By Laura McPherson

The widow Joline nods from her armchair as visitors file by, the old farmhouse floors creaking under their hurried steps. Those who were not already on their way here for the family reunion were shamed into last-minute road trips upon hearing of Arnold’s accident. Hit by a steel-studded tire falling off a flatbed, they clucked quietly. As if he could have stopped it. Several of them drove over the exact spot on the highway where he died, on the way up. The service will be closed casket.

Joline wonders: Is a dead man an ex-husband? Or do you have to call him husband forever?

Sensing a precipitous drop in oxygen, the conversation damps itself to let the room breathe. Only Dr. Cousin Somebody—Joline can’t remember—drones on. He asks the younger cousins if they know about Pavlov.

I know what Pavlov means, Joline thinks. It’s hearing Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Firecracker” and experiencing a violent desire for Crab Rangoon. The sharp claw of hunger tickles the underside of her stomach.

Joline notices that the frames on their (now her?) picture wall are canting in all directions. She always thought a wall of family photos was chintzy since they were childless. But Arnold wanted it, so she made the wall with frames picked from 50% off sales that roughly matched Arnold’s beloved brown suede sectional, sections of which were rubbed bare. When they married, the second time for them both, Joline thought she could look past his attachment to that couch. Love is blind until it gets on its spouse’s health insurance and can afford Lasik, she thinks as she straightens the photos, a mounted columbarium for their memories. She’ll be hauling that couch to the curb as soon as the crowd leaves. But trash day is Wednesday, and that is the day the reunion was supposed to be.

Joline ordered catering for the reunion. She pauses in her straightening work. Is it appropriate to serve barbeque after a funeral? No, she decides. She will have to cancel the order after everyone leaves today. Her empty stomach pongs.

Arnold’s mother Liliane floats down the stairs wrapped in black veils. Joline is cut adrift as the waves of sympathy divert from smothering her to enveloping Liliane. Joline uses her pointer finger to push “Joline and Arnold, at the beach” two degrees counterclockwise. It leaves a smudge of darkened sand in the whorls of her finger-pad. The doorbell pongslike her disappointed stomach and she skirts the clot of people surrounding her mother-in-law at the foot of the stairs.

“Pitmaster Jay’s,” the kid on her doorstep says, pointing at the joyful pig emblazoned on a nylon baseball cap that is too big for his head. The pig stares at Joline, proud to represent a restaurant so popular it can afford a cash only policy. As Joline stands in abeyance, desperately looking for a tow line back to the calendar, contempt sneaks onto the pig’s embroidered leer, mocking her for scheduling the food for the wrong day. A procession of grim teenagers carrying foil dishes that waft the attar of pork fat and vinegar wait silently on the front walk.

Liliane divines the source of the embarrassment and sighs deeply. “How much do we owe you?” she asks the kid, whose sudden avoidance of eye contact indicates he has scented the piney wood of the catafalque being constructed here. 

“$324. And sixteen cents.” His voice cracks on the ’teen.

The susurration of opening wallets pulses as the crowd cobbles together $324.16. Joline’s soul sinks. As the teenagers bear silver boxes to the kitchen in single file, Liliane begins to wail. “Arnold loved Pitmaster Jaaay-aay-aaay’s.” She tells the vowels on the pearlescent rosary beads clutched in her thin white hands, pausing on the mysteries marked by pink carnations.

In the late hours Joline checks on the kitchen. The chafing dish candles are guttering out and the barbeque is congealing under the gaze of Arnold’s apron, hung from its hook beside the fridge. Arnold always cooked for the family reunions, but just this once, she had wanted him to put down the spatula and relax. She turns off the lights and searches for patches of sleep between Liliane’s trembling wails, longing to be alone.

At the funeral Liliane’s threnody overrides the pastor’s attempts to begin the requiem. During a pause in the service, Joline notices that the pictures on the narthex wall are canted. Jesus and his Sacred Heart, instead of pointing the way to heaven, are pointing towards the front door. Joline grits her teeth. It is neither my fault nor my problem, she tells herself. We paid for an internment, not a gallery opening.

She ignores the pictures so furiously that when she closes her eyes, she sees neon-fringed negatives of ships cruising choppy orange seas and numinous ruminants munching red grass. When her eyes open again, she is in the narthex. The flocked wallpaper, dusty with the exhalations of the joyous and the grieved, is stiff against her fingertips, stiff as the picture frame that will not budge. Jesus stares at her placidly, unmoved. Friends, family, nosy neighbors, and the pastor look on in horror.

“It’s crooked,” Joline hisses. “Don’t you see?”

“Sure, Joline. Let’s get coffee,” Dr. Cousin Somebody says, the weight of his hand an anchor on her shoulder. Joline’s fingers, coated in dust, are trembling. Burned into her mind’s eye, the divorce papers on her desk, lacking only Arnold’s signature, are also crooked. Like Jesus and his Sacred Heart, they are glued in place, forever canted and pointing airily towards the door.

About the Author: Laura McPherson is based in Chicago. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Night Picnic Journal, Downstate Story, The Deadlands, Paperbark, and others. Her hybrid chapbook, inVISIBLE, is out with Alien Buddha Press. Find her online at https://lauramcphersonwriter.com/ and on Twitter @silversatire.

By Michael Anthony

Reflections can reveal truths or distort reality. For Charlie Hubner, they do both.

This particular day the seventy-eight-year-old wanders Littleton’s Main Street. Like so many small communities across the Midwest, its downtown is more an echo of the past than a present day destination. The pharmacy that had been there for over a century, the hardware store, the garden center, and the bakery are just some of those gone. All replaced by big-box stores out on Highway 49. Townsfolk no longer stroll Littleton’s sidewalks to browse new displays in shop windows. These days those windows are vacant or plastered with faded signs promising low rents that no one wants.

Charlie first roamed Main Street as a boy in search of trading cards of his beloved Detroit Tigers. When he was a teenager it was cigarettes. Soon he was making the loop while holding hands with his high school sweetheart Sally Jean Osterman.

As time passed, he and Sally Jean brought their children along. Roger, the oldest, walking beside them, Doreen in a stroller, and, Julia atop Charlie’s shoulders. Eventually, those three grew and have families of their own. So, Charlie and Sally Jean now make the circuit as a couple again.

Charlie asks Sally Jean if she feels strong enough to go all the way to Elm Street before heading back. Her answer is a silent nod.

“Remember the glider we bought here?” Charlie says as he lingers in front of a shop window. He finds her smile in a reflection.

That glider swing has hung from the covered front porch of the Hubner’s home for as long as anyone can recall. It is where he and Sally Jean had planned their life together. It also provided a place for their children to pretend they were flying across wide skies and sailing through clouds.

On late summer nights that swing offered the seclusion the Hubner teenagers sought when they were learning about dating, kissing, and more. Deep shadows hid roaming hands until Sally Jean would flip the porch light. Not once, not twice, but three times. So much for adolescent exploration.

When the Hubner daughters each married, Littleton’s resident photographer Ernst Gunderson posed them on that glider, making sure their gowns pooled perfectly at their feet. Now only a strong wind coming off the prairie sways the rusted chains that support wood slats long in need of paint. Sally Jean hasn’t been on it for more than four summers. Charlie refuses to sit there without her.

Moving on, Charlie grins when he spots Gloria’s Luncheonette where the Hubners often stopped for coffee and those breakfast sandwiches that draw truckers and farmers alike. He asks if Sally Jean wants one. Another reflection says no. Despite hunger pangs gnawing at Charlie’s stomach, they keep going.

It’s much the same as they reach Elm Street before crossing Main to return on the south side. Just as he did on the first half of the stroll, Charlie pauses before shop fronts asking if Sally Jean would like another Sunday dress or some strawberries from Dreyer’s Market. An ice cream cone at Tasty-Freeze? In every case, Charlie studies her reflection, seeing not his wife of nearly six decades, but the nineteen-year-old he still can’t believe actually agreed to marry him.

Charlie is excited as they approach the Littleton public library nestled beneath the verdant shadows of towering oaks. It’s where he used to borrow that book of Emily Dickinson poetry he’d read to Sally Jean on the glider in the evenings after dinner.

Grasping Sally Jean’s elbow, Charlie starts across Main Street towards Caulfield Avenue, which will take them back to their front porch and that motionless swing. Without explanation Sally Jean veers directly into the path of an oncoming mail truck.

Charlie yells for her to stop. She doesn’t. Panicking, he starts after her, hoping to reach her before that truck does. The blaring horn of a car coming at him from the opposite direction spins Charlie around. A siren wails. In that confused moment, he stands in the middle of the road frozen by fear.

Two arms encircle Charlie and steady him against the buffeting blasts as the mail truck swerves west and that car speeds east. Though unscathed, Charlie struggles to see if Sally Jean has also made it to safety.

“Charlie,” a voice says. “You all right?”

Still concerned about Sally Jean, Charlie nods while scanning the street.

“Come on. Let’s get you to the sidewalk.” Once there, Ted Ryker checks Charlie for injuries. Finding none, he says, “You really should be careful.” Ted lifts a mobile phone to his ear. After ending the call, Ted tells Charlie he’ll wait with him.

Dazed, Charlie asks, “Is Sally Jean all right?”

“She’s safe,” Ted smiles as he eases Charlie onto the bench in front of what used to be the Grand Prairie Savings and Loan. “Let’s wait here.”

Before long, a car skids to a stop at the curb. Ted waves the driver over.

“Dad,” the man shouts. “What were you thinking?”

“Your mother wanted to go for a walk.”

“He’s okay,” Ted tells Charlie’s son Roger.

“Thanks, Ted. I’ll get him home.”

Agitated, Charlie bristles, “What about your mother?”

“She’ll be fine,” Roger says while ushering Charlie to the car. With his father seated and belted, Roger turns to Ted who’s now leaning against his police cruiser. “I don’t know how he got out again. Thank you.”

“Had the same problem with my mom. Ended up putting deadbolts on all the doors.”

The two men say goodbye. Roger then pulls away. Turning to Charlie, Roger says, “Dad, this needs to stop.”

“Your mother just wanted to take a walk. What’s wrong with that?”

Recalling Doc Levenson’s advice about de-escalation techniques to use with dementia patients, Roger switches the car radio to the classical station that soothes Charlie. Then, choosing his words carefully, Roger says, “Nothing’s wrong. But, next time tell me so I can go with you.”

Charlie stares blankly out the car window at a town he once knew and mutters, “Okay.” The rearview mirror reflects an empty back seat as father and son again head home – alone.

About the Author: Michael Anthony is a writer and artist living in New Jersey. He has published fiction, poetry, illustrations, and photographs in literary journals and commercial magazines. Most recently these include Drunk Monkeys, Bodega Magazine, Pigeon Review, The Coil Magazine, Dove Tales, Raw Lit, and On-The-High Literary Journal. His work may be viewed at: MichaelAnthony.MyPortfolio.com

By Matt Hohner

Jasontown Road
Westminster, Maryland 

Three-fifths of a mile of gravel cleaves a snow-covered field 
in two on a round hillcrest, curves past an island of trees 

at stream bottom in a wan moonscape of white under
sapphire sky. Twelve degrees Fahrenheit. Two p.m. 

North wind whips horsetails of snow across the icy lane ahead.
Five new vacants today: broken-into, scavenged, left for dead. 

Red-tailed hawk scans the earth for prey in widening gyres. 
Where do they go when they have nowhere left? 

Somewhere, four tiny feet scurry across a vast, frozen tundra.
Somewhere, talons and beak circle above their next warm meal. 

About the author:

Matt Hohner has won or placed in numerous national and international poetry competitions, with publication credits in literary journals in seven countries on five continents. Hohner has held two residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with one forthcoming at Anam Cara Retreat in Ireland. His publications include Rattle: Poets Respond, Sky Island Journal, Takahē, The Storms Journal, New Contrast, Live Canon, The Cardiff Review, and Prairie Schooner. An editor with Loch Raven Review, Hohner’s first collection Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House) was published in 2018. You can learn more about Matt Hohner on his website here.

By Michael Bettendorf

I break the seal on the bottle of Dasani in the mini-fridge, knowing damn well it just cost
me five bucks. Highway robbery for twelve ounces of water. But the tap water from the
bathroom sink is mineral-heavy and leaves a taste in my mouth like iron and salt.
I turn the TV on and the room glows electric. The channel is stuck on Telemundo and
after a while, I realize four years of college Spanish has vanished from my brain. It wasn’t
overnight, though it feels like it. I remember parts of college as if tonight were my first night in
the dorms; my head full of nervous whispers rambling on about the endless potential of my
future. But it’s not. It’s another night in a hotel for another business trip, collecting platinum
member points. It’s funny how our brains play tricks on us. Our memories, the work of trickster
gods.
I contemplate the shooters of Jack Daniels in the minibar, but remember how much shit
the accounting department gave me the last time I spent my per diem on booze. I sit on the bed
and wonder why hotel beds are always made up so tight. I lean against the pillows that are too
soft and mash buttons on the remote. The channel doesn’t change and it bugs me more than it
should. I don’t watch TV often anymore. It’s not because I don’t want to or that I think it’ll rot
my brain. I work too many hours. Keep an inconsistent schedule. That rots my brain plenty. I just
wouldn’t know where to start, you know? Paradox of choice. It stresses me out and the last thing
I need at the end of a long day is more stress. It’s too late to call my partner and I’m not in the
mood to read tonight, so I mess with the remote some more.
After a while, I drink all the Jack in the minibar and afterimages of college rest on my
mind, fleeting and paper thin.
It’s only midnight and even though the desk clerk said she was working all night; I feel
bad for calling. I tell her the remote isn’t working. That or the batteries are dead. I tell her I can
change them if she’d bring up some replacements and a screwdriver. It’s a funny concept to me.
That hotels screw the battery covers on their remotes shut. She tells me that isn’t necessary and
she’ll send someone up with a new remote soon.
I wait around for a few minutes, watching a rerun of Decisiones, when the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Hey, I was just calling to see if the desk had a spare phone charger I could borrow.”
I consider not saying anything, but remember I spoke first. The liquor crept up on me and
a gentle buzz settled like fog on my brain. Words wade through whiskey fog and roll off my
tongue, “iPhone or Android,” I ask.
“iPhone,” they say.
“Ah, can’t help you there,” I say. “But maybe the desk will have one.”
There’s a pause. It’s filled by Spanish and there’s a knock at my door.
“Hang on,” I say. I set the receiver down on the bed and answer the door. Michelle, from
the front desk, trades remotes with me and asks if I could test it before she heads back
downstairs. I press the red power button and like that, Decisiones disappears into black, like four
years of Spanish. Before she leaves, I ask Michelle if she happens to have an iPhone charger I
could borrow.
“Oh shoot, I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t have any loaners right now. They tend to
walk away.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “Thank you, anyway.”
“There’s a gas station up the road,” she says. “They’ll likely have one for sale.”

“Thank you,” I say again and close the door. I return to the bed and pick up the receiver,
expecting a dead tone, but they’re still on the line.
“Hello,” I say again. 
“Hi,” they say. 
“The desk doesn’t have any chargers,” I say. “But the gas station up the street might. At
least that’s what Michelle told me.”
“Who’s Michelle?”
“The desk clerk.”
“Ah.”
There’s another pause and I figure they’ll hang up. And then I’ll hang up. I’ll squeeze
between the too-tight-bed sheets and sleep. I’ll go to my meeting tomorrow tired and forget this
interaction by next week. But I stay on the line and so do they.
“Who doesn’t have an iPhone anyway,” they ask.
“People on a budget,” I say. “I’m not some—”
“Don’t say sheep,” they say. “It’s unoriginal.”
“Says the person qualifying their decision to own an iPhone.”
“At least you didn’t say sheeple,” they say. “Those people are the worst.”
“Truly,” I say. “Anyway,” I linger a bit, and pick the phone’s base off the bedside table.
The cord stretches as I walk to the minibar and start in on the gin. “My name’s—”
“No,” they say. “I don’t want to know.”
I take a swig of the first gin and don’t bother putting the cap back on.
“Well all right then,” I say.
“No, no,” they say. “It’s not like that. I think this is more fun, you know?”

“How so?”
“Just think of it,” they say. “This is different. A completely random circumstance caused
by my inability to dial the right number.”
I laugh and make the rest of the gin disappear. 
“And think about it. You could have hung up and you didn’t,” they say.
“Same goes for you,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“So why didn’t you,” I ask.
“I needed a phone charger,” they say.
“And you don’t anymore?”
“Well,” they say. “Not if I’m talking to you.”
“I’m honored,” I say. “To be of service.”
I consider a second shooter of gin, but the room is cold and silent and gin is usually for
lonely nights. It’s not one of those kinda nights any more.
“Why didn’t you hang up,” they ask. “I mean, unless you need a phone charger too, in
which I can’t help you because I don’t have an Android. I have more self-respect than that.”
“Baa-baa.”
“You’ve stooped so low in mere minutes.”
“At least I didn’t say sheeple.”
“I’d have hung up if you did.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t.”
“No changing the subject,” they say. “We already covered our mutual disgust for people.
Why didn’t you hang up? At first, I mean, when you realized I called the wrong number.”

Loneliness.
“Curiosity,” I say. “That and I’m a little buzzed.”
“Oh, look at you, mister moneybags,” they say.
“Yeah, right,” I say.
“I know how much it costs to get loaded off a hotel minibar.”
“I’ve probably spent my whole week’s per diem on it,” I say. “Accounting is going to rip
my ass for it. Oh well.”
“Per diem,” they say. “Sounds fancy.”
“It’s Latin for ten buck’s worth of McDonald’s a day,” I say. “I sit through trainings and
seminars all week and have to ask myself if it’s worth it.”
It’s quiet, but they’re still on the line. I can hear the slight crackle in my earpiece from
them readjusting their receiver. I hear their breath. It’s low, but steady. 
“What would you rather be doing,” they ask.
I answer with a heavy breath and start to pull the sheets back. I crawl into bed, cold all of
a sudden, and pull the covers up to my chest. The room is lit by the single lamp next to the bed,
above the bedside table. I lie on my back and hold the phone to my ear with my right arm. My
left is stretched out across the bed, far enough for my fingers to dangle over the edge. A lazy
Vitruvian Man. 
“I don’t know,” I say. And after a little while, “That’s part of the problem.”
It’s the truth, too. But I wish I could unload some heavy burden onto them. Some
repressed secret buried beneath years and layers of life thrown on top of it. There’s no risk in
anonymity. No judgment. At least none that would result in any sort of shame or guilt. I suppose
that’s what Catholics see in confession. Well, except the guilt. There’s always room for that. I
consider lying, but what would be the point?
“How about you,” I ask. “Do you like what you do?”
“No,” they say.
“What do you do?”
“You could say I’m in between opportunities.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I say. “You could work for my company. You’d be perfect in
marketing.”
They laugh and say, “I’ll make sure to polish my resume.”
I hear them yawn on the other end.
“I should let you go,” I say. “You sound tired.”
“Oh, yeah. I am getting there,” they say. “It’s getting late anyway. Tomorrow’s probably
going to be hell for you, staying up this late.”
“Would have been either way,” I say. “At least I’ll have an excuse for dozing off.”
I rotate into the fetal position and rest the phone between my head and the pillow so I
don’t have to use my arms. I tuck my hands between my knees while the room’s AC unit kicks
on. 
“Hey,” I say. “Why don’t we meet for a drink tomorrow evening? There’s a bar across
the parking lot. Beats the overpriced minibar. I should be done by five. So, call it six? That is,
unless you’re checking out tomorrow.”
There’s a slight hesitation. I can sense it.
“Or if you don’t want to. You don’t need a reason,” I add. “I completely understand not
wanting to and leaving our situation the way it is.

“Which is?”
“Like you said, a random occurrence caused by your inability to dial the right number,” I
say.
They laugh and I think it’s genuine. Tired, but genuine.
“Okay, okay,” they say through another yawn. “Parking lot bar at six. What’s your room
number? Just in case.”
“Forty-two,” I say. “How about you?”
“The meaning of life,” they say. “How fitting.”
“What,” I ask.
“Oh, come on,” they say. “An Android user who hasn’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide?”
“And a pretentious Apple user,” I say.
“Goodnight, Forty-Two. Wear something so I know it’s you,” they say without
explanation and hang up without giving me their room number.

I’m at the bar by five-thirty. Order a beer to start. Finish it in five minutes. Call it nerves. Take a
leak, return to my stool at the bar top. I have an extra name tag and ask the bartender for a
sharpie. They toss me a blue pen and ask if I want another beer. It’s a sports bar and louder than I
like my bars to be, but they have a decent selection on tap. I order a Scotch ale and write the
number forty-two on the name tag, peel the backing off, and stick it to my chest. 
“Highlander,” the bartender says and walks away before I can say thanks. A couple
Premier League teams are playing, but I can’t tell who. Soccer was never my sport. I watch the
game some, but watch the clock closer. I crumple the name tag backing paper into a ball by the
time six-fifteen rolls around. I peel my name tag loose from my shirt by six-thirty. Leave a
couple twenties on the bar top by seven and walk across the parking lot shortly after.
I take my wedding ring off and shower. I slip it back on, rotate it around my finger a
couple times and head to bed. I tell myself there was nothing to read into tonight, but ask myself
to explain why I’m smiling when the phone rings. There’s always room for guilt.
“Sorry,” they say.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “Truly. I would have ended up at the bar anyway. Is everything
alright?”
“Yeah,” they say. “I just…I thought it would destroy what we have.”
It feels wrong, but I catch myself smiling.
“And what do we have?”
“A unique relationship,” they say. “Think about it. It’s not quite anonymity. Sure, we
don’t know each other’s names, but it’d be easy enough to find out.”
“And it’s not quite the same as a chatroom,” I say. “If you’re even old enough to
remember what those are like.”
“Unfortunately,” they say.
“A. S. L,” I say.
“Christ, weren’t those the days,” they say. “But you see what I mean. I know I’m talking
to a real person. We can hear one another’s inflections. I can tell when you’re joking without you
having to type LOL into the ether. I can hear how tired you are.”
“And I can hear you aren’t happy,” I say.
“I’m happier than I was,” they say. “Than yesterday at least.”
“Me too,” I say. 

“And that’s all that matters,” they say. “That we’re better than the day before.”
I know we can never meet. We stay on the line for a while, though we’re silent for
minutes at a time. Speaking isn’t always necessary because we’re sharing an experience.
Connected, yet disconnected, by a thread of anonymity. I do not know them, but I know they’re
real. And so am I. Our daily allowance of existence is enough. For today, anyway.

About the Author: Michael Bettendorf (he/him) is a writer from the Midwestern U.S. His recent work has appeared/is forthcoming at The Drabblecast, The Sunlight Press, and elsewhere. He works in a high school library in Lincoln where he tries to convince the world Nebraska is too strange to be a flyover state. Find him on Twitter @BeardedBetts and www.michaelbettendorfwrites.com.

By Margaret Rozga

The purple asters still hold their color.

A west wind urges, frees, shakes loose,

sweeps gold maple leaves from their branches

and rains them down to earth after taking them

for a spin.

You  ask if I still believe

the arc of the moral universe

bends toward justice.

The moral universe. Is it contained within, or bigger

than the unmodified universe? What of the 130 years

this prairie was broken and farmed? What of the 50 years

now of restoring prairie? How to do that math?

I seem to have brushed up

against wild parsnip. A blister

above my right ankle.

I cover it and keep going.

Yes, I believe. I try

not to confuse mine with the larger moral universe

its arc still bendable if, when, we lend our hands,

our voices to urge, coax, free, wind, pull it earthward.

About the Author: Margaret Rozga served as inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station in 2021 where she hosted Write-Ins and poetry workshops open to all. She curated Our Field Station and the Earth, a campus exhibit of the year’s work. As 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, she edited the chapbook anthology On the Front Lines / Behind the Lines and co-edited the anthology Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems. Her fifth poetry book is Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021).  

By Leah Kindler

The last summer that my heart is all the way home, I do the kid things. Sara and I lose sight of the sun behind the laundromat and our slipping towers of soft-serve. We sit there until half the people we know have walked past the stoop. We lay out our entire summers and watch them sink in the horizon. I let Maggie shave my head a second time on the driveway while their little sister watches and their grandma laughs. I catch a ride to Milwaukee and memorize all the streets named after states and presidents. I get swallowed in the sway of concert crowds. My sleep schedule buckles under morning shifts so I gift afternoons to my bed. Over pho, my dad debates leaving town like all my friends and their parents. I numb my ears, bathe Oak Park in rosy hues, wonder if I still want to leave for college. I chase girls at the last minute with no intention of loving them half as much as I could. I say “she” in the past tense and it’s all too clear who I mean—girl, closeted, of Italian ice-stained tongues and a July basement. In pictures, she sheds her hair and smiles in the lopsided way I used to cry about. I think of my own shearing, how the anger slipped from my face like a curtain. I keep calling this my last summer like I’ll never see June rains tiptoe over my roof again, or shake out the beach into my bed again, or beg Dad to turn on the air. Like I won’t love coming home so much more when it’s not the only home anymore, 

just the original.

About the Author: Leah Kindler (she/her) is an Illinois-based poet and essayist with a BFA in creative writing from Emerson College. She has previously been published by the Academy of American Poets, Invisible City, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @leahliterally.

About the Author:

David L. Stanley, B.Sc, M.A., is a teacher, poet and author, voice-over actor, and speaker. His work has appeared in national magazines on topics from professional bicycle racing to men, depression, and suicide. His first book, Melanoma, It Started with a Freckle was hailed by Prof. Tom Foster of How to Read Novels Like a Professor as “harrowing, insightful, technical, and hilarious.” Stanley’s second book, co-authored with Willie Artis is From Jim Crow to CEO, the Willie Artis Story, available via AUX Media. His latest book is Rants & Mutters, an essay collection.

David Stanley has read his sonnets to audiences at the Dad 2.0 Summit; North America’s largest gathering of dads and brands. His poetry has been featured in blogs and literary magazines. He is the narrator of 40 audiobooks on subjects ranging from Alzheimer’s, bicycle racing, the NBA, to mountaineering. 

Stanley travels to speak on melanoma awareness, fatherhood and life, and The Art of the Pitch. You can find him on twitter @DStan58.

By Gary Duehr

I am an emergency. My name is Bernie Smith, my colleagues at HR Block used to call me St. Bernard, like the hospital on the South Side, because I was always trying to save someone a few bucks. I still live a couple blocks from the hospital, near where the Dan Ryan Expressway split the old neighborhood in half, in a post-war cottage. It’s nice, white brick, with a long narrow backyard like a bowling alley. Just five minutes from the Red Line El, though with a bad leg I don’t get around much anymore. 

You wouldn’t know it, chatting with me in Billz Coffee on the corner, how extraordinary my life has become at the age of 72. I make a point to be polite, yes ma’m and no sir, with a firm, quiet voice like I’d use with clients. When I look in the mirror, I see myself 30 years ago, reddish hair swept to one side, fair skin, a veil of freckles across my nose and forearms where I got sunburnt as a kid, tall and a little bony—my wife, Jennie, who died three years ago, said I reminded her of some 1940s cartoon character.

 I started having visions a year and a half ago. They came like dreams, every week or so, in that haze when you first wake up in the morning, rubbing my face and looking out the window at our gnarled crabapple tree. In each one I saw the same tall glass building with balconies, a glittering shard in bright sun, behind it Lake Michigan’s boiling gray expanse. The address was 1353 Lake Shore Drive, I could see it etched in marble above the revolving doors; it was on the Gold Coast, a stretch of luxury condos and Gucci and Nike stores north of the Loop.

The first time, I saw a fire break out in the upper stories, belching smoke into a crystal blue sky, so real it looked like the TV news. It shook me. The next day I heard about a big fire in a condo downtown, and I wondered if there was a connection. So when I had my next vision of a bomb being planted at the same building, I called 911 to make sure.

“This line is being recorded. Do you need police, fire or medical?”

“Police, I think. Maybe fire too.”

“What is the emergency?”

“It’s happening right now. 1353 Lake Shore Drive. I saw two foreign-looking guys in a van leave a suspicious black bag outside the lobby. Please send someone right away.”

“Where are you located?”

I hung up. When I didn’t hear anything about a bomb on the news, I figured I may have prevented a tragedy.

The visions started to come more often, every few days, and all about something awful happening at 1353 Lake Shore Drive. Drug trafficking on the loading dock, a would-be jumper teetering on the roof, Lake Michigan’s waves crashing in. Why that address, I don’t know. But I began to feel like the building’s secret guardian, keeping watch like a security guard. It became my building.

“This line is being recorded. Do you need police, fire or medical?”

“Medical. A middle-aged male looks like he’s had a heart attack on the 5th floor balcony. I can see him slumped over in his deck chair. There’s no one with him.”

“Address?”

“1353 Lake Shore Drive.”

“Where are you located?”

 Click.

My public defender, Will, says I have to stop. The police finally tracked down my phone. Will insists there is no 1353 Lake Shore Drive. At the beginning, every time a ladder truck would roar up or patrol cars and an ambulance with sirens blaring, they’d block the road and drag their hoses, axes, and stretchers into the lobby of the nearest high rise, 1350, where they’d confront an exasperated security guard behind his counter who’d start to yell at them before they could say a word. After logging more than a hundred calls, the 911 Center taped up warnings by the phones with a Google map of the area: THERE IS NO 1353 LAKE SHORE DRIVE. DO NOT DISPATCH.

I understand what Will is telling me, when we sit together in the cafeteria after a court hearing. But it doesn’t make sense. I can see the building like it’s standing right in front of me, its black iron balcony railings, the gleaming reflections of sky and clouds in the windows, the address in a fancy script above the front door. And the trouble plays out like a movie in my head with bone-chilling screams, closeups of desperate faces crying out to me. I can’t resist.

 “This line is being recorded. Do you need police, fire or medical?”

 “All three. Everybody. It’s terrible, terrible.”

 “What’s the emergency?”

“A big construction crane next door has toppled over. There are hundreds of people trapped up there. The whole thing might collapse. The boom woke me up, it sounded like a huge explosion.”

“What’s the address?”

“1353 Lake Shore Drive.”

“I’m sorry, sir, could you repeat that?”

 Click.

Will is a nice kid, right out of Loyola, with soft brown eyes behind his wire rims. He listens to me go on, then explains what the court order means. They can’t send me to prison, and the evaluations come back normal so hospitalization is out, and they can’t make me take medication. But they can hold me in contempt if I keep making 911 calls, fine me, detain me for a few days. He says they can’t charge me for being lonely and a little crazy, otherwise the jails would be full. But he pleads with me to stop, for pete’s sake, Bernie, stop. You’re causing everyone a lot of trouble.

I tell Will I’m sorry. I feel bad that he has me for a case. I know I’m difficult. Once I accidentally broke my phone, and I started to miss my court appointments. The 911 calls stopped for a while, but because I’m on assistance the judge was forced to give me a new phone, which everyone found painfully ironic, including me. 

I told Will my theory of where my visions come from. My real first name is Joseph, Joseph Smith, which is why I go by my middle name Bernard. I was born in Carthage, Illinois, down by the Mississippi, where the Mormon founder Joseph Smith was killed by a mob that dragged him from his jail cell. Growing up I heard all about my namesake, how he had visions of an angel who led him to upstate New York to dig up golden plates, the Book of Mormon, which tells the story of an ancient American civilization where the Garden of Eden is in Missouri. Crazy stuff, we used to laugh at it as kids. There’s a plaque on the site of the old jail we’d use for BB practice.      

But what if some of the same spirit has gotten into me, stranger things have happened. I didn’t ask for this, any more than Saint Francis of Assisi or Catherine of Siena did. I was raised Catholic by my mom, so she told me the stories of the saints on these playing cards. Inside I’m scared, terrified, but I don’t share this with anyone, including Will. I’d tell Jennie if she was here, she’d help me figure it out, but now there’s no one. It’s fallen on me. What if it’s all true, and I’ve been chosen to save everyone? They need me. I can’t let go.

“This line is being recorded. Do you need police, fire or medical?”
 “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. Please help.”

“What’s going on?”

“Please don’t hang up. I can see an enormous cloud of locusts in the sky over Lake Michigan, it’s so dark it’s blocking out the sun. They’re buzzing like a hundred airplanes, and they’re headed straight for a high rise.”

 “What’s the address?”

  “1353 Lake Shore Drive.”

About the Author: Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, North American Review, and Southern Poetry Review. His books include Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).

By Wendy BooydeGraaff

About the Author: Wendy BooydeGraaff’s fiction and essays have been included in The Shore, X-R-A-Y, Miracle Monocle, About Place, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.

By Connor White

Short played with the buttons of the voice recorder, hitting fast-forward, rewind, fast-forward again, scrubbing through the last movie recording until he queued it exactly where the film concluded. He stood the voice recorder on the concrete floor of the storm shelter. I was laying on my stomach on the bunk above him, worrying about the winds. We were getting close to our last can.

 “Okay, movie time,” Short said. “Whose turn is it? It might be yours, Tall.”

 “I forget,” I said.

 “Well, lemme look at the list.”

 Short got up and found his spiral notebook on the desk. He flipped through to the last page of entries.

“We forgot to pen in John Carpenter’s The Thing, which was two nights ago; 28 Days Later; our triple-feature of Friday the 13th parts 1, 2, and 3; The Exorcist; Night of the Creeps. . .”

“Which one was Night of the Creeps?”

“Directed by Fred Dekker who also directed Monster Squad, which you listened to a month ago. In the zombie classic Night of the Creeps, Tom Atkins, who plays Detective Cameron, is holed up in the Kappa Delta Sigma sorority house with all the sorority sisters dressed up and ready to go to their formal dance, he looks out the window at the zombies in tuxedos staggering toward the house, cigarette betwixt his lips and says, “I got good news and bad news, girls. The good news is, your dates are here.” Then one of the sisters astutely asks, “What’s the bad news?” The camera pushes in, emphasizing the revolver in Cameron’s hand, held at the ready as he says through gritted teeth, “They’re dead.”

 “Oh, right.”

“Then we had: Tales from the Hood; Army of Darkness, obviously preceded by Evil Dead 2; Ganja and Hess; The Blob; In the Mouth of Madness; Carrie; The Babadook; Insidious; Signs.

 “I guess it’s my turn.”

  “Any movie in mind?”

 I listed my favorites. Fantasies like The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, The NeverEnding Story, then more of the realist dramas like Serpico and The Godfather. Short had never seen The Godfather, but he’d seen all ten Friday the 13th movies, and, Short liked to point out, if you included Freddy vs. Jason and the remake of the first film, that made the count twelve. There was some overlap in the films we’d seen, but not much. Mostly from dates we took to a matinee. It had been a long time since we saw a movie.

The night before, after we’d finished a quick session of fooling around, Short began to cry. He was feeling claustrophobic. We both were. That night he’d told me the story of The Ring and got nostalgic for the night he’d seen it in theaters with his first love, Henry. He hid his face in the crux of my arm and wept.

“I’ll never watch a film in a theater again,” he said. “I’ll never sit in the dark and watch the triangular rays of light dance from the projector, lighting up all the particulate floating in its beams. No one will ever make another horror movie. There’s no one to make them for.”

“On our next run, we’ll look again for working players. Anything—VHS, DVD, hell even Laserdisc. Eventually, we’ll find one. There’s gotta be horror movies you haven’t seen. They’re out there. You haven’t seen them all. And someday we’ll watch them.”

“How many DVDs could possibly be in the radius of the shelter? We’ll never get far enough to find them. The winds won’t allow it.”

 “We’ll try.”

I thought more about the films I had seen and recounted the titles for him. Short had an encyclopedic knowledge for horror movies. He could recite half the lines, even giving the camera cues. He remembered what the characters wore, how they styled their hair, the color, contrast, and intensity of the lighting in each scene. I couldn’t even remember the name of the main character half the time. 

 “Have you ever seen Field of Dreams?” I said.

  “Nope, is it good?”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t seen it. And to think, you’re from Sioux City. It takes place in Iowa.”

 “Would I like it?”

 “I think so.”

  “What genre?”

 “It’s a horror movie.”

  “You’re kidding?”

    “No joke.”

    “It’s not a Children of the Corn ripoff is it?”

    “Completely different.”

   “Do you remember enough to tell it?”

   “I’ll try.”

 Short grabbed his tape recorder. He recorded every movie we told each other and carried it with him in case other memories came back to him. In case we couldn’t remember the details later on. When we’re old, he meant. He wanted to preserve the accuracy of the tellings while we still remembered, so we could play them back when we no longer did. It made me slightly shy to know my voice was being recorded. Though, unlike Short, I didn’t think that we’d make it far enough to suffer senility. When I listen to the tapes, I curse myself for sounding timid and unenthusiastic when Short sounded so exuberant. I’m embarrassed by my embarrassment. I enjoyed telling the stories, I really did. I just wanted to do a good job.

“A farmer in Iowa plows over acres of his corn to build a baseball diamond—”

“Tell me about the characters first before you dive into the plot. I wanna fall in love with them so I can feel their calamities.”

 “The aforementioned farmer, Kevin Costner, is the son of a washed-up, triple-A baseball player.”

“The character’s name is Kevin Costner? Like Waterworld Kevin Costner?”

“Just a coincidence.”

“Oh.”

I closed my eyes and conjured their backstory. The type of backstory that Short could appreciate. Something horrific.

“When he was still in diapers, Kevin lost his mother to a stampede at Ebbets Field—”

“Is this a Slasher?”

“It’s a Haunting.”

“The mother? She comes back doesn’t she?”

“Do you want to keep fast-forwarding, or do you want me to tell you the story?”

“I’m sorry, go ahead, I’m liking this so far.” 

“His father never recovers, blaming the sport for the loss of his wife. Each night at bedtime, his father recounts horrible stories of lives ruined by baseball. The tale his father always circles back to is the tragedy of Shoeless Joe Jackson, banned from the league after his team, the Chicago White Sox, are caught fixing the World Series by throwing the game in exchange for kickbacks from underworld bookies. Kevin is eighteen when he flees Brooklyn. He never sees his father again.”

 The LED lights flickered and went dark. The solar batteries had run out of power. A whistling came through the seam in the tornado shelter’s doors. The wind was picking up outside. It had been blowing for eleven days straight. Not the longest storm yet, but getting there. 

For hundreds of miles in every direction was flat land. Nebraska farmland. No forests or high ground to block the winds. No bodies of water to divert the pressure systems. When the winds ripped across that barren landscape, the air filled with dust, a grey cloud of debris that blocked out the sun. Power was hard to conserve when the winds lasted that long. Night and day, it was pitch black in the tornado shelter. We turned on the lights only when it was time to eat. Once the winds finally subsided, we had an opening of clear weather to go scavenging the nearest townships for supplies.

The winds carried a disease. Scientists from the CDC said on the news that it might be a fungus that survived in the upper atmosphere. Buoyant in air, never resting on the earth. Microorganisms that by evolution or by design floated like microscopic balloons. The winds pulled them to earth to infect us. And when they did infect an organism, no water could enter its cells. At least, that was the suspicion. They never found out for sure. It wasn’t long until there were no scientists left.

Birds were the first to drop. Then desiccated animals began showing up around the country by the millions. Deer, squirrels, raccoons, dogs, any animal caught out in a storm. Once infected you can drink all the water you want, but it just passes through on the long slide out the other end. Not a drop absorbed. Death comes by dehydration.

It took some time for it to affect plants. A disease that infected plants and animals alike? The botanists and epidemiologists said it wasn’t possible. First, they thought it was a simple drought. But then farmers noticed that the water from their irrigation was running off the land. The roots of their crops weren’t sucking up any water. Hectares of farms and wild vegetation began to dry up overnight. And soon nothing grew. It stopped raining altogether. Above the prairie now is an endless, uninterrupted sky. Not a cloud in sight. 

It was summer when it started. Before the winds, May through September was muggy in the prairie. Oppressively humid. People complain about the humidity of the south, but they’ve never experienced Iowa and Nebraska humidity. The Corn Sweats, they called it. A phenomenon whereby the corn stalks that blanketed the land transpire an excess of moisture. But now the land is dry. 

It rains over the ocean still. One of the last reports we heard before the silence was of a hurricane approaching the East Coast. Maybe we can make it out to the coast someday. It would be nice to feel rain again. Though the rain might carry it, too. That’d be a nice way to go—a walk in the rain on a hot summer day.

In the dark, I lay back in bed and listened to the winds and the revving of a gear from Short’s flashlight, charged by a hand crank. Finally, after much effort, a bar of blue light sparked to life.

“Want me to keep going or are you ready to sleep?” I said.

“Just a few more minutes,” Short said.

“Trying to put as much distance as possible between him and his father, Kevin moved to Iowa and married a strawberry blonde named Annie. They had a daughter. He became a farmer, growing corn for pig farms. Financially, they were getting by, happy even, but the winds shifted for the little family. One day Kevin heard a voice call to him from deep within the corn. Initially, he dismissed it as a trick of the wind. He ignored it for weeks, but the voice kept calling to him. Like the sirens, it drew him near. He resisted, but the harder he fought it, the clearer the voice became. 

It said, ‘If you build it, he will come.’

An almost sexual urge overtook him—an impulse to rip each stalk of his corn from the ground by its roots. He hungered for it. One afternoon it was too much to resist. 

The corn called to him, ‘If you build it, he will come.’ 

He ran for the shed and mounted his cultivator. While his neighbors looked on from their fields, he drove into his crop, bursting with ecstasy as whole streaks of vegetation were churned under in one continuous spiral, a whole-body orgasm that pulsed through him, aching for desolation. The feeling was too good to stop. He would have kept mowing over his crop until nothing was left, if the engine hadn’t sputtered to a stop, empty of gas.”

Short’s breathing had turned heavy.

“You awake,” I said.

“Yeah, but I’m fading,” Short said.

“Is the movie putting you to sleep?”

“Just tired. I’m digging the movie. Finish it tomorrow?”

“Sure hun.”

The recorder clicked off.

Short shook me awake. 

“It stopped,” he said.

 “What?”

  “The winds, they stopped.”

 “How long?”

I sat up and dangled my legs over the side of my bunk. Short was hustling to get his clothes on in the dark, knocking into things.

 “Short, when did it stop?” I said.

 “I don’t know. While we were asleep.”

 “Have you looked out yet?”

  “I just woke up like you.”

  “What’s the time?”

  “Ten after five.”

  “Morning or night?”

   “AM.”

Short cranked up his flashlight and shined it on our map. The town’s stock had dried up. Each house, each store, each boarded-up restaurant we systematically searched, and after coloring in their little blocks on the map, we never stepped in them again. The time had come to make a run for the neighboring town of Stantzville to our east. It’d be a risk. A necessary one.

“Okay, let’s move,” Short said.

The whole world looked like an attic left abandoned for half a century. A fine layer of dust settled on everything. Mixtures of ash and dirt and dead cells. It made a cloud if you shuffled your feet too much. The remains of every living thing that the winds had touched, turned to dust, scattered about by storms. After the Prairie Fires, the land had turned gray. 

Our bicycles were tuned-up as best as we could get them. We carried a spare air pump, but we didn’t have any spare inner tubes left. A week before, I had popped my front tire. We used our last spare to replace it.

We made good time riding to Stantzville. Before we searched the houses, we decided to check the stores. There was a good chance a can could be found, rolled under a counter or fallen behind some boxes during the runs on the supermarkets. 

Short wanted to try the Casey’s General Store since it was right on the corner. Its windows were shattered, so I wasn’t optimistic. While he climbed inside, I went to examine a mound in the street. With the sole of my shoe I brushed away the dust covering it. 

The body lay facedown. I turned it over to see if it was anyone I knew. The corpse was lightweight. Only skin and bones and clothes. Preserved like a mummy. The towns were small enough that occasionally we recognized acquaintances and, once in a blue moon, friends. A stranger, a man wearing a tattered black leather jacket with chrome studs pinned in the collar. A button in the shape of Australia read, G’Day Mate. Another pin said, Stay Free.

It’s funny, in our isolation, corpses were a welcome sight. Like running into someone you knew at the store. Short would call me over and say, “look who I ran into.” And there would be a friend of ours mummified in their living room. We once found a woman we knew, Ruth, dead in a bed that wasn’t hers, with a man who wasn’t her husband. The nightstands beside the bed displayed an assortment of vibrators and dildos and lube. You might think it’d be grim to witness, but it was comforting to see that she’d had some fun before the end.

“Clear,” Short called as he climbed through the window.

We rode to the main strip, aiming for the Hy-Vee. I stopped at the window of a realty office. Signs in the windows gave details of local sales. A craftsman home, 3 Br, 2 Ba listed for $280,000. A ranch, 2 Br, 1.5 Ba listed for $230,000. 

“You on the market,” Short said. “Come on let’s hurry.”

“Wait, look at this one,” I said. “Rustic country home, 2 Br, 2 Ba, on 3.2 acres nestled in an old apple grove. Well water, septic tank, and in-ground storm shelter.”

“It’s got a storm shelter?” 

“Yup. It’s east of here, too. Right off of Prairie Du Chien Rd.”

“You still dreaming of heading for the coast?”

“Why not? We got nothing else to do? We could do this.”

“Do what?”

“String together a chain of storm shelters.”

“It’ll take years, maybe decades.”

“What else do we have to do?”

“We’ll talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“It’s dangerous for one.”

“We’re in danger already.”

“It’s more dangerous. It’s best to stay put while we—”

 “Hold it.”

 What I’d thought was a feature of the landscape was moving. Short turned to face what I saw. On the sidewalk was a person. A figment of imagination covered in dust. We hadn’t seen another person in a year. The figure trudged toward us. Their limbs were thin. A dress strap hung off one knobby shoulder.

 “Holy shit,” Short said.

 “I thought I was losing my mind,” I said.

 The figure came closer.

 “Stay back,” Short said.

 “They might be starving,” I said.

We quickly backed up as the person hastened their shuffle, trying to reach us. There was still so much we didn’t know. We knew the winds carried the infection, but person to person transmission? Still, I felt for that emaciated soul. They were isolated, starving, dehydrated. How long had it been since they’d seen anyone? Maybe they weren’t sick. Just starving to death, like us. Short stumbled into me and nearly fell. 

 “We gotta move,” he said. 

We turned and ran for our bikes as the figure broke into a labored jog. Short started to ride off, but I stopped and turned around. The person had fallen over in the street. A haze of dust clouded the spot. 

 “Short, wait a sec,” I said.

They weren’t moving. If they were still breathing, it was incredibly shallow. The skirt of their dress had flipped up past their naked hips. The skin stretched tight over their bones. Tendons and muscles strung underneath the skin like poles in a tent. I got close and nudged them with my toe.

 “Don’t touch,” Short shouted.

  He rode up alongside me and grabbed a fistful of my shirt and dragged me a safe distance away.

 “Are you crazy,” he said.

 “I’ll put on my mask and gloves,” I said. “They need help.”

  “Don’t bother, they’re dead.”

   Short was right. They weren’t breathing. 

 “Let’s go to Hy-Vee before it gets too late,” Short said.

The Supermarket was picked clean. Most were since the run on stores during the first wave of deaths. The places we typically found cans were in the loading areas, in the break rooms, and in the back offices. I found a can of peaches stashed behind a crate in the loading zone. Short found a cup of Ramen in the break room. We searched the cabinets and drawers in the back office.

 “So what happens after Kevin mows his crop down?” Short said.

 “Doesn’t it wear you out?” I said. 

“Wear me out?”

“Look at the state of the world. After all the terrible shit you’ve seen? Don’t you want to hear about something nice for a change?”

  “I just like creepy stories.”

   “But why?”

 “I don’t know, it’s fun to get scared and survive. It used to be that I’d watch a truly terrifying movie, typically, a midnight showing, and on the way out of the theater they’d lock the doors behind us. I’d be scared out of my wits walking back to my car alone in the empty parking lot. But once I was inside with the doors locked, I was happy. Horror movies make it easier to return to life. Your life can be all fucked up, but you’re happy to return to it.”

  “What about now? There’s no movie worse than this.”

  “Good horror movies also make you realize that you live in a horror movie.”

   “I already know I live in one.”

   “It’s not so bad. Oh damn, a Snickers bar!”

   “Where’d you find that? Is there anything else?”

 “It was next to the keyboard on the tray. We never check there. We’ll eat this tonight when we watch the rest of the movie.”

We’d have to save the rest of the building for the next trip. It was getting late, and we couldn’t be caught out after dark. The winds had a tendency to start up at night. We returned to our bikes and started riding. 

I was staring ahead, watching for debris in the street that might puncture a tire. On the horizon, the sun shone bright. I had to squint my eyes against it. It took me a moment to realize I was seeing in color. The street was divided. Ahead of me was technicolor, while the street behind me was black and white. The signs on the buildings across the street stood out in stark, neon relief. My brain wasn’t processing the divide between grayscale and color. Short skidded to a stop.

 “Turn around,” Short said. “Go back.”

I braked. The dead branches of the trees were swaying. Dust blew off the roofs. The colors of the town were being unearthed by the winds.

 “Oh god,” Short said. “Ride Tall.” 

We pulled on our masks, spun our bikes around and pedaled. Colorful signs showed behind us. The dust rolled across town like a freight train miles long.

 “We’re cut off,” Short said.

  “Head for Prairie du Chien,” I said.

  “That’s the opposite direction of home.”

   “The real estate listing.”

    “The one with the shelter? I don’t know, it could be padlocked shut.”

    “There’s nowhere else to go.”

 The winds were building around us. Dust devils were spouting from every direction, gray funnels that twisted across the landscape. We rode to Prairie du Chien and cut down a gravel road. We found the house from the picture. 

 Branches were cracking and falling from the dead trees surrounding the property. The winds grazed us. I could only hold my breath for so long. We were panting from exertion. We had to try to get into the shelter quick.

Built into a hill behind the house was a set of storm doors. Miraculously, they were unlocked. We dragged our bikes inside and slammed the doors behind us, latching them in place. The winds got louder as they increased in speed. Updrafts pulled on the doors, trying to suck them off their hinges. 

Short got his flashlight out and found an old Coleman lantern on the shelf, still filled with fuel. He found the matches and lit the lantern, placing it on a small wooden table against the wall. 

The shelter was small. No beds. Only a couple chairs and a small table to play cards at. It smelled of mildew and rodent droppings. Built for the threat of tornadoes, long before anyone had ever heard of the winds. 

“See any food?” I said.

“There’s a water jug,” he said.

Short unscrewed the cap on the jug and gave it a sniff. He took a sip, shrugged and handed it to me. The water tasted of plastic, but my dry throat welcomed it. The storm might last for weeks, but at least we wouldn’t die of thirst.

“Dinner and a movie?” Short said, shaking the Snickers bar at me.

“Field of Dreams or something else,” I said.

“I wanna hear how it ends.”

We pulled chairs up to the table. Short placed his tape recorder between us and pressed 

RECORD.

When I play back the tape, I can hear the crinkle of the Snickers wrapper. His hands working excitedly, but carefully. I can almost make out his voice when he said, here, and placed my share on the table, bundled in half the wrapper. It’s one of the parts I always rewind to listen to.

On the recording I say, “Kevin told Annie about the whole Black Sox scandal with the Chicago White Sox, and his father’s mission to steer him away from baseball and avoid another tragedy. Annie knew the project was important to Kevin. She sensed that he was exorcising some sort of demon with it, and so she was supportive. But she was also worried. They used up their life savings on the construction. Most of their crop was plowed over to make way for the baseball diamond and stands and facilities, and the income from their remaining corn couldn’t cover their mortgage payments. Annie was happy to give to Kevin’s obsession, but he had put their whole future at risk. Kevin had complete tunnel vision in regards to building the field. When she tried to bring up her concerns, he would snap at her.

One night, when Kevin was in a good mood, Annie attempted to convince him to slow down on construction, arguing that maybe they didn’t need the metal halide lights on fifty foot poles to illuminate the field for night games. She was arguing her point to Kevin as he painted lines in the dirt of the diamond, when a man emerged from the corn. They thought he was a neighbor, stopping by to see the progress, but as he came closer, they noticed the leather mitt in his hand. The stranger was dressed in full vintage Chicago White Sox uniform.

The White Sox player came near but didn’t dare cross the newly painted lines, the borders of his world. He introduced himself, Joseph Jackson. Shoeless Joe Jackson. His father’s idol who broke his heart. Joe was right in front of them. Real as day. Annie saw him, too. 

‘Where’d you come from?’ Kevin asked.

‘In there,’ Joe said, pointing to the corn. ‘And there’s more of us.’

‘More?’

But before he could press him further, Shoeless Joe turned and walked back into the corn and disappeared. Kevin and Annie stood there dumbfounded, watching the border of the corn for hours, waiting for movement. 

Annie relented to Kevin’s insistence that they invest in lights. Right when they finished wiring power to the lamps, Shoeless Joe emerged again from the corn, joined by a team of players. The lights sparked on, and the team began their practice. Kevin and Annie were in shock. They watched from the bleachers as the ghosts practiced pitching and hitting and catching. Dawn approached and practice ended. The ghosts returned to the corn. The sun had yet to crest the horizon when the voice returned saying, ‘Ease his pain.’ Shortly thereafter the bank threatened foreclosure.”

“Can we take a break from the story for a bit,” Short said.

“Sure,” I said. “You good?”

“It’s just a headache. We haven’t eaten much today besides sugar.”

The recording is choppy from that point on. Years of dust have worn it down. The gears have stretched the tape, and sometimes it comes off the rollers, and I have to respool it centimeter by centimeter, turning the gears with the tip of my thumb. 

What wasn’t recorded was our panic the next morning. 

 Short couldn’t sleep. His headache got worse, and he started having diarrhea. The water he drank hours before passed right through him. He pushed me away and shouted at me if I came near to hold him. He feared infecting me. In the corner of that shelter he tried to sleep, shifting and rolling and changing positions, trying to get comfortable, but his headache was too severe. 

We were trapped there by the winds. For a week, the winds blew. I wanted Short to see daylight one more time, but by the time it was safe to go outside, he had been dead for several days. 

I listen to the recording of Field of Dreams once a week. I have to limit myself. There are only so many listens you can get from a tape before it breaks. But I have the others, Les Diaboliques, Oldboy, The Omen, The Strangers, all the spooky movies that Short loved. 

I like listening to Field of Dreams the best. He was so pleased to hear a new one. And it made me happy to be able to creep him out, at least once.

It’s scratchy, but the tape continues like this: 

“Kevin and Annie don’t lose their farm. Thousands of people heard the voice too and were drawn to the field. The travelers thought they were going mad, like Kevin and Annie did, until they saw the lights of the field. They came in lines of cars down the county road and paid good money to watch the ghosts play their game. Each night, rain or shine, the ghosts played for cheering crowds. Kevin and Annie kept the games running, but it wasn’t always enough. Occasionally, the corn needed an offering. 

The Field of Dreams was growing thicker. It needed food. Shoeless Joe convinced Kevin to kidnap a Sportswriter to feed to the field. So he did and brought the Sportswriter to meet Shoeless Joe. When the Sportswriter saw Shoeless Joe, he was caught in a spell. Then Joe led the bewitched man into the fold of the corn stalks, and he was never seen again. 

Soon, the Field of Dreams needed more. It was dependent upon Kevin and Annie to feed it, to maintain its lawn, to rake its dirt, to paint its bleachers, and to keep spectators coming. It would never let Kevin enter. That is, until he was no longer useful. 

Kevin grew tired of the field and tried to put an end to it. He filled his fertilizer cart with salt and spread it over the finely manicured grass of the outfield. He flooded the diamond and tried to burn the corn, but the Field of Dreams fought back. One night, the field lured their daughter into the stalks. It consumed her like it did James. On the same day that it took their daughter, it forced Kevin and Annie to mate. The Field of Dreams needed their progeny. Someday Kevin and Annie would be too aged and frail to take care of it anymore. It forced Kevin and Annie to beget more children. Their children would inherit the upkeep of the field. They would inherit its shackles.

Kevin and Annie tended to the field for the remainder of their natural lives, feeding it offerings whenever it was hungry. They had many more children. Some they sacrificed to the field. The others, they taught the art of its maintenance. The family was enslaved to it. As long as they were still able to deliver it food, it would never let them go.”

When I finished, Short said, “I’ve heard so many people talk about Field of Dreams. I thought it was supposed to be trash like It’s a Wonderful Life. One of those flicks boring-ass families watch together once a year. But they share my taste.”

There was a faint, mechanical click and the tape went silent.

About the Author: Connor White is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in The Southern Humanities Review, Monkey Bicycle, Postscript Magazine, Clarion Magazine, The Des Moines Register, and Guesthouse. His novel excerpt “Waking Up” was recently shortlisted for The Masters Review novel excerpt contest, and he also has an essay forthcoming in LitHub on the power of storytelling in the criminal legal system. 

By Charles K. Carter

About the Author: Charles K. Carter (he/him) is a queer poet from Iowa. He holds an MFA from Lindenwood University. His poems have appeared in several literary journals. He is the author of Read My Lips (David Robert Books, November 2022) and several chapbooks. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram @CKCpoetry.

By Kimberly Ann Priest

About the Author: Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress 2021), Parrot Flower (Glass 2020) and White Goat Black Sheep (FLP 2018). Winner of the New American Press 2019 Heartland Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Meadow, Moon City Review, and Borderlands.

By Will Musgrove

“Welp,” Friend One said, slapping his dining room table.

 Friend One stood. His chair squeaked across the linoleum floor. Friend Two remained seated, sipping the remains of his lukewarm coffee while staring out a bay window. Friend One whispered something to his wife, who was getting their kids ready for bed. She whispered something back, and he answered with a shrug.

“Remember that time you choked on that piece of steak, and I had to give you the Heimlich?” Friend Two said.

“I remember.”

Friend One put his and Friend Two’s mugs in the sink. Friend Two rose with a grunt. The two men tried to look at each other like they had as boys but could only see who the other had become.

“Remember how we’d get drunk and go steal lawn ornaments?” Friend Two said, hugging Friend One.

“I remember.”

They separated, and Friend One crept toward the front door. Friend Two followed, bombarding him with nostalgia. They moved so slow Friend One’s wife was able to get the kids tucked in and a bedtime story read before they made it to the mudroom.

  “Remember how we’d egg people’s houses? We were pricks.”

 “I remember.”

 Friend Two grabbed the doorknob.

“Remember—”

“I remember, promise.”

“Well, I should get going,” Friend Two said.

The two men tried again to look at each other like they had as boys but, like before, only saw who the other had become. Friend Two stepped outside. Friend One locked the door behind him. Friend Two ambled down the driveway to his sedan, remembering. His memories were so thick he could almost chew on their rose-colored, existential comfort like a piece of gum. Next to his sedan, he remembered something he’d forgotten to say to Friend One, but the house was dark. Friend One had gone to bed. 

Remembering, Friend Two hopped into his sedan and drove to a twenty-four-hour grocery store. As he shopped, he made idle chit-chat with the few other browsing customers. He bought a couple cartons of eggs and headed back to Friend One’s house.

 Splat.

Crouching behind Friend One’s topiary bushes, Friend Two heaved eggs at Friend One’s siding. After each egg exploded into a yellow and white glob, Friend Two raised his hand for a high five only to glance around and realize he was alone. 

 Splat.

 Remember when…

 Splat.

A light on Friend One’s second floor flicked on, and Friend One stuck his head out of his bedroom window. He could see Friend Two hiding behind his bushes, readying another egg. Friend Two could see Friend One’s silk pajamas, his balding head.

For the last time, the two men, straining, focusing hard, tried to look at each other like they had as boys but, like before, could only see who the other had become.

Friend Two chucked his final egg and retreated to his sedan.

As Friend Two fled, Friend One waved goodbye. 

About the Author: Bio: Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in TIMBER, The McNeese Review, Oyez Review, Tampa Review, Vestal Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove.

Author Bio: J.R. Barner is a writer, teacher, and musician living in Athens, Georgia. They are the author of the chapbooks Burnt Out Stars and Thirteen Poems and their forthcoming first collection, Little Eulogies. They were educated at the University of Minnesota and the University of Georgia. Their work has appeared in online and print journals Flow, Anobium, and Release. New work is available periodically at jrbarner.tumblr.com. 

By Anthony Neil Smith

Too tired to keep driving. Too dark to see anything but headlights spiking our eyes like fuck. My wife had driven most of the way from Minnesota to Colorado. I can’t drive so far anymore, lulled to sleep like a baby. That left Priceline duty to me. Small print on my phone, shitty reception. But hey, it was a VIP deal. Those never steered us wrong, did they?

Once part of a popular brand, a tarp covered the original sign, with its new name sloppily painted across – Day’s Rest or Sleepy Inn or Blurry Blur, my poor eyes. It once had a hacienda theme.

The girl who checked me in looked at least eighteen but small enough to wear a kid’s t-shirt, Rainbow Brite-y or anime. Faded and ripped in a couple of spots. Grime under her nails. Short and dirty blonde. Friendly, even flirty, as my wife waited in the car. 

At the tail-end of Covid restrictions, there was still a plastic divider between us, but she easily bypassed on the left hand side, dealing with me directly, maskless, no hand sanitizer in sight. She handed me key cards with wifi info, local food delivery options – all two of them, one a Domino’s – and at the bottom: Hot Breakfast, 6:30am to 10:00 am.

I love hotel breakfasts, and I’d had a two-year pandemic drought. Even little boxes of Froot Loops and unlimited coffee, I’m happy. Better was muffins, cinnamon rolls, fresh(ish) orange juice. Best of all was hot scrambled eggs, hot sausages or bacon, hot biscuits. Hash browns or American fries, either was great. Colorado seemed a hash browns sort of state. I was very much looking forward to the next morning. 

I’m no hotel snob. I’m no stranger to Super 8 or Meh 6. I’ve picked out some real winners on kitsch value alone. I know well the odor of citrusy-sick disinfectants hiding smoke in non-smoking rooms. I’ve held many remotes with the batteries duct-taped into the back. 

And still, this place.

We parked in the creepily empty lot.

I whispered about the girl to my wife.

“Has to be meth.”

“Tell me later.”

“But look at her when we pass by.”

“Stop it.”

But the girl wasn’t at the front desk this time.

On the way to the elevator we passed the breakfast room. The lights were off and there was a rope across the entrance, a sandwich board sign attached. It had a drawing of a fried egg on it, and a piece of paper with Hot breakfast! written in bold black Sharpie, so I didn’t bother to read the rest. 

The elevator was miles from the desk. Our room was on the second floor, but the elevator was the only way up. The tile in the hallway grew wetter the closer we got to the elevator because it was so near the indoor pool. You know the way a hotel pool smells when chlorine reacts to all the piss, spit, snot, and sweat in it?

On the second floor, we followed the signs and walked more miles from the elevator to our room, on a mezzanine overlooking the lobby. The same lobby we’d started this trek from ten minutes ago. 

“Fuck!”

Scared the shit out of us. A shout like that, no warning. No follow up. Some man on our floor shouting “Fuck!” as we walked by. 

My wife turned to me, wide-eyed. 

“But…hot breakfast.” 

Here was our room. 

The door was already open. 

Imagine, right? As soon as you discover the door to your hotel room is already open, you cycle through fear, then anger, then self-righteous anger, then maybe more fear thinking someone’s installed hidden cameras in the bathroom. 

I found the switch. Inside, even though the air smelled like betrayal – or, really, smoke trapped in twenty-year old carpet – nothing was out of place. Nothing to indicate this was anything more than a mistake. Housekeeping didn’t close the door all the way.

What do you do? 

I shrugged. “It’s prepaid.”

And we were exhausted. 

And hot breakfast!

For our first post-Covid vacation, my wife really wanted to visit Mesa Verde in Colorado, where ancient indigenous tribes carved entire cities into cliff sides, then abandoned them, mysteriously, left for modern people to rediscover later and turn into a National Park. It fascinated her, because before meeting me, she’d been an archaeologist, traveling the Midwest digging up arrow points and other Native American relics before big bad developers built malls or wind turbines or another Casey’s gas station – the Starbucks of the prairie. 

In a few days, we would arrive, only to be told we should’ve gotten a reservation way ahead of time.

The rest of the evening was dull. Loud kids ran up and down the hallway. I watched one of the alphabet shows on CBS (FBI, NCIS, CSI). My wife fell asleep reading her Kindle. My CPAP mask drove me nuts. The hotel pillows sucked. 

Didn’t matter. I had a hot breakfast waiting for me.

I’m a creature of habit. At home, I wake and head downstairs, feed the pets, and immediately start the coffee. Pop Tarts in the toaster oven, or a cup of dry kid’s cereal – Honey Smacks, Corn Pops, Count Fuckin’ Chocula – for breakfast. 

Me. A nearly fifty year-old man.

I want the fastest possible tasty thing taking no effort on my part. 

At a hotel, I get up, put on yesterday’s clothes, and race to the breakfast room before those loud kids and their comatose parents wreck the joint. Same in Colorado, too. Woke, stretched, blew gunk out of my nose. I jiggled my wife’s foot on my way to the bathroom. 

“Get up. Hot breakfast!”

I wet my hair down because my CPAP mask gives me an effortless Johnny Rotten every day. I stepped out of the bathroom to find my wife still in bed, cocooning in the comforter. 

“Hot breakfast,” I said.

“I bet there’s not. Because of Covid.”

“But they said, remember? They said hot breakfast.”

“I’m just saying.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, hands hanging off my knees. 

She said, “Why don’t you check it out? If there’s hot breakfast, text me. If not, come back to bed.”

Alright, then.

Back down the hallway, bracing myself for another “Fuck!”

None this time. 

Down the elevator, the pool’s morning chlorine dump burning my nose. Almost slipped in wet patches. 

I rounded the corner to the breakfast r – 

It was dark. 

The rope still in place.

No eggs or sausages. No kids or sleepy parents. No TV blaring Fox News. No one hogging the waffle irons. 

Instead, there was a card table with a tray half-filled with hardboiled eggs in plastic Ziplocs. A woman in men’s jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, her hair a mullet, sat in metal chair. She took an egg from a stack of crates up to her waist, dropped it into a bag, zipped it, and placed it next to the others. 

She looked up. “Yeah?”

I glanced at the sandwich board I’d passed over the night before. 

Hot breakfast! Until further notice, our breakfast buffet is closed due to Covid-19. We offer you a complimentary breakfast bag and a hardboiled egg.

The woman waited, egg bag in midair.

“Can I have…a breakfast bag and some, um, light roast?”

“Some what?”

“Coffee. Plain coffee.”

She got my coffee first. The cup was half the size of my usual first mug every day. “Sugar? Milk?”

“Sure.”

“How many?”

“Three?”

“Three?”

“Three’s good.”

Another trip for sugar packets and little milk cups. I didn’t ask for Splenda and half-and-half because I’d interrupted this woman’s day enough already. 

She walked behind the buffet divider and pulled out a paper bag, scotch-taped closed, and passed it over.

“You want the egg?”

The egg. 

“No, thanks.”

I don’t like hardboiled eggs. My wife doesn’t like hardboiled eggs. No one really likes hardboiled eggs.

She sat back down, picked up an egg, and dropped it into a bag.

On the way up to the room, I peeked in the bag. 

A tiny blueberry muffin, plastic-wrapped. 

A small tub of strawberry yogurt. 

An apple.

The elevator opened to my floor. I dumped the bag in the nearest garbage can, then poured the coffee on top. 

In the room, I climbed back into bed. Slid in behind my wife, spooned up close and wrapped my arm around her.

“Told you.”

Later we went to Sonic. 

I can’t find the receipt for that hotel, or its name, or the name of the town it was in. I don’t remember passing it on our way home a week later. If I really put some effort into retracing our steps, I’d still never find it again, like the island in LOST. 

Our next hotel outside of Mesa Verde promised hot breakfast, too. All you had to do was microwave one of their frozen breakfast burritos. 

Heaven.

About the Author: Anthony Neil Smith is the author of numerous crime novels including Yellow Medicine, All the Young Warriors, Slow Bear, and The Butcher’s Prayer. His short fiction has appeared in Cowboy Jamboree Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Bellevue Literary Review, HAD. Juked, and many others. He is a professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. He likes Mexican food, British beer, and Italian crime flicks from the 70s. 

By Bethany Jarmul

I’d left it all behind—the sun-faded trailer and asbestos-filled house with broken-teeth windows at the entrance of the dead-end street; the man with pit-stained tank top, cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips, cat purring around his legs; the dogs, one or two in each yard—barking, howling, whining; the rusted cars—some in spots, others all over; the smell of burning wood and the distant gunshots in the woods; touching our neighbor’s house with my fingertips and ours with my toes; hills so steep you can scrape the bottom of your car on the cracked asphalt; neighbors that know when your mail piles up, lawn mower breaks, when you’re sunbathing or laughing or fighting with your sister over a borrowed sweater found balled up beneath your bed; the way the houses start to peel or grow moss or lose their shutters; the Appalachian Mountains as both beautiful backdrop and formidable, omniscient jailers.

I’d left it all behind at 18 when I accumulated enough scholarships to attend an out-of-state college, a few hours north, a state away, far enough to feel like I’d escaped. I’ve visited my parents a few times each year, but each time with a rubber-band ball of dread bouncing in my gut, lurching up my throat with each pothole that I hit or swerve to avoid. 

I’m 30 with a family of my own, we’re visiting my parents for the July 4th holiday. The next town over, Stonewood, West Virginia, where my mother grew up, is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a festival. We’re at the festival, sitting at folding tables inside the local fire station—me, my husband, and our two-year-old son who is enjoying a purple-grape snowcone. My mother is nearby chatting with someone. 

“Bethany, I want you to meet Willa Jean. I taught with her at Norwood,” Mom leads an older woman over toward me. 

Willa Jean—I’ll soon learn—is 88. She wears glasses, sunspots, make-up in the creases around her mouth. She smiles wide as she talks, standing so close that I can see her nose hairs when I look up at her from my seat. 

“You know, I went to Norwood from 1st through 9th grade. Then, I taught there for 30 years. And I didn’t even go to college until after my kids were in first and second grade. When I went to Fairmont for college it was 99 dollars per semester!” 

“Wow!” I say, realizing she’s lived her entire life in this tiny town. 

“I have my great grandkids over every Sunday and feed all of them.” 

“How many do you have?” my mom asks. 

“13,” she says. 

We chat about her children, grandchildren, community activities. I cut off a few of those rubber bands on the ball inside my gut. 

 “I see her out-and-about all the time,” my mom tells me after Willa Jean leaves. “She’s 88, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She always says, ‘The Lord has been good to me.’ She’s volunteering here cleaning off the tables all day; bless her heart.” 

More rubber bands dissolve. 

As we explore the festival, the smell of pepperoni rolls and kettle corn hangs in the humid air, clings to our clothes and the sweat under our arms. In my suburban, near-city life, I’m accustomed to seas of unfamiliar faces. Here, my mother stops to greet an acquaintance or friend every 10-feet, getting pulled into conversations, greeted with handshakes or hugs. 

My son sees a booth selling cake and cookies. “Cake. I want cake!” He runs over and reaches toward the table. 

“No, no. We’re not buying cake,” I say. 

One of the young men who is working the booth says, “Would he like a cookie?” and pulls out a bag of peanut butter cookies. “Here, reach your hand in there and grab one. You can have it for free. It’s our snack.”

My son reaches his hand in and grabs two.

“Oh sure, you can have two.” The man smiles. 

I thank him, feel the ball in my gut shrinking to the size of a marble. 

During the rest of the weekend we splash in a blow-up pool, hang out on a deck with neighbors and sip flavored water, swing on the porch swing, read books, sit in the sun, discuss theology with my dad late into the night, light sparklers. 

On our way home, the ball of dread is gone. I turn to my husband and say, “Something was different this time. I don’t feel the angst that I used to feel when I went back home.” 

Home—I hadn’t thought about it like that for years.

Porch-sitting; pepperoni rolls, hoagies, hotdogs with chili sauce, blackberry cobblers with vanilla ice cream, apple juice popsicles; neighbors who watch you grow, strangers who offer cookies, share stories; fireflies and firepits and fireworks; bare toes in mossy grass, sunshine and shade and splashing in the creek; folksy fiddle music that plays between my ears long after the musicians are gone; $10 in my pocket for a festival meal; the earthy smell after a rain, earthworms emerging from warm soil, robins feasting; being known by a place and the people of that place, feeling that place reverberating in your chest, soaking into your pores, pickling your heart; growing deep roots—I’d left it all behind. 

About the Author: Bethany Jarmul is a writer, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Brevity blog, Gastropoda, Literary Mama, and Sky Island Journal among others. She earned first place in Women On Writing‘s Q2 2022 essay contest. She lives near Pittsburgh with her family. Follow her on Twitter: @BethanyJarmul.

By John F Duffy

The buzzing was overwhelming.  An avalanche of noise that muted the usual din of cars and air conditioners.  The seventeen-year cicada brood was big news in a very midwestern way.  Journalists interviewed entomologists to talk about cicada life cycles and to offer interesting trivia about the orange legged, red eyed creatures that felt like a rubber ball when they bounced off the side of your head.  Cicadas, according to the papers, spend most of their short lives underground, and when they finally surface, they mate, lay eggs, and then die, all within a handful of weeks.  Their mating call is so loud that the males turn off their own ears so as not to deafen themselves while seeking a partner.  Dragging her rolling suitcase behind her, Sarah waved her hands at the air to deter the hefty insects from flying into her face.  She was walking faster than usual as she rounded the corner onto Noyes Street, where she climbed the stairs to the Purple Line El stop.

 Alan had offered to drive her to the airport, but Sarah told him not to bother.  She deflected his kindness with fraudulent decency.  “I don’t want you to waste your time stuck in traffic there and back. Besides, the train is faster, especially during rush hour.”  She had smiled as she said these things knowing that she was lying, knowing that she was eager to start her trip and fearing that a long car ride to O’Hare with her fiancé would just delay the moment she was desperately looking forward to.  The moment when she would be alone.  Once she was a single unit, a person only concerned with her own needs, her own wants, no matter how miniscule or selfish, then she could relax.  Funerals might not be a common cause for relief, but ever since Whitney died, Sarah had been looking forward to going home.

 Waiting in the terminal with a paper coffee cup in one hand, Sarah held her phone with the other.  Whitney’s Facebook page was blowing up with comments expressing surprise and grief at her passing.  She was so young, she was so undeserving, it was such a tragedy, and even a host of statements suggesting that Whitney was now with a God her real friends should have known she didn’t believe in.

 Sarah’s thumb flicked the glass phone screen, then flicked it again.  All she wanted to know was if her briefest of high school boyfriends was going to be at the funeral.  Ever since getting word about the car accident, Sarah had imagined how she would approach the man who took her virginity if she were to see him again.  For the last three days she had silently practiced what she would say not only to Blake, but to all of the people who had filled her days so many years ago.  With as few words as possible and in the most bland of tones, she would tell them all about her life in Evanston and her job at the university.  Brevity would invite intrigue, and her old friends would all be left believing that Sarah’s life was far more interesting than it actually was.  Why she needed them to think this, she wasn’t sure.  Why she so often wondered about where Blake’s life had taken him, she also couldn’t explain.  Sarah did know one thing for sure; if it had been her who had gotten ripped in half by a FedEx truck, Whitney wouldn’t have sat around crying about it.  When she touched down in Chicago to go to Sarah’s funeral, Whitney would have exited the jetway in open toed shoes with a manicure and her blonde hair perfectly blown out, ready to cruise the airport bars for the hottest guy without a ring on his finger.  

 Though the service was going to be in Millard, Sarah stayed at a hotel in downtown Omaha.  Tonight, Whitney’s parents were having a gathering at their house for relatives and friends.  Sarah figured she would go to be polite and cross her fingers that Blake would make an appearance.  If he didn’t and she was bored to tears, she could always make her way back downtown for a drink.

 After showering and towel drying her chin length brown hair, Sarah stepped into a short black skirt and reached behind her back to drag up the zipper.  In the floor to ceiling mirror, she observed herself from all angles before settling on a T-Shirt that revealed one of her shoulders and a pair of black Doc Marten’s. Standing up straight, she proudly looked at her trim profile.  While fixing an out of place strand of hair that no one else in the world would have noticed, she wondered if her look was too casual, but decided to go with it because it was in line with how everyone would remember her.  Before leaving, she grabbed her phone and ‘checked-in’ at her location, hoping to subtly announce that she was back in town.

 Driving the I-80 to Whitney’s parents’ house, Sarah was subsumed by nostalgia.  She smiled as the projector behind her eyes cast her teenage life onto the landscape all around her.  In pale colors she saw the city as it existed at the turn of the millennium, complete with Whitney at seventeen, riding shotgun in a Pedro the Lion T-Shirt, taking long drags from a brown clove cigarette that Sarah could taste on the sides of her tongue.  Sarah sang loudly to Braid’s Hugs from Boys as her rental car took the exit ramp a little too quickly.  She was fully permitting herself to travel through time, to ignore the two decades that stood like a chasm between who she was, and who she long ago thought she would grow up to be.  Like an end times cataclysm, old music that no one remembered, and the imagined laughter of her dead best friend slammed that chasm shut, and now Sarah was deftly stepping over the hairline crack in the Earth that remained, banishing Alan, her apartment, her career, and everything else she woke up every day to bring into being.  She encased all of it in glass and left it on a shelf one thousand miles away, and as she pulled into the suburb where she grew up, her heart warned that she may never want to pick it up again.  

+++

Knick-knacks filled every end table and shelf in Whitney’s parent’s house.  Impeccably dusted Hummels watched over Whitney’s father as he sat watching SportsCenter.  

“Sarah!” Whitney’s father said, pushing himself to his feet, his tan recliner clanging and clanking beneath him.  The chair had a permanent ass shaped depression kneaded into it by the man’s ever-expanding carriage, and looking around the family room, Sarah noted that his increase in size and the switch to a flatscreen TV were the only visible signs that time had passed in this home.

“How are you?”

“I’m well, Mr. Beck, all things considered.  How are you holding up?”  Sarah and Whitney’s father joined for a nearly imperceptible hug.

 “Oh, you know.  It’s hard.  Cathy is taking it especially bad.”

 “I can’t imagine.”  The kitchen was bustling with voices.  “Is she in there?”

 “Yeah, most everyone is out back.  Cathy is in the kitchen with Whitney’s aunts getting the food ready.”

 Sarah passed through the short hallway to the kitchen where Whitney’s pear-shaped mother and aunts were all busy bumping into and reaching past each other as they pulled casserole pans from the oven, chopped carrots, and poured whole bags of corn chips into floral print bowls.

 “Mrs. Beck,” Sarah said, announcing herself as she stepped onto the linoleum floor.  Whitney’s mother turned, and her eyes brightened.  

“Sarah!  Oh my God, come here sweetie,” she said with a booming smile and wide-open bosom. Sarah had known Whitney’s family since she was eleven years old, and as the plump, rosy cheeked woman pulled Sarah’s taut, spin-class frame into her doughy mass, the old woman’s eyes began to glaze with tears.  “Oh, my girl.  Thank you so much for coming!”  Mrs. Beck released Sarah just enough to be able to stare into her face, while still gripping her shoulders.  “It means so much to me, and I know it means a lot to Whitney.”

“Of course, I came.  I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” Sarah said as Mrs. Beck hugged her again, squeezing the wind out of her.  

 “I know you two grew apart a bit after college, but Whitney still thought of you as her best friend.  You brought so much joy into her life.  She was so excited to be your maid of honor next year, and…”  Mrs. Beck couldn’t finish her sentence.  She stepped back, gripping each of Sarah’s hands.  Sadness overtook the woman, and she began near convulsing.  Her face turning purple, Mrs. Beck threw her head back and wailed out, “Oh God!  Oh, God, oh God!”

 Whitney’s trio of aunts were frozen behind Mrs. Beck, the oldest and grayest of the three still squirting ranch dressing from a plastic bottle onto a platter.  Sarah was locked to Mrs. Beck who clamped her hands fast and poured forth her sorrow to a yellow water stain on the kitchen ceiling as if it had some connection to the divine merely because it existed in the space between the old woman’s head and infinity.  

“Why’d you take my girl?!  Why? Why? Why?”  Whitney’s mom was whipping Sarah’s arms like the reins of a racehorse with every “Why,” and Sarah, desperate to find a polite exit, was relieved to see Mr. Beck lumbering into the kitchen to take hold of his grieving wife.

 “It’s OK honey.  It’s OK.”  Ranch dressing farted its last onto a Disney print vegetable tray behind the distraught woman.  

  “Do you want me to take that outside?” Sarah asked a curly haired aunt.

  The backyard had twenty or so people gathered in small clusters of four or five.  Sarah dropped the plate of vegetables onto a glass picnic table and scanned the attendees.  There was an obvious demarcation between the mostly older family members and the younger, more sharply dressed friends, most of whom Whitney had met in college or after.  Sarah did see one woman she knew from high school named Dylan, so she moved towards her and the pack of young thirty-somethings she was standing with.  Sarah said nothing as she breached their circle, only laying a gentle hand on Dylan’s shoulder.  

    “Oh my God, Sarah!”  Dylan pulled her chest to Sarah’s, lifting her chin.  “How are you?” 

   “I’m fine.  Sad, obviously, but I’ll be OK.”

  “You guys,” Dylan said, turning to the group patiently observing the introduction.  “This is Sarah,” Whitney’s best friend from back in high school.”

  Not bad, Dylan, Sarah thought, as Dylan introduced her handsome, well-dressed husband.  Then there were Jim and Jenny, or John and Jenny, or whatever.  Both had “J” names that Sarah immediately forgot, and both worked with Whitney at the insurance company.  “I heard you were getting married, and that Whitney was going to be your maid of honor?”  Dylan said.

   “Yeah.”  

  “That is so, effing, sad,” Dylan offered, with her hand over her heart.

 Sarah stood and made small talk with the group, frequently looking away to the sliding door that led back into the house.  The first glass of drug store cabernet went down quickly.  Sarah split time listening to tiny conversations and looking at her phone.  During her second glass of wine, the sun began to fall behind the cluster of houses to the west, and Sarah ceded the event to Whitney’s older relatives and distant cousins who sat listening to stories about a relation they knew mostly from toothless elementary school photos and horrendously sweatered Christmas cards.  To them, Whitney was a fifth grader with high bangs and braces.  Mrs. Beck was at the center of them all, seesawing between laughter and tears as her husband clasped her hand.  Supportive aunts nodded at the tales they didn’t remember, or maybe never knew, in between bites of boxed coffee cake.  

 While draining the last drops of Malbec from her glass, Sarah told the group of reminiscing elders a story about being on the volleyball team with Whitney when they won state their junior year.  It was her way of tithing the pot.  Though the story didn’t capture the truth of who Whitney really was after editing the best, but most scandalous plot points out, Sarah saw the Beck’s both smiling, and she realized that the truth didn’t much matter.  These were people who needed to cope and to move on with what life they had left, and the truth would only hold them back.  They had a narrative of who their daughter was, of the parents that they had been, and keeping that narrative intact was essential for the Beck’s who were coasting towards their own fast approaching deaths.  So, Sarah withheld uncomfortable details as she told her story, and kept her telling in line with what the Becks already decided that they knew.  Sarah had her Whitney, there was no reason that the Becks couldn’t have theirs.  

 Showing excellent judgment, Dylan left early.  There was no way Sarah was going to suggest getting a drink with Jerry and Jessie, or whatever their names were.  She knew for a fact that Whitney must have thought these two were a galactic bore, and agreeing with her dead friend’s assessment, she yawned and lied, telling everyone that she was tired from traveling and that she needed to head back to her hotel for sleep. 

 Once downtown, Sarah sat at the bar of the Wicked Rabbit and drank a vodka martini.  She sipped it slowly, searching Facebook and Instagram for random people she knew from Omaha.  Classmates and coworkers with last names she fought to remember.  The bar was full of people, and Sarah made sure she looked very single as she played with her phone, but after her second drink she still hadn’t been approached by anyone.  Alan called twice, and twice Sarah silenced her ringing phone.  She planned to later lie and tell him that she got roped into staying at the Beck’s longer than expected.  Pulling an olive from a tiny plastic sword with her teeth, she looked up.  There was a mirror lurking behind the liquor bottles directly across from her.  Locking eyes with herself, Sarah wondered what the hell was wrong with her.  The vodka allowed her cynical inner voice a chance to speak, and it asked her why on Earth she was so desperate – not to see – but to be seen – by people she once knew, people connected to her by nothing more than the flimsiest accident of geographical proximity at birth, people who the passage of time had effectively rendered into strangers.  What did she think would happen if their particular sets of eyes passed over her?  Did she want the very average boys she once knew, who had since grown into spectacularly unimpressive men, to look upon her and to lust?  To question their own life choices?  To quietly scold themselves as fools for not having seen her potential so many years ago when she was an awkward alt girl whose great personality they never made an effort to know, and whose body would hold out much longer than those of all the popular girls they’d paid more attention to?  Why would it thrill her if this particular set of men, who she knew in name only, whose faces had grown weary and sad, agonized over her, if only for one night?  

 Between the necks of the glowing green gin bottles, Sarah squinted at her own sapphire eyes, cold with judgment.  On the bar next to her empty stem glass, Sarah’s phone began to vibrate.  She silenced it, stuffed it into her clutch, and gave a nasty look to the Sarah who was staring back at her from the mirror.

“What?”

+++

Your best friend’s funeral isn’t supposed to be the highlight of your summer social calendar, but Whitney was far too dead to be offended.  Sarah would certainly have preferred that it was a lesser friend who bled to death on the 480 loop, because Whitney would have made a fantastic companion this weekend.  Had they gotten to attend someone else’s funeral together, Sarah knew that she and Whitney, failing to lend the situation the gravity it demanded, would have been on the receiving end of many quick glances that would forever exist for them as a source of laughter.  But Whitney did die, and Sarah was on her own.  Leaning close to her bathroom mirror, Sarah carefully applied a heavy layer of bright red lipstick.

 On the expressway, Sarah listened to Mineral’s Five, Eight and Ten.  There was a voice in her head that tried to call her out, to make her feel silly for listening to twenty-year-old albums, but in the bright light of morning, that voice had no power.  Sarah turned up the volume and painted the world with the same panicked guitars that she and Whitney had screamed along to in their youth.  She was in it now, fully embracing her desire to play at being young again.  Fuck it, it felt good.  It felt right.  Was it really any more embarrassing to listen to her favorite records from high school and to hope to run into an ex-boyfriend, than it was to slouch forward through life towards an ever more dull, more overweight and under-inspired future like most people did?  And who was judging anyway?  Just the little voices in the back of her own head, and they could all just shut the fuck up as far as Sarah was concerned.  She wanted a cigarette and stopped at a gas station to buy a pack despite the fact that she was running late.

The funeral home in Millard was textbook.  Diffuse light restrained by gossamer curtains, buoyant salmon colored carpet, air conditioning cold enough to render embalming fluid unnecessary for those interred.  Mr. and Mrs. Beck were standing at the front of the large parlor room in their department store formal wear.  Brass rimmed chairs were occupied by black clad family and friends.  Whitney’s casket was open from the torso up, and a short line of people was making its way forward to offer condolences to Whitney’s mother and father, and to take their turns silently hovering over Whitney’s wax dummy corpse.

Sarah took her place at the rear of the line, her hands folded in front of her stomach, her back straight.  She looked side to side as she made her way to the casket.  When she saw a face she recognized in the crowd, she would offer a very faint, lips-only smile, enough to say, “Hello, I see you,” without robbing the room of the grief that everyone was working to collectively manifest.  

Amongst the strangers were thirty or so people from her graduating class.  A few had barely aged, but the rest looked as though they had done the excess aging for them.  Men were balder, with thicker necks.  Women were wider, with more lines on their faces.  Sarah absorbed their short nods and subtle waves like flashes from paparazzi cameras as if she was walking a red carpet.  Her dress selection was perfect.  From a few feet away, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that Sarah wore nothing but a layer of black satin paint.  She reveled in knowing that she was the best-looking woman in the room, that she had kept it together, that she not only hadn’t gained weight since she was seventeen, but that her figure was even more firm and toned than it was back then.  She didn’t decline, but improved, and she loved that the men whose wives were still carrying pregnancy weight were noticing. 

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Sarah said to Mrs. Beck, who was clutching a crumpled wad of tissue.  Mrs. Beck leaned in and embraced Sarah, saying, “No, it’s all of our loss.  But God called her home.”

Sarah nodded solemnly to Mrs. Beck and turned on her black suede heels towards the polished mahogany box.  Looking down on her dead friend, Sarah wondered if Whitney’s legs were there in the bottom of the box, and if so, whether any effort had been made to reattach them.  

Your make up looks like shit, she said silently to her friend.  And your face looks kind of smashed.

Gravity yanked all my face skin down and it hardened this way, what do you expect?

Sarah smiled at Whitney’s unspoken retort.  Who picked lavender eye shadow for you?

Ugh! Is that what I’m wearing? Dammit mom!

Well, now you get to look like a hoochie for eternity.

I got painted by a mortician, what’s your excuse?

Tears began to fall down Sarah’s cheeks.  Their years apart were a mistake.  Their belief that there would always be more time, that keeping up over text and Facebook was enough, it was so foolish.  Sarah found herself audibly crying, and her hand flew to her bright red mouth to keep the sound in.  She hadn’t expected this.  She hadn’t imagined crying in this moment.  As Mr. Beck came to escort her to a chair, Sarah caught hold of her choking breath.  Once seated, she dabbed at her wet eyes and wondered who she was actually crying for.

A pastor spoke.  Whitney’s father spoke.  Whitney’s college roommate read a poem and the veggie platter aunt led the room in a prayer.  And that was it.  It was over.  Across the foyer was a dining hall with several long folding tables that absorbed the shuffling guests.  Steel coffee carafes, one with a black lid and the other orange, stood as sentinels on a ghastly yellow countertop.  Several cakes, all of them store bought, waited to be devoured next to a stack of paper plates and plastic forks. 

The guests who didn’t find their way into the dining hall littered the parking lot, sucking on vapes and hunching over their phones.  Sitting amongst her former classmates, Sarah sipped black coffee from a Styrofoam cup.  Many of these people still lived in Omaha, and it was the few like Sarah who made it out and established a life elsewhere, it was these individuals who had something to report, who had to be caught up with, who may just have returned from the wider world with some insight not available to those who had shamefully continued living their lives where they had begun living their lives.  But it was bullshit, and though Sarah knew it, she pretended she didn’t when it was her turn to tell the group what she had been doing all these years.  

“It’s no big deal,” she said of her position at Northwestern University.  She spoke this line as if behind her humility, maybe there was a big deal, some mystery that should be scratched at with further inquiry.  Sarah was deferential.  She asked all the right questions and made every effort to appear interested in the lives of the rest of the group, with special attention paid to those whose existence was so obviously the most mundane, those whose last seventeen years were the most aimlessly shambled across.  Muted envy was palpable, and it warmed her.  Tiffany Schwartz, a girl that was never anything more to Sarah than just another kid in the hallway, a blonde girl in sophomore English, a black and white postage stamp in the yearbook, she hated Sarah right now, she hated that she was elegant and educated and probably highly paid, and that she was pretending that she was none of these things.  She hated how by Sarah’s pretending that she didn’t possess them, that all of her qualities were on full display.  Sarah felt Tiffany’s bitterness, and she gathered it up inside of her, folding it like a cardigan she was saving for a cold winter day.  Around the table there was adoration, lust, and even genuine glee for Sarah, and she wanted all of it despite judging herself for the wanting.  I’m such shit, she thought to herself.  Then Blake stepped into the room, and her heart was a kick drum.

“Hey everyone.”

“Blake!” came the chorus.  

Sarah didn’t react as men rose from their seats to shake Blake’s hand, and to do that thing where guys use the handshake to pull each other into a one-armed hug.  Not wanting to stare, Sarah only nipped at Blake’s visage like a child stealing a few candies at a time until they have eaten the whole dish.  His black hair was held askew by product.  His beard was full but well-trimmed and seasoned with silver strands.  Blake’s black suit was not expensive, but it was a good cut, and it hugged his frame expertly.  Tattoos on the backs of his hands added to his quality.  Though he didn’t look outwardly muscular, he had filled out, and Sarah generally approved of his appearance.  The men who had been greeting Blake returned to their chairs, and Sarah finally turned her head to truly look at him, forcing him to meet her eyes.

“Oh my God, Sarah, you came!”  Blake stepped to where she was seated, and deftly, Sarah pushed her orange vinyl chair backwards, and rose.  She stood erect in her heels making sure every curve screamed at him from above and behind her flat stomach.  Opening her arms, she grasped him as intimately as she thought he could get away with in front of so many sets of eyes.  He said, “It’s so great to see you!  I didn’t think you’d show up.” 

It was plain to everyone watching the interaction that these two people were going to fuck, even to those who knew and enjoyed Blake’s girlfriend Candace, and especially to those who listened carefully when Sarah bragged about her fiancé, Alan.  What they didn’t know was how quickly it would happen.  It took less than an hour for Sarah to excuse herself to the restroom, for Blake to tell the group that he had to step out to make a call, for Sarah to peek out of the bathroom door to make sure no one was looking, and for Blake to close that door behind himself.  In the dining hall, Sarah’s classmates continued to talk about the old days, stabbing their forks into artificially moist, artificially yellow cake, while Blake lifted Sarah by her trim waist and set her down on the edge of the sink.  Her eyes were wide, staring past Blake’s ear, the sweet tobacco smell of his pomade drawn deep into her throat by her muffled gasps.  The last time Blake was inside her she was sixteen and terrified.  She hadn’t expected to have sex that night on the trampoline behind Carolyn Bartlett’s house, and though she was eager to get past her first time, teenage Sarah was convinced that she made every wrong move, including having thrown her bloody underwear away in the kitchen trash can after not so subtly rejoining the party.  Tonight, she wasn’t wearing underwear, and she was on birth control, and she was doing everything right, rolling her hips in time, holding her mouth just agape, and making eye contact as she whispered, “Your cock is sooooo big.” 

Blake came in less than three minutes.  Resting his forehead on her shoulder, he exhaled deeply.  Sarah waited, hoping he hadn’t finished, hoping that he was changing his tempo, when he groaned, “Fuuuck, that was good.”  He chuckled, and added, “I have thought about doing that again for a very long time.”  Before he pulled out, Sarah tried to kiss him, hoping to reignite his interest and to keep the moment alive, but Blake turned his head to the side, only allowing her lips to glance off of his.  “We should get back,” he said.

And then she was alone again, sitting on the toilet to drain what Blake had left behind.  She washed her hands and fixed her lipstick.  Into the mirror she asked, “Was it good for you?”

Whitney was alone, too.  The room in which she lay dead was empty of mourners when Sarah returned to walk down the aisle between now vacant chairs.  She stopped at the side of the casket.

“I just fucked Blake Lewis in the bathroom.”

Whitney didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t much better than last time.”

Whitney didn’t respond.

“I don’t know what I expected, coming here.  I just feel like…” Sarah paused to find the right words, then continued, “Like since we graduated, there was a big bang and everything just started expanding away from me in every direction, and I felt that if I didn’t move too, faster and further than everyone else, that I would be left…floating.”

Whitney didn’t respond.

“When we were in high school, I assumed everyone felt like I did, that the lives we were being primed for were bullshit.  That waking up every day to drive to some job that we hated so we could get a mortgage to buy a house in a suburb that was just as boring as the one we came from, I thought we all knew that it was a lie.  A trap.  And I thought that that was what all the music, and the drinking, and partying, and wanting to get tattooed and to dye our hair pink was all about.  I thought the rebellion was real, that none of us wanted to be our goddamn parents!  I thought we had all seen how they chose to live and that we saw the results – their misery, their stress, their demoralizing acceptance of life on a couch, and I thought that we were all saying, ‘Fuck that!’”  

Sarah recognized that she was raising her voice, so she looked behind her to make sure the room was still empty.  Seeing that it was, she returned to her dead friend, and sighed.  “Maybe there is no escape, no path that actually leads to a life that would feel like more than a shuffled deck of workdays and weekends, meetings and grocery runs, but I thought that the burning need that I felt way down deep in the basement of my soul, to look it all in the face and to say, ‘No!’ I thought we all shared that.  I thought we were alive, and that no matter what, we would be different.  Maybe not all of us, but people like you and me, who had felt a taste of what life could be on so many crazy nights.  I thought that you and I at least, that we were something special.”  Sarah had been gesturing to no one, and finally she rested her hands on the rim of the casket and brought her eyes down from the ceiling to which she had been appealing her case and looked hard at Whitney’s petrified face.  “Do you remember when we drove to Lincoln to see Jimmy Eat World before anyone knew who they were, and my car got towed, and we went to that weird after party and had to walk around taking donations so we could afford to get it out of impound, and when we finally did, it was like four in the morning, and even though we knew we were in total deep shit, we said fuck it, and stopped for French toast before driving back to Omaha?  That was the best night of my life.” 

Whitney didn’t respond.

+++

Sarah texted Alan that night before falling asleep on one side of her king-sized bed, telling him that it had been a long day and that she would see him tomorrow.  The next morning while waiting for her flight to board, she listened to Rainer Maria’s Ears Ring while scrolling through photos people had posted to their Facebook and Instagram profiles from outside Whitney’s funeral.  They all justified this vanity by captioning the pictures with some words of tribute to Whitney.  Sarah swiped her index finger up the face of her phone, clicking her way through a series of options until she found what she was looking for.  A link that read, Delete Account.

 Back in Evanston, Sarah clung to the silver bar that kept her upright against the heaving and jostling of the Purple Line train.  She decided not to tell Alan about Blake.  Not yet anyway.  She was numb to herself.  No choice seemed obviously right or obviously wrong.  Should she go forward with the wedding?  Could she?  Was it terrible that she felt that either path forward was just as good as the other?  That she felt entirely indifferent to all of the decisions before her, and that this worried her more than the decisions themselves?  As all of these thoughts and questions passed through her mind, an electronic voice was calling out train stops from a speaker.  Sarah snapped back into the present as the voice declared, “This, is Noyes.”  The double doors of the train car parted, and Sarah stepped out into the world.

 On the sidewalk, dying cicadas inched along while the already dead curled their limbs towards the blue sky where their brethren zipped through the air on their way to mates and meals, to trees where they screamed in a mighty chorus and laid millions of eggs, before scattering at the sight of birds who ripped their tender bodies clean in half, leaving only their exoskeletons to float back to the Earth like brittle autumn leaves.  It was a seventeen-year-brood.  In a few more weeks they would be forgotten, and the hum of passing cars and air conditioners would be the only sound.

About the Author: John F Duffy is originally from Chicago, but currently lives in the backwoods of southern Indiana.  His debut novel, ‘A Ballroom for Ghost Dancing,’ will be available in the autumn of 2022.

By Jeremiah Blane Kniola

From behind a thicket of perennial grass, seventeen-year-old Rosalyn Fowler eyes a rabbit as he hops towards her snare. A notched stake holds a sapling bent in place; the bark splintered at the curve from the tension of the angle. Stems are piled carefully into a teepee on the opposite side of the looped twine; food to draw the rabbit’s attention. 

Beneath her breath, Rosalyn encourages him forward, praying the snare doesn’t accidentally set off and scare him away. The rabbits big, maybe four pounds, with spotted brown-white fur and long ears sticking up from its head. More meat than Rosalyn has eaten since she arrived at the dunes a month ago. As he hops closer, the rabbit unknowingly slips his head through the noose, but pauses momentarily, as if instinct has warned him of danger. “Come on, don’t stand there,” Rosalyn mumbles beneath her breath. 

 As she leans forward a branch pops beneath her boot. The rabbit jumps, tugs the knotted twine, and untethers the young tree. The slender trunk catapults back to its natural vertical position, jerks the twine skyward, and jolts the rabbit off his feet, the snap of his neck echoing in the silence. For a moment, his fluffy body swings back and forth, legs kicking the air in a last-ditch effort to hop to safety, before finally running out of nerve. 

Rosalyn unties the noose, carries the rabbit by his ears to a clearing in the dunes, and checks the fur for ticks. Once she’s satisfied there are none, she carves two u-shaped cuts around the ankles with her knife—a slightly dull blade with a curved wood handle she stole from her dad—digs her finger beneath the flaps, and tugs off the hide like a parent removing a child’s coat. Fluffs of fur stick to the bloody meat, but Rosalyn’s too impatient to care. Hunger rips through her like a gut shot. Four days have passed since she’s eaten anything but mast. She builds a fire from sedge grass, hacks the meat from the bone, and quarters it into tiny bite-size pieces to roast on a stick. The sulfurous stink of burnt fur does nothing to discourage Rosalyn’s appetite. She keeps her eyes and ears peeled for movement; the smoke liable to attract the rangers’ attention.  

Once she’s eaten her fill, Rosalyn relaxes against a log, and watches the sky change from blue to a peach color as the sun lowers behind the cool waters of Lake Michigan. Her dad would’ve been proud of her today. She wishes he could’ve seen her snag that rabbit. He would’ve given her a high-five and said, “That’s my girl.” On the other hand, her mom would’ve scorned her for dirtying her fingernails and clothes. “You don’t want people thinking you’re a hillbilly,” she’d say. Rosalyn didn’t think that was in all together bad thing to be, but her mom was always concerned what others thought about the family, even if what they said was true.  

Every summer, Rosalyn’s folks took the family camping at the dunes. They said it was beneficial for her and her siblings to connect with nature, get them out of the house and away from the TV, but the truth was a free vacation was all they could afford, her folks stuck in a financial rut from which they could never climb their way out. Mom spent those weekends sitting around the camp, reading her magazines and complaining about the heat and the bugs, while Dad—who grew up around these parts—trained his offspring how to live off the land. They ate by campfire, slept in tents, and learned survival tactics such as how to purify water, forage for edible plants, hunt and fish. Rosalyn always looked forward to those trips, counting down the winter months, impatient to return to, what she considered was, her place of origin. 

When she was seven, Rosalyn jumped at the opportunity to gut a steelhead her dad had caught while fishing off of the East Arm of Little Calumet. He teased her that he didn’t want her hurling breakfast at the sight of blood and tried handed over the duty to her older brothers. Back then, Rosalyn was scrawny and soft-spoken, the runt of the litter, but she picked up the knife and demanded he show her where to cut. Astonished by Rosalyn’s candor, her dad instructed her to insert the tip of the knife beneath the fish’s tail and cut along the belly toward the gills. Rosalyn sliced that steelhead open as easily as a loaf of bread and didn’t flinch a millimeter when blood squirted on her wrist. Her dad spread the abdominal cavity and offered her a spoon to clean out the guts, but Rosalyn stared directly in his eyes and dug her hands into its stomach and pulled out its entrails.  

Rosalyn often reflects on those summers while scavenging for driftwood in the evenings. The wood floats listlessly in the lake, pushed forward by the waves, until it finally washes ashore, where it collects in piles and becomes homes for seabirds. As she walks along the shore, Rosalyn selects a few small pieces then collapses onto the sand and carves little figurines out of the scraps with her knife. 

She enjoys the concentration of the work, the attention to detail, but it’s the silence of the dunes she enjoys the most. The silence has always soothed her. 

* * *

From morning until evening, Rosalyn trounces along the spider web of trails weaving through the hurst of Black Savannahs, across the Mesic sands of the Hoosier Prairie, around the boggy marshlands, and over the windswept dunes, scouting for food. Hunger is always foremost on her mind, gnawing at her from the moment she wakes until she falls asleep. She tries spearing fish in the lake and stealing eggs from nests and sets snares for animals whenever she comes across feeding areas. But hunting proves harder than her dad made it look when she was a girl. Of course, he had more weapons than a dull knife and his wits. What she wouldn’t give for a fishing pole or rifle? Most of the time she has to settle for a pocketful of mast she picks from shrubs or digs from the ground. To preserve her rations, she dehydrates the fruits and plants on rocks where there is plenty of sunlight. Sometimes she loses her rations to pesky predators. 

Late on a cool night in September, Rosalyn awakes to a critter scavenging outside her tent. She opens the flap to a possum stuffing his furry gray belly on some mushrooms she’d planned to soak in hot water for broth the following morning. She sneaks up behind him, but when he hears her footsteps, he hisses and cowers over the loot, eyes like tiny white flames in the darkness. Rosalyn shakes a stick and in a gruff voice orders him to “shoo!” When that doesn’t work, she pokes him in the hind with the pointy end. He drops to his side and lies motionless as if stabbed through the heart. Watching him play dead, Rosalyn feels sorry for the poor critter. She leaves him her rations and from her tent watches as he eats until she falls back to sleep. 

Whenever she encounters hikers, Rosalyn tries to blend in, but people tend to take notice. Hard to look normal when there’s two-week dirt in your tangled hair and you smell rank like something rotten. Normally nobody says anything directly to her, but Rosalyn hears their whispered judgments, feels their stares, sees their disgust. She fears one of these days someone is going to report her, which is why she always on the move. Staying in one place too long is dangerous and she avoids the camp sites at all costs. Though the scent of cooking meat from the campfires draws her close, and she’s tempted to rummage through the coolers and trash bins, she knows if the Rangers catch her they’ll take her in for trespassing. 

One afternoon, a young family stumbles upon her pissing behind a bush. The mom hides the kids’ eyes while her and the dad divert their attention elsewhere. Once Rosalyn has hiked up her pants the dad lectures her on decency. “They have laws against that,” he says. He asks about her folks and looks around as if he expects to find them in the vicinity. Ignoring the parents, Rosalyn pulls a totem in the shape of a fish from her knapsack and offers it to the kids. The mom pulls them away as if Rosalyn’s diseased. The dad warns her that there’ll be trouble if she touches his children. Raising her arms, Rosalyn tells the family she meant no harm then runs off into the woods before they can shout for help. Once she’s far enough away, Rosalyn slouches against a Black Oak and peels away a hunk of bark, feeling the difference between the tree’s rough exterior and its soft inside, watching for any sign the family followed.

Often when she’s lying in her tent, Rosalyn thinks about her family. She wonders if her folks regret throwing her out. Do her siblings ask when she’s coming home, or do they just fight over who gets her stuff? Have her parents been searching for her these last few months? Did they report her missing? She imagines them speaking with the police, faces marked by tears as they plead for her safe return. They probably called every number listed in her phone and checked her texts and messages. Drove around every street in town and knocked on the neighbors’ doors and searched for her at Fox Lake and Winding Creek Park. They may have even searched for her at the dunes. But Rosalyn is careful to cover her tracks. Far as she’s concerned, they never need to find her, but that doesn’t stop her from missing them. After all she put them through can she blame them if they forgot about her altogether?  

* * *

All through high school, Rosalyn was in trouble. She could recite the policy book from memory and describe the principal’s office down to the number of pens in his mesh cup, the monthly tasks listed on the calendar, and the degrees and awards displayed on his walls. Rosalyn had a habit of mouthing off to teachers. She didn’t understand how they expected her to sit inside a class all day in those tight desks, listening to them babble endlessly about things that didn’t matter. She could read and write and pitch a tent and kill a rabbit. What else did she need to know? She wasn’t above challenging boys to fights or telling girls her opinion of them. Her temper as unpredictable as a spooked deer. She got the reputation as someone to steer clear from, which was fine by her; she was never much good at talking with people anyway. 

Her mom demanded Rosalyn cool her attitude or she was going to force her to go to La Lumiere, the local Catholic boarding school, and let the nuns straighten her out, but Rosalyn understood this as an empty threat, her parents couldn’t afford the tuition, and so she continued doing whatever she pleased. Rosalyn’s reckless disobedience spawned many heated arguments. If there was one thing her mom despised—and there were many—it was disrespect. She told Rosalyn constantly she didn’t have to love her, but she’d be damned if any of her children didn’t respect her. Sadly, she didn’t realize that not a one of them did. 

Her dad, on the other hand, tried reasoning with her. After the fighting settled, he’d come to Rosalyn’s room and plead with her to first apologize to her mom then promise to do better in school. He was worried she was going to fail, or worse. All he expected of her was to obtain her diploma. It wasn’t too much to ask for. Was it? Rosalyn would lie and say it wasn’t but knew as soon as she returned to school it wouldn’t take long before she got into trouble again. 

Then her sophomore year, Rosalyn got expelled for breaking Brad Hullinger’s nose. She’d leapt on him in the vocational hall outside metals class, pinned his arms beneath her knees, and drove her fist into his nose turned crooked. By the time the shop teachers dragged her off, the front of Brad’s shirt was covered in blood and two purple half-moons had risen beneath his eyes. 

 Rosalyn had to wait in the principal’s office for her folks to fetch her, knuckles swelled to the size of chestnuts and a tiny compression in the shape of a tooth marking her ring finger. They had to pay Brad’s medical bills and drive to his parents’ house to apologize for their daughter’s behavior. The entire ride home, Rosalyn had to listen to her mom break into hysterics. She couldn’t believe her own daughter was capable of such violence. As if she’d raised a savage. Her dad didn’t have the same visceral reaction. Actually, he said nothing at all, but he didn’t have to, she could sense his disappointment by the way he refused to look at her. They grounded Rosalyn to her room for the remainder of the grading period. At sixteen she’d drop out of school and acquired her GED. Would it have changed their mind if she’d told them why she’d attacked that asshole Brad Hullinger? What would they have said if they learned he’d texted nude photos of her to his friends with the word “Slut” typed in capital letters? But then she’d have to admit she was fucking him in his car out at Winding Creek Park sometimes after school.    

Occasionally, Rosalyn walks to a rusty pay phone, the only one she knows of in the entire area, outside the log cabin style building of the Visitor’s Center. She only goes here early in the mornings when no one is around, stashing her rucksack inside a log about fifteen feet off of the trail. When she grabs the handset, the plastic crackles around the exposed earpiece where someone bashed it against the dented top of the kiosk. She pulls her only quarter from her backpack pouch, a quarter she’s carried ever since she found it on the beach, and runs her thumb along the ridged edges smoothed with sand. She drops it in the slot where it lands with a clank and is greeted with the steady buzz of a dial tone. She presses her folk’s digits, but pushes the squeaky release lever the moment the phone starts ringing, catching the quarter as it rolls out of the scratched metal slot of the coin drop. 

She wonders what would happen if she talked to her folks. How would she feel if she heard her their voices? Would it be so bad? 

“Do you need some assistance, miss?” a woman says from behind her.

Rosalyn snaps out of her thoughts and turns her head to find a ranger leaning against a wood pillar. She’s dressed in the standard uniform: green khakis, gray buttoned shirt, and a wide-brimmed felt hat that shades her round, moon face. Her bangs fall over the left side in a swooping wave. A toothpick twirls between her teeth. The Ranger doesn’t look in the best shape. Rosalyn guesses she could outrun her in a foot race, but the firearm holstered to her tactical belt gives her pause. She decides to play it cool. 

“I was just calling my boyfriend. My folks don’t allow me to bring my cellphone on camping trips.”

“Your family staying at the Mather or Douglas site?” the ranger points with her toothpick in opposite directions. 

“The one by the RV dump.”

The ranger pulls her toothpick from her mouth and shakes it to make a point. “Tell your folks to rent a spot at the Douglas next time. It’s quieter and closer to the hiking trails.” 

Rosalyn smiles. “I’ll let them know. Well, I should be getting back. My folks worry if I’m gone too long.”

“You and your folks need anything be sure to ask for me, Carla Coons.” 

“I’ll be sure to mention that,” Rosalyn replies. 

The ranger sticks the toothpick back between her teeth and tips her hat. “Take it easy now.” 

Ambling down the path toward the State Park Road, Rosalyn waits until she’s out of sight of the Visitor’s Center, grabs her rucksack from the log, then dashes off the trail into the woods.

 * * * 

The sun has barely peeked above the horizon when Rosalyn strips out of her clothing and steps nude into the cold waters of an interdunal pond. She shivers in the early autumn breeze, wraps her arms tightly around her chest, and rubs the goosebumps prickling her tan skin, the light fuzz on her arms and legs standing to attention. A thin film of mud spreads around her as the water laps the sand from her body.  She hardly recognizes the rippled reflection staring back at her. 

The primitive diet has trimmed the fat from her body, her ribs sticking out above her concave stomach. Hours spent in the sun has tanned her rawboned features the color and texture of beef jerky and hair grows in places where she’d shaved before. Not that Rosalyn has ever been pretty. As an adolescent she sprouted to a respectable 5’9 but remained flat and straight in the wrong places. She inherited her dad’s lean cheekbones, angular jaw, thick eyebrows and her mom’s beak-like nose. Her voice deepened, but it wasn’t the sexy deep of movie stars, more like a toad’s throaty rasp. Unable to look at her reflection any longer, Rosalyn dunks her head beneath the surface and runs her fingers through her butchered scalp. 

Floating in circles on her back, she watches the rays of light glistening through the branches and listens to the waves murmuring their aquatic songs. Rosalyn reaches down and rests her palm against the soft patch between her legs.Thinks about when she used to sneak out at night to have sex with immature boys in their cars at the park down the street, their eagerness to be pleased, their ravenous appetites and swollen erections rubbing against the inside of their pants. She thinks about the blankets spread across their backseats camouflaging the stains and crumbs and dog hair. The bedding area, she thought of it. Rosalyn would order the boys to lie on their backs and close their eyes before removing their pants. She didn’t like it when they watched and would stop if she caught them peeking. She’d take them in her hands. Take them in her mouth. Take them grunting and bucking and sweating. She was aroused by how easy they were to tame, though she didn’t derive any pleasure from the exchange. It wasn’t the attention she craved. Nor the intimacy. It was the silence afterwards. The moment when they were lying next to her and the only sound was the boys’ heavy breathing.  

Rosalyn dries in the grass before putting on her clothes. When she emerges from the tree line, clothes stuck to her damp skin, she comes upon two rangers rifling through her tent. She’s careful not to step on any twigs or make a sound. She ducks behind a royal fern and brushes a space between the fronds. The woman she’d spoken to at the payphone, Carla Coons, kneels inside the zipper flap and tosses her things—clothes, canteen, cooking pot, first aid kit, sleeping bag—outside while chewing her toothpick to splinters. The other ranger, a burly cave dweller of a man, pokes her stuff with a stick to inspect for contraband. Carla Coons asks if he found anything. 

 He shakes his head. “Looks like some weekenders wanted to have a bonfire and brewskies without paying the campground fees?” 

Carla Coons slides the skinning knife out of Rosalyn’s shoes. “Squatter. From the blood on the blade I’d say she caught herself a little breakfast recently.” 

 “How do you know it’s a her?” 

 She shows him a package of tampons. “Intuition.” 

 “You sure she’s still around?”

Carla Coons takes a couple steps toward where Rosalyn is hiding, and for a moment, Rosalyn freezes, afraid the ranger has spotted her. She curses her misfortune. She shouldn’t have been so careless. 

 “Unless she’s decided to abandon everything.”

  The other ranger hocks a loogie. “What do we do?” 

 Carla Coons swirls her toothpick in her mouth. “Bring the jeep around. We’ll load up this stuff and lock it in the station. You never know, she might get desperate enough to come around for it.”

 As Rosalyn watches them cart her stuff away, she thinks about everything she’s lost. Her family. Her home. Her dignity. Some might even say her sanity. She reaches into her pocket, feels the smooth ridges of the quarter, and is thankful she hasn’t lost everything. 

* * * 

Temperatures drops a dramatic forty degrees over the next few weeks, as they only can in a Midwest fall. Frost greets Rosalyn where she sleeps in the morning, covering her in a thin icy layer. Some nights she’s lucky to get any rest with the cold, shivering and gritting her teeth against the biting winds that blow hard off of Lake Michigan, her clothes too worn to protect her from the weather. Building a fire has become an arduous task. It rains frequently and without matches Rosalyn struggles to spark a flame. She has yet to master the trick of rubbing two sticks together.  

 Since the rangers stumbled onto her tent, Rosalyn has taken every precaution to limit her exposure. This is increasingly difficult due to the leaves beginning to shed. She hunts at night when she thinks no one is around, but the lack of visibility mixed with the shortage of food has left her desperate. Birds have begun to migrate and there’s less evidence of other animals. There are still fish, but they’re harder to catch, her hands and feet numb in the frigid waters. And since the rangers stole her knife, Rosalyn has no tool in which to skin or cut her meat. She has to use a stick or sharp rock. This leaves her foraging for mast—walnuts, persimmons, chickweed—that grows in the cold seasons. But without proper sustenance, Rosalyn feels fatigued and irritable. Desperation pushes her to scavenge the trash bins in the campsites when no one is around. 

  On a late afternoon, Rosalyn is scarfing down a half-eaten Nestle bar when dark clouds sweep in out of the west. Powerful winds rattle the trees and knock branches in her path as she searches for shelter. Rain pummels her head, soaks her to the bone, and washes the ground beneath her feet. She slips several times, the ground splashing her in mud. By the time she reaches the bathhouse by the public beach she’s drenched from head to toe and bleeding from scratches on her face and arms. She hangs her clothes to dry on the urinal walls, kicks the stall doors and curses her bad luck. She slumps onto the linoleum floor and waits there the rest of the afternoon for the storm to settle. 

A month before she ran away, Rosalyn’s dad procured her a job as a warehouse stocker at Lowes. For eight hours a day, she drove a forklift, unloaded inbound freight, organized product on shelves, and reviewed shipping paperwork. The job wasn’t terribly exciting, but it kept her busy. For the most part, she got along with her supervisors and co-workers. She kept to herself and didn’t complain and performed her duties satisfactorily. She scraped enough money together to buy her a beater with tons of miles and a loud muffler. She cut her hair to a respectable chin length, bathed daily, and even occasionally wore makeup, though she never felt comfortable with it on, as if she were camouflaging her true nature. 

Her parents checked in on her though they’d pretend to be shopping, curious to know how she was getting along. They were proud that she’d turned things around. Also relieved to have the extra income she paid in rent. Rosalyn pretended she was happy but couldn’t deny that deep down inside she craved something more. Something she couldn’t explain. Maybe she lacked imagination, but she couldn’t picture a career at Lowes as her life. The moment she decided to leave she knew she wasn’t going to miss it.

 Long after the moon has risen and the chill has set in, Rosalyn manages to blindly stumble her way to the Visitor’s Center. She knows it’s stupid coming here late night. Carla Coons could be waiting for her. There’s a single blueish bulb glowing in the building, but otherwise the place is dark and appears empty. Just to be certain, Rosalyn circles the perimeter, keeping low behind some underbrush, and when she sees no one, tests the front doors and finds they’re locked. She tiptoes over to the payphone. Her hand trembles as she lifts the receiver. The dial tone crackles in her ear. Hesitating, she fingers the quarter while arguing with herself whether to go forward with the call. Finally, Rosalyn drops the coin in the slot, leans her head against the kiosk and rest her eyes. With each ring, she considers hanging up. She hasn’t thought about what to say if her parents answered. 

 Her mom picks up, sounding groggy. Rosalyn listens to her say “hello” several times. Her mom’s pitch rises in annoyance when Rosalyn doesn’t respond. A tone Rosalyn loathes for its superiority. She hears her dad in the background asking who it is. Rosalyn recognizes the concern in his voice and she almost calls out to him. “I can hear you breathing, creeper,” her mom’s contempt reaches across the line. Rosalyn slams the phone down on the cradle. 

 The last time they’d spoke they’d fought over Rosalyn walking out on her job. Neither of her parents understood how she could make such a brash decision, considering the financial burdens they faced, and she had no way of explaining it to them. Her dad begged her to ask for her job back. Her mom told her if she didn’t want to work to pack a bag and move out. She wasn’t going to take care of a bum. Rosalyn expected her dad to come to the rescue, talk some sense into her mom, but he just walked out to the front porch to smoke a cigarette. Along with her siblings, her folks watched as Rosalyn packed her stuff into her car. None of her family said goodbye. None of them waved. None of them could even look at her. 

 As she drove away, headlights illuminating the country road, Rosalyn had no idea where she was going. All she knew was she finally felt free. 

* * *

For days, Rosalyn lumbers around the trails of the dunes, cold, hungry, and weary, searching for a warm place to sleep and something to snuff her hunger. Beneath the overcast sky, the leaves have changed color and fallen to the clay colored ground, stripping the park of its former beauty. Rosalyn can’t ignore her own filthy stench. Her tattered clothes and knotted hair reek of wilted plants. She can only guess what she looks like. Every mile or so, she needs to stop and rest, tell herself the fatigue doesn’t mean anything. She begs her stomach to shut up. With its pangs and rumblings, it sounds like her mother. 

One evening, Rosalyn stumbles upon the Douglas campground. The campers have long gone. Only remnants of their presence remain: a pile of salt-and-pepper ash burned cold in a firepit. Rosalyn pulls a half-scorched piece of paper, a receipt from Wal-Mart. The campers had bought hot dogs and burgers and potato salad. The rest she couldn’t read, but she could imagine them with their little outdoor picnic, carrying their supplies for a few days of relaxation in the wilderness. While scrounging for wood, Rosalyn comes upon a sleeping bag draped over the twigged skeleton of an eastern redbud. It’s pretty clean for being out here for several weeks. No filthier than her anyway. It looks like the one she used to own, blue on the outside, checkered on the inside. She unzips it, knocks out the leaves and dead bugs then curls inside to watch the sunset over the treetops and listen to the silence until she falls asleep.  

Rosalyn awakes to Carla Coons nudging her with the tip of her boot. “Mighty brisk to be out here snoozing,” she says. Carla sits across from Rosalyn on the stones of the firepit, pulls a toothpick out of a package, and points with the tip to the sleeping bag.  “Thought you might want that back.” Rosalyn snuggles deeper inside it. “I have the rest of your stuff at the station. I had a feeling you might make it out this way at some point. I have to admit you took longer than expected. I looked all over you, but you’re a tough rascal to catch. What are you doing out here anyway?”

Rosalyn wishes she knew. 

“Oh, come now. You’ve got to give me something. What do you say we have a nice chat? Between girls.” 

“You got anything to eat?”

Carla digs through her coat pockets, produces a chocolate flavored protein bar, and hands it over. Rosalyn tears the wrapper with her teeth and takes two huge bites. The mushy brownie is the best thing she’s tasted in months. 

 “You running away from something?” Carla asks. 

 Rosalyn takes another bite of the bar, swallows.  

 “So you just decided one day to live out in the wilderness?”

 “I don’t understand why that’s so unbelievable.”

 Carla Coons bites down on her toothpick. “Because honey, it’s not every day a girl decides to be homeless.”

 “I’m not homeless. This is my home.” She motions at the woods. 

 “Mmm-hmm. Now I’m not passing judgement, but you know this is a state park. You have no legal right to live on these grounds.” 

 Rosalyn finishes the protein bar, tosses the wrapper in the firepit, and licks her fingers. “I’m not bothering anyone.” 

“Be that as it may, we have laws against soliciting on state owned land.”

 “Then why haven’t you kicked me out yet?”

 Carla sucks on her toothpick. “Teens are always camping in the dunes during the summer. No one says much if they don’t cause any hassle. But if you’re planning on staying any longer then we have a problem.” 

  “Are you saying I have to leave?”

 Carla Coons shrugs in her jacket. “Listen, I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re going through, but living out here in the dunes isn’t the solution. A person can get hurt. Trust me, I know.”

 “A person can get hurt no matter where they are.” 

“Can’t disagree with you there,” Carla chuckles. “Be that as it may, my guess is you’re underage, and it’s my duty to get you back safely to wherever you belong.” 

 Standing, Carla Coons dusts sand from her ass and tells Rosalyn to come along. She can wait at the ranger’s station and enjoy a nice cup of freshly brewed coffee while waiting for her parents to come get her. 

 Rosalyn considers running, but where would she go. And she can’t deny how much she’d love a hot meal and a warm bed. She begins to cry. She doesn’t understand why, but something has broken the dam inside her and released a flood of emotion. Before she knows it, her body is shaking, racked by a hurt so deep she can’t say where it originated from. 

 Carla comes down on a knee and rubs her back. Promises is everything is going to be okay. Rosalyn lies her head in Carla’s lap and they stay that way for a while. The two of them listening to the bird calls as the sun rises in the sky.  

 As Rosalyn follows Carla toward the ranger’s station she listens for the silence. She remembers the evening when she first saw the dunes rising above the tree line. She stopped the car on the shoulder of a gravel road off Highway 12, killed the ignition, retrieved the title from the glove compartment, and climbed out into the steamy heat to burn it along with other things from her past: license, social security card, a discount voucher to Applebees. She remembers climbing the dune, forcing herself to keep moving despite the sand sliding beneath her, threatening to throw her backwards. Twice she lost her footing and tumbled a good ways down, the sand ingraining in her clothes and hair and mouth. She’d had to collect some of the things had fallen out of her backpack before continuing upward. By the time she crested the dune she was completely out of breath. 

 She remembers shrugging off her gear and collapsing onto the sand. In front of her, miles of beach spread along the blue waters of Lake Michigan. She lied back, closed her eyes, and listened to the silence. The silence she may never hear again. 

About the Author: Jeremiah Blane Kniola lives in Chicago with his wife and pets, but is originally from a small town in Indiana, similar to the setting where his fiction takes place. In 2020, he graduated from UIC with a Bachelor’s in English at the age of 43. Throughout his life he’s worked as a Law Office Clerk, English Teacher, Railroad Steward, Construction Worker, and Restaurant Manager. His fiction has appeared in Hobart, Literary Orphans, Dogzplot, Lover’s Eye Press, among others. He enjoys baseball, jazz, and gin martinis. 

By Kevin Finnerty

            Nick never paid much attention to the clothes people wore until he met Dana. He cared a little about his own attire, but just a little.   

            Dana managed a boutique clothing shop in the North Loop in Minneapolis. A hip store in a hipster neighborhood. The sort of place where patrons only checked the price after they’d already made the decision to purchase the item. 

            Nick lived in the neighborhood that had been called the Warehouse District for a long time after the warehouses along the Mississippi River had disappeared, only to be quickly re-branded once urban living came back in vogue and the neighborhood offered upscale opportunities to those who worked downtown, less than a mile away.

            Nick and Dana spoke for the first time after he walked into the boutique without any intention of buying, or even pretending to buy, clothes. He’d lived in the city for two years without entering a serious romantic relationship, as he’d discovered Minnesota Nice did not mean warm or inviting. He’d met Dana’s eyes on at least a dozen occasions when passing Fine Threads on his way home from work before he decided to find out if she viewed him as anything more than a potential customer.  

            “How can I help you?” 

            Dana’s question took him aback. He’d planned his approach in advance, but it had not included her initiating the conversation.

            “Do you always wear a suit?”

            Nick thought he could handle the second question at least. “Four days a week.  Five if I have to go to court or meet with a client on Fridays.”

            “What do you otherwise wear on Fridays?”

            “Business casual. Emphasis on the business part.”

            “Most people aren’t so constrained.”

            “What about the military?” 

            “The military, sure.” Dana showed her full teeth as she smiled this time, revealing to Nick the difference between the pleasing smile she’d previously offered and the natural one she now displayed. “What about weekends? Holidays? Vacations?”

            Nick looked down at his clothes — suit, tie, dress shoes — as if they would provide him the answer. “Whatever I want, I guess.”

            Nick left Fine Threads ten minutes later without making a purchase, but he had Dana’s phone number and a thought he’d never previously considered: Most people aren’t so constrained.

            As he walked about his city in the days that followed, Nick paid more attention to the attire of those around him and discovered that even in its corporate center most people took advantage of their freedom.  People wore jeans, both of the designer and second-hand variety, and everything in-between; shirts, collared and pressed, as well as those torn that exposed the wearer’s flesh; sneakers, loafers, boots, sandals, sometimes no shoes at all.  He saw Ts that gave him information about the individual’s favorite band, school, or sports team.  He even saw one guy in his early twenties, hair a little long, but otherwise clean-cut, clean shaven, whose shirt said I’m that guy.

            Nick imagined the slogan would have been profound had the wearer been a philosophy major making an existential statement. The sort of person whose voice mail would have said: “I was going to say ‘I’m not here’ but that may have started a debate that would have been impossible to end. So please just leave a message and I’ll try to get back to you.”

            Nick thought the dude on the street looked too happy to have been a philosophy major, but he was sure the guy wanted to convey some message.    

            “Most people do,” Dana told him on their first date. “You buy top brands at full price, you’re telling the world you want the best, can afford it, and want others to know it. You purchase knock-offs, you want to pretend you’re a member of the first group and hope people can’t tell the difference.”  

            The couple sat at an outdoor patio at a restaurant just across the river in the neighborhood named Northeast but pronounced “Nordeast” by its residents.  

            “What do mine say?”

            “You buy functional clothes and shop middle-of-the-road department stores for items you can afford that you hope won’t offend anyone.” She used air quotes around “shop.” “Nothing wrong with that. I’m with you, right? I wouldn’t have given you my number if you’d worn sweats or sandals when you came into the shop, no matter how good looking you might have been.  That would have told me you valued your own comfort above everything else. Like women who wear yoga pants 90% of the time.”

            Nick wasn’t sure what to make of Dana’s attire and was afraid to ask. He’d noticed at work she wore lots of black or white or black and white. Sharp, professional clothes that would have been beyond her price point but for her employee discount and her employer’s expectations.

            On their first date, Dana wore a striped blouse, solid short skirt, and a red fedora. Nick soon understood she liked to mix-and-match and frequently combined one item that was fairly expensive, another that was dirt cheap, and a third somewhere in-between, but it would be some time before he’d be able to consistently tell which was which.

            Nick better grasped the message she wanted to send on their second date. She wore a Zach Parisee jersey when she greeted him in the doorway to her apartment. They’d made plans to attend a Wild game after he learned, like most in the State of Hockey, Dana was an avid fan on the sport.   

            “No jersey for you?” 

            “I didn’t want to risk it.” Nick had elected to take her to the game when the Wild were facing off against his hometown team, the Flyers.

            She patted him on the shoulder. “That doesn’t happen here. I was at a game last year where we all got serenaded by a bunch of Canadiens fans when Montreal ran us out of the building. Five solid minutes of Ole, ole, ole. Most Minnesotans politely left the arena.”

            “That wouldn’t happen in Philly. Not without a fight.”

            Nick sat quietly through the first period even though the Flyers were the only team to score. After the second goal, Dana leaned into him. “Go ahead and cheer. You know you want to.”

            Nick told himself he would the next time Philly lit the lamp, but as soon as he did so, a Flyer defenseman caught an edge giving a Wild forward an unimpeded path to the goalie. One deke and it was 2-1.

            Dana jumped to her feet. Seconds later she looked down at Nick as if she knew what had happened. Had it been her plan all along?

            Nick wondered if not getting to his feet when the home team scored was just as telling as applauding when good things happened to the visitors. The Flyers scored next, but the Wild scored last during the shootout. Dana left the arena twice as happy as Nick because her team garnered two points and his only one.

            “You look good in those jeans,” Dana said as they reached his car after the game.

            Nick smiled at the compliment but wondered what it was about the jeans she liked during the ride to her apartment. All his pairs were different. Also, did the sole compliment about his jeans imply she didn’t like the shirt or shoes he wore?

            Nick paused when he parked the car outside her apartment, waiting to see if she would abruptly exit or invite him inside. She did neither.

            He turned and stared. She smiled. He leaned across believing it was time for their first kiss.

            Dana moved a third of the way towards him but slipped the kiss and embraced him instead. Nick felt both of her hands on his back, rubbing against his new flannel shirt.

            “You smell good.” She had her chin resting against his shoulder.

            “So do you.”

            Nick couldn’t smell anything. He believed his spinning thoughts must have impaired his senses.

            “I hope we’ll do this again.”

            “We’ll have to go to Philly. They play there later this year.”

            She pulled away. “Slow down, Bud.”

            He prepared to apologize, or tell her that wasn’t what he’d meant, but before he could say the words, she said goodnight and left. He turned around and looked through the rear windshield hoping she’d glance back. She didn’t.

            On their third date, Nick entered Fine Threads while Dana was in the process of closing the shop just after seven on a Friday night. He’d come directly from work wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and maroon tie after spending the day in a deposition until it ended shortly before five.

            Mentally drained from paying attention to every word being said for almost seven hours, Nick considered coming home to change and relax or, alternatively, going out with some colleagues for a drink or two during happy hour. Instead, he stayed at work until 6:45.

            “You should have gone.  Or were you scared of showing Drunk Nick to me too early in the relationship?”

            Nick happily pocketed the last word she said. “I didn’t think about that. I just didn’t want to break with tradition. If staying later on a Friday keeps me out of the office on the weekend, it’s worth it. If I have to come in no matter how late I stay, I might as well take off early on Friday.”

            “So your weekend’s free?”

            “Didn’t say that. Just don’t have to go in the next couple of days.”

            Nick and Dana left the boutique and walked west along Washington towards a popular pasta restaurant that had recently opened in the neighborhood. The place had an industrial feel with its dark brick and wood and exposed ventilation tubes running overhead. Tables were situated close to one another, so guests often had to lean across theirs to be heard. When their server arrived, he bent at the knees and squatted to communicate better with them.

            They ordered one item to be shared from each of the categories on the menu, which included antipasto, bruschetta, dry pasta, fresh pasta, and a meat from the “Secondi” listing. The dishes began to arrive in no particular order from a seemingly endless supply of waitstaff dressed in white shirts and aprons, all of whom (women included) sported a tie. The constant motion ensured guests never waited long.

            Like Dana and Nick, most patrons were in their twenties or thirties. Urban dwellers whose form of relaxation consisted of additional activity, not rest.

            Nick considered the night a huge success until he lost control of the last piece of veal pappardelle and it skated from the plate onto his lap and left him with a stain on his pants.

            “Guess I’ll add visiting dry cleaners to my To Do list for tomorrow.”

            “Give ‘em to me as soon as we get back to your place.”  

            Nick and Dana stopped going on dates. They were dating. She took him clothes shopping, meaning they went to a store together, and she pulled items off the rack, handed them to Nick and told him to try them on.

            “You need more color. And tighter fitting clothes. At least for your free time.”

            Who was he to disagree with the expert in this area? Especially when more than once a person in the street, at a restaurant, or in a store had approached them and said they made a lovely couple.  

            “Tall and blonde, tall and dark,” one middle-aged woman said as she passed their table in the cafe in which Nickand Dana were breakfasting.

            “I wouldn’t think that behavior to be very Minnesotan. Too outspoken.”

            “It’s about you, not me. I’m just like everybody else here.”

            Nick knew Minnesotan women were taller and fairer of skin than the average woman on the east coast, but Dana was far from the norm. She stood eye-to-eye with him when she wore heels, and was far prettier and more lithe than most of those of Scandinavian extraction.

            He looked forward to the opportunity to present her to his world. To show them what she thought of him.

            He soon had his chance when Nick’s firm held its annual meeting in Minneapolis. Lawyers from around the world gathered to attend to company business, to place faces to names they only knew electronically, and to socialize.

            The closing dinner, officially coined The Gala but universally called The Prom by those of Nick’s stature, was a black-tie affair to which lawyers were allowed to invite a guest. Nick invited Dana so he would not have to go stag for the third consecutive year.  

            “Do you own a tuxedo?”

            “I’ll rent one.”

            “You should think about buying.”

            “If I become partner, I will.”

            “Owning one might help you make partner.”

            Nick did not heed Dana’s advice. He thought owning a tuxedo would constitute a commitment he was not ready to make.  

            He entered the converted railway station where The Gala was held wearing a rental once more. For the first time, he paid attention to what others wore.  

            He thought he looked okay. Maybe his tux wasn’t the nicest, but it fit him better than many of the men who were overweight or otherwise out of shape. Formal clothes did them no favors.

            “Except showing they care.” Dana whispered in Nick’s ear after most of the other members of their table — Nick’s coworkers and their guests — had risen to get a drink or head for the dance floor. Mainly the former.  

            “Maybe that’s the opposite of what I want to say.” He saw Dana frown. “At work at least, not with you.”

            “You’re with me here. And you should care, even if you weren’t.”

            “You’re right,” he said, uncertain if he believed himself, “next year I’ll get my own.”

            Nick stood and held out his hand to escort Dana to the dance floor. As she got to her feet, he felt for the first time — not just that evening but the first time in his life — perhaps she was out of his league. At least he believed those who watched him lead Dana, dressed in an off-the-shoulder, black silk dress, would think that. Or that she was banking on him making partner someday.

            Nick wondered that himself, at least until she conceded something to him, or to herself, after the first dance, when she removed her shoes and became slightly shorter than him once more.

            She dropped her shoes just beyond the dance floor’s boundary. “It’s easier this way.”

            They danced for a half hour in a rather unlawyerly way, which is not to say they danced provocatively or even eccentrically. Just that danced. Period. Which meant they made themselves and their appearances open to observation and comment.

            For once, Nick didn’t care.

            When they tired, Nick took her hand and escorted her to one of the bars that had been established in each of the corners of the room for the evening. He left Dana to get in line for free booze. A few minutes later, he found her in a conversation with a partner at his firm. Or the guest of a partner anyway.   

            “We went to high school together.”

            “You guys were really kicking it.” To the extent her sun-soaked skin hadn’t sufficiently aged the woman, her formal white gown did the trick. Nick thought there was no way she could have been a classmate of Dana’s, especially as she was accompanied by a man two decades older than him.

            “You guys having fun?” The partner wore a big smile as he grabbed his date’s shoulders. 

            “Yes, Sir.” Nick took a large sip from his glass.

            “I hope I’m not overdressed.” Dana’s former classmate tilted her head back after closely studying Dana’s appearance.

            “Nonsense.  No such thing. So what do you do, Dana?”

            “I manage a boutique in the North Loop.”

            “See,” the partner said as if Dean and Nick wouldn’t hear, “she’s all about clothes.  You’re with me.”

            Nick wasn’t sure whether he or Dana was the primary intended target of the partner’s jab. In either case, it bothered him.

            Nick pretended it didn’t when he smiled and told the partner he wanted to mingle. He pretended it didn’t when he got another drink and he and Dana found his friends near another makeshift bar. He pretended it didn’t when he and Dana took a taxi to his place an hour later. He pretended it didn’t when they went to bed that night.

            In the morning while they sat at the small round table in his condo drinking coffee, Nick could no longer pretend.  He introduced a non-sequitur into their otherwise banal conversation.

            “Are clothes really that important?”

            Dana offered him a smile he hadn’t previously seen. It wasn’t the smile of the store manager staring at a potential customer. Nor was it the smile of a woman attracted to a potential mate. It was the smile that a person smiles to herself when she expects someone to act in a certain way — a way she wishes the person wouldn’t act — and then sees the person conform to the expected behavior.

            “Happiness is. If I do my job right, I’m helping make other people happy.”

            “For how long?”

            “For a while. That’s something, right? Do you make people happy doing whatever you do?”

            “Not often. Sometimes with a big win perhaps, but most of the time my client is still upset getting a huge bill. And forget about the other side.” Nick stared into his almost empty mug. “Plaintiffs’ attorneys make their clients happy with large verdicts or settlements. Even corporate attorneys do when they make deals.”

            “Why don’t you become one of them?”

            “Not in my nature, I guess.”

            Dana asked Nick to take her home shortly thereafter. He wondered if she’d ever return. They hadn’t ever had a fight before, and he wasn’t even sure if they’d just had one, but there was something about her request. As if she were implying there wasn’t any point if he was going to completely devalue her. 

            On his way home, Nick wondered why he’d sabotaged the relationship. He didn’t agree with the partner and certainly didn’t like him. How was it that other people could influence his behavior in a negative way, even when he knew (or should have known) the person who was influencing him could care less about him while the person against whom he was going to act did?

            Nick knew he needed to apologize but didn’t know what to say, so he avoided saying anything. He thought about what he should do, what he could do, a lot the next day, but didn’t actually do anything.

            Dana knocked on his door Sunday evening. She held a rectangular box in both arms in front of her.

            “I was going to give this to you for Christmas.”

            He stared at the box but didn’t take it. He thought doing so might amount to conceding he was no longer eligible for the grand prize and was merely accepting his parting consolation gift.  

            “So why don’t you?”

            She shrugged.

            “I was hoping you would consider going with me to see my family around the holidays.”

            Nick hadn’t actually ever considered that. Not yet. It seemed too soon. But at that moment he thought he might as well launch a Hail Mary.

            Dana’s somber mood disappeared. Her voice assumed a lighter tone. “Do you think we’re ready?”

            “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t.”

            “I don’t know.”

            Dana looked behind her as if she wanted to leave. Or perhaps to see if she were being observed. Nick occupied one of only three units on the third floor of his building, so there never was any traffic.

            “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot sometimes.”

            Dana thrust her hands into the pockets of her peacoat. “Everybody is.”

            Nick’s parents lived, by choice, in a tiny town in Oregon, far from all major airports, so he and Dana had to rent a car at PDX and then spend more time driving than flying. After six hours on the road, they puled into a grass driveway off a dirt road.  

            From the outside, the placed looked more like a cabin than a house. Wooden construction home hidden by trees.  

            Dana grabbed Nick’s hand when he got out of the car. “So is this going to be like going back in time?”

            “Not at all. Going to Philly is going back in time. This place, these people, it’s like being transported to an alternate universe.”

            Nick’s sister greeted them at the door. She wore old, stained jeans and a frayed sweater, the sort of clothes Nick’s family called “comfortable,” but which he knew Dana thought were not even good enough to be donated to goodwill.

            “Keily, your uncle Nick is here.”

            Ellyn’s daughter raised her hand with a smartphone in it but didn’t move until ordered to do so by her mother.

            “Just eleven and already at the stage where she just does her own thing.”

            The tween wore a flare dress with horizontal blue and white stripes, but she was not the same girl Nick had last seen a year ago. The formerly ever-engaging child now studied her smart phone as if it, and it alone, contained all the answers to the universe.

            “So how you like Tacoma?”

            “Boring.”

            “Did you recently move there?” Dana directed her question to Keily, but Ellyn answered.

            “Six months. The same time the divorce became final. We used to live in Redmond.”

            “Wish we still did.” Keily spoke to her device.

            “No, you don’t, Little One.”

            Keily retrieved her earphones from her pocket and returned to the couch.    

            “Everybody always used to tell me I married well. Corporate executive. Fine home, car, family. I now see Mom and Dad got it right when they left that world and Philly behind and moved to the middle of nowhere.”

            “What made them leave Philly?”

            “They found a tumor near my brain.” Nick’s mother did not hide her scar. The way she wore her hair intentionally pulled away from that side of her head emphasized it. “Hi, I’m Gloria, this is Joe.”

            Dana shook their hands and Nick briefly hugged his parents before pushing past them. “Let’s go inside.”

            The quintet joined Keily in the living room. Ellyn tapped her daughter’s legs so she would remove her earphones.  

            “I’ve heard this story a million times.” The youth answered with more volume than necessary but complied with her mother’s request.

            “How you know what we’re going to talk about?”

            “Because she knows Mom and Dad always share it first,” Nick said.

            Joe grabbed his wife’s hands. “It answers the question that’s on newcomers’ minds right away so we can all get past that. Am I right?”

            Dana nodded. “You moved out here because of your wife’s medical condition?”

            “Not exactly. We stayed in Philly for my surgeries, chemo, and radiation. It’s just the corporations for whom we’d worked for decades could have cared less.”

            “They did at the start,” Ellyn said.

            “Some of the people did,” Gloria corrected.

            Joe shook his head in disgust. “But with all the time off from work and the enormous medical expenses, they soon hated us.”

            “And I couldn’t do my job as I once could. Lost some processing ability.”

            “You … you seem fine.”

            “Thanks. I’m fine.  Used to be better than fine but that’s okay.”

            “Mom was brilliant,” Nick said.  He felt himself redden for having used the past tense.

            “So what happened, if I can ask?”

            “I got out of my suit and put on a nighty. We had some help for a while, then insurance stopped paying for that. We churned through our savings. Joe eventually left one set of work clothes for another because he had so much cleanup duty.”

            “We did what we had to do.” Joe took his wife’s hand. “We were told 5% chance she’d last more than a year. It’s been seven.”

            “So we told our kids maybe we’d given them bad advice. We’d placed such a high priority on achievement, but at the end of the day, that didn’t matter much.”

            Nick placed his leg atop his opposite knee. “Of course, if you didn’t have jobs that provided quality health care and allowed you to accumulate savings over the years, who knows what would have happened?”

            Joe reached out and smacked his son’s foot. “We probably would have moved in with you.”

            “You’ve got a point, Sweetie. We’re not saying stop doing what you do and live in the woods like us. We’re just saying keep your eyes open about the path you’re on at all times.”

            “The one you put us on?”

            “Touche.” Joe looked at his wife. “That’s the problem with raising smart kids. They can fire back every time.”

            “So how’d you end up out here?”  

            “We got in our car and drove west,” Joe said. “Once we hit Utah, we looked at each other and I asked, ‘north, south or straight ahead?’  Gloria said ‘how about northwest?’”

            “When we got here, we needed gas. While we were stretching our legs and filling up, we looked at each other and said ‘why not?’”

            “Just like that?”

            “Yep, best decision we ever made.” Gloria and Joe hugged, and their matching gray sweatshirts blended so much they almost appeared to be one person. “We never went back.”

            Later, it would seem as if it was all inevitable. It wasn’t quite like that when life proceeded forward.

            Nick pondered his possible professional and personal courses. He wondered what hats he should wear or whether he should wear one at all.

            Dana seemed more certain, save for the time she appeared in his doorway that Sunday evening, presumably to end it.

            One couldn’t have happened without the other, but just because Dana agreed to slip into a wedding dress didn’t require them to work together. Sure, she’d proposed the union not long after he did, but she hadn’t conditioned her acceptance. Even a non-transactional attorney like Nick noticed that.

            No, it was a second proposal during that period in which they’d told the world they would marry but before the actual ceremony. She raised the idea to him at brunch shortly after they’d finished making waffles or French toast, both of them wearing robes and slippers on a Sunday morning.

            “What would you say if I said I think we should buy a store?”

            “I’d ask what kind of store.”

            “You’d really have to ask?”

            “I suppose not.”          

            “But I’d have to know what you’d say.”

            “You don’t know?”

            “No.”

            “Neither do I.”

            He said yes on their honeymoon. While they held each other and kicked their legs in eight feet of water in the Atlantic. She wore a one-piece because he’d taught her while a bikini was fine for lounging at the pool, or even one of ‘Sota’s 10,000 lakes, it didn’t fare so well if one intended to spend the day body surfing.

            After they returned home, they kept their plans secret, or at least unknown to their employers, until they found the right location and arranged for financing. Then they gave notice and stepped off the curb into oncoming traffic.

            They ran Eclectic separately but together. Dana bought and sold. Nick hired and fired. She kept abreast of fashion trends, and he monitored governmental regulations.    

            She wore the sort of clothes that perfectly fit the theme of the store. He wore business casual clothes with a slighter greater emphasis on the casual part of the equation. On the first day, he wore the argyle sweater she’d given him as a present on their first Christmas together. As time passed, instead of her seeking his approval concerning his wardrobe, he made the initial selections and simply sought her confirmation. Sometime later, even this last step proved unnecessary.  

About the Author: Kevin Finnerty earned his MFA at Columbia College Chicago.  His stories have appeared in Eclectica Magazine, The Muleskinner Journal, Portage Magazine, Variety Pack, The Westchester Review, and other journals.

By Sheldon Birnie

I used to party fuckin hard, but now I’m old and lame.

One time, up on the reserve by Winfield there, my foot got busted when this wild man from the Kootenays come flying outta the pit and stomped right on it, trying to keep himself upright. I was kneeling down, slamming whisky from the bottle and making eyes at the young lady I was smitten with at the time. We’d been drinking beer all day, hadn’t eaten nothing but a couple powerful pills. Yet when the bone snapped, it was a white hot expressway of pain from toes to the center of my skull. Dulled the feeling but couldn’t kill it with joint after joint until I caught a ride into town in the back of a pickup truck, cold winter wind relentless. Don’t think I stopped shivering for days. 

Those were grimy, greasy days, boy. The local legend whose family’s house this all went down at held punk rock and metal shows there all the time. Played there a couple times myself, splattered blood all over the walls. Bands would set up in the dining room, volume cranked, and shake the foundation. Beer bottle graveyard spilling from the sink all over the counters and onto the kitchen floor, air thick with cigarette and dope smoke, ripe with BO and cat piss.

That wasn’t the first nor the last time I fucked myself up good partying. Ripped ligaments, countless bruises, scrapes, and scars. A concussion or two. Cracked my patella walking down the street with my hands jammed deep in my pockets, drunk, like a half-bright child. Any dummy could have picked out the pattern there, but I kept at it for well over a decade. Those golden, wasted years.

Another time at that same house, New Year’s Eve, I opened the front door just as some young drunk punk rolled down the stairs, out the door. I don’t remember anything else from that evening other than we were on mushrooms and somehow I drove me and my buddies home, but I’ll never forget that tumbling punk rolling down the hill into the woods below while all his friends howled like hyenas from the foyer.

Buddy whose house that was got sober, I’m told. Others from that scene are dead, or otherwise drifted away, forgotten, or still plugging away in tattered denim and well worn leather. Some of us have kids and have jobs and all that shit we thought was bullshit back when we were young. I’d like to say the memories live on. But they don’t. Most of them are burnt out, fuckin faded even now. Not unlike the stick and poke tattoo that gal I fancied, the one I was drinking whisky with that time I broke my foot, gave me coming down off an acid trip on a separate occasion. It all meant something, once. But now it’s hard to explain.

About the Author: Sheldon Birnie is a writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada who can be found online @badguybirnie

By David Wright

About the Author: David Wright’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Image, Ecotone, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Hobart, among others. His latest poetry collection is Local Talent (Purple Flag/Virtual Artists Collective, 2019). A past recipient of an Illinois Arts Council fellowship, he lives in west central Illinois where he teaches American literature and creative writing at Monmouth College. He can be found on Twitter @sweatervestboy.

By Mikey Swanberg

About the Author: Mikey Swanberg is the author of On Earth As It Is (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021), Good Grief (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019), Zen and the Art of Bicycle Delivery (Rabbit Catastrophe Press).
He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison & lives in Chicago.

By Kelli Lage

Author Bio: Bio: Kelli Lage is earning her degree in Secondary English Education and works as a substitute teacher. She is a poetry reader for Bracken Magazine. Awards: Special Award for First-time Entrant, 2020, Iowa Poetry Association. Website: www.KelliLage.com.

By Zoe Yohn

I. 

            They met each week at Daylite Donuts and when that closed, they made the pilgrimage to The Over Easy. The diner wouldn’t be around much longer, either, but when the inevitable happened, there would always be the McDonald’s out near the interstate. 

            – You hear about Peltz’s alien? 

            – Bullcrap. What the hell are you talkin’ about? 

            – Said he found it in the dirt out behind the house. He’s calling it God. 

            – He ain’t. God? Really? 

            – It don’t matter what he’s calling it, he didn’t find shit out there.  

            They shook their heads, rubbed their palms across their eyes, still greasy with the exhaustion of a lifetime. Someone gestured for Debbie, for more coffee. 

            Dale Peltz used to join for hash browns and eggs, but he was a mean bastard. It was a blessing, they agreed, when Dale got sick, because he quit the diner when driving got too sore on his gut. He’d started to stink by then anyway, unwashed skin ripe with odors that weren’t polite to name.

            – Swears he did. And whatever it is, he says it’s going to bring the farm back. He told you that, didn’t he, Jim?

            – Yep. 

            – Like hell. He must be on some new medication, pain management. I had a cousin who gone the same way, near the end. Just lost it. 

            They were quiet for a minute. 

            – That farm is nothing but a weed patch. Won’t even grow stone. 

            – He was a damn idiot not to sell. 

            – Still can. Last plot north of town, and he’s got that good access road. Sensyus offered him a fortune for it. 

            – They’ll get it in the end, anyway.

            – He’s got more dirt than sense. 

             – A fortune. For a plot of piss-poor land not fit for a feedlot. And he still won’t let it go. 

            They’d all sold years back, before the Sensyus announcement, before something like Sensyus even existed, when the factory farms had come in. Petrarch County was wiped clean for pennies. They traded their farms for homes in town. Then, town was gutted and after a few years, so were their savings. Their family land was long gone, too, turned to corn and soy for feedlots, sucking the nourishment from the dirt. Dale Peltz was the only one who held out.  

            – Dale wouldn’t know what to do with money like that, anyway. 

            – That farm’s the only place that can take the smell of ‘im. Stench would kill us all if he moved to town. The man is a walking biohazard. 

            – He can’t move his ass two miles down from that shack. What’s the point of selling? 

            Truth was, no one wanted Peltz to sell. They wanted him to die on that sandbar. He’d been too slow, but they’d been too quick, biting at the first offer that came. They watched as their land was parceled off and cashed the checks. Only a crystal ball could have predicted the arrival of Sensyus to the county, just a few years later, with its multibillion-dollar plans, handing out thick wads of techno cash that should have been theirs by right. It was their land, after all, and the only thing worse than missing payday would be to see Dale Peltz cash in. 

            – A coffee can. That’s what he told Jim, isn’t that right, Jim? That’s where he’s keepin’ it, God or the alien or whatever the hell it is – in a goddamn empty Folger’s can. 

            – Yep. That’s what he said. 

            – Shit. 

            – You seen it, Jim? The alien?

            – Nope. Just know what he told me. 

            – There isn’t no alien, just a foolish old bastard with too much time. 

            They shook their heads. They didn’t like to think about if it was luck or smarts that kept them sane, because they worried they didn’t have much of either, really.

            – Didn’t you offer to buy him out, Jim? Before you sold to QualityFoods?

            – Yep. 

            A low, collective whistle sounded across the table, rippling paper napkins. 

            – Shit.

            – Your land and his. Shoot. That’d be some money now, wouldn’t it?

            – Sure would.  

            – Well, it won’t be long. Sensyus will get it. He ain’t looking good, is he, Jim?

            – Nope. 

            The diner air was heavy with bacon fat. They could feel it on their tongues long after their plates were cleared. It took acid to cut grease like that. Clogged the arteries, mottled the heart. None of them were getting any younger. 

            – Peltz is the last of it. One damn farm between now and the future. Won’t be long. 

            – What is it again? 5G something? 

            – Somethin’ like that. 

            – All that’ll give you cancer. Or autism. Saw it on Facebook. My sister-in-law’s kid, somethin’ isn’t right there and it’s the 5G. 

            –  Yep. 

            Their faces, stale with stubble, all orbited towards the clock hanging above the griddle. Their days were shorter without the rhythm of the land. Pink sunrise to lavender sunset, the scent of freshly turned soil and manure. It’d been a clockwork they’d set their bones to. That was gone, and now their eyes seared beneath neon hot cell phone screens. 

            – Well. It’s a shame anyhow. 

            – About Dale?

            – About Jim’s land. 

            – Sure as shit is. 

            – … wonder if Sensyus will pay for deconsecrating the Peltz farm?

            They laughed. 

II. 

            It was the dowsing rods that found Him. They found everything good in his dirt. Dale just got to dig it up. 

            – Water and blood son. That’s what his grandpa had told him. There’s water and blood in this dirt, you just have to find a feel for it. 

            His grandpa taught him how to use the rods, the right way to hold them and wander the land, paying attention to the slightest tremor in the metal. But there was more to it than that. Even now, laying in the dark on his back – because the lumps in his gut hurt like a son-of-a-bitch – a hum rang down Dale’s fingertips. He could feel copper, cool and smooth in his palms, the pathway of dirt-knowing that ran taut as electrified fishing wire from the rods to his wrists. There was a vein of something rich with moisture was trapped beneath the crust of his earth, waiting.

            Folks in town didn’t think there was anything worth saving on his land. They were idiots, clogged and stupid with methamphetamine and WiFi, or foreigners, who didn’t know the land from the sky. Dale did, though. He held out, he believed. His tongue lapped across his gums and came away tart and metallic. Blood. Blood in the dirt, blood in his mouth, but it would be alright now. 

            Dale had been reared on the land. When he was a boy, the breeze rippled his blood, as it did the wheat in the fields. His fingers and toes froze along with dirt after the first frost. The boys in town thought he’d be better off selling, but they didn’t know worth from value. 

            He shifted to his side and groaned. The bed was rank with sweat, his sheets long yellow. If he had a wife, or some kids, they’d’ve told him to get his stomach looked at years back, when his belly first began to ache and the clods were only pebble-size. They’d expanded over the years. By the time he made the trip to the specialist, the doctors didn’t know if he’d fit in the cat scan machine. A nurse tried keep quiet on the phone to the Denver Zoo, asking if he might squeeze into the machine that scanned large mammals, but he heard. They got him in the hospital machine eventually, and all that just to tell him it was too late to operate.

            Dale took a deep, painful breath in and hauled himself upright. He didn’t turn the lights on. The house was quiet, empty. Padding along the hallway, stretching longer than it ever had before, he palmed the wall to keep upright. Sweat pooled in the folds around his neck. 

            Not long, now. In the kitchen, he reached for the top cabinet and took down the coffee canister where his daddy used to keep folded bills and the keys to the tractor. Not long for him, but forever for the farm. 

            Dale opened the lid and was flooded with the glory of his Savior.

III. 

            The Sensyus CEO was ready to rip it out of the ground, but the lead contractor was a Christian. He knew a miracle when he saw one, he said.  

            The CEO threatened him, told the contractor he could either clear it out or lose a crew and a paycheck. The contractor still refused. It was too late by then, anyway, because the news vans had turned up for the groundbreaking. The contractor, weeping on his knees, was a better image for TV than the Sensyus CEO and his golden shovel.

            The air was metallic, a crisp April morning suddenly close and dense, like a late-summer thunderstorm was boiling across the plains. The folks in town felt it, too. They showed up in clusters, not long behind the news vans, some for the groundbreaking, some unsure of why they were there at all, except to say they’d felt they had to be. Something drew them from their homes and out to the old Peltz place. 

            By mid-morning, the access road was backed up all the way to the northern edges of town. Cars by the dozen, caked in dirt, were stitched tail-to-nose along the road, trucks, cop cars, mini-vans bursting with impatient children. Even the meth chefs found a spark for the rusted-out hunks-of-junk usually cemented to the cookhouse front lawn and joined the parade.

            Rumors began to circulate that the National Guard would have to be called in. No one had ever seen so many people in one place in Petrarch County, not during the County Fair, not during the Octoberfest parade. They must have come from the surrounding Counties – Adams; Burlow; Monart. And maybe even further because there were cars arriving that were city-clean, gleaming and free of dust. 

            On the edges of the Peltz land, clusters of people waited for something to happen. Mothers perched on car bumpers and breastfed their children, high school boys jeered and jumped around, increasingly frenzied as the day baked hotter and heavier. Some folks were praying, rosaries knotted through their knuckles, and others wanted stupid and slow in long, looping circles of their own. 

            A barricade of bodies formed around the site where the ground was supposed to have been broken, surging outwards and circling the Sensyus construction trailer. The crowd heaved against it; meaty shoulders packed to metal rocking violently. Hiding inside, the CEO tried to keep his balance. Legal was in his ear, real-timing a plan of action. 

            – Monica, sorry, can you – can you just, repeat that? No, I can’t – it’s too – there are what, four thousand hicks out there fucking screaming, I just – e-mail it to me, okay? And the ‘copter? Is it on the way?

            The crowd grew thicker, the sun bore onto the earth and baked it dry. Dust haze hung in the air, obscuring the densest depths of the group. It churned against itself, spitting folks out hard onto the dirt before they tried to dig back in again. Law enforcement couldn’t find the way through to the center. Rumors flew like hot oil. Antifa, a bomb, alien spaceship crash. The CIA and FBI were on their way, Air Force stealth planes had been seen circling the south field. 

            By mid-afternoon, the construction trailer and two news vans had been toppled and set alight. There was no sign of the Sensyus CEO. Not a hundred feet from where his abandoned golden shovel lay, a throng of wailing women in prairie garb flung themselves to the ground and clawed dirt into their mouths. Holy men of all sects – priests, reverends, bishops, rabbis, imams, Tibetan monks and more – circled the earth, chanting reverently in their own prayerful tongues. The National Guard hadn’t been able to tear through the order of nuns holding ground over the furthest reaches of the site and in their absence, a handmade infantry marched through the thickets of bodies, semi-automatics resting on their shoulders. They were the guardians, they told the crowds, the protectorate of the land. 

            Meanwhile, the lead contractor had never risen from the ground. The knees of his pants had worn as soft as wet paper, ready to tear. The muscles in his back spasmed and ached, knotted, refusing to unravel. Touring this same spot the night before, surveying the emptiness before it was to be ripped up and churned for the future, his boots had kicked dust from the bald earth, at the nothing before him. 

            And now, from the ash where even the heartiest high-plains grasses had refused to grow, bloomed a pomegranate tree, as rich, ripe and heavy with fruit as it had been in the Garden.  

About the Author: Originally from the Nebraskan plains, Zoe Yohn is a writer based in Dublin, Ireland. She holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin. She has published short fiction in The Honest Ulsterman and her short story “Language Barriers” was long listed for the 2021 Exeter Story Prize. Zoe lives with her husband in Dublin, and is currently working on a novel.

By Jennifer Walker

Author Bio: Jennifer Walker started her writing adventures as a child composing short stories. As she matured, she wrote poetry and novels. Her poetry collection, Prairie Girl, was selected as a 2022 Finalist for The Birdy Poetry Prize by Meadowlark Press. Jennifer is married and a proud mother of three boys. Her other roles include being a high school English teacher and a farmer’s daughter. Jennifer has lived all over the American Midwest before​ finding her way back to her home state of Kansas.

By Catherine O’Brien

Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She writes bi-lingually in English and Irish. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Mystery Tribune, Comhar, Janus Literary, Ellipsis Zine, Splonk, Flash Boulevard, Tether’s End Magazine, Indelible Literary Journal, Tír na nÓg & more. Twitter: @abairrud2021.

By Russell Thorburn

About the Author:

Russell Thorburn is a recipient of a National Endowment Fellowship and the first poet laureate of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He lives in Marquette, where he sometimes performs with his sextet Radio On. His one-act play of a retro-alternate reality, Gimme Shelter, was set for a premiere at the Black Box Theatre but was cancelled by the pandemic.

By Matthew McGuirk

There’s still a clear view in all directions back at the farm and it’s been a little time since I’ve been up there, mainly because life gets moving and everyone has so much going on. With a family and kids and everything you can’t visit every weekend and Christmas is tough because you don’t want to rip the little ones away from their presents. Standing outside the car, though, engine still idling, it all still looks like my childhood. Looking to the left and right and the neighbors are mostly the same except a little older and the buildings look familiar except a little more worn–the barn wood a little greyer and the galvanized roof a little more rust and a little less silver in that sunlight. Time throws a little dust on everything or maybe it shines it up a little and makes it clean, I’m not really sure which at times but being back up here feels like ten or thirteen or maybe eighteen, probably all of them…but mostly it feels like haying. There’s still that scent in the air, the dry hay gets in your lungs and that’s really the best I can describe it. The animals that eat most of the profit are meandering in the pastures because summer allows the unmowed grass to be the primary source of food, some of them as small as black and white dots on the far hill just outside the wood line mixed with pines and maples mainly. 

Days didn’t start too early for us during the summer, but my dad was always out the door early even on the weekends, already on the move before breakfast hit the table. My mom was always the cook, and still likes to cook for everyone, although it’s in a different location since splitting with my dad. We always had eggs and bacon before throwing hay or stacking it on the wagons in the field or unloading it in the barn. When we were young, the bales all spit out in little lines following the tractor that coughed little gray clouds into the air. It was pulling the bailer along just fine, that was before the kicker came and made that part of the process obsolete. I look around now in the cut fields and see big marshmallows and realize we were still doing it wrong back then. I remember riding on the flatbed wagons and trying not to get our feet stuck in the too wide slats, homemade like everything else. My cousin Corey and I did a little more work at that point because my brother Derek was a little younger then and Corey’s brother Shane was still younger than him. One of our dad’s rode in the tractor and bailed up the rows, steering wheel in one hand and light beer in the other; another uncle pulled the flatbed supporting Anheuser as well and the last throwing each of the bales onto the wagon between sips and resting that beer on the edge where it looked like it’d spill with each bump. We lugged them into place like overfilled luggage. 

We didn’t know we were getting swindled by our dads until we realized all the unloading of the wagons happened through our hands. We sat down and negotiated with our dads, the bosses and the employees, maybe this was all part of their plan to show us that to get anywhere in life you’ve got to speak up. So, we went from five dollars a load to ten and that worked out well and bought some extra popcorn at the movies or helped us sneak in a king size versus a regular sized candy bar. It wasn’t until we were all off at college and back for summers that we worked hourly under our dads and it only made sense when it was four or five grown men throwing and stacking bales that they should all get paid that way. 

We had friends that were always over and helping out in those days. They’d throw the bales with us in middle school or wipe sweat from their brows before playing a game of Texas hold ’em after we were done with the wagons for the day. Some doubling what they’d made and others going home with pockets turned to dog-ears. Sometimes, I wonder if their parents sent them over in middle school to run some energy out of them or maybe they just wanted a little time alone with each other for the first time in a while and didn’t want the kids barging in. Maybe a little country air and a little hard work would instill some good values in their boy. I’m not really sure if this is how that works though because I still remember 13-year-old Carter grabbing a beer from my parent’s fridge and putting it in one of the cups from the cabinet, plastic souvenir one from a Sox game, and sipping at it. We all just looked and eventually my mom caught him and sent him home, but he came back and there wasn’t much of a mention of it anyways. 

It was pretty simple most days, at least if you got all the way to dry raked rows, that’s what my dad always said. There was always weather and mulch bales weighed about double what any other bale did, but they fetched a lighter price and quite a bit more anger from the dads when the rains came on a forecast that called for sun.

Of course, farm equipment was always breaking down. I learned about death through a broken bailer. It wasn’t a family pet: a guinea pig in a cold basement, or a dog dying of old age with bad hips or a cat that got hit where the traffic runs too quick in this rural spot. No, my first nudge with death was hearing the mower rumble along in the long hayfields on a day in July and waving at my dad in that cab and hearing some sort of clog, something caught in those whirring blades. I remember seeing smoke plume up into the air from the gears that couldn’t spin and a string of language I’d repeat down the line when I was a few beers deep and debating with a college friend in a bar somewhere. I remember running over, we always wanted to learn the ins and outs of what went wrong on the farm and home and learn the various fixes. By the time I rounded the bend of the still high grass, I heard my dad rambling on, words I knew I wasn’t supposed to say. He was on the other side of the mower and I eased around, the tractor was shut down at that point, but I could hear him heaving his weight against something. I caught a glimpse and turned away; he was yanking on the hind legs of an animal. Later he told us a deer was there, unseen in the grass. Thinking back now, I realized he worked that whole afternoon pulling bits and pieces of a fawn that was recently birthed in the grass out of that mower: small legs and soft fur, heart with too few beats and lungs that had barely tasted the air. 

I still wonder about the hours my dad spent out of the house and the many other odd jobs he held and how that all played out with my parent’s split. I didn’t pay the bills, so I really didn’t know either side of the story. I’m sure I didn’t notice all the spats or silence between them through the years and I’m sure I missed some of the good times as well. Looking back there were the bickering words after the papers had been passed from one hand to another, not a fight, but still, something awkward to sit through while drinking a coffee in the dining room. At that time, I wondered how far removed we were from her bringing beers and sodas out to the hay fields or him driving the John Deere pulling that flatbed wagon full of bales and us sitting on top and my mom telling us not to get to close to the sides or to hang on when we went around the corners. 

Looking out over these fields and barns and the house I grew up in, I can’t help but think about the homemade lemonade pops we ate when the days were hotter than usual, 13 year old Carter grabbing that beer and nobody caring too much because we were doing a man’s work anyways. The hot days where we threw too many bales with hay fever stuck in our eyes and our arms latticed with cuts, still crest and wane like those sunups and sundowns we saw so many of, but a few bucks wasn’t all we pocketed back then. 

About the Author: Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee with words in various lit mags and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities available on Amazon and linked on his website.

Website: http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew Twitter: @McguirkMatthew Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.

By Matthew Schultz

About the Author: Matthew Schultz is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. You can read all about it in his novel, On Coventry. He then attended graduate school at Saint Louis University. While there, he spent a lot of time in Forest Park. Matt’s most recent publication, Encomium: Cento Paradelles, is available from Beir Bua Press. Keep an eye out for forthcoming collections from Alien Buddha Press and ELJ Editions.

By Jim Ray Daniels

 The TV was on. No one was watching it. My nephew Albert stood in front of me, having opened the door and let me in. His wife, Suzie—or Sooz, though I could not call her that, given the warmth and informal goodwill it implied—was on the phone, clearly telling somebody what-for. The nine-year-old twins, Bim and Jim, were chasing each other in a mad circle. Albert held up his hand. I thought he was going to shake mine, but he was giving an air-stiff-arm to the kids that stopped them quick enough to cause rug burns or sparks.

*

My grandfather had insisted on leaving the TV on for his fat dog Ralph when we picked him up for some family occasion at which his presence was required. Ralph had the benefit of a human dog’s life. My grandfather cooked him pancakes and hamburgers in his ancient cast-iron frying pan. He never even rinsed it out, so it always contained a toxic mix of burned food scraps and the yellow stink of old grease.

One day, stopping in to check on him, I found the heavy pan on the floor tilted up against the fridge, and I figured out that my grandfather finally could no longer lift the pan at age 95. He stood, head bowed, hands on hips, as I picked up the pan and put it back on the stove. I expected something from him—an explanation, some comment, I don’t know what, really—but he remained silent, his lips trembling slightly with what was unspoken. The dog looked at me soberly. Whatever had been in the dropped pan, Ralph had taken care of. Grandpa walked back into the living room, where he sunk into his ancient easy chair, leaning his head back against the stained antimacassar which may had not been washed since my grandmother had died ten years ago. Ralph dutifully followed him, plopping down at his feet with a heavy thud, as usual. 

I thought about mopping the sticky floor. I thought about scrubbing the pan with steel wool, or taking a sander to it to erase the accumulated residue, trying to recondition it, but I just kept thinking about the watery eyes of my grandfather and the clear eyes of the dog. I wondered if Ralph had eaten his last pancake. I felt like the heavy thudded clang of that pan on the floor was a sign of something, and it was. Within a month, my grandfather was dead.

*

Albert, his great grandson, took Ralph when Grandpa died and slimmed him down, and the dog lived five more years. Maybe Ralph had insisted that the TV be left on when he was here and it had just become a habit to leave it on. If he couldn’t have pancakes, at least he could still listen to the shrill, exaggerated TV sounds, either trying to sell something, or trying to get you to laugh, or scare you, or whatever. But as Ralph would tell you if he wasn’t a dog, you can’t smell or eat TV, so I’m not sure how much the TV did for him. 

*

My grandfather fed Ralph whatever he had, so Ralph ate a lot of meals-on-wheels. The kindly volunteer driver, a grandmother herself, remarked that my grandfather had quite an appetite. Ralph in turn kept my grandfather alive, if only forcing him to get up and let him out and in a few times a day. Good boy, Ralph. Making it to 95 on your own, quite an accomplishment for anyone I think. My own father wasn’t going to make it that far.

*

I hadn’t been such a great grandson or uncle. In French, brother-in-law literally means handsome brother. If only it were that easy to move into being handsome. My sister Jean was Albert’s mother. If I’d been the age I am now when my grandfather was dying, I might have been more empathetic and caring. I missed seeing him before he died because I had a softball game to play in that night that I refused to skip. My mother said, “If you want to say goodbye to him, you’d better come now.”

We were in the playoffs. One of my teammates had begged off on his 25^th wedding anniversary to be there. My grandfather, a big baseball fan who remembered Ty Cobb, would have wanted me to go to my game, I told my family. I’ve come to hate anyone who claims to know what a dead person would have wanted. It’s like pretending to know what a dog is thinking, which maybe I just did.

*

Albert, Suzie, and their twins Bonnie and Jim. No one turned down the sound. Bim was short for Bonnie somehow, and Jim of course was James. at nine, they were still mostly polite or maybe they’d already written off their serious great-uncle who only made cameo appearances during the holidays.

I first sat on the couch, then quickly shifted over to the lazyboy chair on the side to avoid the glare of the enormous TV screen. It was like they always had company, the people on the screen nearly as big as Bim and Jim. There are a lot of names that end in “im”. I hope Bim doesn’t marry a Tim and Jim marry a Kim.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

“Nothing special,” Suzie said. Albert nodded as if I’d asked a question that did not deserve a reply. The kids ignored the question, though they were now staring vacantly at the screen. Cartoon Network, it appeared, and somebody needed to calm down and become human again. Maybe me.

I had never been in their house before. I lived seven hours away in deep, dark Indiana. I work in Elkhart, the RV capital of the world, at Jay Sport Camping Trailers. Jay’s real name was James.

*

We made small talk, just like I’m making small talk now. Stalling for time. 

“Uncle Carl, why are you here?” Suzie asked finally.

“Can someone please get me a glass of water?” I asked the people on TV,

“Bim, can you get your uncle some water?” Suzie said. She squeezed the remote in her hand. One of them, anyway.

“Great uncle,” I said. “I’m your great uncle.” I never got tired of that joke.

“Hmmph,” Bim said, not quite cute anymore, and stomped off into the kitchen, which had been redone, as is the initiation rite for anyone living in this particular suburb, apparently. Some of my old friends from high school lived nearby and had showed me their kitchen islands and peninsulas. Suburban tropical.

*

I drank my water. Cold, from one of those refrigerator water hookups that always break after a year or two.

“We’re going to move my dad into a home,” I said. “Nobody can handle him anymore. Even the aides who came in twice a day to get him up and put him to bed could no longer do either. Like Ralph, he was expanding into extra large. His wheelchair, a double wide. My father paid the bills and let it go on with Grandpa as long as he could. No room at the family inn for the guy who’d killed his brother and never told the secret, even to those who already knew it.

Or son. I should have mentioned. I have not been a very good son. Why Indiana? When the car jobs dried up, a trailer job seemed like the next best thing. Indiana was flat like lower Michigan. Crossing the border was hallucinatory, except the hallucinations speeded up in Michigan, as was the tradition of Michigan drivers, a slur in Indiana. “Michigan driver!” they shouted out their car windows at each other.

I met my first two wives in Indiana, and I hope to meet another one there before I get in line behind the old man on the lonely road of no return. I don’t believe I’ll meet Ralph there. 

All Dogs Go to Heaven was a cartoon that starred the voices of Bert Reynolds and Dom Deluise, both deceased. Am I showing my age?

*

We were planning to pay extra for our father to get a single room. If he ever stopped knowing who we were, we’d move him to a double. Or if his money ran out first, then we’d take what Medicare gives us.

“I love my father,” I said. “But I can’t lift him either.”

“You’re in Indiana,” Albert said, looking at me over his glasses as if he did not believe me, sizing me up like an actuary.

“You could lift him, Al,” I said. “Big guy like you.”

“You’re not suggesting,” Suzie said. 

“No, I’m not,” I interrupted. Al sold life insurance, which I didn’t know was still a thing, though I understand it’s kind of a tax shelter now. 

“But we could use your pickup truck and help moving. We’ve got to get him out of the house and into the home—isn’t that ironical, shouldn’t it be out of the home and into the house?—and get rid of at least half his stuff. We’ll have to sell the house. I’m using up my vacation to come up and do this. He’s on a waiting list.”

The kids had disappeared. I had neglected to bring them bubble gum like I used to do. Their parents hated bubble gum. I, who will never have grandkids, had to spoil somebody, and that’s how my grandfather spoiled me, by giving me things my parents did not want me to have—soda pop, candy, potato chips, cheap plastic toys from the dime store—cowboys, Indians, and soldiers. And how my grandfather spoiled Ralph.

Since Ralph died, Albert and Suzie had not gotten another dog. The kids did not even know about Ralph, like we did not know my grandparents had another son besides my father—that my father’d had a brother—until we were adults. “If we tell them about Ralph, they’ll want to get another dog,” Suzie said in her Suze voice. “No dog,” Albert affirmed.

Of course, the kids might whine about getting another dog, about how they’d missed out, but my father could not whine about getting another brother. The thick curtain of grief followed them around forever. My grandmother, quite frankly, did not seem to like my father at all. The more he did for her, the less she liked him. After she died, I think he took it out on Grandpa.

“He’s sitting over there now with that giant speaker next to his ear watching right-wing news shows and nodding, but he can’t even get up to make himself a sandwich anymore. He ‘lost’ the emergency help button we got him. The house smells worse than every nursing home me and your mother visited.” His mother, my sister Jean. I’d promised her I’d make this request in person. “He won’t listen to me,” she’d said. “He won’t say no to you,” she’d said. I’d never asked him for anything in my life, so I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten such confidence. I could have gone on forever, just like the TV, with excuses, but they really didn’t care. They had twin nine-year-olds.

Twins who were screaming at each other from somewhere in the back of the house. Big house, successful career. Remodeled kitchen. Kudos to Albert. What was I lacking that kept me from staying in love, or at least married? Both my exes still lived in Elkhart. I’ve heard that they’ve become friends, which I hope is a lie or at least an exaggeration.

Jean had borne the brunt, but she knew me and did not begrudge taking on the role of primary caregiver. Brunt. That’s a tough word. Begrudge. Growing up, I had spent a lot of nights in our tiny box of a house eating my dinner alone in the tiny kitchen that had never been remodeled, exiled by my father, who had no brother, but had a son. 

Suzie got up to check on the kids. I could hear her firm voice. Each kid was sent their own rooms to cool down, but Suzie did not come back. She was probably in the bathroom sighing, waiting for me to leave. It was just me, Albert, and the TV. Albert juggled one of the remotes. He changed the channel to one of the all-sports networks. Soccer players were playing volleyball with their feet. I’d seen it before. The novelty wears off.

“Give me a date,” Albert said. “Give me a date, and I’ll be there. Not with bells on, but I’ll be there.”

Bells on. He had added a lot of insurance salesmen quirks to his vocabulary, as if he’d learned English from a David Mamet character. 

I do quality control on the trailers. I go camping on Lake Michigan, on the tiny wedge of it that Indiana owns. Indiana Dunes—it’s almost beautiful. I was close enough to sneeze in Elkhart and be heard in Michigan, but it was not Michigan. In self-imposed exile from the state I loved. 

Why had I never asked my grandfather about his dead son? Why were we passing down the silence from dog to dog?

To get to Chicago, I had to drive through Gary, Indiana, which, despite the Music Man, was better known as one of the top ten armpits of America, one of the many little Detroits. All my compasses tilted back to Detroit, the original armpit, my father’s armpit he would wrestle me into in a playfully violent way until I outgrew him.

*

“I’ll get you a date,” I said, and stood up. It almost sounded like a threat. I was living alone in Elkhart, Indiana. Couldn’t I find a way to move my father down there, or retire early or something and move back to the Motor City? I was 55. Double nickel. A nickel for your thoughts. Hey Dad, what’s on TV? 

I grabbed one of the remotes and pushed the off button, but nothing happened. “I’ll get you a date.” 

A romantic day spent discarding family treasures and deciding what clothes he might want to die in. My father, to be fair, had been the one to help everybody else die—his parents, his aunts, two cousins. Was he making up for not being there when his brother died of a burst appendix in high school? I hadn’t asked him about my dead uncle either.

He’d handled all their paperwork and emptied their houses, but now it was his turn.

“Now, it’s my turn,” my father said. He’d turned his TV off to tell me.

About the Author: Jim Ray Daniels is the author of six collections of short fiction, including, most recently, The Perp Walk, Michigan State University Press, 2019. His fiction awards include  a Michigan Notable Book prize,  finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize, and awards from the Midwest Book Awards, the Independent Booksellers Association, and the Foreword INDIE Book Awards. He currently teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program and lives in Pittsburgh.

Kyle Simonsen

Winter arrived as midnight sleet, spackled everything with a southwest wind’s relentless pressure. Chunky, bubbly ice pasted our patio and the south side of our mailbox. A thin layer of powder fell to camouflage the treacherous ice beneath.

*

I bundle my three-year-old son for the sinister chill. He doesn’t remember winter, doesn’t know snow aside from the glittery stuff in drifts of picture books beside his bed. Before leaving, I crouch down and catch his gaze. 

“Now, be very careful,” I say. “It’s dangerous out there.” 

He nods, eyes big, says nothing.

*

The preschool parking lot is a vast rink, smooth and slick from curb to curb. He clambers out the car seat and down and whoosh, they’re gone, his feet, somehow three different ways, scrambling. I snatch his elbow, haul him up.

“Let’s walk careful. Like penguins,” I tell him, and we do—for a minute—shuffling above the thin light of the ice and the dark concrete beneath.

But then he skates, and then stomps, and slips again but I’m holding his hand, and I catch him, and then again. He cracks ice, kicks it up, takes time teasing at the cracks with his toes, watching it splinter, spiderweb, laughing when his shoes melt enough of the stuff to squeak as he glides across it. I realize I can only see the slipping, but he sees so much more, and suddenly the lot catches the sun at last, a platter of light reflecting back up into the everywhere.

About the Author: Kyle Simonsen teaches writing, editing, and literature at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His writing appears in Assay, Rain Taxi, and March Xness, among other places, and he is the managing editor of The Linden Review. He has a wife, and she has him, and together they have two kids in a place called Wahoo.

By Colin Brightwell

Betty was eight months pregnant and Sherman was eight months on the verge of breaking. He’d come into work complaining about Betty busting his balls about painting the room and names for girls. He’d give us this high-pitched shrill impression of her and sulk the rest of the afternoon. Me and the other boys at the construction site were starting to take bets on how soon he’d snap.

Mary and me lived in the same trailer park as Sherman and Betty. We were high school pals, baseball players from the old glory days. Our dads were union workers who spent their days at the bar and came home mad and bitter. Sherman and I thought we wouldn’t end up like them, that we’d fly out of here and end up somewhere warm, where money grew on trees and your car always started. But we got married and settled down and that was all she wrote. Ten years passed and we were busting our asses on the sides of highways and knocking beers down when the world went dark. We hung around together because we stayed behind, both of us reminders of a lost time. We talked in past tense and acted like nothing had changed. But I was growing up and understanding that the world didn’t work that way. Life moved on and you had to move with it or else you’d drown in your own shit.

 Some nights in the summer we’d sit on faded patio chairs and watch the cars roll down 40 Highway towards the city and slam back beers while the women chatted. I liked to think we were all content, taking each day one at a time. But there was always something that got Sherman bitter. He would always say what a life we had, Gene, when we were in high school. All the babes we had. Names were dropped, names and faces that memory faded and I just nodded my head and tended to agree with him. Yeah, Sherman. It sure was great.

 And now he had that baby girl on the way and everything was catching up to him. One night he came over and said that he was dying, that he had to get out and cut loose for one more night. One more night to reclaim that old glory.

“C’mon, Gene,” he said. “It’s killing me being cooped up in there with her.”

 So I kissed Mary goodnight while she slept before the night shift at the hospital and we headed down the highway as the sun started to go down. It was late winter and that Missouri cold was biting and I worried my engine would kill itself halfway down the road. 

 We pulled up to Harve’s, sat at the bar, and ordered a round. Sherman looked around and said that this place hadn’t changed one bit. The bar was empty save for the bartender and us, and I felt alone sitting next to Sherman. He seemed different when he drank, violent. One time he threw a beer bottle at some guy for looking at him wrong back after school ended. But now he seemed ready to explode and tear down anything that got in his way. 

 Sherman slammed his beer down and ordered us a shot of whiskey. We held our glasses up in a toast for the last few weeks of his freedom.

 “Don’t get you a baby,” he said. “I tell ya, there some nights I sit up all night and think about leaving.”

“We keep trying,” I said. “Nothing’s happened yet.”

It always scared me, having kids, but for Mary’s sake we kept trying. But deep down, seeing what it was doing to Sherman, I didn’t want a baby in the house just yet. Money was tight enough anyway. In my head I pictured the bills from hospitals and diapers and daycares and college. 

“Be glad about that. Sometimes I think this is what killed my dad.”

When I was younger I saw my dad’s face grind down to nothing but a pulp mess of wrinkles. I saw that same thing on Sherman’s face. I looked at the mirror behind the bar and tried to see if I was starting to look that way. I drank my beer and nodded along with Sherman.

He got up and chucked some quarters into the juke and played some blues. B.B. King’s guitar wailing about evil women and then Springsteen crooning about some promised land at the end of a winding highway, a place he knew he could get to if he just paid his dues and put in his time. I pictured this highway blasting through the trailer park, the pavement fresh and black, and me and Sherman shredding down the road towards the rising sun. Then the Boss yelled about a storm blowing away all those dreams that eat away at you and that highway disappeared. I ordered another beer and felt a wreck happening deep in my guts and sighed.

“You know, we played some great ball, Gene,” Sherman said. 

“Hell,” I said with a half-assed chuckle, “we couldn’t even make state.”

“I’m just sayin,” he said.

Sherman brought this up time and time again those months when Betty was pregnant. I stopped thinking about ball a long time ago after Mary and I married. I knew I wasn’t ever going to wear a jersey again with my name on it. I was a below average player and knew it. But Sherman wouldn’t let this go. He kept bringing it up, the pathetic cliché lost on him. Kept talking about how he could have pitched for the Royals or Red Sox and been real hot shit. Could have married a swimsuit model and lived in a mansion. He was talking nonsense. He wasn’t ever gonna live that life. We were here, and this was it, the end of the road.

“Why don’t you quit that talk,” I said. “You got a baby on the way. Ain’t that enough?”

 He nodded and looked around the empty bar, at the posters of half-dressed girls holding sweaty beer bottles and inviting men with their smiles. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

 “Why can’t you be grateful?” I said. “Betty’s one hell of a woman.”

“Once that baby comes that’s it for me,” he said. “No more ballgames on the weekends, no more bars. Just diapers and Barney.” 

Mary and me knew each other all through high school, and I knew then I’d spend my life with her. She had these freckles on her face that looked like stars and hair that was fire. Mom loved her something bad and would never let it go if I broke her heart. She was pregnant when we married. She had a miscarriage a month after that. I somehow managed to keep everything alive this long. But there were some nights when I would look at her and think that living in the Highway Estates Trailer Park across the highway from an abandoned drive-in wasn’t enough for us. Maybe she resented me for tying her down to this dead-end way. I thought about leaving so many times but crawled back into bed instead and tried to hold her close, thinking to myself that this was all I wanted. 

“Pretty soon,” Sherman said, “there’s gonna be nothing but crying in my home. All night. Goddamn, this is what it all comes down to.”

 I told him to shut up, finish his drink, and let’s go find another place that had more noise where I wouldn’t have to hear him talk and think about myself anymore, tear into the meat of whatever was awaiting us. 

 We drove down the highway speeding down the empty lanes. Patches of pale light from the street lamps helped guide the way. I pictured that winding highway again from the song and wondered what that promised land looked like. If the streets were lined with whatever you desired, if when you came home from work your body didn’t feel like it was broken every which way, if the beer never went flat and the sun never went away and the air was always warm. I wondered if such places existed at all. It seemed to me that places like that were only real in your head. They were fantasies you told yourself to get you through the workday before you crawled back home and realized that you were stuck there. 

We were halfway to the heart of Independence when we saw her. A lone girl hiking on the shoulder of the highway in a coat that was thick as animal hide. She had blonde hair and looked smaller than a twig. I wondered if she would freeze out there.

“Pull over,” Sherman said. “Let’s go talk to that chick.”

He rolled his window down when I stopped next to her and that cold air blasted in like a shotgun. Sherman smiled at her and called out, wanted to know what in the hell a pretty girl like her was walking outside in the Antarctic. 

“My car broke down a few miles back,” she said. “I was heading west.”

“Well,” Sherman said, “why don’t you get your ass in here before you keel over.”

She peeked in and saw me. I tried to look nice. 

“Where you two going?” 

I glanced at her and even in the dark I could tell she was young. 

“We’re just driving around trying to find another bar,” Sherman said. “You look like you could use a drink.”

She put her hands in her coat pockets and looked down at her feet. “I’m only twenty.”

Sherman chuckled with a sweetness I hadn’t heard in ages. “Hell, nobody cares about that. You come in with us and they’ll let you drink whatever, honey.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her eyes seemed distant and I thought about pushing down on the gas and leave before she decided to get in when Sherman started talking again.

“You’re gonna freeze standing out there,” Sherman said. “We’ll get you a drink and some food and get you on a bus out of here.”

She shrugged and slowly eased into the back of the car. Maybe she thought she could get some free beer from us, find somebody at the bar willing to take her as far west as they could. Sherman kept talking her ear off and laughing like a madman. Her name was Alison. I kept glancing back at her through the mirror and thought about kicking her out and heading back home.

After a while Sherman told me to stop at a gas station to grab some smokes. He said he’d be back in a flash and winked at the girl and ran in. 

It was quiet before she said anything. 

“I quit school,” she said. 

I nodded and kept watch for Sherman coming back out.

“I’m heading west because I don’t like it here. It’s too cold.”

“It’s Missouri,” I said. “What did you expect in winter?”

She leaned over between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Her breath smelled like mint. “You lived here your whole life?”

I nodded and dicked around with the radio, trying to find a song worth listening to. But all there was on the air waves this late at night were commercials and talk shows where all they did was talk talk and talk till you lost your patience and slammed the whole thing off and sat in silence. 

“Why don’t you leave?”

“It ain’t that easy,” I said. “Believe me.” She was only about ten years younger than me but she didn’t understand the first thing about life. I thought about playing dad with her and telling her this. 

“You know what they call Missouri? A flyover state. Know why?”

“Because people don’t want to come here,” I said. “Everyone just flies over us and doesn’t give two shits about places like here.”

“That’s right,” she said. “I want to leave. I have family out in California. Or I can stop in New Mexico and work at some tourist joint. I heard it’s always warm out there. The sun’s always out.”

I turned back around as Sherman was coming out. “Maybe you’re right about that,” I said. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe it ain’t all that bad.” 

The Boss’ promised land highway came back to me and I pictured this girl walking down it towards the coast. I looked at her and realized that I wanted her to get out of this place, to find out for me if places like that really existed. I wanted to tell her to get out right now and find someone else to take her out there.

Sherman got in and slammed the door and yelled giddy-up and we drove around till we found a bar off the highway. Some place called The Grid Iron. Trash littered the parking lot and the sign was flickering in and out of life. Some people were gathered outside smoking. They looked half-dead and lost, straight out of those Depression-era photographs they showed us in school.

We sat in the back booth and Sherman ordered himself and Alison a beer and I ordered a whiskey. The same kinds of posters lined the walls, the same kind of women holding the same kind of beer. They didn’t look real to me. They looked like conjured up ideas of women. Sherman kept glancing around at them and Alison. 

I wondered what her life was like back home to make her go out west. She and Sherman were talking but she didn’t seem all that interested. He was giving the same old runaround he gave girls back in the day. He was drunk and she could see that.

After a while he got up and found the juke box and played some slow number and went up to her and grabbed her from the booth and started dancing with her. Her face looked bored, as if she regretted taking a ride with us. She looked like a department store mannequin dancing with him, stiff and lifeless and he buried his face in her neck and her eyes looked gone. 

The song ended and she tore away from him and sat next to me back in the booth. Sherman followed and sat across from her. 

“You’re a pretty little thing, you know that?”

She nodded and looked around the bar. “Thanks. Can you take me to a bus stop now?”

“I wish I knew you a long time ago,” he said. “Maybe I could have gone west with you.”

He sounded desperate and I had an urge to leave the both of them and head home onto the highway on foot.  

I had a strong feeling that one day soon I would end up like Sherman. That Mary would finally get pregnant and I would hate it and try to find some and get drunk and sound pathetic. Looking at him right then and there I felt sick. He was a piece of my past that clung to me like those fish cling to sharks. He was pulling me down and I wanted to hit him. Maybe then he would have finally snapped out of whatever it was that was making him like this. 

“Stop it, Sherman,” I said. He was trying to grab her leg from under the table.

He looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Stop what? I ain’t doing anything. She likes it.”

She asked Sherman for a cigarette and she stepped outside to light it. He watched her go.

“Boy,” he said, “what I would give for a piece of ass like that. Just once.”

“Let it go, Sherman,” I said. “Let’s leave her here and head on back. I’m tired.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll stay here. Play things out.”

He winked at me and struggled to get out and walked into the night with a cigarette in his hand.

The bar was full of greasy men. I figured their lives weren’t any better, driving around the night trying to chase something they thought they could find. Something that would make them feel like they did before life bit them in the neck. I imagined their faces when they realized nothing was there. Walking around in their lives looking for something to blame. Sherman was doing just that. He hated the world so much he couldn’t blame himself for the way things went. He’d just keep hating the world and reliving the past instead of coming to terms with the way it was. 

They were gone for a while, and I had a craving for a cigarette. I paid the bartender and headed out. Outside the bar was empty and the highway seemed desolate. I didn’t see Sherman or Alison smoking, so I walked around to the back.

He was standing over her, pacing back and forth, breathing hard under his breath. I could see the vapor leave his mouth like a piece of his soul. He turned around and looked at me. 

There was one lone light on the wall of the bar, and I could see his face. He didn’t look surprised that I was standing there. She was lying there like she just fell. In the light I could see a pool of black around her head. 

“What the hell happened?”

Sherman shrugged and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I think maybe I pushed her too hard,” he said. “She just sort of lost her footing and hit her head on that dumpster.”

“What did you do?”

“She started it,” he said. “It got out of hand. She tried hitting me, telling me to back off and I had to get her off me. The little bitch was hitting me hard.”

He looked back down at her. I walked over and got a closer look. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. She looked about dead. There was nothing in her eyes. I could have left then, got into that car, and roared down that highway and that would have been that. 

“She’ll be fine,” Sherman said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Back on the highway he didn’t say one word. He sat looking out the window as we passed the streetlamps and empty buildings that lined that section of road. I felt disgusted with him, with myself for letting him leave her there. I could have called the cops or left him there to deal with it himself. Now I was involved. In the TV shows they called it being an accessory after the fact. Sooner or later, someone caught up to people like me. Nothing seemed to bother Sherman about this. 

Whenever I blinked, I saw Alison lying on the pavement. She’d never get out west away from here. I thought that maybe she’d be a ghost that stalked the back of the bar, doomed forever to never leave this flyover state. I could see the blinking light from a plane overhead and pictured its passengers looking out their windows. We were so small to them. It was like we didn’t exist. They would never come here. Even they knew there wasn’t anything good here.

When we pulled into his driveway he didn’t move. He sat there staring at the front door of his home, tapping the dashboard. 

“No one needs to know,” he said. “It was just an accident.”

“Shit,” I said, turning away from him. “People saw her with us. Someone’s gonna find her.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Throw my life away over a little slut? It doesn’t matter. She just fell. She was drunk. Could have happened to anybody.”

“Get the fuck out,” I said. When he didn’t move, I nearly pushed him out, hitting him. He slammed the door and spat. I watched him walk up the steps and Betty greeted him at the door. He gave her a great big hug and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and waved at me. I backed out, my knuckles turning white gripping the wheel.

Back home, the trailer was quiet and dark. I fixed myself a bag of ice and sat in the kitchen while my skull throbbed, and I thought it was going to explode. 

When I crawled back into bed, I wished Mary was there, wished that she would get off her night shift early and come home so I could hold her tight. I loved her and I pictured us having a real family. It would be a matter of time before somebody found Alison and put the pieces together. Pictures of her would be on the news. There would be a knock on both of our doors. I wanted to get out before any of that happened. In the morning I wanted to tell Mary to pack up her things and get into the car. We were going to get the hell away from here. Anywhere. I wished I believed myself. 

About the Author: Colin Brightwell is a Missouri native, from the greater Kansas City area and Jesse James country. He has fiction upcoming in Reckon Review and Bull Magazine. He is currently in the MFA program for fiction at the University of Mississippi.

By Lauren Slagter

Pain in her neck was the first thing Sara became aware of as she blinked open her heavy eyelids. She noted a blue curtain running the length of the linoleum-tiled room, metal rails on the side of her bed and a splint on her left wrist, with a petal of the rose inked on the inside of her arm just visible beyond the black velcro strap. 

Slowly, she turned her stiff neck so she could face the Sunday morning light streaming through a small window on the far wall. She heard voices murmuring on the other side of the curtain and the beep of machinery near her head. 

“What happened?” The words scratched her dry throat, coming out barely above a whisper. 

A metallic jangle of curtain rings sliding along the rod announced the entrance of a heavyset woman in medical scrubs. 

“You don’t remember last night?” the nurse said. Her quick smile didn’t spread far enough beyond the corners of her mouth to cover the glint of judgment in her eyes. Sara knew the look well. 

“Good morning?” Sara frowned and tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear with the hand not in a splint. “Who are you?” 

“I’m the person who’s been taking care of you all night. My name is Pam,” the woman said, scanning her clipboard. “The police are on their way to pick you up, so we need to get you discharged.” 

“Police?” Sara raised her eyebrows. 

“Yes, the police.” Pam’s disapproving look wasn’t papered over with a smile this time. “They said you were drinking last night when you crashed your car. You sprained your wrist, so you need to keep this splint on for seven to 10 days. And you may feel pain in your neck from whiplash.” 

Sara struggled to piece together what happened the previous day. She remembered the fight with her mother, Kim, who had been pestering Sara about plans for an upcoming court-mandated sleepover with her daughter, Coral. 

“What do you think you’ll have for dinner?” Kim had asked standing over her kitchen sink doing dishes, her sweatshirt sleeves pushed up and her graying brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. 

“Not sure yet, maybe those frozen chicken nuggets you throw in the oven?” Sara replied from the stool at the kitchen counter without looking up from the Cosmopolitan magazine she flipped through. Sara had never cared much about doing her hair and makeup, and she was much curvier — the nice word for the extra weight she carried — than the women pictured on the glossy pages. But she liked to pretend she could be glamorous if only she bought the recommended lipstick. 

“You’ll want a vegetable, something healthy,” Kim said. “What about after dinner? Do you have games to play with her? Books to read together?” 

“I’ll figure it out.” Sara was tired of the topic. 

“And you need to clean up your apartment before she and the caseworker come over, right? When are you planning to finish your laundry?” 

“Mom, relax! The sleepover is a week away. I don’t have every minute planned yet.” “You want me to relax?” Kim stopped with the dishes and turned toward Sara, water still streaming from the faucet. “You’re relaxed enough for the both of us. Someone has to show up for our girl!” 

“And let me guess, you don’t think I’m up to the task. Thank God you’re here to save everybody,” Sara fired back sarcastically. 

They hurled insults at each other until the slam of the front door ended their screaming match as Kim stormed out of her own apartment. More doors slammed as Sara paced the kitchen, opening cupboards so she could bang them shut. She spotted a bottle of vodka tucked behind a stack of paper plates in the cupboard by the sink. 

The familiar burn of the first gulp spread from her throat through her chest. Another pull and the tension dropped from her shoulders. She slid her hip on the edge of the kitchen counter and perched there, cradling the bottle to steady her hands still trembling with anger. 

Coral hadn’t spent the night with Sara since she was placed in foster care nearly two years ago. That night Sara had put Coral to bed and then gone to a friend’s house. She was blacked out on Vicodin and Jim Beam when police arrived to break up her fight with another woman. The officers called Child Protective Services, and a caseworker arrived in the middle of the night to pack a bag for Coral and take her away. 

That was when Sara “hit bottom,” as her court-mandated group therapist said. She’d since quit the booze (mostly), stopped seeing the doctor who treated her chronic back pain with endless Vicodin prescriptions, taken the required parenting classes, passed her drug tests, and sat through countless supervised playtimes with Coral. Under the watchful eye of the caseworker, Sara and Coral played Uno and forced small talk so Sara could prove her parenting abilities. The problem was Coral had become so angry. The girl was only 12, but Sara couldn’t say anything without Coral snapping back at her. 

If they could successfully get through a few sleepovers, Sara’s attorney said she would have a good shot at regaining custody of her kid. Taking swigs from the bottle of vodka, Sara felt the walls of her mom’s now-silent apartment closing in on her. Her daughter, her mom, the CPS caseworker and the judge were counting on her to do this sleepover right — though deep down, she suspected they doubted she could. She doubted she could. 

Sara hopped down from the kitchen counter and grabbed the keys to the beat-up black Ford Escort she shared with her mom. She needed to get out of her mom’s apartment and out of her own head. A trip to Joe’s, her favorite bar, would make her feel better. She hadn’t been there in months, since she was on her best behavior for the court. But a night of chatting with the bartender, Shawna, and running the jukebox would be a welcome relief. She could refocus on the sleepover and make up with her mom the next day. 

She didn’t remember anything else from the night before. 

**** 

“So the hospital’s blood test confirmed your blood alcohol concentration was 0.12, over the legal limit. The police say you crashed your car into a light pole in the apartment complex parking lot,” Sara’s attorney, Mark, read to her from a police report as they sat on a bench outside the courtroom following her arraignment Monday morning. “They’re going to bring this up at your next hearing. We’ll have to decide if you want to stick with the not guilty plea we entered today or try to negotiate a deal. I want to warn you, you could face jail time.” 

Sara nodded numbly. The boom of the judge’s voice as he announced the driving under the influence charge still echoed in her aching head. Turns out, she never made it to the bar or even out of the apartment complex after the argument with her mom. Officers had checked her out of the hospital and into jail on Sunday afternoon. Unable to post the $500 bail, she spent a sleepless night on a metal bunk before appearing in the courtroom, where the judge waived bond since she couldn’t afford it. 

After debriefing with her attorney and finally on her own, Sara paused on the steps outside the courthouse. A deep breath of chilly Midwest January air cleared her muddled mind. She made a beeline for the bus stop down the block, eager to be home where she could crawl into bed and pretend none of this was happening. As she waited for the bus, she switched on her cell phone for the first time since jail staff returned it to her. Voicemail alerts flooded the screen. The bus pulled up, and she hit play on a message from her caseworker as she stepped aboard and paid the fare. 

“Sara, this is Linda. I was at the courthouse for another case this morning and saw your arraignment on the docket. We need to meet Thursday to decide how you want to proceed with your custody case. In light of this new charge and the fact we’re nearly two years into this case, we’re prepared to file a motion to terminate your parental rights. That means we’d have a hearing where the judge would make a permanent decision about your ability to parent Coral. Or, you have the option to voluntarily give up your parental rights and we don’t do the hearing. I’ll tell you more about each option and answer any questions you have on Thursday. Please be at our office at 10.” 

Sara slumped in the bus seat and watched through the window as street signs and trees passed by against the gray sky. 

At the liquor store near her apartment, she grabbed a cheap bottle of pinot grigio from the bottom shelf. Not like another drink could make things any worse. Finally home, she unlocked her door and carried a burst of cold air into her one-bedroom apartment. The living room was furnished with a TV stand, couch and chair her mom helped her pick out from the Salvation Army. A crockpot she was using more frequently to make dinner — like the parent educator taught her — sat out on the kitchen counter. This apartment didn’t feel like home. She and Coral had always lived with Sara’s mom, Kim; that was home. But now half of the monthly disability check Sara received due to her back pain went to rent for this apartment a couple buildings over from her mom’s place. Sara had leased the apartment to appease her caseworker, who insisted she demonstrate she could take care of herself as well as her daughter. 

Struggling with the corkscrew to open the bottle of wine tweaked Sara’s wrist again, but after half a glass, the wine dulled the pain. She sank onto the couch and absentmindedly rubbed her right thumb against the tattooed rose petal on her left arm — the touchpoint that reminded her of her daughter. A coral rose for her Coral Rose. Actually Sara got the tattoo first — to celebrate her 17th birthday, shortly before finding out she was pregnant. Her favorite color and favorite flower, why not her baby’s name? Most people would get a tattoo in honor of their kid, but Sara always seemed to do things backward, unaware of the status quo other people seemed to grasp innately or unable to meet others’ expectations for her. A basket of laundry taunted her from the living room chair, so Sara scooped it up and walked to the bedroom intending to put away the clothes. But her gaze lingered on the pastel drawing of an oversized rose tacked to the wall above her bed. Drawing had always been Sara’s escape. Moving her hands to create lines and shapes was the only way she found stillness inside. Her thoughts could assemble themselves in the saturated colors she blended, rather than swirling around in her head. Art had been the one class she looked forward to in high school, before she’d dropped out when her rounding belly made her the topic of gossip whispered at her classmates’ lockers and announced the pending arrival of Coral Rose. 

**** 

Coral was 9 when she and Sara drew the rose picture together, a few months before Coral went into foster care. Sara remembered waking late that Saturday as Kim finished clearing Coral’s syrup-covered breakfast dishes from the table and announced she’d be at bingo for the rest of the day. Battling a hangover, Sara reached for the pill bottle in her purse. “What do you want to do today, girlie?” she asked Coral, who was still wearing her pink camo pajamas. “We could walk to the park. Maybe check out books at the library.” Sara froze when her hand landed on the pill bottle and felt no rattle inside. Had she taken her last Vicodin the night before? Her mind raced through her options to get more pills and realized none of them were possible with Kim gone with the car and Coral under Sara’s supervision. Without her steady supply of pills, Sara would be in no condition to take her daughter in public. 

“Actually, you know what would be fun?” Sara shifted tactics, trying not to panic. “What if we drew a picture together? Like a big one, with my nice crayons.” 

“The nice ones?” Coral’s brown eyes widened, surprised she would be allowed to use the pastels her mom said were for grownups. 

“Yeah, I’ll show you how to use them. Why don’t you go get my crayon case and a sheet of drawing paper from the bedroom,” Sara said, leaning back on the couch. She took a ragged inhale and tried to focus on a second of relief from her pulsing headache. Coral settled on the floor beside her mom, and they spread the large sheet of paper across the coffee table. Sara started to outline a rose, ring after ring of petals stretching to the page’s edge, her hands shaking as she drew. 

“It’s your flower,” Sara said, grabbing the orange, pink and red crayons from the case. “And this is how we make your color.” 

Coral’s fingers followed Sara’s as they blended the creamy pastels between the lines of the spiraling petals; the girly pink, sunny orange, and fiery red combining to create a warm hue that always reminded Sara of a tropical breeze — or at least what she imagined a tropical breeze felt like when she looked at the poster of a beach scene hanging in her principal’s office, where Sara had waited to hear the same lecture every time she was caught cutting class. Sara’s stomach churned, but she forced herself to conceal her pain from her daughter. 

“It looks like your rose,” Coral said, standing back to admire their masterpiece and pointing toward her mother’s wrist. 

“You’re my rose,” Sara replied, catching her daughter’s hand and pulling her close to her chest, her arm wrapped around the girl’s small shoulders. She couldn’t let her know anything was wrong. 

*** 

A few sips of wine remained in the bottle, and Sara gave up on the laundry and lay down on her bed. The court didn’t understand the bond she had with her mom and her daughter. Kim had requested custody of Coral, but the court knew Kim and her daughter were inseparable. If Coral was to live with either of them, Sara would need to clean up her act. Coral’s dad — who Sara spent time with when she was skipping class during high school — had cut ties with Sara years ago; the latest she heard he was in prison. 

“It appears the grandmother often prepares snacks and activities in advance of the mother’s supervised visits with the child,” read a line in the thick stack of reports the caseworker had compiled on Sara’s interactions with her daughter. 

So what if Kim helped out? Sara was still the girl’s mom. At one of their recent visits, Sara had suggested Coral draw with her like they used to. 

“Mom, I’m too old for coloring,” Coral rolled her eyes. Instead she told her mom about the A she got in math, how her teacher said she could be an engineer when she grew up, the sleep-away camp her foster parents planned to send her to this summer, and the neon Under Armour hoodies she’d meticulously selected during back-to-school shopping for sixth grade. Her words jabbed at Sara, underscoring the gap between what Coral wanted and what Sara had to offer. 

Suddenly Sara felt the wine coming back up. She dashed to the bathroom, kneeled on the dirty blue mat in front of the toilet and threw up the acidic alcohol. Along with the bitter bile, up came the sadness she carried in the pit in her stomach, the insecurities and self-doubt, the belief she could be better. She emptied herself of all she could no longer stand, and her head felt surprisingly clear as she steadied herself on the bathroom floor. She knew what she needed to do. 

**** 

The frigid air cut through Sara’s T-shirt as she got off the bus a few days later and walked up the cracked blacktop driveway toward the Department of Health and Human Services. The square brick building was blandly administrative, looking both innocent of the emotional baggage dragged through its halls and appropriately ominous. 

She took the stairs to the Child Protective Services waiting room on the second floor, where she’d spent so many afternoons over the past two years. Sara often brought Kim along to these meetings, but today she wanted to come alone; she’d already told her mom what she had decided. The smell of stale coffee met her at the door, and the receptionist greeted her by name. Sara managed a nod in acknowledgement as she settled onto a hard plastic chair. She usually stole glances at the other people in the waiting room, looking for signs these folks were more or less messed up than she was. But today, Sara focused on untangling the words she’d need to explain her choice. 

Seated across the table from her caseworker, Linda, in their usual meeting room, Sara fiddled with her wrist splint. She talked in circles about the car crash, how hard she’d tried the past couple years, and how she wanted to do right by her daughter. Finally, there was nothing left but to detonate her sentence-long bomb. 

“It’s better for Coral if I give up my parental rights.” 

With her revelation came a flood of tears. 

“I respect your decision,” Linda said, her blazer bunching awkwardly around her shoulders as she leaned toward Sara. “Coral’s foster parents have expressed interest in adopting her, and your decision will allow that to proceed more quickly. They’ll take good care of her.” 

Sara inhaled sharply and closed her eyes for a long moment, trying to block out the image of someone else taking care of her baby girl. But she wanted better for Coral than what she could give her. This could be a fresh start for both of them, a chance for Sara to pick a different path for herself. 

Linda handed tissues to Sara as she cried. After several minutes of trying to catch her breath and stem the flow of tears, Sara rushed out of the office and away from the course of action she had set into motion. On the bus, she rode past the stop at her apartment complex and got off near Joe’s instead. The place would be mostly empty this early in the afternoon. She felt more at ease as soon as she stepped into the dim room that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and beer. Weaving through a cluster of low black tables and chairs, she settled onto a stool at the dark wooden bar. 

“Hey girl, it’s been a while,” the bartender Shawna, wearing her signature black T-shirt and heavy eyeliner, greeted Sara and started mixing her usual vodka-tonic. Shawna eyed the splint on Sara’s wrist, and Sara’s right hand instinctively reached to touch the rose petal there. “What happened to you?” 

“Just my latest screw up,” Sara’s laugh didn’t come out as light-hearted as she had hoped. “It’s not a big deal. I’m sick of wearing this thing.” She started to undo the velcro straps and slid the stiff fabric off her arm, her skin looking pale and shriveled where the splint had left imprints. Her coral rose seemed especially vibrant in contrast. Shawna set the drink on a napkin in front of Sara, alongside the splint she’d laid on the bar. 

“Oh, I’ve never noticed your flower,” Shawna nodded at the tattoo. “How long have you had that?” 

“I got it on a whim in high school,” Sara said, realizing in all the late nights at Joe’s she had spent joking with Shawna, she hadn’t mentioned her daughter. There was no reason to bring up her and her connection to the tattoo now. 

“It’s pretty,” Shawna said as she turned to head to the other end of the bar. Sara folded her injured arm against her stomach, the coral rose inked on her skin held protectively against her soft center. With her other hand, she picked up her drink.

About the Author: Lauren Slagter is a writer and freelance journalist who lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and has roots in a handful of small Midwest towns. Her journalism has won numerous awards, and she has a creative nonfiction piece pending publication in Great Lakes Review. See more of her work at laurenslagter.com. 

By Alexis Draut

Louisville. South side suburb
synthetic flowers in hospital room: I
came out crying, gills for lungs in a
basket on the Ohio River, baptized
in July fireworks and thunder

Favorite color was swing set under sky,
leaves dried on sidewalk, Mother cried
for City’s mercy, peach trees in Saint
Matthews always with barren seeds,
sewer fish thirsty for feet

Swim through humid autumns,
hands grown from a holy love of
pumpkin guts, baseball cap covering
sunscreened red bangs behind third,
a mitt ready to catch the foul

A first sorrow: bikes don’t teach 
flying lessons. A second: blue television
living room light pixel grained breath – 
every sun-filled minute of spring
drenched in Dogwood-soaked sweat

July locusts, popcorn and lemonade 
stands, selling watermelon just beyond
front room mustard walls: who knew a
small house could claim an entire decade,
Lourdes’ bells fill a child’s first gasp

About the Author: Alexis Draut (she/her/hers) is a nature writer who has worked for a small-town newspaper, an organic farm, and a study abroad program. Her poetry, which she describes as place-based, has been published in The Social Justice Review, Havik Anthology and Internet Void. Alexis recently earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Chatham University (Pittsburgh, PA), and is currently working on her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Kentucky. She is a native Kentuckian, born and raised in Louisville. 

By Cerys Harrison

Henry Ford built Greenfield Village as a shrine to American commerce. He dismantled historical homes from across the country and reassembled them on the property he purchased in the middle of my hometown. Locals were hired, at minimum wage, to dress in period costumes and perform Americana chores for tourists like candle making, butter churning, hog feeding.

My father, a rabid Democrat, asserted the real reason for Greenfield Village was to keep ol’ Henry’s property taxes down. Regardless, each year he bought a family pass, and we spent many Sunday afternoons chugging around the Village in the 1873 Torch Lake locomotive that encircled Henry’s menagerie. I felt as if I was traveling between two worlds. One world held the clean, refurbished wooden benches on which we sat as we tooted past the pond with Stephen Foster’s steamboat on our left. The Southfield Freeway on my right led to another world, with Corvettes and Barracudas revving their engines.

I inherited a passion for gift shops from my mother and the one in Greenfield Village was exceptional. The summer I turned twelve I wrinkled my nose at the dolls with heads made from dried apples and the wooden hobby horses that had fascinated me the year before. Instead, I made my way to the section of the shop with racks of women’s dresses and matching bonnets, where shelves with Early American cookbooks and pamphlets with stencils for decorating rooms with Early American patterns soldiered next to packages of vintage sewing patterns. I imagined myself transported back in time to the general store in my cherished Little House books.

I wanted to churn butter with Ma Ingalls. I wanted to read books with Laura by candlelight. I wanted to wear bonnets and skirts that rustled around my ankles. I wondered what kind of underwear Early American girls wore. Those patterns weren’t on the racks in the Greenfield Village Gift Shop. I wondered, too, what Early American girls did when they got their periods.

“They used rags,” my friend Merilee replied as she crossed her delicate arms over her narrow chest and planted her Buster Browns firmly on her backyard grass. “That’s why they say, ‘she’s on the rag’.”

I wondered how Early American girls kept their rags in place. My newly acquired sanitary napkins were constantly sneaking out of their belt and laying at odd angles on my panties.

Merilee fixed me with squinted eyes. “Back then, girls didn’t run around all over the place like you do. They sat still and were quiet. So, the rags didn’t move.”

Merilee’s statements automatically carried the weight of authority whenever we had discussions. She was taller, eight months older, and she consistently brought home better report cards than mine. During Olden Days arguments, Merilee was especially persuasive because her father was a minister and her family lived as if they were in the Little House books. Like my own, Merilee’s family were Fundamental Baptists.

“And then some.” My mother rolled her eyes as she slipped her hands into soapy dishwater and looked through our kitchen window at the Hanson’s backyard.

As next-door neighbors and best friends, Merilee and I were often in each other’s houses. I studied the Hansons’ home as if it were in Greenfield Village. The rooms were dark with the curtains and blinds drawn, no matter the time of day or outside temperature, giving the entire house a musty, old closet smell. The small living room was cramped with bulky dark furniture, including an uncomfortable sofa with two matching stiff, boxy chairs.

“Is this horsehair?” I demanded of Merilee as I ran my hand over the unfamiliar, natty fabric of the living room couch.

Merilee rolled her eyes. “It’s tweed.”
“Feels like I’m sitting on a dead horse.”
To the left of the front door was the kitchen, twice the size of the living room, and Martha, one of Merilee’s two older sisters, was usually there. Large-boned and tall, Martha had just finished her high school freshman year, but she carried herself like a matronly widow, shoulders tucked forward, rarely making eye contact. She was solitary, quiet, and quick to respond when anyone made a request of her. I thought she could easily get a job churning butter at Greenfield Village. Her drab brown hair was long and twisted into a tight bun at the back of her neck. Her button brown eyes seemed smaller because of her bulbous, highly set nose. When I saw Martha walking from the parsonage to her father’s church, her movements were furtive, awkward.

But the Martha who ran the kitchen was a marvel. There, her movements were certain and forceful. The pies and cobblers she pulled from that antique oven were works of art. Her roasts steamed with fragrant juices wafting down the street to the delight of our neighbors. The pastries she delivered to the kitchen table were better than anything served at the cafeteria in Greenfield Village.

“Martha,” I gulped a bite of homemade apple pie, “you should call ol’ Henry Ford and offer to run the Early American Restaurant. Just send him some of your desserts. He’d hire you in a heartbeat!”
Martha ducked her head and gave me a grin that reached from one side of her wide face to the other before she scampered off to load the lunch dishes into the kitchen sink. Merilee gave me a sidelong smirk as she collected both our plates for Martha to wash.

The distribution of labor in the Hanson household perplexed me. Reverend Hanson spent most mornings working on the sermons he would deliver to his paltry congregation. Martha was responsible for everything that happened in the kitchen, all the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. Judy, the eldest, was the smart one. Her job was to do the laundry after she studied for the classes she would take in her upcoming senior year. Merilee was still being treated as a child by her parents, and their only requirement of her was to keep her eight-year-old brother, Archie Jr., entertained.

“What does your mother do all day?” I challenged Merilee. “My mother does all the cooking and cleaning. She does the laundry, too.”

“That’s because you’re spoiled,” came her familiar admonishment.
After lunch each afternoon, Mrs. Hanson sat in the uncomfortable chair by the front door. She smiled benignly, hands folded in her lap, easily blending into her surroundings. Her dark hair hung limply on her thin shoulders. Her black dresses reached the heels of her shoes, when she stood, which wasn’t often. I was fascinated by her stillness, her unaffecting voice, and, most of all, her complexion. It was thick, leathered, and wrinkled like the apple doll heads on display at Greenfield Village. I desperately wanted to touch Mrs. Hanson’s skin, to feel if the wrinkles were as parched as they appeared.

Each weekday afternoon, perched on that chair by the front door, Mrs. Hanson watched her husband like a crow on a telephone wire while her daughters went about their housekeeping chores. Her head dipped to the left as her eyes followed Reverend Hanson from the living room to the kitchen, then it dipped to the right as he moved from the kitchen to the stairs leading to his study on the second floor. Her hands were still, but her eyes skipped and jumped as she followed her husband trotting through the house.

Like clockwork, “Daddy?,” she’d call out minutes after Reverend Hanson returned to his upstairs study. “Do you want me to fix you a little something?”

“Just a cup of tea, Mother. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all!” Mrs. Hanson would shoot straight up from the chair. Off she’d scuttle to the kitchen, where Martha brewed a pot of tea and set a plate of cookies on a wooden tray with cups and saucers for two. Merilee, Archie Jr., and I would hear Mrs. Hanson softly knock on the study door, followed by the creak as it opened for her and, moments later, the click of the key in the lock. We knew what that meant. Merilee and I could play uninterrupted by her parents for the next several hours.

Both Merilee and I received transistor radios for Christmas and we agreed that CKLW, “Radio Eight-oh!,” played the best music in town. Every weekday, after her parents disappeared into the Reverend’s study, Merilee and I tuned our radios to 800 on our AM dials, slipped on our transistor’s wristlets and, each holding our radio against an ear, sashayed down the block. We toured our neighborhood from Telegraph Road to Crowley Park, from Lapham School to the railroad tracks singing along to Chicago’s “Colour My World” and Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train,” logging several miles each afternoon. Occasionally, we’d meet a kid from our class who screeched his bike to a stop and attempted a conversation. Merilee was unaware she had a habit of allowing her gaze to lazily wander from the boy’s hairline to his shoes and up to his eyes while her lips slightly pouted.

“Boys! Pfft! C’mon!,” I’d grouse, slipping my forefinger through the belt loop on the back of her pants and dragging her to consciousness.

That summer, we devoured teen magazines and I decided cut-offs was the look for me. I ripped and frayed my old jeans with fringe that hit mid-thigh. I wore my Keds without socks in a vain attempt to make my legs look longer. Merilee’s older sisters had recently handed down threadbare shirtwaist dresses in shades of taupe that looked like they were costumes from Greenfield Village. Her father allowed her to continue wearing pedal pushers and sleeveless blouses through the summer, but when we started seventh grade in the fall, her parents would insist Merilee wear those old dresses to our new junior high school. Although she and I didn’t talk about it, we both knew Merilee would have a lot of explaining to do to the other kids.

Merilee and her eldest sister, Judy, had the good fortune to look like Joni Mitchell when “Clouds” and “Blue” were the rage. Their blonde hair was worn long and straight with bangs that swept across their almond eyes. They looked sophisticated and svelte. I struggled with unexpected and self-conscious curves — hips and breasts that seemed to have bloomed overnight, and cheeks that retained their baby fat. If I had worn her pedal pushers and sleeveless blouses, I would have looked like I raided my grandmother’s closet. On Merilee, the look was stylish, retro.

One afternoon just before sixth-grade graduation, my mother and I stepped into Kresge’s Department store. While my mother debated the merits of buying Tupperware knock-offs, I wandered over to the makeup department to experiement with the Maybelline samples. I noticed Judy at the opposite end of the counter, poking through the Yardley display. I raised my hand in a wave as she stood, stunned, looking in my direction. Judy’s lips glistened wetly as she made a quick swivel to her right and bolted out the main door. Later that afternoon, while I unloaded my mother’s Kresge bags from her car, I glanced at the street in front of the Hansons’ house and saw Judy sitting very close to a boy in the front seat of his car.

I reported these events to Merilee one August afternoon when she lectured me

on the reasons God didn’t want people listening to rock and roll on Sundays. Tiger baseball games were okay. Like Reverend Hanson, we were fans and listened to every game on our transistor radios. The Reverend said listening to baseball on Sunday was in perfect accordance with the Bible, but listening to rock and roll was not.

“What about the rest of the week?” “The rest of the week is okay.” “Even The Doors?”
“The Doors are okay.”

“But they sing ‘don’t you love her madly’.” “They mean don’t you love her a lot.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s because you have a dirty mind.”

“What about Love Me Two Times? Does that mean to love him twice as much?”

“Sure. What else could it mean?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think your dad would like Jim Morrison no matter what

day of the week it is. I mean, look at his picture in Tiger Beat! He doesn’t have a shirt on! And look at what it says his favorite meal is, pizza and beer! I think if your dad saw this Tiger Beat he would make you change the station when The Doors came on.”

Merilee frowned as she considered this because Jim Morrison was our favorite rock star.

“Daddy said rock and roll is okay. But not on Sundays.”

“Wait.” I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “Are you telling me I’m going to hell?”

Merilee’s arms crossed her chest. “Your family does lots of things on Sundays that they shouldn’t, like listening to rock and roll or going to Greenfield Village. It’s not just your family going to hell. All the people who work on Sundays are, too, even if they don’t know the Bible. Daddy says if your dad was a better father, your family wouldn’t have to worry about hell.”

My cheeks flamed as tears pooled in my eyes and the part of me that is my mother’s daughter chewed on my lower lip, but the part of me that is my father’s child won out. I squared my shoulders, wiped away the tears, and took a step towards her.

“I’m going to hell because my family does things like go to the Village on Sundays. All the people working there in the concession stands and the ticket booths, they’re going to hell, too, because the Bible says no one should work on Sundays.”

Merilee nodded firmly. “That’s right.”

“At Tiger Stadium, people working in concession stands and ticket booths on Sundays won’t go to hell?”

Merilee’s eyes flicked around her bedroom.

“Can you show me where it says in the Bible that God. Likes. Baseball?” My nose was an inch from Merilee.

“Daddy says listening to rock and roll on Sundays is a sin but baseball is okay!” Merilee’s Buster Browns stomped on the parquet floor.

I played my trump cards about her favorite sister, Judy.

“You are such a troublemaker. She had wet lips because she licked them, probably. And the boy who drives her home from school needs help with his homework.”

“Brother!” I hooted. “I hope I never have to help a boy with his homework if it means he has to put his arm around me to study!”

Merilee chewed her thumbnail and glared at me. “Daddy is going to be so mad.”

After this exchange, we spent less time together. Merilee resented learning her sister had worn makeup and socialized with a boy because she had no choice but to rat Judy out to her parents. I was furious that my closest friend, a girl who was older and smarter than me, parroted her father’s hypocrisy. We were at a stalemate.

Judy didn’t finish high school in my hometown. Not long after Merilee and I debated the sin of Sunday rock and roll, Reverend Hanson announced Judy needed to improve her relationship with God and she was sent to an evangelical high school in Indiana.

“It doesn’t make sense to me.” I huffed. “If Christians only stay with other Christians, what’s the point? Our preacher’s always saying how tough it is to be a Christian, but it wouldn’t be if everyone were.”

“You don’t understand.” Merilee glared at me.
“No. I don’t.”
“Daddy says the boys around here only think about one thing. He says we need to be around other kinds of boys.”
“The boys we know only care about baseball.”
Her eyes narrowed. “No, they don’t. And you know it.” “You mean they think about sex.”

“Yes.” she nodded, arms crossed and Buster Browns planted. “You and I think about sex.”

“It’s not the same.”
“You and I think about sex all the time.” “It’s different with girls.”

I smirked.
“It’s true. You and I think about it, but we would never do it.”

I rolled my eyes. “We wouldn’t know what to do.”
One Saturday afternoon in late September, Merilee showed me a letter from

Judy describing a proper boy from her senior class who proposed marriage on their first date. Judy said yes. Merilee thought this was very exciting and proof her parents’ decision to send Judy to their alma mater was the right one.

“Don’t you see? If she hadn’t gone there, she never would have met him. He wants to get married right away, right after they graduate. It’s so romantic!”

“What are they going to do for money?”
“They don’t need money, they’re going to college!”
Shortly after the receipt of Judy’s letter, Martha and Merilee each packed a

suitcase and waited in the back seat of the family’s Buick Roadmaster. I lay in bed staring at the clock on my nightstand. The day before, I sat on Merilee’s bed while she packed sensible shirtwaists and anklets, her copies of the Little House books, and her transistor radio. I promised I would get up early the next morning to wave goodbye from my porch, but I didn’t. My body felt as if it were made of stone as I imagined the black Buick pulling out of the driveway. Merilee broke her promise to send me her new address. I never heard from her.

As seventh grade rolled into eighth, I considered the loss of Merilee’s friendship to be an ache that had calloused over. The days spent pouring over teen magazines and learning the words to songs I shared with a best friend were wispy, infrequent memories. On the morning of my first day in high school, I climbed up the school bus steps to find there was only one open seat. Gwen, a girl I slighlty remembered from sixth grade, used an envelope to mark her place in a worn New Testament and beamed up at me from under white blonde lashes as I sat next to her.

We chatted about the reputations of our teachers as we compared our class schedules. We had none in common. Our conversation stalled. Gwen began twisting a lock of hair around her index finger. She suddenly blinked rapidly and grinned. Did I remember Merilee Hanson, the girl who used to live next door to me? I admitted I did, addled by the unexpected question. Gwen’s cheeks flushed as she pulled out the envelope.

“I just got a letter from her! During summer vacation, I went to the Bible camp Merilee’s brother-in-law runs in Indiana. We had such a great time! There are some people, you know? You just click with them. That’s how it’s always been with me and Merilee. Ooooh! Are you okay?”

“New contacts,” I lied as I examined the mascara smudges on my fingertips.

#

The summer I graduated from high school, I got one of those minimum wage jobs at Greenfield Village. I didn’t feed chickens at the Firestone Farmhouse or cook meals over the hearth at Cotswold Cottage. At the orientation meeting, I received my assignment to research the late 19th century Bloomer Girls and develop a character to play while on the job as a reenactor. I was given a bicycle from the Overman Wheel Company and a list of items to retrieve from the Village’s costume shop including, to my astonishment, underwear appropriate for an Early American Girl: a loose chemise and tight corset.

I soon discovered I had a plum assignment. I simply rode my bicycle around the Village, chatting up the guests at a Suffragette. On hot, sticky summer days, reenactors who had traditional women’s roles were stuck in their assigned house and the expression “slaving over a hot stove” took on real meaning. Their only relief came from brief excursions to fetch water or wood and from breezes that occasionally drifted past the heavy damask curtains in the houses. For me, the most challenging aspect of my job was getting used to riding a bike on the bumpy dirt roads that crisscrossed the Village.

The small group of roving reenactors included my summer boyfriend. Jamie wore a grey Confederate officer’s uniform that complimented his wavy, dark hair and aquamarine eyes. His character, Rupert Beauregard Calhoun III, was in Greenfield Village because he was making his way back to the family’s Virginia plantation after deserting his infantry regiment at Gettysburg. Rupert’s remarkably poor sense of direction being one reason he failed so miserably as a soldier. Jamie used his character’s AWOL status to scout out the best places on the grounds to sneak a cigarette.

I couldn’t look at Jamie without wanting to run my hands up his arms, to pull his shoulders closer, to kiss the mouth that tasted of Marlboros and Wintergreen Lifesavers. I was heady with lust. We met regularly in the secluded areas of the Village. Afterwards, he helped me pin my hair back into a Gibson Girl pompadour under my straw boater and dust the dirt from my bloomers. I navigated the rocks on the dirt roads back to the carousel in the middle of the Village; Jamie dodged in and out of trees along the outfield of the Walnut Grove Base Ball Field at the far end of the property.

Our affection for each other was mutual and finite. On Labor Day, Jamie would hop in his Mustang Mach 1 and take the Southfield Freeway north to Michigan Tech where he’d finish his degree in computer engineering. I had a one-way ticket to LaGuardia and a student loan for my freshman year in the NYU drama department.

One August afternoon, after Jamie and I clocked in at the Administration Building, we followed the path to the Josephine Ford Water Fountain at the entrance of the Village, a spot where tourists typically gathered to pull out their Instamatics for a snapshot before crossing the railroad tracks and setting out to explore the grounds.

I was walking my bike through the crowd, careful to avoid bumping into any of the guests when I saw that long, blonde Joni Mitchell hair. I abruptly stopped. She was no longer what I would have described as tall; she had maybe an inch on me. Her dress was made of the familiar thin, faded cotton, but it wasn’t a shirtwaist. She was five or six months pregnant. When the baby in the stroller next to her began squawking, she rummaged through the diaper bag on her hip, pulled out a pacifier, and plugged it in the child’s contorted mouth. A slight, older man scurried out from the Gift Shop carrying two large strawberry Slushies. He deposited one in the cup holder of the stroller and slurped the other between animated gestures at the buildings encircling the outer perimeter of the pavilion.

Merilee’s eyes followed the man’s jabbing finger. That’s when she noticed me looking at her from across the fountain. She tilted her head to one side, frowned slightly, then a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She said something to the man with her and made her way through the crowd. Jamie turned around a few steps ahead of me. “What?” he mouthed at me.

Merilee nodded at Jamie and addressed me, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Her voice was soft, with no trace of the authoritative tone I remembered. I shrugged awkwardly. She continued, “Can we buy train tickets at the station, or do we have to go all the way back to the entrance and buy them at the ticket booth?”

I hesitated. Jamie interjected she could buy tickets for the train at either place. She nodded at him again, walked a few paces before pausing and turning towards me.

“Thanks,” she murmured. And she was gone.

About the Author: Cerys Harrison was born and raised in the home of the Ford Mustang, Dearborn Michigan. Growing up, she was fascinated with New York City and, after graduating from college during a recession, decided to move there, thinking it was more glamorous to be an unemployed actor than an out of work librarian. After a detour in advertising, Cerys returned to her hometown and libraries. And an occasional turn on the stage. 

By Catherine O’Brien

At that altitude everything slowed, everything but our defiance to be understood and known by the people we existed because of. Blindfolded by the night we proceeded at a funereal pace, one of your hands all slayed fingers queried our future, the other held mine heating our palms with all its might. All around us the snow received yet more snow and the ripeness of our loss walked between us. We telepathically agreed to ward it off by replaying the showreels of our memories. Therefore, our giggles were wholly in context. Our laughter was a riotous explosion when it arrived like a lid dancing a jig on a boiling pot. We must have looked delicious to our predators, two marshmallow figures for main, with snow billowing in soft pillows on a dry iced plate for afters. 

It was excruciatingly difficult to breathe as each breath challenged our lungs to a new level of endurance testing. I knew that sparkling stalactites must have dangled from most of my alveoli. You had done well convincing me not to scream their names any longer, it was weakening not waning (the guilt I mean). It divested me of my ability to think straight and so you were our compass. You, their favourite and only son. 

You were also and still are, an accomplished guide and so, we were unsurprised when our destination despite a veritable blizzard spewing all around us, elbowed its way into sight. The moon had usurped the sun’s position in the sky casting playful shadows on the sombre citadel which meditated in the clouds awaiting our arrival. The surrounding walls ravaged by time begrudgingly stayed aloft despite the odd crumble. As we mounted its granite steps, we saw that the sky had belched stiff meringues of snow coating its soaring steeples with dainty edible hats. Two flags, that of our world and that soon to be ours, flapped and slapped a ceremonial welcome. In that moment, the preceding hours and minutes felt like a thumb print on an already blurry picture. We felt giddy with relief and mounting fatigue.  

Although we were soaked through to the skin, the only visible traces of the snow we carried inside were a light chalk dusting on our soles. A man with a cherubic smile who was a touch taller than average approached us. He held his open arms aloft and spoke in a timbre which knew the hallmarks of the unspeakable trauma we were still tethered to. 

“You are so welcome friends but now you must rest”

We walked together as our gesticulating guide provided an impromptu tour. Richard laughed when he saw the growing brightness of my eyes as they swept over the potato fields which stretched before us on our left. Ears of cheeky corn waved at us from the right. I spied cotton ball sheep grazing on the hills above us and butterflies with mosaics on their backs luxuriated in a world not known to hurt. The countryside looked just as ours had before our world fell asleep, recalcitrant in stubborn beauty. A tractor in combat against the earth was like the snap of impatient fingers jerking me back to life. Suddenly I felt present and exposed to vulnerability with just a fig leaf to cover my modesty. Despite Richard’s efforts to stand in front and block it, I saw the poster nailed to a Sycamore tree. The words seemed alien to me but the faces looking at me could not have been more familiar. We stood on either side of them in pixelated realness. I removed us by gently tearing at the perforated fault lines of our lives until they remained wrapped around one another, hip to hip and heart to heart. I handed you the papier mâché of yourself and stuffed myself in my pocket for later. Richard clacked his tongue in sympathy and we moved on towards the accommodations leaving you behind, yet again. 

You, my dear brave brother, were strong enough to start mopping up the splattered ink of our lives. I floundered. 

“Just because I don’t say it, doesn’t make it any less real”

“Yes,” I said.

I envied you, the horologist tampering with his timepieces setting his own increments within which to deal with it. I longed to learn your secret. In hindsight, maybe it was those magnifying glasses that held all the power and called all the clocks. 

“Eventually, it will pass,” you said. 

I didn’t ask what you meant but I considered and still wonder this, is sadness subject to atrophy? Can it be shrunk to a size so diminutive and light that it becomes too meaningless to be absorbed? Those were the thoughts that occupied my mind. Your conversations about them tapered and I imagined you as a bird. You were soaring above the fields among a structured cloud formation knowing the neat circumference of your personal grief. 

Seeking aloneness not loneliness, I sat in the shade of a yawning Eucalyptus tree. There were no apples which spared me a Newtonian moment to shatter my head full of sadness. It wasn’t until the second hand alighted on my shoulder that my heart began to flurry and time lapsed in the most perfect of moments. 

They applied the subtlest compression as they handed me a crumpled poster. 

About the Author: Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She writes bi-lingually in both English and Irish. Her work has appeared in print and online. She holds a PhD in English Literature. Her work in forthcoming in Idle Ink, Janus Literary, Five Minute Lit, The Birdseed, Free Flash Fiction and more. She tweets She tweets @abairrud2021.

By Nick Young

The town was in for it, he knew.  Gonna be a big storm.  He could feel it, see it in the way the thunderheads were crowding the western skyline.   A helluva storm.    

He continued muttering to himself as he picked up his pace, causing the rhythmic squeak of the wheels on the small cart he pulled to quicken – a-wee-ah-kah, a-wee-ah-kah, a-wee-ah-kah . . . 

Gotta get oil, 3-in-One – yes!

He left the alley at Cotler Way and cut west to Main and across the street to Sandy’s Diner — low-slung, neon-lit, big windows all around.  Carefully, as he did each time he came, which was almost every day, he parked his cart in the same spot, a little patch of worn asphalt not far from the entrance, so he could keep a close eye on it while he was inside.

He was a fixture at the place, so none of the scattering of dinnertime customers who remained paid him any mind when he pushed through the revolving door and slid onto one of the red vinyl-covered swivel stools at the end of the counter.

“You’re late, Connie,” said LuAnn as she ambled toward him, wiping her hands on a small towel and depositing it under the counter.  He had never much cared for the name “Connie.”  Too girlish, or so he had it in his mind.  But it was better than his given name – Conrad.  He really hated that.

“Yeah, I know.  Couldn’t be helped, Lu.  No way to avoid,” Connie went rattling away, his mumbled speech like bursts from a machine gun.  “Went all the way out to Luten’s, Lu,” and then he laughed, showing a row of grey teeth benesth his thick walrus mustache. “That’s funny, ‘Luten’s Lu,’” and chuckled again.  He began rummaging around the threadbare Army fatigues he wore, one that still bore his name “Hellenmeir” embroidered in black on a strip of cloth sewn above the right breast pocket.  Connie’s spidery fingers extracted a crumpled pack of cigarettes.  He burrowed into the foil and paper until he found a smoke and pulled it free.  “Last one, Lu.  Maybe I should break it in half.  Save part of it for later, you know?”  The waitress, at fifty old enough to be Connie’s sister, shook her head, leaning across the counter.

“No need,” she said, hushed.  “I’ll take care of you.”  She raised a finger to her lips.  “Our little secret.”  Connie gave her a clumsy wink in return, went back into the pocket for a battered Zippo, lit his cigarette and then appraised his lighter.

“Long time.  I’ve had this a long time.  Do you know how long I’ve had this, Lu?”

“You’ve told me.”

“Yeah?”

“Many times, Connie.”

“Since ‘nam.”

“I know.”

“Same day I got drafted.”

“Nineteen sixty-seven.”

“September.”

“September.  Yeah, September.  How’d you know that, Lu?”

“You told me.”

“I did?”

“Many times.”

“So, yeah.  September, 1967.  That’s a long time, Lu.”

“Almost thirty years.”

“Goddamn.  Long time.”  Connie drew deeply on his cigarette, the corners around his eyes crinkling.  “You can’t tell me who was President then.  Bet you can’t.” LuAnn pursed her lips and appeared to look far away in thought, the repetition of a game they’d played countless times.

“Let me see . . . 1967,” she said, tapping the pencil she held against her chin, finally announcing:  “Nixon.  Richard Nixon.”  This brought a look of glee to Connie’s face, as he leaned his head backward, laughing.

“Noooo, Lu – not tricky-fucking-Dick!  Lyndon Baines Johnson!”

“Oh, yes – why sure, you’re right, Connie,” LuAnn said with mock surprise, “It was LBJ.”  Connie’s head bobbed up and down at his triumph.

“Yeah.  Yeah.  LBJ.  Not the Trickster!”  He took another drag on his cigarette.  LuAnn could not help smiling at the man’s unadulterated joy.

“So,” she began, “what’ll it be for dinner tonight?  The usual?”  Connie’s mirth evaporated as he furrowed his brow for a moment.

“No.  Not tonight, Lu.  No mac-and-cheese tonight.  No.  I would like a Sandy Big Burger – yes!  A Sandy Big Burger with the works – but no onion.  The works but no onion.  And crispy fries.  Large order, crispy fries.”

“And what about something to drink?  Coke?”

“Sure, yeah.  Coke.  Ice-cold Coca-Cola, Lu.”

“You got it.”

“And make it to go.”

“You’re not going to keep me company?”

“Noooooo.  Can’t,” Connie declared.  “Not tonight. Gotta boogie on, Lu.  Big storm.”  The waitress cocked her head and looked outside.  It was getting on a quarter-to-nine.  The evening was drawing down, growing darker because of the thick canopy of clouds moving in.

“Okay,” she said.  “I’ll get this ready for you chop-chop, and you can scoot on your way.”  LuAnn bustled off to the kitchen, leaving Connie to nervously glance outside, first toward the gathering storm, then to make sure his cart was safely in its place.  He drew on his cigarette in between inaudible mutterings.  From time to time his wandering eyes met those of one of the other diners scattered in booths along the main wall and they nodded and smiled or raised a hand in greeting.  Everyone knew Connie.  Everyone liked him, looking upon him with benevolence.  He squinted as the smoke from the cigarette between his lips drifted into his eyes.  Flattening his hands, he laid them palms-down on the countertop and slid them slowly across and back relishing the smooth, cool feel of the Formica.

Long before that night, Conrad Hellenmeir had been well-known in his hometown of Holloway, Missouri.  He began attracting some notoriety when he was just was a schoolboy.  It wasn’t a particularly unusual story; it was replicated in a thousand other small towns all over the country.  

Connie, who grew up on a farm with a younger sister, was a born athlete.  He first showed his prowess during softball and rag football games with the neighbor kids on a half-acre patch of grass his dad had left next to the bean field.

Once he was old enough, Connie started playing in organized baseball, where he stood out as a perennial all-star second baseman.  On the basketball court, he was a pretty fair jump-shooting forward.

By the time he reached Holloway Regional High, Connie’s was a regular name in the sports pages of the local weekly.  And all the coaches were eager to sign him up for their teams.  He didn’t disappoint, either, lettering every year in three sports.  As good as he was on the baseball diamond or handling himself in the low post, he was most gifted as a tight end and middle linebacker for the Holloway Yellowjackets.

“Never seen a young man with his kind of instincts,” Ben Tomlinson, who coached the varsity, often marveled.  “Offense . . . defense – he just knows where the ball’s gonna be on every play.  Somethin’ special.”  

In his junior year, he was a unanimous all-state first-team pick in the Missouri coaches’ poll.  College scouts started sniffing around.  The University of Missouri in Columbia, then rivalling Nebraska as the powerhouse football program in the Big Eight, even dangled the prospect of a full scholarship ride if he duplicated as a senior what he’d done the year before.  And he was well on his way, picking up where he’d left off, catching five touchdown passes and making a dozen tackles in his first two games.

Then came the bicyle incident.

“Here you go, Connie,” said LuAnn as she set a brown paper bag down on the counter.  “One specially made Sandy Big Burger with the works – no onion . . . a large order of crispy fries and an ice-cold Coke.  Oh, and I slipped in a slice of peach pie for you.”  She leaned in a bit closer and whispered, “On the house.”

“Mmmmmm, peach pie – yes!” Conrad exclaimed.  “My favorite, Lu.”  He relished the thought of the sweet fruit filling with the perfect melt-in-your-mouth crust for just a moment before his brow creased.  “Money, Lu.  You’ve got to have some money.  How much?  What do I owe you?”  LuAn dutifully reviewed the check stapled to the top of the bag.

“Looks like four-fifty will cover it.”  This sent Connie thrusting his hand into the other breast pocket of his fatigues.  He drew out a fistful of crumpled bills and loose coins and deposited them carefully on the countertop. 

“You count it for me, okay?”

“Sure,” LuAnn said as she began picking through the money.

“And don’t forget to give yourself a niiiice tip, okay Lu?”

“I always do, Connie.”  All of this was part of the ritual, too.  But LuAnn never took the full amount of the check – that was on orders from Sandy himself — and never a tip.    Instead, she made a great show of counting out the money, then taking a single dollar bill and putting it in her apron pocket.  She folded the few bills left and stacked the spare change on top. “There you go.  All square.”

“We’re square, Lu?” 

“We’re square.”

“You sure?” He was insistent.

“Positive.”

“Well, okay, then,” Connie said, rising from the stool.  He cast a quick glance over his shoulder out the window.  “Gotta get a move on.  Big storm, Lu.”  As he put away his change and picked up the paper bag that held his dinner, LuAnn snapped her fingers.

“Oh . . . I almost forgot,” she said, reaching into the big pocket of her pink apron.  She drew out a pack of cigarettes and pushed it over the countertop.  Conrad’s face broke into a big smile.

“Heyyyyy, Lu – thank you!  My brand, too.  Camels!  How did you know?”  LuAnn smiled.  She had long before taken it upon herself to buy him cigarettes or flints and fluid for his lighter.

“A lucky guess,” she answered.  Conrad tucked the smokes into the pocket of his fatigues.

“Thanks again, Lu.  Can’t stay, though.  Gotta keep truckin’.  Big storm.”

“Stay dry, Connie,” the waitress said as he pushed open the diner door.  Conrad bobbed his head in reply, stepping quickly outside and tucked the bag of food inside the worn khaki canvas knapsack lashed to his cart with a bungee cord.  Then, with another nervous glance at the sky, he hurried off – a-wee-ah-kah . . . a-wee-ah-kah. . . a-wee-ah-kah . . . .

How often does it prove so that the trajectory of a life can be altered irrevecobly by a happenstance that seems inconsequential at the time?

Such was the case of the bicycle accident.

It was in late September, 1966.  A Saturday.  A beautiful fall afternoon. The gold and crimson maples were beginning to shed in earnest, and a few people around Holloway were taking advantage of the nearly windless day to get ahead of the game by raking the leaves into curbside heaps and burning them, infusing the air with their smoky, seasonal perfume.  Conrad and his best friend Ray Dunbar, the Yellowjackets’ quarterback, were walking along Eaglin Street over by the high school on their way to meet their girlfriends at The “In” Spot when, like a bolt out of the blue, Eddie McCorkle, the town’s eight-year-old answer to Dennis the Menace, laughing and looking back over his shoulder, not paying a damn bit of attention to where he was going, came rocketing down his driveway just as the two boys approached.  Connie wasn’t aware, but it caught Ray’s eye and he cried out:

“Eddie!”

Eddie’s head whipped around and, when he saw what was imminent, slammed on his brakes and swerved.  At the same moment, Connie, startled by his friend’s shout, turned in the direction of the onrushing bicycle and instinctively pivoted to his left.   Eddie’s move and Connie’s reaction avoided an all-out collision, but the young boy’s bike did strike a glancing blow off Connie’s right knee.  He winced and let out a grunt while Ray yelled:

“Eddie, you want to kill somebody?  Watch where the hell you’re going!”

“Geez, I’m really sorry,” Eddie said, abashed.  “You hurt bad?”  Connie flexed his leg. 

“Nah.  Just a bump.  I’ll live.”  He walked up and down a few paces, limping slightly.  Ray glared, still furious.

“You do that again, kid, and I’ll personally drag your ass into the house and let your old man take care of you.”

“It won’t happen again,” said the young boy, now seriously chastised.  “Promise.”

And so Ray and Conrad moved on, Connie rather more gingerly, though he didn’t complain.  Nor did he make much of his injury later when his dad noticed his son favoring the leg.

“Nothing.  Only a bump,” Connie had said.  “Just need to walk it off.”  But that had not worked, and the ice pack he applied that night had had little effect.  The next morning there was stiffness and some swelling.  On Monday, after examining his star player’s knee, coach Tomlinson instructed Connie not to practice during the week in the hope there would be sufficient healing for that Friday’s big conference homecoming game against West Bensonville.

And the knee did come around with plenty of ice and rest.  By Thursday, the swelling had disappeared and Connie was able to run with no pain.

When game time rolled around, he was ready, eager for action.

But as we live betrayal is never far off; it lurks, ever opportunistic.  On the second play of the game, a simple slant pass over the middle, Connie sensed a twinge, nothing more, when he made his cut; but in that instant the supreme athletic confidence of his body failed him, short-circuited by a shadow of doubt, infinitesimal, but enough, and the ball slipped past his fingers by a whisper.

In the stands there was a groan from the Holloway faithful, but no one placed any great importance on the moment.  Although it looked like a sure thing for a score, it was just one play, early in the game; and besides, you couldn’t expect even Connie Hellenmeir to make every catch.

If it had been only that moment, only the one dropped pass, it would have been erased from memory.  But that’s not how it ended.  As the game went on, there were more signs that something was not the same with Connie.  It wasn’t so much his play on defense.  He made his fair share of tackles.  No, it was when Holloway had the ball, and the team was leaning on him to make the big plays the way he always had.  For the shadow of doubt was growing and would soon come to suffocate his self-confidence, in that game and the rest that followed.

It was a mystifying turn that those around Connie – his coach, the team, his parents, the whole town – simply couldn’t explain.  For Connie himself it was an incomprehensible loss of mojo, and the harder he tried to recapture it, the more it eluded him.  In the remaining games that season, he caught only three passes, not one of them for scores.  

It was over.

The college scouts stopped coming around.  Mizzou let it be known that, with regret, there would be no offer of a scholarship.

Yes, there was basketball in the winter and track in the spring, but his play was desultory; and he collected his sports letters at the end-of-the-year awards assembly with no great fanfare.  People had taken to looking the other way.  His name rarely appeared in the newspaper again and then only in the small print, never the headlines.

Without an offer of an athletic ride, college disappeared from Connie’s horizon.  The reality was that he had little interest in the scholarly life and less aptitude for it.  He spent the summer after graduation dividing his time between helping his dad around the farm and bagging groceries at the Kroger in Delmark, twenty minutes south of Holloway.  

With the war heating up, a few guys Connie’s age decided to enlist.  Ray Dunbar signed on for a hitch in the Navy.  He tried to interest his friend in doing the same, but Connie said shipboard life wasn’t for him; he would stick it out as long as he could.

He didn’t have much of a wait.  Connie’s letter from Uncle Sam arrived in late September.  By the end of October, he was doing basic at Fort Polk.  Six months later, he was on the other side of the world, a fresh-faced grunt in a place called Tay Ninh.

*****

As Connie hurried south through the town, the darkening clouds grew increasingly menacing.  There were the first growls of thunder and brief strobes of lightning.  When he reached Oak Street, he paused before crossing to the opposite side of Main.  As he did, a Holloway police car rolled to a stop by the curb and the passenger side window glided open.

“Hey, Mr. Hellenmeir.”  Tim Binter was one of the town’s four police officers.  “You okay?  Everything cool?”

“Yeah, man.  I’m cool.  Very cool, but – “ his eyes shot toward the sky – “gotta keep movin’.  Big storm, Tim.”

“Well, okay.  You find a place to get out of the rain.”

“Dry – yes!  You got it, Tim.  You got it.”  And with that, the patrol car rolled away.  Connie swiveled his head, looking carefully from side to side for traffic and crossed the street.

Two blocks away, he ducked into the entryway of a nondescript three-story brick building flanked on one side by several ancient, towering trees and on the other by a small parking lot.  The sign that ran along the front of the building announced it as the Jasper County Housing Authority, where Connie had lived in a tiny studio apartment on the top floor for more than ten years.  Without any income except from the now-and-again odd jobs he was given around town, Connie needed all the help he could get from the government to keep a roof over his head.  Still, he spent as little time as possible there, choosing instead to walk the streets compulsively during daylight and  find shelter where he could at night.  He never spelled out his aversion to his friends, his sister or his parents.  The only explanation he offered was to his social worker.  He told her the confines of his room reminded him of “a bad, bad place.”

On this night, despite the impending blow, Connie wouldn’t be staying, but he made time to stop by the apartment long enough to pick up a couple of crumpled tee shirts, a dirty pair of jeans and a Ziploc bag containing several dollars’ worth of quarters.  Then he left the building and moved through the lowering gloom as quickly as he could, his cart at arm’s length behind him.

*****

When he was in country, Connie never felt safe.  Nobody did.  How could you?  Vietnam was a thin wire stretched at maximum tension across a chasm of horror.  At any moment it might snap.  By the summer of ’68, the shitstorm of the Tet offensive early in the year had died down, only to surge and ebb in the spring and then flare again over the summer. Northwest of Saigon, the generals had ordered forward firebases set up to cover infantry operations against North Vietnamese regulars and VC moving down from the Cambodian border.  

Three klicks north of Tay Ninh, two platoons had been dispatched to probe along enemy lines; and on July 28, the day before his nineteenth birthday, Conrad Hellenmeir and his squad of eight others moved with all the stealth they could through deep jungle, unsure how far ahead they might encounter Charley.  It was a nighttime patrol in the season of the monsoon, which brought along with drenching rain, humidity that would rival a sauna, magnifying the other miseries of the bush that the grunts had to endure.  

When the downpour eased, with a dull crescent of moon overhead, the sergeant signalled for two men, Connie and Roland Jackson, to angle left and make their way down through a shallow ravine.  Jackson moved out first as Connie lagged back, fumbling to free his rifle which had become snagged on his poncho.  By the time Connie had taken care of the problem, Jackson was crouching low, moving quickly through a small clearing in the ravine about ten yards ahead.  That distance saved Connie’s life, for in the next instant, as Roland Jackson stepped over a fallen log, his right boot touched a tripwire and triggered the Russian-made mine that had been hidden in the undergrowth.  The explosion — a sickening ka-whump! –- blew Jackson apart.  Connie, shielded from the full force of the blast, was raked by small bits of shrapnel.  He would have survived those with little more than a lifetime of scars along the left side of his torso.  But it wasn’t just the shrapnel.  It was the piece of the barrel of his buddy’s M16 that struck under the lip of his helmet, just above the left temple.

Connie never knew what hit him, not until long after he’d been choppered away, his life snatched back by a MASH unit surgical team and flown to a U.S. hospital in the Philippines to recover.  It would be many weeks before Connie was able to comprehend the full story of that night.  He had been the only one in his squad to survive.  A miracle, he was told, given his wounds and the ferocity of the firefight.

All of it was lost to Connie.  His last memory of the night was that of a nocturnal creature snuffling and grunting somewhere near him.  What came next in his consciousness was the red-orange flare behind his closed eyes and the persistent screaming in his left ear, like the noise of an F4 idling on a flight deck.  

It took seven weeks and two more operations before Connie was well enough to be put on a plane back to the States.  The whine in his ear subsided over time.  The noise in his brain and the recurring dreams — haunted nightscapes, full of shadows and dread — never did.  And while Connie regained most of his normal speech, his damaged cognition would never be repaired.

Holloway made a big fuss over his return.  The high school band played at a ceremony outside city hall.  The mayor spoke, calling Connie “our hometown hero,” and pinned a medal that hung from a short strip of red, white and blue crepe cloth onto his uniform.  Over the years, the color in the cloth faded and the gold plating on the medal mostly rubbed off, but Connie was extremely proud of it, even though he sometimes struggled to make sense of its significance.  Nevertheless,  he made sure he wore it every Veteran’s Day, along with his Purple Heart.  And he never failed to wear it on Memorial Day in honor of Ray Dunbar, his best friend.  He was killed in a freak accident aboard the USS Enterprisewhen a bomb he and two crewmates were loading onto a Phantom exploded.  Ray never got a parade, never heard inspiring words from the mayor, never had a ribbon pinned to his chest.  His reward was his allotted share of the family plot in the shade of small elm tree at Rolling Hills Cemetery.  So the medals held great importance for Connie, and he kept them both carefully tucked inside his knapsack.

After all the hoopla died down, Connie settled into a routine.  During the first year or so, he lived on the farm.  A couple of times a week, his sister drove him fifty miles to a VA hospital near Jefferson City for rehab sessions to try to restore his normal speech and unscramble his cognitive functions.  The therapists were patient, and over time, Connie made some improvement. 

His personal life was a different story.  His girlfriend from high school was long gone, living in a hippie commune in Oregon.  There would be no other women in his life.  At home, as understanding as his parents tried to be, there were inevitable tensions.  Connie’s injuries had left a brittle edge to his personality that could easily lapse into a childish stubbornness.  The flashbacks he suffered that too-often rent the night with anguish, alarmed his parents.  And they were deeply sorrowful, filled with guilt that they were powerless to make life the way it had been.  Connie’s taste for alcohol – and his father’s – often led to jagged standoffs and bitter recriminations.  So, after months of deterioration, rather than see their relationship permanently scarred, the decision was made to have Connie move out and into his own place.

In the beginning, Connie liked his Housing Authority apartment, or he seemed to.  But as the years passed, it increasingly became a way station and little more.  In Connie’s world there was another place he had found and adopted as his frequent refuge, especially on a night like this when the lightning and thunder breaking over the town triggered fearful memories of the terror that had gripped him many times while hunkered down in the bush.

The laundromat sat near the edge of Holloway, where West Providence Street ran out and County Route Twenty began.  Built in the Seventies, “The Sudsery” had changed hardly at all.  Its cinderblock walls remained a psychedelic swirl of puce and avocado green, now faded with age, yet still god-awful.  A trio of hazy windows looked out at a small parking lot that was veined with cracks and buckled in several places.  The “laundrymat,” as some of the locals called it, had seen better days, but to Connie there was no place in town more beautiful.  He relished the garishness, the  fluorescent glare.  Most of all he found comfort in the steady rhythm of its machines. 

He hurried up to the door just as as gust of west wind rose and the first fat drops of rain began falling.  Inside, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the harsh light.  No one else was there, and Connie knew there was little likelihood there would be through the night because of the weather.  He liked that, having the place all to himself.

“Gonna be a good night,” he said, with a touch of deep satisfaction. He ran a hand through the thick spray of curly gray hair on his head, as his eyes swept the familiar space.  The building’s exterior color scheme became an equally grating combination of tangerine and canary yellow on the inside walls, inset with eight front-load washing machines on one side, eight dryers on the other.  Down the middle of the room sat a row of top-loading washers, and two vending machines – one for sodas, the other for packets of soaps and softeners.  At the far end, there was a sink, small folding table, bathroom and supply closet.  

Connie’s first order of business was rummaging inside his knapsack and removing the wad that was his jeans and black tee shirts.  He put them in one of the washing machines, bought small box of detergent and dumped it in before slipping two quarters into the slots on the washer and starting the cycle.

Hot wash . . . cold rinse – yes!

Beneath the windows at the laundromat’s front ran a plain wooden  bench for sorting and folding.  As the washing machine hummed behind him, Connie reached into his knapsack and withdrew a rectangle of cream-colored linen cloth and unfolded it on the table, taking pains to smooth away any wrinkles.  The first wave of rain rattled in staccato sheets off the window glass, while Connie carefully laid out his meal and began eating, always following the same pattern – a bite of his burger, two fries, a drink of Coke, saving enough of the soda to enjoy with the slice of peach pie LuAnn had given him.

Dee-licious!

Once he’d finished and cleared away the trash, he refolded the linen cloth with great attention to make sure the edges lined up perfectly and put it back into his knapsack. 

It was time to take inventory.

Without fail, Connie’s visits to the laundromat included making the rounds of all the machines, methodically checking each one for change that hadn’t been collected.  Most nights the cupboards were bare, but once in a while he’d score a quarter, maybe two.  He always checked.

You never know!

That done, he next went to the row of washers that sat atop worn white linoleum tiles in middle of the room.  He bent down in a gap between two of the machines and reached behind.  His hand felt around on the floor for a moment before his fingers wrapped around the top of a ziplock bag, and he pulled it free. 

“This is gonna be a real good night – yes!” he exclaimed, eyeing the contents of the baggie.  There was a cluster of quarters, probaby three bucks’ worth, Connie thought.  But the big prize, nestled among the coins, was a pint of bourbon. Smiling broadly so that his mustache flared, Connie slid the bottle from the bag, unscrewed the cap and tipped the pint to his lips, letting the liquor flow down his throat, quickly warming him in the way nothing else could.  And it soothed him as well, taking the edge off his anxiety over the gusty tumult outside. 

It had been this way every night he’d come to the laundromat for the better part of ten years.  Someone had taken to watching over him.  Always, the baggie contained quarters for the machines, sometimes cigarettes or travel-size toiletries.  And, once every week or so, there was an appearance by his old friend Jim Beam.  Connie had no idea who his good samaritan was, and though grateful in his way, he had long since ceased to care.

When the washing machine shut off, Connie put his laundry in one of the big dryers and dropped four quarters into the slot, good for a solid hour.  Now came the favorite part of his nocturnal visits.  From his knapsack he retrieved a book, picked up a small green aluminum ashtray and his bottle of whiskey from the sorting table, squatted and pushed himself underneath the countertop until his back was up against the corner where the row of dryers met the front wall.  

Safe.  Good.

Reaching into the pocket of his fatigues, he took out the Camels LuAnn had given him.  He slowly removed the cellophane from the top of the pack, peeled off enough of the inner foil to expose the cigarettes and shook one free.  He lit up, allowing his lungs to fill with the strong tobacco smoke.  He closed his eyes and held it a long moment before exhaling.  Next, he uncapped the pint bottle and took a small sip, not wanting to rush.  He ducked his head enough to see the big starburst clock high up on the back wall.  Nearly eleven.

Outside, the worst of the thunder and lightning was easing, but the rain continued to fall in sheets, buffeted by the wind.  Connie settled back, listening to the dryer’s thrum, feeling the vibration of the machine through his back.  He let his legs stretch, crossed, on the floor in front of him and gently took up his book.  

It was the only book he owned, the only one he ever read now, over and over again.  Treasure Island, given him as a Christmas present by his sister (“To Connie from Sally, 1955,”read the inscription inside, the letters jaggedly rendered in ballpoint blue ink.)  He was seven that Christmas; Sally was just five, so she could not possibly have known the import of her gift, what it meant to him as a youth, what it had come to mean to him as a damaged man thrust back into boyhood.

The book, with its brightly colored cover illustration of young Jim, Long John Silver and his pirate cohorts coming ashore on the novel’s eponymous island, was fragile.  The pasteboard cover, which had separated front and back along the edges of the spine, had been lashed together many years before with cellophane tape.  Now old and brittle, it was barely up to the task.  But Connie handled the book with great care.  It crackled arthritically as he opened it, turning the browning pages until he reached the beginning – Chapter One — The Old Sea Dog.

Connie read in fits and starts, his mouth moving silently as he formed the words.  He sipped the Beam and smoked from time to time until he began to nod with drowsiness, lulled by the rhythmic hum of the dryer that so calmed him.  At length, he slept.  And dreamed.

He was seventeen again and strong, playing in his final football game for Holloway, the one that mattered most, the one for the state championship.  Banks of dazzling lights bathed the big stadium field, etching the chalk yard markers sharply against the deep green of the turf.  In the stands, ten thousand voices roared as one.  The game had come down to one last play with the clock ready to run out.  Holloway trailed by a field goal.  The only path to victory was a touchdown, with the end zone forty yards away.

As Connie coiled tensely into his stance, he was conscious of the din from the spectators, rising like a massive ocean wave, washing over the players.  The ball was snapped, and time slowed by half as he sprinted, slanting, toward the goalpost.  When he had run twenty-five yards he turned to see Ray Dunbar launch a high, arcing pass in his direction.  He knew he must find within himself a final burst of speed if he was to make the catch.   Time slowed yet again as he lunged, arms shooting out full, hands turning palms-up.  The ball curved over his head, just in front of him  – it was there for the taking!  His fingers flared open . . . 

In his sleep, Connie’s curled hands, resting in his lap on the pages of his open book, twitched once, and he awoke.  A half-mile to the north, the klaxon on the 5:10 freight out of St. Joe, bearing coal and propane, sounded its long, loud warning as the train lumbered through the Holloway station.  Connie’s eyes fluttered.  He rubbed life into them with a thumb and forefinger.  

When the fog gave way in his head, Connie slowly unpacked himself from beneath the bench and got to his feet.  The storm had passed through to the northeast, and the laundromat was quiet except for the low hum from the flourescent lights.  Connie retrieved his clothes, carefully folding and packing them away with his book and what was left of the bourbon inside his knapsack.

Pushing his way through the door, he stepped outside with his cart and stood for a moment before reaching into the pocket of his fatigues for a cigarette.  He lit it, dragging deeply, savoring the first nicotine rush of the day.  The train was way east now, its horn a faint echo off the distant hills.  Connie looked in its direction, noting the scarlet smear where the rising sun met the last scraps of the night’s storm clouds.  The air had cooled; the streets bore a clean sheen and a fresh breeze murmured through the maple leaves overhead.

Conrad Hellenmeir jabbed the cigarette between his lips, turned west and began walking in rhythm with his cart –ah-wee-ah-kah . . . ah-wee-ah-kah . . . ah-wee-ah-kah . . . 

Gotta get oil, 3-in-One – yes!

About the Author: Nick Young is an award-winning retired journalist whose career included twenty years as a CBS News correspondent. His writing has appeared in the San Antonio Review, Short Story Town, CafeLit Magazine, Sein und Werden, Fiery Scribe Review, Sein und Werden, 50-Word Stories, Pigeon Review and Vols. I and II of the Writer Shed Stories anthologies.

By Jason de Koff

Air flows down a sluice of veins,

across glistening surfaces,

to swirl about imperfect edges.

A frenzy of bobbles

as more follow

describing the meanders

of ever new fascinations.

Capsizing and swelling 

as if borne on the sea

with sights both pleasant

and disturbing

revealed in its wake.

The kite-like conflagration

of whirling and twirling

about its tethered tine

yields much about the chains

yet to be broken

and the change

that must first take place.

About the Author: Jason de Koff (he/him) is an associate professor of agronomy and soil science at Tennessee State University.  He lives in Nashville, TN with his wife, Jaclyn, and his two daughters, Tegan and Maizie.  He has been published in a number of journals including C&P Quarterly, Bandit Fiction, The Daily Drunk, Sledgehammer Lit, Ayaskala, Fahmidan Journal, Near Window, Briefly Zine and Flyover Country Literary Magazine.  His chapbook, “Words on Pages”, is currently available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3eookJk
Twitter handle: @JasonPdK3

By Mitch James

“Desperado

Why don’t you come to your senses
You’ve been out riding fences for so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one
But I know that you’ve got your reasons
These things that are pleasing you will hurt you somehow”

-Eagles

“Every group needs an other. I don’t know how a society can exist without classifying another as the other.”

–Rabih Alameddine

“It is not possible to extricate yourself from the questions in which your age is involved.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

After fourteen years and a child, Eno couldn’t see the fence line like he used to. Once the flesh was picked clean, it was just a long run of skeleton and rebar. Proof that at his core, he was just like them. 

On the other side of his fence line was the Coopers’ property, which sat empty for decades until recently and was now undergoing fertilization. Having not seen it done but once when he was a child, Eno had forgotten how many bodies it took to fertilize sterile land. The Coopers’ men dragged them from the hills by the truck load. When Eno was little, he remembered how they wailed and fought the chains of his grandfather’s men. Now, they were drugged. The Coopers’ men lined them up and, with just a hand on a shoulder, laid them down. It was done humanly, unlike in his grandfather’s day. Now, it was a single bolt through the brain stem. When done like that, they fell like dropped cloth.

The workers had spread the bodies over the Coopers’ land and now scrambled at what to do. Eno would’ve have told them had they asked, but the Coopers swooped in and got to work without as much as an introduction, it evident to Eno that the Coopers were an enterprise used to buying up land. But they didn’t know the white-rumped vulture, local to the area, was nearly extinct, that there were far too few to clean that many corpses before they rotted. That old way of doing things didn’t work anymore. That’s why it was outlawed. But when you have a county that’ll overturn a law to make money, then Eno guessed this is what you get.  Now, for the past three days, the Coopers’ men have been shooting dogs who come from ten miles in all directions to feast. Just the day before, Eno had to tell Beth to keep Hannah in the house while he put a .22 shell through the head of husky dragging himself across the yard, it’s back legs bloomed and useless. 

Botulism attacks the hindlegs of a dog first on its way to its lungs. 

After he killed it, Eno drove the dog to the pasture and pitched it over his fence, onto the Coopers’ land, where it fell limp atop a bloated body he identified as female because of the breasts. As he studied the corpses and then the skeletons upright on rebar, he cinched the bandana tighter around his mouth, certain of only three things: he didn’t feel the same about it, he was raising a daughter, and he didn’t know what to do.  

*

Back home, Eno kissed Beth’s head and touched her hip on his way to shower, then joined her and Hannah at the dinner table. 

“It’s getting hard to even enjoy a simple meal,” Beth said of the stench that followed Eno into the house and clung to their lives. 

The Coopers’ pasture was a mile from the home, but the smell made it to them now, the bodies had sat so long.  “If they were going to repeal the law, I just wish they would have taken all else into account, not just overturning something from a different time to make money now. Times have changed. The process needed to as well” replied Eno.

“Should’ve never been a way of doing things in the first place.”

Eno peered at Beth and thought, you knew what you were getting into when you married me. Sure, you never liked it, but you approved of it more then. He thought, We can’t just uproot our lives and change everything because times have changed. He thought, What would we have then? But he knew not to say it angry or at dinner or with Hannah there.

“How was school,” Eno asked Hanna, changing the subject.

“Fine.”

“What’d you do today?”

“Math and reading. And we looked at maps.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Eno, wiping his teeth clean with a roll of his tongue. “What about maps? Daddy has maps of all the land around here.”

“Maps of where the hill people used to live. They lived in the hills, but they also lived everywhere else. They probably lived right here, where we are.”

  Eno glared at Beth. 

“They’ve got to learn history and geography, Eno. Glad somebody’s speaking the truth,” she grumbled under her breath.

   “You’re teacher’s right, Hannah. They were here first,” Enno confirmed.

  “I know,” she said. “Mr. Tikeman said when our ancestors got here, they killed a lot of the hill people, even children, to force them to be like us.”

 The nonchalant way Hanna discussed the death of children shook him. Looking at Beth, he asked, “Why are they teaching kids this stuff so young?”

 “Because it’s the truth,” she said.

“Lot’s of things are truth. It doesn’t mean a child needs to know. Honey,” Eno said to Hannah, “there are a lot of ways to tell the same story. Our ancestors,” he paused, “who are not us,” he assured, glaring across the table at Beth, then back to his daughter, “came over here and did bad things, but that’s how things were then, so it didn’t seem so bad. Good and bad change over time.”

“Why would it ever seem good to kill a baby?” Hannah asked, with a push that made it clear to Eno that she didn’t realize that if his ancestors hadn’t proceeded the way they did, her comfortable and safe life would be very different.

 After a moment, Eno said, “It’s never right to kill children. It never has been. But sometimes certain things look one way one time and a different way another. Now, let’s talk about what you read in class. That’s enough about maps.”

*

   “Jesus,” Eno said to Beth as they got into bed later that night, “they need to teach this stuff in context.”

  “What she said wasn’t wrong.”

 “I know it wasn’t wrong, Beth, but it wasn’t the full truth. Nearly every nation in this world was built by the bodies of slaves. We’ve always exploited each other. It’s just a bad truth about us being human, but what I wish that history teacher would remind the students is that you and I never did any of those things. And we never raised Hannah to do those things.”

   “Their bodies still mark our property line,” said Beth. “That teaches Hannah something.”

   “My grandfather did that. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Take them down, Eno. Put up a wooden fence like they do in other parts of the country.”

 Eno thought about the land. It was done a certain way for hundreds of miles in all directions. “What would people think? If we took down the property line and put up fencing?”

  “That you’re not your grandfather. That they’re not your wife or daughter, so you don’t care what they think.”

   “It’s more symbolic now than anything. It’s more about tradition.”

  “Does it smell symbolic?” asked Beth. “Does it look symbolic when you’re walking the fence line? Did you symbolically kill a dog the other day?”

 “It’s not supposed to be done that way anymore, but that land hadn’t been broken for over thirty years. Hell, it’s been damn near salt flat since before dad died.”

 “Not supposed to be done that way?” Beth mocked. “What a waste of your words.” 

 “Fine. But what about the other part of it. Breaking new ground is expensive. How’s the county supposed to pay for it? We can’t fertilize all that land by taxes alone. It’d bankrupt us.”

“If you can’t afford to do something the right way, you don’t do it,” Beth growled. “You see us with a huge house? No. Bunch of cars? No. You can’t afford it, you don’t do it. Government needs to live that way too, and if they are gonna splurge, it shouldn’t be at the cost of life. Always about money. What’s the cheapest way to accomplish something.”

“It’s better than cheap, Beth. It’s free.”

“Oh, Christ crucified,” she snapped. 

“I’m not defending it,” Eno growled, “I’m just speaking logic. We make the land prosperous for the community at no cost.”

“You think it doesn’t cost them everything?” Beth asked of the people from the hills. She rolled away from him.

  Eno was quiet a long time. When he wasn’t certain she was still awake, he asked, “When did you know? That you didn’t feel okay about it anymore?”

 “The first time I felt Hannah kick.”

 He thought, I’ll never feel that, something that can make me so certain about anything. Though Beth lie next to him, he suddenly felt alone.

 “I just hope that the teacher’s teaching Hannah none of it’s her fault, that she didn’t do any of it.”

  Beth said, “I think he’s doing his best to make sure it never happens again.”

*

 Eno rode early the next morning, the sky bruise before dawn. Bill O’ Conner had called the night before. Eno listened to the message over coffee and thought of it now as he walked the line and stared at the Coopers’ land over the curve of a parietal bone that looked just like his beneath the flesh. Bill said it had come during the city council meeting, the idea that they could burn the bodies. He said the city council voted it down, but Bill didn’t confirm how he felt one way or the other, though Eno knew Bill had two boys, one a teen, like Hannah. As Eno stared at the sunrise crawling over the bodies, bloat flies settling in like dew, he wondered if Bill could put both on the same page, the killing of the hill people and his own boys.

Eno slipped from the horse and approached a skeleton, the bone white with sun bleach and fissured where the heat had split it. The fence line was simple construction, really, easier to install, even, than a wooden fence. You simply sink number four rebar into a footer and slide the structure over it through the foraman. Though he’d never done it himself, Eno knew that sometimes a drill  was needed for the lower back, but that was it. You just slide it over. Then you link one structure by the hand to the other down the line. When finished, your boundary is marked. They stand like that forever. 

“It takes a long time to weather bone,” Eno mumbled, words his grandfather said decades before, as he held smooth metatarsals to his own. He did the same with Hanna’s pink hand the day she was born and recalled it then.

*

Eno returned home at noon to find no one there and was surprised. Though Beth’s car was gone, Eno still called her name once in the house, then checked his phone to find a missed call. It was Beth, trying to control the emotion in her voice as she told him Hannah never made it to school. She said not to panic, said a number of kids were missing that day and that the sheriff suspected they had simply skipped and taken a couple of quads out on the range. She said she was grocery shopping and would be home by two and not to worry, though it sounded more like she was telling herself and not Eno.

As promised, Beth barreled through the door, grocery bags in hand, at two, the only new update being a call from Sheriff Banks to inform them that both Harold Jackson’s quads were gone, as where his boys Terence and Spencer, and that of all the kids who never showed to school, only Pete McKibben’s pickup was missing. Banks’ detective work instilled a kind of confidence in what he said, more or less proving, he assured, that the kids were skipping school, nothing more, and that they’d be home by dusk. “If not,” said the sheriff, “they’ll need fire to stay warm, and we’ll spot it.”

Eno thanked the sheriff and updated Beth as she shelved groceries.

“What do you think she’s up to?” Beth asked, slotting canned soup onto a lazy Susan.

  Adding a box of cereal to a cabinet, Eno said, “Oh, just being a kid. We skipped our fair share of school days.”

“You did,” she said, giving him a long stare as she climbed far enough back into her mind to see him when he was young. “I was too busy chasing that basketball.”

 “You were.” 

  They paused to smile at each other before finishing the groceries.  

 As the light outside put itself to rest behind the hills, Eno and Beth worked around the kitchen to prevent talking about the fact that Hannah was still gone. Short of a few phone calls from other parents whose kids were missing, there hadn’t been any correspondence since the sheriff called that afternoon. When the dinner was finished, they left it covered on the stove, neither needing to say they couldn’t eat. Then there was a call, the sheriff.

   “Sheriff,” Eno said, answering the phone.

   Beth crossed the room and stood hip to hip with Eno, tipping her head towards the receiver.

  “Hi Eno. I need you to come to the west end of your property line. We’ve got a small rebellion on our hands.”

    Eno heard a deputy chuckle in the background.

   “What?”

   “Just come on out.  You’ll see what I mean.”

 Eno hung up the phone and peered at Beth.

 “I heard him,” she said.  “Let’s go.”

 They drove along the western edge of the property, the orange sunset sluicing across the still grins of skeletal faces, their frames whipping unevenly along the straight line like musical notes along a staff. The truck jerked and rattled atop the course earth until Eno saw a squad car, a pickup, and two quads. The Sheriff stood in his hat at the fence line. A dozen kids, Hannah at the head of them, had yanked the skeletons from the rebar and chained themselves in their place, then joined hands. Looming across from the children was a line of men in thick suits and masks, fuel packs on their backs and torches in their hands, small tongues of orange flame licking from every barrel.

 “Hannah!” Beth exclaimed, nearly falling from the truck before it came to a stop.

 Eno followed suite and looked at the skeletons, then at the children and his daughter chained in their places. He glared at the men facing them with flame throwers. Eno paced his breathing. He felt he might explode. 

 “What’s going on sheriff?” Eno asked.

“Well, as I said, it appears our youths are making political statements now.” The sheriff hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I’m gonna let ya’ll figure out how to discipline ‘em. They locked themselves up pretty good, though. I will say that.” He kicked a bucket of opened padlocks beside his foot. “I sent deputy Woods to the station for the bolt cutters.”

 Eno looked to the children whose backs were to them, then to the men. “What about them?” he asked.

“They work for the Coopers. They’re gonna to do a controlled burn test, just to see the results.”

“The council voted against it.”

“That’s why it’s a test, to see if the council’s concerns are truly warranted.”

“That’s not how that works,” Eno snapped.

“Eno,” said the sheriff, “It’s just a test.”

“We voted against fertilizing the land with bodies too. That was a law, but you all got around it.”

 “Goin’ against that wasn’t my doin’,” assured the sheriff. “That’s above my pay grade.”

 Eno let out a belt of disbelief and spun in a circle.

 “Just take a second,” said Sheriff Banks.

Eno looked at the sheriff, then laughed. “Unbelievable,” he said, looking again at the line of children hand-in-hand, chained to the poles, and the line of men with fire across from them. “Unbelievable,” he whispered again.

Eno walked to the fence line and faced his daughter. Beth stood behind and stared Eno in the eyes in a way he’d never seen. Then he looked at Hannah, her chubby face dirty and hair astray, her eyes fixed on his. There were tears and fire and certainty there, something he’d never break. But there, too, was something else, something that let him know more than ever that she needed him. Beth said everything changed when she felt Hannah kick. This was it, the moment, the closest to that kind of knowing a father can get. Right then, in his own way, he felt his daughter roll and turn inside him. He felt her kick.  

Eno turned from Hannah and slid one body from the pole and placed it on the ground.

“What are you doin?” asked the sheriff.  

 Then Eno did the same with the one beside it.

“I said, what are you doin?”

Eno walked past the children, took Beth’s hand, then took two locks from the bucket.

“Now, Eno, I ain’t plannin’ on holding the kids accountable for all this, but a couple of adults go get themselves involved, well, that’s different. Ya’ll are grown.”

Eno stood beside Hannah and wrapped the chain around his waist, the pole, and his legs, then lopped it in tight and locked into place. He handed the other lock to Beth, who did the same. Hannah looked up at her father, thene took his hand, and he took Beth’s, and together they faced the line of men across from them, the sheriff’s voice, a background sound, something behind them all.

About the Author: Mitch James is a Professor of Composition and Literature at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, OH and is the Managing Editor at Great Lakes Review. You can find Mitch’s latest fiction at Flash Fiction Magazine and Scissors and Spackle, poetry at Peauxdunque Review and Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and scholarship at Journal of Creative Writing Studies. Find more of his work at mitchjamesauthor.com, and follow him on Twitter @mrjames5527 and Facebook @perhupsous

By Steve Carr

Morning, a hot wind blowing from the east sent the tall yellow prairie grass bowing in ripples toward the old house. Colin leaned against the wood post to the barbed wire fencing that stretched from east to west as far as the eye could see, altering nothing in the flat prairie, but an intrusion in the pristine western open landscape nevertheless. He lifted a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam to his parched lips and poured the whiskey into his mouth while looking skyward, squinting in the glare of the yellow sun unobstructed by the white pillows of clouds that hung in clumps in the pale blue sky. He lowered the bottle and with his bare back against the post he slid to the ground, sitting in a nest of grass that he had formed while standing there kicking at the earth with his boots. A meadowlark alighted on a distant post and let out a brief melodic aria. Colin raised the bottle to his mouth again and looked the direction the wind was blowing, focusing blurringly on the house, and took another long swig.

Even at the distance he was from the house, he could hear Jack barking, probably having caught the scent of a gopher or jackrabbit. Good old Jack. Colin opened his eyes wide, trying to fool his booze addled mind into believing he could clearly see what he was looking at. What he was seeing was the image imprinted in that part of his brain that retained the same image he had seen since he was old enough to crawl around in his diapers among the chickens. Gnats buzzed around his ears and sweat ran in rivulets down his bare chest and abdomen. He took another drink of whiskey. 

With the bottle empty he tossed it aside and removed his dingy white cowboy hat and placed it in the grass beside his outstretched legs. The wind rustled his curly black hair and he turned to the east and opened his mouth and gulped in the blowing aroma of the prairie in late August; dry earth and sun scorched plants. 

                                                                      #

The next noon, the chickens in the yard busily pecked about for the scattered kernels of corn that Colin’s mother, Janet, has tossed around in handfuls scooped out of a large wooden salad bowl. Her cotton floral print skirt fluttered in the breeze that also caught loose strands of her graying black hair creating tentacles that curled and twisted around her sun-weathered face. Jack was at her side, rubbing his lean body covered in long red hair against her bare legs. She looked to the west and watched as a line of bison crossed the range beyond the barbed wire fence. Colin came out of the house and stumbled from the small set of stairs that led out of the kitchen to the backyard, catching his balance before falling face-first into the dirt. Jack ran over to him, his tail rapidly wagging.

“Hey old boy,” Colin said, rubbing the dog’s bony head. He held the back of his hand to Jack’s mouth and let him lick it. “It’s going to be another hot one,” he said to his mother.

She turned from watching the bison and scooped the last handful of corn from the bowl and tossed it to the chickens. “Your father was hoping you would ride out to see about the cattle with him this morning,” she said. “He tried but he couldn’t wake you.”

“I think I had a bit too much to drink last night,” Colin said, wavering unsteadily on his bare feet.

“You always have too much to drink, Colin,” she said, looking up to see a flock of geese flying in a v formation cross the sky.

“My friends took me to that saloon in Scenic,” he said, swatting at a horsefly that landed on his shoulder, tickling his flesh. 

“Your friends are what got you in the trouble you’re in to begin with. Them and alcohol,” she said walking past him and up the stairs. As she opened the door she turned to him and said, “We hoped you would try to be sober at least a couple days before you go to prison.” She went into the house letting the screen door slam behind her.

Colin staggered over to the empty water troth, a remainder from and reminder of the days when they rode about the ranch lands on horses. They were sold in favor of a used Ford pickup that his father called Magnet because that was the name of his favorite mare he no longer had. His stomach was in upheaval; the chili he had at the saloon had not set well with the whiskey, his preferred choice of beverage.  He turned around and barfed into the troth, then wiped his mouth with the back of the same hand that Jack had slobbered on, and took a pack of Marlboro’s from his back pants pocket, a Bic lighter from his front pocket, lit a cigarette and took a long drag on it. He watched the curl of exhaled smoke quickly dissipate in the noon time breeze.  He wanted to drive somewhere, anywhere, just for the hell of it. But his car was gone, sitting in a car junk yard among all the other hunks of mangled automobiles.

Driving while under the influence, DUI, they called it.

                                                                     # 

Night, the month of June, Colin was under the influence of a full moon shining bright and low in the early summer star-filled sky. He was under the influence of the rush of wind though his open car windows, his car being filled with the scents of wet earth from a day-long raining spell and sprouting  bright green prairie grass that grew along highway 44 coming from Rapid City. It had not been the fun night he had planned, but he never liked the saloons in Rapid City anyway; too filled with businessmen posing as cowboys wearing clothes, hats and boots that had never been worn on an actual ranch or farm, and desperate secretaries not interested in meeting anyone but these fake cowboys. He had had a few shots of whiskey at the last of the three saloons he had been to that night, drove in a half-lit state around the city with two friends until he found a store where they could buy a couple bottles of Jim Beam. 

He and his two buddies sat in the darkness in the grass along Rapid Creek and drank until sunrise. Leaving them to sleep it off there along the creek, he got into his car, opened the last bottle of Jim Beam, put a Garth Brooks CD in the player, and drank and sang his way under all those influences half way to Scenic before swerving off the road to avoid hitting a deer crossing the road. His car flipped three times before he was ejected miraculously unharmed out of the smashed windshield and landed in the grass, still grasping the neck of the broken bottle. He laid there in the grass with his car upside down on top of a bent highway sign, until a deputy sheriff found him, the demolished vehicle, and destroyed Highways Department property, an hour later. His blood alcohol level was two times over the limit. Two days later he was under the influence of a judge.

“This is your third DUI charge in six months and the records show you have not sought help for your excessive drinking,” the judge said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Colin wanted to say he needed a drink, but he looked at his dad who had barely looked at him all the way from the house to the court building in New Underwood, and seeing the pale face and dour expression on his father’s face, he kept his mouth shut.

“You’re a menace to anyone else on the roads. Maybe two years in the state prison will help you with your drinking problem,” the judge said before bringing down the gavel with a resounding crack. 

                                                                      #

Afternoon, three o’clock, the pendulum in the grandfather clock in the corner ticked monotonously from side to side as the chime behind the clock face sounded three times. On the sofa, Colin sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. Through the open window hot wind blew the sheer blue curtains into the room, their hems fluttering and snapping in mid-air. He got up and ducked beneath the curtains and looked out. Jack was lying under the swinging chair that rocked back and forth hanging from  rusty, squeaking, hooks in the porch ceiling. A small eddy of dirt, like a miniature twister, whirled across the bare front yard.  

                                                                      #

Afternoon, fifteen years before, Colin was twelve years old and sat in a hard wooden chair in the principal’s office swinging his legs back and forth under the seat. His father, Al, sat on one side of him in another wooden chair and his mother sat on the other side, in a similar chair. The principal, Mr. Dawson, was seated behind a big metal desk, his hands folded on top of a small stack of manila file folders. The window behind Mr. Dawson was closed and the brown shade up. Colin watched heavy snow fall on the playground equipment and school yard behind the school. Several crows were perched along the top of the schoolyard fence like avian sentinels.

“Al and Janet,” Mr. Dawson said looking first at one then the other, “we’ve been friends for a long time and I’ve known Colin his entire life, so I feel I can be frank with you.”

“Certainly,” Janet said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.

“Colin is one of the brightest pupils in his grade, but his teachers can hardly handle his restlessness. Mrs. Upshaw said it’s like Colin is fighting against invisible restraints around his body,” Mr. Dawson said. “And as you know, Mrs. Upshaw is not prone to exaggeration.”

“He’s the same way at home,” Janet said. “He was examined by the doctor and all he said was that Colin is just going through a phase.”

Mr. Dawson leaned back in his chair and grasped onto the arms as if trying to hold himself in his seat, and looked at Colin’s dad. “What do you think, Al?”

Al cleared his throat. “It’s nothing that a good hide tanning won’t take care of.”

                                                                        #

Afternoon, 3:15, Colin pulled his head back in and turned around and through a curtain that flickered in front of his face he saw his mother standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen looking at him. She was wearing an apron and her face was smudged with flour. He had never been able to read her facial expressions.

“You have flour on your face, Mom,” he said, pushing aside the curtain that had given his view of her being seen in a dreamlike bluish haze. 

“I’m making bread,” she said, lifting the hem of the apron and dabbing her face, sending a light snowfall of flour onto the wooden floor. “You always liked my bread.”

“You make it sound as if I’ll never have it again,” he said. “I’m going to prison, not Siberia.”

“If only you had gotten some help for your drinking,” she said wistfully. “It’s what your attorney said you needed to do after the second charge.”

“I like to drink,” Colin said. “When I pass out then wake up I don’t even notice time has passed.”

“I don’t understand that at all,” she said, pushing a stray hair back from her forehead spreading flour across her brow. “You can’t just drink to throw away what little time you have on this planet.”

“I can’t think of any other way to do it,” Colin said.

                                                                       #

Evening, 5:30,  Al sat in the large chair in the living room trying to pry a splinter out of the palm of his hand with a Swiss army knife. Jack sat at his feet gnawing on the bone he had been given from the roast that Janet had fixed for dinner. The grandfather clock ticked and a steady hot breeze blew in through the open window. The sound of a lone coyote yelping from somewhere out in the prairie momentarily interrupted the solitude. Colin came into the room carrying some sheets of paper and sat down on the sofa and began to read what was written on the first sheet.

“What you got there, son?” Al asked looking up from the bleeding wound he had made in his hand.

“It’s a list of what I can’t have when I am in prison. Contraband they call it. They want to make sure I don’t bring along any files or hacksaws when I check in,” Colin said not looking up from the paper. “Basically I can’t take anything to make life more comfortable or to make time pass faster.”

“You were never happy with what you had or where you were anyway,” his father said grumpily. 

“It’ll be two years of just sitting around,” Colin said. “I’m going to get pretty restless.”

“You were born restless and you’ll die that way,” Al said.

“You tried to beat it out of me,” Colin mumbled.

“What?” His father asked.

“You tried to beat it out of me,” Colin said, his voice raised.

“What?” 

“You tried to beat the restlessness out of me,” Colin screamed.

“I was just trying to help,” his dad said, his lined, tanned face red with anger. “Look where being restless has gotten you.”

“You tried to beat it out of me,” Colin whispered.

                                                                      #

Night, Colin ambled his way through the tall prairie grass, carrying a bottle of Jim Beam, the one he had kept hidden in his room. He looked up at the night sky and watched a shooting star streak across the heavens and disappear into the clutter of stars. Jack followed close behind and Colin stopped and patted the dog on the head.

“Go home old boy,” he told the dog, who whined briefly then turned and went back toward the house.

 At a wood post, part of the barbed wire fence that divided their property from the open prairie and the boundaries of the Badlands National Park, Colin leaned against it, took his cowboy hat and laid it in the grass at his feet and opened the bottle and took a long swig. He could see the light on above the porch of his home but all the windows were dark. Coyotes howled in the distance. He drank until he was drunk and had reached that point where the passing of time went unnoticed and the endless boredom became meaningless. Then he passed out.

                                                                      #

Morning, Colin opened his eyes and shook his head trying to erase the dream he had. It had been so vivid, as if his brain was showing a movie about the details of his life, his home, the blowing of the hot summer winds across the prairie and even Jack’s barking. He looked at the stretch of prairie between him and the house, and the house itself. In the dream he had set it all ablaze. 

 The day before had worn on like most of the days before it, the only difference being that he and his parents were confronting the reality that he would be going to prison. Lying there in the grass he didn’t know what the feeling was exactly, but it was like he was a piece of glass, cracking, about to shatter. Reaching into his pants pocket he pulled out a red Bic lighter, turned westward, flicked the small wheel on the lighter, put the flickering flame to a clump of dead grass, and watched it ignite. With his hat he fanned the flame and felt the heat of the erupting fire. He scooted a few feet from the spreading fire and watched it move westward, rapidly consuming the combustible dry grass, stretching out in a crackling line of exploding grass, north to south, a rapidly moving and expanding inferno. He heard Jack whining, and then silence, and then the house was covered in a blazing blanket.

About the Author: Steve Carr, from Richmond, Virginia, has had over 550 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. He has had seven collections of his short stories published. His paranormal/horror novel Redbird was released in November, 2019. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice.

By Lindy Biller

***Content Warning: allusion to domestic abuse 

*The children’s book quoted in this story is Dinosaurium, by Chris Wormell and Lily Murray

It started slowly, without warnings or sirens. Astrid pulled out a box of Cheerios and found it coated in a fine layer of ash. Her fingers left circles of yellow cardboard. It was the same with everything else in the cupboard: the bear-shaped honey, boxes of cheddar crackers, bags of rice. All of it a dusty gray. 

She brushed off the Cheerio box and poured each of her daughters a bowl, one with milk, one without, just the way they liked it. After breakfast, she took them to the park, planted each child on a swing, googled ash kitchen cupboards. Found articles about ash sapwood, ideal for building cupboards and pantries. She watched her daughters swinging. Whenever her husband was around, the cupboard doors were always falling off. He would yank them too hard, or slam them shut, or shatter her mother’s china against them. The plates with the tiny orange flowers. 

Push us, Mama! the girls shouted.

She pushed them, the chains groaning. Maybe it was termites? Accumulated smoke from all the charred cookies and heads of cauliflower and pot roasts she’d left cooking too long? She toyed with her wedding ring. The girls soared back and forth like birds on a string, tethered.

By evening, the ash had spread. A thin layer on the drop-leaf table, the laminate countertops. The girls giggled and drew pictures in the dust: shooting stars, princesses, dinosaurs. Astrid rinsed out a saucepan and made macaroni and cheese. She called her sister in California, but the call went straight to voicemail. 

It’ll be okay, she imagined her sister saying, even though her sister never said things like this. She tried to think of the last thing they’d talked about, before they stopped talking. Before her husband exploded between them, his blast radius flattening everything for miles. She couldn’t remember. Maybe something about winter. How cold it was here. 

The next morning, Astrid made coffee, stirred Hershey’s syrup into cold milk for the girls, and they sat on the porch together, watching the sun glow through a haze of smoke. By now, people were talking about it on social media. A weather anomaly. Maybe something to do with all the wildfires. How could it be everywhere, all at once? What did it mean? 

“This is not an extinction event,” a scientist said emphatically. 

Astrid knew denial when she heard it. She pulled out one of the girls’ old dinosaur books—the most up to date book she could find, with chicken-sized velociraptors, with full-color, sad-eyed illustrations. At home, while the girls played, she read about the asteroid strike. How ash choked out sunlight, and the world went dark, and all the plants died. Then the plant-eaters. Then the meat-eaters. Except for a few, the theropods who discovered flight. Their arms became wings. Their bones lightened. 

It would’ve been a time of cold and darkness—winter on an epic scale, the book said. All major extinctions of life on earth have been followed by a burst of evolution, it added, softening the blow. 

Astrid dropped off her kids with a neighbor, who was drinking margaritas and soaking her feet in a kiddie pool. “They’ll be fine,” she said, “go out, have some fun, you’ve earned it!” Astrid went to the grocery store, where panic clung to her like tar. She bought jugs of water. Toilet paper. Fruit snacks shaped like actual fruit, orange slices and strawberries and bumpy clusters of grapes. She saw church people with coal-black smudges on their foreheads, even though Ash Wednesday had been months ago. She saw a man with a curved beak like her husband’s, elbowing to the front of the checkout line. She watched him slash the air open, making space for the hunger of his body. 

Astrid went back home. Retrieved her daughters from the booze-soaked neighbor.

“We’re going for a drive,” she told them. 

She packed their clothes, the dinosaur books, the matching baby dolls. She packed the last of the unbroken china. The winter gear. She packed sunscreen. She left her ring on the table, where dust immediately began to cover it. They drove. 

The highway twined through countryside, its waving cornfields sugared with ash. It would be a four-day journey, with breaks for sleep. The six-year-old read out loud to the three-year-old about the fossils on a site called Egg Mountain—parents, eggs, juveniles.  “Many would never hatch,” she recited. “Instead they were covered by volcanic ash, preserving them for future study.” The girls ate fruit snacks. They played rock, paper, scissors. They fell asleep, their bodies folded like praying hands. 

Astrid turned on the radio, and listened to the voices from far away, trying to make sense of things: “scientists still have no explanation,” and “people are advised to shelter in place,” and “if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction,” and “water should be strained through cheesecloth or coffee filters, then boiled before drinking.”

Astrid turned off the radio. Listened to her daughters’ breathing. 

I love you, she told them, until the words became only sound. A mourning-dove coo.

At a playground outside Omaha, Astrid checked her phone. Three breaking news updates. Seven voicemails from her husband. One text from her sister: Please, please call me. 

This time, her sister answered on the first ring. 

“Astrid, thank God. Thank God. Where are you? Where are the girls?”“Nebraska,” Astrid said, and then she laughed, and couldn’t stop laughing. She could feel it filling her up. The lightness. Wind through hollow bones. She told her sister to set up the spare room, and she’d call again soon. She made peanut butter sandwiches and spread a blanket on ash-choked grass. She pushed her girls on the swing set, higher, higher, their T-shirts billowing open like wings.

About the Author: Lindy Biller grew up in Metro Detroit and now lives in Wisconsin. Her fiction has recently appeared at Chestnut Review, X-R-A-Y, Longleaf Review, and Superfroot Magazine. 

By Timothy Tarkelly

For Nolan and Elena

The parade made me nervous
as every cop car and fire truck
in a twenty-mile radius were there,
tossing candy and blaring
their cacophonous tune of catastrophe
for fun, for the kids. I just hoped
no one’s house was burgled or burnt
to the ground as we cheered
for childhood’s best motivators,
for the promise of funnel cake,
for the newest queen of Belle, Missouri
who came riding in on a bale of hay,
who later thanked a crowd of grandparents
for this royal opportunity, her queen’s heart
showing through seven layers of makeup,
sparkling even brighter than her plastic tiara,
making us all forget about the smell of the pigs,
about how one day she will grow old
and stand in the mud, with not a single set
of eyes looking at her. 
By the time the bluegrass band
takes the stage, we’ve moved on,
lifted plastic cups to toast the evening’s
humid diffidence and almost let Mark
convince us to steal the show ourselves.

About the Author: Timothy Tarkelly’s fiction and poetry have appeared in Rhodora Magazine, Back Patio Press, Paragon Journal, and others. His third book of poetry, On Slip Rigs and Spiritual Growth, was published by OAC Books in July 2021. He has two previous collections from Spartan Press: Luckhound (2020) and Gently in Manner, Strongly in Deed: Poems on Eisenhower (2019). When he’s not writing, he teaches in Southeast Kansas. You can find him on twitter: @timothytarkelly or at timothytarkelly.com

By Jane Hammons

When you live in a town like Vlan, and it is not much of a town, you must look far and wide for a place that is pretty enough for a picnic with your family and friends. If you should find a spot in the dry scrub and yellow grass, don’t go so far as to take visitors from out of town there, expecting them to marvel at its beauty. It is unlikely they will share your view. But down by the river there is a place called beautiful, and if you find it, you will not be alone. The water is the color of a well-worn slate, the earth red clay. In winter when covered with a brittle layer of frost, you will seldom see another soul out there. Bent twigs of mesquite along the river path, barely visible impressions upon the near frozen ground and the slight muddying of otherwise undisturbed waters are the only signs that someone has come before you. Few appreciate this beauty. Hondo Duggins and Estrellita Serna were two. Before the first snow fell and ice formed on the surface of the water they buckled up and took a drive to the bottom of the river.

Hondo and Estrellita were one year out of high school and still hanging around town like kids do when they don’t go off to college or out to the oil fields. Hondo was a busboy at Benny’s. Estrellita was a student at the Beauty College. Their absence was noted with silence for fear that merely pronouncing their names would disturb the quiet that had come since they had gone, which is exactly what happened once the strange woman arrived. 

Plagued by dreams of hair—long twisting strands, short blunt clumps—she’d wake to find her auburn tresses decorating the pillow where she slept, the follicles black and dead. Her stylist assured her it was common in middle-aged women.

“I hardly qualify as middle-aged.” The woman bristled at what was meant to be reassuring information.

The stylist did not respond. She didn’t know the woman well, but she’d done her hair often enough to know she didn’t want to do it again. She bestowed upon the woman her last tube of a homeopathic treatment her parents had made before they were forced to cease production because of their products’ disturbing side effects. She took the tube of ointment from a drawer. 

“Riovlan.” The woman read from label. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” said the stylist, and that was true enough. “But it works.” 

Following the directions on the tube, the woman massaged the ointment into her head for several nights. She didn’t expect immediate results, but she also didn’t expect to see a young couple appear next to her own image in the mirror as she sat at her vanity. Frightened by the hallucination, the woman immediately swore off the Riovlan and shoved it into a drawer. But the next morning, there were fewer strands of dead hair on her pillow. She attributed the ghostly images to her stress, and returned to the treatment regimen. Again the young man and the young woman appeared, even more clearly this time. Though concerned about her mental state, she could not help but note how handsome the man was, how beautiful the woman, what a perfect couple they made. Over the next few days, she saw them reflected everywhere she looked—the side view mirrors of cars in parking lots, puddles of water left by rain and even in the highly polished surface of the wide cleaver she used for chopping lettuce. 

 She interpreted the advent of the two youths as a sign she was meant to be part of a couple, so she flirted with inferiors at work and visited a dating website a couple of times before deeming the available male population of her town worthless. The ointment almost gone, her head full of hair, she dreaded the loss of her visitations as much as she had the appearance of dead follicles. The couple wiped her tears, stroked her cheek and ran their fingers through her hair until at last the woman got it. Their ministrations were an invitation. She wasn’t meant to be part of just any couple. She was meant to join them. She consulted the tube of ointment that had summoned their appearance, noted where it was made, quit her job and closed up her apartment. Then she purchased a bus ticket to Vlan, a place few have dreamt of.

Upon arrival the woman appraised herself in the glass door of the bus station. She smoothed her skirt over her trim hips, tucked her soft white blouse into the tiny waistband of her skirt, then yanked her suitcase from the bottom of the pile on the luggage cart and headed down River Street to The Rio Inn, its metal sign beaten and battered by the sun and wind into the flat dull sameness of the rest of the town.

While the woman waited for the couple, she wandered out to the little kidney-shaped swimming pool where she admired herself for as long as she could stand the heat. In the evening, she’d walk along the dusty banks of the soggy creek that ran behind the Inn. Covered by trickling water, bright ferns flourished beneath the surface. Fronds extending above the shallow water were dead, blackened by the sun. Reminded of her affliction, the woman took this as a clue and began visiting every beauty parlor, as they were still called, in Vlan. She asked questions about a young couple, describing Hondo and Estrellita perfectly. No one responded until finally Lupe Villanueva directed the woman to Velynda Ashcroft’s Beauty College. 

In the restful months that had passed since Estrellita’s absence, Velynda Ashcroft had put the wicked girl out of her immediate thoughts. She became agitated when the redhead came into the Beauty College asking questions about a girl who had once attended her college. Noting Velynda’s distress, the woman knew she had found a source. She sat down in one of the many vacant chairs, freed her long hair from a tight French twist and requested a shampoo.

Velynda’s hands tingled with the anticipation of getting her hands into that gorgeous hair. She tied a stiff plastic apron around the woman’s neck and led her to a sink where she plunged her fingers into the auburn locks, shampooed and rinsed, shampooed and rinsed again as she talked about the frustration of teaching cosmetology to students who did not truly appreciate the science of beauty, did not comprehend the importance of the right haircut, professionally manicured nails, the correct moisturizer, foundation and lipstick.

Estrellita Serna. Velynda could not stop herself from saying the name, was such a student. She had not attended college to learn how to properly cut, comb and curl, but only to pass the hours her boyfriend was at work. Estrellita refused to keep up her tuition payments. She stole beauty supplies. But worse, she had destroyed the reputation of the Beauty College. 

Every fall Velynda and her students represented their profession in the County Fair Parade. And every fall since Marva Kunkel was thirteen years old, all the beauticians in Vlan had vied for the presence of her thick chestnut hair on their float. With the promise of a year’s worth of styling and beauty products, Velynda had won Marva in last year’s contest.

On the morning of the parade Velynda, Marva and all of the students gathered at the College to style one another’s hair. Only Estrellita was idle; she refused to style her glossy black hair, letting it hang as always straight to her waist. So Velynda assigned Estrellita the task of turning Marva Kunkel’s ponytail into long symmetrical ringlets. But instead Estrellita cut it off and ran shrieking triumphantly from the College, waving the shimmering trophy as she went, leaving Marva with an unattractive ducktail protruding from the back of her head.

Though in a state of shock Velynda and her students were determined to go on with the show. Velynda surrounded herself with her sniffling, nail-biting students and rode center stage, having whipped her hair into a hurried beehive that collapsed half way down River Street. The tale of Estrellita’s assault on Marva spread quickly along the twelve blocks from North to South River where the parade ended. Townspeople booed and hissed at the Beauty College float as it rolled past, its black tires disguised as pink sponge curlers.

Filled with compassion for the shorn Marva Kunkel and repelled by Estrellita’s behavior, the woman doubted it was Estrellita she sought. But to be certain she asked for the address of Estrellita’s family.

Weary from washing, combing out and blasting every bit of natural wave out of the woman’s hair with a powerful blow-dryer, Velynda didn’t think to ask why she wanted it but trudged to the shoebox where she kept the delinquent file. After giving the woman directions to the Serna’s house, she closed up shop. Overhead small dark clouds, clenched like fists, beat upon the glaring face of the sun. Blinded by jagged flashes of lightning that ripped open the sky in a sudden thunderstorm, Velynda dashed madly across the street to her usual parking space in front of Primm’s Pharmacy just as Tad Ostermann sped down toward her, an hour late for a date with his girlfriend Marva Kunkel. He didn’t see Velynda and hit her hard. She flew several feet into the air before landing in the back of his truck. Her spine snapped, Velynda died quickly, splayed out in the bed of manure Tad had planned to spread on his mother’s lawn.

Sip Drang, sole reporter for The Vlan Daily Witness, was in the pharmacy purchasing travel size toiletries to take on his annual vacation, keeping a journal from which he’d write his popular Great American Sights column. Folks in Vlan don’t get out of town much, so he used GAS as a way to educate them about the larger world. Sip saw the entire incident and supported Tad’s claim that it was a terrible accident though the town gossips would call it an act of revenge.

Meanwhile the woman walked toward the Serna’s small brick house on Sunset Ave. According to Velynda, Estrellita was a great beauty, but there was little evidence that she had inherited her looks from the woman who answered the door, Mrs. Serna appearing wrinkled and worn beyond any reasonable affect of time. She stood firmly in the doorway and told the woman that Estrellita had probably run off with her boyfriend, Hondo Duggins. Then she shut the door.

The woman walked a few blocks to Benny’s dinner where she assumed she’d find an in tact phonebook in the indoor phone booth. Three Duggins were listed. She called each of them asking for Hondo. The first swore at her; the second number was no longer in order. On her third call, she found a woman named Modine who owned up to being the boy’s mother, gave her directions and invited her over. 

Modine Duggins had plenty of things to worry about. The disappearance of Hondo was not one of them. She counted that among her few blessings. Her husband had recently run off with another woman, and she’d just had a phone conversation with her daughter, Nodell, who said she had found a lump on her right breast. But she welcomed the woman into her home anyway. She hauled out the family scrapbook to show the woman a picture of Hondo but ended up showing her a collection of newspaper articles about Nodell’s short-lived career as a faith healer.

After a few reported successes, Nodell had attempted to cure Mrs. Russell Palmeyer of arthritis. When she grabbed the cane from the old woman’s hand and commanded her to dance before God, Mrs. Palmeyer had fallen flat on her face, breaking an arm and cracking a cheekbone. Nodell had been so shamed by Sip Drang’s damning articles in The Witness that she moved out of town.

Hondo? Modine turned to his section and showed the woman clippings about her son’s numerous arrests for fighting, drunk driving and vandalism. She’d quit reading them but dutifully continued to clip and past them into the family chronicle. Just what was the nature of the woman’s business with him anyway, Modine wanted to know.

The woman told Modine how she had been summoned to Vlan. She made clear she was not certain Hondo was the man of her dreams. He certainly resembled the pictures of the boy in Modine’s album, but she was having a hard time reconciling the love she had felt from him with the deeds of Hondo Duggins.

For the first time in her life, Modine Duggins had not a single word to say. She thought maybe the woman had escaped from an asylum and directed her to the door. Then she left a message for Nodell out at the trailer park north of town where she had set up business. PALMS READ HERE the white board with a big red hand on it announced to travelers who ventured down the highway. When she finally returned her mother’s call and heard the story of the redhead’s visit, Nodell claimed that she had recently dreamt of Hondo dead in a watery grave. She felt destined to meet the woman who might have more information. She had a few appointments, but she promised to be home early the following day.

As eager as Nodell was to reach Vlan so was the woman eager to leave it. The youth she dreamt of could not be born of these ugly women in this ugly town. She checked the bus schedule. One last night in Vlan then she would return to her apartment and begin looking for work. The very thought of updating her resume gave her a headache. She’d never had an easy time finding or keeping a job. Not even angry that she’d given no notice only a few days ago, her supervisor had simply escorted her to the door. Feeling foolish she began packing her bag. 

The woman arrived at the bus station early the following morning, purchased her ticket and was the first to board. She hadn’t slept well the previous night. Praying that the couple would come to her rescue, she tossed and turned until it was time for her to get up. As the bus pulled out of the station, she closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep. The young man and woman surfaced in her murky dream, and she began to choke and gasp for air. 

Sip Drang, who had given his statement to the police along with a list of telephone numbers where he could be reached, was seated directly across the aisle from the woman. He jerked her up out of her seat, positioned himself behind her and performed a quick Heimlech on her.

Infuriated, and not the least bit grateful, to find herself in the arms of the chubby bald man, the woman shoved Sip away. Sip let the bus driver take over. He was on vacation after all, and he had only recently witnessed the demise of Velynda Ashcroft. He didn’t need any more trauma in his life. He’d handed the writing of Velynda’s obituary off to his friend Lupe Villanueva who covered The Witness for him when he was on vacation. He wasn’t sorry he’d miss Velynda’s funeral. Next to Nodell Duggins, Velynda was one of his least favorite people. The two of them had taunted him, wondering how someone so homely and fat could be the son of such a beautiful woman, however crazy she might have been. They’d flirt with him and then reject him, jerking him around like a yoyo. 

Because the woman wouldn’t stop shrieking about a boy and a girl she needed to find, the bus driver decided to take her to the hospital in Vlan. He swung the bus around, nearly running Nodell Duggins off the road.

The ER doctor examined the woman, asking her questions she found entirely too personal. Had this ever happened before? Was there someone the hospital should contact? What kind of medications was she on? 

The woman declared she was on no medication except for the Riovlan she’d been using for the past month.

“Riovlan?”

The woman took the empty crinkled tube from her purse and gave it to him. “It’s made here. I’d like to buy more if you know where I can find it. I wasn’t able to locate the name of the business in the phone book.”

The doctor examined the tube. “La Oscuridad Inc. Not familiar with it. Massage into scalp nightly,” he read the directions aloud. “Have to be careful what you put in your head.” He chuckled at his joke, but got no response from the woman. He handed the tube back to her.

“I didn’t put them there. They came to me.”

Puzzled, the doctor stared at the woman. Then decided not to ask what she meant. “I can give you something for anxiety.”

“Anxiety?” The woman scoffed at the suggestion she suffered from that condition. “A little hair loss,” she said. “That’s the only health problem I’ve ever had in my life.”

“What you experienced on the bus sounds like a panic attack.” The doctor explained his diagnosis.

“I was drowning.” Only in the moment she spoke those words did she understand the vision she’d had on the bus. Catching sight of her rather disheveled appearance in the towel dispenser, she smoothed her hair and left with renewed determination. Somewhere, in dark waters, the couple awaited her arrival. 

When you ask people in Vlan about bodies of water, as the woman began to do, they are most likely to tell you about their ditches, tanks and reservoirs. They might quote you the cost of their new pump or tell you how much they paid to have a well dug. If they mention the river, it will only be to dismiss it. Fishing is poor—mud cats and carp. It is not consistently wide or deep enough for boating or water-skiing. There are no shade trees, so in summer if you are tempted to go there for a swim, you are likely to find yourself alone.

Teenagers go to the river for precisely this reason. There is nothing to do, and they can rest assured there will be no babies or old people to bother them. As they mature and feel the need to find entertainment outside themselves, they’ll drive the thirty miles to Bottomless Lakes. Many of them just keep going. That’s how Nodell Duggins explained the lack of youth in Vlan to the woman who found her annoying but tolerated her because Nodell let her use her car while she worked. She was eager to provide assistance in the search for Hondo and Estrellita, sure that her recent visions would lead to their location and restore her reputation as healer and visionary.

Night after night, the woman was drawn to the cliffs above the river. She parked near the bridge at a turnout in the highway called Scenic Spot. The Spot is where high school kids go to make out. Encased in their automobiles, they find the privacy they long for even though most nights the Spot is about as private as the laundromat on a Saturday morning.

The woman had spent enough time at Scenic Spot to know that if she sat there long enough she would see at least one shooting star. When she saw the pair falling in perfect unison and watched their arc disappear into the river below, she knew she had found her destination.

She fixed in her mind the place where the two stars had fallen and drove back to town. She noted a dirt road that led away from the highway to the river. She was confident that in the light of the following day she would be able to find the place. She was eager to return to the Rio Inn and check her map of the area, but first she had to meet Nodell at Benny’s for what the woman knew would be the last time. As soon as the sun rose, she intended to return to the river. And she intended to return alone.

Sip Drang thanked Lupe again for picking him up at the bus station and waved to her as she backed out of his front drive. From her he’d learned Nodell Duggins was back in town, and that for the past week she’d been stirring things up with a story about how she and a psychic were looking for the bodies of Hondo and Estrellita who had been visiting them both in dreams and visions. 

Sip quickly unpacked, put away his clothing and toiletries without his usual concern for neatness. Then he donned the Panama Hat he had purchased in Baton Rouge and left the house. Eager to learn more about Nodell and her psychic sidekick, Sip pressed the gas pedal to the floor and sped toward Benny’s where everyone was always willing to talk.

When Sip entered Benny’s he was shocked to find that Nodell was something called a Dinner Hostess. As Benny’s had never before had a Hostess, he correctly assumed that Nodell had managed to create a job for herself. She turned a cold shoulder to Sip who seated himself at the coffee counter where he was greeted by those who awaited his return with stories of their own to tell: a new grandchild; a two-headed snake found out on someone’s ranch; Bervin Fall’s prize Longhorn had died.

Knowing Nodell, Sip was prepared for just about anything but he was not prepared to see the woman he’d Heimliched on the bus plaster a fake smile on her face and wave cheerfully at Nodell, inviting her to sit at her booth. Curious, Sip got up to inquire after the woman’s health. Fine, was all the woman said and dismissed him brusquely.

Nodell shot Sip a wicked smile, pleased with the discomfort her new friend had caused him. She slid into the seat across from the woman and explained loud enough for all to hear that Sip used The Witness to spread malicious gossip. The woman, who was beginning to get on Nodell’s nerves, seemed preoccupied and did not respond to her. Nodell ground her teeth. In the short time they’d been sitting together, the woman had admired herself in the window and had even managed to get a quick look at herself in the underside of the waitress’s shiny metal tray. She was using a water glass as a mirror and applying fresh lipstick. Nodell needed a break. She told the woman she’d be unable to drive her around the next day. 

The woman again said merely, “Fine.” She explained she needed to catch up on her beauty sleep anyway and the sooner she started the better. She left Nodell sitting in her booth and walked back to The Rio Inn.

Sip finished the last bite of pie, wished everyone good evening, then drove to the Rio Inn and parked across the street. There he waited, imagining headlines, lead sentences and the Who What When Where Why and How of his next big story, another revealing the chicanery of Nodell Duggins and whoever the redhead was.

Inside her room, the woman took a pen and blackened the road on the map that would lead her to the place in the river. Early the next morning she paid the desk clerk twenty dollars for the use of his car. She drove out of Vlan, past the places that had become familiar to her. Cheerful and feeling at home, she even waved to the boys on a hay truck. Sip Drang, who followed at a discreet distance, had a sick feeling about where she was headed.

As the woman drove along the river road, she watched the water grow faster and deeper with every mile. She stopped near the place where the water runs purple and gray. She got out of the car and made her way down the river path, creeping in and out between the cacti and cholla, until she reached the water’s edge.

The river licked at the tips of her open-toed pumps and invited her in. Caressed by the current, she walked into deeper water. Lulled by the swirl between her thighs, the woman shivered with desire.

From a ridge, Sip watched. He would never forget the day that he and some other youngsters—Nodell and Velynda among them—had taken a large wooden raft out to the river in the back of his father’s pickup. When they put the raft in the water, Nodell told him about the contest they were going to have. What she described hadn’t seemed like much of a challenge. In fact, it seemed like the kind of dumb thing Nodell and her friends would think was an accomplishment. They’d take the raft out to the deep water. Each person would swim the length of the raft while those aboard timed the swimmer. The fastest person won. Though he didn’t expect to win, he knew he could swim from one end to the other. Sip slid off the back end with a confident splash. As he swam beneath it, the raft grew longer, the water darker.

Sip remembered swimming for what seemed an eternity, surfacing in the belief that he had surely reached the end of the raft, bumping his head each time on its underside. Logic told him to swim to the side of the raft and away from it. But his pride and the river’s dark current kept him paddling pointlessly forward.

Weary of the constant thump thump of Sip’s head beneath the raft as he tried to rise for air and the fear that they might actually cause him to drown, one of the boys dove in and rescued Sip as he descended into the muddy arms of the river bottom. Later everyone laughed as they roasted marshmallows around a campfire, telling him that as he swam, they had paddled, negating any progress he made. They had played the trick on others who had all been smart enough to simply swim away from the raft once they began to tire. No one had ever been as dumb as Sip Drang. “No wonder you’re mother left you behind,” he could hear Velynda Ashcroft saying again, “you’re not just fat, you’re stupid, too.” He let them laugh and said nothing about the seductive force that had pulled him deeper and deeper into the river.

Sip scrambled down the river path and plunged in after the woman. When he saw her disappear, he took a deep breath and dove after her, grabbing her by the hair and to his horror, ripped it easily 

Her lungs filling with water, the woman clutched her bald head in humiliation. She sank into the purple water where she saw Hondo’s dirty black car. Decayed flesh dripped from Hodo and Estrellita’s bodies. Tiny fish swam in and out of their eye sockets. Tendrils of green algae and moss flowed from their mouths. Their noses were plugged with debris and mud. Dozens of Styrofoam wig stands bobbed about in the back seat. A blank-faced hollow chorus, they jeered at her. Angry at their betrayal, she pulled at the door handle, but it gave way in her hands. They were beyond her reach. An old catfish with sickly pink eyes circled the woman, jutting back and forth between her legs, tickling her with its whiskers. It gave the woman one last scaly caress before she slid beneath Hondo’s car and settled behind one of the tires.

Sip walked back to the ridge, his soggy sneakers leaving damp impressions upon the ground. When he looked inside the car the woman drove to the river, he saw the map inside her large open purse. Next to it, something caught his eye—a shiny flattened tube decorated with a purple snakelike figure. Something familiar about it filled him with dread. He retrieved the tube and discovered it was what he suspected. Riovlan, made by La Oscuridad Inc., his parents’ old company. Riovlan was just one of their many products made from the red clay he stood upon mixed with the waters of Rio Oscuro that flowed past him as well as plants native to the area. So many people complained about the sickening side effects of their homemade remedies that they had eventually gone bankrupt and out of business. Sip’s mother took his little sister with her to live among a group of Wiccans, leaving Sip behind with his father who became a goat farmer for a few years before dying from an undiagnosed stomach ailment. Sip put the tube in his pocket. It had been a long time since he’d thought about his family. He credited his career in journalism to their talk about magic and cures and spells. Disgusted by their superstitions, not to mention the harm they’d done him and his sister, using them as guinea pigs for their concoctions, he’d turned to facts.

But he’d lived in Vlan long enough to understand that their were things he could not explain. He put the empty tube of Riovlan in his pocket, drove to his house, changed his clothes and went to Benny’s for an early lunch.

Sip ate his omelet slowly, waiting until Nodell had no one to seat, no kids to boost into booster chairs, no customer to chat with. Then he took a deep breath and approached the Hostess Station, which was just a TV tray that Nodell had brought in to sit behind. Before she could begin insulting him, he apologized for the harsh words he’d used in reporting on Mrs. Palmeyer’s accident. Mouth agape, Nodell stared at him with the deep green eyes that had so captivated him in his youth. He fought the impulse to fidget like a lovesick boy. He told her about his new column for The Witness: VIP Vlan’s Important People. If she wanted, she could be his first subject. In it, she could respond to the faith-healing fraud article if she chose to. Nodell listened, chewing on her already chapped lips. She was suspicious but interested.

When she told Sip she’d consider it, he acted grateful. “Don’t wait too long. I need the interview by tomorrow.” He took a peppermint candy from a glass dish and unwrapped it slowly. “My second choice is that new woman—the redhead.” He popped the peppermint into his mouth.

“She can’t be a VIP,” Nodell protested, “she’s not even from Vlan.”

“Well,” said Sip. “She seems to love the place, the way she drives all over the countryside. And let’s face it, she’s a knockout. A photo of her on the front page will sell a lot of papers.”

“Fine. Tomorrow,” said Nodell.

“I’ll pick you up, and we’ll drive out to the river. Real pretty this time of year.”

Nodell snorted. “It’s never pretty no time of year. I want my photo taken in front of my trailer.” She held both of her palms out in front of her. “PALMS READ HERE.”

“Your trailer isn’t really in Vlan. We need a local background, especially for the launch story.” 

Determined to become the first VIP, Nodell agreed to the river.

“Four o’clock sharp. Maybe we’ll catch a pretty sunset.”

“Don’t get any ideas, fat man,” said Nodell.

“Strictly business.” Sip cracked the peppermint between his teeth and left.

The next day Sip and Nodell made uncomfortable small talk—the only thing in common a history of dislike. Sip talked about his recent trip to Louisiana. Nodell described how to read the palm of a hand.

When Sip pulled up right next to the car the woman had driven to the river, Nodell hopped out, curious about who was there. When she looked inside, she recognized the familiar marked up map the woman had left on the seat. Nodell yanked the door open and grabbed it. “What are you and that crazy woman up to?” She waved the map in his face.

Sip played dumb. “I had no idea she’d be here.” Casually he followed the path the woman had taken to the water. “Looks like she went this way.

Nodell scurried to catch up with him as he approached the water. “You have some crazy idea we’re going to compete for VIP, for your attention. Dream on, you idiot.” She grabbed Sip by the arm meaning to spin him around and unload a barrage of humiliating name calling on him. She was surprised when he pulled her into the river behind him.

“She’s waiting for you,” he said.

Nodell recoiled at his touch, but as they tussled in the shallow water, she became excited by Sip’s hands slipping up her skirt and down her blouse. He groped and grabbed trying to get a firm hold on her. They tumbled farther out into the river, losing their footing as the current grew stronger, the river deeper. Nodell got up on Sip’s back and pushed him under. She held him down and beat on his bald head. Thump thump. She laughed, remembering the sound of his head bumping the bottom of the raft so long ago. She was surprised when Sip surfaced easily and tossed her off. He swam for the dark water. Determined to teach him another lesson Nodell slipped out of her skirt and swam after him, thinking he must have forgotten that she’d been the state 400-meter freestyle champ all four years in high school.

Sip was happy to see her taking the bait, but the sight of a newly energized Nodell, her muscular legs churning the water, made him tired. He wasn’t worried about the dark water. Twice he’d been caught in its current, and twice it had released its hold on him. He worried that he wouldn’t have the stamina to lure her out to the deep water.

Just as Nodell reached him, she went down. She popped back up, her eyes wide in surprise. She yelled something at him before she went down again. When she surfaced the third time she flailed only briefly before she disappeared.

When he got to the shore, Sip picked up the map Nodell had dropped along with her handbag and tossed them into the river. If their bodies were found, the people of Vlan would acknowledge a logical conclusion to the story they’d gossiped different versions of for the past couple of weeks. He sat down on the bank of the river and warmed himself against the flat sandstone rocks that layered the shore. He took off his shirt and let the heat of an early spring sun warm his flabby white belly. He saw the delicate blossoms quiver on the hardy cactus. He allowed the yellow grass to tickle his face and chest. He watched the fluffy white clouds separate, revealing the brilliance of a turquoise sky. Dark water coursed through his veins, and he called the place beautiful.

About the Author: Jane Hammons taught writing at UC Berkeley for thirty years before moving to Austin, Texas, where she writes, takes photographs and, before the pandemic, listened to a lot of live music. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Maternal is Political (Seal Press); Selected Memories (Hippocampus Press); Columbia Journalism Review; and San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. Three of her photographs were included in Taking It To the Streets: A Visual History of Protest and Demonstration in Austin, an exhibition of the Austin History Center. She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.