“Desecration” by Mike Bove

Posted on October 12, 2008 by Mary Akers

Father Tooley woke to a terrible sound. It was gone in an instant, and he wondered briefly if it had been some trick of the mind. As silence reassembled, he pushed back the blanket and went for his robe. Pulling the folds tight around his waist he reached for the door, but the shuffling at his back made him pause. Behind him, the woman in the sheets lifted her head.

“Stay there,” he said.

The sound, a crash, had come from outside the rectory, and he made his way in the faint-light dawn to the double doors that served as gateway. On the other side the darkened nave yawned, vast and empty, and he paused as the door closed to listen. Silence. He walked slowly to the center aisle and looked down between the rows of pews at the front entrance. The carpet scraped his naked soles, the fibers near threadbare from decades of hosting the faithful. Turning to face the altar, he signed the cross and genuflected, whispering an apology for appearing in his bedclothes. Then he saw the face of Christ.

It was above the altar, on the altar, smooth and pained, monochromatic in the dim light. Up the marble steps and closer, recognition dawned. The bare wall behind the altar: the mighty crucifix had fallen.

Ten feet by six and forged from steel, the gold plated cross held a pewter Messiah, massive in presence, hung emaciated by outstretched arms. Now, the head lying prone against the cracked marble alter, the figure looked even more helpless. Father Tooley trembled to see the battered face of the Savior surrounded by broken bits of marble. He felt dizzy, nauseated, but breathed slowly and collected himself in time to follow the base of the cross down to the floor behind, badly scraped and encircled with shards of marble and- something else, pale wedges and bits of ivory moon-spilled communion wafers.

He breathed, he buckled, he fell to his knees. The crucifix had somehow detached from its clasps, falling from the wall, the steel stem splitting the top of the tabernacle like an eggshell, dashing its contents to the floor as the weight of the cross above pitched forward and swung the face of Christ violently down to the altar. Why? Pieces of aftermath lay at Father Tooley’s knees, why, and the answer appeared.

“What happened?” Mrs. Bertrand was wrapped in his bed sheet, her bare shoulders visible even in the shadows. She padded slowly up the marble steps to his folded frame.

Father Tooley stiffened. “I asked you to stay in bed.”

Momentary silence and the two looked down at the wafers on the floor, sacred confetti mingled with terrestrial stone. Before mass, merely discs of unleavened bread purchased in bulk from a Catholic supplier, but during the ceremony of the Eucharist, when Father Tooley held them before the congregation in a gilded platter, they acquired hallowed form. Transsubstantiatio, the miraculous changing of the bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ.

“What a mess,” Mrs. Bertrand said, holding the sheet closed at her breast with one hand. She leaned forward with the other and started to sweep the debris into a small pile.

Father Tooley caught her wrist. “No.” He felt her shrink, but he would not have her further defile the holy pieces with common touch.

No one else could handle the wafers after their metamorphosis; if any were left over from mass they were stored in the tabernacle and used the following day. But it was his sole responsibility to convey them from their resting place on the platter to the hands or tongues of the parish. And if one should fall to the ground by clumsiness of a careless child or arthritic elder, he alone could bend down to retrieve it. It was his touch that preserved their sacred state, kept them free from sin.

Mrs. Bertrand shifted in the sheet. “What now?”

The sun was beginning to filter through the windows above, illuminating the faces of Aquinas, Augustine, and the Holy Virgin cast motionless in stained glass. The reds and golds, blues and purples of their static garments crept down to the pews onto the marble steps to touch gently the edges of the white bed sheet wound around Mrs. Bertrand’s shape. Father Tooley held a special fondness for the early morning light of the church, all color and silence, and he let his eyes fall on the mixed hues that skirted her waist, her thighs. To see her like this, bathed in these tones, was blasphemy, and he felt the bitter pangs of guilt resurface.

Mrs. Bertrand was a boxy woman of forty, a widow fifteen years his junior who had returned to the church of her childhood after losing her husband, her faith. Father Tooley was her console, although his contributions had expanded of late to include physical as well as spiritual sustenance. It was never his intention, but she sparked a forgotten longing not felt since the days before Seminary, a tension that waned during the years of prayer and silent obedience. She was swimming in sin, as was he now, and he longed to free himself from the sensual grip of a forbidden undertow.

She sensed his gaze and loosened her grip on the sheet. The fabric went slack at her chest, dropping just far enough to expose the top of a breast, pale and round.

“Cover up,” he said, looking away.

She reached for him and placed a hand on his robe, finding the fold and slipping her fingers in against his skin. Her touch warmed him, but when he closed his eyes he saw the broken visage of the fallen Christ. He stood up fast and loomed over her. She let the sheet fall full, both breasts burning now with the sacred fire of stained glass sun.

“Cover up.”

The spectacle of the crucifix- the broken alter, the shattered tabernacle and scattered wafers- was a warning he brought on himself. He’d allowed her to entice him and invited her into his bed. He knew well the price for such actions, the price for them both. Neither were innocent. He knew, too, that it was her inborn deceit that brought them to this place: of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die. It would be a death without honor, shameful in the eyes of Christ; he’d fallen victim to her charms. Serve only your God and fear him alone. You must destroy the false prophets who try to lead you astray. And so he did, most every night, until he could destroy her no more and collapsed in a heap at her side.

Mrs. Bertrand pulled the sheet up and stood. Father Tooley could not meet her eyes. Filled with such loathing, he couldn’t bear to look. “This isn’t right,” he whispered, “you know it.”

“It is right,” she said, “and you know it.”

It was not the only time he’d made a false claim of repentance. The first time, a winter storm wrought chaos on the roadways. He’d ended their counseling session early, but by then it was too late; the power was out and ice had frozen her car doors. He’d prepared the bed in the rectory’s guest chamber, but she never made it. Somewhere between lighting candles and building a fire in the hearth he yielded. The next morning he rose with the dew of her body still on him and wept in the shadows while she gathered her things. There was no explanation, no reason he could offer to God or himself; he’d tasted the fruit. When she left he purged her from his thoughts and adopted immediate resolve. Never again, and he would spend the rest of his life toiling for forgiveness in the service of the Lord.

But he slipped. Their sessions turned into more than talks about grief, and he found himself drawn farther away with each touch, each kiss, each night of empty pleasure. Weeks passed, months. She kept a toothbrush in his medicine cabinet. She cooked him meals and called him John. She insisted that he call her Lilian, she was no longer anyone’s Mrs., but it terrified him.

Standing in the Sanctuary with her now, he trembled to think what punishments awaited. God was angry. Sickened with lust, he’d enraged his Savior. “It’s sinful,” he said.

“Sinful?” she shook her head, “it’s love, John. There’s nothing sinful-”

“Stop it,” he said, and stepped to the crucifix.

The aftermath of the fall was overwhelming. The altar was ruined; he’d have to hire a mason. Some of the minor cracks in the base could be filled, but the main slab would have to be replaced, he was sure. He’d need to commission a new tabernacle. It had been in the church before he arrived; he’d have to call the Diocese office to inquire after the original records. The small door was gold, could it be salvaged? He looked at it now on the floor, unhinged and speckled with marble and dust. These were the pieces of his own desperation, the flotsam of weakness.

And suspended above it all, supported at each end by cracked stone, the crucifix. He went to it, touched the scraped face of Christ, and placed his hands firmly underneath the cold torso. It would not do to wait.

“What are you doing?”

Mrs. Bertrand was behind him, he could almost feel her breath at his neck. He closed his eyes and felt the muscles tighten.

“John, stop,” her voice again, “it’s too much.”

But he pressed the bare flesh of his fingers hard against the torn metal, feeling the skin open. The pain was mad but he kept on, wrenching, twisting, trying to lift the cross away from disgrace. He pulled with his body, with his being, and his breath went quick. The heat of the task rose in his face, his eyes, splotches of white coming and going like the apparitions of Elijah. He was reaching, stretching, cleansing himself with the burn of exertion, rinsing away sin with his own hot blood. And he reveled in it, rapt with holy subjection. This was atonement.

Paralyzed with strain and nearing exhaustion, there came a sudden jerk from behind. He groaned as his fingers tore loose from the steel and spun to see Mrs. Bertrand, upright and naked, her hands at his sides, the sheet at her heels. She was heaving, fear in her eyes. “Stop.”

He hit her. He swung a hand at her face and she cried out, reeling back into the soft light with blood on her cheek.

Neither spoke. Father Tooley stood with the crucifix at his back, looking into temptation. The tips of his fingers pulsed. His hands bled freely now; crimson globes falling onto the marble, spattering the debris. Mrs. Bertrand’s face was an enigma. In an instant he saw fear, true pain, a mix of the two that boiled in her eyes. He imagined a tear, a bevy of them brimming and falling to wash away the blood mark on her cheek. But she did not cry. As quick as they appeared, the hurt and fear were gone, wiped clean by an unseen hand. The face that remained was stone. Father Tooley shrank within himself but couldn’t look away.

You’re not an evil man, she had said. Three months into the affair: he was a wreck of shame. A wolf in sheep’s clothes, he led his flock into the sulfur and hadn’t the courage to admit it. This is bigger than God, she told him, and he cringed. Yet a small light flickered inside, call it doubt or truth, and he’d sobbed freely in her arms and told her he loved her.

Now Mrs. Bertrand didn’t speak. He watched as she pulled the sheet up around herself once more and stepped lightly from the altar down into the center aisle and away, past the pews and into the shadows.

Father Tooley heard the hollow click of the rectory door and knew she was gone. He spent a moment in stillness, watching the nave lighten, the windows burning with morning sun. Thoughtless, he turned back to the prostrate crucifix and worked his bloody hands beneath. In the emptiness of the cavernous church he heard his own whimpers against the distant ceilings. He tightened his grip and pulled, pulled with the fervor of sacred will, but the stone-cold Christ would not rise.

Mike Bove‘s fiction has appeared in Mindprints and Eastoftheweb, his poetry in The Cafe Review and Off the Coast. He lives with his wife and son in Portland, Maine and is a member of the English faculty at Southern Maine Community College.

“Practice Runs” (Author Unknown)

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Mary Akers

I sat down at the black and pink Formica table in my studio apartment in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen to construct a paper model sailboat from an “easy-to-assemble” book. The book contained 18 boats of all types from bark canoes to ocean liners, each six to ten inches long. First I unpacked my tools – scissors, an exacto knife, glue, a cutting board, toothpicks, and nickels and quarters for ballast. During the next few hours I cut the boat from the page, scored and folded along the dotted lines, and glued the pieces together. By the time the afternoon light faded I had assembled a sailboat – not unlike Viljandi the thirty-two foot sloop, named for my husband’s birthplace in Estonia, he and I sailed from Maine to Key West, two years before he died. Although we were novice sailors we learned along the way, traveling short distances each day, making our way through the murky seas of New England to the lucid blue waters of Florida. John was most comfortable when he was moving down a waterway, whether in our Klepper kayak, in a raft on a wild river, or sailing Long Island Sound aboard Viljandi.

Constructing the little sailboat was not my first paper boat creation. I’d begun making them on a long cross-country trip to relax after a day gripping the black leather steering wheel of my van camper driving on unfamiliar roads. I didn’t tell anyone about the boats. Making them seemed a bit like the work of a crazy person cutting out paper dolls. I was not yet sixty but my daughters were looking for early signs of senility and I didn’t want to give them any ammunition. Soon after I assembled a boat I’d long to set it free, off on its own explorations, to make its way in the world.

Sending off these paper vessels evolved into ritual. Because they are made of heavy waterproof paper I can almost believe they last forever. I spend a great deal of time searching out the waterway with the greatest potential for my ships’ joy and adventure.

As I let the sailboat dry and packed up my tools, I remembered my very first send off on the Virgin River in Zion National Park in Southern Utah. I hiked a few miles up the Riverbank Trail with a six-inch paper replica of a bark canoe tucked in my daypack next to my water bottle and high-energy breakfast bar. The winding trail led me into a slot canyon along the river lined with giant pines. A mist hung in the air intensifying the fresh pine smell all around me. At a solitary spot, right before the canyon narrowed, I put my canoe into the ripples along the bank. I imagined two people in the boat; one kneeling toward the front and the other in back; both paddling with the current. The canoe was soon out of sight, lost in the shadows of the canyon walls – on its way. As I retraced my steps to the road, I felt a twinge of envy because I wasn’t part of the little canoe’s voyage and sadness because I knew I would never see the canoe again.

I put the completed sailboat on a bookshelf to dry, christened her Little Viljandi and began to plan her maiden voyage. I intended to send her off in Central Park in the middle of Manhattan. I pictured her surrounded by dog walkers, bicyclists, and sunbathers spread out on rocks. Over the next few weeks on long walks in the park I charted a course for Little Viljandi; one that would allow the boat to keep moving toward its final destination. It was a challenge to find a solitary place at the beginning of the course to send her off. Although it’s not easy to be alone in Central Park, with careful planning, it can happen.

On a late July morning, I put Little Viljandi into a large cloth bag and took the bus along the edge of the park up Central Park West to 100th Street. I hurried along a path north toward The Pool and west along The Loch. There in The Ravine in a calm pool at the bottom of a cascade I helped Little Viljandi set sail. I wanted the sailboat and her crew eventually to reach the Harlem Meer, at the northern end of the park, but I feared that she would get stuck in an iron grate or run aground in the shallow water. Although I hoped she would get some help along the way from one of the park workers or a Central Park Conservancy Guide, once I let her go I had no control over her lot. I crouched at the edge of the stream
placing the boat bow first into the water feeling my fingers turn numb from the cold. The sail caught the wind and she began to move away from me out of sight. I felt the now familiar nostalgia, a mix of loss and exhilaration imagining the adventures awaiting Little Viljandi on its journey – a journey without me.

Sending Little Viljandi on her way in Central Park was my fifth launch of a paper boat. I had let a dinghy go just as the sun poked over the horizon among the reeds of a small pond at a ranch in the Gallatan National Forest in Montana. My paper replica of a river paddle boat plies the waters of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Memphis. In Houghton Lake, Michigan I picture my mahogany runabout pulling water skiers across the lake leaving squeals of laughter in their wake. Assembling the boats was getting easier but my sense of loss and excitement when I let them go never changed. For the first time in six years, when I launched Little Viljandi, I thought about my husband’s ashes in a paper box on the back shelf of my closet. I’d never known what to do with him.

Two weeks later, at our home in Connecticut, my daughters and I arose early on a Sunday morning. Taking the box of ashes with us, we drove to the clearing at a riverbank that I had scouted out earlier in the week. Jennifer and Joanna were quiet. I think they were going to do whatever Mother wanted this time. After we parked the car I opened the square green box and took out the plastic bag holding the ashes. We walked to the water’s edge and I opened the bag, knelt, and scattered the ashes into the widening in the river called Diana’s Pool, my husband’s boyhood swimming hole. I knew they would reach the Atlantic Ocean.

Like my paper boat launches, it was over very quickly. I recognized the feelings of sadness and expectation as they swept over me. Standing by the shore with my daughters I remembered all my paper boats, and for the first time I realized that with each launch I was saying goodbye to John. I needed all of that practice to prepare me for this final goodbye because it gave me permission to start the rest of my life. It was a send off for him and a new beginning for me. When we walked back to the car I tossed the plastic bag and cardboard box into a trash can and wondered if anyone would notice it and know what it had held.

Author Unknown. If you are the author of this piece or know who is, please let us know at r.kv.r.y.editor(at)gmail(dot)com. We lost records when the old website imploded, and would like to fully credit all authors who have generously shared their work with us. Thank you.

“Hidden Valley” by Elaine Barnard

Posted on July 26, 2008 by Mary Akers

I kiss Jered goodbye with the hope he’ll be clean by the time I get back from
the desert. I don’t even know where the desert is really. I just say I’m going
there because it sounds adventurous. Something I’m not. Something I’ve
never been. Now Jered is adventurous. He’ll be the first one to tell you so.
He’ll stick a needle in his arm without hesitation. He says it takes guts to do it.
Why am I such a wimp?

Before the day I found him at it I never knew what he did while I was at
work, work being the part-time payroll clerk at the Seattle free clinic where I
first met Jered. He was the clinic counselor. You know, the guy who interviews
the candidates for rehab. Jered counseled nights, I payrolled days. And that
worked swell for sharing our moldy apartment. We never got in each other’s
way. That is, until the day I left for work early feeling sick and found Jer higher
than Mt. Rainier. He was almost beautiful like that, dancing around the stains
in the carpet, graceful as Nureyev in “Swan Lake.” Only I was afraid he’d leap
out the window on one of his inspired flights.

“Jer, for god’s sake,” I yelled as he balanced on the sill. It was a humid
summer morning. I’d opened the windows before I left for the clinic. He
faltered at my voice, pressing his nude body against the glass for support,
sweat staining his skin until it gleamed. I wanted to touch him then. I wanted
to make love to him in a way I’d never done before.

“You idiot,” he hollered as he fell from the sill and rushed toward me. “You
never know when to keep your mouth shut.”

He clenched my wrists, forcing me back to the bed. Straddling me, he
clutched my neck with thin fingers. I tried to scream but strands of his bleached
hair muffled me. It had a chemical smell, like the one that overwhelmed me the
first time I entered the clinic. I felt myself falling into a gray space. “Jer-Jer,” I
gasped, “I’m…I’m pre-pregnant.”

His body grew limp, “You’re what?”

“I’m pregnant,” I gasped again, my throat aching.

He wrenched himself from me and slammed into the bathroom. I heard the
shower run full blast, as if he wanted to rid himself of any trace of me. After
that he slumped into a depression for weeks until I convinced him it wasn’t
true. I’d lied so he’d lay offa me. But that was two years ago.

Jer is in rehab now. He’s been in and out of rehab several times. He lost his
job at the clinic when they found he was the free loader they’d been looking for.

When I leave him this time I say, “Jer-Jer…I-I might not be back…”

“I hear you, Carla, I hear you.” He slumps on the sofa. His eyes glaze like
he hasn’t heard me at all. Maybe he hasn’t. How should I know what goes on
inside his messed up head?

Jer wasn’t always like this. In the beginning it seemed like we were glued
together, dancing the tango in the clinic cafeteria after it closed for the night. I
held a rose between my teeth, its petals in full bloom, fragrant and sweet on
my tongue, like Jered making love to me in the early morning before I left for
work.

As I make my farewell exit into the spongy streets he yells after me, “If
anything’s in that pooch Carla, don’t bring it back.”

I inhale hard. Suck in my stomach until it hurts, hoping that might change
everything.

Just in case you’re thinking how brave I am to leave my lost lover for
unknown parts, let me tell you that my Aunt Duffy is picking me up at the
airport. Aunt Duffy has been picking me up for years, ever since Momma died
and Daddy skedaddled.

“Come hang out in my trailer, Carla, until you get on your feet,” she said
when I confessed I’d lost my job at the clinic. They suspect me of being in
cahoots with Jer, which in one sense is true but not in the way they think.

So here I am, no job, no apartment, two months pregnant and living by the
grace of Aunt Duffy. Life’s a real picnic, ain’t
it?

Aunt Duf lives in a dumpy trailer park on a forgotten fork offa highway 62,
somewhere outside Palm Springs, California. She’s a naturalist. That is, she
eats natural foods. Drinks water straight from the faucet. Wears no makeup.
Skinny as a snake and so on. You get the picture.

Duf, who doesn’t know I’m “with child,” insists I need a little desert
orientation with her long time friend, Harry. She’s been on the phone with him
ever since I arrived. “Now you’re here, you might as well see what the desert
has to offer. It’s not the wasteland you might think.”

So here we are at the bus stop at eight-thirty in the morning with layers of
Duf’s sun block on my face, Duf’s extra straw hat, her extra sunglasses and
canteens of her natural water. Duf’s in much better condition than I am even
though she’s “seventy-three going on thirty-seven,” as she confessed last night
when we were bonding over bottles of cactus cola.

There’s something about Duffy that’s kinda sad. Maybe it’s because she’s so
determined to be cheerful. I wonder if someday I’ll look just like her, waiting
with sun wrinkled arms and freckled thighs for some retired tour guide to make
my day.

Because this is a tour, even it it’s just the two of us. Duffy wouldn’t let me go
any other way, not wimpy overweight me. I know that’s one of the things Jer
hates about me now, the weight I mean. I wasn’t this heavy when we met. I
started gaining when I discovered he had a secret habit he loved more than
me. That’s when I started stashing Hershey Kisses in my underwear. I have
some Kisses in the back pocket of my overalls right now, triple wrapped against
the oncoming heat.

Fortunately my overalls are two sizes too big or the Kisses might make my
butt look even bigger. I always wear my clothes two sizes larger. That’s
another thing he dislikes about me. “Geez,” he said, “if you ever get really
pregnant you’ll look like a house waiting to be demolished.”

Fact is, I feel just like that with my bulging tummy and my boobs too big for
my bra. But I don’t give a shit. I’m not giving into it, to my lousy mood and all.
They say that happens with pregnancy. The dark days loom ahead.

Harry is kind of a macho character, big and grizzled, in his sixties maybe.
Duffy said he was a ranger before he retired. Now he has his own company,
“Desert Adventures.” He yaks non-stop on our ride to Joshua Tree. I’m glad
he’s a motor mouth because I don’t feel like talking even though Duf tries hard to
get me going. Rocking and rolling over these roads just doesn’t do much for my
attitude.

Harry pulls up for a pit stop in Yucca Valley. The air is mellow with the
fragrance of May-blooming cactus all yellow and orange in the sunlight. My
stomach’s feeling queasy so I buy a carton of skim milk. Duf stands in line for
the toilet with a few weary tourists just arriving from L.A. I didn’t drink any
coffee this morning to keep my bladder at minor emergency level, so I pass the
line and park myself under a Joshua tree. I finish off my last Hershey Kiss
before it melts and wash it down with the milk, splattering my breasts, which
feel swollen and tender as I dab them with a tissue. In seven more months
they’ll be outrageous.

Harry honks, revs up and we’re off into Hidden Valley. As far as I’m
concerned, Hidden Valley is about as hidden as my boobs. Boulders jut from
the earth as if it had a headache. It must be at least 105. My skull will burst if I
touch it so I don’t. I just stand dazed while Harry demonstrates his rusty rock
climbing skills. I think he’s showing off for Duffy. She can’t take her eyes off
him even though his skin looks like he washes with a cheese grater, cuts and
scabs everywhere.

Harry scurries up his “minor” boulder like the mountain goat I saw pictures of
at the rest stop. If this is minor then I’m more of a coward than I thought. He
dares us to join him. Duf can’t resist. “Hey,” Harry hollers, “c’mon up, Carla.
Great view from the top.”

My stomach flips. I do not want to go up, but it’s obvious Harry isn’t starting
down until I do. They’re both above me now, cheering me on. “You’re a wimp,”
I hear Jer say, “just a fat female wimp.” His words sting like a bad sunburn.
Perspiration creases my chest, trickles beneath my armpits. I smell the deep
tremor of fear.

“Hey, Duf, could you snap me on the way up?”

Duffy waves her camera and focuses as I press one shoe into a crack
between the rocks. This won’t be as hard as it looks. It’s all a matter of timing,
one foot in front of the other like the monkeys in the zoo that Jer and I used to
visit before-

God, I need some rain right now, a good deluge might clear my head, give me
some courage.

“Careful,’ Harry yells, “that rock might be loose. Test it before you climb any
higher.”

My legs feel stiff and achy. “Smile,” Duf calls, kneeling beside Harry. “Make
it look like you’re having fun. Us old coots can do it, you can too.”

Much to my surprise, I’m two thirds up. “Take another shot,” I gasp at Duffy.
“Double insurance.”

My fingers tremble. I place one hand above the other. “You’re almost there,”
Harry drones. “You’re-”

“Look this way, Carla. It’ll be a good one.”

I lift my head to smile up at Duffy. What a terrific shot to send Jer. Make him
eat his words. But just as she snaps the photo, my foot loses its hold, dangles
below me as if it had a will of its own. I cling to the rock, try to boost myself.
My knees scrape the granite. Blood trickles down my legs, saturating my socks.
Something releases inside me. Just some more blood. What’s a little blood
here and there. What’s a little-

Then I realize it’s my womb, my womb aborting its bit of life. I slip, slide in a
jigsaw down the boulder, peeling flesh from my arms, cutting my knuckles until
the bone shows bare and white like Jered’s skin in the sunlight.

Harry clambers down as fast as he can. He kneels beside me trying to
staunch the blood with his flimsy first-aid while he calls for help on his cellular.

Through a haze of sun I see Duffy, her gnarled fingers caressing me, dabbing
at me with her bottle of water. “My God, girl, you’re a mess everywhere.
Something must be wrong inside you. I can’t stop the blood.”

Harry takes off his shirt. Duffy diapers my crotch with it. Blood keeps
gushing, the dank odor of the unborn.

“Hang in there,” Duffy whispers from somewhere beyond me. “They’ll be
here soon.”

I vomit. The acrid odor makes me shudder in the heat as if I’d been
transported to the frozen side of hell. I descend into a numb dark as a final
surge of blood soaks the desert floor.

“That’s the-l-last of you, Jer…” I hear myself mumble as I reach for Duf’s warm
fingers.

A siren shatters the desert silence. Lights dazzle me. The musk smell of
cactus mixes with the blanket of sand drifting over me. Duffy caresses me, a
comforting cocoon, a sweet sensation…

I stayed with Duffy for a year before I went back to Seattle. I was hoping to
get my old job back or any job at all. I couldn’t live off Duffy forever, much as
she wanted me to. “We’re a team, Carla. Stay. You could get a job at the date
stand maybe, or that earth foods market down the road. There’s a ‘Help
Needed’ sign in the window.”

Harry drove me to the Palm Springs airport in his dusty old van. Duffy sat
beside me holding my arm like she didn’t ever want to let it go. “Here’s some
cactus candy for you,” she said before I went through security. “I made it
myself. I’ll send you more if you like it. It’s chock full of Vitamin C and stuff. You
might need it where you’re going.”

I arrived in Seattle in the rain and went straight to rehab. Crazy as it may
seem, I somehow had to see if Jer was there. I was hoping he wasn’t. I was
hoping-

The rehab clerk looked up from her computer when I inquired about Jer.
Then she scrolled her charts while I leaned against the counter for support.
“Jered was released a while back. I think he’s still around. Got a job, I hear,
with Sally’s Dance Academy downtown.”

I walk two blocks to Sally’s place, an old shoe store remodeled into a dance
space. Through the window I see Jer demonstrating a leap. The kids stand in a
circle around him trying to imitate the movement, their supple bodies silken in
white leotards and tights.

I press myself against the window absorbing him until the lesson is over and
the kids straggle home. “Jered,’ I whisper before I turn back into the rain and
hail a bus to the clinic. My breath leaves a memory on the glass.

Elaine Barnard’s fiction has been published in Kalliope, Pearl, Sage, Writers Forum (UK), Storyteller and Timber Creek Review. Several of her plays have been produced at regional and university theaters. On January 11, 2008 five of her stories were produced at the Beverly Hills Library as part of the City’s “New Short Fiction” series. She holds an MFA from the University of California at Irvine.

“Medusa Song” by Mary Akers

Posted on July 12, 2008 by Mary Akers

She scrambles the eggs while the baby howls at her knees. To drown out the racket, she hums as she jabs her fork into the yolks. She enjoys the way they spill their yellow color and swirl into the whites. She matches her tune to the schook, schook, schook of the fork against the bowl, then does a quick side-step when the baby lunges for her legs.

His little fat hands grasp the air, throwing him off balance. He totters on his heels for a moment then sits hard and rolls back sideways, bumping his head on the floor. He stops crying abruptly and flails his arms in the air like a big bug stuck on its back.

Cynthia knows she should pick him up, comfort him, but she’s too deep in her own need. She won’t look down, even, because if she looks at his face all twisted up and desperate for her, she’ll have to pick him up, and she just can’t do that motherhood stuff right now. She used to love the feeling, everyone needing her so badly. She would peel and seed John’s oranges when she packed his lunch. She cut the crusts off his sandwich out of pure love. And when the baby fell asleep, she’d sit and hold him just as long as he would let her.

But John Junior is walking now-into everything-and he’s gotten so clingy. Her friend Alice says that John Junior is feeling separation anxiety. Every time Cynthia leaves the room he thinks she’s gone forever, just disappeared. Secretly, Cynthia wishes it could work like that–two steps into the bedroom, and poof, she’s in another life, another world.

She used to love her life. She looked forward to every day. Cynthia can’t even say when things changed. Maybe it was back when she suspected John of sleeping with his secretary. Maybe it was after John Junior was born and she couldn’t seem to do anything right.

John and she had never fought before. Well, sometimes, but it was always more of a disagreement and once Cynthia apologized it would be over. It never spilled out into the rest of her life.

Now things seem to get all tangled up, till she can’t separate them, one from the other. She feels like that woman with snakes for hair, only all her problems are tangled up there too, squirming and writhing around, hissing on top of her head. She figures that must be why John isn’t home yet-imagine living with a woman who can’t comb her hair for the snakes. She tries calling his office, but that snooty Angela answers, so Cynthia puts on a different voice and pretends to be one of John’s clients.

“Mr. Albee promised to show us a home today, is he in?”

She smiles because she knows Angela is too dense to figure out it’s her. She’s careful to keep the smile out of her voice. Then Angela says, “Mr. Albee hasn’t been in all day, Ma’am, may I give him a message?”

She says it real sly-like, with extra emphasis on the ma’am, until Cynthia is really getting sick. The eggs look disgusting and she feels so nauseous. Then she’s throwing up again, retching in the toilet, and thinking, God, please don’t let me be pregnant, but she’s known it for a while.

When she’s wiping her face, John calls and she thinks he says he’s at work, but it’s hard to hear for sure over the baby. Liar. She just called there. Cynthia doesn’t want to yell at him, but she feels it rising up in her throat like bile, and she wants to stop it but the words are pouring out all over the place like vomit, sour and steaming.

She hangs up and tries to finish supper, even if it is just eggs and toast. After John sells a house they’ll have steak. She puts the baby in his crib, and over the monitor she can hear him banging his head against the bars. She goes to the door and watches, fascinated. His eyes roll back in pleasure. She tries banging her own head once on the door frame before she remembers the snakes. No sense getting them all riled up.

Then she hears the eggs frying too hard, and sure enough, they’re brown when she stirs them, and the toast needs scraping. Schook, schook, schook, the crumbs fly all over the sink, sticking to the sides. She thinks about that woman who drove her kids into the lake and cried about it on national TV. What a terrible person, a horrible mother. But the snakes hiss, “Yessss.”

She’s barely gotten the toast buttered when John Junior starts up again. He’s poopy, too. She can see it rimming the edges of his diaper. What with the snakes and the baby it’s really all just too much for her and she carries him out to the pickup and puts him squish onto the seat and she leaves supper unfinished and she’s really going to do it this time because she just can’t take it any more.

Halfway to the lake it starts raining. John Junior is sitting in the floorboard playing with his toes and the wipers are keeping time in the dark, schook, schook, schook, marking off the seconds till it’s done.

Cynthia pulls right up to where the lake meets the road, and there’s no one around, so she gets out and goes over to the water’s edge. The baby watches her; his face against the window, nose flattened, big eyes shining white through the dark.

The water smells dank and fishy and it’s way too cold when she sticks her head in. Cynthia is on all fours holding her breath and she thinks about how she must look-rear in the air, head in the lake. She doesn’t get up, though, and her chest starts to ache from needing to breathe. Her head is throbbing, and her throat spasms, her body trying to force her to breathe. But she won’t, she won’t, and she can hear the schook, schook, schook of blood in her head, looking for oxygen.

When her body starts to relax and she’s feeling like she could stay down there at the bottom of the lake forever, she jerks her head up hard, throwing back her shoulders, landing on her back at the muddy edge of the lake.

And possibly the baby is crying in the truck, but he’s safe enough, and she remembers that his diaper needs changing while she watches drops of rain fall silver through the night and feels them sting her cold lake-water face as she listens and waits and hopes the snakes have drowned.

Mary Akers’ fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in various international journals such as Bellevue Literary Review, The Fiddlehead, and Primavera. She has an essay in the newly released anthology The Maternal Is Political and her co-authored book Radical Gratitude, first published in March of 2008, is in its second printing. Although raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-which she will always call home-she currently lives in Western New York with her husband and three children. This is Akers’ second appearance in r.kv.r.y. Her short story Multicolored Tunneled Life appeared in r.kv.r.y.’s summer 2006 issue. (Edited to add: in 2010 Akers took over editorship of r.kv.r.y. from Victoria Pynchon.)

“In the Morning” by Ryan Crider

Posted on April 12, 2008 by Mary Akers

bed, bedding, bedroom

Maybe I expected to feel something the next morning. Better, worse – either one. But when I awoke beneath the thin sheets of the strange bed, it was the same as always. Even during those seconds when I couldn’t be sure of where I was or how I’d gotten there, there was no panic. My head was all right. And then I did remember the details of where/when/how, recalled a few things about the night before. I looked over at the woman next to me and then over at the door to the bathroom. And one thing I did feel when I saw her was that I wished the whole deal seemed a little stranger than it actually was.

I got up, found my jockey shorts and jeans lying in the floor and pulled them on, then went into the bathroom, splashed my face with water, rinsed out my mouth and pissed. I reached into my right jean pocket and checked to make sure the ring was there, and it was, right where I’d put it before leaving the house the night before. I looked into the mirror and felt of the ring for a minute, then walked back over to the bed and decided not to leave. I knew what it was like to wake up and not see the person I expected to be there next to me. So I lay back down and watched her sleep. When I got tired of that, I stared at the box fan blowing air at us from the corner of the room. Then I tried to see out the window, between the drapes that were tossing back and forth. I went back to looking at the woman, and after some time she started making little morning noises and shifting in her sleep.

I pulled myself up until I sat propped against the headboard. She sniffed, reached up and scratched her nose, and then slowly opened her eyes and squinted. She grinned when she saw me watching her.

“Morning,” she said.

I nodded and smiled back. She ran the palm of one hand across my bare chest.

“I think I’m going to have a shower,” she said. She was looking me straight in the eyes.

I pulled the covers off my legs and swung around over the side of the bed and started picking the rest of my clothes up off the floor. She placed her hand on my right shoulder, then let it slide down to the small of my back, then let it fall to the bed. She sighed and yawned.

“Well,” she said. She sighed again and rubbed at the nape of her neck. “Well, I’ll be quick about it. Wait around until I’m finished, and I’ll fix some breakfast.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. I’d pulled my shirt on over my head. I turned around and saw her staring at me again and changed my mind. “I’ll wait around until you’re out.” I didn’t have any reason to hurry.

She went into the bathroom and I heard the shower start up. I finished getting dressed and then headed toward the kitchen, going slowly and staying quiet. There were a couple of kids sleeping somewhere, and I didn’t know which room was theirs. It wasn’t a big house, but I passed by three closed doors in the hallway, and they had to lead somewhere. In the kitchen, I checked in the refrigerator, and all there was to drink was a bottle of cheap wine, just a touch of milk, and a plastic container of something red. I started opening up cabinets and found the cups and glasses to the right of the sink, pulled out a little blue plastic one, and used it to get some water from the faucet.

I thought I should do something, so I looked around the kitchen and spotted the coffeemaker on the other side of the fridge. I went over and found the big can of Folgers and some filters in the cabinet above. I lifted the carafe out and filled it at the sink, then poured the water into the back of the maker, replaced the carafe and loaded the maker up with a new filter and several spoonfuls of coffee. I turned the thing on, pulled two mugs out of the cabinet with all the glasses, and set them down next to it. Then I wandered into the living room.

The room was untidy. There was a couch positioned across from the television, and covering the couch were several stuffed animals and an old felt blanket. A ragged-looking recliner sat off a bit to one side. Toys were scattered all over the floor, dump trucks and airplanes and little people, other action figures that didn’t quite look like people. Behind the couch, on the stretch of carpet leading to the front door, I saw the red plastic toy convertible I vaguely remembered tripping over on my way in the night before. The fireplace looked dusty and neglected, and it was summer so it wouldn’t have been used for a good long while, but the mantel was full of small pictures propped up in oval and rectangular frames. I maneuvered around the stuff in the floor and walked over and looked at them.

There hadn’t been time for picture-looking the night before. Most of the photographs were of two little boys, or one or the other of the boys, playing with a toy, or running around outside, or posing in a baseball uniform, things like that. There was one professional looking, posed shot of the woman with the two boys. At the end of the mantel was another studio shot of an elderly couple. I didn’t see any shots that looked like an ex-husband, but then, there wouldn’t be any of him.

There wasn’t any remote control anywhere, so I bent over and flipped on the TV. I turned the channel to an early morning newscast and lowered the volume, then walked back across the room and looked around some more. I saw the little plastic convertible again and picked it up off the floor, took it over to the recliner and sat down. The car was made of hard plastic, rather than the flimsy kind, and it seemed sturdy enough. It was as long as my arm from the elbow to the ends of my fingers. I spun the car’s tiny wheels in my hand and watched them pinwheel freely. On the lamp table next to me sat one of the little people I’d seen around the room. The little guy was five, six inches tall, but at the moment he was bent at the waist so that, the way he was sitting, he was staring right at me with this painted on half-smile. I stared back at him a minute, and then I blinked and reached over and grabbed him.

He was dressed in camouflage, and so I guessed he was some sort of soldier. His plastic was harder than the stuff the car was made from, but he was flexible at every joint. I bent his knees for him and then tried to squeeze him into the driver’s seat of the convertible. His legs just barely fit underneath the steering wheel, which wasn’t proportioned well to the rest of the car. But I managed to position the man’s hands on top of the wheel so that it looked more or less like he was driving, like he was in control of the thing, and I lowered the car to the floor and pushed it hard across the carpet.

It rolled quickly, bouncing a bit at certain rough spots in the carpeting, and then crashed into the TV. The man ended up falling to the side, still bent up in that same position but now turned over onto the seat. No toy police cars, ambulances, fire trucks were needed, since the car certainly hadn’t flipped end-over-end and come to rest in a pile of crushed and twisted fake metal. Nothing like that. There was no blood, no broken bones for the little man. He hadn’t even been thrown clear, landed on his empty little plastic head or anything. He still wore the half-smile.

I got up and turned off the TV. The coffee maker was making gurgling, brewing sounds and I knew it would be done soon. I took the car with the man in it and rolled it over into a corner of the room, off to the side of the TV. I started gathering up all the other toys, too, the other vehicles and figurines and animals strewn about, and congregating them all in that same corner.

“What are you doing?”

I turned around and saw the woman standing at the entrance to the kitchen. Her hair was wet and straight, and she had on a pair of sweat pants and a white tee shirt.

“Just trying to make myself useful,” I said. I got up off my knees. “Thought I’d get some of this stuff out of the way.”

She tilted her head to one side, then felt of her wet hair.

“I’m sorry it looks like this,” she said. “When my sister watches the boys, she lets them leave their shit wherever they like.”

She walked into the kitchen, and I followed her.

“I thought I’d go ahead and get your coffee started, too,” I said. I got to the kitchen and she
turned and smiled.

“You’re sweet,” she said. “That’s nice of you.” She took one of the mugs I’d set out and put it back in its cabinet and took out a tall glass instead. “I don’t usually drink coffee. Just have the machine for when somebody else is here and wants some. But that’s nice of you, anyway. You take anything with it?”

“No,” I said. I went over and filled the mug with coffee from the full carafe. The woman had the door of the fridge open now and was down on her haunches, rummaging around. I had to squeeze past her to get to the table, and I tried not to make any contact but ended up brushing against her rear, anyway, thinking all this time that the coffee can hadn’t even been close to full. Somebody had been here often enough to drink themselves a bunch of it.

“What do you feel like having?” she asked me without turning around.

“I’m fine, really.”

I took a seat at the table and blew on the hot liquid in the mug. I didn’t care much for coffee,
either, but I wasn’t going to let the whole pot just sit there. I’d made the damn thing, after all.

“You have to be hungry,” she said.

“No,” I said. I took a sip of the coffee.

I heard her pull something out of the fridge and then she whirled around and was holding a
package of bagels.

“Will you split one with me, at least?”

I tried to smile, then nodded. “I can do that,” I said.

She grabbed the container with the red drink in it, shut the fridge, and set the package of bagels and the container on the table. She poured some of the red drink into the glass and then started undoing the tie around the bagel package. She looked up at me and smiled when she saw me watching her. I took another sip from my mug and looked away. She pulled out one bagel and walked with it over to the counter, took a knife from out of a drawer by the sink and cut the bagel in half, then popped the two halves into the toaster. She came back to the table, and I felt her looking at me again, but I managed not to return the look until she’d gone back to replace the package and container in the fridge. Then she sat down across from me at the table and took a drink from her glass.

“I really like this juice,” she said. It came out awkward and then she sort of giggled, which made it worse. “I know that sounds childish,” she went on, “but it’s my version of morning coffee, I suppose. Simple pleasures.”

I tried to grin at her and nodded my head as best I could, then took another sip of coffee as she drank from the juice. There was more silence as we both waited for the bagel to finish browning, and all the while she kept on staring at me. She could really stare. I tried not to stare back, and finally she dropped her eyes from mine and stared at her drink instead.

The bagel popped up out of the toaster. She got up to retrieve it and brought the bagel over on a plate with two butter knives, then went back to the fridge for the cream cheese, and as she was sitting back down with it, she finally said, “I don’t feel bad. Really, I don’t. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything. Maybe I was hoping, but that’s another thing.”

“That’s good,” I said as I watched her spread the cream cheese all over her half of the bagel.

She glanced up at me. “You don’t believe that at all, do you?”

“I believe you,” I said. “I believe you. It doesn’t make me feel better, but I believe you.”

“Why should you feel bad?” she said as she chewed her first bite. “Eat your bagel.”

I reached over for my half. I started to dip my knife into the cream cheese but decided against it. I took a tiny bite of the bagel and then set the rest of it next to my coffee mug.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you, to tell you the truth,” I said. “I mean, I feel bad no
matter what, anymore. I feel bad if I wake up alone, even.”

She stared again, then her eyes shot off over my shoulder, past me, and she blinked a few times. I guess she had no response to this because she said nothing for several minutes and just ate the bagel and drank the red juice. I hadn’t wanted to say it like that, exactly. I chewed on my part of the bagel, taking a few larger bites, and drank more of the coffee, which tasted okay with the bread. She got up and refilled my mug.

“You’re quiet,” she said, sitting back down.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t apologize, goddamn it,” she said. “Just stop it.” She shook her head. “You talked about a lot of things, last night. You were just a rush of talk then.”

“You were a good listener,” I said, and I thought that might have been true. I tried to remember just what I’d told her the night before. “You were easy to talk to. I needed to talk.”

I was twisting the mug around in circles on the table and pushing it against my knife. I could still feel her eyes locked in on me.

“A year and a half,” she said. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yeah,” I said. I nodded. So I’d told her that part. Or else she was good at guessing. I’d told her something had happened a year and a half ago, maybe.

“You still feel real fucked up, don’t you?” she asked me. It was matter-of-fact, but her voice was softer now. “It’s like things will never be normal again.”

“Normal,” I said, repeating her, shaking my head. Then I laughed. I looked up and saw her face had dropped into a sympathetic-looking half-frown. I was already tired of that look, no matter who was flashing it at me. “What do you know?” I said. “It takes time, right? Is that what you’re going to say now? I’ve got all the goddamn time in the world. That’s not a problem.”

I glanced down at my bare ring finger and then felt in my pocket for the band. I rubbed my index finger along its smooth metal.

The woman sighed across from me.

“Time is overrated, in that way,” she said. She bit into the bagel again, and a dab of cream
cheese hung on the edge of her lips. “The trick is not to allow yourself a mourning period at all,” she went on as she chewed, still looking kind of sad, though I was beginning to wonder. “When my husband left me, it took two years before I could even date again, and that was only because my sister got me drunk at the bar one night and pawned me off on some guy, ditched me so that I had to leave with him, and that sort of rekindled something, I suppose. So I do know a little something about this. You have to move ahead. Some things you can’t do anything about.”

I stared at her, and at that point I didn’t give a damn what I’d told her the night before. I forgot all about that stuff.

“Who the hell are you?” I said. “Who the hell are you, saying this?” I could feel my arms start to shudder as I sat there, my fingers gripped tightly around the coffee mug. I took a big gulp of the coffee and stuffed the last bite of bagel into my mouth. “How can you even think that compares?” I said, chomping the bread. “How can you sit there and say that.” My cheeks were burning.

“Go to Hell,” she said. “We’ve had our fun and fucked each other and taken care of the small talk, and now the two of us can go our separate ways, too. So now you can go to Hell.” She said this matter-of-factly, too, almost a whisper, really. Then she bunched up her face and for the first time looked less than sympathetic. She seemed disgusted now. Confused, too, maybe. She kept staring at me, still. “What’s your story?” she said. “You’re not making any sense.”

I stared back at her, knowing that I was growing red and that my fingernails could be heard barely tapping the mug as my hand started to shake. She looked me over real good then, glanced down at my tapping fingers, and her scowl slowly disappeared. Then she bit her lip and ran her hand through her hair. Her eyes widened and I could tell she was going to say something.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say anything else. Just leave it at that.” I pulled both my hands up and
together and used them as a resting-place for my chin, then blinked and swallowed. “Here, I’ll tell you a story: It was a cold, dark, rainy night. It was slick out. That was the story. How was it? And my own story is I keep waking up in other people’s houses. That’s my story. When I get to where I can accept my own fucking empty bed again for what it is, I’ll be okay.”

The woman was shaking her head. She wrinkled up her brow, and her mouth sort of shifted to one side like she was grinding her teeth. She pinched off another piece of bagel and raised it to her lips.

“That’s not much of a story,” she said as she chewed. “And even if it is, it’s not the one you told me last night. Not that I care, but you didn’t tell anything like this, last night. Not that I can say I know what you’re talking about, anyway, but this doesn’t sound like your story from last night.”

“I must have gotten things mixed up,” I said. I lowered my hands again and ran them across the smooth surface of the table.

She blinked at me and shook her head once more. “This is just bizarre,” she said. “You’re strange or sick, or both.”

I nodded.

The woman chewed and chewed on that piece of bagel until it had to be down to nothing, then popped in the last little piece and ground into it at an even more deliberate pace. She lowered her eyes and seemed finished with me. She wasn’t looking at me anymore, at least, instead staring at her glass. I was thankful for that, I suppose. We sat there a while. I drank down the rest of my coffee. She kept chewing, grinding her teeth again, even after I knew she’d swallowed the last of the bagel. Maybe she wasn’t just absently staring but was thinking of things. It was like she’d forgotten there wasn’t anything left to chew on. Then in a quick motion she raised her glass and downed the last of her juice, pushed away from the table, got up and smiled again in my general direction.

“I should get the kids up soon,” she said. “They’re spending the day with Grandma.”

I nodded and stood up.

“Do you want to take the rest of this coffee with you?” she asked, motioning toward what was left in the carafe as she carried the plate and the glass to the sink and threw them in, causing a sort of minor crash. “I’ve got an old thermos I could just give you. It’s not like I can save the coffee.”

“That’s all right,” I said.

I lay my mug in next to the dishes in the sink and followed her to the front door. I reached past her and opened it, and then she turned into me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

“Thank you,” I said, though I can’t say why I said it.

“Okay,” she said, rubbing her hand up and down my back as she pulled away. “Thanks.”

She closed the door behind me and that was that, and as I walked off the front porch I felt past the ring to the car keys at the bottom of my pocket. It was quiet out, and still mild this early in the morning. It had rained a bit overnight, and when I reached my car at the end of the driveway there were still a few droplets lingering on the front windshield. I unlocked the driver’s side door and stepped in, slammed the door behind me, and put the key into the ignition. I turned it over and the car started up. I hit the wiper switch and watched the water droplets get smeared off the windshield. I adjusted in the seat and reached into my pocket and felt of the ring, let my finger stroke back and forth across the thin metal. I pulled it out and held onto it as loosely as I could between my thumb and forefinger.

Then I let the car idle in park and just thought for a while. I had the time. My house wasn’t far from where I was, but I wasn’t sure I should go straight home. There was also a cemetery close by, in the other direction, and even a flower shop on the way, if I was up for that, up for a scene. I had all the time in the world, but what do you do with all that time? I didn’t know where I wanted to go. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about, mostly. What I was thinking was, I was mixed up as to which roads would take me to my house, and which would lead to the cemetery. I was confused, still foggy from the night before. There was a gas station just down the street, with roadmaps, if one of those would help. There was a pawnshop somewhere close by. I had to get rid of that goddamn ring: This seemed the next logical step, the next first step. I slipped it onto my finger and drove off, my eyes fixed on the slick, waterlogged pavement up ahead, squinting for a familiar way home.

Ryan Crider has previously been published in Moon City Review. He is the past Section Editor for the literary journal Natural Bridge. As a graduate student, he has been nominated twice for the AWP Intro Journals Project in fiction. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the editor of The Southwestern Review.

“A Toast” by Patty Somlo

Posted on April 12, 2008 by Mary Akers

White Bird Eggs in Basket Next to Grayscale Photogras

Jenna lifted the first envelope above the bed and let the contents drift out. From
piles scattered across the faded blue bedspread, she picked out a photo taken by
her mom the night of the senior prom. Instead of a gown, Jenna had chosen a
silver metallic dress whose hem brushed the top of her thigh.

Darrell hadn’t worn a tux. “Too stuffy,” he said, when he showed up in a pale gray
suit that teased more blue out of his eyes.

Halfway through the first envelope, Jenna stopped. Time heals all, Jenna thought,
reaching across the bed and twisting open the shades to let in more light. She
recalled reading those words once, in a self-help book checked out of the library.
At the time, Jenna didn’t believe she would ever heal.

The card from Jenna’s old friend Lilly had arrived just when the leaves began to
turn and fall.

“He’s gone,” Lilly wrote. “Why don’t you come back? At least, come back for a
visit.”

Jenna was standing at the front door, just inside the apartment, still slipping off a
pair of backless clogs. Out loud, she whispered, Dead.

The room grew dark as she stepped inside. That’s when she realized. Lilly hadn’t
even mentioned his name.

Jenna parked the car. Oak trees lined the street. Suddenly, she could smell
smoke, sweet and dusty from burning dry leaves.

The houses looked as Jenna had recalled — white colonial, with red brick and
carefully wrought columns. Elegant well-tended lawns led up to gleaming
mahogany doors. She took a deep breath.

The sun had climbed higher. Between the trees, streaks of light now peeked out.
Jenna had grown up in this town. Across the street, up a narrow set of steep
stairs, a tall white Victorian had housed the library. The sign out front was gone.
A black metal mailbox hung next to the door.

How many times had she walked down this street, taken each tall step slowly, and
opened the door, listening to the bells over the window shiver? The place smelled
damp and was dark. To the right of the foyer, ancient as dust, the librarian sat, lit
by a low lamp with a green glass shade. The librarian resembled Jenna’s Grandma
Lizzie, her black silk dress buttoned to the neck, wearing shoes with square heels
and long laces.

The next block over, downtown began. When Jenna was young, downtown had
everything- shoes and clothes stores, a movie theater that showed Saturday
matinees for kids, and a soda fountain where Jenna and her friends crammed into
booths for vanilla Cokes and French fries.

McCarthy’s Shoe Store sat on the corner, across from the bank. At the start of
her junior year, Jenna gazed through the window at the penny loafers- navy blue,
forest green, cordovan, and standard black and brown. Jenna’s mother would only
buy her cheap imitations, sold in Gimbel’s bargain basement at the mall. Jenna
saved her babysitting money and one afternoon, she asked Mr. McCarthy to bring
out a cordovan pair in size six, for her to try on.

Jenna’s mother argued that the loafers sold at Gimbel’s for half the price were the
same.

Every girl at school, though, understood. The difference was the penny slot, a soft
arc on the genuine Bass Weejun’s and a severe line straight across the imitations.

Jenna’s mother had opinions about Darrell too. He did not, her mother said, seem
serious.

“I don’t want someone who’s serious all the time,” Jenna argued back.

Darrell was a foot taller than Jenna and slender. At parties, Darrell could balance a
cup of beer in his right hand without losing a drop, while he and Jenna fast-danced
or stepped up and back, doing the cha cha. Darrell’s eyes resembled a Husky’s,
infinite and milky blue. All of Jenna’s friends agreed that Darrell was the cutest guy
in the senior class. Best of all, he had dimples, and a dangerous grin.

Darrell and Jenna won Cutest Couple that year. The kids at school thought of
them as one. At the diner on Route 38, everyone asked about Darrell as soon as
Jenna arrived.

Two nights before, in the midst of getting ready for the trip, Jenna let herself look
at the photographs. The woman at the shelter all those years back instructed
Jenna how to pack them, carefully at night, when Darrell was gone. Jenna slipped
the photos out, one by one, from behind the white glued-on corners. By month’s
end, the pictures were safe, hidden in a canvas bag.

After she’d left, Jenna stacked the photographs in large manila envelopes and set
them on her closet shelf. She feared she would go back if she ever slid them out.

“Have you thought about dating?” Dr. Goldfarb asked, one week after the gray
December morning Jenna had the divorce papers served.

Jenna leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, as she often did when Dr.
Goldfarb asked a question. What she wanted was to stand on a beach, watch the
waves roll in and walk, lost in the rhythm of each leg stepping forward, arms
swinging loose, the waves circling and crashing, creating a background sound to
her breath.

“No,” Jenna said, opening her eyes.

By the time Lilly’s letter arrived, Jenna had resigned herself to being alone.

Jenna made it through downtown and over to Woolman’s Lake, where she and
Darrell skated when the surface froze solid.

“Brought a little somethin’ to keep us warm.”

She could picture Darrell next to her, his head bare, though the temperature
hadn’t warmed above freezing. He’d lift the brown thermos from the deep slanted
pockets of his tan jacket, twist the top loose and hold it in his left hand, as he
used the right to pour. Jenna would take a sip, the coffee laced bitter with rum.
One sip was more than enough.

The drinking came naturally to Darrell. Jenna didn’t question it or worry. Darrell
was strong.
.

Jenna made her way past the old wood-sided houses on the bad side of town.
There used to be an old fish place here, where they bought bags of French fries, a
quarter a bag. Gone now, Jenna could see.

“You’d better come get him.”

It was Harold on the other end of the line. Harold, who ever since grade school
had wanted to be a cop. Harold had looked up to Darrell but now Harold was
wiping Darrell’s vomit off the back seat of his police car.

Jenna drove the deserted streets. It was way past midnight, the traffic lights off.
She didn’t stop at the blinking red ones. From experience, she knew no one was
out.

“Hate to see him like this, Jenna,” Harold said, out of breath by the time he’d laid
Darrell across the back seat of Jenna’s Ford. “Darrell don’t know when to quit.”

Jenna didn’t want to talk. Everybody in town knew. Yet, Jenna still clung to the
belief that Darrell would stop.

“Thanks for your help, Harold.”

That night, Jenna left Darrell in the car. He’d be hung over and sick when he woke
up. She would claim he’d been too heavy to lift. He’d get mad and hit her

Jenna stepped into a shady spot at the bottom of the hill they referred to as the
Mount. When Jenna was young, long before she’d fallen under the spell of Darrell
Young’s smile, she loved to come up here and walk. Just walk. All by herself. Up
the hill, under a covering of trees, collecting leaves that had fallen to the ground to
press between wax paper in her science book, imagining she could keep them alive.

Something died, Jenna thought, as she reached the top and stepped out from
under the trees. The well-trod path passed a line of low small gravestones to
larger ones for the recently deceased. Something died with Darrell.

The sun climbed higher as Jenna made her way through the cemetery. They’d
buried Jenna’s mother here on a bitter March afternoon, under a silver-white sky
that looked like snow about to fall. At the thrift store, Jenna picked out a gray
cotton knit skirt and top. There was nothing in black she could afford. The
temperature hardly got above twenty. Jenna shivered as she stood next to the
coffin, gripping the thin stem of a rose, red as her frigid hands.

Darrell started on beer before the funeral. Afterwards, he switched to Jack Daniels.
It grew dark in the dining room, where Lilly had helped Jenna set out salads and
casseroles, plates of home-baked brownies and sliced white bread brought by the
neighbors and friends. Darrell’s insults were making everyone leave.

“Better get going before the snow starts,” Mr. McKenna said, while he kept his eyes
pressed across the room on Darrell, talking loud. Mr. McKenna had lived next door
to Jenna’s mother since before Jenna was born.

Darrell passed out on the couch while Jenna was spooning ambrosia and potato
salad into Tupperware containers and sliding cold cuts into plastic bags. Jenna
crept back to the silent bedroom. For the first time in years, she was alone, her
mother gone. How might it feel now to go?

A thin line of gray-green mold framed the top of her mother’s gravestone. “He’s
north of your mom,” Lilly wrote in her last letter. Jenna took her time. Even as
she walked, Jenna asked herself if she wanted to go.

She followed the path, glancing at the inscriptions on the markers. Jenna might
have known most of these people, if she’d stayed in town.

Handsome and popular, son of the town’s most successful businessman, Darrell
was expected to take over his dad’s car dealership. People in town thought he
might one day become mayor. Instead, Darrell drank and fought, long after
passing the age when he should have stopped.

“It’s at the end of the row,” Lilly had said to make sure Jenna didn’t miss it.

And there it was. Darrell Young. The inscription said, A Toast.

Jenna waited for something. Sadness. Anger. Relief. She took a deep breath, as
she would have done, sitting across from Dr. Goldfarb. Watch the breath, she
reminded herself, and carried the breath in her mind through the lungs, down to
the belly and back.

Regret. That’s what she would have said. In the movies, people always came to
gravesites and communicated with the dead. If this were the movie of her life,
what would Jenna say?

For the first time in years, Jenna could see Darrell in front of her. A strand of dark
hair was blown across his forehead by the wind. Under the midday sun, his eyes
flooded her with a longing she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt.

At that moment, the gravestones and wind, trees and sun, along with every
thought in her mind, disappeared. And Jenna was left with the memory of Darrell’s
wild sweet grin, and a blessed forgiveness, that finally split open the crushing
darkness she had been living within all these years.

Patty Somlo has had her articles, reviews, fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction published in numerous journals and newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the Baltimore Sun, the Santa Clara Review, ONTHEBUS, and Fringe Fiction. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies Voices From the Couch, VoiceCatcher 2007 and Bombshells: War Stories and Poetry by Women on the Homefront, and is forthcoming in the Sand Hill Review, and in the anthologies, Rainmakers’ Prayers and VoiceCatcher 2008.

“Backbone” by Sarah Voss

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Mary Akers

Gray Scale Photo of Baby in White Onesie

At Thursday’s noon meeting, one guy oozing piety used his speaking time to offer a long, traditional prayer, something even Jane knew was totally against the rules. Jane’s own prayers were mostly short, silent requests for insight.

Perry’s presumption irritated her.

Still, she was new to AlAnon. She kept quiet.

Later, at home, Jane wondered about the protocol. Should she have spoken up? Complained to the group facilitator? Said something privately to Perry? She was so damned tired of being carpet!

In her journal, she experimented with things to say to Perry next week. She wrote:

Perry, when you recite an entire prayer to us, it’s like you’re forcing prayer on us. I find this invasive. In the future, could you please not do this?

She read it over, decided she’d followed a good formula: state the behavior; use “I” language; make a request.

Then she softened her message: You could make it available afterwards, for those who want it.

She scratched out the last sentence, added some starch:

Your prayer offends my spiritual sensitivities.

Then: Don’t subject me…

Before she knew it, Jane had spent forty-five minutes trying to decide what to say to Perry next meeting.

Forty-five minutes! She wasn’t even sure she’d go back. What a dope she was, wasting her time, her effort. Idiot!

She felt exhausted.

“I’ll just let it go,” she thought.

She paused. Then heard her words, “Let it go.”

“Oh!”

She closed her journal, unexpectedly excited, her own prayer answered.

Sarah Voss is a semi-retired minister, author, and lecturer who lives in Nebraska and publishes mostly esoteric stuff about religion and science including articles on “matheology” and “moral math,” in publications as varied as Parabola, Religious Humanist, and Theology and Science. Her poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Thema, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Healing Muse, Ellipsis, Nebraska Presence and (forthcoming, web journal) Sacred Journey. Micro-fiction is a new exploration for her.

“Libby” by Aaron Hellem

Posted on January 19, 2008 by Mary Akers

Water Drops from Stainless Steel Faucet

Billy glows in the dark. Not as green as money or Jello, but a softer incandescence.

Elizabeth reaches out and lays her palm flat against his stomach. Billy leans over her, kisses her forehead and down her nose. Finds her lips in the dark. Finds her buttons with his eyes closed.

She wraps her lips around his whole body as if to swallow him and burn on the inside from whatever makes him glow in the dark.

The water boils when it rushes from the tap. Glaciers are melting quickly somewhere in the world, but that’s not what makes the water boil when it rushes from the tap. Billy’s father, at the table, looks like he’s melting into his coffee and buttered toast. His skin sags like a turkey’s neck. Dark circles around his eyes. Sores on the end of his nose. He doesn’t look good.

Dad, Billy says, you look awful.

Thanks, son, his father says. Now, will you please pass me the goddamn shitting son of a bitching salt?

He doesn’t look up from his toast.

Outside a tanker truck shifts gears and screams down their street. Children aren’t supposed to play outside for stretches of time longer than forty-five minutes.

What do you do there at the plant, Dad? Billy says.

Put food on the table, his father says. Son of a bitching bacon on this goddamn shitting table. How do you like that? He looks up at Billy. His eyes are entirely black. Sheen, like a fish’s.

How do you like that? he says again. Your sister’s shitty ass shoes and your son of a bitching college fund. His left eye twitches in manic spasms.

All right, dad, Billy says. The whole side of his face looks ready to burst, his eyeball ready to pop out and roll across the table.

It’s all right, dad, Billy says.

I know it’s all right, his father says. You don’t have to tell me it’s all right. I’m the one who son of a bitching slaves away all shitting day in that worthless asshole shitbox. You don’t have to tell me.

Billy nods. He’s too young for this, he thinks. Too young to have a melting father. Too young to glow green in the dark.

Elizabeth is late, and the ultrasound shows them their baby, as big as a fish. With flippers. The doctor doesn’t say anything. Quiet, like he has to tell somebody a loved one is dead.

They’ll go away, Billy says to Elizabeth. They all look like that initially.

Right, doctor?

The doctor points at the screen and shakes his head.

The baby glows green just like its daddy. Elizabeth cries. Billy holds her hand. Just tell us straight, doctor, he says.

The doctor cries. His finger on the screen. It’s a fish, the doctor says. He traces the gills and the bottom of the baby where a tail protrudes.

Elizabeth squeezes Billy’s hand as though she’s falling from the top of a building. Off the edge of a cliff. Dangling only by metacarpals.

Gills? Billy says.

Oh god, Elizabeth sobs, I see the tail.

Where? Billy says. He squints at the screen.

I see it! Elizabeth cries.

Where? Where is it?

The doctor’s shoulders shake. His hand trembles. He points at it. As long as the tip of his finger.

There, he says.

I see it! Elizabeth cries. She closes her eyes and turns her head away.

The bones in Billy’s hand are crushed to chalk dust; he doesn’t feel a thing. Oh god, Billy says.

I don’t want it, Elizabeth says.

Are you sure you don’t? the doctor says.

I’m sure, she says.

And you? the doctor asks Billy.

He already has gloves out. Already has a rod and a hook ready. Bait all ready to go. The baby shifts on the screen. On the screen, glowing green, flipping and flopping. The doctor hooks the worm.

Billy? Elizabeth says.

We need to do this now, Billy, the doctor says. Billy nods, but doesn’t watch. He holds on to Elizabeth like he’s the one falling now. From a mountain. Off a bridge.

It’s all right, Elizabeth whispers into the sides of his head. She holds onto him as the doctor dangles the lure in between her legs. It’s all right, she says again. Billy feels the green bursting inside him, squeezing into the backs of his eyes and from the inside of his ribs, thrashing to get out. He feels the glow burn on the tips of his fingers and the ends of his hairs. Can feel his teeth from white-wash to Chernobyl green. Ghoulie green. Gangrene.

Billy works the night shift because his green glow allows management to cut out the lights at night. He walks so he won’t wallow. Elizabeth won’t answer his calls. Her mother threatens to call the police. The police know Billy, and are afraid to touch his skin to handcuff him.

Billy makes his rounds, sings so he doesn’t sob. Other night-watch men have mentioned hearing voices at night, sneezes and screams from down the hallways. It used to be hospital for those too sick for reality and those not sick enough for a real hospital. Some physically defected from the contaminated water they drank and poisonous soil they played in as children. Those who ate vegetables grown in their own backyards and those who ate fish from the river. They were sent there when the tumors were too big to
carry. It’s where his father will go when he finally melts into a hole in the ground; his voice will boom in the dark at Billy: Get your son of a bitching ass back to motherfucking work! His ghost will haunt in a puddle, oozing underneath the door cracks and mail slots.

Billy doesn’t have a flashlight. He has a belt of keys instead. One for every door in the building.

There are, at least, a hundred doors. One key for each of them. Sometimes two. Billy doesn’t open them. Down the dark hall, he hears the ghosts flopping towards him. With tails rather than chains.

With fins stretched out. You’ll know your father, Billy thinks, by his green glow. By how he goes in between the worlds of light and dark.

His father melts into his slippers. A puddle of skin pooled in the bottoms of his worn slippers. Does this mean you’re not going to work? Billy asks him.

I can’t take the day off, his father says, his voice as quiet as though on the other end of a telephone.

No goddamn son of a bitching vacation time for this sorry old bastard son of a bitch. His father sighs.

Crap, he says.

Is it time for me to feed you now? Billy says. He envisions breakfast in a blender, down a straw into his father’s deflated mouth and down his deflated throat, leaching into his deflated intestines.

I don’t need nothing from you, pissant, his father says. I’ll melt right into my goddamn grave before I take a son of a bitching helping hand from you.

The horoscopes are printed right next to the air and water quality reports. The air is better today because of a front blowing through. The water still needs boiling before using. Billy’s horoscope tells him not to expect anything extraordinary from loved ones. He hears two tiny voices: one tells him to turn down that son of a bitching green glow and the other tells him to run. He leaves the dishes where they are, leaves the newspaper scattered on the table, and leaves his father in a skin puddle rippling with each miniature expletive. His legs carry him down the street like wheels.

The light in Elizabeth seems extinguished. I’m sorry, she says. Her hands shake. Her bottom lip, too.

Splotches of red in her pallid eyes. A ping in her palliation.

It was nobody’s fault, Billy says. Rocky Mountain creases across her forehead. He takes her hand to infuse her with his green glow heat. It radiates into her palm and up her forearm. Her eyes widen, and it spreads into her chest and her clothes combust and fall off her in sparks.

I’m sorry, she says, and the words fly out in flames, bursting brightly in the air like popping fireworks.

I am, she says. I am, I am, I am, I am. Each one a flowering flare as though spit from a roman candle.

We are, Billy says.

Outside of town, they lie down in the middle of a field. They stare up at the other small suns scattered across the Big Sky Country night. That one, she says, and points at one that glitters.

It looks tropical there, he says.

Clear blue water, she says.

She finds her way around him in the dark. He delights in the way his skin lights up hers.

The way they see perfectly when they should be blind. The heat of her skin smolders new lines into his fingerprints. They burn a circle around them where they fall asleep in the grass.

Again: Elizabeth is late, and this time the doctor smiles and points out the carpometacarpus in the ultrasound. You know what this means, the doctor says.

They don’t. Elizabeth squeezes Billy’s hand tight because ultrasound news pushes her from high heights.

The doctor traces the outlines of a beak. The webbed feet.

I don’t understand, Billy says.

Not again, Elizabeth says. I don’t think I can take it again. She closes her eyes and cries.
No, the doctor says. You’ll see for yourself. The doctor calls in a nurse.

I’m not ready, Elizabeth says.

I’m afraid that doesn’t matter, the doctor says. He snaps gloves onto his white hands. Do you wish to stay? he says to Billy.

I’m not going anywhere, Billy says. He offers Elizabeth his other hand. She holds onto both of them as though the world might reveal a drain and wash her down it.

I’m not ready, she says again.

Billy wonders what haggard creature his defective genes will wreck into the world. He imagines the worst: a scaly dragon breathing fire into all the dark corners. Crushing the tops of houses with incredible talons. Scorching those trying to run. A pitiful and painful end to Libby at the fire and talons on his progeny.

I’m not ready, she says again.

I’m not ready, Billy says.

A nurse enters with a syringe, a press, a mop. Her clothes swish and crinkle as she turns on machines and readies the room. Right here? she says to the doctor.

There’s no time to move her, the doctor says.

Don’t leave me, Elizabeth says.

Never, Billy says. He can’t help the images flashing through his head, strobe-like ultrasounds glowing green. The nurse places Elizabeth’s feet in stirrups.

Oh god, Elizabeth says. She closes her eyes and bites down on Billy’s arm. Billy doesn’t feel a thing.

Here we go, the doctor says. The sound of an earthquake, of continents scraping together until one acquiesces, rips and rifts and tears. The screams and the song. Their son bursts out of his mother like canon fire, unfurls wings and flies, twice around the room then through the window. Wind rushes in as their son soars out, slow and powerful as airplane propellers. Ascends into an existence of its own that owes nothing to Billy. He watches out the window as his son fades into the horizon. The nurse dabs at Elizabeth’s head with the hot water press. Sticks the syringe in the fat part of her arm.

I felt him love me inside, Elizabeth says.

Billy watches from the window.

Billy, Elizabeth says.

He’s sure his son’s wings will help him accept the malaise and keep him above the film of scum on top of every water body. Will help him rise high enough to see for himself the only kingdom up there is an illusory one, a thinned vaporous one erected out of rarified air. He can’t blame me, Billy thinks, I’m the one who gave him wings. It’s true I gave him life, but the wings and the songs will save him from that. Billy has only his glow, and he glows as the sun sets.

Aaron Hellem lives with his wife in Leverett, Massachusetts and attends the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His short stories have recently appeared in Fourth River, Xavier Review, Ellipsis, Phantasmagoria, Amoskeag, Quay Journal, Menda City Review, Mississippi Crow, 13th Warrior, and Beloit Fiction Journal; also, works of his are forthcoming in Lake Effect, Oklahoma Review, Parting Gifts, Crate, Cause and Effect Magazine, and Confluence.

“Chickens” by Lance Feyh

Posted on January 19, 2008 by Mary Akers

White Rooster

She lost all respect for him after the incident with the chicken truck, but she’d probably lost most of her respect for him long before that. The thing with the chicken truck was that it confirmed what she already suspected, that he could no longer afford even the pretensions associated with respectability. His wrecked vehicle was there in the front yard for everyone to see, little feathers still stuck to the bent steel and broken glass. Not that they had many neighbors in the first place, and not that anyone out here was overly concerned with property values anyway, but it was the principle of the thing.

The tow truck had dumped the Subaru off in the yard while he was still at the hospital. He could have been killed by the chicken truck, and she was grateful that he wasn’t hurt more than he was. He could have come out of the whole thing with a permanent disability, and nothing would have been more terrible than that. This way she could leave without the guilt.

When he finally did get home, his right arm was in a sling and she was gone. He knew she was gone, probably for good, because she’d taken her pillow and her toothbrush, among other things. She didn’t leave a note. But she’d been more or less telling him for a long time that it would eventually come to this. Frank didn’t want to linger on it much. He couldn’t remember the name of her boss anyway. Bob or Bill, something like that. That was the guy she’d run off with, he figured.

He sat down on the couch, turned the television on, and popped a pain pill. The insurance company wanted to total the Subaru, which sounded like a good idea to him. He’d have to figure out a way to pay for the emergency room visit, but it wasn’t like he had to worry about slow payments making his credit any worse. For now, he had food in the pantry and beer in the fridge, plenty of good pain pills to take and some time off work, part of it paid. He hadn’t had a vacation for years, except for the one time they visited her crazy brother in Indiana .

After a few days, the weather had turned warm and he got the idea that he might go fishing. He’d been out to the garage a few times to tinker with his long dead motorcycle, but there really wasn’t much point to hiding out in the garage anymore. So he brought some of his fishing gear inside and started practicing with a rod and reel in the living room, even though the ceiling was too low. The wrist on his bad arm was still in good condition, and he found he could use it to fling a cast with his ultra-light as long as he didn’t move anything from the elbow up. With his left hand and arm, he could work the reel and manage all of the other tasks required to catch a fish. As long as the sling stayed tight and his damaged shoulder stayed at home, he figured he wouldn’t have much trouble taking a few smallies from the stream.

He had to walk through the neighbors’ wooded backyard to get down to the river. Frank didn’t really know the Lubanskis that well. But Harold Lubanski was retired and he was always out back working on birdhouses. Harold’s wife, Loretta, liked to stay inside and bake things that smelled good.

“Howdy, neighbor,” said Harold. “Looks like you had an accident.”

Frank figured he might as well level with the guy. “Got in a wreck and my wife left me,” he said. “So now I’m going to do a little fishing.”

“I’m sorry to hear about all that,” Harold said.

“Well I’m in better shape than the Subaru,” Frank said, looking back in the general direction of the place where the wagon had been temporarily laid to rest.

“I noticed it in your yard, saw the tow truck drop it off, actually,” Harold said. “I’m just glad to see you made it out alive.”

That’s when Frank decided to tell Harold the whole story about the chicken truck. Harold was so interested that he put his paintbrush down and turned his attention away from the birdhouse he was working on entirely.

That morning, they had been in the middle of a fight about the phone bill when Trudy’s boss at the accounting firm called to tell her not to bother to come in on account of the ice. Frank said it was nothing and that he wished he had a boss who would write the whole morning off on account of a little ice. He worked at the college, where it was his job to sort and deliver the campus mail. The professors would get bent out of shape if they didn’t get their magazine subscriptions and various solicitations on time. Besides, he got paid by the hour.

It was the end of winter and Frank figured what ice there was on the road would melt off quickly. But his was a two-wheel-drive Subaru instead of the fancy kind, and the tires were worn. He’d bought the wagon used a few years ago from a college student who was looking to upgrade. Already late for work, he was trying to maintain enough speed to get up the first big hill on the interstate without going too fast. When he started sliding on some black ice, he figured it was just his luck. He knew not to hit the brakes, but he couldn’t get any traction and he was worried about going off the road and over a steep embankment or
crossing the median and sliding into oncoming traffic. There were two lanes going his way. He slid across the center lane one way, then the other, working the wheel back and forth without predictable results. It was all very slow and uncontrollable. Then he slid sideways, and that’s when he saw the chicken truck. The truck driver couldn’t stop and he was trying to slip the big rig by the Subaru in the right lane.

Frank figured he was a goner.

But after making contact with the chicken truck, the wagon went shooting across the ice like a vehicular hockey puck and then came to rest abruptly in the grassy, frosted median. One whole side of the wagon was crunched and most of the windows were shattered. The driver’s side door worked, but Frank didn’t know that. He dislocated his shoulder badly when he fell out of the window trying to escape like a stock car driver.

The driver of the chicken truck had pulled over on the shoulder of the interstate on the northbound side. “You almost slid right under me,” said the chicken truck driver when Frank finally made it over there to talk to him. The driver was leaning out his window. “I thought you were a goner,” he said.

The heavy truck only had superficial damage, a few scrapes. The chickens were visible through open spaces in the trailer. They were stacked and secured tight in big metal crates. A few of the jailed chickens were making low squawking or screeching noises and some white feathers were still drifting through the air. Mostly, though, it was strangely quiet. Incredibly, one chicken, a ball of white, had somehow managed to escape during the mismatched confrontation between the big truck and the little wagon and that chicken was
moving slowly back down the hill, a surreal and determined refugee. Frank figured it would either get hit by a car or get eaten eventually by something coming out of the woods. He figured the chicken was better off in the long run, no matter which way it turned out.

The chicken truck driver was a black guy. His wife was riding along in the back of the cabin. They told Frank to come on up and they’d give him a ride into town, seeing as how their rig could handle the road conditions. They let him use their cell phone to report the accident and to call a tow truck and call work. He tried to call Trudy, too, but he had to leave a message when she didn’t answer. The truck driver’s wife poured Frank some coffee into a foam cup out of an old thermos, and she said she was just glad that nobody
got hurt. Frank said his shoulder hurt pretty bad but that he knew what she meant.

The truck driver and his wife were heading to St. Louis with the chickens. Apparently all of the big chicken processing plants in the southwest part of the state were taking on as many chickens as the Mexican workers could process and, besides, the people who lived by the processing plants were starting to raise a stink about the constant stench coming out of those places. Now there was a new processing plant in an old warehouse near St. Louis, across the river in Illinois, actually, where there were already lots of interesting
industrial and organic smells and where people were less likely to complain or less likely to have their complaints heard.

“Nobody from my outfit wants the East St. Louis run, so they keep giving it to me,” said the chicken truck driver. “What do you think about that?”

Frank said he didn’t know what to think about it.

They exchanged insurance papers and agreed that the accident was the weather’s fault and that it definitely wasn’t the chicken truck’s fault. Frank thanked them and wished them luck when they dropped him off at the emergency room.

He took extreme care in descending to solid ground. As the truck started to roll away slowly, Frank found himself staring straight into the pink eyes of one of the chickens. It was just one of hundreds, maybe thousands, and that chicken looked mad as hell. “Jesus Christ,” Frank said.

Frank’s neighbor didn’t laugh at any part of the story. When the storyteller got to the part about Trudy running off with what’s his name, the guy actually put a hand on Frank’s good shoulder.

“Do you really think you ought to be fishing?” Harold asked.

“I’ve got it all figured out,” Frank assured him.

He’d tied on a small plastic worm back at the house. That was the hardest part. When he got down to the little river, he flipped a cast into a little hole and immediately caught a little smallmouth. The hook came out easily and he released the fish, and the best part was he didn’t have to use his bad shoulder at all. The water in the stream was cold and it was flowing pretty fast in the shallow riffles, but Frank risked wading a few feet down to the next hole. He caught another smallmouth out of that hole and was feeling pretty good about
things. Let someone else deliver the mail for a while, he said to himself.

But as he tried to move on through another shallow stretch of running water, he slipped on a wet, moss covered rock. Unable to catch himself, he got swept up by the seat of his pants in the current. He lost his rod and the river rocks were punishing his backside, but he didn’t try to fight it. The current quickly dumped him into a pool of water about five feet deep.

He wasn’t about to go back the way he came, so he cut his losses and waded over to the bank and reached for an overhanging tree limb with his left arm. The first limb broke when he tried to use it for leverage. But the second one held and, with much difficulty, he was able to pull himself up.

Dripping and cold, Frank made a new trail through the woods and finally emerged into Harold’s backyard. He must have been a sight. The old man looked up from his birdhouse and didn’t know what to say.

“Caught two,” Frank reported.

Harold didn’t laugh or anything. “Are you okay?” he finally asked.

“I figure I’ll live,” Frank said.

The good thing about the incident in the river was that Frank, though sore all over, didn’t do any additional damage to his shoulder. It was still in place and all. While he was taking a hot bath, he thought he heard the door bell ring. By the time he finally got changed and went to the front door to check, somebody had taken the Subaru away. Apparently the insurance company had towed it away to wherever they kept totaled vehicles. Frank thought it would make a nice addition to their collection.

Standing in his doorway, he looked down and made another discovery – a bag of Loretta Lubanski’s homemade peanut butter cookies and one of Harold Lubanski’s hand-made birdhouses. There was also a little note and it just said, Hang in there, neighbor.

Frank thought he might cry.

Later that afternoon, he called the phone company to make arrangements on his bill. Then he called his brother, who had an old car Frank could borrow for a while. Next, he called his boss and told him that he’d be back to work the following week and that he might be interested in some overtime, assuming that kind of thing was even available. Finally, he thought about trying to call Trudy. He got the phone book out and put it on the kitchen table next to a ceramic bowl with fake fruit in it. He didn’t know if she’d be back to get the
rest of her stuff or if she’d already taken everything she wanted.

He ate a peanut butter cookie and then he got a beer out of the fridge and sat down to think some more. He thought about the caged chicken with the pink eyes, the one that had stared right through him, and then he thought about the chicken that got loose on the highway. He even considered the meaning of birdhouses.

He took a long drink of beer and smiled. Her boss’s name was Bill Cooper. That’s what it was. Not that there was anyone to listen anyway, and it might have been a failure of imagination on his part, but Frank couldn’t think of a bad thing to say about the guy.

~Lance Feyh

“The Reprieve” by Dorothy Duncan Burris

Posted on January 19, 2008 by Mary Akers

Pile of White Pink and Brown Oblong and Round Medication Tablet

My daughter auctioned the furniture out from under me while I was in the nursing home. What feels emptiest are my hands; I was so used to stroking my possessions, as though they were pets, or as though I were blind and could not see them any other way.

The real loss is the shape Ross, dug into his side of the mattress, the worn section of bedpost where he grabbed hold of it every morning, everything on which he left real or imaginary marks.

I feel like a dog who has been driven miles into the country and dumped out of the car. I’m not angry at Peg, though. I was senile when they put me in the nursing home, and it wasn’t until the doctor took me off all those prescribed medications that my mind started to clear up.

Being in that medicine-induced fog was nice for a while, but then I needed to take more medicine just to feel normal, let alone any kind of high. When I think about these last wasted ten years, I’m angry at my doctor. Angry that he would go along with my pleas for more of this and more of that. Especially when none of it was necessary. Well, the first pill wasn’t necessary. The others became so — as antidotes or equalizers of whatever preceded them.

I know I shouldn’t have asked for the pills. I was wrong. Ross was dead and I was lonesome, but I was wrong. I also know that the doctor should have called my bluff. He should have called me what I was: a prescription junky. But he lacked the integrity. Our symbiotic relationship is not a pretty truth.

Peg is visiting me today in my new apartment. I’m still a visitor myself here. Yesterday, I wanted to go around and mark it off in the liquid way a dog does. Peg’s finally grown into her nose. It used to be a few sizes too big. Now her long countenance has been counteracted by a haircut that fluffs out at her ears.

Peg tells me that the money she got for the furniture has been doubled by a stockbroker and acts as though it were an unalloyed good. The words pencil the enlarged nose back on her elongated face. I don’t criticize. She meant no harm, just like the time when she was six years old and locked me out of the house and wouldn’t — or couldn’t — let me back in. I never believed Ross when he told me she knew — at five — how to operate the lock. The first thing I said to her after I got back in the house was “I know you didn’t do that on purpose.” I said it to her twice to make sure she heard, but the second time she covered up her ears and glared at me as though she had been the one locked out. I ignored her, which is what I usually did when she misbehaved.

“I’d give up more than half of the money to have my old things back,” I say now, and I notice there is a note of exasperation in my voice–no, more than exasperation. Anger. A real anger that is as different from irritation as a legitimate pill-taker is from a prescription junky. Peg doesn’t reply, but a hint of a smile sears itself across my eyes. This is not a Mona Lisa smile. There is no doubt concerning the pleasure behind it.

Peg very seldom shows her emotions. I have too often penciled lines in between dots that aren’t there. This is something I started to look at in the nursing home. Peg’s one lone visit to see me. That was it, just one. Not two. So you couldn’t connect them with a line. That kind of woke me up. Not that I, still being on drugs, recognized her when she came.

The nurses told me about the first visit, so I kept looking forward to her next one. I’d sit–and later stand–by the window and look out, willing the black speck on the horizon to turn into a car that carried her inside, just the way I carried her inside forty years ago. Then I would remember the way my own mother would wait for me by her window at my age. And how Peg, as a child, never did wait by the window for anybody but her father to return. Then I felt ashamed and stopped waiting as though it were a hex that was keeping her away.

When I stopped looking, I started listening. Every so often one of the other residents would get a phone call. They’d be taken to a little glassed-in office on the ground floor and left alone, sometimes trembling, with whoever was on the other end of the line. I remembered the toy phone Peg’s father gave her for Christmas once and how she used to spend hours talking to him at the office and my wishing that I was the one who went off to work. He was gone all day–maybe that was what made him more precious, made him the favorite. It certainly couldn’t have been his strictness, although Peg never seemed to mind it. But then, she seldom showed her emotions. I think I said that before. And I have to admit in hindsight that if he had been as permissive as I was, she would have been a thoroughly spoiled child.

When I first started coming back from drug-induced senility, I comforted myself in Peg’s absence by imagining her on that toy telephone, calling me.

Now that Peg’s here with a smile like a Cheshire cat, I realize she is happy that I am unhappy. She has locked me out of my house for the second time now. Except this time is permanent. All right, I will not look the other way again. I reach out with my hand and Braille her face, her mouth, willing myself to feel its sharp, cruel curve. “My own daughter. Happy that I’m unhappy.”

There, I’ve said it. I lived through it. And I feel strong instead of the way I thought I’d feel —
demolished.

Peg is nodding her head in acknowledgment, encouragement. She is cheering me on, the way I prayed she would when I was at the nursing home. I not only feel strong, I feel happy, as though I have reached into the past and changed something for Peg. I look at the dear shape of her nose and of her face. This alone is landscape enough.

~Dorothy Duncan Burris

Rkvry Quarterly Literary Journal

A literary journal that explores recovery.

Category Archives: ShortsOnSurvival

“Desecration” by Mike Bove

“Practice Runs” (Author Unknown)

“Hidden Valley” by Elaine Barnard

“Medusa Song” by Mary Akers

“In the Morning” by Ryan Crider

“A Toast” by Patty Somlo

“Backbone” by Sarah Voss

“Libby” by Aaron Hellem

“Chickens” by Lance Feyh

“The Reprieve” by Dorothy Duncan Burris