Rusty Barnes's Blog: Fried Chicken and Coffee, page 16

Two Poems by Tiff Holland

Saltines

We was all afraid of that bridge, just

ropes and slats, spaces between where

the crick came right up at you if

you looked down at it, and Billy, that’s

what we called him, after the fairy-tale,

squattin’ underneath. I was eight. Mama

sent me for flour. I had to cross the bridge

goin’ and comin’, tryin’ not to look, but

thinkin’ about all those rocks underneath,

the water, and me not able to swim.

I was pleased with myself on the way

back, practicin’ holdin’ the flour on

one hip, the way I did John Jr. and Brooks,

pretendin’ it was a baby, only I was

the mama and not the sister, got

the lovin’ and not just the diapers.

Five pounds is a lot; I know that now,

enough to throw off your balance

suspended by ropes and held up

by slats, weighin’ just a small multiple

of five and the wind in the hollar.

Maybe I wanted to fall. I think that,

too, but not into Billy Gruff’s arms

or close to.

I landed flat on my back, cradlin’

that bag just like it really was a baby

all the way down until the sharp point

of a rock almost halved me, and I

let loose the way Mama did when

Brooksie was being born.

The flour started makin’ itself

into other things the minute it hit

the water: snowflakes and stars,

crooked-creek clouds, and me

just watchin’, wantin’ to scoop

it all up, bring it to Mama, knowin’

five cents was heavier than five pounds.

Billy picked me up, slung me over

his back and carried me home, just

like we actually knew each other, not

me just knowin’ the top of his head and

him knowin’ the shape of my shoes,

the space between my legs up under

my dress.

He didn’t say nothin’ or even knock

when he brought me in the house,

laid me on the bed. Mama ran after

him, yellin’, what have you done?

Nothin’

caught in my throat as

she chased him down the road.

I spent a week in bed. Couldn’t get up

not even to pee. The girls took turns

changin’ the sheets of the bed we shared.

After she was done cryin’ about the nickel

and the flour, Mama brought me saltines

and cider from Uncle Lawrence, tellin’

me as she tipped the cup, how those

saltines could be bread, if only I hadn’t

dropped the flour.

Polly, Age Nine

I got my embarrassment

at Twelve Pole Creek

I was messin’ with crawdads

wearing just panties

a group of boys came by

they didn’t say nothin’

didn’t do nothin’

Or even look at me

I had a stick, but

I hadn’t been pokin’

but then the boys came

and I knew

by the way I felt

just the way I felt inside

that I couldn’t go

without a shirt again.

Tiff Holland's poetry and prose regularly appear in literary journals. Her novella, "Betty Superman," recently appeared in "My Very End of the Universe." Tiff teaches at Windward Community College on Oahu.

Sweet and Clear, essay by Terry Barr

I saw her smiling at me in K-Mart, over by the jeans. She had red hair, and no matter which aisle I turned into—the Men’s grooming products, the albums, the “notions”—there she was, smiling. I don’t know if it was her hair or her smile, or those eyes, green and wide like two Persian limes. She looked at me as if she knew me, as if she knew something I didn’t know. As if she’d like to know more.

I turned back again and again to make sure it was me she saw. I was only fifteen, and I knew she was older. I recognized her from high school, but I didn’t know her name.

That night after my parents finished their shopping and drove us home, I looked her up in our last year’s “Largus.”

Denise Gosling.

There was only one Gosling listed in the Bessemer phone book, and the next night, at a more decent hour, I dialed the number and held the last digit on the dial for ten or fifteen seconds before I let it go.

“Hello.” It had to be her.

“Is this Denise?”

“Yes, but who is this?”

It’s funny, but though we talked for ten minutes that night, I don’t think I ever identified myself as anyone but “that guy you smiled at in K-Mart last night.”

“Is this how guys do it,” she asked. “They just pick up the phone and call girls who’ve smiled at them?”

“I don’t know. It’s what I’m doing though.”

I called her again the next night.

“Do you want to go out with me sometime,” I said.

“Can you even drive?”

“No, but we could double with someone, maybe my friend Steve.”

“Anyway, I’m dating Ricky Russo.”

“Oh.”

Some girls are that honest, some even save the moment.

“Do you have a favorite song?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess it’s “Country Girl,” by Neil Young.

“Mine is “Rock and Roll Lullaby” by BJ Thomas. That song just hurts me,” she said.

Hurts her. What a thing to say.

I didn’t call her again, this girl who smiled at me, who tried to tell me something with her eyes. That weekend I went back to K-Mart, but of course she wasn’t there. It didn’t matter. I bought the record anyway:

“Sing it sweet and clear, O mama let me hear that old Rock and Roll lullaby.”

The next week at school, I saw her in the hallway, arguing with Ricky. I could hear them clearly. Denise had been flirting with another guy, a senior named Eugene who was the lead drummer in the marching band. Eventually, Ricky would blacken Eugene the drummer’s eye, but on this day, Denise turned her back on Ricky and walked away, down another aisle.

And when she did so, she caught my eye. Only this time she wasn’t smiling.

Terry Barr's essays have been or will soon be published in Deep South, Red Truck Review, Belle Reve Literary Journal, Blue Bonnet Review, and Hippocampus. He is the proud owner of a Carolina Wild Dog, aka the Dixie Dingo. He prefers Alabama barbecue to the Carolina version, though he'll eat it anyway you serve it as long as it's grilled in a pit over hickory, pecan, or cherry wood. He lives in Greenville, SC, with his family.

Transformer, fiction by Benjamin Soileau

I’m fiddling with one of those transforming monstrosities that toy companies make just to drive men like me crazy. It’s some kind of dinosaur that turns into a speedboat and I’m looking down at it, turning it this way and that, calling it about a hundred different kinds of motherfucker. My boy stands watching me until he gets bored and runs out of the room. I’m just about to throw the thing on the ground and stomp it to pieces when I hear Janie calling to me. She’s standing over a pot on the stove, an orange apron draped over her big belly.

“What’s up?” I call to her.

“I said did you think of anymore names?”

“What about Pico and Paco,” I say.

She stops stirring the sauce for a second and looks at it like it’s an old friend whose name she can’t remember. “I’m serious,” she says, and gets back to it.

“Give me some time,” I say to her. Hell, that’s the one thing I need most. I look down at the damn conundrum in my hand.

She’s been after me to settle on names for a while now. Tom and Huck. John and Jim. Cody and Collin. I hate thinking about it. I think maybe we should just name them Smith and Wesson, and be done with it, but I keep that to myself. The smell of onions is making my stomach turn. Janie’s been using too many onions in just about everything she makes now.

The goddamn transformer has my nerves bundled up so tight that I’m pissed at my mother in law for giving it to Sammy in the first place. If they didn’t give him all these expensive toys that require an instruction manual then maybe Sammy would behold a stick and string as something miraculous, and we’d would be off the hook. I put the transformer down on a shelf behind some pictures where he won’t be able to see it. Maybe he’ll forget about it. I move behind Janie and stretch my arms around her belly. I kiss her on her cheek and sort of rub against her behind, but she just bumps me off of her and keeps on stirring. I’ve been getting the bump a lot here lately. I peck the back of her neck and leave her in there with her onions.

I go and sit in the sewing room and look out the window at the front yard. It’s the quietest room in the house. I can’t figure out how things got so far gone so quick. I think of Janie and me moving together in that old boat in the sun on Bayou Pigeon. Things were so easy. At least we had more fun back then, went out to eat every once in a while. I’d wanted to travel or maybe go to a college somewhere to be somebody important, and she was talking about going to hairdressing school, but then Sammy popped out and we got married. Just like that. I knew that I had more in me than to stay working at the plant my whole life, but I can’t just up and quit, especially now. I feel the concrete setting around my feet. I do what I can though. I get a lottery ticket from the Cracker Barrel every Monday night, and it’s fun to dream about until I look at the numbers, but you can’t get struck by lightning if you don’t go out in a thunderstorm. That’s what I tell myself anyway.

Something catches my eye out front and that’s when Sammy tears into the room screaming and laughing. He goes running right behind me, and when I look over my shoulder I see his naked ass run by. Next comes Janie, who’s hollering bloody murder after him. She’s yelling at me from the next room.

“Danny!” she’s calling. “Danny, get in here!”

I can hear the paddle sliding off the top of the fridge and then she sticks her head around the corner.

“Sammy put shit all over the dog.”

I hear her, but I’m watching the fellow that has pulled into my driveway. He’s standing at my mailbox, reading the numbers on it and contemplating my yard. His shiny peach El Camino is idling at the head of my driveway, farting blue smoke out of the muffler.

“Did you hear me?” she says, standing in the doorway with the paddle in her hand. “Biscuit’s covered in crap!”

She takes off and I hear her struggling with Sammy. She must have caught him because I hear him crying and wailing around. I think he likes when his mom whips him. It’s like a wrestling match for him.

This fellow at the end of my driveway gets back into his car and sits there looking at my house. I smell something awful and I notice that Biscuit has come into the room and is looking out the window. We watch the peach El Camino back into the driveway and then Biscuit starts barking. I grab him by the collar, careful not to get my hands dirty, and bring him in the bathroom. I walk by Janie who’s struggling with Sammy and tell her not to let Biscuit out of the bathroom.

“Can I get some help here?” she says.

“I got to see to something,” I say, and walk out of the house, away from the onions and all the crap in there.

It feels good outside. I step out onto the carport and the man has gotten out of his car and is standing with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. The car is still running and I’m wondering to myself why on earth he’s backed in when he notices me.

“Howdy,” he says.

“Howdy yourself.” I step out into the sunlight. “What can I do you for?”

This fellow seems about twenty-five, maybe thirty. He’s got jet-black hair that comes down to his shoulders and a mustache that reminds me of a young Burt Reynolds. He’s dressed in what Janie calls a Canadian tuxedo, denim from head to ankle, with a belt buckle and some nice brown cowboy boots. There’s some kind of lizard or frog on his belt buckle, but I don’t want to stare. He steps up to me and sticks his hand out.

“My name is Kyle Ducet. I lived in this house when I was a boy.”

I take his hand. “Good to meet you Kyle.” I tell him my name.

“Still looks the same,” he says, putting his hands back in his pockets and peering out into the back yard. “My daddy built that,” he says, nodding his head toward the shed. “And that magnolia tree behind it,” he says. “Me and my daddy planted that.”

I tell him that I’m glad for it. “There’s some wasps up in that shed that I’ve got to take care of, but it’s sound otherwise.” I ask him where he lives now.

“Oh, here and there.” He scratches that mustache. “I moved up north with my old lady and I was in town so I just wanted to sort of revisit my youth.”

“We’ve been here about four years,” I say. “I believe it was the LeBlanc’s before us.”

“They bought it when we left,” he says. “Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but do you mind terribly if I just sort of walk around the yard a bit. It would mean a lot.”

“Help yourself,” I say. “You want a beer or something?”

“No thanks,” he says, and scratches that big black mustache.

I tell him that I’ve got something to do inside and I leave him to it.

I don’t want to go back inside, but I know what old Kyle Ducet is feeling. I once went back to the house that I grew up in. This was right after Sammy was born, and I was feeling sentimental as hell. I sat in my truck and balled like a little baby. I didn’t get out or anything, but it felt pretty weird being back in the house I’d grown up in, thinking about my momma and daddy, and about how a person’s options in life dwindle as they get older.

Back inside Janie’s hunched over the stove. She looks at me when I walk in and a string of her brown hair falls out from behind her ear and dances a little in the steam rising from the pot. I want to go over and bump up against her, but I know where that will get me.

“Who’s that?” she asks, pointing the wooden spoon over her shoulder.

“Some fellow says he used to live here and wants to have a moment.”

“He looks like a redneck Frank Zappa.”

“Burt Reynolds, I say.” I grab her by the elbow and spin her around and she humors me for a minute and lets me two step her around the kitchen.

“Sammy keeps asking about that toy,” she says when she breaks loose.

I guess I knew he wouldn’t forget about it. The thought of fooling with that thing makes my head hurt. “Where is he?”

“I made him put on some clothes and I told him to stay in his room.”

The dog is scratching against the bathroom door. I put my hand on the small of her back and she looks at me. “You know,” she says. “I could really use your help.”

I open up the kitchen window to let those onions out and that car is idling in the driveway. I make my way back into the hallway and look in on Sammy. His bedroom door is open, but I don’t see him. That boy is trouble. I go into the bathroom and get the water running. Biscuit’s got shit all on his back and even on the top of his head. This is the second time Sammy violated the dog like that. What the hell kind of person does such a thing? I hope he won’t end up in one of those magazines that truckers keep under their seats. I get Biscuit in the tub and start washing. I don’t want to think about what it is I’m doing at the moment. I think instead about lying on a hammock on a beach somewhere with Janie, or else arguing about something with some academic fellows at a round table, maybe even receiving an award for something or other. Hell, I’d rather be cleaning fish that what I’m doing. I hear Sammy behind me. I’m on my knees bent over the tub, and I look at him over my shoulder. We’re at eye level and I don’t wait to hear what he has to say.

“Boy,” I say. “You should be the one doing this, you hear me?” He stands there in his little green shorts and scratches at that brown hair.

“Daddy,” he says. “There’s a man digging a hole outside.”

I ask him what the hell he’s talking about.

“It’s a big hole,” he says. “As big as,” he stretches his arms out, and I get up and leave him in there with the dog.

I grab a towel and clean off my hands as I make my way outside. I go out the side door and I can see a shovel leaning up against the shed. I can’t see how big the hole is, but there’s a pretty impressive pile of dirt stacked up next to the magnolia. When I get in the yard I can see old Kyle trotting to his car. He’s holding a big brown satchel over his shoulder. I look at the hole in the ground and then back up at him and he looks over at me and that’s when he starts running.

What the hell, I think. “Hey!” I holler at him. I see the bag he’s holding is covered in dirt, and I take off after him. His boots are clacking on the driveway and then he’s almost to his car. He throws the bag toward the window, but it bounces off the door and a bunch of money spills out of it onto the concrete. He starts scooping the money back into his satchel, and he just about gets all of it as I’m getting up to him. He slams the door and peels out. I get up to where the car had been and I stand there in a big cloud of blue smoke. I squat down and pick up the little bit of money that he left behind. It’s caked with dirt, but I flip through it and there’s ten hundred dollar bills wrapped up in what looks like dental floss. I immediately shove the cash down into my pocket and slap at the front of my jeans for my truck keys. I run inside and grab them off the kitchen counter. Janie’s standing at the kitchen window looking confused, but I don’t wait to hear what she has to say. I get in my truck and go screeching off after him. There’s no way in hell that I’m gonna let some Burt Reynolds son of a bitch stroll into my back yard and make out with what I figure is legally mine. I can’t believe what’s happening, but I’m not the sort of person to stand around scratching my head over it.

I haul ass through the neighborhood, blowing right through stop signs. I get to the entrance of the subdivision and I see where some tire marks veer off to the left, and so I follow them. I wonder how much money was in that bag. Jesus, I think. How many times had I mowed the grass right over that spot? Five years I’d been out in the yard walking right over a fortune. I start fantasizing what I can do with a bunch of money. Hell, I just want to talk to the fellow and find out what’s going on and what that money was from. Maybe we can even work something out since it was on my property. I pass up a few cars on Greenwell Springs Road and then I start coming up to town. When I get up to the Kroger’s, I can see the peach El Camino idling at the red light. There’s two other cars in front of me, and just as I’m about to get out and jog over to him, the light turns green.

He goes squealing off and me right after him. I get in the next lane and zig-zag my way up beside him. He looks over at me, and I’ll be damned if he isn’t wearing that black mustache anymore. “What the fuck!” I shout out my window to him. That car has some muscle, because it coughs out some more blue smoke and shoots off. I kick down on the gas and go after him, but he’s really moving. I chase him for another mile or so, and am feeling pretty good about my chances. He’s not getting too much ahead. I let out a loud hoot, almost a laugh, thinking about what it is I’m doing. I sure didn’t think I’d be in a car chase when I woke up this morning. I figure it’ll be interesting on Monday morning when the fellows ask me how my weekend was, but then I wonder would I even have to go to work. I feel like I’m in somebody’s dream. I press my hand against my leg and can feel the money in my pocket. Even if I don’t catch him, I think, I’d still have a grand. Then I start thinking about the doctor bill that’s coming and I gun it. The cell phone buzzing in my front pocket just about gives me a heart attack. It’s Janie.

“What the hell are you thinking!” she screams into the phone.

I tell her what happened, how I’m following him at the very moment. She wants to know how much it was in the bag.

“I don’t know, baby, but it’s enough for us to get out the hole and get a maid. Hell, go to Hawaii.”

She’s quiet for a minute and then she begs me to just come home, to please not get hurt. “I need you here, Danny,” she says.

“I just want to talk to him.”

“Well if you go off risking your ass with all you got relying on you then you’d best catch that thieving son of a bitch!” she screams.

I snap the phone shut and toss it on the seat and keep my eye on the road. I feel glad I’ve got a cheerleader, but it hits me that Janie can be tricky with her words. I really don’t have time to ponder.

I wonder where Kyle Ducet is really from and where he’s going. Once we get over the Amite River Bridge the two lanes turn into one. He’s a good hundred yards in front of me, but I’m determined. I check my gas gauge and figure I can go for as long as he can. Up ahead, a big, red truck pulls out into the road right as the El Camino passes him by. I’m yelling every name in the book.

I step on the gas and go to pass up the truck even though there’s a car in the other lane heading my way. I get up as far as I can alongside that truck and I glance over at the driver. All I see is a blonde bushy beard underneath a camouflage hat. He’s screaming at me and shaking his fist. I hear the driver that’s heading toward me laying in on their horn, but I keep on. I cut back into my lane with no time left, and I nearly clip the front of that red truck. Horns are blasting everywhere. I floor it. I can see the truck in my rearview mirror go screeching to a stop, smoke from burning rubber enveloping it. That El Camino has gained some more, and I call that old bastard in the red truck every name I can think of for impeding my progress.

I keep my eye on the peach El Camino, but it’s getting farther and farther away. It turns left off the road toward Sherwood Forest Boulevard. He’s gonna try and hump it to the interstate. I think about all the stops between there and here, and I start feeling some hope. Once you get out to Sherwood, there’s about four red lights before the on ramp to I-10. I know traffic will be a mess on a Saturday. My heart’s beating in my windpipe. There’s just no way in hell I’m gonna miss out on this. I’d been in the trenches for too long. Me and Janie have dreams and two little alarm clocks on the way. I imagine that with even half of the money I saw in that bag that I won’t be showing up at the refinery on Monday. I can see us not having to struggle any more, and I can damn near taste the salty breeze of some exotic beach, but I shake my head and try to concentrate on the task at hand. There will be time enough for dreaming later.

The phone starts buzzing again and I know it’s her wanting to know what’s happening. That gives me some wind. I don’t plan on coming home empty handed. I picture our house and it takes on a strange glow in my mind. Five whole years we’d been living in a gold mine.

I come up on the first red light, and I can see the little prick up ahead stuck at a light. I was right. Traffic is bad. I have to wait another hundred feet or so before I can get out from behind the cars in front of me, but when I do, I cut to my right and haul ass through the Wal-Mart parking lot. The El Camino is at the second to last red light before the on ramp and the parking lot will spit me out right behind him. I punch it down and soar along the edge of the lot with no problem. I’ve got him. When I come up alongside him the light turns green, and my truck goes lurching out from the parking lot back onto the road behind him. Horns are blasting everywhere, and I’m so close. There’s only one car separating us now and I’m flying. The last light turns red as we come up to it, but he guns it on through and pulls up onto the onramp. The car in front of me brakes for the light, and I’ve got nowhere to go. I slam on my brakes and cut the wheel at the very last second. I swerve off to the right into the Waffle House parking lot, scrape a phone booth, and slam to a stop against a light pole. I feel a little fuzzy, but when I look out the window I don’t see any peach El Caminos, just some smoke hissing out from beneath my hood. I turn the ignition, but nothing happens.

I want to get out my door and borrow somebody’s car, but I’m having trouble moving. There’s a fellow in his little Waffle House hat standing at my passenger window looking in at me and asking if I’m ok. A siren rings in the distance, getting louder. I look away from the man and out my window. People sit in their cars staring at me. I hear the screeching tires. I look in my side mirror and see that red truck that I’d clipped come sailing into the parking lot behind me. The bearded man gets out and starts marching toward me. My cell phone buzzes gently from the floorboard. I listen for the sirens to get louder, but before I know it he’s pulling me out of the cab. He’s got my shirt all bundled up in his fists, standing over me, cussing me to hell and back. His words wash over me, along with his spit, but for some reason, I focus in on his hat. It’s camouflage and there’s a cartoon of a lady on it with her back showing. Her rear end is whiter than the rest of her body and the caption reads, I hunt white tail year round.

Right before he lays in on me, I’m aware of a crowd of people standing around watching. I picture my backyard with a big pile of dirt and an empty hole. I can see that peach El Camino just cruising into the sunset and I wonder how far I would have chased it away from town, away from my family. I feel like laughing knowing it was there the whole time. I can see Janie standing over the stove back home, and Sammy chasing the dog around. I remember the toy that I’d been working on and I know I’ve got to get it right. I can’t start on it soon enough. Maybe when I finish with it I’ll put it in the hole out back before refilling the dirt. Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about before I’m all out of time.

Benjamin Soileau is a raging Cajun from south Louisiana who self-exiled to the Pacific Northwest. His fiction has appeared in The Monarch Review, Eclectica Magazine, B O D Y Literary journal, Border Crossing and elsewhere. He drives a beer truck in Portland, Oregon.

Triadelphia, WV, poem by Jay Sizemore

The hotel room seems damp—

cold as the West Virginia sky,

a certain kind of humidity

left behind in the empty space

that light can never fill

and that only the nostrils

can interpret as moisture

in the atmosphere of green carpet

and comforters. I’m wearing

my blue jean jacket, the one

with the Grateful Dead pin,

and this second skin of denim

isn’t enough to fight off

the chill.

These people stare at me

as if they have never seen a man

who doesn’t enjoy haircuts,

who doesn’t comb his face

with a wagon wheel,

who doesn’t have the confederate

flag tattooed on his heart

like a stubborn crown of thorns,

but their accents say

that history will soon learn

its place is in the books

and not on the bumper stickers

of rusted out Fords.

After four beers I don’t care,

I start to wish that I had

asked out the waitress

at the Olive Garden,

whose black hair and imperfect

teeth struck me as honest

and beautiful.

I start to wonder how

I’ll ever fill eight more hours

with conversation

when the first leg

of the voyage turned into

summarizing the billboards

after only four hours

and listening to Jerry Garcia

smother the silence with raspy

tunes from beyond the grave.

These country roads

look more like Interstates

that lead to adventures disguised

as job interviews

surrounded by leaveless trees,

coal mines, and houses built

like patchwork quilts,

as the sun continues to set

right on schedule

and the loneliness of bare walls

seems like a reflection

of my dreamless self,

but I know these same highways

will lead me home

as soon as I turn around

and go back the way I came.

Jay Sizemore brought the high-five out of retirement. He still sings Ryan Adams songs in the shower. Sometimes, he massages his wife's feet. His work has appeared online and in print with magazines such as Rattle, Prick of the Spindle, Revolution John, Menacing Hedge, and Still: The Journal. He's never won an award. Currently, he lives in Nashville, TN, home of the death of modern music. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

Roulette, poem by M.S. Lyle

You move around the house, a cord attached

to that spot on your back that no matter how hard

you try to reach, you cannot reach. At the other end,

the chamber. And you are so small; you heard the doctor

say you are 40lbs, so you’re almost sure that it’s not weight

that will trip the trigger. You figured out that some things

come from deep inside of her and some things

don’t, so you might be one of the outside things

that make her not work the right way, but maybe

you could be a thing that does. You like when she

is humming at the kitchen window, light through

the screen patterning gold on her taupe hair,

so you run in the woods for lessons from birds

on how to sing and how to fly (just in case).

The clouds look like warning signs; you think

she might be a witch, power so dark and magical

it could change the sky. Then the cord tugs

and the chamber spins. You run in circles,

forgetting all the birds told you, flapping your little arms

in desperation, as she casts another spell on the sun.

M.S. Lyle grew up on farmland in the Watchung mountains of north central Warren, New Jersey, She now lives and writes from Atlanta, GA, where she's also known to orchestrate the ancient art of wine importation over the high seas. She graduated from Lesley University with an MFA in Creative Writing and is currently polishing her first poetry manuscript, "Reclamation." Her next project includes collected essays and photographs that chase Steinbeck's ghost across America.

Big Red Cap, fiction by James Leary

Not so long ago there lived a young man who suffered greatly at the death of his father.  The young man, who became known as Red Cap for the old, dusty Marlboro hat he always wore, was loved by all those who lived in Saltlick.  They found him a strong, lean young lad, willing to help out neighbors with the simplest request.  When anyone needed a hand, Red Cap was there to chop wood, repair broken trailer pins and hitches, rescreen doors and windows, and set or pull or house tobacco.  The cap itself was a remnant from the life of his father.  Once when the young man was a young boy, he fell off the back of a tobacco wagon as it bounced up a gravel path to the barn.  The boy cried and cried, even though he had only been scraped, until his father took the Marlboro cap from his own head and gave it to his son.

One day the young man’s mother reminded him that the annual farm machinery show was going to be held in a nearby city.  She told him very clearly, “I need you to take your father’s tractor to the city and sell it so that we can keep food on our table for the year.  Be careful and don’t waste all the money while you’re in town.”  She also explained to him the dangers of the city, in particular the fact that out-of-towners are preyed upon, for money or otherwise, when they spend too much time there.  The young man had dreams of becoming a farmer himself, so at first he was quite disappointed that his mother would ask him to sell the tractor.  But, he thought, his father’s smaller, red utility tractor, a tiny International, would still do well on the farm, and the money from the sale of the bigger tractor would help keep him and his mother fed while he practiced what he’d learned about farming from his father.

Red Cap’s father had never asked him to attend the show.  His father often went, nearly every fall, but Red Cap typically stayed home with his friends and got into mischief in Saltlick or played out in the field with the family dog.  Red Cap had been as far as Burford, twenty miles away and populated with a single stoplight, but he had never been farther.  The world beyond seemed mysterious and dangerous, even though he could read about most everything about it from the World Book.

Now,  to become the man of the house after his father had passed on, Red Cap needed to go out into the world and do as his mother asked.  Red Cap loaded the main tractor into a large box trailer and headed out to the highway and the city beyond.

Once Red Cap reached Louisville, he found it much more disorienting than he expected.  He saw a forest of buildings and light poles and signs covered with advertisements.  He marveled as he followed the signs for the Annual Farm Machinery Show that led him through sweeping and sloped highway interchanges and along above-ground bridges that loomed over the cityscape.  Saltlick had none of these.  His home had more grass and trees and dung in an acre than he figured could be found throughout the entire city.

The closer to the highway exit he drew, the taller the buildings grew.  Eventually he saw them so packed in that it made him think of neat rows of towering tobacco ready to harvest.  This thought actually comforted him.  It felt like something familiar in a wilderness of dark, strange things.

Near the fairgrounds, Red Cap took an exit and pulled his truck and load into a grand parking lot.  In a sea of trucks and trailers and tractors, he put his palm up to shield his eyes and scanned across the lot.  He saw no clear signs to direct him and had no idea where to go next.  Did he check in somewhere?  Did he wait for someone to approach?

As he was pondering his next path, an attractive young woman stepped out from behind a row of John Deere machines and handed him a small flyer.  He glanced briefly enough to only notice a young woman dressed in a bright red cloak on the flyer.

“Hi, honey,” the young woman said.  She held a stack of the small flyers, all the same.  She wore a fitted pair of denim jeans, cowboy boots, and a yellow tank top.

“Good evening,” said Red Cap.  He glanced away from her hands to her face and back quickly.  He felt a bit ashamed at talking to her, though he wasn’t quite sure why.  “Do you work for the Machinery Show?” he muttered.

“No,” she said.  “I work at JT’s, six blocks north on Crittendon.” She pointed at the flyer in Red Cap’s hand, touching her finger to it and softly brushing his thumb as she drew it back.  He noticed she had an inviting smile, understanding and alluring.  “You should come see me.”

“Well, I’m talking to you right now,” he said, proud at his cleverness.

“You can see more of me there,” she hinted.  “Not too much more on account of the city lawyers and council and so forth but more than what you see here.”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Red Cap stammered.  He looked her up and down again and realized he didn’t know many women like this from Saltlick.  She was fairly smaller than he was used to, and she looked at him differently, like she was hungry and excited that he was around.  Women, mainly, and some girls from Saltlick usually invited him to dinner or to stop by the house and talk later.  None had ever hinted that he might see more of them or what that meant.  Red Cap wasn’t sure what JT’s was and why it was further into the city.  “I’m not from Louisville, so I don’t know the area much, and I’m here to sell this tractor anyway.”  He gestured at the trailer behind him.

“Honey,” she began again, “it ain’t far, and surely you’d rather look at something other than tractors all night.”  She reached for his hands and turned over the flyer in it.  Pointing at the back, she said, “Look there and you’ll see easy directions to get down there.”  She hugged him, a little awkwardly, and walked on down the lot.

Within the hour, Red Cap sold the tractor, as it was a rare model of that size.  The payment, all cash, he tucked deep down in his boot-sock, safe and sound.  He considered wandering around and looking at some of the other equipment, but he felt tired and homesick already.  He planned to leave quickly when he encountered the young woman in the parking lot again.  He noticed this time, from behind, that she had longer hair than he expected, mostly brunette with some blond streaks throughout.  She waved at him as she positioned the last of her flyers under the wiper on a nearby Ford pickup.

“Are you coming to see me later?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said, “are you done here?”

“I’m done,” she said.  “Going to JT’s here in just a few.  I would offer you a ride, but we aren’t allowed.”

“Ah, I’d have a hard time explaining that story at home anyway,” he said.  “Not many people like you where I’m from.”  She smiled.  “What is your name anyway?” he asked.  “So I know who to ask for at the place.”

“I go by Candy,” she said.  “But I’m not always sweet to people.  I just like it when the farmers come to town.”

“Why is that?”

“Let’s just say they make it worth my while for the whole year,” she answered.  It was clear that she didn’t want to explain because she quickly asked again if Red Cap would be visiting her club.

“I might,” he answered.  “I probably could.”  This seemed affirmation enough, as she hopped excitedly and asked him when he might arrive.  He told her was going to head that way immediately, but that he felt like he’d rather walk to get a better sense of what the city was like.  Yes, he planned to walk the six blocks, but he figured that was pretty easy compared to getting cattle where you wanted them to go all day and working in corn or soybeans or tobacco.  With that, she jumped into her a small sedan and squealed off, flyers all gone, toward the downtown skyscrapers.

Red Cap’s walk was more amazing than he ever expected.  Though he had heard, read, or seen pictures of the many types of people in large cities, he had never seen them up close.  The sidewalks were full of mysteries.  A man pushing a baby carriage filled with soda cans, a woman with a white and tattered wig whispering to everyone who passed, a three-legged dog being led by a one-legged man on a motorized wheelchair, dozens of shirtless black boys walking in small groups, a police officer on a horse, and even three teenage girls zipping by on a single, tiny scooter.  It was a wilderness of unfamiliar people and things.  Feeling disoriented, Red Cap remembered the small flyer in his pocket and knew the directions would lead him if necessary.  However, he needed no such help.  Soon he saw for himself the great, glowing sign marking the entrance to JT’s.

He went in. It was darker than Red Cap expected.  The lights gave only a muted, bluish glow.  A young, nightie-clad woman quickly approached him.

“Hi, honey, you want to get a drink?” she asked.

“I’m looking for someone,” Red Cap answered.

“Well, sweetie, you’re in the right place.  There are lots of someones here.”  And she was right.  Red Cap looked past her and saw dozens of men and a few women gripping bills tightly and finding curious ways to give them to women who were dancing on the stages.  He remembered the money from the tractor sale and felt the folded pile deep in his boot and damp with sweat against his ankle.

“I’m looking for Candy,” Red Cap replied.

“She’s over by the bar,” the woman said.  She turned to leave, and Red Cap realized that she was wearing a small rabbit tail.

Puzzling over this, Red Cap made his way to the bar where he had been sent.  Candy was there, sure enough.  She spoke with another man beside her.  She had her back to Red Cap, and he noticed that she, along with a rather revealing gray outfit, sported a tail of some sort.  It looked wolfish.

As he looked around the establishment, Red Cap slowly understood the reason for the tails.  The club was themed, to a degree, around hunting.  The walls were the dark cedar of a men’s lodge.  The upper areas were adorned with the trophy heads of hunted beasts.  The ceiling displayed fake greenery, made up to look like the overhang of a canopy of trees.  For Red Cap, who had only read and heard about places of this caliber, the scene was jarring.  Yet he could quickly see how the atmosphere excited and invigorated the men, who then freely gave their money.  In turn, the women, who freely accepted bills tucked into intimate places, including just beneath their tails, were invigorated by the exchange of money.

What struck Red Cap suddenly is that his father never mentioned such places.  Surely such knowledge would have helped Red Cap in the long run, as so many of the farmers he recognized from the show had ended up here.

Unsure of how to act in such a strange space, Red Cap sat at the bar and nervously ordered a glass of water from a young female bartender who wore a brown bikini with what looked like a raccoon tail attached.  A song with a consistent beat played in the background, making Red Cap think of the put-put-put of the cornmeal grinder at the county fair near Saltlick.  Soon, Candy left the bar with the other man and disappeared into another part of the club.  She left through a doorway framed by a skinned and stuffed water moccasin, and Red Cap turned back to his glass, which was now becoming slick with condensation.

While she was gone, several other women approached Red Cap and asked him for a drink, to drink with them, or to come somewhere and sit with them.  Each time he refused and repeated that he was there to speak to Candy and that he would wait right there for her.  Each woman, after he refused, slinked out into the open space of the room and weaved through and around and against all the other farmers wearing various caps of dozens of colors, and many, Red Cap saw, sat down beside some of the men or sat in their laps, giggling into their ears.

Before long though, Candy returned from her doorway, now alone.  She wore a different outfit, even more revealing than the tight gray shirt and bottom she wore before.   This time it was a pink bikini with small red cherries all over.  The tail was nowhere to be seen now.  She grabbed him by the hand without a word and led him from the bar into a small room.

Red Cap felt disoriented by the room, as it had mirrors all along the walls and a long dark leather couch along a whole side.  Candy sat him down and asked him how he was doing.

“Good,” Red Cap said, “though I’ve never really been in a place like this.”

“Are you having a good time?” she asked.  She began removing her top.

“I think,” Red Cap answered.  Her top fell to the floor.  He felt frozen, unsure of what to do next.  Should he leave?  Should he ask her about something, herself?  “Did you go to the machinery show today, or were you just outside?” he finally asked.

“I never go in,” she said.  “I go down there to pass out flyers for this place.”

“Well, it sure was nice to meet you down there today.  This is the first time I’ve ever even been to the machinery show.”

“Oh,” she said.  She glided toward him and straddled his lap.  “I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Do you not remember me from this afternoon?” Red Cap asked.

“Of course, honey,” she said.

“You were wearing jeans and tank top,” he said.  “You changed when you got to work?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “I can’t get very comfortable in here wearing that stuff.”

“Why is everyone wearing tails?” Red Cap wondered aloud.

“It is part of the way we work here, club’s rules,” she cooed, “part of our theme here at the club.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, the better to entertain you with,” she giggled.  She began to rub her hips hard against him.  Red Cap sensed himself growing uncomfortable.  Candy’s hip and the undulations of her body matched the pace of the song.  Red Cap tried to think of the cornmeal grinder, but it was no use.  When she removed her bottoms, he was surprised and confused to notice the tail still attached to her.  He thought that surely it was glued on, wasn’t it?  His heart beat faster, and he felt both excited and worried.  To his relief, or perhaps lack thereof, the song ended and Candy moved off of him and sat beside him on the couch.

“That’s twenty,” she said.

“Twenty what?” Red Cap asked.

“Twenty dollars.  That’s one dance.  Later there’ll be a two-for-one special and I can come back if you like,” she said smiling.  Her teeth, a bright white, unnerved Red Cap a bit.

“What makes you think I have money,” he said.

“All the farmers have money when they come here.  If you didn’t want to spend, why did you even come in here?  At least you’re getting something good for it!” Candy retorted.

Red Cap, now realizing how people behaved here, finally began to understand.  He wondered if his father had come here.  He thought about his father’s excitement every year before the show, and he considered that it might not just have been for farm machinery.  “I have to go outside,” he said quickly.

“The twenty first,” Candy demanded.  Red Cap thought of the fights his mother and father often had over money.  He furiously stuck his hand in his boot and sock and wriggled out a bill. That his father’s legacy to the family was a collection of well-worn land and machinery seemed bitterly cruel. He shoved the wadded money into her palm.  Red Cap would have purchased feed or fertilizer with it; frustration made him want the money back, but Candy had already slipped away, behind some secret curtains.  He stumbled out into the main room, still a bit disoriented.  He saw the dozens of men in the club laughing and cackling and eagerly waving money in the air.  Some drew out single bills from a large wad of cash, much like his own, and tucked one after another into bikini strings, bra straps, garters, and underneath the rabbit, raccoon, beaver, and wolf tails.  Red Cap felt ashamed, as if everyone could see that he felt strange and weird and out-of-place, but at the same time he knew that all the men were clearly focused elsewhere.  He realized, though, that he could escape while the others could not.

Another woman with a fake nose sporting whiskers approached him and inquired if he’d like to sit down for another drink.  “May I go to the bathroom first?” he asked.

“Of course darlin’.  You go and I’ll be right here when you get back,” the woman responded.

Red Cap sped towards the bathroom, beyond it, and out the door into the street.  For a moment, panic struck him as he considered the possibility that others in the club had seen him withdraw money from his hiding spot.  The money was vital to keep him and his mother in good shape while he became a true farmer.  Finding himself out in the street, in the dark, Red Cap swiftly walked back the six blocks, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone or anything.  Before long, he found his truck, locked himself inside, and took a deep breath that brought in the smells of the dirty truck floor, speckled with earth and mud from his home in Saltlick.  He felt great relief.

So Red Cap left JT’s and Louisville and headed home to Saltlick and his mother and the still raw absence of his father.  Red Cap knew, though, that he was not his father, and the journey to Louisville convinced him of such.  However, he did so with a boot sock still strapped with cash, a small legacy from his father that would serve as riches enough while Red Cap made his own way in the world as a farmer and son.

James Leary is currently teaching at Duquesne University and Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a recent transplant from Louisville, Kentucky where he recently completed his doctorate in Humanities at the University of Louisville. His work has appeared in :lexicon, Eagle’s Flight, The Chaffin Journal, Aurora, Grab-a-Nickel, and Here and There. His literary interests and influences include southern and Appalachian fiction, fairy tales, and magic realism.

Frogball, poem by CL Bledsoe

We couldn’t afford bats so we scavenged,

broken lengths of PVC pipes, crooked

sticks, hands, if that’s all we had. Likewise,

instead of baseballs we used pinecones, dried

cow pies, rocks. One kid started catching

frogs and smacking them into trees. We envied

his easy swing in duct-taped shoes, home–

cut hair, and worn-out clothes. None of us

were frogs so we didn’t protest too much

other than to let him always take bat when

he caught one. We hardly went to his house,

anyway, with its collapsing roof, gun-collecting,

drug-addled mom’s boyfriend. At least

he wasn’t burying cats and mowing their heads

off, diddling his sister, or telling us we’d, all of us,

never escape the burning lake we were born for.

CL Bledsoe is the author of five novels including the young adult novel Sunlight, the novels Last Stand in Zombietown and $7.50/hr + Curses; four poetry collections: Riceland, _____(Want/Need), Anthem, and Leap Year; and a short story collection called Naming the Animals. A poetry chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. Another, The Man Who Killed Himself in My Bathroom, is available at http://tenpagespress.wordpress.com/20.... He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 10 times, had 2 stories selected as Notable Stories by Story South's Million Writers Award and 2 others nominated, and has been nominated for Best of the Net twice. He’s also had a flash story selected for the long list of Wigleaf’s 50 Best Flash Stories award. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings, http://clbledsoe.blogspot.com. Bledsoe reviews regularly for Rain Taxi, Coal Hill Review, Prick of the Spindle, Monkey Bicycle, Book Slut, The Hollins Critic, The Arkansas Review, American Book Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere.

not getting served at the subway inn, poetry by John Grochalski

not getting served at the subway inn

ten minutes before this

we were still in the hospital room

watching my mother-in-law wrestle

with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

just something, the nurse told her

to get in her stomach to take away the nausea from chemo

we were dressed like hazmat techs

in gloves and smocks and something to cover our mouths

the steelers were losing to the jets

two minutes left in the game and my wife shut the tv off

so her mother could get some sleep

but that was all right

the football gods will always live to see another day

and besides i stopped watching the NFL almost two years ago

i have ceased tying my fate to that of any sports team

only here in the subway inn they have televisions all over

playing games in between commercials

for SUVS, luxury cars or joining the marines

the few people in here are shouting

some drunk chick keeps screaming

pass-interference!

pass-interference!

but i don’t know at which screen

and though it may seem sexist

i’ve always held a special hatred for the female football fan

my wife and i aren’t getting served in the place

we probably need a drink

more than any two people in manhattan this sunday afternoon

only the bartender is gone

or he’s one of the people sitting at the bar

watching football and waiting us out

most likely he’s changing a keg or taking a shit

the bar has signs hanging

asking people to help save it from

twirling moustache landlords

and the inevitable new york city rent hike

you can tweet or twit or join facebook to spread the word

at the end there’s a banner proclaiming the bar saved

the same legendary subway inn

only now it’s moving four avenues away

where the rent hikes will take another ten years

to make their way east

and they’ll have to do this shit all over again

i consider the subway inn and its change in venue

how it really won’t be the same

no matter what these people fool themselves into believing

we change and morph and never realize it

because we’re too hung up just trying to live

like my mother-in-law in her hospital bed

telling us that she suddenly feels like an old person

or how i’m forty and now often times

i’m one of the older guys in the bar

wondering where in the hell my drink is

or where the tiredness and all this gray hair came from

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and the novel, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.

Hyperhidrosis, fiction by Cassie Adams

The day I found out that grandma Dolly was a prostitute, I realized that I’d never given much thought to the sex industry. But now that I was thinking about it, it was everywhere, from the obvious stuff (prostitution, strip clubs, porn, back alley blowjobs, and so on), to the marginally less obvious stuff (most of the film and television industries, nearly all of advertising, everything in women’s magazines, a good portion of the stuff in men’s magazine’s, Tiny Tots in Tiaras (otherwise known as The Apocalypse is Upon Us: a reality TV show for those who hate themselves, and those who should).

Listen, I’m not a terrible looking person. There are those who refer to me as ‘cute.’ Sometimes even ‘adorable” or ‘attractive’ or maybe even ‘beautiful’ (though this is usually by men whose eyes say “I’m imagining bending you over the nearest hip-heighth object rather than focusing on the conversation in which this compliment is supposedly taking place” (you’d be amazed how specific (and often explicit) some people can get with their eyes)).

Anyway so my point is that I – look – I really don’t want people to be attracted to me. It’s weird, you know, I want to be attractive… but I don’t want people to react to it. When I said as much, GJ (a.k.a. Gina Johnson LCSW, my therapist) raised her left eyebrow unprofessionally high, if you ask me.

Right, but my point is that it’s… I can’t really avoid being on the receiving end of an assortment perks from other people’s sexual fantasies about me. And I know you think that sounds vain, but it’s just the reality I live in – it would be difficult not to notice it happening. Late to work? It’s fine, you look like you got some much-needed rest (read: I’m just glad you finally did your laundry and started wearing a proper bra again, because those 32 triple D’s really weren’t handling the two-week-sports-bra thing you had going too well). Anyway I can’t prevent it, is my point. I genuinely fight against it, I do – but I can’t do anything about it, most of the time. So why not capitalize on it? Wouldn’t it be easier just to bring the transaction to the surface?

A week after finding out about the whole prostitute thing, I co-hosted a party with my sister’s new boyfriend Dane. You know, for like, group cohesion and camaraderie and so forth. It was a pretty dismal affair, in the end, because Dane had overestimated the number of romantosexually available female friends I had, which had, as it turned out, been kind of the point of asking me to cohost to begin with (something I’d normally pick up on long before the actual event). Anyway the only person who actually got laid that night was a frat boy also invited by me, who took advantage of my clinically lonely (as well as unbelievably out-of-her-mind-drunk) best friend from grade school. Anyway, at one point I ended up at a different house in a room with 8 college boys between the ages of eighteen and nineteen (by this time I was already twenty-one, which you would think wouldn’t make a big difference, but I’m telling you – it does), and a bong (naturally).

Now, there were a variety of problems, from my perspective, with this situation. The first was that I was the only female in a room filled with a brood of males who were (a) horny, (b) unattractive, © lacking in the self-awareness to know how unattractive they were, and (d) verbally and ethically underdeveloped, meaning that they were neither (d.1) polite enough to care whether I was aware that they were all simultaneously focused to an inappropriate extent on my apparent reproductive health, nor (d.2) capable of maintaining a conversation which did not make it painfully obvious that I (as an offshoot of my apparent reproductive health) was the center of attention in the room.

So, here’s what happened. I wanted to get stoned, so I couldn’t leave. The room’s air conditioning was broken, though, so I began to sweat. A lot. This wasn’t terribly unusual, since I’d suffered from a pretty conspicuous case of hyperhidrosis since an eighth grade dance party during which I tried to hide my sweat stains by dancing with my arms pinned to my sides, and all the boys in the class started doing “the penguin” in imitation, resulting (obviously) in enduring psychosomatic damage. This, it would seem, produced some sort of pheromone which just made things worse – although it could also have had something to do with the fact that I’d foregone underwear that day. And also pissed my pants just the tiniest bit earlier in the evening as a result of being too nervous about navigating the crowded hallway to face the restroom in time.

Right. So we passed the bong around our enormous, ridiculous, circle, and they all watched me when it was my turn because who isn’t turned on by watching someone anti-fellate a porcelain object? And ye who are without sin, and all that jazz.

Okay but so then I had like a tiny self-contained panic attack, which they all noticed, of course, because they were noticing every single fucking thing that I did. And so then, because I’m stoned now and I’d starting reading An Invitation to Sociology that week (you know, to try and understand why most social situations made almost zero sense, and whatnot), I tried to explain something about how I’m not talking because I’m distracted with thinking about how group dynamics work, or some shit, I don’t even know what I said, and they all nodded like it made sense which made my heart sink all the way down to my ever-so-captivating genitals.

The guy sitting next to me was actually a really nice guy who I’d hung out with before in less horrifying settings – the sort of person who goes out of his way to compliment a stranger’s shoes. His name was Daman, and he was originally from India. I’d been holding out hope that he would be my conversational escape, but when the group nonconversation inevitably died, Daman turned to me and told me that he knows how to read palms, and I said what does that mean, because I’m thinking of the palms they burn on ash Wednesday. And he took my hand, and said he wanted to read it – and of course I didn’t want him (or anyone) to touch the pooled sweat on my stupid hand, but now he already had so I don’t really have a reason to say no, so I let him continue.

Then, slowly, – tenderly – he wiped the sweat from my palm.

Let me say that again: He wiped. The sweat. From my palm.

I was exactly as unnerved as I would’ve been had someone offered to q-tip my ear wax out for me, and then actually did it. But so he went on pretending to read my hand for a while in the key of gibberish. I looked at the other boys in the room (some of whom had left the sad show at this point), trying to find Dane, who looked comfortably uncomfortable.

“Does this even make sense? Is he even saying things?”

Dane just shook his head with a little frown of something like embarrassment.

Then Daman looked at me again (if he’d even stopped) and he said,

“No, I’m telling you the truth, you’re going to choose a path and it will follow the line from your thumb to your…”

I pulled my hand away. And he sat up so straight, like his spine was a string hanging perpendicular to the ground from a point high above the earth. He put his hands on his knees so calmly, and looked me in the eye – bored into them — and he said,

“Stacy, you don’t have to be in so much pain. You’re beautiful. Do you understand?”

I looked at the floor, feeling simultaneously moved and violated. His words were touching – but they were the kind of touch you want, in a vague sense, but without wanting to be touched that way like this.  Like when my sixth grade math teacher gave me a shoulder rub while I was visibly struggling with multiplication tables.

He was right, though. I was in pain. But I couldn’t just choose not to be because he pointed it out. I mean, I sort of understood: yes, I was dripping from most of my orifices, and yes, I was a little self-conscious about it. But he was misattributing, as far as I could tell, my intense anxiety to that factor alone, when in fact the matter was grotesquely complicated, and my anxiety wasn’t just a scar or a burden, it was the glue that kept the puzzle that was “Stacy Brooke Wade” together.

He kept looking at me with those prying eyes, and finally he said,

“You’re beautiful and any man would be happy to have you – you don’t have to be so shy, why do you lock yourself up like this? Let yourself be free. Let yourself – you could have so much fun – you could, Stacy you could give… you could make money by giving…” his hand formed a circle around the air and bobbed up and down, up and down, up and down…

“Daman,” Dane finally cuts in, the words fumbling in his mouth like bite-sized hot-potatoes, “you’re stoned. Daman, you need to stop. Leave poor Stacy alone. She doesn’t want you to read her palm, look at her, she’s scared!”

“But that’s what I’m saying, is that she doesn’t have to be scared! Why should she be afraid when she’s beautiful, why should she not come to parties and have friends and do other things that she would enjoy, and she could…”

“Okay, okay Daman, you have to stop, don’t say that again – things are different in India, do you understand? You don’t say things like that here. I don’t know what it’s like there, but you don’t say things like that here. Women don’t do that here. I mean they do, but it’s only some of them and you know who those ones are, but people like Stacy don’t just do that here.”

And then it dawned on me.

“Did he just suggest that I should give handjobs for money? Is that what happened?” I asked, and Dane’s face fell visibly by a quarter of an inch.

“Um, I – Daman’s a really good guy, I’m sorry Stacy, but I think that things are just a little different in India, he doesn’t mean it that way, you just have to be more… you have to learn how to…”

Daman turned to me again, saying, “you could do it, Stacy, you could… I would… a lot of people would…”

And that’s what it came down to. A lot of people would pay for a handjob from me. A lot of people would pay for a handjob from anyone, but they would also pay for one from me. And my favorite grandma had done it. She’d been more of a courtesan, I imagined, but the idea was there: why not make sex your job? God knows it’s a skill that can be honed or buried. I’ve run the gamut, and if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that some dudes will wiggle on top of you for a few minutes and then come, and some will lick your asshole and find the spot and the angle and ride it so hard you forget who they are, and if you’re really lucky, you forget who you are, too.

But that’s not the point. The point is that I fall in love with strangers every goddam day. I’ve made out with, and made love to, a handful of people who probably didn’t deserve it. I have the ability to see the good in people and to want the best for them, and to give freely of myself to people just because I believe they need to feel a connection with someone. Doesn’t everyone? And what’s so wrong about giving physical acceptance to people who need it for money? What’s so wrong about giving in to all this pressure from every side to be appealing, to be polite, to be nice and generous and evenhanded…

At least then I could talk about it. At least then I could just tell people the price and take it or leave it. At least then I could tell people whether or not they meet the standards for an acceptable candidate for admission into my clientele. I guess I just started thinking, you know, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But then I thought about Daman. Would I do it for him? Would I give him a handjob for money? How much was a handjob worth to me? It’s not like they’re pleasant, but they’re also minimally effortful, generally. And it could all be pretty impersonal, really. But would there be kissing? Probably. And how do you approach something like that with the guy who just told you to sell handjobs because your hands are naturally lubricated with sweat?

I don’t know. I didn’t know. But I thought about it in my own little world for quite a while as the rest of them argued Daman down and awkwardly discussed what should happen next. Eventually, I decided to table the question and get the hell out of there. But, of course, I didn’t get the hell out of there before a slew of exiting-rituals were carried out with a slew of people I really didn’t feel all that comfortable performing exiting-rituals with. But at least those little concessions to what’s polite and appropriate were relatively painless. And at least this time I didn’t piss myself before I’d troughed through the obligatory social barriers between myself and my destination.

Cassie Adams is a recent graduate in psychology and philosophy at the University of Utah. In her free time, Cassie enjoys getting some fresh air in Southern Utah, and her interests include coffee, sweaters, and bubble wrap.

Ry Cooder's musical journey has taken him India, Africa and, finally, Appalachia

by Wayne Bledsoe

Just listening to Ry Cooder's catalog is like taking a college course in music, but a lot more fun. His albums have celebrated blues, folk, calypso, early jazz, rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, gospel and the music of the Southwest, Hawaii, Cuba and Africa. He's helped the world know about the glories of Hawaiian master Gabby Pahinui, Tex-Mex accordion great Flaco Jimenez, Malian guitar virtuoso Ali Farka Toure, Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Cuban all-star group collectively known as the Buena Vista Social Club. In addition, he's performed on albums by The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Arlo Guthrie, Randy Newman, Judy Collins, The Monkees, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Captain Beefheart, John Hiatt, Bill Frisell, Taj Mahal, Warren Zevon and many others.

It's surprising, though, to hear that one of Cooder's first musical loves is bluegrass and he's now on a tour in a collaboration with musical couple and bluegrass greats Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White.

More.