelic concentration he gets,” she added to ingratiate herself.
“Go on,” Soren said. He wanted to know what had happened, not what she thought.
“‘It’s time to buy a suit’ is what I said, right out.”
“‘A suit? You have some suits,’ he said without looking up. I don’t know if he was playing dumb.”
“‘No, a suit for you,’”
“‘A suit for me?’ He looked up at me as if I had betrayed him.”
“I told him it was because he was 12. He said he wouldn’t wear a suit. He said I had never told him my kid should wear a suit.”
“I always think of him in the same thing,” Mary said, “in the summer a T-shirt, usually blue with white stripes, and bluejeans—and no shoes. I can see him running between the rows of corn when we still lived on the farm. In the winter the same, bundled in a down jack and snow boots.”
“You know how he can bend his neck and fight back, like when we were in the boat and Dad was rowing and he wouldn’t take his feet out of the water?”
Soren chuckled, “I was pissed off,” he said.
The door opened for his father, Big Kurt, who wore a tailored gray suit with his shirt open at the neck.
“Sigrid is telling us why Little Kurt is not with us tonight,” Mary explained, wanting to smooth things over.
Big Kurt nodded understandingly to her without taking his eyes from her. He was by nature both attentive to others and self-centered. Soren stood and shook hands with him, as did Mary. Since she was up, she made a gesture toward the scent of a roast in the air and started toward the inner door, but stopped because she wanted to hear the whole story.
“It was difficult to park with the snow,” Big Kurt declared.
“Would you take a glass of beer?” Mary asked him.
“Of course,” Big Kurt said.
“I’ll get it,” Sigrid said and stood. Mary followed her out of the room.
“Is Little Kurt all right?” Soren asked.
“The neighbor girl is baby sitting,” Big Kurt said, evading the question of his son’s feelings.
“I’ll miss him,” Soren said.
“I’m sorry too,” Big Kurt said, “I know you’re his pal. I wanted to find a way for him to come. I used to have conflicts with my father…I bought a telescope when I was about his age.” He put his hands up before his eyes as if peering through memory at the event— “My father didn’t want me to spend the money—I earned it selling worms to fishermen on the pier in the summer. One day my brother and I got some old shoes. After I’d sold the worms, we slipped off our clothes and slipped into the water on the other side of the pier, swam under, and put old shoes on fisherman’s hooks. When my father found out, he broke the telescope.” He arched his hands as if breaking twigs for kindling.
“That was not just or kind!” Soren said.
Big Kurt nodded gratefully. He deeply appreciated his father-in-law’s sense of right.
The women came back, Mary carrying a tray with four pompous beer glasses with thick hollow stems. Sigrid resumed her chair and her posture. When they had each taken a glass, in the moment before they usually would have toasted one another, Mary raised hers and said, “To Little Kurt, we wish he were here.”
When she lowered her glass, Sigrid wanted to keep explaining. “So I told him he had to have a suit to wear. We fought. You know how we do.”
She looked to her mother for understanding and Mary nodded sympathetically. “He screamed at me that he wouldn’t, that we had not raised him to wear suits. I told him there was a time for everything.” She had not wanted to point out that his father wore suits to work because she did not approve of his work. “He ran to his room and slammed the door.” She went on talking as if descriptions would soften their memories of past quarrels. “It went on for a couple of weeks. Then one day when I came into his room he said, ‘OK, you can buy me a suit, but I won’t wear it.’” Sigrid looked around at her family to see if they understood she had tried and Little Kurt had tricked her. Big Kurt sat with his hands lifted and his fingertips touching: paying close attention.
“So we made a date to go to the tailor. On the bus he was quiet. I let him select the cloth and the color. He picked out russet tweed, flashier than I would have, but I didn’t say anything. He was interested in how the tailor went about his work—I have taught him to appreciate craftsmen—and asked him about why he did this and that and how often he made suits for boys his age.”
“What did the tailor say about that,” Soren asked.
“I don’t remember,” Sigrid said because she wanted to stick to her point. “We went back once for a fitting, and then the tailor phoned that the suit was done. I had to go into town to shop so I picked it up. It was in a pink laundry box wrapped in tissue paper. When I got home he was playing cars in the yard with his friend Bobby. As I walked past them I nodded, tapped the box, and said, ‘The suit is here.’ He was holding a red toy car that he had been pretending to drive between the rows of lettuce. Do you know his serious look?” she asked because she wanted to remind them who he was, of his quiet, haunting determination, and by that remind them that he was her son, herson, and so any strength he might show, even against her, was also to her credit. “He didn’t say a thing.”
“When he came in from playing he went straight to his room. I followed him with the box. And opened it on his bed. And put aside the tissue paper. He didn’t say anything. He did not even put his hand out to touch it. I closed the box and put it in the bottom drawer of his bureau. It’s still there,” she concluded to make them chew the bite of her confrontation.
“He’s a tough little guy,” Soren said.
“What happened tonight?” Mary asked.
Sigrid thrust her face toward her own mother to emphasize what she had to repeat: “He didn’t say anything. I reminded him Wednesday, and he didn’t say anything then either.”
“Do you think he was trying to make up his mind,” Soren asked.
The question surprised the mother who wanted to see drama rather than ambiguity. “I honestly don’t know,” she replied. “So afternoon came and I had to ask him, ‘Will you put on your suit and go to your grandparents?’ He shook his head, and I told him he had to.”
“He asked me why he had to, ‘I’ve never put on a suit for them before. I don’t believe they care if I wear a suit.’ He was obstinate as a mule. He said I had betrayed him.”
“Why did he say that?” Mary asked.
“He said we had never told him we were the kind of people who put suits on children. So in the end we had to leave him there. And we were lucky to find the Skii girl when she could baby sit.” Sigrid rested her case.
Mary glanced at her daughter, her husband, and her son-in-law. She wondered if Big Kurt had taken his son’s part.
“I admire his conviction,” Big Kurt said. It’s the stuff leadership is made of; it’s integrity.”
“He’s a fool,” Sigrid said bitterly. “I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my life. I saw him looking from the window when we drove off. He always has a good time when we come here. I know his heart was aching.”
“We do too,” Soren said.
“Poor little guy,” Mary said, down cast, “It makes me feel terrible that he had to make such a choice.”
“Do you remember when you wanted to play bridge?” Soren asked his daughter.
“No,” she said dismissively.
“One evening we were playing bridge with the Crawford's—you were younger, maybe six or seven. You wanted to play with us. You kept saying you wanted to play. Mary tried to explain nicely to you that the game was too complicated, that in a few years you would be old enough, but you were still angry with us. Then I said. ‘When you’re grown up you can say the same thing to your own children.’ You were furious. You shouted, ‘I’d rather die than live like that!’ and ran to your room and slammed the door. In later years I thought you had a point.”
“I remember,” she said, “I’m sorry; it makes me feel shamed.” She did not lower her face, but looked from one to another as if daring them to sympathize with her.
“I understand,” Big Kurt said catching her eye, “but we all strike out some times.”
Soren wanted to ask his daughter if she had forgiven him, but he was afraid of the answer she might give. “Little Kurt is being a fool, and I admire him too,” he said, “and I feel sorry for him, and for you.”
“I wish he were here,” Mary said.
Martha's World
by William Gladys
eter speaks:
“Two hundred yards behind Martha I sit and observe her quietly. Dressed in green cords and jacket I am indistinguishable from nature’s greenery that surrounds me. I am motionless, a calm and steady rhythm of inhalation, exhalation, the only sound capable of betraying my presence. Through the screening summer nettles I watch as she stares towards the desolate grey stone farmhouse at the top of a slightly sloping field. Her body, caught at an odd angle, appears paradoxically frozen in the heat of the merciless overhead sun; the sun’s shared existence questioning our conjoined silence and peculiar disparate togetherness. Martha is unaware of my existence as I wait beneath the canopy of leaves that witness our mutual solitude and separate detachment from the bleak rural surroundings. At the top of the slope the small, cheerless barn, beaten by nature, is poised to crumble into an oblivion that beckons from the other side of the hill. The centuries old stone, leached of the lime and water that held it together, deposits a residue of dust escaping with the wind. The sharp blue sky vies for attention with the intense yellow of the newly cut stubble. Her white arms and frail body clothed by a pale pink faded dress violate the contrasting stark and simmering rawness. Her dark hair drawn back in a long bun hides her face and eyes concentrated on the vacant farmhouse. Scaffolding and two long redundant wooden fruit picking ladders, their rungs covered in moss, lean against the front of the sad, forsaken house; its windows like so many eyes search the surrounding landscape for signs of a returning tenant. To one side a rusty two wheeled farm implement waits for time to erode it, while the tracks of a once well used lane are just visible beneath the weeds and blown detritus that seek to erase its once busy existence. Behind the mangled chicken wire, disheveled wooden posts dutifully mark the parameters where chickens no longer scratch, no longer cackle. In a corner of the run an old stone coop, bereft of slates, commiserates with those which have fallen to shatter in many pieces. The blown dust and earth begins its task of covering them with a daily deepening layer that will soon bury them. A single door hangs decaying from a precarious hinge, as it continues an involuntary dance macabre in the wind which will lead to its inevitable disintegration. A sagging line dispossessed of clothes, droops, heavy with the slime of neglect.
For more than an hour, Martha sat, crouching low, sometimes prostrate as if in fear or hiding from a presence that could not possibly be there and which comfortingly I knew could never be. Then without warning she rose and started to walk briskly back to the refuge, her present home, three miles from the isolated deserted farmhouse where she had lived since early childhood.”
Martha speaks:
“When I left my room at the asylum I not only sensed but was physically aware of Peter Santani as he shadowed me at what he considered a safe distance. He was wearing green cords and a jacket that didn’t blend with the undergrowth where he sat behind me. His familiar odour, a mixture of cheroot smoke, stale Budweiser and a sickly brand of body deodorant was carried towards me by the wind. From this distance, I could hear the wind rustling his paper, and the scratch of his pen as he made notes to give to Doctor Hughes—far better if Peter Santani had revealed himself. His illogical reasoning, moreover, would not have considered it an intrusion, yet oddly my privacy had already been violated by his blundering manner and insensitivity—Doctor Hughes had informed me I would not be allowed out unless accompanied by a ward attendant. I had not forgotten his words, but if I had chosen, could have slipped away to enjoy the freedom of my own solitude, my own physical well-being and the environs of nature that I loved to explore. What a futile gesture it would have been, however, ensuring that I remain locked behind windows and doors for many more months or even years.
This was my first visit to the old home where, in front of me, father had hacked mother and older brother Gabriel to death four years earlier. A violent unsophisticated act he anticipated would prevent the sexual attention he had subjected me to from being aired publicly. Daddy had confided that what he was doing to me was normal. If it remained a secret, the family would not suffer, and I believed him. Since then, I have had many years to research books and medical journals in the library, and am now considered a well read authority on the subject. Although it is medically recognised that this type of sexual conduct can harm children, especially if exposed to it for a number of years from an early age, I do not follow that reasoning at all. I am proof positive that it hasn’t hurt or harmed me mentally or physically. How can it be otherwise? Indeed, without such proof, Doctor Hughes and his staff would not agree to a day release for me accompanied or not. Within the next few months it is essential I persuade the psychiatric staff that I be allowed out on my own It is an imperative for me; I need public transport to visit the nearest town or city to explore the stores where books on chemistry and plant poisons can be purchased. Not for my benefit of course, but Peter Santini who enjoys the hot drink I make for him each Saturday evening.”
Accent
by Saskia van der Linden
he only people who take offence at my accent tend to be old and male. As a rule, I find myself standing beside them at a bus stop or seated next to them on the bus. Once their radars have spotted a strange accent, they’ll sit up, put on a brisk voice and start raving on about how they defended the Brutish Empaaargh during The Waaargh. I make big eyes and nod patiently as I let them finish their story. Only at the end I’ll declare devilishly, but in a sweet voice, that I’m not German. “I’m from The Neverlands.” (Not: “Holland.” The older generation knows their geography, and to them it sounds dangerously close to their enemy’s territory. The younger generation seems to think unanimously that it’s part of Scandinavia.)
“Oh” They’ll take a deep breath, until the red bits have disappeared from their cheeks and been replaced with a smile. “I love The Netherlands,” they’ll exclaim, for every old male in Britain has at least one relative there who got married to some lovely Dutch person. They visit the country once a year—“At least!”—and know many more places than just the capital. “It’s just a shame it’s swarming with German tourists.” In another life I’ll be less of a coward and defend my German contemporaries with the words: “They’re too young to have fought against you in The Waaargh. Just as I am too young to have fought against you in The Waaargh.” But for now, I’m too busy playing an ambassador for my own country.
The only people who still don’t understand me after all my years here are bus drivers. Conversations with them go like this: “Can I have a return to—” but before I’ve stated my destination they’ve given up already. “Wha’?” Upon which I return the full sentence. Which is a mistake I keep committing. A colleague who’s also foreign once explained to me that the moment she started mumbling instead of articulating, and producing sentences of no more than three words, her problems with bus drivers were stored in the past. Mine will never be over until I change my strategy. Every day, a bus driver leans over to me and adopts a tone he or she will only use for children, the mentally underdeveloped and foreigners. I make big eyes and nod patiently as he or she explains to me the whole route to work, which I take on a daily basis. They’ll also warn me that it’s The Bronx of rural Britain: “Be careful, love.” “Love.” Was this the reason why I emigrated here? To be called “Love” whenever you buy your groceries, stamps, bus tickets…? Once upon a time it seemed like a dream-life to me. When they’ve told me where to get off exactly, they’ll ask, “Single?” To which I reply, exhausted: “No. A return.”
But today I was reminded of the fact accents can also come in useful. I’d gone to London for the day and after walking around for quite some time I felt my legs could hardly carry me any longer. I went inside the first pub I spotted and ordered a large cup of coffee. Which was a big mistake. Not only couldn’t they offer me milk with my drink, an unwanted companion sat down next to me as I took my first sip. I felt too tired to leave and too desperate to finish my drink that I decided to give in to his inquisition: I made big eyes and nodded patiently. Then I reverted to the accent and lied. “Do you live here?”
“No. I live in Holland.”
“And what do you do?”
“I’m a secretary.”
“You know, you could find work as a secretary in London.”
“Huh. I don’t think my English is good enough.”
I was strangely disappointed when he didn’t come to my defence here. On the positive side, I felt totally guilt-free when I finally jumped up and said it was time for me to go to Heathrow.
Human Nature
by David Brown
taring at the endless blue skies I see the birds fly high above the yard changing direction here and there but working effortlessly to distant lands. In my lonely prison I sit and think of that word that isolates me from my kind outside these walls: freedom. What is freedom, for I don’t know? How does it taste, feel or smell? Just how does it compare to this life?
The birds now vanish from sight, and I am left with my thoughts and constraints. The sun is setting and the clouds are tinted with shades of pink and peach; Mother Nature has decorated the skies for us, as she does most evenings with her palette and brush, but on this day there is no respite.
The sun is just a prisoner like me; each day it is released from its confines to enrich a starving world, but then the hands of darkness escort it to its cage beyond the horizon and then it is the turn of the moon and stars to be set free. I once enjoyed the feel of the sun shining through the bars of my home, but now I know the truth, there is nothing to look forward to in this miserable existence.
My home is but a small cage in one of two long rows lining the warden’s path, or the walkway of life and death as we all regard it. I have three walls enshrouding my weakened body and half a dozen cold, rusty bars to cling to for support at night. In one corner is my own bowl; a once perfectly round and green artifact of Man, but today it stands as a ragged, sharp reminder of nights of chronic chewing and despair.
Beneath my body I can still feel the dampness of my urine and excrement; the warden has just passed by and that’s why the floor is stained. There was a time when I tried to resist my nerves, but now I barely notice as my fur closest to the ground suddenly feels warm and the stench overwhelms the air in my prison. All desire to cleanse, to maintain my rich fur and to free myself of parasites has long since subsided. This is what I have been reduced to, the way it has always been.
Across the warden’s path, beyond another row of crying and screaming victims, there sits the defences of this fortress. They swallow each victim whole and digest them slowly, marveling in every outburst of anguish. We saw the warden invite his kind to the prison yard to erect the fortress; they brought violated and molested trees, reshaping them into what the warden calls a “fence” and to this they added dull foliage, sharper than the prickliest leaves and named “barbed wire.” How strange the trees now appear, standing once more to keep us locked away, whereas before they were our harmonious sanctuary.
Outside the fence stand a dozen guard dogs; one of these was once an innocent like me, pure of heart, seldom subjected to hate. We called him Victor, a name of great bearing on his character; he was our inspiration, never would he shy from a challenge and always he could lift the lowest of spirits. Today, this hope is unrecognisable; hours being beaten with the warden’s instruments of death have turned Victor into mankind’s plaything. Now he has no heart or soul, only a desire and hunger for those of us that dare to escape from this fortress. In a matter of weeks, the warden’s hands have taken away a friend, and molded and contorted him beyond all comprehension. The predator returned to us another enemy, but this came as no surprise; we know the power of those filthy hands.
You can never be sure when he will appear, but it’s usually around noon. It must be like the routine of prey in the wild. First you hear the footsteps signaling the warden’s approach, the dry soil is crushed beneath his feet at every step; another aspect of nature simply wilts into dust in his presence. As he closes on our cages, we listen for the sound of his club being removed from his belt and then the rattling of rusty bars as our host taunts us. He passes by my cage, knocking rust clean off the central bars, and then he crouches in front of me, his grey eyes focused on mine as he licks his lips and chooses his next victim. His bulky arms are covered in tattoos; the images embedded in his skin are of skulls and snakes, some hidden like safe animals in the forest that is the thick hair on his arms. Those strong hands are always damp; their stench is of blood and sweat, while the faint scent of his last victim is often present. He handles animals like a curious child learning of the limits in life; we don’t know what to expect when we are taken from our homes. He always has what looks like a small branch between his teeth; smoke rises from one end, which is badly burnt, and often we hear the name “cigar” when our host converses with his kind. If Man is the embodiment of all this world’s worst traits, then the warden is the manifestation of the cruelest evil; a dark adversary, bereft of compassion and sorrow, giving way only to unmerciful hate.
There was once a young girl that came to our fortress. The warden would show us all to her and she would giggle with delight at our blank expressions as we waited for our next punishment. The girl brought the brightest light of comfort to the shadows of our world of suffering. The warden would never show the girl how he treated us; instead he would speak of his empathy and how he had rescued us from those ‘nasty men that hurt poor animals.” Howeve
