Rusty Barnes's Blog: Fried Chicken and Coffee, page 28

The Troubles, fiction by Sheldon Compton

“Raise your shirt, Mr. Mullins.”

“How about I just take it off?”

“That’ll be fine.”

She asked him to breathe heavily three or four times, moving a stethoscope from his chest to his back and then to his chest again.

The assistant was fine looking. Green eyes, bouncy blonde hair with them highlights running through it like dripped away bits of honey. He could smell her perfume a full minute after she walked out. Now she was back and Fay was taking off his shirt real slow so she could see the scars and how nicely kept together he was for a man of his advancing years. It was the tattoos she mentioned.

“That’s a phoenix, right?” She pointed a red lacquered fingernail at his chest. Fay could feel its sharp tip shaking a few of his chest hairs.

“Yep.”

“Interesting.”

“Why’s that?”

“It just is, I guess,” she said, stepping back and bending her head to write quickly on a chart she cradled against her waist like a flatted out child.

“It just is,” he mimicked, and then smiled warmly. The assistant looked up and turned her head sideways, the way cats will from time to time. “Maybe it’s interesting because that’s the mythological bird of rebirth,” he said then. “Born again and again from its own ashes.”

The assistant’s small lips dropped open and Fay could see her teeth were white and straight. He continued to smile warmly at her and leaned back against the wall, the stiff paper stretched across the exam room table crinkling as he did so.

He hadn’t counted his scars, but there were more of them than tattoos. There was the biggest scar and the one he was most proud of just above the phoenix, a thick and shiny one that curved across his chest like the body of a lizard. A half dozen or so more were scattered out across his back like a series of islands. Many more on his hands and forearms. These were the brightest of them all against the leather brown of his skin. Fay had obtained not a single one of his scars during fights, not bar fights, at least. The assistant finally commented on the one above the phoenix while taking his blood pressure.

“Looks like that might have hurt,” she said, and squeezed the pump on the blood pressure machine.

Fay figured the doctor would be in soon and his little conversation would come to an end, so he talked fast and, when he did, his accent came out more pronounced than usual.

“That one nearly took out my beating heart,” he said evenly, rubbing the muscles that seemed to crisscross across the bones of his arm like bark. “It was January of 1969. I was nineteen and walking with my Da in the civil movement.”

“On Washington?” the assistant asked.

“No, honey. The one from Belfast to Derry.” He paused and smiled again. “Belfast, Ireland, honey.”

“I thought you talked from somewhere else,” she said, her head turned like a cat again.

“Still a little I guess after all these years here in United States of God’s America,” Fay said. “That’s were I was born and raised, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Been here nearly four decades and I’m pleased as hell that it still sneaks through here and there.”

“Oh,” said the assistant, the inflection of her single syllable somehow more knowledgeable now, but she kept her head tilted, the honey-dipped hair curled across her shoulder, the folded wing of a sleeping bird, golden feathered even in the fluorescent lights washing down the walls of the exam room.

“We’s part of what they called the People’s Democracy, though that didn’t mean much to me or anybody else my age,” Fay continued. “My older brother used to tend bar and then one day he was shot dead as a nail by some folks on the other side. That was in 1966, the start of The Troubles. All I knew was that vengeance was heavy in my heart, but Da was a peaceful sort. So by January of 1969, like I was saying, me and Da was marching from Belfast to Derry as a civil rights movement effort or some such thing when were attacked by what they called loyalists in Burntollet, County Londonderry. Every scar you see on my body happened in less than half an hour.”

Standing up from the exam table, Fay held out his arms and turned in a slow circle. When he had made a full turn, the door opened and a man in rimless glasses and a neatly trimmed beard entered the room, a quizzical look melting across his eyes and down to his mouth. The man tugged his white coat closer around him like a military general about to give orders to a field full of ready troops. Dignified. Wanting it to be known that he was clearly in command. The assistant stepped aside, but continued to look at Fay’s upper body, who had left his hands out to his sides and smiled out of the corner of his mouth to the doctor.

“Mr. Mullins?”

“Yep.”

“You can have a seat there on the table and put your shirt back on,” said the doctor. “I’m Dr. Randall. What seems to be the trouble?”

Fay glanced to the assistant and smiled knowingly, gave a soft, gravely laugh.

“Well, Doc, I work the railroad line from Kentucky to West Virginia, have for twenty years or more, and they seem to think I might’ve spent up my time,” Fay said. His accent was gone now, replaced again with the more familiar east Kentucky twang. “They wanted me in here for a checkup.”

“Seems like you have put some hard time in from the looks of it, but you seem to be in pretty good health otherwise,” the doctor said. “Of course a full screen could include an MRI and some other tests, if the company has asked for a complete exam. But it says here,” the doctor paused and flipped pages on his chart, which he did not cradle like a child but held it out in front of him like a shield. “It says here you can’t have an MRI.”

Fay winked at the assistant. “Why’s that?” he asked.

The doctor balanced the chart in the palm of his hand and used the other to hold steady his glasses, bent closer to the chart. “Says here you have obstructions that would put your at risk due to the magnets in the machine. An MRI machine works in such a way that –”

“I know about how they work, Doc, all due respect,” Fay said cutting him off and fastening the last button on his shirt.

“Have you had operations before?” The doctor pressed on. “Metal devices implanted during a surgery of some kind that’s not in your chart for whatever reason?”

“No, Doc. Nothing like that.”

The doctor turned to the assistant and gave her a disgusted look. He tucked his chart under his arm. Wordless glances were exchanged momentarily and then the doctor excused himself after handing a note to the assistant.

“That young man could use a drink,” Fay said after the door closed. “What’s his little note say?”

“You’re so full of it,” the assistant said, tossing her hair back.

Fay closed his eyes and took in the perfume, sliding across the air to him in a small and powerful wave. He figured Dr. Whatshisname was good and pissed about not having all the information, his full arsenal there for his guidebook.

“You’re so full of it,” the assistant said again.

“I just need a clean bill so I can go back to work. This is only my second trip to the hospital. The first time was for a physical when I got hired on at the railroad. Wasn’t much to that, just cup and cough, eye test, that sort of thing. What’s his little note say, honey? I gotta keep this job a least a few more years. Retirement and all, you know.”

“His little note says get an X-ray, STAT,” she said. It came out in a hiss, the honey-dipped feathers turning to snakeskin before Fay’s eyes.

“What’d you mean, saying I’m full of it?”

The assistant put the chart back in its motherly position on the soft curve of her hip, gathering herself, and left the room.

Fay stretched out a little at a time on the table and waited. For some time he whistled a tune into the silence of the room. Beside the sink at the foot of the table were some magazines and when his back muscles started knotting he pulled himself up and started thumbing through one, glancing at pictures and listening for voices outside the door. Presently, the assistant came back with another expressionless woman.

“Let’s get you down for an x-ray, Mr. Mullins,” the expressionless woman said softly, routinely, her voice as flat as an ironing board.

Fay turned to the assistant and gave her another warm smile then leaned in close, taking in her scent, feeling her green eyes on his neck as he whispered in her ear.

“That’s what they’ll find, honey,” Fay said when he was upright again. The expressionless woman was holding his elbow, a slight tug. “And then it’s just more troubles for me.”

“You’re so full of it,” the assistant said. It was an echo by now, bouncing off the walls of the exam room. Void of any meaning. Just something to say.

“Ashes to ashes and back again,” Fay said as the flat-faced lady guided him through the door and away down the hallway.

When the woman returned, the assistant was standing at the check-in counter of the clinic.

“What’d that guy whisper to you,” the woman asked, her face a bunched up series of worry and curiosity, despite her best efforts to keep it at bay.

The assistant didn’t answer right away and when the woman didn’t keep walking or go about other duties, she turned to her.

“Shrapnel,” the assistant said under her breath.

“Pardon?”

“Pieces from one or more of 1,300 bombs set of in the centre of Belfast,” she said and looked to the floor at her feet. “That’s what he whispered.”

“Right,” the woman said, still offering no expression. “And I’m chief of medicine.”

“He’s full of it,” the assistant said. 

Sheldon Lee Compton survives in Kentucky.  His work has appeared in Emprise Review, kill author, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Metazen and elsewhere.

 

Running Mule Hollow, fiction by Murray Dunlap

The roads in Mule Hollow are long and wide, unfrequented by cars, and in summer months, make for the perfect place to run.  The sides of the road are flat, and a beaten path threading through wild flowers give safe asylum from the occasional logging truck. Beyond the path, cabins and deer-filled valleys spread out like knit blankets, and beyond that, the sharp-crested mountains hold on greedily to the last patches of winter snow. The mountains are big enough that no matter how fast or how far you run, the view never changes. Even when I run a twenty mile loop, circumnavigating Mule Hollow entirely, the mountains stare down on me, unimpressed and unmoved.

The town itself is small, about twenty thousand people, and the center of town, which I never run through, is only a few blocks of simple stores, a gas station and obligatory car wash, a grocery and pizza parlor. Most of the town works for the logging company, the ski resort, or during some hard winters, some commute fifty miles south to San Pieta for employment. On the west side of town, there is an alternative living community called Blessed Fields. The members have given up all personal possessions and any desire for personal gain, all for the sake of harmonious communal living. In order to survive, Blessed Fields became self-sufficient.  They grow their own food, stitch their own clothing, and run an herbal remedy shop in town.  It is common knowledge that Blessed Fields members support the medicinal use of marijuana, and that they sell it covertly under the counter at their shop. No one in town cares enough to put up a fight and quite a few locals buy more than Ginseng when they visit. In fact, I would be hard pressed to think of any of our young inhabitants who didn’t take advantage of the Blessed System, aside from me, as weed makes me nauseated.

Katie told me that when her father died, she had taken all of the photo’s she could find of him and made a number of small collages. Then she had put each collage in a separate section of a wooden folding screen. This way, she said, she could look at her father in different lights, on different days, with different expressions, as if he were still around. Katie said that she had bought the screen with six places for photographs because that was as close as she could find to seven days a week, and thus, she could wake up and say hello to a new side of him every morning. When I asked about the seventh day, she said that on Sundays we slept late with hangovers, and she would rather not see him like that anyway.

I usually run in the late afternoons. I’m stiff and groggy with thick legs in the morning, and I’ve sworn off the noon-day sun, so when I finish work at 4:30 or 5:00,  –as a sculptor, this varies daily– I lace up my Asics and stretch my legs across the long  country roads of Mule Hollow.  I try to run different routes day to day; from the sandy shouldered east side roads along the graveyard, to the pine and patchouli scented gravel west of town. Some days I run for six miles, some days ten, and some days twenty. I never know, or care, how far or how long I’m going to run. I don’t wear a watch and I don’t drive my route. Instead, I double knot my shoes, sunscreen my nose, and often carry music.  But I do not enter races and I never keep track of time. Running is the only place where I am free from stress and pressure and from all the noise in my head.

Katie also tells me that while she misses her father badly, that there is a certain purity in the way things are now. She knows that he is not suffering, that he is free of need, and she knows that they will never fight again.  She tells me that she talked with her father before he died and they had put all of their differences aside, which I guess means that they had put me aside, but I don’t say that. She also says that she wishes I could do the same with my father. Katie pulls her soft, mocha hair back and tells me she is ok with her father’s death. But I know Katie is a runner too. So when I see her coming up strong on the opposite side of the road with her brow crunched up and her hair black with sweat, and notice that she isn’t wearing a watch either, I know that exercise is the furthest thing from her mind.

I have epiphanies when I run. Seriously. Sometimes I have small, unimportant epiphanies, like when I realized that the expression for all intents and purposes, was not, in fact, for all intensive purposes as I had thought for most of my life. But there are times when I have the real thing. Life changing realizations that come to me in an anaerobic flash. Once during a fifteen miler, I stopped running entirely, put my hand to my head, and coughed and wheezed as I realized my father had cheated on my mother with my 3rd grade baby-sitter. It wasn’t that I had come across any new evidence; I had not spoken to anyone new or found anything, it was just that I had looked closely at a ten year old’s memory with a thirty year old mind. Then there was the time that I realized my then-girlfriend was bulimic. The odd amount of time spent in the bathroom, the constant talk of caloric intake, fat grams, and metabolic process… Running along the Blessed Fields vegetable garden, it hit me like an aneurysm.

And so I run Mule Hollow. In a clouded daze of memories and realizations. Like we all have –I suppose, but mine occur on the run. And it turns out, I run around Mule Hollow, keeping the town just inside my path, but tussling the mountains to the outer edge. And it may seem senseless, but I am most at peace when I am out of oxygen and circling our tiny mountain town in a forward lean.  It is that hour or two that I sort through the logistics of sculptures I am working on, or invent new ones.   And in that same time, I recommit myself to art. The art of art. And my movements to stay clear of any 9 – 5.

And that brings us to the real story I hope to tell you here. That of Mule Hollow, the town I call home, and that of Katie, who’s love I crave with a cocaine-like addiction.  Katie teaches at the only elementary school in the Hollow, and that includes the gifted children.  Once, Katie explained to me that smart kids are smart, but gifted kids have a way of thinking that is just plain different. Katie was a gifted child and her insights here amaze me.

As for my father, he died last summer. Katie begs me to make amends, even now. She says to write a letter, drive it to his grave, leave it with the birds.  She says the mental act of writing followed by the physical trouble of the road-trip and the psychological symbolism of leaving it at his grave will do enough.  So I have packed our hybrid and am ready. I’ve asked Katie to join me, and she has agreed on the condition that we not make it a vacation of any sort.

So we pack up, and are off. The drive to Montrose isn’t bad. Just a long straight shot. Ten hours long. And why we can’t fly is not clear, except that Katie says I have to endure a struggle.  And struggle, I do. In mid-build of a sculpture that seems Calder-like, and almost whimsical, I force myself to freeze the genesis of it and strive to make Katie happy. Like I said, Katie’s love is my cocaine, and most all of my movements circumscribe to her happiness. I remind myself of this after 5 hours driving on the road in a hybrid car that only seems happy at 60 miles an hour. Now, entirely worth it for the MPG’s, but plain silly on the highway. Maybe I just got a lemon?

As the highway scrolls by, we discuss an incident at school.

“You know, I had a gifted child yesterday who has William’s syndrome , you know, I told you she is not able to distrust… Anyway, she told me that the clean-up man asked to see if she would lift up her shirt. So she did of course, but can you imagine? An eight year old with no breasts whatsoever, and this jerk does that?  I can’t get over this and where it could have gone.”

“Holy smokes,” I say. “Really?”

“Really. I told our principal and she fired him. No discussion.”

“Good.”

“I hope this child learns.” Katie says as she leans back to stretch.

“Me too. It has to be the strangest way to grow up.” I drive on in sincere disbelief.

“The odd thing is, there is really nothing anyone can do.”

“Crazy.”

“So you and your father,” Katie begins. “I’m thinking you can let go after you leave him that letter.”

“I pray,” I say as I pat my chest pocket where the letter sits.

“Just be sure to acknowledge what you are doing as true communication with him.”

“I’ll try. But I’m not sure I know how to speak to the dead.”

“Just know that he knows. That is all.” Katie stretches and looks out her window as the Bay comes into sight.

“We must be close,” Katie yawns out.

“Yes, just ten more minutes.”

We do reach Montrose after a painfully long conversation about how my father still holds power over me, if I let him. Ten minutes never took so long. But we coast in and I show Katie the main drag, and where my Dad lived growing up. Then we stop at Wintzell’s Oyster House for a bite before going to the graveyard.

“Fried oysters, huh?” Katie seems confused.

“See the sign? ‘Fried, Stewed, or Nude…’” I point to a drawing my high school science teacher made on the wall.

“Ugh.” Katie hasn’t learned to love the south. “So so, Ben. This place gives me the creeps.”

“Creeps or not, the food is terrific!” I state with confidence. Although, I wish Katie had ordered seafood, not the spaghetti. I didn’t even know they had that here.

We finish, and as it turns out, the spaghetti was great. As always, my oysters were excellent, and I am very relieved that our start to the graveyard trip will begin right.  With full bellies and tired eyes, we plod on to the graveyard. Now fully night.

“Can’t we wait until morning?” I ask.

“No, it will be better that you have struggled through the entire day. This makes it work better. You have to believe that you have earned this.”

“Hmmm. A ten hour drive, an odd conversation about a pervert, a great meal, and this is supposed to help?” I scratch my head conspicuously.

“None of those specifics matter. It is that you struggled to get here. And that you can leave your father in peace. You will sleep well tonight.”

“I hope you are right, my dear. But if those oysters give me gas, you won’t.” I smile wide.

“Oysters or none, you’ll sleep hard.” Katie squeezes my hand. “Come on, Ben.”

We make the graveyard in moonlight. I take the letter from my chest pocket. We walk in silence to my father’s grave. I open the letter, unfold the sheet of paper, and lie it on top of the tombstone.  A gust of wind catches it, and the letter floats over to the next grave, Crawford Filbone.

“Crawford here might not like what I have to say.”

“Hmmm. Just lie it on the soil of your father’s, don’t balance it on top of the tombstone.”

“OK.” I unfold the paper again, and lay it on the soil. I use a stone to hold it in place. “How is this?”

“Perfect. Now say whatever is on your mind to him. I’ll be over by the car.” Katie walks slowly away.

“So Dad. Hiya there. Comfy? I don’t what in the hell I’m doing, but if it makes Katie there happy, I’ll do it.” I look to Katie now at car-side and smile. “You have to let go of me Dad. At least, I’m hoping that’s what you’ll do. It’s been a year now. I miss you Dad. I miss your laugh. I miss having those dinners.” I look over the grave searching for something to talk about. “This is horseshit, Dad. Absolute horseshit.” I cross my arms and hope for a breeze. “OK buddy. Hope that did the trick. Or at least convince Katie.”

I uncross my arms and walk to the car.

“How did it feel?” Katie asks.

I consider my answer and the night ahead, “Peaceful. It was very peaceful.”

“Oh good,” Katie says. “I’m so happy to hear you say that.”

“I felt closure.” I say. “ Closure.”

“Well, hmmm, I’m not sure it works like that. But if you feel good, I’m happy.”

“I thought closure is what we were after?” I ask.

“Well, closure would be something you felt in a few days or weeks, or months or years… Not right now. You are not fifty feet from his grave. You have to let this happen. You can’t force it.”

“Oh. Ok. Then I feel however a guy should feel fifty feet from his father’s grave.”

“You are not taking this seriously, Ben.” Katie folds her arms and sighs.

I raise my eyebrows, “What do you want to see?”

“I want you to FEEL this. No eyebrow raising allowed.” Katie replies.

“I’m full and tired and would like to find a hotel to lie down,” I say.

“I hope you’ve seen enough to heal, Ben.” Katie says.

“Point anywhere, and I will stare. I don’t know what I am supposed to do?”

“OK, to the hotel.” Katie raises her palms and turns to face the car.

We sleep fitfully and rise early, returning to the highway. We talk little. Mid-afternoon, and we are already crossing into Mule Hollow.

“Learn anything?” Katie asks as I pull into our driveway.

“I learned not to be honest when you try to mess with my head. I learned to be as vague as possible so that we can remain at peace. I learned a ten hour car ride is miserable in our hybrid.”

“Really? That’s all you can say?” Katie asks without waiting for an answer. She goes inside and shuts the door.

I unpack, stretch, and put on Asics. I’m out the door and running just as the sun dips beneath the mountains. Katie has done the same. We leave headed in opposite directions, which means we will cross paths in about six miles. As predicted, after six miles, I see Katie’s mocha ponytail and furrowed brow. Per her usual, she has no watch, and is so deep in this hypnotic ritual, barely realizes who I am.

“Katie, stop for a second. I’m sorry about how things went. I just wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or how to feel.”

“I know Ben, I guess I just hoped it might come to you. I’m not really sure what I expected either.” Katie bends down to stretch her hamstrings.

I chuckle and it hits me.  “You know Katie… You know what I have realized? I have the same laugh as my father. And I miss his laugh, but I guess if I have his laugh, then I act as the second coming of him. Or something like that.”

“Woah, Ben.” Katie stands straight and smiles. “It has worked! You get it! My god am I happy to hear you say this!”

“Really? Because we have the same laugh?” I silently realize that the whimsy of my new sculpture will benefit from all of this, after all.

“No, not that. It is that you realize you miss the man who made you, and know where you come from! I’m VERY happy we went! At last!” Katie gives me a high five that I am not sure how to react to. But, in the end, Katie is happy, and that is all that matters. And as a bonus, I have sudden motivation to finish new work.

We turn and begin our jog home, but this time, we run side by side. I ask Katie if she expects the scene at school tomorrow to revolve around the incident. She says yes, and looks over to me.

“He was fired and that ends it,” Katie reties her ponytail. “But I know everyone will have gossip.”

“I’m just glad no one was hurt,” I say.

“The thing is, I saw the whole thing. I turned him in. If I had not of seen it, he would not be fired. And I know he hates me for it. I’m nervous he’ll come back for revenge.”

“Shit. I didn’t think of that. Maybe you should stay home for a few days. Let this all blow over?” I scratch my head.

“No,” Katie replies. “I need to go back and stand my ground. I know the principal will call in more security.  There will always be people around.”

“Good. I don’t want you alone.”

“Me either. But I know I won’t be. And now that you are at peace, I can see you’ll be home sculpting in vigor.”

“Yes, thank you for giving this to me.” I lengthen my stride and Katie stays with me, chugging our route as the sunlight flits about the mountain line.

“No, you gave it to yourself. I just had to nudge you in the right direction.”

“Thank you just the same,” I say.

“Ok, catch me if you can.” With that Katie speeds up into a near sprint and leaves me wondering if I can, in fact, catch her. Running full speed, I stare at Katie and grin, letting my father’s laugh come right out.

“I got her Dad,” I say. “I got her.”

 

Murray Dunlap's work has appeared in about forty magazines and journals. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as to Best New American Voices, and his first book, Alabama, was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. He has just published a collection of stories called Bastard Blue. The extraordinary individuals Pam Houston, Laura Dave, Michael Knight, and Fred Ashe taught him the art of writing.

Snakes, poem by Denton Loving

I.

My office building sits atop a den of snakes. I’m sure of it. The building edges the campus where I work. Only an overgrown horse pasture separates the manicured lawns of higher education from the woodlands of Cumberland Mountain. The snakes slither down the mountain and somehow find their way in the parking lot or between concrete steps. They stick out their tongues to test the air, sun themselves on sidewalks. Once, when I returned from lunch, the ball of my brown Oxford grazed the head of a black snake lying so still I thought she was a crack in the sidewalk. She never moved, but I jumped high enough for both of us. Everyone in the building came out to see the snake, as if it was a new creation, as if we were children seeing the very first one. She waited patiently, completely still, while we gawked. The girls softball coach drove by just then, told us all to back away. Then, he pulled his Oldsmobile off the black-topped parking lot and down the sidewalk. The snake flailed as the right front tire crushed its middle. I imagined screams as the tire rolled back and forth. When we were sure it was dead, he pulled it off the walk with a golf club from his trunk, a nine iron, flung it out into the grass to be chopped up by the grounds crew and their lawn mowers.

II.

A different day, one August, when I wasn’t at work, another black snake was spotted in the grass. The sun was hot, and this snake was resting in the shade of a giant catawba tree. Summer drought brought him down from the mountain’s rocky pinnacle in search of water. Two women from my office, Regina and Carolyn, found the snake. Again, the office workers emptied into the front lawn of our building to see the snake for themselves. Again, there was shock and excitement and perhaps the feeling of being intruded on by an uninvited monster. Clarence, a maintenance man, stopped to see what was happening. “Wait,” he said. He knew how to take care of this problem. Straight through the center of the black head, Clarence drove a metal stake, quick as you like. He pinned the snake to the earth until the writhing stopped. When the last breath of life escaped, someone suggested they take a picture. The photo shows Clarence, his name patch white against the blue of his uniform. He holds the metal rod in the air, and the snake dangles to the ground, five feet long if he was an inch. Regina and Carolyn stand beside of him, no longer afraid of the snake. They all smile for the camera.

III.

“Why is everyone’s first reaction to kill a snake?” My friend Maurice once asked this at a party. It was easy to see how disturbed he was by the stories we told, the murder in our voices. How to explain to him that my own fear of snakes came to me in the womb? There was no temptation as a boy to feel scales against my flesh, to even see one slither past my path – each snake the devil incarnate, the only good one a dead one. Another friend, Donna, tells me snakes symbolize transformation. She explains that if snakes repeatedly come – as they do on sidewalks and in dreams – it means that I’m changing and growing and preparing for something new. I picture myself shedding my old life and old choices like an old skin. In writing, I’m advised to embrace my fears. Explore them. Give them to my characters. But just as if those fears were real snakes, my intuition is to give a wide berth, to avoid at all costs. The hardest things to write about are … well, they’re hard. It takes courage to embrace what scares you the most, serpents from the proverbial garden, monsters come up from the depths of nightmares. In real life, when I walk through the woods or the hay field around my home, I keep a close watch before letting either foot touch the ground. Twilight is the worst, when every twig seems to shimmer in the faint light. I fear each of them is a copperhead sliding down to the creek for a drink.

IV.

Last summer, a pair of Carolina wrens practically lived on the back porch of my house. In the mornings, they sat outside my bedroom window and served as my alarm clock. In the evenings, as I sat in the shade and read, they hopped around me, tempted to land on my open, extended palm. One Saturday, they called me with their trilling racquet to come to the back door. Between the porch and the shed where the wrens nested, there was a black snake sunning himself in the grass. This is a space where I walk daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes in my bare feet. I was pleased to live for the summer with my fat, trickster wrens, but I was equally displeased to think of this black snake joining our happy home. As a child and perhaps even a few years ago, I would have lost my mind with fear. Had he been something definitely poisonous, a copperhead or a rattlesnake, for instance, I would have still been terrified. But the years have accustomed me to seeing the occasional black snake. After that time I almost walked on one, I learned to appreciate the black snake’s gentle manners. I empathized for the thirst they must feel in the driest parts of summer, for the warmth they must ache for on the first sunny days of spring. My little Carolina wrens, brazen and full of tricks when they need to be, warned him from our home. “Go away,” I could hear them say. “We’re not afraid of you. Go!” I never admired these little birds so much as when they were willing to face off such a daunting enemy, but I took a different tact. “Hello,” I said to the snake as I looked down from the safety of my raised deck. I was cautious, but for the first time in my life, I wanted a closer look. I admired the way the afternoon light glistened across his ribboned back. “Please don’t bother the wrens,” I said, and I went back inside, leaving them to work it out for themselves. Within minutes, my curiosity was too much, and I had to go back out. I wanted to see the snake again, but he was gone. The grass showed no trace of his path, and I was both relieved and sad.

Denton Loving lives on a farm near the historic Cumberland Gap, where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia come together. He works at Lincoln Memorial University, where he co-directs the annual Mountain Heritage Literary Festival and serves as executive editor of drafthorse: the literary journal of work and no work.

His poem “Reasoning with Cows” received first place in the 2012 Byron Herbert Reece Society poetry contest. Other fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Appalachian Journal, Trajectory, Main Street Rag and in numerous anthologies including Degrees of Elevation: Stories of Contemporary Appalachia."

Hillbilly Rich, essay by Jeff Kerr

Sometimes I forget how rich I am. I’m not talking about the cash in my pockets, stocks, bonds or any of that stuff. I’m talking about the stories and characters that live, breathe and wail within my blood, marrow, bone and brain.

When the bills are overdue, the house is in foreclosure, the wife has filed for divorce, the scars on your body accuse you when you look at them, it is easy to take for granted the wealth that no one can see until the words splatter the pages. The written word then becomes redemption not only of myself but also those in my family before me. I am their voice.

To me, the term “hillbilly rich” means having a little more than you usually have. Maybe a couple of hundred bucks. Enough dough to pay some bills and maybe get you some good timing action.

People like me aren’t meant to be literary people. My dad drove a fork-lift in a warehouse and my mother worked in a plastics factory. Both of my grandfathers were coal miners. Other family members did what they could to survive or in some instances come out ahead such as my great-uncle, a professional gambler and organized crime figure. I’m the first generation to be raised “all the way up yonder north” away from the Southern Appalachian mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia.

At best, I could have gone to college and trained for a respectable and well-paid career. At worst, I could have taken my place in a factory or machine shop (which I have done in the past). These were the expectations of men from my class and background.

I grew up around storytellers. From the older people, such as my Paw-Paw Kerr, it was tales involving animals and their mysterious ways, strange mythical hill beasts, ‘hants and violent events torn straight out of death ballads that my Paw-Paw would tell me. Other stories were told by my parents, uncles and aunts on boozy evenings. I would sit under the kitchen table and listen to yarns about Army days, jail, drunken escapades in the hills or in the city. These were rough stories that hinted at the adult world my parents lived and I got glimpses into whether I wanted to or not. Even though there was violence or tragedy in some of these tales, there was also a tough humor to them.

I remembered all of these stories and painted vivid pictures in my mind. I created new stories that I told myself. I would take Sears catalogs and turn to the pages featuring furniture and draw strange figures that looked like paper clips with arms and these would be my characters and I’d talk out loud leading them through various scenarios. These would invariably involve domestic strife or drunkenness.

I would also stare long and dreaming into the woodwork of furniture and see ghosts, demons and other figures in the swirls. I could look at tree bark and see animals and strange animals that I had never seen in a book. Sometimes these beings would speak to me with ghosts as soft as cigarette smoke and I had to concentrate to hear them.

My older sister would sometimes do her homework at the kitchen table with its shiny oilcloth. I asked what her pictures were and she said that they were “things called words.” The first word I learned how to read and write was “the.” She started me on the path of the written word.

I started school and learned how to write and read very quickly. I went through books with a huge inner appetite. Everything from mollusk biology to Tom Swift adventures. I was amazed and drunk on words and the pictures that they painted inside of my mind.

A few years later, I read a child’s’ biography of Mark Twain and realized that there were people who were actually responsible for writing books. This was an actual job that someone could have. It seemed to me an ideal existence and every bell inside of me rang and pealed. This is what I was meant to become.

I knew that to be a really good writer I would not find what I needed in colleges or in workshops taught by mediocre writers. I did not want to become mediocre myself. I had real stories to tell. It was just a matter of time and work to hone the tools to carve those stories out of the raw materials I had within me. Over the years, I worked a variety of jobs and had a string of devastating experiences that I will not go into here. During that time, I kept writing. Sometimes I would send a story out and get the uniform rejection letter back. It seemed to me that the world of literary magazines was locked to me. However, I kept at it. What was important was the work itself. The satisfaction of creating something that did not exist before. It was like giving blood and bone to ghosts.

I started getting published regularly about seven years ago and have worked with some amazing editors and met some kick-ass people. It is the life that I dreamed of as a child clutching to written words and stories trying to find his place in this world.

Today I am one of the richest people that I know. Yeah, sure, it’s hillbilly rich but that’s all right. It’s more than most people will ever have.

Jeff Kerr currently lives in Milwaukee, WI. He has deep roots in the southern Appalachian mountains of the Kentucky and Virginia border country. His work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Now and Then, Hardboiled, Plots with Guns, Hardluck Stories, Criminal Class Review and others. He has been a featured reader at Book Soup, San Quentin Prison among other venues. His short story collection, Hillbilly Rich, can be ordered directly at JeffKerr1965@gmail.com.

 

Caring for Cast Iron, by Misty Skaggs

Nobody wants to hear about my everyday life anymore. Nobody wants the truth I want to offer up, even though I listen courteously to your bullshit, mindless intellectual swill spewed over organic dinners with vegan options. My small talk's not spicy like your authentic curry recipes. The setting for my anecdotes aren’t smokey bars or seedy truck stops or a one bedroom flop for misguided and horny hillbilly youth. The characters in my anecdotes aren't five hundred pound, no good, mohawked boyfriends with shitty bands' and shitty vans that I have to crawl under to unstick the gears. At least not anymore.

Nobody wants to hear about my new holler life. About making beds and tacking quilts and bowel movements so black and hard they look like lumps of coal staining the bowl. About caring for cast iron, lovingly caressing the heavy black weight of a lightly rusting pan with two fingers, lubed up in lard. Nobody wants to hear about caring for a woman who's slowly dying in front of me. A woman who’s not ready to die. And not demented and dimmed by her ninety seven years of age. She’s sharp as a cliche tack. But nobody wants to hear about my Mamaw's heart failing, congestively.

It's her heart. That's what the ugly, lesbian, hospice doctor says. And I trust her. It's her heart, the doctor says. That's why her arm hurts and aches until she screams and that’s why I stay up all night and I heat towels and wrap her tired limbs. Her good heart gone bad; only three nitroglycerin and then call the ambulance. And then wait and wait and pray until they manage to find us at the end of gravel road hidden amongst stands of black pine and ancient, gnarled up oaks. It’s her heart, it’s her age, it’s nature catching up. It’s nature, dying.

Everybody wants to hear the story about how Gramaw and I sit around and shit talk Herbert Hoover. And how she refers to Johnny and June like they're family, even though she hates "that Boy Named Sue" song. "Silliness." Everybody wants to hear how she loves to read the raunchy romance novels with the seething, shirt less pirates and dark eyed, calloused cowboys on the covers.

But nobody wants to hear about how sometimes I sit straight up as I'm drifting off to sleep. And it's my heart. It stops. And I'm convinced I can hear her soul leaving her body through the baby monitor. Nobody wants to hear that crazy shit. Nobody wants to hear about how she doesn't want to go peacefully. About how her eyes flash wildly when she thinks death is here and she isn't sure what's next. Everybody likes the story about how she's ready to be clutched tight in the arms of her handsome, blue-eyed Jesus.

Misty Marie Rae Skaggs, 30, is a two-time college drop-out who currently resides on her Mamaw's couch in a trailer at the end of a gravel road in Eastern Kentucky. Her work has been published here on friedchickenandcoffee.com as well as in print journals such as New Madrid, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Limestone and Inscape. On June 9th, she will be reading her poems on the radio as part of the Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival. When she isn't baking strawberry pies and tending the backyard tomato garden, she spends her time reading and writing damned near obsessively in the back porch "office" space she is currently sharing with ten kittens.

Sestina for a Powder, poetry by Joshua Michael Stewart

She’s listening to the clock—the heartbeat

that mocks the blood that pumps inside this house.

She clicks her tongue in time with the sound that knocks

against walls, and mimics heel-to-toe boots on redwood

floors. There’re knickknacks to dust

and soapy dishes to scrub. She waters the plants

to keep her mind from creeping back to the goons planted

in graves thanks to the triggers she squeezed. She wouldn’t beat

the rap—not a chance. For the two droppers she dusted

she’d claim self-defense, but that silk tie she popped in a house

of God, she can’t chin her way out of that. Would

you’ve done different if a butter and egg man offered Fort Knox

to care for you and your mentally impaired brother? Knock

off my competition, and you won’t waitress again. Plant

six shells into him while he’s on his knees praying, and I’d

give you enough dough you won’t need to mess with deadbeats

who want to toss your brother into the nuthouse.

Don’t worry about the bird I want you to drop. To you he’s dust.

To set her mind on more pretty things she starts to sing Stardust.

The screen door in the kitchen knocks

against its frame, and she turns to smile at the man this house

belongs to. The man who spends his days among the plants

in his garden. In his hands is a strainer full of beets.

He kisses her check. He smells of earth and freshly cut wood.

It smells like you’ve been sawing wood,

she says as she brushes sawdust

off his shoulders. And then some, he says, rinsing the beets

in the sink. Other men would’ve ratted to the cops, and knocked

her out on her ass before she had time to plant

one murderous painted toenail inside their shack.

Instead, he swept the air with his hand and said, Get in the house.

He taught her brother how to select seasoned oak for the wood

stove, and told him all the names of the plants.

He doesn’t talk to him as if he’s a child or deaf. They like to dust

off down the road to watch the heifers in the field, and to knock

tin cans over with rocks. He listens when her brother says, Beets!

and says, Beets, again. She knows when to knock

on wood. All that she loves is planted

in this house. Everything else can turn to dust.

 

Joshua Michael Stewart has had poems published in Massachusetts Review, Euphony, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, William and Mary Review, Pedestal Magazine, Evansville Review and Blueline. Pudding House Publications published his Chapbook Vintage Gray in 2007. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook Sink Your Teeth into the Light in 2012 He lives in Ware, Massachusetts. Visit him at www.joshuamichaelstewart.yolasite.com

Pyote, fiction by Shannon Hardwick

Imagine I am a body on the side of the road, maybe a girl in a skirt and a shirt that’s torn, or a boy with a briefcase and muddy boots. Imagine I am you. You’ve taken too long to get here, the middle of nowhere. Pyote. City of Pyote sign ahead but only dirt roads and maybe a farmer somewhere way off in the back beyond where you can see mesquite and that’s all littered around like forgotten seeds of something half-grown but with roots strong and long enough to reach any water-table no matter how deep. That’s the desert. It eats what it can. Imagine I am a man fixing a radiator because it’s too goddamn hot to run away. It’s too hot to feel your legs let alone your heart which is breaking, and always has been. Imagine the three of them broke down in the same place outside the city of Pyote. Which exists. I’ve seen it, driving into nothing because it’s too goddamn hot to do anything else. The girl with her skirt

and the boy with the boots. He’s thinking, Take her to Red Sands Inn. He’s thinking, Take out the pain I’m in. He’s thinking the old man with the radiator might make it halfway to Brownfield and the girl is thinking, Where am I going? She’s thinking, I’ve got a body, I should use it. So she walked out and kept going and had the thought of eating snake but didn’t. When she was a girl she wasn’t afraid. More afraid of not being poisoned. She wanted the hallucination like a light. Like a feeling of being somewhere higher than here. Imagine I’m you. Everything you’ve lost in that boy’s briefcase which he kept because it locked and he planned on throwing it out once he decided, This is it. I’m a goner. I’m gone. The old man with the radiator wanted water and a coastline but he married for money and a tight ass. Nothing lasts. The girl’s got some legs, that’s for sure. The boy, a gun, probably. Nothing more dangerous than a young broken boy looking for something to ground him. The mesquite can live in the heat for years because it has the patience to stay still. To stay long enough to reach a water-table, no matter how far down. The man once reached Kansas and told himself he’d kill himself before he got any farther. Instead he went back to Pyote by way of a broken down bluebird of a car that kept things interesting. The girl thought the same of snakes but was never brave enough to pick one up. Shoot it, maybe, but then you can’t get stung. So she told the boy to take her to the Red Sands. Why not? It was too goddamn hot. And the old man said, All right, get in. I think I have enough for the three of us, and handed them a round.

 

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick received her Masters in Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in 2010. She recently completed her first full-length manuscript of essays and poetry and has a chapbook in print and one forthcoming with Mouthfeel Press. She is the resident poet for Port Yonder Press' online magazine Beyondaries and her work has been featured or is upcoming in 3:AM Magazine, Night Train, Versal, Sugar House Review, among others. She writes in the deserts of West Texas.

 

Loveville, fiction by Timothy Gager

Loveville is a free-wheeling town you enter without a seatbelt at 100 miles per hour down the Main Street; going so fast, a clock can’t tick. When you spin off the road you are thrown onto the grass near a signpost. Look up and read it: “Welcome to Loveville-Population: Everyone else in the Universe. “Is this what you want?” you ask yourself.



You want this: You want love in Loveville. You take someone to town but you don’t want to be with her after you arrive. When did this place become so uncomfortable? Don’t come in here!” the statie yells as he pulled you up off the ground. “Hey, you’renot supposed to move the victim,” you tell him immediately. “Don’t talk back,” he says. “I’m not employed by Loveville.”



Loveville takes you on a walk since you have no car. It’s a famous walk. You start in your hometown and don’t stop. You walk fifty miles per day and in less than four months you have crossed the country. Loveville does not exist on the other coast because it is not your home. You walk in the opposite direction.



There are times after you return you settle back into Loveville and are actually comfortable there. There are meals and evenings on the couch with your arms a future there. When you kiss, Loveville kisses back. The clock ticks loud enough so you can hear it and then it’s all that you can hear. It forces you to get out again and you sprint.

<



Timothy Gager is the author of nine books of short fiction and poetry. He has hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month for the past eleven years and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival. His work been published over 250 times since 2007 with nine nominations for the Pushcart Prize. His work has been read on National Public Radio.

Benediction, novel excerpt from Charles Dodd White

Chapter 1

Lavada rose to the iron dark and stepped barefoot across the cabin floor, pausing and placing her hand to the door to test the wind's new ache. To know it as her own. Touch told her she would need Mason’s coat. It hung on a nail next to the mantle. She took it in her hands and slipped her thin arms through the sleeves, wearing the weight of her man for a moment before she drew on his blistered boots and stepped into another day lacking him.

A rill of daylight cracked the ridge. She came around the side of the cabin to check the car for frost. Drew back her fist and smacked the door seam, overnight rime freeing. She climbed in and cranked the engine, revving it to open the thermostat. Went back to the cabin to get the old man up and ready for being left alone.

She tapped at his bedroom door and spoke his name. She could hear him stir, but he said nothing. She knocked again, harder, and heard the underlying hiss of his slippers. He would be out.

She snapped three eggs into a china bowl and whisked them together, dicing in onions and thawed peppers. Anything else would have been too hard on the old man’s teeth. The range ticked three times before the pilot light caught and the ring spat crenellated flame. The skillet talked as the eggs hit the surface. By the time she scraped them onto two small plates, Sam entered, dressed and cleanly shaven.

“Good morning, daughter,” he took his place at the kitchen table.

She set his plate before him and sat. How long had it been now since the convention of calling her as his kin had been confused with his actual belief in their blood relation?

“Good morning, Sam. Sleep well?”

“Ah,” he nodded.

His words failed him more these days. What was said and what he intended seemed to live in two different corners of the same room, never completely at odds and yet mislaid somewhere between thought and the saying.

“Do we have time to garden today, Daughter?”

She crossed the fork and knife on her plate.

“It’s winter, Sam. There’s nothing we can plant this time of year. Everything’s frozen. I’ve told you that.”

He released a sigh, shook his head, blue eyes seeking.

After scraping off the remains of windshield ice with a kitchen blade, Lavada climbed into the Honda and gunned it for the ridge line road. She liked the feeling of the hollow sinking behind her, the road opening up to the overlooks. Slip all tethers and give herself to momentum. The morning drive was a pleasure, a tight controlled movement along the shoulders of the mountains, the right-of-way ceding to her memory of so many drives in and out like this one. She did not consciously anticipate dips and curves, as much as feel herself forward, lean intelligently into the next bend and brake.

At Stubbs’s roadside stop above the county line, she pulled into the empty parking lot for her cigarettes. When she swung the door open, the cowbell banged against the glass and Mrs. Stubbs glared at her over the top of a Better Homes and Gardens.

“Help you?” she said in a tone bereft of sincerity. Her magazine a solid screen of overbold font, porticoes, English topiary.

“Yessum,” Lavada answered, awkward. “Can I get a pack of Kools?”

“What’s a Kools?”

“They’re cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes.”

“Never heard of them,” she said, sighting her down one ill eye.

“They’re in a green box. With stripes.”

The old woman found them, shoved the pack across, rang her up.

“How’s your husband? I’m used to seeing him in here.”

“Coughing up a lung,” the old woman said. “Come down with something, I guess. He’ll recover.”

“That’s good.”

Lavada turned to leave.

“Your man still up at the pen?”

The familiar disfavor, the judgment of a life reduced to what they wanted to see of her, what they wanted to make of her. She knew she would always remember the simple gift of their hate.

“Thanks for the cigarettes,” she clinked open the door.

“You’re still a young thing,” the old woman called. “There’s better out there than holing up with a father-in-law fit for the old folks’ home, you know.”

She had lit the first cigarette before the engine turned and finished it by the time she crossed the South Carolina state line. With the window cracked, the winter air danced in, making confusion of the hair loose at her temples. It stung.

Once she was coming down through the foothills, the road widened as it plunged through red banks and thickening pines. Roadhouses stood empty this time of morning. Fireworks stands were bright and antic with signs. Broad ply board proclaimed: BLACK CAT. NO DUDS GUARANTEED.

On to the town limits of Dry Gulch, a long stretch of green flats with a few small farms on either side, tractors asleep under tin roofs. Further on, the town proper began to assemble itself, newish brick ranches with big yards and cyclone fences surrendered to hundred year old stately colonials with scrolled balconies. Finally, the old downtown, a true main street, divided by occasional islands of rotary club flower beds, stubbled for the winter. Small poplar trees braced with metal poles to ensure perfect vertical growth. On each side broad sidewalks gave way to independent store fronts: a pair of barber shops, Lonney’s Hardware, a Purina feed store, Army/Navy surplus. Going out of business.

Lavada parked at the end of the sidewalk and stepped into Gillenwater’s. Inside, the grill sizzled with sausage patties and hash browns. She stepped behind the counter and poured a white mug full of coffee for herself. Gillenwater flipped the sausage and potatoes onto a plate and leaned back over the counter with a mostly clean fork. She poured him out a cup and set it down at his right hand. He fell to his breakfast.

“You’re in early,” he shaped out his words between bites.

She scanned the few tables and booths to make sure the morning prep work was done. The duty, automatic.

“Afraid of the weather. Thought it would be worse than it is.”

“You know I can always come out to get you in case it gets rough.”

“That’s too far, Dennis.”

“It’s just a drive, is all.”

He looked down at her boots, laced tight to her calves, the ends tucked in.

“Don’t those get hard on your feet? You look more sawmill pulper than waitress.”

Through the glass facade, she watched the empty street come into its regular midweek stride. As soon as the door swung open, she greeted her first customers, order pad tucked under her arm, pen notched above her ear.

“Now, Dennis,” she cocked her head and answered in her best Nancy Sinatra. “You know as well as I do these boot were made for working, And that’s just what I’ll do…”

She whistled off, leaving him grinning.

Chapter 2

Mason lifted his arm, thumb rigid in the air, hearing big tires and a quick engine coming on. He had not bothered with the thin sounds of passenger cars, knowing they were a waste of effort, but the big trucks were driven by men long on the road, empty of good caution. They would welcome him, a curiosity to entertain the lonesome hours ahead. When he heard the grinding downshift and the engine catching high, he dropped his hand, eased one shoulder strap of the ruck from his shoulder and turned toward the asphalt, waiting to be let on and taken the rest of the way home.

He climbed up into the cab and stowed the back pack on the floor in front of him, all his ready possessions riding against his shins, bouncing softly as the truck gathered speed.

The driver grunted his name and Mason gave his as well and then they were on to the ritual exchange, the swapping of stories that ate up so much of the common life of the highway. As the hours drew on, his own voice became an easy song in the throat, a steadiness that passed between both men while his mind could slip away to watch the long green of the free world roll out on either side of the road, the borderless ground like some kind of materially realized echo, a cracking sound wave of all that limitless choice.

As they came into the foothills and later the mountains, the trees nudged in closer, attending him, constricting the passage into some form he could reasonably suffer. So different than the unfamiliar world of the piedmont, a place that was crushed, dimensionless. Here there was grip and hold, a country with legacies not easily slipped. This place held no guesses, no deceptions of promise, only the fate of knowing what others who had ridden these same roads and byways knew, that the world of bluff, creek and gorge was without parallel, that the grim and the beautiful were locked together and that the men and women were owned by it in equal measure, released by nothing so simple as God given will.

He got out at the head of the Narrow Spoke crossroads, footing it back toward the glum windings of the gravel road leading in to the family property, singlewides up on naked blocks with clapboard additions tipping against the prefab, rude ideas of improvement realized by increments. Shepherds and terriers barked. Security lights popped on in the twilight.

Ray Ray met him on the deck of his trailer, automatic pistol palmed but loose, a simple piece of iron, no threat between peaceable kin.

“You look like shit, Cousin,” Ray Ray smiled.

“The way of the world.”

Ray Ray laughed his easy laugh.

“Bring your sorry ass up here.”

Mason slipped the ruck and met an embrace. Ray Ray shoved him back a second later and stared hard into his face.

“Same old Buddy,” Ray Ray said finally, falling to Mason’s childhood nickname. “Sit down. I’ll get us a little cold beer.”

Mason pulled up one of the metal folding chairs and trained it around so he could see the length of the valley he’d trudged up. On the other side of the far ridgeline the tourists had moved in and bought up all the scenic views, sticking pasteboard mansions to it so they could feel good about themselves for looking across at all the stubborn trailer trash who refused their bribes. The homes’ huge glass fronts were ablaze with electric light. Big yellow light pouring out so they could be seen watching those who watched them back, maybe wondering if it was enough to stir envy and hate in those poor misbegottens. Hoping it did. The sight of it all made Mason itch for a few satchels of dynamite.

Ray Ray came back with two popped tall boys, tears of condensation running. Mason laid one to his temple for a moment, then drank deep.

“I guess you figured out Lavada didn’t come and see me,” he said. “Two years, and not once.”

An old diesel train engine hauled a short freight out towards the river bed. The sound of its progress clacked on, a spike of useless noise in the useless distance.

“Buddy, she’s been looking after your Daddy real good. That has to count for something.”

They emptied their cans.

“She’s my woman, and she abandoned me. That sure as hell counts for something all right.”

 

There was little easy room to be had when it was time to settle in for the night. The couch and an old boy scout sleeping bag were all Ray Ray could apportion. The beer had taken its toll on Mason, and he suffered a tiredness that threatened to carry him into a scaling and dreamless oblivion. But before he would let himself be broken and dragged down, he ground his fists into his eyes and turned his head toward the long window and the valley beyond. Darkness and mountains reared in an enormous force over everything his eye could take in. A frozen breakwater, a great avalanche of stone poised to descend.

He swung his feet to the floor and steadied himself, listening to Ray Ray snoring in the back bedroom. The night made things somehow strange, derelict. The shape of old lamps, chairs and end tables released their accustomed lines, and objects inert managed to live, to feel. The sadness of this place suddenly broke over him, tumbled in a mute chaos of things remembered and imagined. Confused grief beaded in his eye. He did not know what sorrow he was weeping for. He feared, above all, that it was not his own.

One more beer. A rickety shuffle to the humming fridge and an Ice House torn from the plastic ring. Drinking like there was an undiscovered world in the next swallow. Knowing it all was about her, always had been. Even his hatred was a kind of love. He knew she made him suffer a brand of madness, an epilepsy of need, and regret too. One element seemed to sharpen the others, grinding down whatever remained of him in the process.

He eased out to the porch where his ruck was leaned against the far railing and carefully drew the weight of it onto his back. Staggering, he braced his free hand to the corner post and stepped out into the starlit yard, moving under the constellations, feeling as ancient and marooned as those splinters of galactic time. Overhead sketchings of cardinal direction and decision. He sucked back the rest of the beer, pitched the aluminum husk beside the road and walked straight out of the old family place, pursuing the stranger course of what lay before him.

Charles Dodd White was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1976. He currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina where he teaches writing and Literature at South College. He has been a Marine, a flyfishing guide and a newspaper journalist. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Night Train, North Carolina Literary Review, PANK, Word Riot and several others. His novel Lambs of Men, a story of a Marine Corps veteran of World War I in Western North Carolina, was published by Casperian Books, and his story collections Sinners of Sanction County by Bottom Dog Press He is currently at work on another novel.

Poems by Shannon Hardwick

BARTENDER-LONELY

How can you stand so many

people, I ask, drunk. Shirts dirty

themselves for the washing, waiting

for a woman’s hands, he said, I’d steal

their laughter, pawn it for a handgun

just to piss someone off. I’d drink

myself into mystical states, I’d get sick

on her doorstep for a glass

of water. I’d do this for anyone

who ever loved my sorry ass.

 

FRANCINE WANTS A FARM IN MISSOURI

Francine dreamed a deer drug her heart across five states. It was told to eat slowly. Francine dreamed the dear, before getting there, wrapped its neck around wire. My heart was hit, she writes, by a trucker called Grace. If I cut my arms, there’s space. Francine feels the weight of five states. If I had a farm in Missouri, she writes, I’d believe in destruction and healing. Francine believes she’ll eat the dear slowly and fill her heart. If not, she writes, I’ll cut my arm. I’ll buy a farm. Marry a trucker called Grace.

 

River 31

The snake sang on the bank

Belted about being born empty

Let us fill, he said, each need

Twice. He took to swimming

Beside me because I was lonely

And asked, What do you dance for

The belt around my waist became

A river. All the fish found me naked

Then I knew, bodies were made

To be broken, loved. This song,

The snake sang, keep near

To your belly. I became a wild

Dancer yet again. Keep going.

The river woke. Night-birds

Hid in fear. Eggs began to appear

And I, the woman, ate in silence

Every last stone-bread

Of the buried men’s hearts.

 

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick received her Masters in Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in 2010. She recently completed her first full-length manuscript of essays and poetry and has a chapbook in print and one forthcoming with Mouthfeel Press. She is the resident poet for Port Yonder Press' online magazine Beyondaries and her work has been featured or is upcoming in 3:AM Magazine, Night Train, Versal, Sugar House Review, among others. She writes in the deserts of West Texas.