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Best short stories by the Winner, seven Shortlist Winner Nominees, and eighty-seven Finalists of the second annual Adelaide Literary Award Competition 2018 selected by Stevan V. Nikolic, editor-in-chief. THE WINNER - Toni Morgan; SHORTLIST WINNER NOMINEES - Lazar Trubman, Pam Munter, Susan Pollet, Esq., Jose Recio, Peter Freeman, Michael Washburn, Janet Mason; FINALISTS - Andrea Lorenzo, Brooke Reynolds, Heather Whited, Jack Coey, Darrell Case, Alexandra Lapointe Edward D. Hunt, M Cid D'Angelo, Richard Dokey, Michael Mohr, Scott Kauffman, Olga Pavlinova Olenich, James White, Thomas Larsen, Patty Somlo, Rita Baker, Janine Desvaux, Mark Albro, Skyler Nielsen, Rachel A.G. Gilman, Jim Zinaman, Carolyn L. Bell, Robert McKean, Royce Adams A. Elizabeth Herting, Tara Lynn Marta, John Wells, Heide Arbitter, Jeff Bakkensen, Jeffrey Ihlenfeldt, Bettina Rotenberg, Hina Ahmed, Peter Hoppock, Matthew Byerly, Tim Rodriguez Riley Bounds, Wayne Hall, Dennis Nau, Kathryn Merriam, Sam Gridley, Jonathan Maniscalco, Harold Barnes, Mattie Ward, Brenna Carroll, Barbara Bottner, Beth Mead, David Macpherson Judyth Emanuel, George Korolog, Peter Gelfan, Mary Ann Presman, Deborah Nedelman Rebekah Coxwell, Richard Klin, Ted Morrissey, Ben Rosenthal, Terry Sanville, Steve McBrearty Richard Key, Max Bayer, Amada Matei, Sydney Samone Wrigh, Ross Goldstein, Zia Marshall, Lisa Lopez Snyder, Peter K. Wehrli, Joshua Hren, Maureen Mangiardi, Carolini Cardozo Assmann D. Ruefman, Lynette Yu, Mandi N Jourdan, Masha Shukovich, Annina Lavee, Meg Paske, Emily Peña Murphey, Clay Anderson, Niikah Hatfield, Jose Sotolongo, Carl Scharwath, Kaleigh Longe Maryna Manzhola

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Published by ADELAIDE BOOKS, 2018-12-14 09:00:32

Adelaide Award Anthology 2018: SHORT STORIES, Vol. Two

Best short stories by the Winner, seven Shortlist Winner Nominees, and eighty-seven Finalists of the second annual Adelaide Literary Award Competition 2018 selected by Stevan V. Nikolic, editor-in-chief. THE WINNER - Toni Morgan; SHORTLIST WINNER NOMINEES - Lazar Trubman, Pam Munter, Susan Pollet, Esq., Jose Recio, Peter Freeman, Michael Washburn, Janet Mason; FINALISTS - Andrea Lorenzo, Brooke Reynolds, Heather Whited, Jack Coey, Darrell Case, Alexandra Lapointe Edward D. Hunt, M Cid D'Angelo, Richard Dokey, Michael Mohr, Scott Kauffman, Olga Pavlinova Olenich, James White, Thomas Larsen, Patty Somlo, Rita Baker, Janine Desvaux, Mark Albro, Skyler Nielsen, Rachel A.G. Gilman, Jim Zinaman, Carolyn L. Bell, Robert McKean, Royce Adams A. Elizabeth Herting, Tara Lynn Marta, John Wells, Heide Arbitter, Jeff Bakkensen, Jeffrey Ihlenfeldt, Bettina Rotenberg, Hina Ahmed, Peter Hoppock, Matthew Byerly, Tim Rodriguez Riley Bounds, Wayne Hall, Dennis Nau, Kathryn Merriam, Sam Gridley, Jonathan Maniscalco, Harold Barnes, Mattie Ward, Brenna Carroll, Barbara Bottner, Beth Mead, David Macpherson Judyth Emanuel, George Korolog, Peter Gelfan, Mary Ann Presman, Deborah Nedelman Rebekah Coxwell, Richard Klin, Ted Morrissey, Ben Rosenthal, Terry Sanville, Steve McBrearty Richard Key, Max Bayer, Amada Matei, Sydney Samone Wrigh, Ross Goldstein, Zia Marshall, Lisa Lopez Snyder, Peter K. Wehrli, Joshua Hren, Maureen Mangiardi, Carolini Cardozo Assmann D. Ruefman, Lynette Yu, Mandi N Jourdan, Masha Shukovich, Annina Lavee, Meg Paske, Emily Peña Murphey, Clay Anderson, Niikah Hatfield, Jose Sotolongo, Carl Scharwath, Kaleigh Longe Maryna Manzhola

Keywords: anthology,short stories,fiction

SHORT STORIES
Yes. Are you happy now?
Let’s feign cheerfulness. Let’s kiss the air. Let’s have a party.
Let’s burn down the house. Let’s turn back time. Let’s play the pre-
tend game of let’s stay friends, no matter what. Let’s lets...
Let’s not.
How does he take his coffee?
One lump or two, darling?
Lumps in my chest frantic. Watch how fast he packs up his
pork sword. That weapon, from which sparks fly too soon. I smoosh
Trident noodles into my face. Pal screams,
Open your mouth!
He drips starch and silk and success. I crash on the floor. Hang
onto his ankles, disgust kicks me into the corner the dust the flower-
pots the hollow the pine. My hands on my inedible heart. He sculls a
brandy. You’re on your own. Slams our wrong door. What the fuck
has he done? Well he leaves. On my birthday. Cruel cake crumbs
deliberating love’s not funny honey.
Oooh slap me. Nothing is safe. Everyone stares. Everyone says
hello. Feminist tongues wag.
Men are all the same.
The same as what?
And Crazy strips bare. Wisdom belts my naked. Whips my stu-
pidity. Ouch. Since the dawn of time. A woman’s vocation is sorrow
and stacks of greasy plates and holey moly lonely starkers visions of
boxer shorts dipped in olive oil. Drinks gin, chops raw onions and
cries the way Egyptian women howl at weddings. I cry the way a
new-born elephant cries when its mother tries to kill it. I cry uncon-
trollably, pathologically like a patient detained in a mental asylum.
I cry steering the leaking raft of despair. On a masochistic sea. Same
as that painting, but without the wretched men in loincloths. Oh,
the dark clouds, the raging sky are there.
Hang on.
Only a fool survives as a nonstop thrill ride. The seedy bar, a
weirdo wearing chequered pants trembles his fingers attempting to
feel me up. I slide off the bar stool. Silly sings karaoke,
I’m just a flea on the windshield of life.

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Slow dances some sexy with a pimply Irish backpacker. Lepre-
chaun’s nose millimetres from my ear.
What’s yer number?
Invites me to his hostel for a friendly drink.
I shoot the breeze with a nub nub bird and his friend the gan-
dersnatch.
Sure kid. We all got troubles. Buck up. Take it on the chin.
Christ. These abandonment days. Body odour twists into yoga
giraffe bending over. Legs splay. Nose sticks to a smelly mat.
A crochet cap and rainbow sweater-vest, this ensemble at-
tending lectures with thousands of stranded women. Misery sitting
in the front row of outlandish.
Pierce your ears. Move to Norway. Everyone looks gorgeous. De-
light in stickiness between the thighs. Control gnashing of teeth and your
multiple personalities. Danger girl, thumbs pressing on throats. Pizza
night, wear crotch-less knickers, a red thong, go on suck his little man-
boobs. Buy a pet.
I select the cutest budgerigar. On sale fifty percent off. The pet
shop assistant tells me,
He talks.
Pearly beak the size of a teardrop chirrups,
Pretty boy wants a fuckbiscuit.
The extent of his vocabulary. And at the sight of me. Shit.
The budgie buries its head under a wing disapproving of distraught
women.
Late at night, I hear a loud thump. Windows rattle. Heart
palpitates a panic locks the bedroom door. I phone Pal.
Someone is breaking into the house.
He rushes over and races as if a scalded rabbit through every
room. His face set like a planet. Eyes avoiding me. My presence so
unbearable, does he think I plan to seduce him. Want. Well. Fat
chance.
We are not born killers, we are made. I blow my nose causes
this headache brain explosion. Pal calls it my ‘dotty mood.’
Ready set. The heavy scent of lilac perfume. I hide the best
sharpest kitchen knife behind my back. The gangsteress wielding

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a meat cleaver. Go. Oh Pal. Oh baby. He turns and I run at him.
Lunge a beatific saint smile. He pees himself and faints. Crazy the
careful psycho pushes half an inch of blade into his breastbone,
breaks the parchment skin, pulls it apart, whispering,

Love hurts.
He moans with pleasure. Does he get off on this. Bliss I lift
out his heart, be still my beating heart. Keep his heart on ice. But cu-
rious now. I slice his heart open. Urk from out of the left and right
ventricles drops the following. Straw, money, mush, a new lover,
golf balls, mess, the absence of love. Nothing of me in there there.
Do you feel like you’ve been stabbed?
Plenty of towels to mop up the. But nothing sticks. Apply a
sterile bandage. You can guess. A wabbercocky constructed of paper
pulp. Gulp. I light a match. That last time I see Pal. And babe, we
never say goodbye.
The budgerigar munches on seed. I open the cage door.
Kiss kiss I forgive you Pal.
The bright bully bird cocks its head.
You should have locked the door.
My heart full of him, bursts from my chest. I am broken. I am
broken. Nasty boy dismisses me with a defiant glower. Whoosh. The
bird flies out of the cage. Damn thing darts demented with freedom.
Hysterical flaps down the stairs. Frenzy craps on my rugs, drapes,
frills. Feathers storm through a window. Half open, half stuck, half
way. And dark outside. But still he skies around in the hungry si-
lence and chirps,
Don’t forget me.
Gone with the wind. I shiver. Tomorrow I will think of some
way to get him back.

151



Desert Bloom

By George Korolog

Some things were certain. When the end of the day had finally
drug itself down into something resembling a final, fiery conclu-
sion, everything would sigh with relief and move thankfully into the
shadows that were beginning to smudge the horizon, a perspective
stroked with a cool brush the color of reddish-brown ice. Things
that had been patiently biding time would burst forth, fully formed,
into the world in the blink of an eye, in the time that it took for you
to snap your head sharply and look behind to see if anything was
following. Something was always there. In the desert, you needed to
know that. You had to be ready for anything.

After the sun began the leisurely slide beneath the alkali, the
crusts of blisters would crumble and give way to the scent of flesh
moving deliberately through the dunes. From behind the wheel, I
would search into the distance for the neon and listen for the sweet
sounds of a jukebox. When I could finally hear the music coming
across the sand in waves that pushed the last of the heat up hard
against the bottom of the sky, I’d jerk the wheel, hit the brakes
and slide the car perfectly into place in the far corner of the gravel
parking lot.

She was alone, the only woman sitting at the bar, which had
been installed, I was told, in 1946, right after the war, made pos-
sible by a large donation from a P38 pilot who had managed to
survive twenty-seven combat missions. He was a local, and when
he returned to the States, said he just wanted a soft place to land, a

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place to lay his head, so he popped for the leather and wood, cut up
his flight jacket and had it sewn into the top left hand corner of the
bar. It was his special place. He sat on that same stool every night
for thirty years, until a few weeks ago, when he stopped coming
in. No one even bothered to ask why. He just disappeared into the
desert. We knew the end of the story. No one gets out alive. Odds
are one out of one. His name was Toby and he was gone. He’d been
coming here for a long time, but now he’s not. That’s it. There were
no other questions.

She was sitting on his stool, carefully rubbing the crossed eagles,
picking at the cluster of palms and sipping her beer. She looked up
sharply, tweaked her nose with two fingers and sniffed at the rank
odor of the last of three week old wildflowers that were sticking out
of the tops of the beer bottles that lined the back of the bar. Toby
had told the stories and everyone understood that pilots had photos
of their wives or girlfriends taped to the dashboard of their planes. It
was the last thing to see on the way down, something to focus on in
those final seconds. The bar did not post any photographs of wives
and girlfriend’s, they just stacked empties on the back shelf, with stale
puffs of white flowers for effect. Something to stare at on the way
down. I’d been staring, but staring at the string of blinking Christmas
lights strung above the painting of an Appaloosa brought to its knees
by three cowboys under a full moon. She snapped her finger against
the back of my head and asked me to buy her another cold one.

She never looked up or even asked me if I was interested. Told
me that she had done some things by the side of the road, and she
had done them often. When she was in the mood, she encouraged
them to do her in the shadows or in the rainbows that rose in the
early morning light. Then there were the special times, the really
exceptional times when she announced that she didn’t give a shit
about anything at all, and in those moments, she was more than
willing to lay it all down in broad daylight. Right there for everyone
to see. She craved bringing astonishment into the world. And she
could bring it. That was for certain.

She knew the kinds of smells that followed her. After she rose
from the sand, she sweltered with a stink that covered her clothes

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with dark scrapes of Apricot Mallow and Jimmy Weed. Once, they
were a comfort, a padding five good strides from the side of the
road, but now, even they had something to say and encouraged her
to spread her hips wide open for the stars, on her back by the side of
the arroyo, pressing into the sand and Brittle Brush, leaving a map
of welts and pricks on her ass, her mouth stuffed with Wild Carrot
and Creosote, the sweet scent of the desert bleeding out after a hasty
rainfall. Here, she belonged.

Shew was something of a mystery to me. I couldn’t understand
why I thought that fucking her would absolve either one of us. I
thought that if we could find a motel room by the side of the road
and split a pint, I could be persuasive enough for both of us. I’d ask
her to rub me into her sagging breasts and into her wide cracks. I
could wallow between them and wipe myself with her, even though
I knew I could never get any closer to the truth, even if I rubbed all
night. She would moan and cry, but that wasn’t going to be enough.
Not near enough. I wanted sainthood. I wanted to go down and
confess all of our sins right into her pussy. I would absolve her.
I would absolve us all. I would push her legs apart and make the
speech of my life.

At the end, we clicked final shots of Jack and walked out the
door, hand in hand. Across the street, beneath a thick crusty cluster
of yellowing moths, we bumped into the motel manager. He recog-
nized her immediately, smiled, offered me a discount and told me
that she would be doing more for me than I could ever dream of
doing for her. He turned and walked over to the front of the motel
to settle into the porch rocker to wait for sun to come up. He knew
what it was like to wait for the heat to rise with the sweet scent of
Devil’s Trumpet closing in, that was for certain.

George Korolog is a San Francisco Bay Area poet and writer whose
work has appeared in over 100 literary journals internationally, in-

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Adelaide Literary Awards Anthology 2018
cluding The Los Angeles Review, The Southern Indiana Review,
The Bookends Review, Tar River Review, Chiron Review, Pithead
Chapel and many others. He has twice been nominated for the
Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. His first book of po-
etry, “Collapsing Outside the Box,” was published by Aldrich Press
in November 2012, His second book of poems, “Raw String” was
published in October, 2013 by Finishing Line Press. He is working
on finishing his third book of poems, “The Little Truth.”

156

Dancing in Venice

By Peter Gelfan

Giuliana had the compartment to herself. She had chosen the seat
farthest from the window and facing the rear. While riding back-
wards made some people queasy, and most preferred being next to
the window, Giuliana had always liked this seat, where she could see
out both sides of the train and watch other passengers lurch down the
corridor.

Mother had insisted on packing her a lunch, and Giuliana
decided to eat it right away, while she was still alone, just to get the
chore out of the way. A hunk of bread, some cheese, a handful of
olives, a bottle of mineral water.

This was no have-a-look-to-see-if-you-like-it trip. Had she
tried to explain her feelings, her mother would either have pooh-
poohed them or argued with her. Giuliana alone knew that by the
time she got to Venice she would already have decided, sight-unseen,
whether to live there or not. And if she did decide to live there, she
wouldn’t first go back home, as Mother expected, but would ask that
her things be sent to her.

Milano shrank into the distance. Newish-looking but shabby
suburban apartments lined the tracks between the commuter sta-
tions her express sped through.

She’d read enough biographies of artists, musicians, and saints
to know that if you ever wanted to be really good at something,
you had to devote your life to it. Devoting your life to something
sounded an awful lot like school, only with death, rather than gradu-

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Adelaide Literary Awards Anthology 2018
ation, at the end of it, with maybe a brief retirement coming first like
a summer vacation for the old and feeble. But Giuliana wanted to
be one of the best. Not the best, which required a genius she didn’t
flatter herself with, but among the best, which was reachable with
talent and dedication.

Some of the greats had known all along what they’d wanted,
even as small children, and had never wavered. Others, having been
forced into a vocation by ambitious parents, had soon taken it on
as their own obsession. She was in neither situation. Mother en-
couraged but never pushed, and her own intentions were never so
powerful as to preclude doubts, distractions, and bouts of laziness.

Home was all right. She had her own room, her things, friends
she’d known for years. Venice would mean study or practice all
the time, teachers who were brilliant or just harsh, and roommates
perhaps far more talented than her who might not like the new girl.

Grownups had to think about jobs, apartments, divorces. Children
had to make lots of decisions, too, but small ones, even if they didn’t seem
so at the time. This was Giuliana’s first big one. It was hers alone.

When the train stopped at Verona, three young men got into
her compartment. They sat near the window, talking about a friend
of theirs and laughing. The one with lots of black hair and a face as
round as a cherub’s smiled at her. She smiled back then looked away.
The one next to the window and facing backwards had a narrow face
and barely glanced at her. The third one eyed her with the kind of
expression that still both excited and scared her even though she’d
been seeing it on men’s faces more and more over the past year. He
saw her watching and pulled his eyes away.

Just to stay out of trouble, she had to pay some attention to
Mother, her relatives, her teachers, and priests, but otherwise she
had little interest in adults. Something, though, gave her power over
men. It had to do with sex, that was no secret. It wasn’t something
she did on purpose, as some of the other girls did. In a strange way,
one that she would never try to explain in confession, she felt like a
saint, as if God were using her as a channel for His own power and
purpose—though more likely it was Mother Nature.

The train pulled out of Verona station.
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“Fifteen hundred words on the ideal art form,” the cherubic
one said, “and it’s supposed to be a philosophy class.”
The hawk-faced one gave him a dismissive wave with the back
of his hand. “You don’t need fifteen hundred words. Just one. Sculp-
ture.”
Sculpture? It was cold, and it didn’t move.
“Sculpture? You paint.”
“Only because marble’s too expensive.”
The one with the hungry eyes laughed. “One wrong move and
clunk, clatter, crash. Five tons of gravel.”
“Is there a right answer,” Hawk asked the cherub, “or are you
supposed to figure it out for yourself?”
“We’re supposed to defend our conclusions.”
“I didn’t know priests were required to think,” Hawk said.
Eyes laughed again. “Maybe it’s a trick question. Either you say
it’s God’s six-day wonder or you flunk out.”
“No,” Cherub said, “I think he meant by humans.”
Hawk shrugged. “Sculpture.”
“That’s not a factual statement,” Eyes said, “it’s just your
opinion. You could just as easily say, a symphony.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Hawk said. “You have to be educated to
understand a symphony. Even to see a two-dimensional painting as
three-dimensional. Literature, forget about. Sculpture has an imme-
diate impact on anyone.”
Eyes leaned forward and tapped Hawk on the forehead. “That
a moron can drool with chimpish delight over it makes it ideal? I
vote symphony.”
“I’m going to go with poetry,” Cherub said, “for the exact
opposite reason you say sculpture—it requires the most refined aes-
thetic sense to write or understand it.”
“Elitist,” Hawk said.
Dance. Why couldn’t they see it? A dancer turned herself into
a work of art. Anyone could appreciate dance, but at many different
levels.
Eyes fished a pad of paper out of his briefcase and tossed it
onto Cherub’s lap. “It’s a philosophy class, not a football match

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Adelaide Literary Awards Anthology 2018
where you scream your tonsils out for a team you’ve picked for no
good reason and which doesn’t give two farts for you. You need to
approach this in a methodical manner. List out all the attributes of
the ideal art form.”

Hawk looked out the window. “The voice of science.”
“Newton’s laws have more beauty than all of Rodin put to-
gether,” Eyes said.
Hawk snickered and continued to gaze out the window.
Giuliana watched vineyards slide into view. The vines kept
arranging themselves into rows, scattering again into unpatterned
chaos, then once more aligning themselves, only this time along a
different equator.
Cherub pulled a pen from his pocket. “Attributes…”
“Durable,” Eyes said.
“Like sculpture,” Hawk said, not turning from the window.
Cherub was writing. “And portable.”
Eyes nudged Hawk’s foot with his own. “Not like sculpture.”
They’re ignoring graceful, and alive, like dance.
“Reproducible,” Eyes said.
Hawk turned on him. “A work of art is unique. Copy it and
it loses that.”
“Now who’s being elitist? Should art only be enjoyed by the
rich few who can afford the unique? Besides, not even sculpture is
really durable. How much Classical Greek stuff do you see around?
If it had been reproduced in quantity, we’d still have it.”
“He’s right,” Cherub said. “Reproduction is the solution to
durability. Nothing lasts forever, or even very long. That’s why I vote
for poetry. The physical medium doesn’t matter, only the words, and
they can be reproduced in unlimited quantities and still exist after
the paintings and statues have become dust.”
“You like Greek statues?” Hawk asked.
“Sure,” Cherub said.
“How about Hesiod’s poems?”
“Who?”
“Theocritus? Sappho?”
“I can’t read Greek.”

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Hawk smirked at him. “I thought poetry outlived sculpture.”
Cherub crossed something off the list on his pad.
Hawk leaned forward. “Any artist knows that the most im-
portant thing about your medium is its price. You know what a
tube of oils costs these days? Or canvas? Forget marble. Can you
imagine some unknown composer trying to get his first symphony
performed?”
Cherub waved his pad around. “All a poet needs is a pencil
and paper.”
“And a publisher with dough,” Eyes said. He glanced at Gi-
uliana and caught her watching.
She looked away. All a dancer needed was her body. She didn’t
even have to have music.
“The performing arts are out,” Cherub said. “Too interpretive,
too subject to changing trends, too dependent on the availability of
performers and performance space.”
If you danced for yourself, wasn’t that still art? Maybe, but
she’d always imagined an audience, a stage, an orchestra.
“Except for music,” Eyes said. “You can record that.”
Hawk held his nose. “Even a CD stinks in comparison to a
live performance.”
“We’ll have the technology for near-perfect recording within
the next ten years,” Eyes said. “And holograms for plays and ballet.”
Finally. A mention of dance.
“Isn’t this paper supposed to be about the real world?” Hawk
asked.
“He said we could make up an art form if we wanted.”
Mother said Giuliana could finish school then go to university,
or concentrate on dance as long as she also became qualified to teach
it. Anything else would be fantasy.
Eyes bounced on his seat. “Let’s get down to business.”
“Start with raw materials,” Hawk said. “Cheap and plenty of
it. Dirt, air, water, grass, flowers, bugs.”
“And cheap performance or exhibition space,” Eyes said. “The
great outdoors. You can stop and look at it, or listen to it, or what-
ever it does, on your way to work.”

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“No middlemen,” Hawk said. “Agents, promoters, gallery
owners, leeches like that.”
That’s what Mother had said, a performer is at the mercy of
mercenaries.
Cherub looked at his notes. “Brilliant. We’ve come up with
kids making sand castles on the beach.”
Or in the air, as Mother would say.
“That’s probably about right,” Hawk said.
Eyes shook his head. “Sand castles wash away with the tide.
What about reproduction and distribution?”
“Your holograms take care of that,” Cherub said.
“Not if we want cheap.”
“And no middleman,” Hawk added.
Small farms flashed by. In the distance a haze hung over a
large town. The refreshment cart rolled up to the door. The young
men bought sandwiches and fruit drinks. For a moment Eyes
looked like he might offer to buy her something, but he didn’t.
She wondered what she would have said. For a while the three
men ate in silence.
When he’d finished eating, Cherub picked up his pad again
and looked over his notes. “How do you plentifully reproduce and
distribute a work of art without being subject to performer inter-
pretation, mechanical inaccuracy, linguistic changes, or commerce?
That’s where we’ve gotten to.”
“They have machines that build machines,” Eyes said. “Your
work of art would have to be able to build another of itself, which
would then build another of itself, and so on.”
Hawk gestured with his juice bottle toward the compartment
wall in front of him. “I can see it now. They come into the Louvre
one morning and find the Mona Lisa has calved a second Mona
Lisa, which then crawled to another wall and hung herself up. The
next day there’s four of them. In a year you can’t walk down the
streets of Paris without tripping over them. I don’t even like the
Mona Lisa.”
Eyes laughed. “That’s because your girlfriends always look like
Picassos.”

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“Suppose it didn’t reproduce itself exactly,” Cherub said, “but
with little variations. Not so much that you wouldn’t recognize it as
the Mona Lisa, but enough so that you would look at each one. This
one’s smile is a little different, that one’s looking at something—”
“I thought you wanted accuracy,” Hawk said. “Now you’re
talking about interpretation.”
“But as part of the artist’s original concept, not someone else’s.
Like a jazz musician who never plays his own composition the same
way twice. And doesn’t the element of chance enter into any work
of art?”
Mother said life was risky enough without taking chances.
The train stopped at a station. Several people walked past in the
corridor and looked in, but no one came into their compartment.
Soon they were moving again.
Eyes looked at her again for a moment, this time not being
sneaky about it.
“I still think,” he said, “that a beautiful scientific discovery
or theory is a work of art. It never deteriorates because every time
someone hears about it they reproduce it in their own mind. If they
get it wrong, it dies out with them. If they improve upon it and pass
it on, it replaces the older, less evolved version. Perfect Darwin, but
without the blood and guts.”
“Doesn’t count,” Hawk said. “Science is based on truth, not
beauty.”
“Not so. Even though we know they’re not true, we still appre-
ciate the theories of Copernicus for their beauty.”
“But only because they came closer to the truth than previous
ideas,” Hawk said. “Art is beauty. Even when it’s ugly. Truth has
nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe science is beautiful,” Cherub said, “because it helps us
see God’s creation, which is beautiful.”
Eyes laughed. “Spoken like a true priest. Are you really going
to give up women? And how did God butt into this?”
“Then it’s not science itself that’s beautiful,” Hawk said.
“Okay, forget science,” Cherub said. “Here’s what we’ve got.
Raw materials—dirt and air and stuff. Outdoor exhibition space.

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Reproduces and transports itself according to the artist’s built-in
instructions. Free, no middleman.”

That didn’t sound at all like dance. Was dance so limited, or
limiting? Surely less so than painting or sculpture. But it didn’t last
long, and took place in a small space, and you hoped an audience
would come…but dance was still the best.

And you didn’t have to restrict yourself to making a work of
art out of your body, you could make your whole life a work of art.
Your home, your friends, your clothes, love, all could be a dance.
The dance of life. She knew it was a romantic, girlish idea, but she
liked it anyway.

Eyes was looking at her again. “What do you think?”
She felt herself flush, just a little, and hoped they wouldn’t
notice.
“I like dance.”
“A dancer. I knew it.” He wiped the mouth of his juice bottle
and held it out to her. She shook her head.
Cherub slapped his notes with the back of his fingers. “How
does dance fit in with all of this?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I like it.”
All three boys laughed.
“There’s your ideal art form,” Hawk said. “Whatever turns
you on.”
They laughed some more. Giuliana smiled along with them,
sure they weren’t laughing at her in any mean way.
The train slowed down, then stopped at Mestre. The three boys
got up to leave. On their way out, Cherub smiled at her, Eyes looked
at her legs, and Hawk ignored her. She had the compartment to
herself again.
A bird had built a nest just under the station roof. Someone
had planted flowers in boxes under the windows. A cat was grooming
herself on a corner of the platform. The train started to move.
Giuliana imagined leaping to the platform in front of the boys
and gesturing like a dancer. Look! Look at the birds, the flowers, the
cat, and at the trees, the grapevines, the people—all so alike and so
unique. You were right about your ideal art form.

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The train was on the causeway now. The sea sparkled on either
side of her. Across the lagoon, the spires and muted colors of Venice
shimmered in the sun. She would like it here.
Peter Gelfan is a novelist, screenwriter, and freelance book editor
who lives in New York City. His new novel, Monkey Temple, will
be published by Adelaide Books in 2019. His previous novel is
Found Objects.

165



Rowley Road

By Mary Ann Presman

“Frank!” Kate stomps around in her big old farmhouse kitchen hol-
lering for her son. “Frank!” She accompanies this with a thumping
of the broom handle on the kitchen ceiling, which happens to be the
floor of Frank’s bedroom immediately above. “C’mon, Frank! Gotta
get a move on!” More stomping, hollering, thumping of the broom
handle until finally the yawning teenager makes his way down the
steep stairs that open into the kitchen.

“I’m up, Ma. You can stop yelling.” Frank pulls his jacket off
one of the hooks by the back door and heads out to the barn in the
still dark morning. He’ll do the milking and tend to the cows; she’ll
take care of feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs. Milk and
eggs are important sources of income in a budget with razor-thin
margins for profit and loss. Her husband died seven years ago, in
1941, after a long illness. It hasn’t been easy with just the one boy
for help on this 94-acres of rolling hills—but Kate is determined to
make a go of it.

Frank was just a skinny ten-year-old when Tom died; now he’s
tall and lanky—a strong, able-bodied young man about to graduate
from high school. After he finishes in the barn, he returns to the
house to wash up and then drive their dark blue Ford into town for
a full day of classes, followed by football practice, before returning
to the Rowley Road farm for evening chores.

Kate wishes he’d just come right home after his last class,
but he loves football—he’s good at it—and so he talked her into

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letting him play last year when he was just a junior. He’s pretty
pooped by the time he gets home, so he doesn’t do any extra work
to help out, just falls into bed after he’s done with his night chores
and had his supper. The good thing is, he’s so tired he doesn’t have
the energy to chase around with his buddies or be messing with
any of the young girls that are lolly-gagging after him at those
football games.

At least, that’s the way it goes on week nights. The weekends
are a different story. On Saturday nights, he drops her off with
the crate of eggs at Genz’ General Store and then drives around,
making the loop down Main Street several times, sometimes with
one or two of his buddies and sometimes alone. He’s always alone
when he picks Kate up to take her home after she’s done with
her shopping, but then he goes out again and Lord knows what
he’s up to. She used to stay up waiting for him to come home—
washing eggs or some other chore—but she started nodding off
over her work and figured it didn’t make much sense for both of
them to stay up so late. She can only hope and pray he stays out
of trouble.

And he does. Even after high school, Frank puts in a full week
of hard labor on the farm and then goes out on Saturday night to
play pool with James and Davey, drink lots of beer, and still make
it safely home. Although getting him up in the morning gets more
difficult every year. There are a couple of Sunday mornings when
Kate has to go out and milk the cows herself before she gets cleaned
up and goes into town for Mass.

She goes through a spell of lighting votive candles every week
when Frank up and joins the Army in 1951. “How am I supposed
to manage?” she asks, when he came home from over to Dubuque
and announces that he’s enlisted.

“Same way you did right after Dad died,” he tells her. “Hire
someone. Ask the Thompson boy down the road to help out—he
can use the extra money.”

“That’ll cost me money I can ill afford.”
“I’ll send you most of what I get from Uncle Sam,” he says. “I
won’t need much anyhow.”

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As it ends up, he never gets shipped out to Korea—spends his
time at Fort Leonard Wood and in Georgia. After two years, he’s
home again and they fall into the familiar division of chores.
She begins to worry when he starts seeing this one girl on a
regular basis. Takes her dancing at the Palace up on the highway
every Saturday night. Her name is Amy—she figures this out when
she hears him whistling “Once In Love With Amy,” that Ray Bolger
tune, when he’s shaving at the kitchen sink. She pretends not to
notice, can only hope that the romance will fizzle out.
They never talk about it. What would happen if he decides he
wants to get married? Kate figures the new bride would move in with
them—but that’s not something she’d look forward to. Another
woman in her kitchen? And she didn’t like imagining them in bed
together in that room right over her head.
“I hear Frank has a girlfriend,” Adella Vincent says as she settles
her tall spindly self next to Kate at the St. Theresa’s Altar & Rosary
Society card party. Busybody.
“You know more than I do,” Kate responds.
“That Amy Tranel is a very pretty girl.”
“Is that so?”
“You haven’t met her?” Adella seems surprised.
“Can’t say that I have. But I think I know her folks—don’t
they belong over to St. Patrick’s?” Kate points out they are not of
this parish.
“How are the raspberries at your place this summer?” Lu-
cille Krameier asks. Lucille doesn’t like controversy and has Adella
pegged as a troublemaker. She’s taking a break from her duties as
rectory housekeeper for an afternoon of euchre.
“Raspberries are good.” Kate smiles at Lucille. “I’ll be dropping
some off Sunday morning when I come in for Mass.”
The Amy thing goes on for months. Nary a word is spoken—
Kate isn’t even sure Frank is aware that she knows about Amy. If
there is anything to know. She isn’t about to ask.
They go about their business—Kate tending to the chickens
and Frank taking care of milking the cows and messing with the
pigs. He seems happy spending his days out in the barn, and in the

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fields, handling almost all of the outside work. Except for the garden;
Kate still plants and hoes and picks the beans and the sweet corn,
sweating to beat the band as she hauls her hefty self up and down
the ripening rows. When she has a full day in the garden, she has to
let some of the housework slide—the extra bedroom upstairs doesn’t
get dusted that week. But mostly she keeps the big old two-story spic
and span, even though it’s more of an effort every year. She finds
herself panting as she lugs the vacuum cleaner upstairs and decides
she really doesn’t need that—a dust mop will do. She’d like to see
some skinny little thing take care of this big house. She guesses Amy
is skinny—they all are these days.

So she is kind of surprised when she again runs into Adella
Vincent—this time at Genz’ one Saturday night. Adella grabs her by
the arm and says, “There’s someone you really must meet.”

Before Kate can escape, Adella drags her around the end of the
canned goods and stops in front of a sturdy redhaired girl who is
going through a stack of jeans.

“You two should know each other,” Adella proclaims. “Kate,
this is Amy Tranel. Amy, this is Kate, Frank’s mother.”

Amy smiles and sticks out her hand, “I’m so pleased to finally
meet you! I’ve been pestering Frank to introduce us for months.”

“You’re heavier than I thought you’d be,” Kate announces and
pushes by her to the back of the store to check on her egg money
account, leaving Amy standing there with her hand stuck out.

Adella touches Amy’s arm as tears well in the eyes of the
shocked young woman. “She’s like that, pay her no mind.”

The next morning when Kate gets home from Mass, Frank is
sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. “What the hell did
you say to Amy last night at Genz’ store?”

“There’s no need for that kind of talk on a Sunday.” Kate takes
off her hat and walks from the kitchen to hang her hat on the hall
tree in the dining room.

Frank follows her. “Ma! What the hell did you say to her?”
Kate turns to her son. “I honestly don’t remember. That Adella
Vincent person was introducing us so sudden-like.” And she doesn’t
remember. What is he so fired up about?

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“Well, whatever it was, she wants nothing to do with me now.”
“You can’t be serious.” Kate walks past him back into the
kitchen and pours herself a cup of coffee.
“Oh, I’m serious. That’s the very reason I never brought her over
here to meet you. I just knew you’d say something that’d scare her
away.”
“Why would I do that?”
He stops and glares at her. “I don’t know, Ma. Why would you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t do any such thing.” She plops noisily into her
chair at the table. “I was so surprised, meeting her all sudden-like.”
“Right.” Frank paces the floor on the other side of the table.
“Bring her around. You’ll see I can be nice to her.”
“Forget it, Ma. It’s over between Amy and me. She said she
can’t imagine having to measure up to…” He lets his words fall
away.
“Well, if that’s the case, maybe it’s for the best,” Kate specu-
lates matter-of-factly.
“You just don’t get it, do you, Ma? There’s not gonna be any girl
good enough.” He runs his hand through his thick dark hair in frus-
tration. “You’d like me to be a bachelor the rest of my days, wouldn’t
you?”
“Would that be so bad? Look at your Uncle Charlie—he was
a happy-go-lucky guy.”
“Uncle Charlie was a fairy, Ma.”
“He was not.” Kate glares at her son. “Don’t you be saying
stuff like that.”
“Forget it!” Frank storms out of the kitchen, letting the screen
door bounce a couple of times behind him.
Kate looks into her coffee cup. “He’ll calm down before
supper,” she says.
But Frank isn’t himself for a couple of weeks. He barely speaks
to her, only when absolutely necessary and wears a surly look on his
face. She even makes him a banana cream pie, which she hasn’t made
in ages. She tries to remember how long it has been—maybe after
her sister-in-law’s funeral five years ago? Edna had been the last of
her siblings or their spouses, only Kate is left.

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“So many people dying. Heaven must be getting to be a pretty
crowded place,” Lucille observes when Kate shares her banana cream
pie story at the next Altar and Rosary Society card party.
“Oh, I’m not so sure Edna made it—she was awful uppity.
Thought she was better than us farm folk, her being the wife of the
pharmacist and all.”
“You’d better be careful how you talk, Kate.” Lucille smiles and
pats her friend’s hand. “You might end up in town yourself—might
not be able to be ‘farm folk’ for the rest of your life.”
“Of course I can. Why wouldn’t I?
“Well, the work has to be very difficult for you. Wouldn’t you
want to move someplace where you could put your feet up and take
a well-deserved rest?”
Kate looks at Lucille as if she has bats in her belfry. “I never
heard of such an idea! I’ll be working in my garden and taking care of
my chickens til I keel over. Besides, Frank couldn’t do all the outside
work and take care of the house.”
“Well, Frank might want to get married…”
“I don’t see as any of this is your business!”
Lucille backpedals. “You’re right, of course. Sorry. I didn’t
mean to horn in—but I get worried about you trying to do too
much at your age.”
“I’m not that much older than you and you take care of the
priest’s house seven days a week.”
“Right.” Lucille decides to let this go—knowing full well she is
at least fifteen years younger than Kate. “Let’s find a table and play
some cards, shall we?”
Kate figures she had made herself clear until the Tuesday
afternoon after Friday’s card party. Here comes Father Bergen,
driving in through the open gate and going to the front door. He’s
been St. Theresa’s parish priest for a couple of years and this is his
first personal visit to their Rowley Road farm, so he doesn’t know
enough to come to the back porch door, but knocks politely at the
front door.
Kate walks from the kitchen through the dining room and then
the living room, wondering all the while what prompted this visit.

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Lucille spoke highly of the genial priest but hadn’t mentioned that
he was making courtesy calls.

“Good afternoon, Father. What brings you out this way?”
“Hello, Kate, hope I’m not disturbing you. I’m making a few
visits to parishioners here and there—I don’t think I’ve ever been
to your place.”
“No, sorry I haven’t invited you for dinner or anything, Father.
Come in.” Kate opens the screen door and the priest steps in. “It’s
only me and Frank here and we have a lot of work. Keeps us busy.
We’re not much for entertaining.”
“Oh, I don’t expect that from you.” He looks around the living
room. “This is a nice place. Big. I can see that it would keep you
quite busy.”
Kate is glad she dusted the downstairs that morning. “Can I get
you a glass of iced tea, Father? Or water?” She wipes her hands on
her apron, wishes she had taken if off before she answered the door.
“No, I’m good—just had my lunch.” He takes another step in
and smiles at Kate. “Perhaps we could sit for a few minutes?”
“Oh, forgive me, Father! Of course, please sit.” Kate steps back
and motions to the sofa. “Here. Sit here, Father. It’s comfortable.”
“Thanks.” The priest settles back onto the sofa, Kate sits in the
armchair next to it. Father Bergen leans forward suddenly, remem-
bering—“I wanted to thank you, too, for those delicious raspberries
you dropped off at the rectory a few weeks ago. Lucille told me they
came from you.”
Aha. That’s why he’s here. “There are still some on the bushes
back along the alfalfa, Father. And I have a box in the fridge that I
picked yesterday—you can take them back with you.”
“Oh, no…I wouldn’t dream of taking your one box of berries.”
“It’s okay. I can pick some more tomorrow.”
The priest settles back into the sofa again. “It must be nice,
being able to walk out your door and have fresh sweet berries right
there for the picking.”
“Well, as I said—they’re out by the alfalfa, so it’s a bit of a hike
to get to them.” Kate notes the priest’s carefully shined shoes. “But
a blessing all the same, and no real bother.”

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“It’s a good life you have here, then?” he asks.
“I thank the Lord every day,” Kate reports. Father Bergen
smiles and nods. “Though I must admit I’m saying my prayers sit-
ting on the edge of my bed these days, it’s a little difficult getting
down on my knees.”
“Ah? I imagine it is. We all reach that stage when we are not
able to do the things we were in our youth.” He casually pulls at his
ear as if mulling over this thought for a moment. “So it’s a wonder
to me, then, that you are able to do all the work of a woman half
your age. Outside in your garden? And here in this big house? How
do you manage that?”
Kate’s eyes narrow. “Did Lucille send you out here to give me
a talking to?”
At least this priest has the decency to blush. And he isn’t going
to lie to her—“Well, she did mention that she wondered about your
situation here.” He gives a large wave of his hand to indicate the
house and farm. “Your friends are concerned about you. And as
your priest, I care about you—you’re one of the stalwart members
of our parish.”
“It’s not like I’m here all alone. My son Frank is out there
mowing alfalfa now.”
“Yes, Frank. And how old is he now?”
“He’s thirty-four.”
“I’m sure you rely on him a great deal.” The priest pauses, then
barreled forward: “But won’t he be wanting to get married and start
his own family one of these days?”
“He’s welcome to do that. There’s no one stopping him.” Kate
fools with the apron in her lap, smoothing imaginary wrinkles away.
“But would he bring his bride to live here? With you?” He eyes her
intently. “How would you feel about that? A stranger in your kitchen?
And then, very likely, some noisy little children running in and out?”
Kate stands. “I appreciate your concern, Father, but we’re
managing quite nicely, thank you. I’ll get you that box of berries.”
Father Bergen gets up and reaches out to stop Kate. “No, no.
I don’t need your berries. Thanks just the same. You keep them—
make Frank a pie.”

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Kate looks at him, stone-faced.
“I’ll be taking my leave, then.” He moves toward the door,
stops. “But these are things you need to be thinking about, Kate.
For your own good, and for Frank’s.”
“Goodbye, Father.”
Kate isn’t about to be bothered by any such thoughts. And the
next Sunday, she goes to Mass over at St. Patrick’s to see if maybe
that priest has any more sense. At least, that housekeeper won’t be
sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong. Kate doesn’t even know
the St. Patrick’s housekeeper.
Frank is a genial person—takes after his father, who could
charm the birds out of the trees. So, while he struggles with his
mother’s decided lack of charm, he goes on day after day, week
after week, doing his chores. Over the next couple of years, he dates
a few women—but never even thinks of bringing them around to
meet Ma. Purposely chooses young women who are from Gratiot or
Warren or Cuba City—who are not likely to know Kate.
Until he meets Carolyn from Dickeyville. He falls hard.
Kate is totally unaware. She’s washing the last of the eggs to
take to Genz’s one Saturday night, carefully fitting them into the
crate. Frank is sitting in the chair by the radio, listening to the WGN
Barn Dance, waiting for his mother to finish so they can get going to
town. He has something important he wants to talk to her about and
he figures if he gets her in the car, she can’t escape. If he brought it
up here, she’d storm off into the other room. Or, more likely, he’d
be the one slamming out the door. That’s the way most of these
discussions ended.
So when they’re in the Ford and on their way to town, he asks:
“Ma, have you heard about the new Senior Living place they’re
opening up next to the hospital?”
“Heard about it. Not really interested.”
“They’re having an Open House next Thursday afternoon. I
thought we might go take a look.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be looking into Senior Living?”
“Ma, you know I’m not suggesting we look at it for me.”
“Well, then, I don’t see any point. I’m happy right where I am.”

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“But, Ma, you can’t live on the farm forever…”
“I’d like to know why not!” she interrupted.
They aren’t quite into town, but Frank pulls over and parks,
turns off the ignition. “There’s this girl—Carolyn. I love her, Ma,
and I want to get married.”
“So, get married.” Kate turns to look out the car window. “No-
body says you can’t get married.” She turns to look at him again.
“Bring this Carolyn person to the farm. It’d be good to have some
help.”
“You know and I know that’d never work.” “Here’s the deal,
Ma. Either you move, or I move. I can start farming up at Caro-
lyn’s uncle’s place near Dickeyville—he’s been having lots of health
problems lately and I’m thinking he would be willing to sell me the
place.”
“But I’m not having any health problems. I’m not ready to
move into some old folks’ home. Why can’t we go on the way we’ve
been doing?”
Frank takes a deep breath. “Carolyn’s pregnant, Ma.”
“Pregnant?”
“Yup. We want to get married as soon as possible.”
She looks at him as if she’s trying to figure out if he’s making
this stuff up.
“Take me home,” she directs him.
“Home? But what about the eggs?”
“You can take them in to Genz’s. You and what’s-her-name…”
“Carolyn.”
“You two’ll be doing all the chores. You don’t need me to take
the eggs in. Might as well get used to it.” She turns and looks out
the window again. “Take me home.”
“Ma..” he pleads.
“Now.”
So Frank takes his mother home. He goes back into town and
drops off the eggs, then goes to pick up Carolyn. They have some
supper at the Village Bar outside Cuba City and then, because Car-
olyn isn’t feeling all that well, call it a night.

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Frank is relieved to find his mother hasn’t burned the house
down, or shot up the windows, or something else to indicate her
displeasure. He’s surprised to find her still up, sitting at the kitchen
table with a bunch of papers in front of her.
“This is the deed to the place, and records of our expenses for
the last couple of years. We might need to get ahold of a lawyer to
sign things over.”
He almost feels sorry for her. Almost.
“And one more thing.” Her jaw is firmly set. “You’d better get
yourself to Confession.”
“Right.” He heads upstairs to bed. He’s said all he has to say.
And he realizes that for the first time in his thirty-six years, he’s won
an argument with his mother.
Mary Ann Presman is an author of short stories and a playwright,
retired after a long career as an advertising copywriter, radio disk
jockey, and TV weather person. She is nurtured by two writing
groups—one in Tucson led by Meg Park, and the other in Galena,
Illinois, led by Peggy Stortz. Mary Ann is in a “mixed marriage”—
her husband Bob is a fan of the Chicago White Sox, she is an avid
fan of the Cubs. They have two happily married adult children, and
one fabulous grandson.

177



Evangeline and the Wrestlers

By Deborah Nedelman

Spikes of sunlight pierced Evie Rose’s thin jacket and pinned her
her feet to the sidewalk.

Her eyes narrowed the world to what she could see through
the wide window of the wrestling gym: two combatants struggling
to outmaneuver one another. Their power, their visible power, in
apparent balance.

Evie Rose absorbed the movements of the grappling men—
their intense focus on one another, their arms locked in intimate
embrace, sweat gilding their brows. She studied how lightly they
shifted their feet and how they torqued their bodies, calculating
their opponent’s weakness. She peered into their faces. In one, Evie
recognized a minute shift, a shock of fear trembling through him.
Her own body stiffened, bracing for danger.

The referee’s whistle released the men and they stepped away
from one another. Evie Rose exhaled.

Then her brain began sending signals to her body: “Time to
go. Cort’s waiting.”

But Evie Rose did not move until the jostle of a bag-laden
woman passing behind awoke her to her surroundings. The slam of a
car door, the rumble and wheeze of a bus slowing to a stop. Her gaze
finally gave way and she looked down at her feet. She recognized
the worn bulge on the outside of her left shoe where the leather had
conformed to the shape of her bunion. Tentatively she lifted her
heels and rose up onto her toes; she took a couple of dancing steps

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in the manner of the men in the window. She clenched, unclenched
the coils of her fists. She bit hard on her back teeth.

Letting out a stale sigh, Evie stretched her fingers wide. Her
nails were chewed to the quick; the soft flesh at the tips of her fingers
was raw.

Finally, she turned her back to the window. Repositioning the
frayed strap of her purse on her shoulder, she inhaled the city per-
fume of diesel exhaust and smog; then she walked away from the
sight of men engaged in physical struggle.

Where was she? Evie needed to get back home. She needed to
hurry.

She’d wasted too much time standing there like an idiot. When
she got home Cort’s face would be hard; he would scream at her.
“Damn it, Evie!” His voice echoed in her mind as she rushed down
the street. “Where the hell have you been? Who have you been flirting
with?”

Cort couldn’t help that he loved her and wanted her to himself.
He needed her. Since he lost this last job, he needed her even more.
She repeated these words to herself, mantra-like.

Evie Rose ran three blocks to the store.
The glass door of City Foods automatically swung open to
welcome her. She picked up a green plastic basket and stood a mo-
ment catching her breath. Then she tightened her jaw and headed
for the cereal aisle.
Evie put a box of Cort’s favorite Crispy Coco Puffs in the
basket. She’d manage without her Cheerios for another week.
Milk—whole, none of that “filthy blue crap” she’d brought home
once. Lesson learned. Then to the freezer section. It was expensive
and gave her heartburn, but Cort loved his frozen pepperoni pizza.
She hesitated by the beer aisle; she couldn’t go home without it.
Calculating totals in her head, Evie pulled her wallet out of her
purse, counted.
At the check stand, she held her hand out for the few coins of
change, picked up the brown paper bag in one hand and the six-pack in
the other. She hesitated as she exited the store, then turned right, going
the longer way, the way that did not take her past the wrestling gym.

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The apartment smelled like it always did–mold mixed with
the tang of Cort’s aftershave. Evie had gotten used to stepping over
the loose threads in the carpet and no longer scrubbed the yellowed
linoleum on the kitchen floor.
Cort stood in the bedroom doorway, shirtless. Evie recognized
the impatience of his muscled arms; her body threatened to betray
her with a longing flush. She turned her head, erasing him from her
line of sight.
Behind him a TV announcer was screaming “The Bayonne
Bruiser is over the ropes again! He’s taking this battle into the stands!”
Cort loved those fake wrestlers. Evie bit her lip.
“Where the hell have you been?” Cort’s voice echoed the scene
that had played in her head.
“The lines were long. Sorry. Got your pizza and your Coco
Puffs.” Offering a pleading smile, she set the beer and the groceries
on the counter. Cort stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans
and took a few deliberate steps until he stood in front of her. “I’m
late for work,” she said and started for the door.
He put an arm out to block her way. He moved up tight,
pushing her against the kitchen counter, and stood there, his face so
close all she could see was the line of his pink lips.
Evie knew better than to speak. The heat of his body engulfed
her. She closed her eyes.
Cort’s gripped her short curls. He jerked her head back and
stared down at her. “You need to move faster, then, don’t you?” he
whispered.
He held her there a long moment. The announcer shouted from
the bedroom “It’s pandemonium here, folks! The crowd is going
crazy!”
Cort opened his hand and released her. Evie pushed herself up
and walked slowly to the door. She did not look back at him. She took
hold of the doorknob and turned it, pulled the door open, and stepped
out. She closed the door behind her and, slowly, let her breath out.



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In the back of The Second Time Around, by the loading dock,
Martha was waiting to take her break. Also waiting were the piles
of discarded clothes, smelling of other people’s sweat and of rich
perfume and cigarettes. Plastic garbage bags overstuffed with dona-
tions leaned against the wall of the building. Martha and Evie shared
the job of sorting, finding the pieces with holes and ugly stains—
the ones too ruined for another go round—and pulling them from
the stack. These, Evie knew, were headed for pulping; they’d be
ground into shreds and made into cheap carpeting to be walked
over, stomped on.

As soon as Evie stepped onto the loading dock, Martha headed
down the concrete steps to the driveway. She leaned against a utility
pole and pulled a Bic from her pocket. Waving an unlit cigarette,
Martha teased her friend. “You know how I worry when you’re late,
Evie.”

“Yeah. I slept in.”
Martha caught the sarcasm in Evie’s voice, shrugged.
The two women had met the first night Evie spent in the
shelter, the time she tried to leave Cort. Martha had looked her new
roommate over and concluded, “Well, it’s about time you got away
from that dirt bag. Good for you.”
Evie was stunned at this woman’s clairvoyance, her ability to
voice exactly what Evie was feeling. But she soon realized Martha’s
greeting was generic and universally comforting to any woman who
found her way to that desperate sanctuary.
It hadn’t been long before Cort tracked Evie down. He stood
outside the thrift store window; his hands shook as he lit a cigarette.
When it came down to it, she was relieved by his offer of another
chance. A few days after she returned, he made sure she understood:
if she ever tried to leave again, he would go to the police and tell
what he knew.
“I walked past a wrestling gym this morning.” Evie told
Martha. Those men moving against each other, the sensation of her
own muscles twitching in sympathy—Evie wanted to erase it all. She
squeezed her eyes shut, but the images stayed vivid.

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Martha took a deep drag on her cigarette. “Yeah? That one on
Folsom? I always want to stand there and watch those guys, but it
feels creepy.”
Evie nudged a bag with the toe of her shoe. “I was in a daze,
kinda. That gym’s blocks away from where I was going. Had to race
to get to the store and back home.”
Martha stared up at her friend, exhaled and squinted her eyes
against the smoke. “You ok?”
“Cort watches that TV wrestling. Those jerks—pretending to
be dangerous.” She gave the bag another shove. “But those guys in
the window were different.”
Martha grinned. “Yeah.”
Evie knew what Martha was thinking, but it wasn’t the sexuality
that had held her on the street, staring. It was the gut-clench of fear.



At five years old, Evie Rose pressed the heels of her hands against her
ears and hummed Baa Baa Black Sheep as her father struck his fist
against his open palm and threat leaked from his mouth. At ten, she
screamed at her father to “Stop it! Stop it!” and then she ran to the
neighbors in her bleach-blotched Minnie Mouse shirt and her bare
feet. Her father dragged her home and tormented her with his silent
fury and the calloused palms of his grasping hands. At thirteen, Evie
begged her mother to leave. By fifteen she’d given up and lied about
her age to get a job waiting tables at a diner; she worked the late shift.

Her mother, whose name was Evangeline, hid herself beneath
faded housedresses with long sleeves; her red, swollen hands were
never still. She took comfort from stolen cigarettes, smoked in
hidden corners. This Evangeline had given up on fear long before
her daughter was born; numb to her own adrenalin she was more
like a worm than like the mouse that her husband insisted she was.
When Dwayne slapped her, the weight of his thick ring clunking
against her cheekbone, she dropped to the floor and rolled onto
her stomach; in the first year of their relationship she had learned
the danger of looking him in the eye. Back then, it was worth a few

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bruises to get the tender, tear-filled apologies the next day, to hear
him swear to never hurt her again. No one had ever spoken to her
with such love before she met Dwayne.

The baby was born, and Evangeline named her Evangeline
Rose; she called her Rosie, but Dwayne called her Evil.

He took photos of his darling girl to the office; buddies patted
his back and took him out for drinks.

When Dwayne pinned his fifteen-year-old daughter to the
wall and whispered, “filthy whore,” his spit soaking into her shirt,
Evangeline watched from the doorway, tears on her cheeks, a nico-
tine-stained finger pressed hard against her lips. Evie Rose did not
say a word; she kept her eyes down and trembled until her father
released her.

Back then, when Evie showed up at the diner for her shift, Claudia,
the cook who wore her gray hair pulled into a bun on top of her head,
would smile and ask, “How’s my sweet Evie Rose this fine day?”

Every day was fine in Claudia’s world; most days Evie pre-
tended she lived in that same world, replying “Fine, thank you.”

At sixteen Evie began stowing her tip money in a tampon box.
One night, when the box had gotten too small, she brought
her savings with her to work. To Claudia’s greeting she answered,
“I’m not going back there.”
In the story Evie Rose told Claudia, the police refused to do
anything. And her mother couldn’t keep her safe. The fact was Evie
had never called the cops, never would. Her mother had begged her
not to. “They’ll take him away and what will I do? We’d lose the
house, everything.”
But Evie Rose knew it wouldn’t matter anyway; her father had
a way with words. People believed he was a good guy.
Claudia lost her smile. “Well, sweetie, if you want, you can
stay with me. He’ll probably come here first thing looking for you,
but I’m a good shot.”
A laugh, sharp and surprising, burst from Evie’s mouth.
“I’m not kidding, sweetie.” Then Claudia pointed her wrinkled
index finger at the door and cocked her thumb. “Ker pow! And it’s
all over. My pleasure.”

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Evie bit her lips together hard to stop the wild jostling inside
her. The laughter rocked her body until tears streamed down her face.



Claudia had a brother who owned a hotel on the coast about 100
miles south. She could get Evie a job, a room with the other maids.
Her brother could be kind of gruff, but he wasn’t a bad guy.

Evie Rose was fine with gruff.
In her new job, she scrubbed toilets and changed sheets and
felt safe. Claudia’s brother had a son, Cort, who also worked at the
hotel, sweeping the hallways and keeping an eye on what the girls
were doing.
The first time she ran into Cort in the narrow passage be-
tween the laundry and the kitchen, Evie Rose could feel his dark
eyes roving over her body. His funny, lopsided grin made her put a
hand out to steady herself.
“Excuse me,” was all he said. A gentleman. Then he turned
and walked away from her. He wore cowboy boots with heels that
announced his step and made his hips move like an invitation. Evie
pictured dancing with him, twirling under his arm, sliding her body
against his, her feet following those boots.
She did her work and watched for him. She knew when he’d
been in a room ahead of her–the sharp sweetness of his aftershave
set off a prickling under her skin.
He learned her name, but did not use it often. When he caught
her with her arms full of dirty sheets, he smiled and pushed past her
a little too close. He whispered into her hair, “Nice.”
But in her bed at night, when Evie thought about Cort’s smile,
memories of her father’s mouth on her uncoiled from the darkness.
She squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head, scouring her hand
across her lips.
After a month, Claudia called. “Your mother showed up here.
She wants to talk to you.”
A sharp breath. “Does she know where I am?”

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“I didn’t say a word. Not to her and not to that asshole of a
father you’ve got. I nearly shot him. First time he showed up here
acting like he owned the place yelling ‘Where’s my god damned
daughter?’ He grabbed a chair and threw it across the room. Scared
my customers half to death. I picked up the gun and pointed it
at him. ‘This sure looks like self-defense,’ I told him. He didn’t
come back.” Claudia laughed. “That was fun. But now your mom’s
looking pretty frantic.”
Evie Rose agreed to call the diner on Thursday at 5. Claudia
would tell Evangeline to be there.



“I figured you’d want to know.” Evangeline’s voice sounded strange,
unfamiliar.

“Mom, are you ok?” Though Evie had never known her mother
to be ok.

The pause of exhaled smoke. “Oh, well. It’s not easy Rosie, but
he won’t last long. The doctors can’t do anything. Can you imagine
that? Nothing.” Evangeline sang these last words and Evie realized
the strangeness in her mother’s voice was hope.

“Do you … does he want me…” Evie wondered if she should
make some sort of effort, if she should try to forgive him. Her hand
held the phone like a weapon, her knuckles turning white.

“Look, you got yourself out of here. You stay away, Rosie.”
Then her mother said, “When it’s over, I’ll come see you.”

Evie breathed again. “Okay.”
But Dwayne was stubborn in his dying. Six months passed
after that phone call and he still lived.
Evangeline called again. “He can’t do much except shoot off
his damn mouth. Doctor keeps saying it’s any day now.” Her light-
heartedness had faded.
When Cort asked why she was leaving, Evie told him “My
dad’s dying. Mom needs me.” Her plan was to see him one more
time and not cower.

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Cort’s father wouldn’t let him date the girls who worked at
the hotel. “Once you leave, we could go out.” He grinned. “Give
me your number.”
“I’ll be pretty busy.” She couldn’t look him in the eye.
“Look,” he said softly, “I want to see you.” He handed her a
pen and a pad of paper with the hotel logo on it.
As she wrote the number, her hand shook.



Evie stepped into her childhood home, into the slap of bitterness
that rang in the red air. She was knocked back by the pain that rose
in her throat. The fearless swagger she’d practiced turned mincing
and failed her.

Dwayne’s impotent fury filled every inch of open space. Evan-
geline slunk through the house, clinging to the walls, dragging her
shriveled shadow behind her. The sprouting hope Evie had heard in
her mother’s voice vanished.

A week into her stay, Evie looked at her reflection in the bath-
room mirror and gasped. Her eyes had sunk into purple rings and
resignation puckered her lips. She looked as old as her mother.

“Get in here, bitch.” Her father’s voice, rasped dry by the thing
that was eating him from inside, sounded like claws on bones. Evie
stood a moment in the hallway, staring at the wall where he had held
her as she trembled years before. She forced her shoulders back and
balled her fingers into fists.

That morning Evie had insisted that her mother go outside,
even if only to sit on the porch steps and smoke in peace.

“Get in here,” the voice demanded.
Evie froze. She counted to herself: one, two, three. She would
make him wait. He did not have the strength to walk or even to raise
his hand. She would make him beg.
Four, five, six. “Where the hell are you?” His voice was getting
weaker. Evie thrilled to hear it. “God damn cunt! What good are you?”
Seven, eight, nine. How long could she stand there? Longer. A
good while longer. Ten, eleven, twelve.

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A groan, then the thump of a weight hitting the floor.
Still she resisted the urge to rush in. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
Silence.
Finally, Evie Rose advanced. In slow motion, her feet savoring
the familiar creaks in the floor, her fingertips tapping the dusty wall,
she neared his room. At the open door she stopped. He lay on the
floor, sprawled between the bed and the chair.
His eyes were closed. Beads of sweat glistened on his brow.
He did not move. He did not speak. His chest rose and fell.
She stepped closer to him. She held her breath, lifted her foot a
few inches and moved it forward so that the toes of her shoe touched
the bare sole of his foot. Nothing.
She swung her foot forward with a bit more pressure. Nothing.
She placed her foot back on the floor and inhaled deeply. She
could not look away from his chest, from the shallow rise and fall.
Bile came up in her throat. She started to turn away but
thought better of it. She pushed the chair aside and moved around
to his head, nudging his arm as she did. His hand rocked limply like
a sea creature passively waving in hopes of seducing its prey. She
stood above his face and tasted wrath on her tongue. She drew her
head back and flung spittle into his eyes.
He did not move.
Evie Rose heard the front door open. “Mom,” she called. “It’s
over.”
But it wasn’t. Not yet.
Evie’s mother stood in the bedroom doorway, her hand over
her mouth, her eyes wide with terror.
“He’s not dead, but I think he hit his head or had a stroke or
something. He can’t move.” Evie Rose was still looming over her fa-
ther’s body, a dribble of spit hanging from the corner of her mouth.
Evangeline let her hand drop and she took a deep breath. “Are
you sure he can’t move?”
“Come over here. Look at this.” Evie Rose lifted her foot and
gave her father a hard kick in the ribs.
Her mother gasped.
“Go ahead, Mom. He can’t hurt you.”

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Evangeline slowly shook her head as she stared down at her
husband. She stood there for several seconds, not moving. Then a
deep growl began to work its way up from the depths of her chest.
A wild animal giving warning, she began to hiss. Evie watched her
mother’s shoulders rise toward her ears, her lips pulled back, and she
lunged, falling on Dwayne’s immobile body, pounding, scratching
and digging into his flesh. Evie’s foot rose of its own accord. As her
mother pummeled him, Evie kicked him again and again.
In a short while—or maybe it took hours—both women were
spent. Evangeline pushed herself off of him. Evie stepped back.
Dwayne’s body was twisted onto his right side, his left arm flopped
behind his back, his chest continued to rise and fall.
The two women looked into each other’s eyes. “I’m through.”
Evangeline said, using her foot to push her husband onto his back.
She grabbed the pack of cigarettes and lighter from his nightstand,
drew a cigarette from the pack and lit it. She bent down and blew
a cloud of smoke into Dwayne’s face. Then Evangeline turned and
walked from the house. She left the front door unlatched and did
not return.
But Evie Rose stayed, sitting on the floor all afternoon, staring
at her father’s chest till it sank and did not rise again. A chill blew
down the hallway and settled around Evie’s shoulders. It grew dark
and she slumped against the bedroom wall, hugging her knees.
That was the first time Cort rescued Evie.
She recognized the sound of Cort’s boot heels on the porch.
She listened as he called into the house. “Evie?” He found her in
the bedroom.
“You gotta call the cops,” Cort insisted when he recognized
death in the room with her. Then he looked closely at Dwayne,
this father whose fury Cort knew of only through Evie’s quivering
withdrawal from his own caresses. “What happened here?” He held
up a finger—this was not a question for Evie. He began pacing
back and forth. “The mother-fucker had a knife, didn’t he? Took
it from his plate at dinner, right? You got close to help him to the
shitter or the bed or somethin’, right? He tried somethin’, put the
knife to your throat. Clear as day. Self-defense. What could you

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do? He fought you. Stronger than anyone thought. And nasty.” He
left the room; in a few minutes he returned with a steak knife in
his hand. “This’ll do. You can get a tray, some dishes, some food.
It’ll look like you’re the good little daughter.” Cort reached his
hand out and helped her stand. “Got it? Your mother won’t say
nothing, will she?”

Evie shook her head. The need for all this had not occurred
to her. She would have to explain the damage to her father’s body.
Cort’s manufactured tale did not feel like a lie between her teeth; it
was only false in its chronology.

“We wore ourselves out beating him,” is what she would have
told the police, if Cort hadn’t rescued her.



Evie Rose reached for one of the bags and stretched the opening
wide. She sighed as she pulled out a threadbare housedress, its pat-
tern faded to grey. Bunching the garment into her fist, Evie growled.
Then she buried her face in it and wept.

Martha put her arm around Evie’s quivering shoulders. Her
smoky breath crawled through Evie’s hair.

At the end of her shift, Evie hugged Martha goodbye and
climbed onto her homebound bus. She stood, clinging to a pole, as
the bus turned down her street. Her eyes sought the windows of the
apartment where Cort was surely slumped, beer-filled, before the
TV. The bus stopped at the corner. Passengers jostled by her; Evie
did not move. As darkness began to sink down to lay across the city
streets, Evie lowered her body into an empty seat and waited till the
bus stopped in front of the gym. There two men hunched together,
struggling in the dimming light.

She searched their eyes for the fear she had seen earlier, but
what she saw was pleasure. This was a game to them, their ferocity no
more real than Cort’s cartoonish wrestlers. Her mind crowded with
images: Claudia, her finger pointed, her thumb cocked; her mother
huddled in a dark corner, a cigarette cupped in her hand; Martha’s
arm on her shoulder.

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As she stepped off the bus, street lights flashed on. Evie Rose
stood a moment watching shadow of her own body spread across
the pavement.
She tugged the frayed strap of her purse tight over her chest,
squeezed her fingers into tight coils, and headed home.
Deborah Nedelman writing career began in 2nd grade. By the time
she left home for college she had a ‘body of work’ written on envelop
backs and inside homemade journals. All of that early work was de-
stroyed in a train fire and her career as an author was briefly derailed.
College, grad school, marriage, parenthood and a 30-year career as
a clinical psychologist were all delaying tactics. Finally out of ap-
pealing distractions, she began writing full-time. Two non-fiction
books, many short stories, pieces of flash fiction and poetry, and a
novel later, she is enjoying leading writing groups and helping others
find their own literary voices. She has an MFA from the Northwest
Institute of Literary Arts and is a certified Amherst Writers and Art-
ists group leader. Her novel, What We Take for Truth is in press
with Adelaide Books and will be available in 2019. Deborah lives on
an island in the Salish Sea.

191



Sailor
By Rebekah Coxwell

Chapter 31

I looked at myself in the mirror the next morning.
I ran my hand over the stubble on my head. My mud brown

eyes sparkled I smiled.
I picked out a dress. It was a dress I kept in the back of my

closet because it was too simple. It was navy blue. I slipped it on. My
brown skin gleamed. I had not seen its beauty until then. I picked
out a pair of small gold hoops and slipped them into my ears. It was
time for something new.



Sitting in the parking lot I was not sure what I wanted to make
myself for dinner, but my hands were restless and I did not want to
be who I was yesterday.

I walked quickly from my car to the store. I kept my head
down. The door dinged as it slid open. A few people looked in my
direction absentmindedly and then looked away.

One pair of eyes stayed with me. I felt them dancing over and
around me. I blushed and hurried over to the produce aisle. The
eyes followed me. They felt like the sun on a warm summer’s day.

I forgot about them though, once I was surrounded my inspi-
ration. I decided to make a ratatouille. I had never made it, but now
was the time for something new.

I picked up a butternut squash and knocked on it. Then, I
smelled pickles. I looked down at the squash, accusatory, then saw
movement in the comer ofmy eye. A tall brown woman with dreads

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down to her butt, dressed in black, stood beside me. She smiled then
pointed to the butternut squash, “you’re gonna wanna try using zuc-
chini for ratatouille.” Then she smiled at my look of surprise. “You
talk to yourself, love.” Then she put her hand out to me and said,
“my name is Sailor and I think you’re beautiful.”

Chapter 32

Sailor smelled like pickles because she grew her own cucumbers in
her backyard, then set them in homemade barrels she kept open
all year around. “The open air makes them taste better,” was her
reason why. She sold homemade pickles to mom and pop shops and
restaurants. She had even started to sell them to a few comer stores.

After a month, I helped her lug her barrels of pickles over to
my backyard. I helped transplant a good number of cucumber plants
over from her backyard to mine as well. Once we moved what we
could, we went out for two seasons in a row to harvest the remain-
ders. Sailor said they were her babies and she couldn’t abandon them
but she couldn’t be away from her Rosebud. The last part would al-
ways follow quickly behind the first, as did her sun warmed love eyes.



Sailor taught me how to love the earth. She told me to take off my
gloves before planting something. To plunge my hand deep into
the soil, so that it dug itself under my fingernails and became a part
of my person.

She taught me how spongy black soil could grow almost any-
thing. How red caked clay had to be mixed with better soil to grow
anything.

How it was important to put a bit of soil on your tongue to
taste the acidity of it. I balked at the practice.

Sailor laughed at me, “you’ll eat a dead cow but you can’t taste
a little dirt?” Sailor was vegan and believed it was the human beings
prerogative to care for all creatures.

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I enjoyed rare steak. We didn’t talk about it.
I simply waited to eat my meat on late nights when Sailor was
on overnight business trips trying to convince owners of various
businesses to sell her homegrown, sun warmed pickles.
During these secret nights, I would bite into my bloody steak.
I would close my eyes and imagine walking up to a black and white
Holstein and biting into the side of it. The surprise on its face and
the sound of its cry followed me into my dreams. I’d have night-
mares of the same scene every night, until Sailor came back through
the door, her smile lighting up her face and chasing the nightmares
away.



When Sailor would return, she’d ask me to help her pull her hair
down. I would quickly unknot the piece of hemp Sailor tied her hair
up with and then I would wash my hands and get back to whatever
recipe I had been cooking beforehand.

Sailor would come behind me, put her hands in my hair and
kiss the side of my neck.

Then she’d hold me from behind and rock us side to side. Her
head nestled between my shoulder blades.



“When you want to see if something is ready for pickin’-that’s how
Sailor said it every time and soon I started to look forward to the
absence of the small hanging ‘g’-you bend over and let its smell drift
into your body.”

I was skeptical of this as I was of all of Sailor’s aphorisms.
Another Sailorism. But the first time we made love in my garden,
next to Sailor’s pickle barrels and my newly planted herb garden, I
smelled coriander. I thought perhaps it was the herb garden next to
us, but the tender green shoots barely peeked out of the black spongy
soil. And besides I bent over to smell them, my right nipple grazing
a shoot of rosemary, yet smelled nothing but earth.

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Sailor chuckled at me, laid on her back and raised up on her
elbows. She raised her throat to me again. I got on top of her, my
knees sinking into the soil on either side of her and sticking into the
red clay underneath. I grazed my nose on the inside of her throat
and there was the smell again. Coriander. I smiled. I leaned in and
took in the smell, deeper this time, I let it sit in my chest and create
a memory that would float up everytime I made lamb chops.
We made love again next to those barrels. I Closed my eyes and
nipped Sailor in the hollow of her neck a few times.
After, I jumped up and made a curry. I put in potatoes, carrots,
and onions from my garden. Then I took a whole chicken, I slathered
it in butter, salt, pepper, and coriander. Sailor watched me silently.
I baked the chicken then cut a few pieces of the chicken up and
threw them into the curry. I looked up into Sailor’s eyes as I did this,
so there was no mistake what I was doing. The rest of the chicken, I
served up as a side for the curry.
Sailor refused the pieces of chicken on the side, but she ate a
whole bowl of curry and then another.
Later that night I woke to Sailor vomiting both bowls into
the toilet and crying to herself. Weeping for a chicken. I snorted to
myself, then closed my eyes as Sailor stumbled into the room and
fell into bed.
We didn’t talk about the curry incident ever again.



After the night of the incident, I started wearing a sprig of rosemary
behind my ear, or a sprig of it braided into the side of my fro. When
I washed my hair pieces of rosemary fell down into the shower.
Sailor would smile, “it’s like seeing mother nature cleaning herself in
a waterfall.”Sailor would say this and sit back on the toilet, watching
me with a sad look on her face.

I closed my eyes and turned around.



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Sailor was an older woman. In the morning, when she sat in
my kitchen drinking black tea and reading her morning newspaper,
I would see this. It wasn’t the way Sailor wore her glasses at the
tip of her nose, but the way she didn’t push them up on her nose
self consciously when I walked into the room. How she licked her
finger once, then twice when turning the pages of her morning
newspaper. How she would look over at me over her reading glasses
just like my grandmother telling me to finish my plate of unfin-
ished food.



Sailor’s smile was youth. Her mouth raised her cheeks. The laugh
lines at her eyes smoothed out her forehead.

But I love Sailor’s wisdom. Her hair spoke of timelessness. I
found myself reaching to run my hands through Sailor’s hair, but my
hands would hesitate and the taste of maple bourbon would collect
at the back of my throat. My hands would flutter up to smooth my
own hair or rub the back of my neck.

Sailor’s youth would dry up from her face.



Sailor’s breasts sat comfortably on her chest. Even when her head
was thrown back when she was coming. Her breasts sat heavy and
calm on her chest, like they knew life was not as serious as my high
anxious breasts suggested.

I envied the way Sailor approached the world. Sailor laughed
off so called pickle days as days that happened and would come
again. Pickles had their usefulness in the grand scheme of things.

I laughed and said Sailor thought of pickles alot for a lesbian.
Sailor said nothing. She walked out back and didn’t come back until
dinner.



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When I had bad days, Sailor would listen thoughtfully to ev-
erything I said. Even on the phone I could hear her dreads softly
brushing her shirt as they followed the rhythm of her head moving
understandably up and down.
Then Sailor would go upstairs and run a bath for me. I’d come
home and climb in. She’d climb in after me and sit behind me, mas-
saging tea tree oil into my scalp with the tips of her fingers.
I went along with this for the first year we were together, it
was-nice. But after, I still felt unresolved and the way Sailor smiled
at me after, as ifl was a child throwing a temper tantrum about a toy
getting stolen on the playground, made me angry.
The second year we were together, the anger I felt after the bath
would bubble up as soon as Sailor’s left foot touched the bottom
stair.
I would scream at her:
“Why can’t you take things seriously?” “How does nothing
bother you?”
“Why do you think a neck massage and sex will fix everything?”
Then I would storm out of the condo and walk. Feeling the
acute anger vibrating through my arms and legs.
When I would return from my walks, Sailor would be doing
Tai Chi in the backyard. She would be moving slowly, but her
dreads would be lively and shaking at her waist.
I would sit on the ground in front of her and watch her until
she was done. Sailor would not look at me until the end of her
routine.
When Sailor would finish, she would look down at me with
the kind of smile that hid a
frown.
I would jump up and Sailor would bend down and pick me
up. I would wrap my legs around her middle and kiss her hard with
my hands clasped tight around her neck.
These times we’d make love on the kitchen floor. I would have
friction burns on my knees and elbows. Sailor would have hickeys
and bite marks on her neck, her breasts, and her hips. These were
the apologies we gave each other.

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