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Oldest European Fort Found in the Appalachians

Credit: University of Michigan

The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of what is now the United States have been discovered by a team of archaeologists, providing new insight into the start of the U.S. colonial era and the all-too-human reasons spoiling Spanish dreams of gold and glory.

Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and his men built Fort San Juan in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1567, nearly 20 years before Sir Walter Raleigh’s “lost colony” at Roanoke and 40 years before the Jamestown settlement established England’s presence in the region.

Fort San Juan and six others that together stretched from coastal South Carolina into eastern Tennessee were occupied for less than 18 months before theNative Americans destroyed them, killing all but one of the Spanish soldiers who manned the garrisons,” said University of Michigan archaeologist Robin Beck. More.

An Open Letter to the Baby Deer I Nearly Hit Tonight by Dena Rash Guzman

The mist cold and thick, I had the high beams switched off

so the brilliance wouldn’t channel in and blind me—

the switchback roads wind through the woods past

houses built by people with wagons drawn along

by beasts with four legs just like you still have.

It was close. I would say you came out of nowhere

but that’s a lie. You came out of the woods, your home.

These woods have been home to baby deer long before

I came and will be long after I break free these surly bonds.

I can say with certitude that I was driving carefully tonight.

When your eyes and fur came before me I did the thing—

I slammed on my brakes. The road lit bright red in back

of my car, a German number. It handles well in stress

like beasts with four legs just like you still have.

Inches from your shell-shocked little face,

I stopped. Your mother came after you, rearing

as I would have. Her life with us here must be difficult,

all her nights most likely fraught by ancestral memories

of wolf packs hunting her herd. She might be a single mom.

Dena Rash Guzman is a Las Vegas born poet and essayist. She now lives in a river gorge outside Portland, OR and is the founder of Lusted Road Honey Co. & Humblebee Pollinator Conservatory.  She is the author of Life Cycle—Poems, Dog On A Chain Press 2013. www.denarashguzman.com

But Pat Boone Never Lived in Bessemer, essay by Terry Barr

On the night before I entered 7th grade, my across-the-street, 9th grade neighbor Joe, while we were enjoying spareribs at our family’s annual Labor Day picnic, gave me this advice:

“Be careful tomorrow. You never know who’s carrying a switchblade.”

I grew up in the switchblade era. I’d hear talk at home about beer brawls in the rougher sections of town where combatants would pull switch-blade knives on each other and fight it out, often to the death. In fact, Joe’s family’s handy-man–Elijah who had conked red hair and carried his own ladder—was murdered in a switchblade fight. I knew Elijah. He was friendly enough, but my senses—or was it my grandmother’s voice—warned me to not hang around him too long, as I did with the various other maids and yard men of our circle of friends. I was only ten when reports of the incident made their way through our neighborhood hotlines, the usual afternoon phone sessions where my mother and grandmother and all their friends might tie up the lines for literally hours.

“What does a switchblade look like,” I asked Joe. At that moment, I felt as threatened by a switchblade as I was by the cottonmouths that my parents told me slithered in and near the creek down the street from my house.

“Never mind what they look like,” Joe cautioned. “Just keep close to the lockers and never get in the way of a ninth-grader, or anyone else for that matter. You never know who’s been left-behind.”

I couldn’t enjoy the rest of my supper that night and refused the homemade vanilla ice cream altogether.

“It’s OK” my Daddy said later. “Joe’s Mom forgot to put sugar in it again.”

So there I stood: My first day at Bessemer Jr. High in these switchblade times. The front entrance doors opened garage-door wide and I thronged in with my new classmates. The main office lurked just to the right of this entrance, which didn’t really assure me that any “hood” wouldn’t try to sneak in a dangerous weapon. Because, I noticed in my first breathtaking moment of junior high, the office had no windows, on the door or elsewhere. And neither on this day or any other in my experience there did the principal–Mr. Camp, whose larynx had been crushed, reportedly, in some foreign war—nor the assistant principal—Mr. Davidson, a red-haired and, I’d been warned, hot-headed man—ever stand in the front doorway to frisk the entrants. Joe told me that if you ever got caught with a switchblade, you were automatically expelled. I wondered how, if they weren’t checking at the door, our school guardians could ever catch anyone with that venomous weapon. I considered my chances of surviving that year fifty-fifty at best.

I hadn’t been in school for a week when I saw my first fight, the first in what seemed an every-other-day occurrence. Once, Russell Aldrich tore a hunk of Don Griffis’s hair out of the side of his head. Having a bald spot in seventh grade is maybe a badge of honor. It certainly didn’t hurt Don’s success with the girls. And then, a giant of a ninth grader, Biff Wyatt, allowed himself to be pummeled into submission by a wiry kid named Bobby Ray Ledbetter. I saw Biff on the ground, struggling to cast off Bobby Ray’s “bulk,” his face a red ribbon of strain and shame. Most of these fights were set up during school hours and then enacted just after the 3:00 bell, behind the school and just beneath the gymnasium window. On any given week there might be a feature event three or four days straight; never was there a week with fewer than two.

Maybe the strangest and scariest of these for me occurred on a cold, cloudy afternoon in early December when, as I was walking up the hill to my Mom’s car, I saw Bruce Duncan, the first Black kid who’d ever spoken to me in elementary school, walking among a crowd of white boys. When I reached our car, they passed me, heading across the street and under the railroad viaduct. A few minutes later, our car passed, and in a vacant lot I saw Bruce, entangled on the ground with one of the boys. The others were gathered in a semi-circle watching, cheering, or so it seemed to me since our windows were rolled up as we passed. We turned the next corner, out of sight, but I kept thinking of that scene and how as they passed me on their way to the battle, they seemed like they were going over to someone’s house for a game of football in the front yard.

I didn’t see anyone with a switchblade during that grappling moment. Nor did I see one over the next few months of school, though like those snakes that I never saw either, I just knew that someone’s switchblade was out there, somewhere, waiting for me.

Education is a funny experience. Not everything you see will educate you in the way that your guiding elders intend, and just when you’re distracted enough from real or unreal fears, someone arises to impart a valuable lesson. Such was the case with my educational experience in the face of Pat Boone’s immortal art film, The Cross and the Switchblade.

In my 7th grade year, I came home straight from school every day, and after a light snack, immediately tackled my homework. I was allowed to pause for a game of football with friends in my own front yard, but I could not watch TV until every last bit of my geometry, composition, or science homework lay exhausted in my notebooks. In my leisure time I read biographies of famous Americans; Ray Bradbury stories; Batman comics; and the Sports Page of The Birmingham News, our afternoon paper. While I didn’t always eat my vegetables at dinner (steamed cauliflower smells exactly like sewage), I generally obeyed my parents’ every command: I always asked permission to go to a friend’s house; took out the garbage after supper; raked every leaf I could see in early fall. I was no cause for worry or alarm.

And I didn’t need help from a born-again Christian crooner-turned-auteur.

Yet, as part of a Methodist Youth Fellowship experience, one winter Friday night, my church friends and I packed into Birmingham’s Empire Theater to take in Pat Boone’s personal epic. Munching my highly-salted popcorn, over the next ninety-five minutes I watched Pat take on and convert a switchblade-wielding gang. For all of those minutes, as I observed his white bucks, his plastic bromides, and his strangely combed hair, I just knew that he would be sliced to ribbons, packaged up, and delivered to the nearest 4-H clubhouse by my junior high peers: Hollis Todd who wore no underpants (I know, because he made no secret of it when he stood at the urinal next to me); Phillip Barnes, who was rivaled in uncouthness only by Hollis’ sister Judy (who reportedly staged many fights herself with girls and guys); and Wayne Whitlock, a six foot one, eighth-grader, who could scale the ten-foot wall on the obstacle course using only one arm.

I remember riding home that night with my best friend Jimbo in the back seat of his Mother’s station wagon. WSGN-AM, “The Big 610,” was following up “Crimson and Clover” with “Honky Tonk Women.”

“What did ya’ll think of the movie?” Jimbo’s Mom cheerfully and optimistically asked.

“Oh, it was OK,” we responded in unison which, if you understand teenage lingo, translated into: “It was beyond stupid, and thanks a lot for ruining another weekend night on this crap when we could have been at a party, attempting to kiss a girl or something.”

“I thought it was really inspirational,” she replied, hopefully. “You can take a lot of comfort and learn a lot of lessons from these movies!”

Sigh. No one but an adult would believe that Pat Boone could turn the hearts and minds of my hoodish peers who wouldn’t even need the switchblades that I was sure they owned, but never saw in those early months of school.

However, I did see the Reid brothers, Saul and Paul, who were as distinct as fraternal twins can be.

Saul was sixteen when he re-entered the seventh grade. He had tattoos on both arms—faded-green 1969-era tattoos that I thought only cab drivers and filling station attendants dared. And Saul’s muscles, so clearly defined that in semi-flex they rippled to such an extent that even class princess Rennie Robinson expressed wonder at them. These muscles seemed to discount Saul’s needing a switchblade to keep us puny junior high pawns in our places. So full of swagger, with greased hair flipping up both in front and back, Saul held us all in contempt, and we held him in abject fear, complete and stupefying terror, but also with a strange and mesmerizing respect. For Saul, among other feats of scholastic daring, told everyone that Fridays were his day off, and after a few weeks, most teachers just skipped his name during Friday roll call. On the other days, instead of answering “Here,” or “Present,” Saul had his own cultural signifier: “Accounted for.” And in some way that I didn’t yet understand, he certainly was.

Truthfully, if you were smart, you did want Saul accounted for. During the first week of school, after having been exposed to Saul for maybe three days, I was sitting on the bleachers during gym class with my good friend Randy Manzella. Waiting for Coach Brewer to appear and so inform us of the remarkable feats of athletic prowess that we would be attempting this school year, Randy and I didn’t account for Saul, who had slowly and imperceptibly crept closer to our row. Randy was no doubt filling my ears with yet another horror story he had heard about gym class–about boys popping your exposed rear with wet towels, or stealing your clothes as you showered. We vowed right then and there never to shower in gym class, and I suppose our false bravado set us up for Saul.

So sitting there, believing that our greatest problem concerned not appearing naked in the showers, we allowed Saul—that undulating cottonmouth—to strike. Except that Randy, God Bless him, wore thick glasses with wide black frames, and even Saul had a code. So it was I and I alone who qualified as Saul’s prey. Up until this very moment, Saul and I had never spoken or even exchanged looks, or at least he had never caught me looking at him. Of course, everyone looked at Saul, just like everyone stares hypnotically at the reptile pit in the zoo, wondering just what prey continues to wriggle in that particular viper’s throat.

So consider me the hamster.

“Hey, Candy-Ass!”

His voice conveyed no trace of anger, vitriol, or, class-envy. His tone sounded the same pitch and inflection as all those “Accounted for’s” we heard that year. Yet, the words themselves clearly communicated his menace.

“That’s my spot, and if you don’t get up by the time I count to ten, you’re gonna get it.”

And Saul showed me his flexed arm, which had extended from it at its the very end, not the switch-blade that had recently haunted my days and nights, but a massive, scarred fist. Displaying this prize, he began counting.

Each of us has a particular experience that gives special, personal meaning to the phrase “Words failed me.” This, of course, was mine.

By this point–“three, four…” Randy and the entire Manzella family had set sail for their native Sicily. Actually, since he was the smartest kid in our class, Randy, with the encouraging words, “You better move,” slid off his seat and found another, maybe five rows below us. Yet, hypnotized by Saul’s viperous arm, I couldn’t.

And so I wondered: Would a cross, at this late moment, make any difference at all? Would I stand a chance against the demon of my adolescence had I Pat Boone’s smooth, silver-tongued delivery or his plasticine comb-over instead of my own frozen larynx and Beatle-bangs?

Good old Pat!

Would he ever be able to account for a viewer like me, the product of a mixed Protestant-Jewish family–a family who definitely did not own a cross?

I had seen crosses and actually touched a few in my time. My Dad worked in a jewelry store, and I had my first summer job there, just before this school year started. The store, Standard Jewelry Company, was in my Dad’s family, so we were Jewish jewelers though no family name adorned any store signpost. And not only did we sell crosses, but crucifixes, and other jeweled Christian icons too. I knew that ordinary crosses were off-limits to me, but once I did ask Dad to get me a surfer’s cross. My favorite male TV stars wore them, and so I assumed that girls would think they were cool. That these cool talismans also looked like the German Iron Cross escaped me then. Nevertheless, Dad got me the cross, which I then promptly gave to the girl-of-my-dreams, Joe’s sister Mary Jane, who just as promptly handed it off to her little sister. Did this mean that I was going steady with a nine-year old named Margaret Lou?

But even if I hadn’t given it away, Saul wouldn’t have been impressed by it. Maybe I could have told him about the legend of the surfer’s cross and the story of my unrequited love for the beautiful blonde-haired girl whom I watched in secret every day from my living room window. Maybe he was a closeted Jan and Dean surf-rock fan, for wasn’t my story the stuff of every 60’s teenage pop song? Maybe hearing my tragic lament, he would take pity on me or be so bored that he’d forget he was counting my fate.

These thoughts, though seemingly endless, had gotten us to the count of seven. My arm, Saul’s intended target, was already beginning to ache.

But that’s when the Pat Boone miracle happened.

Saul had just counted “eight,” when the gym office door opened. Out from this inner sanctum strolled not a man in white bucks, but one in black cleats: Coach Billy “Bomber” Brewer, who was also an itinerant Baptist preacher. As the year went on, many guys in gym class would come to accuse “Bomber” of cheating, as he would call invisible fouls or interference whenever he had, or lost, the ball during the innumerable football and basketball games that composed most of our gym periods that year. On this day, however, the gym grew quiet, not so much because he was standing there, but because of what he had in his hand: A three-foot long, solid wood board, which, supposedly, he had named “The Little Bomber,” after himself.

To this day I’ve never figured out how he knew what was transpiring ninety feet from his office without being able to see through those plaster walls. I suppose he knew that he had to account for Saul eventually and not let more than a couple of minutes go by without checking off his presence.

Whatever the case, Coach Brewer walked straight to us, never wavering, never looking elsewhere.

“Saul, get down here right now and grab those ankles!”

Saul, fist still poised above my already-wincing arm, had no excuse, no recourse.

So he complied. He descended the bleachers, walked right up to Coach, and bent over, grabbing those ankles in front of the entire gym class, God, and Pat Boone. Then “The Little Bomber” went to work. Three loud whacks that echoed like Bible thumps throughout the gym. To his credit, Saul held firm, and when Coach said “Get up, and go back to your seat,” Saul did. But first, he extended his hand to “Bomber” and said, “Hey! They were good ‘uns.”

Saul left me alone after that. Oh, he might occasionally speak in my direction:

“You’re fat, you know that?”

Of course, I did.

The only other encounter we had occurred during our class spelling bee trials. Since I was one of the champion class spellers, our teacher often allowed me to call out the words in practice sessions. On one particular afternoon, as I was anticipating which words those standing in line were bound to get, I saw Saul waiting his turn. My eyes skipped down the page to see the word he would be forced to spell.

When his turn came, I looked him in the eye and called it out:

“CONVERSION, Saul.”

“Conversion.” He looked puzzled for a moment. Our eyes met again, and then he started:

“C-O-N-V-E-R-…

I waited, wondering. And hoping.

…S-I-O-N.”

“That’s right,” I confirmed.

Saul neither smiled nor nodded. He merely took his place in the back of the line, waiting for his next word, or for the bell, or for something else that I would never understand. I wondered whether he was proud of himself, and if that pride might translate into something greater if he could just spell the next word correctly. I tried glancing down the list as my classmates struggled through “conversant” and “convoluted.” But I didn’t have a chance to see what would happen, for the bell for last period rang then, and we were off to the greater glories of Reading Lab or Machine Shop which is where I lost Saul each day. On this day, and this day only, I was actually a bit sad.

He never converted, by the way. Maybe in part because his brother Paul had reconstituted himself by Saul’s standards into a “normal” student—meaning one who wanted to stick it out at least until high school.

And yes, before school officially released us for the summer, I saw Saul’s switchblade. It was during science class. He had waited and waited, and finally, to impress Rennie Robinson, he brought it out, switched it open, and then, after maybe ten seconds, carefully closed it and returned it to his front left pocket. It was all rather anti-climatic, for by that point in the year, I had already experienced too much. I had even given a girl a box of candy for Valentine’s Day: Debbie Patterson who was rail-skinny and had the longest, waviest blond hair I had ever seen, and who claimed to be part Cherokee.

“See how crooked my nose is? Just like an Indian!”

Two days after I gave her the candy she broke up with me because “I never called her.”

It really didn’t matter so much to me because at least I had one girlfriend in seventh grade.

Besides, when Saul showed me that menacing switchblade, he also did something else that he had never done before.

He called me by my name.

SWITCH

“That’s how you open it, Terry.”

Saul didn’t make it to the end of that school year. He turned seventeen in April and so, as he pledged he would, he left us behind, journeying out into the Damascus of his life: A crossroads of glittering switchblade fame, a perpetual small-town rebellion.

It might make a nice, Hollywood ending if I said I never heard from or saw him again. That way I could leave him painted as defiant, plagued, and maybe even repentant, in an adult and rehabilitated life.

But I did see him again. It was three or four years later, my high school years. Shopping for Christmas at our local mall with my mother and brother, I looked up and coming out of WT Grant’s, I saw a man and a woman pushing a baby stroller. The woman was a bleached blonde, a little heavy, but that could have been the after-effects of her pregnancy. I had never seen her before. But something looked familiar about the guy. He looked… would “beleaguered” be the right word? “Haunted?” I watched them for a minute as they strolled closer. And then I knew it was Saul. He had gained some weight. He had “settled,” so to speak.

I imagined this little family taking their purchase from Grant’s or Super-X Drugs home, and gathering that night in front of their Motorola watching “The Movie of the Week.” Maybe they’re eating burgers or Dinty Moore Stew. Maybe they have a beer or two and remember to give the baby his bottle. And maybe they keep the knives they cut their burgers with safely out of the baby’s reach. I’d like to think so anyway.

I saw another movie unfold in those few moments, but I didn’t stare too long. For I had seen crosses and switchblades in my small Alabama town. And I had survived them all.

Terry Barr lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his wife and two daughters. A native of Bessemer, Alabama, he graduated from the University of Montevallo in 1979 and went on to earn a Ph.D in English at The University of Tennessee in 1986.

He is currently Professor of English at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, where he teaches courses in Modern Novel, Film Studies, and Creative Writing. He has had scholarly essays published in Southern Jewish History, The Quiet Voices: Rabbis in the Black Civil Rights Era, Studies in Popular Culture, and has creative essays published in The American Literary Review, The Battered Suitcase, and moonShine review. He is working on a collection of essays about growing up in Alabama and his journey from being Christian to Jewish and to marrying an Iranian émigré.

Texas Never Whispers, by C.L. Bledsoe

The closer it got to Joey’s dad’s birthday, the more agitated he became, and with nothing worthwhile to do when he wasn’t at work – which was less and less often since Jerry had been cutting his hours – he spent his time lifting weights. So when Chyna rolled in, middle of the night, and flashed a letter postmarked from Texas with his and Chyna’s names on it, he wanted no part of it.

“It’s nothing bad, I’m sure,” she said. “Probably saying he’s sorry he missed your birthdays and isn’t around.” She smelled like perfume and Marlboro Lights and took a long drag on a Route 44 Cherry Dr. Pepper from Sonic.

“Shouldn’t be in prison, then,” Joey said, glaring at the TV.

Chyna didn’t answer that; she just started in from the top, reading it to Joey while he sulled but listened – he wasn’t far enough gone in his anger to ignore his fealty to his sister.

The letter started, like she’d predicted, with apologies, and then moved to questions. It asked about Joey’s life, how he was doing in school, whether he was doing anything stupid.

“How’d he get our address?”

“He used to live here, stupid,” she said. “And I wrote to him.”

Joey was stunned. “Why in hell would you do that?”

“He’s our father.” Her voice was soft, vulnerable.

“Is he?”

She continued reading. Joey’s anger caused him to miss the immediate bits that followed, but he tuned back in as his father, apparently in answer to a question of Chyna’s, described his life.

“It’s boring here; that’s the main thing. You can read or play cards or something, but it’s the same every day. There’s some real hard fellers here, but long as you got friends, you’ll do all right. The food is no good, but you get used to it. I ain’t never been messed with, to answer your question. What I miss most is seeing you two and your momma and not being in prison.”

“You asked him if he’d ever been messed with?” Joey said.

“I was curious.”

He went on to describe his cell and his daily routine, as per Chyna’s questions.

“I got old, here,” he said. The implication was that he shouldn’t have.

Joey could picture it as she read; the narrow cell, the exercise yard. The images in his head were colored by movies he’d seen: Brubaker, with its death row that was little more than a series of boxes; Robert Redford digging hole after hole. He saw his father as the vague memory he had; a bone-thin frame, taut with muscle. The man in Joey’s head was always tan and grinning. He probably wouldn’t be tan anymore, Joey figured. And he sure as hell wouldn’t be smiling.

“I’m going to write him back,” Chyna said, breaking Joey’s reverie. “Want me to say anything?”

Joey considered it. “Tell him not to worry about not being here. I don’t miss him.”

* * *

Joey didn’t see Tommy standing in the doorway watching him work out, though Joey had worked himself into such a state of exhaustion, he could barely register what was right in front of him. Joey finished his rep. and sat up on the weight bench.

“You training for something?” Tommy barked.

“No sir,” Joey said. He wiped sweat off with a threadbare towel.

“Come on and make a run with me.”

“Can I take a shower first?”

“I’d rather you did.”

 

They drove out by the municipal airport, in the tangle of barely graveled roads, pulled off into a grotto Joey’d never known existed. Tommy killed the engine and pulled up to a trailer hidden amongst some weeds.

“Don’t say a fucking word,” Tommy said.

They got out and Tommy handed Joey a duffle bag from the trunk. They went to the door and stood there without knocking. Joey heard footsteps moving through the brush, and somebody came around the side of the trailer, but all Joey could make out was the twin barrels of a shotgun amongst leaves.

Tommy grabbed the bag and set it down by the trailer door. He stepped back and Joey went with him. Another bag flopped by their feet. Tommy nudged Joey who picked it up. They went back to the car, Tommy cranked it and revved it a few times, and backed out all the way back to the road before turning around.

“Know what’d happen if you knocked on that door?” Tommy asked.

“Double-dog dare me,” Joey said.

Tommy laughed a little. “Hungry,” he said and they went into town for something to eat.

* * *

After that, Tommy was bringing him along all the time.

“You don’t ever ask nobody their name,” Tommy said. “Don’t ask no questions or they’ll think you’re a narc.”

Joey took it all in. At first, it was mostly just him riding along. A couple times, Tommy took Joey with on longer trips; they’d end up trading joints in some tweaker’s house while he read from the bible about the end of the world, eating can after can of baked beans; or, they’d stand in some guy’s kitchen while his battered-looking wife chased around kids who already talked back to her because they saw their daddy do it, trading shots. It was like that, Joey realized; you had to spend time with them. His experiences with pot smokers had been the same, but he’d thought they were just lonely losers; turned out, you had to put in time, let them get to know you, or they got suspicious.

“Anything happens to him,” Joey’s mom, KT, said after one trip. “I’ll never forgive you.”

“I know,” Tommy said, a simple statement of fact.

Joey had known his mom and Tommy sold weed and sometimes meth for years; people were always coming by, or Tommy was always off on some errand for days at a time. Joey had assumed it was mostly weed they were selling, and maybe it had been, but these days, Tommy seemed to want to step it up. He didn’t offer an explanation, and Joey knew better than to ask for one.

It was surreal for Joey – one minute, he’d be out in the sticks shooting cans for target practice with some guy who’d just as soon stick an ice pick through Joey’s eye as see him, and the next, Tommy would drop him off at school, and Joey would be sitting in some class trying not to fall asleep. He smoked plenty of pot and drank, but Tommy only let him try meth one time – Joey was pretty sure it was because of KT. But this one time, they’d been out at a dealer’s house, and he’d insisted that Joey join them in sampling the wares. Tommy tried to make a joke about it, but the guy got wide-eyed and weird, so Joey had to do it. Tommy kept eying him as Joey lit the pipe like he’d seen so many others do and hit it.

It was kind of the opposite of pot; whereas marijuana made Joey feel spacy and distant, meth made him feel present, very fucking present, and clear-headed in a deceptive way.

He didn’t sleep the next day, or the one after that. He stayed out with Tommy, and when he was finally made to go to school, he cut classes and jogged around the school, grinding his teeth and working out weird theories in his head. When he finally crashed, he slept a solid day and a half.

 

From time to time, the old guys would stare at Joey for a while and then get this knowing look on their faces. The first time it’d happened, Joey thought he was about to get raped. But then the guy had pointed at him and asked his name. Then he’d started talking about Joey’s dad.

As far as Joey knew, his dad ran guns. Some of KT’s oldest friends would reference him, but they hardly ever came to the house. The weird thing about them was when they did, they’d actually talk to Joey and Chyna, back when she was around, anyway. They’d ask how the kids were doing in school, the standard bullshit. Joey’d asked Chyna about it one time, and she’d explained they were friends of Joey’s dad. He didn’t know how to feel about it.

But the way these guys talked, it was like Joey’s dad was a legend, instead of some guy rotting in a Texas prison. They’d tell stories about fights he’d gotten into, people he’d screwed over or who tried to screw him over. Joey had never really thought of him as a person, but here he was, living on in the tattered memories of a bunch of tweakers.

After they’d left that one’s house, Tommy had been antsy in the car.

“You remember your dad?” he asked.

“Not really,” Joey said.

Tommy grunted. “Good man,” he said, which shocked Joey.

“You knew him?”

Tommy laughed. “We came up together. He was always smart, smarter than me.” It was the most he’d ever really heard Tommy say.

“Were you friends?”

Tommy grunted. “He told me to take care of you and your momma,” he finally said. Joey sat, stunned, the rest of the ride home. He wanted to ask Tommy questions, but couldn’t think of a one. Later, as he lay abed, trying to sleep, he made a list in his head that he knew he’d never ask:

1. If he was smart, why was he in prison?

2. Does he know you’re fucking his wife?

3. Did you run guns with him?

4. What’s the difference between manslaughter and murder?

* * *

Joey was upstairs, working out again. This time, it was his mom standing in the doorway when he looked up.

“Know what today is,” she said.

“Tuesday,” Joey said, wiping himself off and starting in on curls.

She came in and sat on the bed. “Chyna’s been writing to him. Said he wrote to you.” Joey didn’t answer. “Wrote to me, too.” She let it slip out so he could’ve ignored it, but it hit him like a slap to the face.

“What’d he say?” Joey said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Said to make sure you don’t end up like him.”

Joey laughed. “In prison?”

“Selling.” Again, it was a simple statement that carried massive weight.

“Talk to Tommy. He’s the one always taking me along.”

“I have. Way he figures it, and I don’t disagree, is you want to do it.”

“I guess I’m learning a thing or two.”

“I guess you are.” Joey switched arms and started curling with that one as she continued. “You don’t have to, though.”

“What else am I going to do?”

She nodded and rose but didn’t leave.

“Does it bother you? That you’re out and he’s not?” He didn’t make eye contact, just let it lie.

“It does,” she said. “But he forgave me. I did what I had to do for you kids.”

Joey thought of a few things to add to that, but he let it go and focused on his exercises. A moment later he felt a cool hand on his shoulder and looked up into his mother’s sunken eyes. Her face was wrinkled, the skin slack. She was nearly toothless, though her hair still had traces of black amongst the gray. There was a squirreliness about her eyes, but in the centers, they were calm. She smiled and he did his best to soften his face.

* * *

Joey rode to school with Chyna when Tommy didn’t drop him off. And almost every day, he rode home with her.

“Come and go for a ride with me,” she said when he met her at her car.

“Yeah, I was going to.”

“No, I mean…just get in, dumbass.”

She took him up Rabbit Road and turned off east on the somewhat paved road that took them, eventually, out to the municipal airport and the tangle of gravel roads that circled it.

“Clint asked me to marry me,” she said, apropos of nothing.

Joey laughed before he could stop himself and she reached over and smacked him, hard.

“Sorry,” Joey said. “So what did you say?”

“I told him I’d think about it.”

Joey looked at her. “Yeah? And what did you think?”

She shrugged, which was a little troubling, because she had this way of lying on the wheel and steering with her shoulders, so when she shrugged, the car veered to the side.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, I really like Clint.”

Joey looked straight ahead. “Why?” He finally asked.

She punched him again. “Nevermind.”

“No, I’m serious. Why do you like him so much?”

She glared at him until she realized he was being serious and then slackened up. “I don’t know. He’s nice. He respects me.”

“Does he?”

“More than Tommy and KT.”

“Okay. So what do you get out of marrying him? I mean, what does that do for you?”

“Not everything is about what you can get out of somebody.” Joey didn’t answer. He settled back into the seat and watched the trailers and trees move by. “You can come visit,” she added.

He laughed again. “I’m doing okay.”

She looked at him. “You’ve been going out with Tommy. KT told me.”

He shrugged. “Got to learn a trade.”

It was her turn to laugh. “So you can end up like dad?”

“Least I won’t be leaving a family behind. But at least I can count on you to write me letters.”

* * *

Joey was on a run with Tommy, hanging out at the house of a guy they’d dealt with a couple times, just drinking beers and bullshitting, when the phone rang. The guy’s wife answered and then turned to the tweaker.

“Billy, they’re asking for somebody named Tommy.”

Tommy and Joey both looked up like that cat that had caught the canary.

“You give somebody this number?” The guy asked.

“Hell, I don’t even know this number,” Tommy said.

The guy took the phone and demanded to know who it was, but clearly wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Hell, it’s for you,” he said and handed it to Tommy. “Won’t tell me shit.”

“Yeah?” Tommy said. He had a confused look on his face and didn’t speak again except to say. “Yeah, I get it.” Then he hung up and went back over by Joey.

“Well? Who was it?”

“Wrong number,” Tommy said, pulling on his beer.

The tweaker looked at him, mean as a snake, and then laughed loud. They talked some more, and about five minutes later, there was a knock on the door. The wife went and answered it and cried out as someone shoved her aside. Joey didn’t realize Tommy wasn’t beside him anymore until he saw him wrestling with the tweaker, who was trying to pull out a handgun from a drawer by the sink. There were two guys at the door, and they beelined for Tommy. One of them hit the tweaker’s hand hard, which was half in the drawer, and he yelped. Tommy stepped out of the way, hands raised, while the two took the tweaker to the door. His wife was on the floor, and one of them knelt and helped her up.

“We’re sorry, Darla,” he said.

“Yeah, just call me and tell me where to get what’s left of him.”

They closed the door behind them.

“Want us to wait with you?” Tommy asked.

She sat at the kitchen table. “Yeah, hell, y’all hungry? I got some squirrel and dumplings.”

“Shit yeah,” Tommy said.

While she was heating it up in a big pot on the stove, Joey nudged Tommy.

“What did they say on the phone?”

“Said somebody’s going to come knock on the door and ask for Jack. Said to let them take him, otherwise, they take everybody.”

“Did you know who it was?”

“If I did, I don’t want to.”

 

They each finished two helpings of squirrel and dumplings with some cats-head biscuits on the side before the phone rang. Tommy looked over at Darla, and she gave a ‘go ahead’ motion. He answered and said, “All right.” And hung up.

“Said we can pick him up at Big Eddy Bridge. Want us to go get him?”

“I got the kids coming in from school any minute,” Darla said.

When they drove out, they found him in the middle of the concrete, bruised and bloody. They were halfway back to town before they realized he was missing a finger.

“What did you do?” Tommy asked.

But he kept screaming until they dropped him off at the emergency room.

“Must’ve owed somebody money,” Tommy said.

* * *

After they went home, Joey went up to his room and thought about everything and then went and knocked on KT and Tommy’s bedroom door. Tommy hollered from inside, and Joey told him that he wanted to talk. There was a lot of grumbling before Tommy opened the door.

“What in hell do you want?”

“I want to do more, sir.”

“Well clean the damn house, then.”

“No, with the…you know…what we’ve been doing.”

“Shit.” Tommy shook his head and turned and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

Chyna graduated, and Joey was surprised when KT and Tommy actually showed up for it and sat beside KT’s mother awkwardly.

“I’m surprised you graduated,” the kids’ grandmother said to Chyna. She turned to Joey. “Think you can hold out two more years?”

“Yes ma’am,” Joey said because it was what she wanted to hear.

Clint came with them when they went out for dinner at The Catfish Hole restaurant, on Grandmother’s dime, of course. She nibbled on one piece of fish while the rest of them gulped down hushpuppies, French fries, and piece after piece of fried catfish. Tommy burped loudly and pushed his plate away, knocking over his sweet tea, which deepened Grandmother’s scowl.

Chyna cleared her throat. “Clint asked me to marry him,” she said, glancing at him. He smiled and took her hand.

“You knocked up?” Tommy asked.

Grandmother gasped.

“No,” Chyna said. “Don’t be a pig.”

Tommy eyed Clint. “You whipped or something?”

Clint shook his head slowly. “No sir. I love Chyna.”

Tommy grinned, and KT elbowed him hard.

“And what do you do for a living, young man?” Grandmother asked.

He explained his work for a propane company. It wasn’t that interesting, so Joey and Tommy both zoned out. They both tuned in when Grandmother laughed at something Clint had said.

“He’s quit a catch, Chyna,” she added. Chyna squeezed Clint’s hand. Tommy and Joey exchanged looks, frankly too shocked to respond.

The plan was that the couple would move to a house Clint’s grandparents had lived in

a little town called Shirley up in the mountains to the center of the state.

“Shirley?” KT said. “Who’s she?”

 

Joey rode up with Chyna and Clint to help her get moved in that weekend, trying not to flinch when Clint raced up the hills and around the tight curves. When they got to the town, he wasn’t impressed.

“Hell, ain’t nothing here but bears and a Sonic,” Joey said.

Clint laughed. “You’re not far wrong.”

The thing that annoyed Joey about Clint was that he was all right. After they unloaded Clint’s truck, he took Chyna and Joey to Sonic for lunch. They drove back that afternoon with an air of easy camaraderie.

When they dropped Joey off at the house, there was a letter from Joey’s dad lying on his pillow.

* * *

Joey stared at it for a few seconds and then sat on his bed and ignored it for a few more. He started for the door to go downstairs, but he was tired from the heady day and caught himself. He grabbed the letter and ripped it open and scanned it.

“They set a date,” it began. “I’m out of appeals.” The tone was sober with a couple of attempted jokes, even. “I’d like you to be here, since you’re my son,” he said. “But I understand if you can’t.”

He read the letter over three or four times and dropped it. He could hear a hum of music downstairs from KT and Tommy’s room. He went back over to the doorjamb and punched the wood, hard. Then again. Then again until his hand, not the wood, splintered. He went back downstairs and knocked on his mom’s bedroom door with his left hand. When she opened it, he held up the already swelling hand.

* * *

“I’m not going,” Joey said. He was on the phone with Chyna, pacing across the scuffed linoleum in the kitchen.

“He asked,” Chyna said. “It’s his last request.”

“So?” Joey said. “Hell, he doesn’t even know who I am. I could send somebody else, and he wouldn’t know.”

Chyna didn’t answer that. “I would go,” she finally said.

“So go.”

“He asked you.”

“Oh well.”

“You know,” Chyna said. “If you hate him that much, you should go just to see him fry.”

Joey didn’t have an answer for that. They ended the call soon after, each agitated, though without a specific focus for it. He went up to his room, closed the door, and went over to the bookcase against the wall beside the door, squatted down, and pulled the bottom out. He paused and listened, and when he was satisfied, he reached in and dug out a cigar box and sat with his back against the door. Inside, there was a letter and a photograph and some other trinkets. The letter was dated about five years ago. The paper of the envelope had gone yellow, and the letter inside as well. He opened it carefully, being especially gentle with the folds, which were tearing on the edges. He read over it and then folded it and put it back in the envelope. The picture was of a man holding a baby. For the first time, he could see himself in the man’s face. He stared at it a long time and then put it back with the letter. There were other things – a baseball card he’d thought would be valuable someday, some little toys he’d held onto for some reason.

He put it all back in the box, added this new letter to it, and put the box back under the bookcase and pushed it back against the wall. The letter had said it would happen over the summer. Joey didn’t know why it was such short notice; maybe his dad couldn’t decide to send the letter.

* * *

Tommy drove out to the house of the tweaker they’d taken to the hospital just a couple weeks before.

“You going to Texas?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t think so,” Joey said.

Tommy made a noise. “Why not?” He finally said.

Joey shrugged. “Why would I?”

“He’s going to be dead forever. He’s only going to be alive a little while longer. You can hate him as long as you want, but this is your only time to see him,” Tommy said.

Joey was stunned silent as they pulled up to the house and got out. Tommy went and banged on the door and grunted something, and Darla, the wife, opened it and let them in. Joey noticed she wouldn’t look them in the eye, but he was so focused on other things, he wasn’t really paying attention.

Billy, the tweaker, was out back in his shed, apparently. Darla led them through the house and pointed them to a squat, square building still showing its insulation. Tommy glanced back at the house, which caused Joey to. The glass door was closed behind him.

“Run and try that, quiet-like,” Tommy said.

Joey tried the door and showed Tommy that it was locked. Darla had pulled the blinds closed as well.

“All right,” Tommy said. “Something’s up. He’s watching us, I figure.”

He knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Billy said.

Tommy nodded to the side and Joey stepped clear of the door. Tommy pushed it open and stepped to his left a moment later, lingering in the doorway just a second. A gunshot rang out. Tommy pulled his handgun out and ran to the side just as a shot blasted through the wall where he’d been. Joey high-tailed it the other way. Tommy found a window and peeked in. He glanced at Joey, who was lying on the ground about fifteen feet away, strode up to the window, and fired several times, then ducked back away from the wall. There was no answering shots, but a sound from the house made them both turn. Darla came busting out, screaming, shotgun in hand, running for Tommy. She didn’t make it, because Joey tackled her before she’d covered half the lawn. Tommy disappeared into the shed, and one shot rang out. Joey rose and trained the shotgun on Darla, who got to her feet and crossed her arms. Tommy emerged a moment later.

“Where is it?” he asked. Darla just sneered. He slapped her, good, across the face, and she fell to the grass.

“It’s gone!” she said. “He smoked it all! Why do you think he did this?”

Tommy put his gun to her forehead. She looked scared but didn’t cry until he took it away.

“When you tell the pigs about who did this, you want to think about that boy in there. Think real good, you hear?”

“I hear you,” she said, on her knees.

Tommy went back into the house. Joey followed, still holding the shotgun.

* * *

After that, the business dried up for a while. The familiar smell of weed began emanating from Tommy and KT’s bedroom. The week of the execution came, and Joey was spending much of his time in his room when Chyna came to visit. She tapped on the door. When Joey didn’t answer, she pushed it open. He was on the floor, sketching.

“You haven’t drawn in a long time,” she said.

He looked up at her. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “Visiting. Can I see?”

He passed one up to her. She studied it. “You doing superheroes again?”

“It’s from a dream I had,” he said.

She carried it over to the bed. “Tell me about it.”

He sat up on his elbows and related the dream, all about an alien planet or maybe it was in the future after society collapsed. There were these warriors who jousted but with cars. That’s what he was drawing.

“Cool. Did you do any more?”

He showed her a couple others he’d done of the jousters and a protagonist he hadn’t worked out a story for.

She set them on the bed, and he kept drawing. “So it’s tomorrow,” she said, after a while. He didn’t answer. “I was thinking of driving down.” Still, the only answer he gave was the scratch of pencil on paper. “So you wanna ride down with me?” He paused, but still didn’t speak.

“I don’t want to see it,” he said and kept sketching.

“You don’t have to. Just ride with me.”

He finished and set the pencil down. “First time I would have seen him in ten years would be when he dies.”

“Just ride along so I have somebody to talk to,” she said.

He sighed and shook his head.

* * *

They left that afternoon after Joey packed some clothes, pencils, and paper. The plan was to drive it in one day, crash in a cheap motel, and Joey would hang out while Chyna went to the thing. They joked and listened to music and made fun of signs the way they used to, before things got tough; Joey started to feel like himself again.

That night, in the motel, they ate pizza and didn’t even turn on the TV. Joey woke in the middle of the night when Chyna threw a shoe at him to make him stop snoring, but even that felt right to Joey. The next morning, she asked if he would go with her. He’d known she would but hoped he was wrong.

“I don’t want to see it,” he said.

“Because you hate him or because you’re afraid you don’t hate him?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, she added, “It’s a chance to see someone die.”

“I’ve already seen that,” he said. He told her about the tweaker.

“Oh Joey,” Chyna said and grabbed him in a hug. Somehow, he ended up in the car trying to think of excuses not to get out all the way to the prison.

There were a handful of protestors outside, which really shocked him. When Chyna parked, he hopped out and went over to them, with her following and trying to stop him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

An elderly nun with sad eyes explained that they were protesting the death penalty.

“That’s my father in there,” he said.

“I’m so sorry, my son,” she said.

“He killed 37 people.” She just stared for a moment. “But it was manslaughter not murder because he was just involved in the killing. Like he helped other people kill. They couldn’t pin them all on him.”

“Come on, Joey,” Chyna said.

“It must be hard having a man like that for a father,” the woman said. The other protestors were gathering around him and her, now.

Joey shrugged. “He’s been in prison most of my life, I guess.”

The woman patted him on the arm and called out, “This boy is the son of Lucas Newcarter!” People started noticing, then. “How can you murder this man while his son watches?”

“No,” Joey said. “He should die. He’s a bad man!”

“They’re making an orphan! Will that bring back the dead?”

Chyna dragged Joey away to the building. “Bitch,” she said.

A man guided them to metal folding seats in a little room facing a big window. There were a couple other people there, but not many.

“You know, I think you were right,” Chyna said. “He made his bed, and he has to lie in it.”

They brought him out and led him to the chair. It was kind of far away, but he saw them and smiled a little. Joey smiled back, purely by instinct. They put him in the chair and strapped him in, said some words, and pulled a big elaborate switch, and he was dead.

“Well,” Chyna said, “I guess that’s it.”

But Joey was crying, hard. He didn’t know why and he didn’t know how to stop.

 

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/2011/08/01/the-man-who-killed-himself-in-my-bathroom-by-cl-bledsoe/. 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. Bledsoe lives with his wife and daughter in Maryland.

 

Toluene, by Max Sheridan

This guy I knew, he thought he could make his shit high sticking toluene up his ass. Some people know more than one guy like that. I figure you talk to enough of them you’ll hear just about anything twice.

You stick toluene up your ass and you will not get high. I know you will not get high because of the warnings on the markers. They tell you everything. They tell you not to eat it or inhale it or sniff it or anything. But there is not one warning on any of those markers about inserting toluene into your rectal orifice. Means no one but that guy I knew ever thought of doing that. He invented that and if he sent a letter, said he’d just stuck a watermelon-flavored marker up his ass and got high as a kite, you can bet they would write something to that effect on the package and ruin it for all of us. WARNING: DO NOT INSERT THIS MARKER INTO YOUR RECTAL ORIFICE. IT MAY CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE.

I tried sniffing toluene. I’ve licked it. I’ve steamed it. I’ve glued it into pebbles and smoked it. I stole a gross of toluene markers from the high school art closet in Fort Dodge once and ate a whole damn box.

They blame the IQ gap on that, which means I walk into a store and the fat guy behind the counter is twenty years older than me and he’s smarter than me because I huffed toluene and he didn’t. I don’t necessarily believe that claim. Why can’t he stop me stealing Cheetos then? Why is he so damn fat?

Honestly, I’ve had it with Armand Assante. You ever had that tension in your jaw where it feels like you’re walking around with a bank safe strapped to your head with a red-assed baboon sitting on top, jumping on your head? That’s what it’s like to be sick of Armand Assante and not be able to do anything about it.

You might say, Well, hell, at least you don’t have to see Assante when you turn on the TV. He’s so bad he’ll never feature in a movie marathon.

That’s worse actually, when you don’t see him, because you can only imagine him.

Years back I sent letters, some pretty bad ones. I shat into an envelope once and removed the turd and outlined the stain with toluene. I sent letters like that to Armand Assante out of a PO box in Waukomis and never heard back.

That was a lie. The first time I got something from Assante that said: Dear Mr. Gregor Mendel, although Mr. Assante doesn’t have the time to answer all his fan mail personally, he reads every letter. He wishes to thank you for your kind words.

And I’d just sent him my shit.

After that I didn’t hear back.

There ain’t no use crying. Ain’t no use laughing either. I laughed at a cop one time and got cited for polluting God’s creation. That was in Ponca City, Ponca Lake Park, and I’d pissed into the water after closing time and he’d seen me. He said there’s people fishing and swimming. Hell, he said, there’s people washing, splashing, cavorting in that water and I’d just relieved myself like a pack animal. Me, I don’t know how I’d got all the way out there to Ponca City if I hadn’t been huffing. When I asked that officer for a ride back to Enid he should have had an idea of my position vis-à-vis self-inflicted brain impairment, how many years I’d been practicing. He agreed to drive me back up the road to where his partner was waiting in a police truck and they ripped up the ticket and got their boots dirty on me. I’ve never been back to Ponca City. I’ve never crossed Route 35 since.

Besides that guy who tries to get his shit high, I got a cousin who sniffs markers. Rondell isn’t a Negro but he gets called a Negro all the time because of his name, even when he’s there with you and you can see he’s white as shit.

Rondell’s worked ten years at Bearing Rubber and Hydraulic coiling hose without fucking himself up yet. That’s because Rondell’s permanently elevated. You want to know what Rondell’s on every day he shows up for a shift? Just open up your utility drawer and pick out anything in a bottle that smells like bad news. Whiteout, rubber cement, silver polish, the fumes from crazy glue. Paint thinner. I’ve seen Rondell snort the blue soap off of Brillo pads. Heavy-duty one-way ticket. You ever want to see a man without a conscience, and I mean literally without because it’s been replaced by pure chemical fumes, just call Rondell. He’s got what you’d call devotion, long-haul endurance. He can fill his whole damn medicine cabinet at The Home Depot.

Me and Rondell, we got into trouble one night before I changed my name. This was hardly a month after they’d let me out of high school and we’d just gone through half a box of Sanford glitter highlighters Rondell’d stole from the Save-A-Lot and Rondell got this yen to steal kung fu robes.

That’s the thing about toluene. You do it steady enough, you sustain that feeling, and your saner oxygen starves. All you’ve got left are the shit-ass crazy molecules.

It was one of those velvety early summer Oklahoma evenings and I knew it wasn’t going to get any better than this. We were sitting there listening to Slayer, getting our asses kicked at Donkey Kong on Rondell’s ColecoVision, and we decided to run out to the Conoco for a breather.

They knew us there at the Conoco but they watched us anyway. Probably if they didn’t and the cameras caught them breathing out their mouths while we was filling up on Slim Jims and Chef Boyardee and half-price Conway Twitty tapes they’d get their own asses fired. Anyway, we had money tonight. Rondell did. He had a job.

Rondell poured himself a Frozen Dr. Pepper bigger than his hands and let it ice the fumes in his head a while. He called this “beezing.” While Rondell beezed, I wondered what the fuck I’d do with myself if I waited five years and let myself become Rondell. Rondell had quite the ego and I was sure he hadn’t even been laid yet. I’d at least gotten my fingers dirty.

Rondell had one of his moments of clarity, what had got him the nickname the Glue Buddha at Bearing’s. He said we ought to steal those kung fu robes and show up at the M&M Bar wearing them. We’d order a round or two in our robes and then put them right back. As if breaking into a kung fu dojo wasn’t bad enough, Rondell thought we’d just mosey on in again and return what we’d stolen. Get it all on camera case they missed us the first time around. Take a shower maybe, eat a can of tuna. That’s how fucked up Rondell was.

I said, “That makes not one bit of sense, Rondell. Even if you plain stole them, what would be the point?”

Rondell’s beezing sometimes gave him this look you might confuse for clear, pointed thinking. If you ask me, he just looks like he’s about to be hit by a car but don’t know it.

He said, “You ever stolen from a black belt before, Clyde?”

“I sure as hell haven’t.”

“You think it’ll make them black belts mad?”

“You bet.”

“You think they’ll beat the shit out of us then? If they catch us?”

“I sure as hell hope not.”

We huffed the rest of those highlighters in Rondell’s Barracuda. If I had to give Rondell any points, it would be there. That car kills. The mag wheels and tooled leather are enough to make you forget who’s doing the driving. We cased the dojo for probably just a little too long. It was obvious no one was inside, and who hits a dojo anyway? Nobody. Rondell.

Rondell said, “You know this dude?”

I knew Bridge Jackson well enough to stay far clear of him. I swear Jackson could beat you up with his stare alone. He was one tough Negro and I respected him and wouldn’t ever have thought about stealing his robes if I hadn’t been junking my mind on highlighters since dinnertime.

We parked way down the road and around the corner so you couldn’t even see Jackson’s dojo from there. Rondell had a roll of plastic garbage bags in the trunk. He always did. If he wasn’t making a mess, he was prepared to clean one up. This time they came in handy.

There was a streetlamp making a pretty big splash out front. We passed under it and cut left to the unlit side of the building. We went over to where Rondell imagined the bathrooms were.

I put a foot up on Rondell’s chicken shoulder and held him like a bowling ball under the ears and he got me up as far as the transom and that was all I needed. I slid right through, and most of my fear steamed off right there. The alarm was the big if and Jackson didn’t have one. I dropped down headfirst onto my wrists and rolled onto a soft canvas bag. Even in the darkness I could see Rondell’s bathroom was the equipment closet.

I got up and tried the door. It was locked from the outside. I called out to Rondell and the big dummy said to try the lights. I knew better and waited for my eyes to adjust. I kept my voice down.

“You dropped me into the equipment room,” I said.

“That’s better than the bathrooms,” Rondell said. “You found those robes yet?”

I’d hadn’t found anything yet but sparring gloves and a sparring mitt. I’d found cakes of toilet soap and plenty of roach killer and some mats on a utility shelf. I zipped open the bag I’d rolled onto and laid my hands on a lady’s wig. Under the wig were lady’s underthings and two short pillows and under the pillows was more money than they had at Liberty Federal for sure, stacked in crisp Hollywood bricks and rubber-banded. It smelled better than buttermilk waffles cooking.

“Throw ‘em up and get on out,” Rondell said.

I hadn’t made any noise for a while, I guess, and Rondell must not have liked that. No one could see him where he was but so what.

I threw a brick of Bridge Jackson’s money out the window and Rondell shut up. I threw out another five bricks, stuffed a few more into my pants pockets, front and back, and packed the bag back up. I’d just had my first clear thought of the evening. If we stole only this much, it would look like an inside job. They’d think it was one of Bridge Jackson’s students or helpers that had got greedy, or his brother Barry, a mean son-of-a-bitch and a natural midget. I tested the metal shelves.

“All clear?”

But Rondell wasn’t answering. I called out again. Then I shut right up.

I’ve learned since that betrayal will always catch you dumb. In another world where I wasn’t trapped in Bridge Jackson’s equipment closet, I’d have said that Rondell didn’t know any better, that he’d beezed away all the sense he’d ever own. But I could see that crack of light under the door now, which meant Rondell’d seen a hell of a lot more than me and he’d left me flat on my ass.

Quiet as I could, I made a go at climbing Jackson’s shelves. I felt like a one-armed monkey. When my head came back out the transom, there he was, pasted to the wall like a window jumper with second thoughts. We had a moment of mutual understanding then, Rondell and me, but I still won’t tell you that Rondell gave a good goddamn and wasn’t mostly frozen into place like a possum in a dumpster. He told me to get the hell down and he held out his chicken arms. As my shoes slithered up and over the window sill the light in the closet popped on and a mean midget voice barked out at the soles of my feet. That voice was crazy as they come with rage.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

A good beeze can last you the whole night if your brain cells are used to it. I told Rondell to stash the money in the trunk, in his tool box. Rondell said ok but when we got to the M&M Bar he wanted to take one brick inside.

“I’m breaking one of them bills,” he said.

“That’s not a good idea,” I said.

“I’m breaking the first hundred.”

“You do that and Jackson’ll sure find out.”

“They break them every week at the One Stop.”

Rondell was right. Most paychecks are spent that way in Enid when Friday rolls around and you’re the king of the whole damn planet. It’s only when you’re lying in bed on Sunday with a broken finger and no medical insurance, no food in the fridge and nothing in the bank, that you remember you work for that money. I let Rondell carry in that brick but I had him promise me he’d peel it in the bathroom, in a stall.

Right away Rondell ordered us a plate of bourbon and beer chasers. He called us over two older ladies to help us out. Now, I was sexed up as usual but I could see that these two women I might think twice about stopping to look at out of sheer curiosity. Sad to say, they were eying us up the same way.

One of them had stringy mop hair and dark mascara that had run but she didn’t know it. She had thin thin lips. The other one was chubby. Names went around. I excused myself politely and left them there to get to know Rondell and see what a fool he was so they’d leave us alone and we could get home.

I ordered a bottle of beer at the bar and I didn’t even get ID’d. I nursed that longneck like a pro, making occasional relaxed eye contact with a better looking catch sitting in the shadows at the crook of the L being bored by her date. I said I was sexed up. Now I felt skittish. I ordered a shot of Wild Turkey, wanting something to happen but not knowing how to make it happen.

She was looking at me regular now and her date wasn’t blind to this. He was a big one and I could tell he’d never huffed a thing in his life. I wondered if he’d already given up on laying her that night and would beat it out of me like those cops in Ponca City had. The creeper next to me knew. He’d already started scooting his stool over towards the cash register. I was this close to sending her over a drink.

A Negro midget with a shotgun might be the funniest thing you see in your whole damn life but hell if you’re going to laugh if you actually happen to see one in a crowded bar taking aim at you. Barry must have been coked up silly busting into the M&M trying to settle up scores with buckshot. Goddamn. I looked everywhere for Rondell, but it seemed Rondell’d made himself scarce.

The bartender had his counter rag out now and he was cleaning his hands. I hadn’t figured he was yellow on account of his size but the boy’d already cleaned them about nine times. Out the corner of my eye I saw that creeper on the barstool again. His creeping had almost gotten him to the cash register. I wished I could have told him to stop that, that if there’s one thing in this world would make Barry more shit-ass crazy than he already was it was an obvious get-away creep.

Then I got mad myself. Here I was barely a month out of high school and I had to shoulder men like Rondell and this creeper, teach them how to behave like men. I’d lost my ROTC interview because I was high on Conoco regular and I wasn’t going to become a marine in this lifetime. It was a straight dotted line from Donkey Kong and Slayer to a case-a-day habit and a crap pension after a forty-year run at Bearing’s that would seem like one very bad month. I could see it all, that this was the best it was ever going to get, and I was so mad at the world I would have fingered Rondell right then and there if he wasn’t in the toilets padding his crotch with bar napkins.

I said, “Barry, I don’t know what you want but we two are going to take this thing outside.”

Her eyes were still on me. I knew they were and it felt like this was too easy, being a man. I was clear-headed and mean as gasoline and ready for the Lord Jesus Christ to knock my ass all the way to China.

I eased off my stool. I winked at her and watched her just about melt under the fear and tension. Even her date wasn’t much of a man anymore that I could see. I winked at him too. I took my time getting over to where Barry was.

Barry and Rondell. Which of them two had a deeper brain fry on that night is idle speculation, but I’d probably have to give Rondell the edge for the kung fu attack he’d been planning in the toilet that whole time. He was still humming from that platter of bourbon and the residuals of his king-sized beeze and I guess he just mixed up his skills. He flew out of the bathrooms on kill mode with a toilet paper headband and blew right up to Barry, but instead of knocking the shotgun out of Barry’s hands, he pickabacked that little man using his shotgun for reins. I swear it was a moment in the history of mankind. I’d never seen anything half as dumb as Rondell and his beezed-out brain cells, so it was another second maybe longer before I even realized that that midget and his single-barrel Snake Charmer .410 were headed straight at me.

What do you feel when you’re staring down the barrel of an oiled shotgun? You feel like your body, your heart and lungs and pretty much everything you are that you can’t see, is inside you and that it is outside you, on the walls and on the floor and ceiling, at the very same time. That you are bleeding to death as you breathe. That in your joints instead of marrow you’ve got trapped cordite and you can already smell it starting to uncurl and sit on the air. What you feel is that you are two places at once and none too good. I put everything I had into keeping my eyes open so I could watch that sonofabitch chamber catch fire and blow my sad ass away.

Kaboom!

Barry missed me by two fat asses. He hit the creeper’s stool instead and blew out the top two rungs and a little chunk of his coward’s ass.

Soon as that happened the M&M jumped back to life. I mean they were all scrambling for a place to stay alive in. Even she was. It was just instinct. She’d dropped into a backwoods squat and now she let out a scream that wouldn’t come. It was like she’d just fallen twenty stories in a dead elevator and her stomach was on backwards and still five floors up. I don’t think I’d felt a damn thing but my heart jump a beat.

That gun went off two more times and when the smoke cleared I could see Rondell’d been burned bad. He’d had his eyebrows singed right off and his nose was peeled raw so that he looked different, almost like a sunburned baby. He’d dropped a steaming load that was just now rolling out his pant cuffs. Barry himself was down, blood trickling from his shiny black forehead. The shotgun had skittered across the wood floor and for a moment no one could find it.

Rondell was still lost in his kung fu daze and I thought they were going to have to slap him to shut him up. He was that fucked up, and I guess he never really recovered. You’d hear later on at Bearing’s about how Rondell’d burst out into the same routine at random, in the supermarket even. For now he just kept whipping up the air with his chops and sideways kicks, maybe until the police came.

Me, I knew those stacks of hundreds in Rondell’s trunk were at least a hundred deep and I grabbed her by the wrist and we made for the Barracuda and took that money and hopped on the first Greyhound bus that wasn’t Kansas-bound.

I changed my name. I stopped sending Armand Assante shit in the mail and I stopped huffing and after the red marks on her wrist healed over we had a little baby girl that I kept when she left me with three months paid up on a vinyl-sided house that was no condo but no goddamn trailer either.

 

Max Sheridan lives and writes in Nicosia, Cyprus. He wrote features for the Cyprus Mail for a few years—until he was forced to challenge the film critic, a notorious windbag, to a duel. Some of his recent short stories have appeared in DIAGRAM Magazine, the Atticus Review, the Writing Disorder, and most recently, Thuglit. His latest novel, Dillo, is looking for a home. He keeps his work here: www.maxsheridanlit.com.

 

 

 

The Last Summer, by Kelly Ford

My friends would head to the pool that day. They’d show off their new boobs in their new bikinis. Point out which boys they wanted to date. Make plans without me for our upcoming sophomore year.

Angela paused and spun her car keys around and around a finger. She didn’t much like hanging outside the porch in all that heat, but on account of the situation, she was kind enough to pretend otherwise. “You’ll be fine.”

“Do you have to go?” I asked. Dad had never bothered to babysit me, so I didn’t understand why everybody was so intent on me returning a favor I’d never received. When was the last time we’d even been alone together? Never. That’s when. “What if he chokes on something?” We were in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. According to my eighth grade gym teacher, CPR Annie would die on my watch.

“Honey.” She knelt in front of me like I was a child in need of consolation. “Your dad can’t get much food down anyway. It’s only for a few hours. I’ll be home after the lunch rush.” A crease appeared between her eyes. “I need this job,” she said. “I’m lucky they keep me on at all.” She pulled a pen and crumpled diner napkin from her purse. “My work number’s on the fridge. But if anything happens, you call the Creekkillers, you hear? They live next door.”

Next door? There were no doors. Just trees and dirt and nothing much for miles and miles. I looked down at the name on the napkin she gave me. I’d rather take my chances with emergency resuscitation.

Angela held me by the shoulders with outstretched arms. Last time I’d seen her, she’d worn makeup and had blonde highlights. She could’ve been mistaken for my older sister. Now, she looked like what she was, a step-mom.

“I’m glad you changed your mind,” she whispered and pulled me in for a hug.

When Mom dropped me off the night before, I’d asked her if I had to stay the whole summer. Your father’s a sonofabitch, she’d said, but he’s dying.

So yeah, the whole summer.

When Angela drove away, dust kicked up from her tires and settled on the fuzzy cedars that lined the dirt road.

Through the screen door, I could see into the living room. The plastic window blinds were closed and the lamps were off. Dad wore thin cotton pajamas. A pile of blankets twisted at his feet. Light from the TV flickered on his face.

I returned to my spot in the living room where I was charged with watching my Dad. Watch him do what, I didn’t know. Nobody said. Just that I should be there. I should be there. The phrase had been repeated so often, it felt like a dinner prayer. Dad slept on the couch, his breath a steady stream of phlegm-caked air that set off my gag reflex. Once Good Morning America ended, he asked me to pop a war movie into the VCR. Which one? Didn’t matter. I flipped through the video boxes and found one with a man on his knees. Heavy green vegetation surrounded him. Platoon. I’d seen photos of Dad in fatigues, before he’d shipped off. Mom told me how he’d held on to her while she washed the dishes and whistled Motown tunes in her ear. How he’d bring home chocolate coins and pasture-picked dandelions.

“Weren’t you in Vietnam?” I asked. He mumbled something and rolled over on to his side, away from me.

I watched him there on the couch, drifting off from painkillers, thinking Mom must’ve gotten him confused with some old boyfriend.

Angela came home from the diner and made us a lunch of tuna sandwiches and potato chips. Dad got a can of Ensure. After lunch, Angela cleaned up and encouraged me to go outside in that after-school-special way: Get out! Get some sun! You’re fifteen! (Like fifteen was some magical age that I would look back on some day when my knees failed and my elbows turned ashy like Grandma’s.) The Creekkillers had a daughter. Nice girl, Angela said. Just beyond them trees out past the drive. A bit younger than me. But maybe we would find something in common. (Doubtful.) And there was an older brother, a senior next year, always shooting off guns and scaring the birds, but nice. I interpreted her description to mean: He ain’t much to look at.

Sure, I’d head over for a visit. Instead, while Angela tended to Dad’s daily pill routine, I slipped back to my room to read the Sweet Valley High books my friends had loaned me – not that I wanted to read them.

Around dinnertime, Angela set the table for two and pretended like we were normal. How was your day? Fine. Yours? Good. After the two of us ate, she pulled out a TV tray and sat next to him. She cut his meatloaf small, whipped the potatoes thin and poured salty brown gravy over them to convince him to eat. She leaned down to kiss him, and the food went cold.

 

***

 

After a couple of weeks, I’d finished all the books I’d brought from home. With no letters to read from the friends who swore they’d write every day, I decided to go in search of more material. From my experience, all grownups had books they kept out of sight. They tried to fool you with the Encyclopedia Britannica’s and the Woodland Flowers of the Southern United States doorstops they kept on coffee tables. With Dad knocked out on the couch, high on meds and war movies, I made my way through the house to their bedroom. Most of the books on the shelf in their room were these worn Harlequin paperbacks with “GET SOME AT THE BOOK NOOK!” stamped on the side. I flipped and skimmed the pages until I got to words like “heaving” and “rod,” giddy-scared with the idea of getting caught even though I’d have heard Dad coming a mile away with that clomping thud of his when he headed to the bathroom. I pulled out a couple of Harlequins, a captive-woman-falls-in-love-with-her-captor Wild West story and a Stephen King book Mom forbade me to read, thinking it might seduce me into dark arts. Arms loaded, happy with my haul, I stepped around the bed and made my way toward the door.

On my way out, I noticed a faded picture of Dad lodged in the corner of the dresser mirror. He sat in his red pickup truck with the door open, a straw cowboy hat on his head, his battalion pin front and center. Dark hair. Thick mustache to match. Tattooed muscles jutting out of an Army green t-shirt. Sunglasses mirrored back the photographer and a cigarette hung from his mouth. The date stamp on the back read: July 1978. I had just turned five. The year he left Mom. The year she stopped asking his friends to carry him into the house because he was too drunk to make it on his own. When she stopped spackling all the holes in the wall. The year she quit nursing school and went back to work at the furniture plant because he’d emptied the savings account on a weekend bender with some Army buddies up in Tahlequah. Good riddance, she’d said. Good riddance.

At least for her.

Five Fourth of Julys after that, Dad had arrived our house for his annual visit. He tossed my worn bag of shorts and t-shirts into the back of that red pickup truck, and we drove two hours to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, mostly in silence. Once we arrived, I shot out the passenger side to catch up with all my cousins before they started having fun without me. I only saw Dad again when it was time to eat. Over catfish, fried potatoes and hush puppies scented with jalapenos, we’d catch each other’s eyes and flinch, like neither of us expected to see the other one sitting there across the room.

Grandma died and the drives and visits stopped. He didn’t call. He’d send a birthday card. They were always too young for me, with colored balloons and puppy dogs with big, sad eyes. I’d grab the $20 from the spine of the card, shove the bill in my pocket and toss the card in the trash like the others that came before.

Just like those drives to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, I dreaded our time alone, with him on the couch and me so quiet. I couldn’t make a sound without him rustling and grumbling. I felt like I’d been dumped in a new school in the middle of the semester. Not sure where to go, what to say, what to do. He never needed me and never did ask questions or even talk. Not when I was sitting right next to him in the truck. Not when I was sitting right next to him on the love seat watching him die.

After lunch, lacking anywhere else to go and an aching feeling to get out of that house, I headed outside and through the vacant acre of land that stood between the girl-I-might-like’s house and my Dad’s. A thicket of towering pines shaded the lot from the sun. The smaller trees reached out at odd angles to grab whatever light they could find streaming through. The air was sticky and the mosquitoes thick. The sweet, lemony scent of cedar trickled in and out of my nose. I could almost smell the heat of the soil, filtered through blankets of dead leaves that had fallen for years and escaped the rake. Nothing but dirt underneath them when I crunched across the lot in my flip-flops. Out here under the trees, everything was quiet save for the sound of squirrels or some other critter dropping twigs and acorns on the ground. Inside the trailer, the sound of Dad’s wheezing lungs echoed off the walls. The noise grew louder each day. Out here in Nothing Much To Do, Arkansas, I finally felt like I could catch my breath, suspend my thoughts.

Up ahead, light trickled through the overgrowth. I pushed the branches away and crawled between two strings of barbed wire, careful not to snag my shirt. When I looked up, a boy had a shotgun trained on my head.

“Who are you?” he asked.

My brain couldn’t think of anything to say, so I held my hands up like I’d seen on TV. The boy was dark-skinned, like the men on the Wild West paperback I’d taken. Only, he wore a shirt and didn’t have a big-boob companion hanging limp and lusty off his arm. Small patches of acne sprinkled each cheek, but I didn’t mind. Some Asian and Mexican boys were in my class, but no honest to God Indians. Staring at him, I couldn’t help but look down at myself and wonder what he might see: All skinny legs and big hair made even bigger by the humidity. At least I had clear skin. But, this boy wasn’t anyone I would have talked to at school. Those boys were out with my friends. The ones who promised to pick up the phone when I called.

“I live across the woods,” I said and pointed behind me.

He lowered his gun. “Sorry about your dad.”

Seemed strange to me that anyone would know about my Dad – not that my Dad would know about them.

The boy’s name was Cody. He had come over every now and then before Dad got sick. His mom sent over casseroles and condolences. His sister wasn’t at home, she wouldn’t be for a while and I asked too many questions. That last part he punctuated with the sound of him loading another round.

“You used to come over?” I asked.

“Haven’t had time.” He lowered his head, ashamed of the lie.

“Dad was in Vietnam,” I said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind about the last thing I’d been thinking.

“I know,” he said. He dropped the gun at his side. “He told me.”

“What’d you talk about?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Vee-et-nam.”

“No, I mean, what exactly did you talk about?”

He aimed at a line of generic brand soda cans he had lined up along a bunch of tree stumps down the pasture. “Guns. Fighting. Girls.”

Cans like that used to line the fence posts in Grandma’s back yard. Dad ran target practice with my boy cousins while us girls helped with supper. The other girls took to making homemade rolls and collard greens like some genetic memory had been triggered at the appearance of metal mixing bowls and butter. Me, I stared at them boys, but mostly Dad. Spiteful, I scaled the catfish with my spoon and spit at the ground.

“I’m just surprised he told you about the war.”

Cody blew a hard line of air out of his nose and arched an eyebrow. The rapid firing of his gun scared a flock of birds flying by. I disappeared back into the shadow of the woods.

After dinner, I watched the blankets rise and fall as Dad drifted in and out of sleep. I’d never thought about it before that summer. Where Dad had gone, what it’d been like for him. What it meant to him. From the comfort of the living room, everything on TV seemed like fiction. In that photo tucked into the mirror frame, Dad’s face mirrored the men in the movies we watched. Not the handsome lead actor, but the guy gone wrong. The one with the scar across his cheek and an itchy right hook waiting for a fleshy face to sink it into. But on the couch, with the light from the TV heightening the shadows under his sharp cheeks and sunken eyes, his hands were up, ready to die.

 

***

 

Every day after lunch, I’d tiptoe through the woods towards Cody’s house to watch him shoot. Usually, I was able to prevent detection. Usually. One day, I’d gotten a mighty case of chigger bites on my ankles from wearing flip-flops. During one particularly exhausting itching fit, I lost my balance and nearly fell into the barbed wire.

“You’re the worst spy ever,” Cody called out.

I considered whether or not I should sneak back through the woods to my house, but then I’d be alone with Dad. “I wasn’t spying.”

“You’re there every day.”

There was no point in disputing the matter, so I came out of hiding. “Where’d you learn to shoot guns?” The blue rings of his t-shirt pulled at the muscles on his arms. I’d never seen a boy’s arms this close, or paid much attention to the ridges that separated one smooth curve from the other. He kept loading and made no indication that he was interested in conversation. I was used to that in school. The boys there wouldn’t talk to me either. (Not that I tried.) But I didn’t want to go home, so it was either talk or leave.

“Are you Indian?”

“Indians are from India. Don’t you know anything?” He turned his back to me.

“Well, what am I supposed to call you? That’s what they’re called in the books.” I knew better, but that didn’t stop me.

“Only in stupid romance novels.” He kept on with his guns, barely stopping to look up or reveal any emotion on his face.

“Is your sister home?”

“No.”

“Maybe we could hang out.”

Same expression, no change. “No, go home.”

“You don’t have to be mean about it.” Nothing. He continued messing with his gun. Something about him made me want to poke and prod and see how far I could go. “Come on. Aren’t you supposed to kidnap me? Scalp me? That’s what Indians do, right?”

He rushed towards me, fast. Up close, I could see the hair in his nostrils push out with each breath. He clenched his jaw. The faint trace of his body odor leaked through his deodorant and clutched my gut. Warmth reverberated down my body.

“Are you in Special Ed?” His eyes burned. He didn’t smile. But he no longer looked like he wanted to scalp me. “Alright,” he said. “What’s in it for me if I kidnap you?” He looked me up and down. I felt an electric charge race through my limbs. My mind fixed on all those dirty words in the Harlequins. “You don’t look like you could pull in a ransom.”

“I can cook. I’ll clean.” Some odd feeling rushed through me that lacked any description other than a complete and utter loss of wits. “Anything you want.”

He snorted. “You don’t look old enough to be a wife. You don’t even look old enough to have your period.”

That hurt. I pretended I didn’t notice and kicked the dirt with my toes.

“I tell you what, I’ll give you an authentic Native American name. You are hereby known as…” He took his shotgun and placed it on one of my shoulders and then the other. (I was pretty sure that Indians didn’t knight their warriors, but I decided not to educate him just then.) “Flirts With Boys.”

Without any warning, he turned me around and popped me on the butt with his gun. “Now, get on home, Flirts.”

I didn’t want to leave. But I’d recovered enough to know that I’d worn out my welcome for one day.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

***

 

Every day, it seemed like Angela took a slower route home, no more wanting to babysit my dad than I did. When she did arrive, her smile seemed more strained. She wasn’t mean or anything. I don’t know. Sad? One time, Dad yelled out for some water. He couldn’t see her standing in the kitchen from the living room. She stared out the window while he called and called. Finally, she pulled a glass out of the cupboard and dragged a smile on her face before handing it to him.

Dad slept less and less. His cough came on and kept him awake more than any commotion from me. Instead of averting his eyes when I caught him staring at me, he kept looking. I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me or wanted me to get something for him. I just sat there waiting for words that never came out of his mouth.

After about a week, I finally met Cody’s sister. His mom was always gone because she worked. His dad, nowhere to be found but on the walls. His sister wanted to braid my hair and put on makeup. That was something I always did with my friends, but I was older now. I could either braid my hair or wrap my legs around Cody’s and go for a ride on his four-wheeler down the dirt roads and through the woods.

Out on the bluff one day, like always, Cody turned off the engine. My innards hummed from the buzzing motor. We rubbed the dirt and bugs out of our eyes. Sometimes, we’d talk about our friends or what our schools were like and what we hated the most about our classes. Mostly, we sat there without talking. I didn’t mind. Every now and then, we accidentally touched each other’s fingers when we readjusted from sitting on the hard ground for so long. I thought about what it might be like if it weren’t an accident.

We watched the horses beat their hooves across a field below us until the sky turned to rust. Sunset always came too soon, much like the end of summer. In two short weeks, I would pack up and return home to Fort Smith. I didn’t want to head back yet, not before I got to hold Cody’s hand or kiss his lips or ensure that he wouldn’t go back to his school and fall in love with someone who wasn’t me.

He took his knife out of the leather case on his belt and plunged it into the ground. “How’s your dad?” he asked.

I shrugged. “He has cancer.” Every time I brought up my friends or my life, he asked about Dad. If he cared so much, he should have gone over to visit.

The gouges in the ground grew deeper as he talked. “If that were my dad…” He shook his head.

“You said your dad was a drunk.” And had a mean temper. Based on some of the scars I’d seen on Cody that resembled cigarette marks, I couldn’t figure why he’d want to talk to him.

Cody stabbed the ground one more time. “He’s still my dad. We’re blood.”

“Yeah, but you barely know him.”

Cody sighed. “It’s different for men,” he said.

“Like you know anything about being a man,” I said. “Have you even been with a girl?” As soon as I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have because he jumped up. He was liable to leave me out there in the dark. I stood up in case I needed to run and jump on the four-wheeler before he took off without me.

Instead of leaving, he hooked his thumbs in the front belt loops of my jean shorts and pulled me in. “You want to know?”

I did. And I didn’t.

“I have,” he said. He looked me over, and I held my breath.

What on earth did I know about kissing or making out or anything else? Nothing. I knew nothing at all, and I didn’t want him to find out. I braced myself for what I thought might come next and prayed that I wouldn’t screw it up by moving my tongue the wrong way or busting my teeth up against his or being altogether lousy at the thing.

“You’re too young to have sex,” he said and nudged himself away.

My heart dropped into my shoes. I hated to cry. I hated how I cried when anything bad or sad happened. Or if I got angry.

Cody looked at me a bit softer then, which only made me more mad.

“I don’t want to have sex with you!” I shoved him in the arm. I hoped whatever girlfriend he found next year gave him V.D.

He lowered his head and kicked the dirt with his already muddy sneakers. I tried not to sniffle and give myself away. But the snot near dripped out of my nose, so I swiped at it with my hand like my nose itched, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

He spit at the ground, and then hopped onto the four-wheeler. “You act like you’re from New York,” he said. “I’ve been to Fort Smith. A public pool and a drive-through liquor store don’t make it a city.”

We rode home, quiet but for the engine beneath us.

***

 

Gunshots rang out over lunch, like they had in the week since I’d last seen Cody out on the bluff. Instead of racing over to meet him, I went back to eating lunch with Angela and reading and trying to ignore the clock and Cody’s random, rapid succession of shots. All summer long, Dad hadn’t complained. But with his cough keeping him awake, Cody quickly became a menace to my dad.

Dad threw the remote on the side table next to him. The sound of hard plastic hitting the wood only added to the noise. “What in the hell is that boy doing out there?”

If Dad hadn’t had cancer, he would have been right out there with Cody. He wouldn’t care if he disturbed anyone. I bet his little skinny arms couldn’t even lift a gun at this point. Besides that, here I was, one week away from going back home and I had not kissed a boy, lost my virginity or gotten to know my dad at all. Wasn’t that the whole point? He’s dying, everyone said. Better get to know him! Better take advantage of the opportunity while you have it! Fat good that did. With Cody and with Dad, all I ever did was make the effort. Dad especially should have taken the time to talk to me. He was the one dying.

I glared at him. “Cody’s gonna teach me how to shoot.”

Dad raised a finger, pointed it at me. “I don’t want you shooting guns.” He retch-coughed into the sleeve of his pajama top.

Of course. Of course, he had to pull out a death-cough to make his point. “Why?”

Our eyes locked. A cloud went across his brow. If I’d been sitting closer, he might have reached out to smack me. “Jackie.”

“You used to shoot guns with the boys – all my cousins. Stephen and Ricky and Tom. I remember.”

“That’s different.”

“Because they’re boys?”

“Because they’re older.”

Two years. Two years older, was all. “Old enough to hear stories about the war? I heard you tell them. And Cody? He told me you told him stories, too. Guess if I want to know anything about you, I better go ask one of them.”

Phlegm caught in Dad’s throat and rattled. The clock in the hallway stopped, the TV stopped, the gunshots stopped – everything seemed to get real quiet, except for that awful sound of him retching. He clutched his chest and tried to sit up but the effort only forced more coughs to rack his body. I jumped on the sofa bed, tipping him on his side. He thrust a hand out to catch himself but his face crashed into the pillow. I righted him best I could and held his body while he heaved and gasped. He felt small in my arms, so small. When his body shook, it shook me, too. I remembered a time he held me like that. I couldn’t recall when or where we were. But I remembered.

When he relaxed, I grabbed the water from the side table and put it to his mouth, careful not to bang the glass against his teeth.

“You’re spilling it,” he rasped.

His fingers clutched the glass out of my hands, but shook under the weight. Water streamed down his pajama top. I ran to his bedroom and grabbed a towel. I opened drawer after drawer of Angela’s things, until I found his lone drawer at the bottom. I grabbed an Army green t-shirt much like the one in the photo nudged into the dresser mirror and ran back to the living room. Finally, I’d done more than just warm a spot on the couch.

He swatted my hands when I tried to take the wet shirt off of him and replace it with the dry one.

“I can do it!” His eyes burned like they always had. All those feelings inside me froze. All this time, I had wanted something from him. Some indication that he even cared that I was there. But he didn’t. He didn’t care about anyone but himself. Never did and dying wouldn’t change that, so he could go on and do it himself for all I cared.

“Fine!” I yelled and ran out of the house.

Those damn gunshots pierced the air. I put my hands up over my ears and screamed.

Over and over and over the gun fired. What I wanted was to run all the way across to where Cody shot, only maybe be the target, run right through his aim. Maybe if I did, Dad would notice. Instead, I decided to take that gun and shoot, and keep shooting, keep Dad awake. Let him know it’s me making all that noise.

I was out of breath by the time I ran across the vacant lot to where Cody stood.

“Hey,” he said, surprised.

I reached for the gun.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to shoot,” I told him, my eyes still on the gun. “I want you to teach me to shoot.”

He nudged the gun and himself away from my hands. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“I changed my mind.” I clasped my hands around the barrel. “Come on.”

He considered and then eased the handle against my shoulder. His arm shadowed mine, curve for curve. His mouth was near my ear, telling me to use the scope, to aim. I held the gun for a long time, long enough that my arms shook from the weight of it. Soda cans loomed in the distance, all lined up in a row. Strawberry, Grape, Orange Crush. I aimed, pulled the trigger and felt the gun kick back so hard I thought my collarbone might crack. Clouds of dirt funneled into the air. Cody told me it was fine, I did good, try again. His breath pushed into my ear, hot and pleasant. I aimed, cocked, pulled, shot, fell back. Over and over. Just like he did every day. I aimed again, but this time, all I saw through the scope was sky. Just the big, blue, stupid sky with clouds that held the promise of rain to shoo away the heat and the hardness of all those hot summer days. But the clouds would only hold the rain and never let it fall. Not that day. I shot the sky. I shot the clouds.

Before I realized what happened, the gun was out of my hands. I looked around me. Cody ran with the gun toward the far end of the pasture, past the cans still lined up in a row. When I got closer to where he kneeled, I saw what he saw: A bird flapped its shattered wing in the dust. Blood covered the feathers and the bird’s head twitched frantically.

“What’s wrong with you?” Cody yelled up at me.

An accident, I wanted to say. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to reach down and hold that little bird in my arms but a hot cord of rage lit its way up my body and through my mouth. “Maybe it had cancer. Maybe I put it out of its misery.”

Cody looked from the bird and back to me. “Yeah?” His eyes grew red. “Maybe you’re just an asshole.”

The pressure of my blood beating furious in my veins swelled my head and my whole body shook. This was probably some Native American thing. Like the bird was a spirit animal. A symbol of life on Earth. But life on earth sucked, and everyone died. Birds died. What did it matter? “Stop being such a girl.” I pushed him hard. His knees buckled and he dropped to the ground. “You’re the one who owns guns.”

Tears crested and rolled down Cody’s brown cheeks. His shoulders drooped. “I shoot cans. Not birds!”

I guess part of me wanted to see him cry. But when I did, I wanted to take it back, make those tears go in reverse, right back into his sockets. I wanted both of us to return to the top of the field so that I never held the gun, never shot the sky, never shot the cans. But that’s not what happened.

 

***

 

Dad collapsed into a heap on the ground. He called out, but no one could hear him with the chopper hovering overhead. Dad pleaded with his stick arms. Move it! he hollered at them. Instead, the tattooed skin melted around his wasted muscles. The chopper sounds grew faint. He looked up. The chopper was leaving without him! There was no time! He dragged himself by his fingernails to a piece of paper that had fallen from the chopper and drifted to the ground. He used the blood that spilled from a gash on his busted head to scrawl: I’m sorry. I love you… Then, he died writing my name.

The crunch of Angela’s shoes on the dry grass ended my daydream.

Her shadow fell at my feet, where I sat under a tree. My chest thumped when her breath sucked in like she was about to yell. My shoulders hunched up around my ears, and I braced myself.

“You wanna talk?” she asked.

“No.” Yes. I had wanted someone to tell everything to, but no one wanted to talk. Not Dad, not Cody, not my stupid friends who never wrote me back or picked up the phone. I hated them all, so no. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

“Alright, then,” she said. “Come in when you’re ready.”

Hours passed before I was, and that was only because hunger clutched my stomach. By dusk, I was soaked in sweat.

I walked around the lip of the trailer. Dad sat on the porch steps in his pajama pants and the green t-shirt I’d given him to wear after he’d spilled water all over himself. He turned and watched me walk up the yard. He gripped the bottom part of the railing with his arm. The step creaked when I sat down beside him.

Only the whippoorwills in some distant tree decided to talk. Fireflies flickered in the distance. He pointed to them.

“You used to chase ‘em. Pull off the tails.” He reached over and tapped my finger with his. “Make glow rings.”

I couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t I remember? It wasn’t fair that I had to be there to watch him die and there was nothing, nothing I could do. A stuffed-up feeling filled my chest.

“All I’m doing is sitting here.” I swallowed and swallowed, trying to keep all the feelings down. “I’m not helping at all.”

He reached out and patted me on the leg. “I…” He coughed and turned so I couldn’t see his face. “I like looking over,” he said, “and seeing you sitting there.”

My throat felt full of rags and my eyes went blurry.

 

***

 

In late September that same year, Dad died at home. Angela said he fell asleep and never woke up. After the funeral, Angela gave me the flag from Dad’s coffin, all folded up nice from the Honor Guard.

At lunch, I listened to the same old stories my friends told every day. I wondered if they were just trying hard not to forget, afraid that if they skipped one day’s telling, those summer memories would slip away. None of them had kissed a boy or done anything else. Every time we dropped our lunch trays on the conveyor belt that led to the dishwasher and walked past the senior boys, they chanted “Cherry, Cherry” over and over until we walked out and couldn’t hear them anymore. I sat through another history class that started with the American Revolution and ended with the Civil War, like every other history class every other year. If anyone expected us to know anything that happened after that, we were – as Cody had said once out on the bluff – screwed.

After the incident with the shotgun, I didn’t go to his house at all in the last week I spent with my dad. He never bothered to come to mine. No shots rang out during the day, either. If I ever saw him again, I would never admit that I missed the sound. Or him. As for Angela, she had promised to call when she headed over to the Book Nook. But I figured that maybe reading wasn’t on her mind.

The bell rang and my classmates rushed out the door. Instead of following them, I stayed. My teacher stared down at his shoes, lost in thought.

“Mr. Merrill,” I asked. A dazed look crossed his face before he settled on mine in anticipation of some request that he probably expected would give him a headache. “In what grade do they talk about the Vietnam War?”

He sat down on the edge of his desk and stroked an invisible beard. His eyes lifted and his brow wrinkled in thought. Maybe no student between the start and end of the school day had ever asked him anything other than if they could have the hall pass or if they could get an extra day for their homework. He shook his head and frowned. “Is there something in particular you want to know about?”

I didn’t know where Dad had been in Vietnam. I didn’t know the dates. I only knew that he’d been there. And once, he’d been the type of man to dance and sing Motown and give chocolate coins to my mom.

“Just start from the beginning,” I said. 

Kelly Ford hails from an Old West outpost in Arkansas, spends the majority of her free time with people who only exist in her novel and plans to eat her way across the world. She also completed Grub Street writing center’s Novel Incubator program in Boston and received a Literature Fellowship Grant from the Somerville Arts Council. She's a contributor at Dead Darlings, and her fiction is forthcoming in Knee-Jerk Magazine. 

Flight, by Mitchell Grabois

 

Once you have tasted flight, said Leonardo

you will forever walk with your eyes

turned skyward

 

and when you are fourteen and initiated into sex

by a thirty-two year old woman

who lives in your parents’ hippie commune

you will forever look to the aged for

love

 

You will survey the wrinkles and age spots of women

with a particular greed

You will know that their old men are dying off

like flies

They can see the lust in your eyes

 

They long to be touched

to be taken

They want to tell you about their maladies

their bodies, their traumas, their children

but you will have none of it

 

Be Here Now, you tell them

with a certain cynicism

a dose of sarcasm

 

You will try to assess

from a distance

how much tightness

remains in their vaginas

before you’ve even said hello

 

M. Krochmalnik Grabois’ poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart” published in The Examined Life in 2012, and for his poem. “Birds,” published in The Blue Hour, 2013. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition.

Poems by Marian Veverka

After the Victims were Buried

Everyone went back to the farmhouse where

Friends and wives of neighbors had set out food.

At first there was just the sounds of chewing and

Swallowing and maybe a child piping up a few times -

Everyone still conscious of the empty spaces, but then

The talk got around to planting and ethanol and what

New problems lay ahead. Some of the older women

Got up and began to scrape small leftovers into bigger

Dishes and clear away the empty plates and the men,

a few at a time began to wander out the door.

Long ago someone had set up stakes and now George

Went into the barn and brought out horseshoes. Which

Was fine with the women, they had all the clearing up to

Do and stuff to discuss while they washed and put things

Away. The windows were open, a warm afternoon for

Early May and soon the rhythmic clang of metal against

Metal added to the scraping of plates and rattle of silverware.

The pallbearers and almost all of the men had dressed in

dark suits and now they took off their jackets and rolled

Up the sleeves of their white shirts and they resembled

Members of a sect, perhaps religious, like the Amish only

No one wore a beard. The grass and all the bushes and

Young trees were a clear, bright green, and as the men

Moved from one stake to the other, they formed a pattern

Of black and white on a green chessboard.

And so the men followed their patterns outside and in

The kitchen the women followed the routines that had

Been handed down since who knew when but it was a

Comfort, the breaking of bread together, and the clearing

up afterward, the soft voices and the quieting of the

children and the men finding something active to do

with their bodies when everyone was faced with a situation

That no one, down through all the ages, had ever been able

To make any sense of.

Explosion in the Afternoon

Our old man can explode with anger

Over the smallest dumb thing

Like a gallon of milk left sitting on

The table

The fridge door not closed all the way

Someone’s shoes sitting empty in

The middle of the living room

And the TV still on

He’d use real cuss words

So loud the neighbors could hear

And scream back for him to shut

The —– up

And our baby sister woke up crying

And mom yelling because we woke

The baby

I’d take off running through the back yard

Down by the old bridge where the train

Tracks crossed the swamp

And imagine myself a hobo swinging aboard

A slow train to China

Or any place far enough away

Where all you’d hear was the chatter

Of crickets in the tall grass

The ghost of a whistle from the days

The trains still ran.

There weren’t so many babies

And Mom and Dad would shut

The doors and be as quiet as the night.

Born and raised in Cleveland OH. Attended Univ. of Kentucky, Fenn College

Received BFA from Bowling Green State Univ.

Worked in libraries for many years.

Spend a lot of time reading, gardening in season. Interested in natural world,conservation of untouched places–forests, wetlands, prairies.

Written 2 novels (unpublished). Published several short stories & many poems in literary, small press, and local publications.

Castoffs, by Lindsey Walker

How would this look to a cop, hanging halfway inside the unlatched window with C.J. boosting me through? It is dark inside, but I grip what I think is the short side edge of a farmhouse table, pull my knees in and jump down into the smell of old basement, into air like a greasy thigh. My climbing hands dirty now, I open the side door out to a stairless metal porch and let a chair down for C.J. to climb on. He is fat and has more than thirty years on me and is not a good climber. He winds up with a stripe of black grime running down one jeans leg. And it is here, during my first and only breaking-and-entering, while waiting for my pupils to catch up the low light, that I realize I probably won’t see him again. Between our minds a ravine spreads narrow but deep, one that shared history can’t bridge. But in real time, we stand ankle deep in discarded junk in a storehouse neither one of us owns. The roof is a tin can split longways half in two, and the rusted parts let in only cracks of fog-light and songless birds that roost in high shadows. 

Before today, I hadn’t seen C.J. in years, not since I’d moved from the north Georgia woods to “Go west, young man,” to Eugene and then Seattle. I was married at the time to a So Cal punk rocker, and we had left for no good reason, except all our friends were small-town tweekers. We had no jobs waiting for us, just a single-wide trailer with a wood stove for heat, tucked in ferns up the Willamette. On the night I left, C.J. gave me a pendant without a necklace: a comically large cross made of silver, marcasite, and garnet, one that would serve better for hunting vampires than for wearing to church. And he said, “If I was twenty years younger…” and I said, “If I was twenty years older…” even though I lied. Our differences were greater than age even then.

The first time I met C.J. he was working as a bounty hunter, though I heard he used to restore antique furniture, used to have a wife (a florist!) and kid, used to be in bed by ten o’clock on a Saturday night. What I’m saying is he got tired of routine, so he quit it. I had trouble imagining him in this other life, because, like I said, he was a bounty hunter, only wore black tee shirts and jeans, a cowboy hat, Bic’d head, and one rattlesnake tail for an earring. He wore a six-gun on his hip and kicked around in The Cypress Lounge, a strip club down in Marietta. He never took drugs himself, but didn’t mind if a dancer needed a little bump to lighten her mood. Right before I met him, he’d hooked up with a gal named Jade, who he’d met outside the jailhouse in Holly Springs, her bleached hair gone brassy from shampooing in water from rusted pipes. She’d been locked up for assaulting a cop. Bit him just below the eye. They made her wear a straightjacket in the cell until she sobered up. What I’m saying is: C.J. got tired of doing things the right way.

And that was fine with me. I had a fear then that I still hold now, a fear of becoming a boring person, of waking up one day in a pressed shirt and a house smelling of Glade plug-ins. This was our shared fear, I soon learned. Neither C.J. nor I understood why so many people chose quiet lives of moderate misery. We valued “interesting” above all. C.J.’s solution entailed a Harley, a risky job, and a wild woman. As for me, I chose to fix it by shaving a mohawk, getting a Germs burn, and hanging in dirty punk clubs in downtown Atlanta. Jade hired me to do body piercing at a boutique she ran. The main storefront was low-ceilinged, dusty, dimly lit, with shelves overflowing with displayed curiosities: fake shrunken heads made of goat skin, antique taxidermy of strange animals (sea turtle, raven, beaver) with dust motes gathering over their glass eyes, and an extracted gypsy from a quarter-slot fortune teller booth. That’s where I met C.J., first over the phone. He called the shop at ten a.m., and I could tell he’d been up all night; his voice sounded like it’d been dragged for a mile behind a tractor. He called and said, “Jade’s drunk again. Hide the money and the guns.” So, I padded my bra with yesterday’s cash, sank the pistol in the toilet tank, wrapped the shotgun in a blanket behind the python’s terrarium, and was being cool, man, cool while Jade rummaged through the cash box and stole her own jewelry from the display case.

I worked for them both off and on for five years. I got to know them better than I wanted to. C.J. believed in ghosts and lived in half-collapsed house with a squirrel-infested top floor. He let a homeless man called Chief stay in his van undisturbed in an empty lot he owned, even gave the guy ten bucks a day for food. He missed his ex-wife and messed around with floozies every time Jade split town or got arrested. These broads stopped by the shop looking for him, and he ducked behind the clothing racks while I made up nonsense to shake them off. “He’s not here,” I said. “He’s in jail. He got in a bar fight and got arrested. I don’t know when he’ll be back” or “He went to Mexico, for sugar skulls and icons and these bones that tell the future.” The women left, he laughed, and I told him he owed me.

Then Jade would come back, and she could always tell. C.J. found out that her brain worked differently than most people’s. One of the several times she left him for good, she wrapped a whole raw chicken in a heating blanket and plugged it in under his bed, not hot enough to cook, just warm enough to rot faster. Another time, she squeezed all his blonde beard dye from the tube and replaced it with bright red. But the more she drank, the less creative she became in acting out her little hates. She had about five inches on him, a real Valkyrie, broad-shouldered, and she fought like a man. He had a black eye when I saw him next, and she had a chunk of hair missing that she tried to disguise by parting it on the other side. I watched Jade devolve, until she was straight drinking Listerine and shooting bullets through the drywall in his house.

C.J. drove all his friends away. Even the strippers didn’t want any part, scared of what Jade would do if she found out. C.J., who lost everything but his religion, started begging God in his nighttime prayers, begging God to die quickly in his sleep. And I said, I love you both, but I can’t do this anymore. That’s when I split for Oregon. A month or two after I moved, the shop closed. And that’s where we left off.

Now C.J. hears I’m in town and tracks my number down. It’s December, and though it had snowed several inches three days earlier, it’s almost seventy degrees when we meet up. Soggy earth sucks at my boot heels, and the sky looks like rain. Naked oak branches bend low, and all the houses have twinkle lights in the windows. Out past the nuthouse where Jade is locked up with wet brain, we catch up over barbecue. I decide this is the worst way to meet up with anyone, gnawing bones like dogs do, sauce on cheeks and chin.

It’s weird seeing old friends. We disappoint each other. My hair has grown out to a respectable length; C.J. wears a shirt with buttons and a collar. He’s learned how to roll a silver dollar across his knuckles after reading in a book that P.T. Barnum used to do it. He is no longer a bounty hunter; he’s an auctioneer now, splitting time between Waleska and Gibsonton, Florida, selling off Depression-era circus junk, like carousel horses and Ferris wheel seats. He tells me Jade shimmied out a window three weeks ago, but the police found her under a bridge and hauled her back, raising hell. He knows, because he’s still listed as her emergency contact. C.J. says the old shop is haunted and that if I stand outside late at night, I’ll see a light moving back and forth on the top floor, passing clear through a brick wall. The new owners, he says, told him they lock up every night, but when they come in the morning, the door’s always open.

I say I always wanted to live in a haunted house, but I’ve never seen a ghost.

He says he tried to buy a storehouse just because it looked haunted, but the deal fell through, and do I want to go look at it?

We take his truck down Hickory Flat Highway and wind around east where the tracks cross. No other buildings crowd the street, and few cars pass by. We pull off the main road and park in a clearing where the gravel has washed out. Three rusted tanks stand three men high each, and I wonder what they used to hold. I say the building looks beat but not spooked. He says he’s never actually been inside. But the chain link is bent at one corner, and somebody has used bolt cutters on part of it, and after a quiet afternoon remembering louder days, we egg each other on. We crawl through the fence and scale the industrial tanks. We walk around the building testing the doors, but they are all locked. He says the guy that owns it wants to sell it, just not to him. He says it isn’t the money at all. He says that if that sliding window is unlocked, I can climb in first, and then let him in from the inside. An adventure, like old times. I remember then that I am thirty years old. C.J. is almost sixty. So we break into this building.

Once we get in, we don’t speak for a while, and I am glad for the dark, because it hides the spiders. No dividing walls break the wide space that spills open like a cathedral, and the light sockets have no bulbs in them. All across the plank floor lie big stacks of castoffs: women’s shoes, candlesticks burned down to the nubs, scrap metal, thin blankets, and children’s records. We split up. I don’t touch every pile, just a few, and when I do, it feels like rubbing my thumb over a gravestone with a missing name. I can see C.J. doing the same thing on the other side of the storehouse. I think we both expect something else. No big treasure, but maybe a gramophone or a twine-bound stack of letters from a Confederate soldier.

Or maybe we expect more from each other. I know I didn’t plan to see him so frighteningly alone. The expense of living according to whim, of being the kind of guy who runs away with the circus (he did, in fact, spend a summer with the circus), was the loss of most of his personal relationships. Now he lives alone in his dead mother’s house with a toy poodle mix that's not housebroken, a little yapper to punch back the silence. He’s got a woman in another county he doesn’t care one whit about. She’s a few years his senior, not a looker, but she works a bank job and bails him out when he’s behind on his bills.

And what did he expect from me? Not the hesitation I showed before slipping through the chain link fence. Not me testing the sturdiness of the chair before I pass it to him. And now that I’m divorced, he doesn’t expect me to pull my hand away from his so fast. But I do, all the same, because we’re not the same. I look at all these things piled up on storeroom floor, things that used to be useful but were never coveted. And I think we are both castoffs and empty as these old shoes. Or maybe I’m the shoe, and he’s the scrap metal.

And when we leave, he says I should visit next summer. The sky is clearing up, and by the railroad tracks it feels like the ground is starting to dry. And I say yes, because for a second, it seems like I should. I even tell him I’d bring a tape recorder. I’ll get the whole story next time. And he says I can’t publish it until he dies. But this town isn’t my home anymore, and neither one of us is who we used to be.  

Lindsey Walker was born in Chattanooga, and grew up in North Georgia.  She is an esthetician and salon/spa owner, and she studies creative writing at Seattle University.  Her work has been published a little in print and a lot online, most recently in The Far Field and The Raintown Review.  When she's not writing, working, or studying, she is probably drinking bourbon neat and watching bad movies with her gamer fiance and her badass pitbull.  Visit her at lindseywalker.wordpress.com.