Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 46, March 2021

A SUBTERRANEAN
PURGATORY

by Mitchell Near

When I was a boy, I took the bus to school. cars, in the Forest Hill neighborhood of San
I had no other choice. Too far to walk; too Francisco. Inside the garage is a boring
far to bicycle. Both my parents worked long Lexus sedan for my wife Jennifer and then
hours, Dad as an airplane mechanic at the there are my two vehicles. The first and
regional airport and Mom as a legal sec- foremost being a powder blue Porsche 718
retary. My sister and I were mostly on our Boxster with a folding soft top. The second,
own. Our home was a bungalow in San Di- when I need to share the space with clients
ego. Little rooms. I did have my own room, or family, being a metallic gray Audi A4 Ti-
but I could barely fit in my model airplanes. tanium.

I made my trek to Everett Williamson I haven’t seen the inside of a bus since
Middle School on a prototypical yellow being taunted by Joe McCleary. In high
school bus with bad suspension and ques- school, I switched to a ten-speed racing
tionable companions. The worst of them bike and quickly upgraded to a clover green
being Joe McCleary, six foot three inches Triumph Spitfire in my junior year of high
tall, two-hundred and twenty-five pounds, school. That sleek auto accompanied me to
blonde crew cut, green eyes, too dumb to UC Berkeley, where I got both my Bachelor’s
know he was dumb. Joe knew his destiny and Master’s degrees in business.
was to be star quarterback for the San Diego
Chargers, to lead his team to the Super Bowl I started out as a financial analyst at
and win that ultimate victory. Joe would yell, Chase Bank and worked my way up the
“Shaddup, Jeremy!” to me when I mumbled corporate ladder. I’ve since jumped out of
lines of dialogue from ‘The Maltese Falcon’ that ship to occupy a more elevated role as
aloud in the seat behind him. senior vice president at Lewis and Jacobson
Investment Bankers. If you want the best
That was thirty-three years ago. Now, I advice possible about how to grow and hide
own a Tudor style, four thousand square your precious money, then contact us. We
foot mansion with a three-car garage, plus follow the letter of the law, but that’s about
plenty of room on the driveway for yet more it. Forget about the spirit of the law. That’s

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out the window. That’s for chumps who be- a gas! I got the Boxster off the ground and
lieve in playing by all the rules. Chumps who some old bag lady tramping up the hill on
live dull lives, pay all their taxes, even when the sidewalk gapes at me with her mouth
there are legal alternatives to doing so, wide open and spittle sliding down her chin.
chumps who take the bus or the subway to I did have to take the Boxster into the repair
work, chumps who drive Toyota Corollas on shop after that. I haven’t attempted that
weekends, chumps who vacation at public little trick again.
campgrounds, chumps who work out at the
YMCA, chumps who think a good restaurant So, a few weeks back I’m late for work.
is the Olive Garden. I back the Boxster out of the garage and
driveway and proceed out of the ‘hood up
Me, I like to enjoy life. I’ve earned it. And to Portola and upper Market Street. I’m zip-
last year, I earned a ten-million-dollar bonus. ping now, hitting the green lights, not too
My daughter, Yvette, is attending Harvard much traffic at ten am. Then, I pass Castro
medical school studying plastic surgery. street and out of the corner of my right eye,
That will certainly be remunerative. My son, I spy a bicyclist. He’s wearing rainbow col-
Jeremy Junior, is finishing up at Stanford ored lycra tights, he’s got a purple bike cap
business school, a chip off the old block as on and a black jersey covered with ads from
the saying goes. He’ll make a bundle. Bianchi and Pinarello Italian road bikes. The
guy is pumping his legs up, down, up down.
Jennifer and I jet off to Paris twice a year What the fuck! He thinks he’s Lance Arm-
and go on gastronomy tours of all the re- strong on the Tour de France coming into
gions of France. We recently sampled black the home stretch.
truffles from Périgord. Amazing taste! Hints
of Oak and dark chocolate. And the wines! And then, he edges out of the bike lane.
I love the red Bordeauxs. Pairs beautifully Asshole! I see that he wants to pass an old
with filet mignon. guy on a three speed who’s probably com-
muting to his desk job, but if you’re on a
But, what I enjoy more than anything, is bike, you’re supposed to stay in the bike
tooling around at high speeds in my Boxster. lane! Hey, I used to bicycle. I respect them,
I even ship it around the world when I travel. as long as they stay in their place. Live and
I know this car. The touch of the steering let live. Com si com sa.
wheel, the subtle give of the brakes, the pull
and push of its low center of gravity. And Jesus, he’s getting close to the Boxster. I
not only do I enjoy racing around France or just had her polished and tuned yesterday!
Holland or Germany, I take great pleasure He’s edging closer. I’m in my lane. I’m fol-
in racing around San Francisco. The hills are lowing the rules. The jerk edges closer,
a gas. I’ve even tried the Steve McQueen looks to his left and flips me off! That’s it. I
thing once or twice after checking that no didn’t do anything wrong. I flip him off and
cops were visible in the vicinity. You know, steer the car just a bit toward him. Just to
Steve McQueen, Bullitt, the old cop movie. scare him. That was my only intention. Then
1968. The car chase. Frank Bullitt is barreling boom, the asshole is down on the road. I
up and over the hills of good old San Fran- didn’t touch him. He’s yelling, screaming,
cisco and even gets air borne after cresting a gets up, points at me. He stands up, hob-
few of the steepest hills. Amazing! So, what bles around a bit. Not seriously injured. Not
the hell, I tried that a couple of times. What my fault. Then, the cop shows up. He was

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right behind me, okay two cars behind me. “But how do I get to work?” I blurt out
He saw the whole thing. Officer, I never before David elbows me in the ribs and tells
touched the guy! He bicycled right out of me to shut up.
the bike lane into the traffic lane. What am
I supposed to do? I what? I steered into him. “Good question,” she says and consults a
Why, never. I would never do that! sheet of paper in front of her. “In this par-
ticular case, given the degree of arrogance
He writes me a ticket. A very expensive I perceive and after due investigation of my
ticket. Reckless driving it says. He talks to the options, I’m going to add one more require-
bicyclist who then limps away while shaking ment to the judgment against you.”
his fist at me and cursing in bad Italian. The
cop says, “See you in court.” Then waves me “And that would be?” David asks.
on. I drive slowly to my office in the Transa-
merica building. I park in my private parking “Mr. Keller will not be driving his car or
space in the underground garage. I get out any other car for said period, and he will
of the Boxster and check for scratches. She not be allowed to hire a car to drive him.
looks fine. He must take public transportation, or I sup-
pose he could walk or bicycle to work, but
Three weeks after that unfortunate in- I seriously doubt he will make that choice.”
cident, I end up in the Superior Court of
California. My attorney, David Goldberg, “With all due respect, Judge Kamon,”
is there with me. He recommends I plead David answers, “but I do not believe the law
nolo contendere, no contest. Judge Jackson, gives you that option.”
a woman with short black hair and streaks
of gray, fleshy bags under her eyes and lines “I know you can’t keep up with all the
radiating around her mouth, stares down at new laws, counselor, but there is a new law,
me. “Since you’re pleading nolo contendere, passed back in January, that does give me
there will be no testimony from the officer the option to add this requirement at my
present at the incident. I’ve read his report discretion.” She waves the piece of paper
and that is sufficient. Do you understand she had been studying.
the gravity of the situation, Mr. Keller?”
“May I approach the bench, your honor?”
“Yes, your honor, I do.” I answer.
“Yes, counselor.”
“I see you’ve collected a number of
speeding tickets.” David walks up to the judge’s bench. She
hands him the paper and he proceeds to
“Yes, that’s true.” read it. He walks back to our table.

“Mr. Keller, driving is a privilege, not a right.” “Can she do that?” I ask as he grabs his
briefcase.
I look up at her from my seat and twirl
my silver pen between my thumb and fore- “Yes, she can Jeremy. I’m afraid she can.”
finger.
A few days later, I find myself walking to
“Okay, Mr. Keller. Count yourself lucky Forest Hill subway station. I’m in no hurry,
that no one was injured in the incident. I’m banker’s hours you know, ten a.m. is plenty
fining you five hundred dollars and sus- early enough for me to be camped out in
pending your license for thirty days.” my office. It’s June and the fog slides past
my face in dewy tendrils. I’ve got my blue

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pin striped suit on, a dark blue fedora atop or why they are late. That’s the usual Muni
my head and a slender, black Armani brief- shit.”
case in my right hand. I stroll down Ventura
Avenue past a red brick house with a large “Oh, I see.” This guy may be weirder than
multi-paned window overlooking the street. his looks imply. I give him a quick nod and
A white-haired man with two small dogs walk further up the platform.
greets me with a hearty, “Good morning!”
I stand and look out over the tracks
“Morning,” I reply and step up my stride, below. I see a couple of small rats scurrying
no time to converse with the geezer. I know between the tracks, making their way to-
the way to the station. I do like taking walks ward the West Portal station. I glance up at
in the ‘hood. I also mapped it out on Google. the electronic signs hanging over the plat-
I stride up to the street above the station form. “No Predictions,” they spell out in red
and walk down the path through the small electronic letters. I take out my phone and
park behind it. I walk around to the front open my Wall Street Journal app. I get yes-
and into the station. So far, so good. The terday’s news. It’s not updating down here
walk was pleasant enough. in the netherworld of the San Francisco
Muni underground.
I buy a transit card, proceed through the
turnstile and down the long set of stairs to I look up from my phone. My fellow
the platform. Water drips down the dank commuters stare at their devices or off into
walls and a slight smell of urine wafts into space, a couple of old Chinese ladies sit on
my nostrils. I feel as if I am descending the stone bench behind me and jabber in
into Dante’s inferno. My punishment as a Cantonese.
modern sinner begins.
I look down the tunnel toward West
There’s about thirty people waiting on Portal. I see lights coming this way! I hear
the platform. Seems sort of crowded for the clanging roar of steel wheels on steel
9:30 a.m. The guy next to me looks normal tracks. Okay, I think, that wasn’t much of a
enough, about thirty-five, business casual wait. Then, from the amorphous, hidden
dress, good haircut. I ask him, “What’s up speakers secluded somewhere in the
with the crowd?” tunnel, I hear a robotic, faintly female voice
announce, “The inbound train will not be
“Usual Muni shit!” he says with one lip stopping.”
curling up a bit as if he’s just crunched a bite
of an African Devil chili pepper. “What the fuck!” I mumble. The train bar-
rels past me, the artificial breeze created by
“What’s the usual Muni shit?” I ask. the passing train slightly displaces the per-
fect angle of my blue fedora. I readjust my
“Did you just move here?” hat.

“No, but I decided to try a new way to get Okay, I’ve got a couple of books on my
to work, maybe save a bit of money.” phone – ‘The Art of War for Venture Cap-
italists’ and ‘Robot Wars.’” I tap on ‘Robot
He looks me up and down. “I don’t think Wars.’ Apparently, in the year 2153, a fu-
you need to save any money.” He pauses a ture version of Sam Spade is caught in
beat. “The usual Muni shit is they’re late. the middle of two groups of robot armies
They don’t provide any reasonable infor- fighting for the control of California. Sort of
mation about when the train will be here

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like the Dodgers versus the Giants, except look down the tunnel toward West Portal. I
the robots aren’t demanding huge salaries see the lights approaching. I hear the clang
for hitting a baseball. of the wheels. The train pulls up to the plat-
form, the doors open, I walk into the train
I start reading. Apparently, Sam Spade car. It’s half empty. I stand in the center area,
has reincarnated as a new version of a San my briefcase in one hand, my phone in the
Francisco detective. You’d think he might other. The doors close. We travel into the
want to try a different profession, or a dif- tunnel, lights on the tunnel walls flashing
ferent city. My wife thinks she used to be by as if in a video game arcade hall of the
part of the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, a 1990s. Then, we stop. The train halted
lady-in-waiting, wearing too much makeup somewhere underground between Forest
and seducing moronic French courtiers. I Hill and Castro street stations.
suppose that’s possible. Me, I’m more likely
to have been a 19th century London banker I glance to my left and right to gauge
with one of those cool top hats and a the reactions of my fellow travelers. They
walking stick with a carved gold parrot finial. continue as before, staring at their phones,
slumped in their red, plastic seats with eyes
I’m deep into the story. Spade has infil- closed, a few jabbering away in Chinese, Rus-
trated the Los Angeles robot army and is sian or English. I see repressed anger, frus-
gathering intelligence for the San Francisco tration, acceptance, like the seven stages of
robot army. Are the robots too stupid to grief. I suppose the next stage is death on
know he’s not a robot? Or, maybe he is a the underground. Perhaps a team of manly
robot! Okay, this is amusing, for a while. men from the San Francisco Fire Department
will be rescuing us just before we asphyxiate
“One car M train for Embarcadero in two from mysterious gasses. Or the firemen will
minutes,” the Muni voice announces. About never show up and anthropologists from the
fucking time! Why only one car? The train 23rd century will dig up our earthly remains
pulls up to the platform. It’s crammed with and long defunct smart phones.
commuters. The doors open. There’s barely
enough room for one more person. I stand Our train lurches forward a few feet.
in place, not sure whether to get on. Others Stops. Lurches forward a bit more. Stops.
on the platform have no such qualms. Several Then, a miracle. The train starts up and pro-
commuters rush past me and shove them- ceeds at a rapid and smooth pace. We slide
selves on to the train, pushing other riders fur- into Castro Street station.
ther into the train. Jesus! We’re not in Tokyo!
A smattering of commuters awaits the
The doors close as the two guys closest train. The doors open and they walk onto
to the door squeeze in even further. The the train, grabbing a seat or a strap handle
train takes off and I’m left standing there or a metal bar above their heads. A young
with my mouth slightly agape. I close my man ambles to the center of the train and
mouth. I look around. At least I’m not alone. plants himself across from me, leaning
About a dozen of us still remain on the plat- against the waist high grab handle behind
form. This sucks. I’ve got a client coming in him. He nods at me. I nod at him.
at 11 am. My phone now says 9:46 am.
He looks a bit like my son, Jeremy. Tall,
I hear the disembodied voice, “Two car a bit over six feet, wavy red-brown hair,
L train for Embarcadero in one minute.” I

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parted on the left side and falling to his “To the music conservatory. I’m studying
shoulders, a narrow face with wide brown music composition and conducting.”
eyes, a straight nose and thin lips, a strong
chin and a sharply trimmed goatee outlining Our train slowly proceeds toward Van
his lips and chin. He wears black jeans and Ness station.
a blue dress shirt. He pulls out a book from
his messenger bag. “I’m getting off here,” the kid says as we
finally pull in to the station.
A book! A book made from paper and
glue. A book with a cover. A book that “Best of luck to you,” I say. “I expect to
speaks of four hundred years of printed see you conducting the San Francisco Sym-
books. I glance at the title – ‘The Glass phony one day.”
Bead Game’ by Herman Hesse. Blast from
the past! I read that very book when I was He flashes a big grin. With a wave of his
a sophomore at UC Berkeley. I’m not sure I hand, he is gone.
understood it, but it was interesting. And,
the very sexy girl I was dating suggested I A woman takes his place. She slides into
read it. So, I read it. the center area, leans back a bit against
the holding bar and stares at her phone.
The kid looks over at me. “Herman Hesse,” She’s about thirty-five, slender, with waves
he says. “I’ve read all his books three or four of black hair falling to her shoulders. She
times. They open up new worlds to me.” wears blue eyes and a blue dress. The dress
is conservative, hiding her cleavage, hiding
“That’s great! Believe it or not, I read the her knees. But, she’s sexy, and she knows it.
very book you’re reading when I was an un-
dergrad at UC Berkeley.” She glances up from the screen of her
phone. “Great hat,” she says. “You look like
“Awesome! I think Hesse’s future world a well-dressed version of Sam Spade.”
speaks of preserving the best of humanity’s
cultural and spiritual wisdom, rather than “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I say.
focusing on the trivia of everyday life.” “The Maltese Falcon, that was my favorite
book when I was a kid.”
“I agree wholeheartedly on that.”
“Why?”
The kid smiles and nods his head. “Reading
anything interesting on your phone?” “It made me feel tough and smart. You
need that when you’re a thirteen-year-old
“Sci-fi. Future robot wars. A bit trashy.” boy.”

“Hey, no judgment made. Sounds fun and She put her phone in her blue purse. “You
who knows where AI and robots are taking need that when you’re a thirteen-year-old
us.” girl.”

“You remind me of my son,” I blurt out. “I’m sure you did.”
Why the fuck did I say that?
“You headed to work? Banker’s hours?”
“You remind me of my father.”
“Exactly. I’m an investment banker at
Okay, this is getting positively Freudian. Lewis and Jacobson.” I open my briefcase
Better change the subject. “Where you and extract a business card and hand it to her.
headed today?”
“Jeremy. Jeremy Keller. Senior vice-presi-
dent. Very impressive.”

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“And you? Are you an independent busi- grey fedora and wrote short stories about
ness woman?” shady characters who sometimes did good
things for not so good people. Okay, maybe
“Exactly.” She reaches into her purse and those short stories weren’t great literature,
hands me a business card. but they weren’t bad either. The kid real-
ized he’d need to make money and he took
“Lisa Mandotti,” I read aloud. “Catering some business courses. He aced them and
for the stars.” proceeded to graduate school in business
and a Master’s degree.
“We’re all stars, by the way.”
He met a bracing young woman while
“Exactly.” I put the card in my breast browsing at Black Oak Books on Shattuck.
pocket. “I’m a gastronome myself.” She was beautiful and sexy and fun. She
loved all things French and introduced
“A gastronome! We’ll have to get lunch him to French food and French fashion. He
sometime.” took her on his own Dashiell Hammett tour
of San Francisco, showing off the Flood
“That would be great!” I smile, but not too Building at Market where Hammett worked
widely. as a Pinkerton detective, strolling past the
Geary Theater where the sleazy Joel Cairo
She smiles back, without displaying her had tickets to see the Merchant of Venice,
teeth. and then to the Palace Hotel where Sam
Spade, when he had the cash, ate a sump-
“Civic center station,” an anonymous fe- tuous lunch.
male voice intones.
Okay, okay. Why am I tripping down
“My stop,” Louisa says. memory lane? Must be something about
this subterranean purgatory. Ah, the train
“Bye for now.” doors are starting to close. And in slips, at
the last possible moment, a trim gentleman.
“Bye,” she says with a quick wave and de- He strides quickly through the doors before
parts. they close and over toward the center of
the car. He stands before me.
She was sweet, and so was the kid. After
that shaky start at Forest Hill Station, this is He’s about six feet tall and about sixty
going well. Two stops to go and it’s 10:20. years old. He wears an impeccably tailored
Hopefully, I’ll be sitting at my desk by 10:45 Italian grey pin striped suit, a grey fedora
at the latest. Definitely, a bit on the slow with a single blue feather on the left side,
side, but, hey, it’s a new experience. and holds a black leather briefcase in his
right hand. He stares straight at me. “Good
The standing space across from me is morning,” he says in a smooth baritone.
empty for now. I stare at the wall of the
subway car. I see the boy who read The Mal- “Good morning,” I reply.
tese Falcon and imagined himself morphing
into Sam Spade, a man who could handle “Do you know why I’m here?”
both danger and dames. I see the college
kid at Berkeley hanging out at Moe’s Books “Looks like you’re attempting to get to
on Telegraph, eyeing sexy young college work, same as me.”
girls for potential dates. And also eyeing,
and reading, every book Dashiell Ham-
mett ever wrote. That college kid wore a

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“Perhaps.” “Funny. Very funny. Well, yes, I do find my
job fulfilling. I assist my clients to maximize
I guess I’ll humor the old guy. He is well their wealth. This requires me to plumb the
dressed, could be a future client. “Why are depths of the world financial system, to
you here?” master, as best I can, the myriad legal finan-
cial opportunities offered in a world market.
“To be your guide.” Quite fascinating. And, my clients are happy,
appreciative and pay well.”
“My guide? To what? Fine suits? I prefer
English suits to Italian. Fits my job.” “I see, but didn’t you once want to be a
writer?”
“And what may that be?” he inquires
with arched eyebrows. “I’m going to kill Jennifer.”

“Investment banker.” I hand him one of “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
my cards. He glances at it and places it in
his jacket breast pocket. The train starts up and proceeds toward
Powell Street Station.
“Are you satisfied with that role?”
“Well, yes, I did harbor some literary pre-
“Pays well, very well. It allows my wife tensions when I was at Berkeley. Thought I’d
and me to travel the world in style.” I smile. be my generation’s Dashiell Hammett. I hung
out at Moe’s and Black Oak Books. I penned
“But what about the work itself?” a few stories, but I sure as hell wasn’t going
to make a living that way.” I looked toward
“It’s challenging. Keeps my brain occu- the train doors as they opened at Powell
pied.” I pause for a few seconds. “Are you Street Station and imagined making a dash
my guardian angel? Like Clarence Odbody for them. I could walk down Market to
in ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’?” Montgomery, not that far, but then Jennifer
might arrange for another practical joke. I’d
“Well, in a certain sense, yes I am.” better see this one through.

“My wife put you up to this. Didn’t she?” “Did you publish any of those stories?”

“I’ve never met you or your wife before.” “One. In the Berkeley Fiction Review.
Called ‘The Regents’ Extortion’.”
“Aha. She was always one for practical
jokes. She knew I’d be riding the rails of the “Write anymore?”
netherworld today.” The train crawls forward
toward Powell Street Station and then stops. “Sure, I managed to write a dozen or so
before business school took over my life.
“Let’s say your wife did put me up to this. I collected a sizable pile of rejection slips
She has your best interests in mind. She and got on with my education. Jennifer and
wants you to experience your truest fulfill- I were planning to get married, to start a
ment.” family. We needed to be realistic about how
to create a good life, for her and me and our
“I see, she did put you up to this. She’s on future children.”
the board of SF Playhouse. You must be an
actor she hired to get my goat. Just like her.” The train doors closed and we glided into
the tunnel toward Montgomery Street Station.
“I don’t see any goats. I don’t believe
they’re allowed on Muni,” he says with a
deadpan expression.

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“And how did that go?” man with a dark grey fedora pulled down
to obscure his eyes. Perhaps Dashiell Ham-
“It went great. My daughter’s at Harvard mett, or his alter ego, Sam Spade, is inves-
Med and my son’s at Stanford business tigating a case.
school. Great kids. Both of them sharp and
motivated. Now that they’re out of the I could spare five minutes. I walk into the
house, Jennifer and I travel to different re- lobby of the Mills Building. The man in the
gions of France every year. I own a Tudor grey fedora has disappeared. I amble past
style home in Forest Hill. The kind of home the barber shop and the ice cream palace.
a struggling writer would never own.” Perhaps I’ve slipped back in time.

The old guy lifted up his fedora with his There’s a series of photographs displayed
right hand on its brim, and ran his left hand on the long walls of the lobby hallway -
through his silver hair. He replaced the fe- photos of Dashiell Hammett and the places
dora atop his head. I half expected to see a he, or Sam Spade, may have haunted. I stop
halo appear when he removed his hat. in front of one of them. It’s black and white.
Hammett wears a light-colored suit and
“Perhaps,” he starts, “you can craft some matching fedora. The sunlight, or the pho-
new stories. Put pen to paper, or keyboard tographer’s flash, cast a somewhat sinister
to screen, again. Pursue something different, shadow of his head and torso on the wall
something in addition to your banking ca- behind him. The image intimates the om-
reer. Add your voice to the world.” inous creations occurring within his mind.

Our train pulls into Montgomery Street The Mills Building embodies San Fran-
Station. My old friend tips his hat to me and cisco history. Completed in 1892, it survived
quickly departs out of the train doors. I walk the great 1906 earthquake and fire. Perhaps
out the train doors a few moments behind there’s a story here. A story of different eras
him. I see him amble up the stairs and he intersecting. A story of a writer, and the
is gone. characters born of his imagination. The two
merging on paper; the two merging in the
I walk north on the east sidewalk of world we occupy for a short time.
Montgomery Street. I pass the arched en-
tryway of the Mills Building and see a tall

About the Author

Mitchell Near resides in San Francisco. Along with his
interests in writing and literature, he is a student of art,
architecture and music. He is also a committed urbanist
who loves walking in the great cities of the world.

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REMEMBER
HAWAII

by Mickki Garrity

Thud, thud, thud, thud. The sound reaches “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,”
through my dreamless sleep and I struggle he replies. “Work called. I’m being sent to Se-
to open my eyes against the brightness of attle to work on this virus. You have to take Na-
the windows. than.” I blink, trying to organize my thoughts.

“Amanda!” yells Greg through the front “Wait, the virus in China?” I ask.
door. Sigh. How long has he been out there?
“Yes, well, it’s not just in China anymore,”
“Coming!” I yell back, swinging my legs he says. I realize now that Nathan is standing
over the side of the couch. The coffee table beside Greg. He looks down at his little blue
is covered in beer cans. There’s a pile of rain boots and has his preschool backpack
clothes on the floor; I pull them on while on, filled with whatever it is four-year-olds
attempting to steady myself. I make my way carry to preschool.
to the front door while Greg knocks a few
more times. “Hey!” I say to him, crouching down.
“Good to see you, buddy!” I reach out my
“I said I’m coming!” I yell again. I crack hand but he doesn’t move toward me. Ugh.
the door open slightly. “What is going on?” Sitting like this makes my head swim and
I say as Greg frowns through the opening. I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. I swallow
back the feeling and slowly stand up again,
“Jesus, Amanda.” He says, looking past looking at Greg.
me at the pile of cans. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Wait, so you’re leaving now?” I groan
“So?” I say. slightly, my head too foggy to sort through
what I should be saying.
“Soo…nothing.” Under his rain jacket
he’s wearing a sweater I bought for him last “Yes. Now. I’ve packed his bag and you
Christmas. I always liked how that collar can take him to preschool. Can you take him
looked on him, with his full dark beard and to preschool?”
sharp blue eyes.
“Yes, I’m fine.” I say, stepping back from
“Why are you here?” I ask. He isn’t sup- the door so the two can enter. I grab an
posed to do drop-off until Friday.

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armful of cans and take them with me to My bed, my mind corrects. You would
the kitchen. One of them is still full of beer. think that a year of being apart would be
“Have you eaten?” I ask. I crack open the enough to remember that we’re not to-
kitchen window despite the steady misty gether anymore. Sometimes, this house is
rain, throw out the cold pizza sitting on the just too big.
counter top, and start the coffee machine.
The bigness is what we loved about it.
“I don’t have time,” he says from the Coming up the long driveway the first time,
other room. I return and catch him eyeing I sighed. “This is it.” I said aloud, taking in
the beer cans. I keep my distance; I’ve not the patio that wrapped around three sides
brushed my teeth. of the house and the large picture windows
that faced the water. Stepping out of the car,
“Do you think you can do this?” he asks I was immediately in love with the massive
me. I can’t read the tone in his voice. It trees on one edge of the half-acre property.
seems sad, maybe. The cool wind blew the smell of fish and salt
under our noses, and the roar of the Pacific
“Do I have a choice?” I respond. He nods kept an even cadence. Here, on this penin-
and turns toward the door. sula, we felt on the edge of the world.

“How long will you be gone?” I ask, taking It was a good move, we hoped. Getting
a step closer to him. The last time he was out of the city meant less anxiety for me.
sent to a virus epicenter, he was away for We imagined filling the rooms with dinner
eight months. parties of friends and spending evenings
walking on the nearby beach. Me, working
“I don’t know. But I’ll call you in two days on my book. Him, consulting from a dis-
when I know more about what’s going on.” tance. And eventually, babies.
He turns back and picks up Nathan, giving
the boy a full-bodied squeeze. Even his eyes I hear Nathan fussing from his room.
are closed tightly, and Nathan squeals a little “Dad!” He cries, still asleep. I wait. The snif-
from the bear hug. I feel my heart yawning fling stops. I go back to reading the article.
in my chest and my pulse increases. I think
my face is flushing now, although that might The next morning, I text Greg.
be the hangover. Greg whispers to Nathan
and kisses his cheek. Are you okay?

“Okay.” There’s a lot more I’d like to say. It isn’t until after I pick up Nathan from
“Be careful” is what I manage. preschool that he texts back.

“You, too,” he says, looking again at the I’m fine. Sorry I haven’t called. Things are
beer cans. I close the door after him. really intense.

He doesn’t call on Thursday. I stay up It’s okay.
reading anything I can find about the virus,
which isn’t that much. The novel coronavirus I can’t think of what else to type. I try
was first announced only last month. In that to imagine what Greg is doing while in Se-
time, the virus has already reached us. I sip attle. Donning full PPE, interviewing people,
on the mostly-empty bottle of Scotch I keep collecting data. Crouching over his laptop
near our bed. It’s okay, though, because Na- at three a.m. with a thermos of coffee
than is already tucked away in his room. writing summaries of findings to share with

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his colleagues and department heads. The because it died while I was sleeping and I’d
CDC must be very concerned, to pull in forgotten to plug it in.
former disease detectives. Normally, EIS of-
ficers are doing post-doc work for a limited I keep meaning to start writing. Since I
stint, as Greg was doing when he was sent stopped having weekly meetings with my
to Guinea during the Ebola outbreak. Now editor, the project I’d been working on has
he serves as a consultant to various depart- been slipping further and further behind.
ments and partners of the CDC. He hasn’t On Thursday, I only had three beers before
been in the field in years. going to sleep, and so Friday morning I feel
much better after a glass of orange juice
I don’t type anything else. I keep the and some toast. Time to write.
phone close-by in case he does. I finish the
bottle of Scotch. Around 2 p.m. I get a message from Greg.

“Mom?” I open my eyes and Nathan is This thing is really scary.
standing next to the bed, holding his stuffy
in one arm and blankie in another. How long What’s happening now?
has he been there? I wonder.
Patient is really ill. Symptoms progressed
“Hey, kiddo,” I say, managing what I hope quickly. We have him in the Ebola isolation
looks like a smile. “Come here.” He crawls ward.
into the bed with me and I cover him with
the blanket, pulling him close. I can smell Do you think it will be controlled?
his hair, the same color as Greg’s, and I close
my eyes and sigh. Too early to say. We don’t know how
many other people have carried it over.
“When is dad coming back?” he asks in
his tiny voice. I don’t tell him how much I worry about
him. I assume he knows that, since we used to
“I’m not sure yet, Nathan.” I say. “He’s fight about it all the time. Even after he made
helping people in Seattle right now.” it back from Guinea safe and sound, I could
never shake the fear that his work, tracking
Nathan starts sucking his fingers. It’s new epidemics of the world’s most dangerous
been a long time since we’ve lain in bed diseases, would be the end of him, and our
like this. I’m comforted by the feel of his marriage. I close my eyes and will my fingers
small body against mine. My head hurts not to type. It’s taken a long time for there
from all of the Scotch. We doze for much to be some kind of peacefulness between us,
of the morning, until I can get up to make and I want him to keep talking to me.
us breakfast.
Be careful, I send. I shake my head. What
A week goes by before I hear from Greg a stupid thing to say.
again. The daily routine of taking Nathan to
preschool and picking him up has started On Monday, I get a call from my moth-
to improve my time management, slightly. er-in-law. Former mother-in-law, my mind
I’ve been trying to go to sleep before mid- corrects.
night, although some nights are easier than
others. I’ve only been late taking him to “How is Nathan?” she asks in a too-cheery
preschool twice; it was my phone’s fault, voice.

“He’s fine,” I respond. “He misses his dad,
but preschool is going well.”

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“And are you….okay?” she asks. How do I Wyman’s I pick up after dropping him off at
even answer that? preschool. I wait until I’ve started to make
dinner before I crack open the first beer. We
“I’m fine, too” I say. “And I’m sure you’ll watch a Disney movie after dinner, before
hear from Greg soon. You know he gets re- I give Nathan a bath and tuck him in. I try
ally busy with this kind of thing. I’m sure drinking a sparkly water between beers to
everything’s fine.” slow down a bit. It’s been a long time since
I’ve had more than two nights in a row with
I wonder how long we’re going to keep Nathan.
assuring one another that everything’s fine.
I have my first meeting with my editor
We’ve reached the time of year that in a month. I’ve started making progress on
Greg and I used to call the “constant sog.” the book again, and I can tell she’s relieved.
The rain doesn’t stop; the mud along the After the first two books I published went
driveway never dries; the sun doesn’t show really well, we were all excited about more.
its face. For weeks on end, the water never The large advance I received for a third
stops pouring from the sky in cycles of misty novel was meant to give me a year’s focus
clouds, dense fog, and heavy rain showers. on the project; I’d already taken two. We
I love the rain – I really do. It’s half of the worked out a new timeline.
reason I wanted so much to move to the
coast. But this is the saddest and most dan- “I like what you do, Amanda” said my ed-
gerous part of the year, for me. We used to itor. “But you have to meet this new time-
get ourselves through this time by imag- line. You won’t get a fourth chance.”
ining past and future suns.
“I know,” I said. “I’ll get it done.” I’m not
“Remember Hawaii?” Greg would say, sure if that’s true.
taunting me with memories of our honey-
moon. “The warm sand at that beach where It’s been nine days since I’ve last heard
we napped all afternoon?” from Greg. We’d had a video chat then, so
Nathan could see his dad’s face and talk
“Where I slipped on the mud?” I would with him. I eavesdropped as they talked
say. “Ha! Yes, I remember that beach.” about Frozen2 and Nathan’s preschool rou-
tine. Greg has always been so good with
I longed for that beach, now. We played Nathan – encouraging his playfulness and
footsie, lying next to one another on a straw curiosity. Since then, I’ve read that the first
mat, our feet caked in large grains of sand. It patient has been released from the hospital
was too hot to lay nearer to one another, as and they’re trying to monitor the people
we usually did, so we satisfied ourselves by he’s been in contact with. That means Greg
scratching one another’s feet. It was beau- is making home visits to people who’ve
tiful, and so peaceful. We laughed at the been exposed to the virus.
chickens that raced around eating bugs, a
constant feature in Kauai. On Wednesday I decide to text him again.

Now, outside, the wind beats more rain Any news? I send.
against the giant windows that face the cold
beach. Not good news. I get back, almost im-
mediately.
I refrain from buying Scotch, as long
as I’m solo with Nathan. I stick to cases of Is my simple reply?

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I’ve tested positive for the virus. I blink last night if he could get Frozen2 pajamas.
a few times. I need to remember to order them from
Amazon.
How is that possible?! I reply, too quickly.
Greg is always extremely careful around I get Nathan into the bathroom so we
new viruses. can both pee and brush our teeth. I splash
cold water on my face and look in the mirror.
I’m not sure, he says. I’ve been really Puffy, I think, before putting my hair into a
careful. ponytail.

Dropping my phone in my lap, I put my “Nathan, your daddy wants to talk with
hands over my eyes. I don’t know how to you this morning before school,” I say, trying
respond. This man, who survived Ebola in to sound cheerful.
Guinea, now has this virus?
“Yay!” he says, his eyes suddenly bright. I
I see that he’s typing a message, so I wait. grab the laptop and sit with Nathan on the
He stops. I start typing, but then I delete couch. I’m so glad I’m sleeping in my bed
the message. I can hear the kitchen clock these days, I think, opening Zoom.
ticking. Click, click, click, click, it sounds off
the seconds. I bite my lip and look for my There he is, in a bed, surrounded by plastic
can of beer. It’s finished, so I get another sheeting. He looks okay, but is out of breath
one, pacing around the kitchen and drinking as he and Nathan talk. He makes small talk
quickly. with Nathan, his eyes crinkling at the corners
as Nathan tells him about dinosaurs.
How are you feeling? I finally send. An-
other dumb question. “Okay,” I interrupt after a while, “time
for Nathan to get ready for school.” I close
I have a cough and a fever. It shot up yes- Zoom against his protestations, and start
terday. I’m in the isolation ward now. My pushing him toward his room to get dressed.
blood thumps in my ears.
“More talks with Daddy another time,” I
Can I talk to Nathan? He asks. promise him.

It’s late. He’s already in bed. I send back. It’s three days before I hear from him
In the morning? I add quickly. again. On Saturday, after distracting me and
Nathan with a visit to the nearby aquarium,
Yes, in the morning. I scour every news source while downing a
half a case of Wyman’s in bed. I reach out
I down the beer and get another. I take to my friend Heather who lives in Seattle.
a hot shower and climb into bed with my We Zoom late one night, but I end up drunk
laptop. I fall asleep, trying to read anything crying about Greg and the virus, and so we
I can find about the virus that I haven’t al- call it a night.
ready.
On Sunday night my phone dings again.
My alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m. Shortly I’m already in bed, beer in hand, when I see
thereafter, I get another text from Greg. it’s from Greg.

How about now? He asks. It’s getting worse, his message reads. I
bite my lip.
Soon, I reply. Just woke up. Let me get
Nathan. I rouse the sleepy boy, who’s
wearing his dinosaur pajamas. He asked me

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Can you talk? I send back. “I’ll never forget that beach,” I say, trying
to stop the tears. “That whole trip was
I’ll try, he says. great.”

I open the Zoom app and check first to “Yeah.”
see how I look. The line between my eye-
brows is showing itself. I try to smooth it out We sit in silence for a moment. I can’t
and fluff my hair a little before we start the remember the last time we just looked at
call. each other. The machines keep beeping and
clicking steadily in the background.
He’s lost weight; his normally full cheeks
are sunken and he has a cannula in his nos- “I love you, Greg.” I say, despite myself.
trils. I can hear the machines beeping and He winces, and then slowly nods his head.
clicking in time to his pulse and breathing.
“I love. You” he says, the effort to speak
“What are you still doing in the hospital?” becoming more difficult. I don’t know what
I say, attempting some humor. He smiles to say, now. My nose and eyes are streaming
softly. I fight back immediate tears. water and I’m using the edge of my shirt to
wipe them.
“They won’t let me leave.” He says, stop-
ping to suck in air after every two or three “I need you to get better,” I say, trying
words. I’m grateful he’s making a joke. The to sound brave. “Nathan needs you to be
old Greg would definitely have made jokes. better.” I think of our little boy, asleep in his
room.
“I’m so sorry you’re there,” I say, my voice
cracking. I don’t know if I can handle crying “I’ll… try.” He says with a small smile. “I’ll
in front of him right now. try.”

“I’m so sorry too, baby,” he says. Baby. “Okay,” I say finally. “Text me when you can.”
When was the last time he called me that?
“I will,” he says, before leaving the room.
“Sorry for what?” I ask. The tears are
flowing now. The next day I text Greg.

“Everything” he says, looking right at me. How’s today? I ask. I busy myself by
cleaning up long-neglected parts of the
“Don’t say that,” I sob, shaking my head. house. I go over and over again the Zoom
“It was my fault.” conversation from the night before while
scrubbing the bathtub, and throw out
“Not your fault. Not only your fault, weeks-old takeout containers from the
anyway” he replies. I shake my head. I can’t fridge. I hear nothing back from Greg. The
do this now. day seems so long. I keep checking my
phone; I am sure to plug it in before going
“I really miss you,” I say, before I can stop to sleep.
myself. He closes his eyes.
The next day I get a phone call from the
“Remember Hawaii?” he says. Breathing, hospital. As I reach for the phone, I notice
hard. “Napping? At that beach?” my hands are shaking. Maybe it’s Greg.

“And all the chickens!” I laugh. “God, “Amanda Campbell?” asks the voice on
those chickens were amazing.” the other end of the line.

“You loved...those chickens” he says.

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“Yes,” I say, my throat suddenly tight. “DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CAN’T
DO,” she yells, cutting me off. I say nothing;
“I’m calling from the hospital about Greg I hear her sobbing in the background.
Campbell. You’re listed as his emergency
contact? I have some news about his condi- “I’m so sorry,” I manage to say.
tion.” I take a huge breath and close my eyes.
It’s Wednesday morning when the hos-
“Yes?” I say, in a voice that seems so small. pital calls again. “He passed away overnight,”
the voice tells me this time. It’s been a
“I think you know that Greg has been month and a few days since I saw him last,
working with coronavirus patients, and the day he dropped Nathan off at the house
has been infected with the virus. He’s been without notice. Our house. Our big beau-
in the hospital for several days. He’s now tiful beach house we were going to fill with
having difficulty breathing on his own, and babies and dinner parties. How can this big,
has been intubated and is currently sedated. strong man be gone, in just a month?
He’s developed a severe form of COVID-19…”
the voice trails off. I try to focus, but the Later in the afternoon I drive into town,
only thing I can do is imagine Greg, all alone, but I can’t feel my feet on the pedals. Did I
with a tube down his esophagus connected stop at the stop sign? I wonder, as I find my-
to a machine that is breathing for him. self in front of Nathan’s preschool. He darts
out of the front door in his raincoat, hood
“We will follow up when there’s a change up but buttons undone, hoping to avoid the
in his condition. I’m sorry to have to tell you unavoidable rain. His blue boots splash in
this over the phone,” I hear the voice say. the puddles. He pulls open the door handle
We finish the conversation and I hang up, and scrambles inside.
my hand over my mouth.
“Hey, kiddo,” I say, “how was school
I get another call, this time from my hys- today?” I watch as he buckles himself in.
terical mother-in-law. Shit, I think, I should How am I going to tell Nathan? I wonder,
have called her. I tell her what I know, and biting my lip. He starts to tell me all about
we talk about whether we should meet in Se- the book they read in school today and all I
attle. Remembering the Ebola protocols, I tell can see are his bright blue eyes. His daddy’s
her, “we’re not going to be able to see him. eyes. I swallow hard and turn the wheel to-
He’s under strict quarantine. And honestly, ward home.
we don’t know enough about this virus…”

About the Author

Mickki Garrity (Bodewadmi) is enrolled in the Citizen
Potawatomi Nation and lives on the North Coast of Oregon,
spending her free time walking in the woods and puttering
in the kitchen. She’s written for Denver’s Washington Park
Profile and recently had her first fiction story published in
ang(st).

114

RETURNING

by Audrey Renner

Felicity examines the halls of The Great’s over her heart. She looks at Janna. “This
Garden Museum one last time. Her foot- better not be a joke, young lady,” she says.
steps echo through the dark, empty muse-
um. She enters the Dutch Room and stops. “Is it real?” Janna asks, eyes wide.
A lone woman stands in front of the frame
where Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea Felicity takes her hands away from Jan-
of Galilee once hung. She holds a thin box na’s shoulder. She lifts the canvas and, on
draped with an old sheet. the side, reads ‘Rembrandt ’33. Felicity
looks at Janna “Where did you find this?”
“Excuse me, the museum is closed,” Fe-
licity says as she walks towards the woman. “My childhood bedroom,” she says, looking
at her.
The woman turns to face Felicity. “Yes, I
know,” Janna says. She swallows hard. She Felicity places the canvas in the box and
places the box behind her legs, away from points at it with a shaking finger, not taking
Felicity. “Do you think you could help me her eyes off of Janna. “Do you know how
with something?” much this painting is worth?” she asks.

Felicity stops. “With finding the exit?” “Millions,” Janna says. “If it’s real.”

“No,” Janna says. “I need help authenti- “Rembrandt signed his landscape paint-
cating a piece of art.” ings on the side as to not draw attention
away from the art,” Felicity says. “I can only
“You’ll have to come back-” guess he would have done so for his one
and only seascape.”
“Please, it should just take a moment.”
Janna sets the box on top of a glass display Janna gasps and places her hands on her
and steps back for Felicity to examine the hips.
piece.
“I would need to further inspect it,” Fe-
Felicity sighs and walks towards Janna licity says, framing the canvas with her hands.
and the box. She uncovers the box, dated She looks to Janna. “Would you like that?”
on the front 1990. She tilts her head. She
unclasps the box hinges and opens the top. Janna reaches over, shuts the box, and
She gasps loudly, placing one hand on the pulls the sheet back over it. “Maybe I don’t.
shoulder of the woman and the other hand Because if it’s real, then I’ll have to give it back,
won’t I?” She paces away from the painting.

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Felicity narrows her eyes and crosses her audience? How is it worthy of a frame in a
arms. “Is that not why you brought it here?” museum?”

“No, I brought it here to know if it’s real,” Felicity’s eyes wandered the room be-
Janna says. “But now that I’m here… I’ve fore landing on a self-portrait of Vincent Van
been stabbed with a double-edged sword.” Gogh, lit with a preservation light. “Van Gogh
Her voice breaks. She wipes her faces with didn’t sell a painting in his life. Was the time
her jacket sleeve. and craft he put into his art not worth it?”

Felicity opens the box again. She looks Janna swallows. “Perhaps not,” she says.
back and forth from the painting to Janna. “This is a beautiful painting and I once be-
“Did you know this was stolen?” lieved it to be mine. But I don’t think Rem-
brandt would like it if this painting stayed
Janna shakes her head. “Not until re- stolen forever.” She walks around Felicity
cently. My dad told me this painting was a and towards the exit of the Dutch room.
family heirloom, passed down generations
from great-grandad Rembrandt himself. But “What’s your name?” Felicity asks.
then I asked some relatives about it and “Surely you would like credit for returning a
they said they’d never seen it or heard of it.” multi-million-dollar painting.”

“Do you know who stole it?” Felicity asks. Janna stops and turns around. “Don’t
mention me,” she says. “Tell the public that
Janna catches her breath. “I have an idea.” someone returned it. That’s all that mat-
ters.” She continues towards the exit but
Felicity takes a few steps towards Janna. stops before leaving. She turns to her left to
“It’s very admirable of you to bring this to me,” the self-portrait of Rembrandt hanging on
she says. “Would you like one last look at it?” the wall. He smiles down at her. She smiles
back, tears still staining her face.
Janna scoffs. “You’re not giving me a choice,
are you?” she asks. She exits the Dutch room.

Felicity shakes her head. “I am letting About the Author
you decide, but I’m expecting that you’ll
make the right decision.” Audrey Renner is from Overland Park,
Kansas. She studies Creative Writing at Full
Janna sighs and walks towards the Sail University.
painting. She hovers her hands over it, careful
to not touch it. Her fingers follow the ocean
waves, breathing deep to relax. “Could I ask
you something?”

“Of the painting?” Felicity asks. “Go ahead.”

“Is a piece of art worth anything if no one
will see it?” Janna asks, still looking at the
painting.

Felicity crosses her arms. “I think so. I
believe you can make art for fun. Who says
you need an audience?”

“But how would Rembrandt ever
know this seascape was good without an

116

JUNKYARD DOG

by Henry Alan Paper

I was fifteen and rabid, roaming the streets with a card game, and a man who was killed
of Los Angeles like a wild dog, watching vid- with a knife. That was before he came to
eogames on TV, old boxing matches on You- L.A. to make his way. I once overheard him
Tube, Tik-Tok and Instagram on my phone, say to another black man at a barbecue, “I
listening to no one at home who was real. ain’t afraid of no man.” When he spoke, it
My mom, to get me out of the house and seemed to be with the voice of John Wayne.
under control, sent me to stay with her sis- It was said he had white women like Jack
ter, who lived in a decent neighborhood, Johnson. I never mentioned this to my sister.
and was married to a black man named
Steve. Steve owned his own business – a I remember coming up to him once at
junkyard in the middle of South Central – a party and asking him about some pills. “I
and would put me to work all summer. Lon- don’t mess with nothin’ but drink,” he said,
ger if necessary. “and I strongly advise you to do the same.”

Steve and I had brushed acquaintance At the time I didn’t listen to anybody. I
before, at a couple of family barbecues, felt that I could run and dodge like Ali or
once when I had, by my own count at Sugar Ray without anyone catching me, end-
least, kept up with him in beers. At over less fast-foot shufflin’ till I ran off the face
six feet and 200 pounds, his athletic frame of the earth, which, in fact, would all right
seemed to contain a carefully controlled with me. But somehow, through every fre-
swagger, like [Lawrence Fishburne]. Steve quency of my finely tuned body, I believed
was a handsome man, with teeth that were him. Which was just as well. He was going
capped in gold and etched in front with as- to be my boss. And I was about to become
terisks and slivers of moon. When he smiled his junkyard dog.
it could be a frightening thing.
It was hot, 10 A.M., already between
Steve wasn’t, in my experience at least, a 80 and 90 degrees. I was manning my post,
violent man, and he never treated me with standing water watch in the cutting hole,
anything but courtesy and respect. Although holding the hose and facing a rusted ‘84
I did gather from family talk that he was sub- Monte Carlo that the crane on the tow truck
ject to mood swings; it was scary to think of behind me had just put on its side. The
all that weight swinging around. Much later foot-deep hole was filled with oil, sludge,
I heard that he had gotten into some kind of dirt, grease, auto body parts, and, most of
trouble down in Georgia, something to do all it seemed, my own human sweat. I had

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just finished stripping the car of its seats including myself, would steal old or aban-
and insulation, and if any remaining cotton doned cars – junkers we called them
caught fire, I would put it out so that Steve,
standing next to me with his iron mask and – and occasionally a car left on the wrong
flaming torch, could go on cutting. Canisters street at the wrong time, and tow them
of acetylene and oxygen ringed the perim- back to the yard. The next day we would
eter like howitzer shells. These, along with break them down into parts: tires, steering
the cutting torches, were the tools of our wheels, windshields, seats, and metal for
trade. recycling: chrome, copper, tin, and steel.
Nonstop jerking and smashing for $9 a
Poony, as small and thin as his name sug- ton or whatever a person might give for a
gested, was at the controls of the crane. He missing part on their car. It was wonderful
was a quiet guy, with deep ebony skin, Coke- healthy outdoor work – if you were a cretin
bottle eyeglasses, clothes that hung on him or a slave. Working for room and board, I
like rags, and a loaded .38 in his pocket. CW, guess I was the slave.
who specialized in cutting out motors, was
taking “five” on a milk box against the tin So there I was, standing water watch
shed that housed his set of sledgehammers. next to a hot torch under a broiling sun,
CW’s job was to cut all the links that held possibly the only white guy in a ten-mile ra-
the engine to the body, jerk it free with dius, when this dog comes walking up. He
hooks from the crane, and, putting one wasn’t one of ours, since we didn’t have a
foot on the motor block, swing the sledge dog, since we had basically nothing to steal.
to knock the bolts off. Even sitting relaxed in
the California sun, his arms remained taut It was so goddamn hot you could roast
like black steel cords. All around the yard hamburgers on a car grill, which was what
were large hills of motors. He, Steve, and we sometimes did, and this dog’s tongue
Poony had brought in the Monte Carlo last was hanging out like the long arm of a palsied
night. It was the first of five cars we were bum begging for change. The mangy creature
going to do that day. looked like a cross between a wild boar and a
ridgeback, with thick head and stubby nose,
“Hey, white boy, watch Steve don’t and a light brown fur that was all gnarled and
singe your manhood,” said Poony leaning scarred, with chunks missing here and there.
out from his perch in the crane. I heard A veteran of the street life, like me.
CW chortle: “Ain’t nothin’ that hippy gon’
miss!” It seemed as though I was the only “The dog needs water,” I said. I was, like,
hippy those boys had ever seen – although Gunga Din; I figured it was okay to say this.
I wasn’t really a hippy, I just had long hair.
They mostly called me “white boy,” or “boy,” “Leave that dog alone,” said Steve, before
or “the hippy.” I weighed 98 pounds. They removing his Darth Vadar mask and staring
thought everything I did was laughable. at both me and the dog. He was sweating
like Sonny Liston.
Oddly enough, Steve’s own junkyard
business was similar to my former life of “Hey, man. It’s hot. I’ll pay for the water.”
prowling the streets, although his prowling
was usually done at night and with a clear “You don’t pay for shit. Stay away from
purpose. He and his crew, sometimes that dog.”

But I was already kneeling down and had
put my arm around this dog. A low steady

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growl was coming from its chest, like a There was silence. Finally Poony rose,
train in the far distance, barely discernible carefully put down his beer, and said: “I’ll
but coming down the tracks. “Nice doggie,” get them fuckin’ torches.” I walked over
I said. “Nice doggie.” I poured water from to the shed with him, and on the way he
my hose into a large hubcap next to me; picked up a flat square shovel. I stopped ten
the dog leaned down and took a long sla- yards in front of the open door – through
vering drink. He finished, the water dripping which I could see the dog lying languidly
from his jowls. I poured, and he drank again. on his throne – while Poony continued on
Then he turned and slowly walked away. I around behind the shed, took a stance,
didn’t see him for the rest of the day. and, raising the shovel, smashed the tin
shack three times. The dog leaped from his
The day ended, as usual, with all my fin- perch and came right at me. I screamed and
gers pink and raw from stripping and pulling, started to run. But not fast enough. Imme-
muscles aching from lugging car seats, band diately I felt his fangs sink into the back of
benches, sledgehammers and other tools, my lower leg. It was the most humiliating
brain frazzled from holding the heavy vi- and hurtful pain I’ve ever felt – I damn near
brating hose in the hot, unrelenting sun. buckled. Yet survival superseded fear. Arms
But finally I was breaking down the torches, pumping, legs doing some crazy high-step-
rolling up the hoses, locking them away in ping dance at full tilt, I was flying! The dog
the tool shed along with the breakers, crow- jumped and bit me on the right hip. He was
bars, benches, hammers, and oxygen and on me – biting me – and I was going “Help
acetylene tanks. This fucking job was the me! help me! help me! – running down the
hardest thing I had ever done in my life. middle of the yard in front of these guys
laughing and spilling their beer.
I was sweeping out the cutting hole
when Steve said to me, “Got somethin’ else Those guys were howling like dogs them-
to cut, go get them torches.” selves, holding their sides, rolling onto the
ground. I didn’t even realize the dog had
It seemed these guys never slept. It given up till I looked behind and saw that he
seemed to me I had earned my place in the had walked back toward the shed. I slowed,
shade with my own lips pursed around a leg and thigh burning. and limped back
bottle of beer. But I dragged myself over to the to this gang of thugs. And they were still
tin shed, opened the rusted door, and there howling, slapping their knees and shaking
was the dog – that same pig dog – sitting on their heads. “H-h-he – bit me!” I shouted,
top of the torches, staring at me. He started and all over again they started rolling in the
to growl, baring his teeth. “Nice doggie, nice dust and the oil and the grease.
doggie” I said, “now you’re gonna have to
move so I can get them torches.” Instead of When they finally caught their breath,
moving he responded with a frothy flash of Steve said, “Don’t worry ‘bout that. Just go
his filthy incisors, and his growl ratcheted up get them torches.”
so that it reverberated in the tinny shed.
I started to protest, but, embarrassed,
I strolled over to the guys who were finally clamped my mouth and walked back
sitting around, joking, having a beer and to the shed.
waiting for the torches, “That dog is sitting
on the torches,” I said. “I can’t get anywhere And damned if the dog wasn’t back in
near him.” there, panting triumphantly on his throne

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of torches! I immediately went back to the balancing act with mops and sledgeham-
guys. “I ain’t doin’ it. He’s still in there.” mers and a loaded shotgun. We had some
beers, they called me “hippy,” and finally
“I’ll get him out,” said Poony. I decided to walk back home to Steve’s,
where I was living in a nice cozy tool shed
“No, No! Wait, wait,” I shouted. I searched out back. It was dusk, a nice cool evening
frantically around the yard, saw an old junker, for L.A.
got in, and slammed the door.
All through the neighborhood people
Again Poony ambled over to the shed, were hanging out, some of them drinking.
started slamming the shit out of it with the I took a detour through a section I’d never
shovel, and the dog leaped out – and went been in before where all the clapboard
right for me in the car – just as I noticed houses were just about crumbling down
that all the windows were open! I went to and no one was hanging out. I passed one
roll up the front window – but there was empty weedy yard after another when sud-
no handle! denly I heard a familiar growl, did a bug-
eyed double take, turned, and there on
The dog leaped up, his thick neck and the other side of the rusted link fence, was
head straining into the open window – wide my ridgeback pig dog tied with a chain to a
excited eyes bulging like they were trying to thick steel stake. In his mouth was a piece
wrap themselves around me, his nails scrab- of asphalt big as a dinner plate and over it
bling on the junker, his slather spraying my his beady eyes were looking at me. A growl
quaking flesh. I whirled and pulled some was coming from deep within his chest as
cotton batting from the skeletal seats and he worked the asphalt back and forth in
shoved it in the dog’s snorting, ugly face. his teeth – like it was a poor substitute for
Each time the dog leaped up to get at me, I my head. “We-e-ell, doggie,” I finally said,
shoved more cotton batting at him. I could “what have we here…how-do-you-do” – and
hear the guys laughing in the yard. Finally he let go of the asphalt, went furiously head
something clicked in this useless brute’s over feet trying to break the chain to get at
brain. He thumped down and began slowly me. I couldn’t believe it.
circumnavigating the car.
Right then and there I decided to do
After a while the boys resumed their something about this relentless mangy
beers, and finally their conversation, and, critter. I pondered going back to the junk-
after a much longer while, the dog walked yard to get a hammer, or crowbar, or one
out of the yard and disappeared. of CW’s sledges to smash this filthy cur’s
head in, smash his bellowing body till it was
The next day I showed up black and blue, just like that mass of cotton wadding I used
cut and sore. At the end of that very long against him yesterday. I figured I could stuff
shift, Steve said to the crew, “Let’s go over and hang him over my mantelpiece. I would
to Mindy’s.” even build the goddamn mantelpiece, just
for the occasion. I looked carefully around
Mindy was a fat old boy who sold chips, the derelict neighborhood as the dog con-
juice, beer, tobacco, bait, as well as a selec- tinued to snarl and lunge. No one else was
tive range of auto parts out of a store that around; no one had appeared in a doorway
had no signs in a black neighborhood that
had no other stores. At Mindy’s we jawed
around and played some cards. CW did his

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or come to a window. It was as though the between one frustration and another, one
whole neighborhood was use to this ani- antagonism and another, one insane im-
mal’s stupid, demented, caterwauling be- pulse and another. I could have done any-
havior and, as it happened, were leaving it thing I wanted to him. Just him and me on
to me. I turned back. We were alone in the this thankless, desolate street in this for-
world, just him and me. I stared into the gotten and unforgiving neighborhood. Until
red eyes of this rude beast, so goddamn I saw something in this dog that seemed fa-
stupid he couldn’t even tell the difference miliar. Too familiar.
between hurt and help, between hate and
love. This poor crazy scarred and scraggly I looked around, took one final look at
fuck’s whole life was just a mindless blur him, and walked away.

About the Author

My stories have been published in The Sun, New Phase,
Scottish Life, and Portland Monthly Magazine, Kerem,
Response, Jewish Currents, New World Writing, Bewildering
Stories, and Webdelsol; the adaption of my story in
Webdelsol won a NYU Filmmakers’ Award.

I often read my stories in New Haven and have been
featured numerous times on Connecticut Public Radio. I
live in Hamden, CT, with my wife and two daughters – the
best Papers I’ve produced.

121

HUNGRY

by Liz Shine

It’s a typical boring Saturday. Susie woke two sandwich and stuffs it in her satchel, along
hours ago, but is still lying in bed, thinking. with the rope licorice she has been saving
She stares at the top-bunk ceiling, breathing for a special occasion, two peanut but-
the air of her shared bedroom. One of those ter-honey balls rolled in cornflakes and
leftover-hot mornings. A lonely box fan whirs wrapped in wax paper, plus several slices
in the window. The weather does not seem off a two-pound block of American cheese.
to care that there are still two weeks until
the official calendar summer ends, and Susie She tells Eileen, the babysitter, that she
is not in the mood to fight with her whiny is going for a walk, to which Eileen gives a
little sister about what channel to land on for quick “stay out of trouble” before resuming
hours of Heckle and Jeckle or Mighty Mouse. her phone conversation, presumably with
her boyfriend (by the way she twists the
What should she do? She is not in the curlicued cord around her wrist and up to
mood for much of anything. Yesterday she her elbow and stares awe-eyed out the
yelled at her mom. She’d held in her anger window while she talks).
for so long and then just one little thing (a
comment about how Susie’s jeans were too Once Suzie walked in on Eileen and
small), and she had let it all fly. Nothing I do is her boyfriend. He stopped by one time to
good enough for you. All you see is my flaws. supposedly bring her math book back to
People have all kinds of bodies, you know? her. When Susie discovered them, he had
She’d cried so hard she had snot coming out one hand up her shirt, his mouth all over
of her nose, plus the hiccups. She’d stormed her neck, the other hand tugging her head
off to her room and slammed the door so back by the hair. She backed back out of the
hard it knocked the Precious Moments room before they noticed her.
angel with her name etched on it onto the
floor. One wing broke off. What had really Susie walks to Pioneer Elementary
upset her most was that she waited hours where on weekdays she attends Ms. Stern’s
for her mom to knock softly on her door, for fourth-grade class and really tries to stay out
her mom to try to console her. of trouble for daydreaming and doodling.
She does not mean to daydream, and she
It never happened. certainly does not like the consequences:
notes home, smacks with Ms. Stern’s blue
Susie goes downstairs makes herself ruler, scolding looks. She tries to focus as
a white bread peanut butter and butter Ms. Stern calls it, but her helium-balloon

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imagination reaches for the clouds. She knows it a whole afternoon will have gone
peeks in the window of her classroom, the by, and she will have spent the entire time
chairs tucked, the desks empty, no hint of in another dimension or solving a mystery.
the familiar images of Room 10 except the
criteria for the theme paper on the impor- After spying in on her empty classroom,
tance of family chalked on the board. Susie plays solo hopscotch, using a penny
for a marker. Out of breath, she climbs to
All the girls in her class play hopscotch the top of the monkey bars and devours
now. In September it was four-square, and her sandwich, smacking between each bite.
then later it was Double Dutch. Now hop- She’d like to either be a detective or marry
scotch. Susie lately has spent most of recess Bradley M., who sits behind her in class and
just standing on the sidelines, waiting for never talks to her. She nibbles each peanut
someone to pity her enough to give her a butter ball, listens for the crunch, lets the
turn. honey and peanut butter melt together on
her tongue, licks her fingers clean when she
Ms. Stern says the word ‘criteria’ heavy- has eaten them both. She invented peanut
like, just as she utters the words ‘focus’ and butter balls herself one afternoon, when
‘no’. Due Monday. Double-spaced. Two she had a sweet tooth so bad and could not
pages minimum (the word minimum un- find anything else after investigating every
derlined four times). nook and cranny of every drawer and cup-
board in the kitchen.
Maybe she should just fake illness on
Monday so she can stay home. That way She takes the slices of American cheese
she would have one less day of school and and pulls them apart, presses them be-
one more day to write her paper. School tween her palms, squeezes and molds until
has not been going well lately, anyway. Last she has a perfectly round cheese ball to
Wednesday, her class went to P.E. with Ms. nibble. She puts the licorice rope back into
Form. Softball again! Waiting to be picked the satchel to eat on her way home.
last, only to have the wisdom of having
picked her last verified when she missed When Susie returns her sister has aban-
an easy catch and struck out. Then Laurie doned the TV, giving her free reign to watch
teased her, saying her laugh sounded like whatever she wants. Eileen calls out from
an elephant, right in front of Bradley, her where she’s perched on the stairs and re-
deep secret desire. She got a C-minus on sumes her phone conversation before Susie
the spelling test, her worst grade ever. Her replies.
best friends aren’t talking to her, won’t tell
her what she did wrong. They just scoot Susie goes to the cupboard and finds
their trays away from her at lunch and say what look to her like chocolates. She eats
you should know. four pieces, tucking the wrappers under the
first layer of garbage in the can. They are not
On Wednesdays, Susie gets pulled out of the best chocolates she has tasted (kind of
class to go to Ms. B’s room for reading en- chalky and chewy) but they are all she finds
richment, the one nice thing Susie can come in her search for something sweet. They are
up with about school. Ms. B has a room full three weeks into Mom’s latest junk food ban.
of books of all sorts and says Susie is a good
reader, way above her grade level. She likes Not while I’m dieting, Mom says. None of
to read. She can open a book and before she us need that crap anyway.

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Yesterday, Susie went with Mom to do “You know cameras add twenty pounds,
the weekly shopping. Cream pies were on right? Mom said. “Can you believe that? Ac-
sale five for a dollar. Strawberry ice cream tresses have to be very thin.”
was buy one, get one free. When Susie held
up the ice cream, Mom had already turned Early evening, Mom returns from her
her down on three can-we-gets. But it was Trim Twist class, flushed and manic. Susie
the ice cream she really wanted. is two and a half episodes into an Avengers
marathon, wishing she could fight like Cathy
“Please?” Susie said. “I won’t let you eat Gale.
any, I promise.” She gave Mom her best
you’ll-break-my-heart look. “How was class?” she asks.

“No.” Stony. “It doesn’t work that way. “It’s hard,” Pearl says. “But I’ve lost four
No junk. I won’t let you sabotage my diet pounds in three days.”
again.”
Susie tries to calculate whether those
Susie can’t remember the last time Mom four pounds will put Mom in her losing
wasn’t dieting. Every day she steps on the weight mood, a mood that could impel her
scale, her mood lifts and sinks by pounds to take Susie shopping downtown to buy her
lost or gained. She can’t resist a new fad. new tights and a newsboy cap, like she did
She has tried the California Cleanse and the the last time she fit into her skinny pants.
Tomato-A-Day Trim and will likely try them
again. Or she will try a new diet, like the Susie’s toddler-plump little sister Jane
one that had them all eating cabbage soup practices her ABCs in the adjoining room,
for dinner every night for what seemed like saying the seven semi-comprehensible letters
forever. Honestly, Susie can’t understand she has learned so far over and over again.
why her mom cares so much. Being skinny
doesn’t make you happy or nice. Mom plops down on the couch, lifts her
leotard-encased legs to the coffee table.
The sweetness of the chocolates lingers
on her tongue through an entire Donna Glued to the TV screen, Susie realizes her
Reed episode. During two separate com- mother is staring at her that way she does
mercial breaks, she goes back to the kitchen, before she says You look just like Doris Day
pulls the chair back over to the counter, or You are going to be tall enough to be a
and climbs onto it. She stands on tiptoe to model. When Mom looks back at the screen
reach the box, taking out four more care- without a word, Susie feels relieved. She
fully, stopping to glance at a picture of Mom never knows how to reply to things like that.
in a green dress on the fridge, her skinny
picture. Mom watches the end of the third ep-
isode with her. They try to figure out the
She returns a fourth time in the middle crime together and for just that little bit of
of the Aunt Jemima commercial. It’s an time Susie feels close to her. Pearl strokes
ad she knows by heart, that can pop into the hair on the top of her forehead, plants
her mind any old time, like the Easy Curl a kiss there now and again.
Grownup Girl song and McDonald’s Is A
Happy Place. Susie once told Mom that she When the show ends, she pushes Susie
wanted to be an actress. off her lap, gets up, leaves the room.

“Your dad will be home soon.” Already in
the kitchen when she says this.

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“My stomach hurts,” Susie calls, the “Tell us what you ate today.” Mom speaks
only way she can describe the lurching and firmer than Dad.
turning in her gut—hurts.
Little Jane picks this moment to toss a
Mom makes dinner: baked potato, green hunk of chicken on the floor and pound her
beans, chicken breast. Susie knew this fisted fork on the high chair tray.
would be their dinner, because she checked
the diet plan posted on the refrigerator that When Susie tells Mom and Dad about
afternoon to see how many days they had the chocolates she found in the cupboard,
left. Day five: two ounces skinless chicken they are hushed for a moment.
breast, half baked potato, boiled green
beans. The dishes Susie likes best Mom only “What chocolates?” Concern in Mom’s
cooks in her losing weight mood: tuna cas- voice.
serole, fried chicken, clam chowder.
Susie shows them the empty packaging
When the churning in her gut finally lets tucked inside the garbage can.
loose, Susie barely makes it to the bath-
room. The toilet seat cold, her bowels let “Jesus, Pearl! What have you done?” Dad
loose with a force that scares her. Sweating looks disappointed.
and breathing hard, she has just pulled her
skirt back when the churning starts again, Has her mother poisoned her?
and she sits back down. She hears Dad
come in the front door. Her skin clammy “Oh, shut up. She’ll be fine.” Mom takes
cold, she worries about just how long she the box out of the cupboard and reads the
might have to sit there, about just what her label for answers.
parents will do when they discover her. Will
she die here on the toilet seat? Her stomach Susie stands, silent and confused.
hurts bad now. Every time she tries to stand,
the churn tells her to sit down again. “What does the box say?” Dad asks.

Mom outside the door. “You all right in “It says not to exceed six in twenty-four
there?” hours,” Mom snaps.

“Yeah. Be right out.” Susie straightens her “Well, does it say what will happen if you
skirt, washes her hands with Mom’s favorite do?”
rosemary soap.
Susie begins to cry in that way children
Mom and Dad are already seated at the do when what the world suddenly feels
table when Susie emerges, walking slowly, uncomfortably complicated, in jerking yet
her skirt askew. She sits at the table, her semi-quiet sobs.
forehead and back of her neck slick with
sweat. Dad pulls her close. “Honey, it’s okay. But
those weren’t chocolates. Those were for
“You doin’ okay, kiddo?” Dad asks. mommy’s diet, and you weren’t supposed
to eat them is all.”
“My stomach hurts.” She drops her fork.
“You’ll be fine, you’ll just have diarrhea
Susie keeps her eyes on her chicken for a while,” Mom adds. She sounds cold
breast, doesn’t immediately respond. about it, but it’s Mom who makes her a bed
in the living room, brings her comforts: a
few magazines, a hot water bottle, and the
TV remote.

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After sipping some drink that Mom says She also feels embarrassed at the
will replace her electrolytes, Susie does thought that Ms. Stern will eventually read
not eat any more. She will obey Mom and the essay.
wait until her stomach stops churning. She
is not hungry anyway. She falls asleep on On dismissal to lunch, each student
the couch, her head tucked under a green files into the cafeteria and waits in line to
cotton blanket, her stomach still unsure, her receive a lunch tray heaped with a sloppy
mouth dry. joe and green beans. The swapping begins
even while still waiting in line. A friend close
Sunday night, Susie tries to write her behind might whether you like fish sticks or
essay on the importance of family. After sloppy joes or beef spread on toast. Plus,
an hour of starts and crumpled pages, she there’s the home-lunch crowd with their
writes, “Family is very important because bologna sandwiches and Twinkies. With the
they are always there for you.” She then right negotiating skills, it is possible to get
expands that into three skinny paragraphs exactly the lunch one wants.
that repeat that same idea in different and
sometimes similar words for what Susie Susie sits at the table as usual with her
feels sure her teacher wants her to say. friends who have somehow taken her back
for now, but she does not feel as normal.
At the bell on Monday morning, Ms. Hungry as she feels, each bite passes her
Stern instructs them to pass their essays lips to her stomach, tasteless and empty.
to the front of the room, then pauses at She eats what she is served, trades nothing.
the front of each row to finger through the She tries but cannot tune out the echoing
pile and note anyone who did not turn an voice of the lunchroom. Her imagination
essay in at all. Susie feels relieved she has pulls out words and weaves them into fears
avoided the humiliating I see you didn’t do that it could a lifetime to unravel.
your homework look.

About the Author

Liz Shine wrote and read her way out of small-minded, small-town doom. We’re not talking
about riches here. We’re talking about how a practice like writing can save a person. How
it can give hope, shape identity, and ignite purpose. She hopes to write stories and poems

that move readers the way certain works have made all
the difference to her.

She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in
the power of practice and has been practicing writing since
some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in
the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with jour-
naling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes vi-
olent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some non-
fiction and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran
University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published
in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is
a founding editor at Red Dress Press.

126

437 WILTON STREET

by Zach Murphy

Charlie’s wistful heart tingles as he pulls It was a commercial for a landscaping busi-
up to 437 Wilton Street, the apartment ness — aptly named Shawn’s Professional
building from his childhood. Everything is Landscaping.
gone but the skeleton of a structure and
the echoes of Charlie’s memories. You can Charlie wished that he were older. Then,
board up the windows, but you can’t cross maybe he might’ve gotten noticed by his
out the souls that once occupied the walls. first crush, Henrietta. He’d often daydream
about her curly hair, sparkly lip gloss, and
Every Saturday night, the entire block mysterious eyes. Sometimes when Charlie
would light up with a Fourth of July ju- passed by her door, he’d hear loud yelling
bilance. Dueling music speakers battled and harsh bangs. Wherever she is now, he
to steal the humid air at full volume. The hopes that she’s safe and happy.
Ramones shouted to the rooftop. Bruce
Springsteen crooned to the moon. And Sam TJ always treated Charlie like a little
Cooke sang to the heavens. brother. He’d even give him extra cash for
snacks every single week. Charlie always
Out in the street, Rich used to show off admired TJ’s bright red Nike shoes. One
his candy red Mustang. Rich thought he was day, TJ got arrested by the cops in front of
a lot cooler than he actually was. His hair Charlie’s very own eyes. It turned out that
grease looked like a mixture of egg yolks TJ was selling a certain kind of product, and
and cement. Charlie hasn’t forgotten the it wasn’t chocolates.
time that Rich revved up his ride in front of
the whole neighborhood, only to blow the Charlie’s grandma cooked the most de-
engine. As everybody laughed, Rich’s face licious spaghetti. It smelled like love. The
blushed redder than his broken car. sauce was made from fresh tomatoes that
she grew on the building’s rooftop. Charlie
Shawn was the tallest human that Charlie still thinks of her sweet smile with the
had ever seen. He dribbled the basketball missing front tooth, and the big, dark moles
on the bubblegum-stained concrete like he on her cheeks. The cancer eventually got to
had the world in his hands. He never did her. When she was put to rest, Charlie was
make it to the pros, though. But he did be- forced to go into a new home. But it wasn’t
come a pro of another kind. Charlie hadn’t really a home. The memories from that
heard about Shawn in years until the day a place are the ones that Charlie permanently
familiar voice spoke through the television. boarded up in his mind.

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After snapping out of his trance, Charlie
picks up a decrepit brown brick from the
building and sets it on the passenger side
floor of his pristine Cadillac. When he ar-
rives back at his quaint house in a quiet
neighborhood, he places the brick in the
soil of his tomato garden and smiles.

About the Author
Zach Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background
in cinema. His stories appear in Boston Literary Magazine,
Mystery Tribune, Ghost City Review, Spelk, Door = Jar,
Levitate, Yellow Medicine Review, Ellipsis Zine, Wilderness
House Literary Review, Drunk Monkeys, and Flash: The
International Short-Short Story Magazine. He lives with his
wonderful wife Kelly in St. Paul, Minnesota.

128

PELIOS HAS
DEPARTED

by Reed Kuehn

DSM-5 Criteria for PTSD
Criterion A (one required): The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or
threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence
Criterion B (one required): The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced
Criterion C (one required): Avoidance of trauma-related stimuli after the trauma
Criterion D (two required): Negative thoughts or feelings that began or worsened after the trauma
Criterion E (two required): Trauma-related arousal and reactivity that began or worsened
after the trauma,
Criterion F (required): Symptoms last for more than one month.
Criterion G (required): Symptoms create distress or functional impairment (e.g., social, occu-
pational).
Criterion H (required): Symptoms are not due to medication, substance use, or other illness.

Two specifications:
Dissociative Specification. In addition to meeting criteria for diagnosis, an individual experi-
ences high levels of either of the following in reaction to trauma-related stimuli:
Depersonalization. Experience of being an outside observer of or detached from oneself (e.g.,
feeling as if “this is not happening to me” or one were in a dream).
Derealization. Experience of unreality, distance, or distortion (e.g., “things are not real”).
Delayed Specification. Full diagnostic criteria are not met until at least six months after the
trauma(s), although the onset of symptoms may occur immediately.

- Abridged criteria for the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the DSM-V,
American Psychiatric Association

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1000 Thursday 24 May 2012 interest in him, including the reception clerk
Staff Sergeant Aaron Hedlund who is enthralled by her phone. He nods
slowly to reassure himself that everything
Months later, it still feels odd for Aaron to is fine, takes a breath, and steps toward the
walk up a flight of stairs with only one tes- counter to sign in.
ticle—the swing of the legs, the rise of his
boxers, the almost imperceptible different Before he gets there, a gentle hand
occupation of three-dimensional space. touches his arm, startling him. He recoils
There are the constant dull ache and phan- from the touch, and a sharp inhalation
tom presence of the missing organ, but squeaks in the back of his throat. With wide
no actual pain. There never really was any eyes, his head whips around as a woman
pain as he remembers, but in the medica- steps back and raises her hands apologet-
tion-induced fugue he lives in, he is unsure ically.
of himself and his environment. Short of
breath with sweat beading on his forehead, “I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to scare
Aaron reaches the top floor of the building, you,” she stammers. Her eyes betray a hint
which was only three flights of stairs. He of fear at his reaction. Aaron’s heart thun-
grabs the handrail and pauses to catch his ders in his chest, but he forces his outward
breath while cursing his significant physical appearance to soften. He focuses on the
decline. Aaron tries to chastise himself for woman and feigns polite recognition while
being soft and weak, but all he can muster batting at the cobwebs that clutter his recall.
is an unintelligible mumble as his tongue She is familiar, but he can’t place her in his
feels like it’s glued to the roof of his mouth clouded memory.
with drywall paste. The dry mouth is ex-
ceptional on this spring day, and he curses “Major Saunders,” he says with a consti-
internally again when he realizes he had pated smile. Her uniform’s name and rank
forgotten his water bottle. tapes provide a few moments reprieve as
his mind scrambles frantically.
He sharply inhales before exiting the
stairs into the lobby and hears a woman’s “It’s so good to see you again. Are you
voice calling his name. Visibly confused, he back for group today?”
turns, opens the door to the stairwell, sees
no one, and then pivots back to the lobby. So she knows my name and that I’m here
“Aaron,” the voice repeats, louder this time. for IOP, he thinks. He feels exposed and at
His concern grows, and he cautiously turns a distinct disadvantage. A cold sweat beads
a slow circle to locate the source. It’s his on his lower back as his anxiety grows, but
first day back to the Intensive Outpatient he has to put on a show of normalcy, so he
Program since his release from his most sucks in his stomach and stands tall and
recent inpatient stay on the psych ward, calm. His uniform, a few sizes too small
and he worries that his mind is already be- now, groans at the effort, but she doesn’t
traying him. Aaron freezes and tries to act seem to notice or at least is kind enough
inconspicuous and not draw attention and not to mention it. He nods methodically in
potentially expedite returning to the hos- response. “Yes, I will be in group today.”
pital. His eyes dart around the room at the
few people present, but they have taken no “That’s wonderful. We’ve missed you.
Well, I’ve got to go to my one on one, but
I’ll see you later. It’s great you’re back.” She

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moves to pat his arm but stops as he winces so gravity can help out. You make a large
in anticipation of the unsolicited contact. slit down the middle of the belly, careful
She lowers her hand, offers a smile dripping not to injure the intestines. You pull all the
with pity, and walks away. guts out and let them slide down the slope.
Then, get a handsaw, hatchet, or serrated
Aaron remains glued in place while his knife and split the breastbone. Reach up
heart rate decreases and the bile in his and cut the esophagus and windpipe. Slice
throat recedes to his stomach. He exhales away the lungs and heart, and now pretty
into a slouch and shuffles toward the desk. much everything is free except for the stuff
He signs in, sits down to wait for his appoint- down here.” Aaron grabs his crotch. “Take
ment, and browses through some magazines that hatchet again and split the pubic bone
and leaflets, settling on a year-old hunting right in the middle, making sure not to
magazine. The magazine seems familiar as damage the bladder or intestines again, or
he reads an article on how to appropriately there will be piss and shit everywhere. Not
field dress a deer. Something clicks, and he a pretty sight and can ruin the meat. Finally,
remembers that he has indeed read this be- cut the butthole and the genitals away, and
fore, possibly in the same seat. He starts to everything is free to be released. Pull the
laugh. It begins as a high pitched giggle that deer further uphill from the piles of guts,
morphs into a tear-jerking guffaw. and you can start carving the meat or take
the whole carcass out and do it later. Many
“You all right, sergeant?” another male people think that the main sit up muscles
soldier who Aaron hadn’t noticed before are your abs, but they’re not! It’s the ten-
asks from a seat across the aisle. derloin. They run along the spine, and oh
boy, are they tasty. If you were in a situation
Aaron wipes his eyes and waves the where you had to eat another guy, hopefully,
magazine in front of the soldier. “Sure am!” that will never happen, go for those first.”
Aaron jumps to his feet and plops down
in the seat next to the soldier, who leans “Thanks, sergeant, but I’m not much of a
away at the invasion of his personal space. hunter,” the other soldier says. He shifts un-
Aaron spreads out the magazine and jabs comfortably in his seat and puts more dis-
at the open page. “See this article here. I tance between the two of them to show his
was reading it two months ago in that chair disinterest, but Aaron continues unabated.
right there!” he says with excitement while
pointing. The other soldier raises an eye- “So, I was reading this magazine right
brow and adjusts his body to the other side in that seat. I thought to myself; there is
of his chair to increases the distance from some useful information here. My wife
Aaron just a bit. was riding me hard about having kids as if
being responsible for a kid would help me
“Okay, sergeant. I gotcha. Great.” out of this funk, you know? Well, not really
riding me because my shit doesn’t work
“You don’t get it, private! This article anymore. These fucking meds and whoop!
right here,” Aaron says with a slap to the Just a floppy noodle, am I right? Well, my
magazine. “I can’t believe it’s still here. wife was pressing and pressing, and I read
So, this is about how to field dress a deer. this article, so I made a decision. If there’s
You a hunter? Right, check this out. After nothing down here,” he says, slapping his
you make the kill, make sure you have the
deer’s belly facing down a hill, if possible,

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groin, “then she’d shut up about having kids. “I’m out of inpatient, so that’s good. Clara
Easy. Not like it works anyway. So, later that left me and took the dog.”
night, I popped some pills, had a couple of
cold ones, and sharpened up a knife. I got “I’m sorry to hear that. How are you
one nut off and started on the second, but doing with that?”
damn it if I didn’t pass out from the blood
loss. My wife found me, lost her mind, and “I miss the knucklehead. Never judged
called the ambulance. Didn’t even get me and always was happy to see me, even
started on my pecker.” The other soldier sits when I was in a shitty place,” he says with
mute and horrified, but Aaron doesn’t stop. tender remorse.
“So, I woke up in inpatient rehab, again, and
have been there since yesterday. Just one “You’re talking about the dog?” He nods
nut now, but not a worry. My wife left me, and his face with genuine surprise at her
so no more pressure there, which is a relief. question. “And your wife?”
Women, right?” The other soldier stares
with his mouth agape, unsure of how to “I’m not sure yet,” he says flatly as the
engage when a voice from across the room emotion evaporates from his voice. “The
releases him from the situation. apartment is quiet, that’s for sure.” Her ears
perk up.
“Sergeant Hedlund,” the clerk calls from
the desk. “You can head to room seven now.” “You’re home alone?”

Aaron waves a hand in recognition to the “Yeah, there was no one to release me
clerk and tosses the magazine to the soldier. to, so they called me a cab and sent me on
“Here, ya go. You should read it. Great ar- my way. It’s all good. It was nice to be back
ticle.” He stands, heads past the reception in my bed.” Mrs. Lightly purses her lips and
desk, and through the double doors to find nearly breaks her pencil as she furiously
his room. scribbles some notes.

“Come on in, Aaron,” a familiar voice “Aaron, I’m not happy they sent you
calls out after he knocks. He enters and sits home by yourself. I’m going to talk to them
across from his nurse case manager, Mrs. about that. Is there anyone who can stay
Lightly. She is a lovely middle-aged woman with you?”
with a calm disposition, but who demands
a great deal from her charges. “Thanks for “My dad’s coming down tomorrow to spend
coming on time.” a week or so with me. Dr. Sampson signed off
on the plan before they discharged me.”
“Couldn’t miss it with your emails, texts,
and phone calls,” Aaron responds with sar- “Okay, well, I’ll be checking in with you
casm as he glances about the room like a this evening and tomorrow morning. When
nervous cat. your dad gets into town, I’ll need to speak
with him, too, okay?” Aaron nods as his
“Well, since I haven’t needed to call you eyes focus on a corner behind her desk.
in two months, I thought I would make up
for it and let loose. Seriously, though, thank “Your plant died.”
you for being here. It’s good to see you.
How’re you doing?” “What?”

“You used to have a plant over there,”
Aaron says. Mrs. Lightly notices the tremor
in his hand as he points across the room.

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“This isn’t my office, Aaron. That’s in “I can’t pronounce any of the names,
another building. It’s just the room I’m in but I’ve got the ones for pain. Another is
today. The plant is fine.” for neuropathic pain. That one is for anx-
iety. This one’s for insomnia, which is pretty
“Oh, that’s good.” bad, and another for the nightmares when
I do finally get to sleep.” She checks each
“So, after I talk to your dad, we will work off as he calls them out. “This is for the re-
out a long term living arrangement, okay?” ally bad anxiety attacks and another for the
tremor it causes. Mood stabilizer is this one,
“Yeah, sure.” Aaron continues to look at and then one for the impotence from the
the empty corner as he tries to reconcile mood stabilizer, but it doesn’t work. Still no
the missing plant from the room and his boners. I’m also fat as fuck with all these
fragmented memory. meds. I look like a bloated whale on her pe-
riod. Do whales get periods?” She shakes
“So, today, you and I are going to go over her head at him. “Did I miss any?” She picks
your medications since they just discharged up one small bottle and shakes it at him. He
you. Did you bring them, including a good stares at it for a moment and then snaps his
med list?” fingers. “Dry mouth, but it doesn’t do shit.”

Aaron pulls a crumpled piece of paper “Language, Aaron.”
out of his pocket and tosses it across the
table. Then, he unbuttons his trousers’ side “Sorry, ma’am.”
pockets, unzips his breast pockets, and un-
does the hook and loop on his shoulder “Okay. That’s all of them. Take the bot-
pockets with a resounding tear. He removes tles, and I’ll update your list and give you
bottle after bottle until there is a haphazard another printout of the meds and times to
pile of narcotics, anxiolytics, mood stabi- be taken once group is over. I’ll also email
lizers, antidepressants, and tranquilizers on you a copy of it. Next week you and I will
her desk. She snorts at him. go over your upcoming appointments.” He
gives her a flaccid thumbs up.
“Is that all?” She asks with the slightest
sarcastic edge. He raises a finger and takes “Head on over to group. They’ll be starting
another out of a pocket and lobs it to her. soon.”
She catches it mid-air with a less than
pleased look on her face. “This is how you “Thanks, Mrs. Lightly. See you soon.” He
carry your meds? Can I get you a bag, at gathers his various bottles, stuffs them back
least?” into his pockets, and wanders out of the
room, clicking and clacking with each step.
He shakes his head. “I’ll just set it down He stops for a drink from a fountain, but the
somewhere and forget it. I rattle like a gum- lukewarm and metallic water doesn’t miti-
ball machine, but at least I don’t lose them gate his horrendous cottonmouth. He drifts
this way.” aimlessly about the corridor and watches
through closed doors other soldiers with
“Be careful, okay? Some of these are their case managers. They reconcile medi-
dangerous, and all of them are important.” cation lists, coordinate safety plans, and a
Aaron huffs. She ignores him and smooths host of other tasks as they shepherd their
the list out in front of her. “Let’s go through assigned flock of broken sheep. He stares
what they sent you home with. I want you
to tell me what you’re taking.”

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at one session and wonders if the case feels like he meets him for the first time at
managers’ herculean efforts reap any real each encounter. Aaron looks him over and
benefits for their charges. He thinks of the wonders if he is even real, a figment of his
soldiers who have come and gone and won- imagination, or an automaton that the Army
ders what success looks like after leaving built to proctor this perpetuated worthless
this place and the Army. Aaron quickly loses gathering. There is always a stain on his un-
focus as his thoughts blur, so he meanders buttoned white coat. Lunch. Pen ink. Coffee.
about until the appointed time to enter the Every day is a new one. He usually carries a
group therapy room. clipboard, which is absent today. His pants
are wrinkled and rise above his mismatched
Even being absent for two months, the socks and scuffed loafers.
atmosphere of the room hangs heavy with
disconnection. No solace is found in this “All right, everyone,” Dr. Sampson starts
place, and it serves as nothing but a holding in his methodical and unaccented voice,
pond in the sewage treatment plant that is “Let’s get started. We welcome Aaron back
his life. It’s a place to keep him occupied to the group today. It’s so good to see him
and idle until the Army has completed its again. I think,” he says as he looks around,
obligatory due diligence at rehabilitation, “everyone has been here before, but we will
and he’s booted. His nose wrinkles at the go over the ground rules again. This room is
familiar odor of the stagnant room. It’s dif- a safe place. Everyone has a right to speak
ficult to describe, but if it were a scented their truth in turn. We don’t interrupt
candle, it would be called Military Building. anyone, and everybody is free to speak or
It’s a mixture of old sweat and humid funk not speak. I will work to engage all of you at
from the HVAC system with an overtone some point during the session, but I won’t
of stale cigarettes and broken dreams. He pressure anyone, okay?” Silent apathy is the
laughs and then looks around at the un- only response he receives.
changed environment. There is a circle of
uncomfortable folding chairs and a table Aaron glances at the clock far too early
in the corner to put cell phones and bags in the session and notices that they have
since they are not allowed in therapy. You started almost twenty minutes late, which
can have a water bottle, but no smoking or means they will end at least forty-five min-
vaping. A fluorescent light, which has been utes late. He grimaces and rubs his sore
on the fritz for a year, flickers and whines. It neck. He looks around at the others and
makes Aaron’s eyes hurt, so he chooses a notices the major from earlier sitting across
seat with his back to it. Even then, he knows the circle. So, I know her from here, he mur-
it’s there, so he closes his eyes and waits for murs to himself. He squints and racks his
the others to arrive. In time, the seats fill, brain at her background. It’s so hard in a
and Dr. Sampson asks for everyone’s atten- room like this with so many terrible stories.
tion. Aaron slowly lifts his head and looks They all just blend into a giant anthology of
at the doctor through a cloud of confusion, shit.
not realizing that he had entered.
His gaze bounces from face to face, and
Dr. Sampson is a non-descript man, slight he recounts the litany of the stories he can
of build with glasses and curly hair, easily remember as his recollection is fuzzy on
forgettable, and impotent of life. Aaron most days. She got raped. Her husband
blew his head off in front of her. He was

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in a tank that caught fire and watched his to us to handle the indig women and children
friends melt. Accidentally shot a kid in Iraq? if we picked any up out on mission.”
Maybe. He isn’t sure. That dude’s friend got
shot and bled to death in his arms in some “Understood. Proceed.”
valley in Afghanistan. A helicopter crash
killed everyone but her. Aaron thinks the “So, the lieutenant, who was a badass, by
major was raped or her kid died or some- the way, was killed the same night I got in-
thing. When he hears what some of them jured the first time. She was in a stack on
have gone through, he feels like an imposter the outer wall waiting for the assault force
and wonders why he can’t handle his shit. to clear the compound. Private Jumper was
The Army trained him to kill and be okay right in front of her and stepped on a pres-
with it. No one gets trained to be raped, sure plate. She was standing right on the
or beaten, or watch their husband commit bomb when it went off. Boom. Then she
suicide. He stops the fruitless exercise and was just gone like nothing left, gone. I think
tries to concentrate on what Dr. Sampson it’s described as total body disruption. We
is saying. found some pieces of Jumper and the other
guys but nothing of her. I was inside on the
“Does anyone want to share today? other side of the compound, and when
It’s an open floor.” Aaron raises his hand. the blast went off, a wall collapsed on me.
“Aaron, first-day back and ready to get after Concussion and blood in my lungs, but not
it. Fantastic stuff. Go ahead.” enough to send me home. They dragged me
out, and I remember seeing the crater where
Aaron swallows and peels his tongue they told me she was standing. We watched
from the roof of his mouth. He focuses on the drone footage a few times during the
his words as the medications have slowed remainder of the deployment. It’s strange
his speech to near imbecile level. They all to watch someone you know just disappear.
understand, so no one rushes him or gets Like she was never even there. I think we die
impatient. It was a bit shameful to him, twice. Once when we stop feeling and then
but for some reason, today, he just feels when we stop breathing.” Aaron pauses for
like talking. “So, I was in the shower this a moment. “So, in the shower this morning, I
morning, and the water was hot. I mean, cranked up the water until it burned my skin,
boiling. It got me thinking about Lieutenant and I wondered if that’s what she felt when
Childress.” she died. Even for a split second, did she
feel it? Did she have time to know what was
“Who, Aaron?” Dr. Sampson asks while happening? Did she know that she was dead,
he scribbles in a small notebook that he and if so, what was that like?” Aaron pauses
pulls out of his soiled coat. and looks at nothing through glassy eyes.

“She was one of our CSTs.” “How did that make you feel, Aaron?”

“CST?” Dr. Sampson raises his head. “Eh?”

Aaron sighs. The civilian doctor irks him “How did you feel when the water was
to no end because he has zero military back- burning your skin, and you were thinking
ground and never takes the time to under- about her? Did you feel like it should have
stand or remember any lingo. “Cultural Sup- been you? Did you feel like hurting yourself
port Team. C. S. T.” He pronounces each letter or that you wanted to be dead?”
with emphasis. “A few females were assigned

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“Not really. I didn’t feel much actually. I for everyone who has been working so hard.
turned the water off and made breakfast. Enjoy the time away, and don’t forget to take
Toast and eggs. Wasn’t great.” Aaron looks advantage of the holiday to fire up the bar-
at his hands and starts to pick at a cuticle. beque and have some fun with your friends
and family.” Aaron furrows his brow at the
Dr. Sampson scratches his temple and shit-eating grin on Dr. Sampson’s ignorant
watches Aaron for a moment as he contem- face. “Aaron, do you have a second?” Aaron
plates his next questions. shrugs his shoulders and approaches. “Are
you going to be okay this weekend? Should
“Since he’s done, can we talk about how I be concerned about you hurting yourself?”
hard it is for me to drive to this group ses-
sion and that I need accommodations?” “Because of the story I told?”
Specialist Levine, a near cachectic kid from
Louisiana, pipes up. “Yes.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake Levine, again?” an- “No, I’m good.”
other soldier shouts, and if any connection
between Sampson and Aaron was about to “Great, I think so too,” Dr. Sampson says
be made, it was now broken. as he gathers his things and walks toward
the door. “Make sure you touch base with
“Eat a dick, Scoggins, I almost died!” your case manager each day this weekend,
and you have my cell phone number, so call
“You crashed your car off post when you me anytime, okay?” His voice trails off as he
were reaching for your vape pen, you an- exits, leaving Aaron alone in the empty room.
orexic cracker. No one gives a shit.” Aaron looks up and watches the light flicker
and buzz for a minute before he walks out.
“Okay, everyone, calm down,” Dr.
Sampson slides into the conversation, “this Later that evening, Aaron is alone and
is a safe place, so let’s give Charlie our at- one of the few things occupying his apart-
tention and respect. Go ahead.” ment. His wife took most of their stuff with
her when she left, including the television
“Thanks, doc,” Levine says before he en- and most kitchenware. He looks at his cell
ters into a mind-numbing diatribe for the phone and thinks about the conversation he
remainder of the time they have. When he’s just had. His father called and said he isn’t
finished, Dr. Sampson’s voice rouses a few coming. Some problems at the quarry, he
of them out of their stupor. said. Something about him needing to be
there next week, and it doesn’t make sense
“So, thank you, everyone, for your par- for him to drive all the way, just to turn
ticipation today.” They begin to stir and rise around and go back home a few days later.
from their seats. “Before you go, remember
that this is a holiday weekend, so no group He fiddles with a game on his phone
until Tuesday.” and then sees that he has missed a few
calls from Mrs. Lightly during the after-
“It’s Thursday, doc. That’s four days away.” noon. He thinks about calling her back but
Aaron says with an edge of concern that puts his phone in his pocket and goes to the
sharpens as his voice rises. bathroom. On the counter are all of his pill
bottles, which he organized earlier into a
Dr. Sampson turns to him. “Memorial standard small-unit formation. The mood
Day is Monday, and the base is taking to-
morrow off to make it a four day weekend

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stabilizer is the squad leader and flanked It goes straight to voicemail. “Hello,
by the pain medications. The one for the you’ve reached the voicemail of Dr.
tremor is on point near the toilet to make Sampson. Please leave a detailed message
sure the enemy doesn’t surprise the patrol. after the beep, and I’ll get back to you at,”
The sleeping pills and nightmare meds are Aaron hangs up. He slumps on the floor in a
the heavy weapons guys and are positioned heap without any energy or desire to move
behind the lead group. The dry mouth guy and remains there until his watch alarm
and the erectile dysfunction medication rouses him. Time for another round of
bring up the rear, where the worthless meds. He slowly extracts his stiff body from
pogues like them usually are. He stares at the kitchen floor, shuffles to the bathroom,
the arrangement for a while and then looks selects the prescribed pills, and downs each
at his watch. He sighs as it’s still hours be- with a gulp of water. He lays on his bed and
fore his next round of pills. stares at the ceiling fan. The blades travel
dutifully in their contracted circles, yet he
He turns off the light and heads back to can feel no air movement from their per-
the living room. He pulls out his phone again, sistent effort. It’s Thursday evening. He
looks at the missed calls, and thinks about doesn’t go back to group until Tuesday. He
making a call. He has two choices of who to thinks that four more days is a long time to
call, and for lack of a better way of deciding, be alone with his thoughts. Like a heavy
he scrounges around his apartment for a cloak draped over his shoulders, hopeless-
coin. He tosses it in the air but misses, and ness joins him, but then the meds take hold,
it skitters under the oven before he can grab and his mind sways and then floats, unteth-
it. He swears and gets down on the ground. ered from his body. A trickle of drool es-
He gets covered in dust and crumbs but capes from the corner of his child-like grin
manages to retrieve the coin. Heads. Now, and pools on his pillow. Happy Memorial
which one was heads? He swears again. He Day, lieutenant, he thinks as the fog rolls
makes up his mind and dials the number. over him.

About the Author

Reed Kuehn is a combat veteran and an aspiring writer.
While he has called Wisconsin, Washington DC, North
Carolina, and Colorado home, he currently lives and
writes in Providence, RI. His work has appeared with
Akashic, Dream Noir, Notch Publishing House, and the Kurt
Vonnegut Museum and Library

137

UNDERLYING
CONDITION

by Vincent Barry

When I was mustering out— weeks turned for worst. . . . Particulars of
funeral. . . .”
Whoa! I’m not talking anything as in-
trepid as Ranger Company for Field Force Terse. Yes, he is that, my brother, and not
II. No, no, the Peace Corps is all. Uganda. just with words. . . . I hear from him only
Y’know, Idi Amin, “Big Daddy”— “His Ex- when there’s a death in the family. . . . Me?
cellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al I have no deaths to report.
Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of
All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the He’s like the father in that way—curt,
Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in blunt, . . .
Africa in General and Uganda in Particular”?
Right, right, the guy who liked to feed his The father took his rest in the clay, as
enemies to the Owens Falls alligators, un- he’d say, not long after my mother. Not that
like Robert McNamara, who with but one it matters. I guess the email just set me to
title likely killed more innocents than “Big thinking ’bout him is all. . . .
Daddy” ever did. . . .
Notice, by the way, I didn’t say, “along
Voltaire was right, wasn’t he: “All mur- with,” lest you think they lie eternally to-
derers are punished, unless they kill in large gether, père and mère. No, no more in
numbers and to the sound of trumpets”? death than in life. She rests in Holy Name
Cemetery—in Jersey City, I think. I can’t say
I was about to say that my Peace Corps for sure ’cuz I haven’t been there since the
termination just happened to coincide with funeral, which was ages ago, and I was very
Carol’s wedding is all. But it bears on some- young, and, frankly, I am not at all certain I
thing that my brother’s email has exhumed was even there, or even that God has a little
from my dissipated memory. Oh, right, the acre hidden behind so-called America’s
email: Golden Door. But for certain, for his part,
“the father of eternal silence and infinite
“George—Sorry, bad news. Carol passed. spaces,” as memory clutches daidi, resides,
Been ill with stomach cancer. Last few per his wish, among the little people in that

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“right good place for those who are asleep”— She must have been hovering in the hall
his words, spoken with a trace of a brogue. ’cuz she stormed back in like frenzied Brunn-
Which is to say he sleeps a whispering sea hilde and caused a terrible row. Just terrible.
away, in the arms of the life-restoring soil Of course, I told her she was hearing things,
of Newcastle West, Ireland, though state- lied that I’d never call her crazy, or was it
side it was where darkness veiled his bone- “bitch”? ’Bout then ’s when I called over to
rimmed eyes. Perhaps I should have been Wortman.
there for death or dirge, but wasn’t. Or
maybe I was. I don’t—. By the time he arrived Brunny had
cooled down and left.
Clearly I’m on the hop between memory
and conscience. . . . or, perhaps, I am coming I made sure, I can tell ya, not to mutter
down with what my wife’s got— fever, chills, anything after she went, though I could
cough. . . . “Same difference,” as boss-eyed have kicked myself for not realizing earlier
Wortman would say. that she’d be lurking about after class, as
was her wont—to skulk and lie in wait in
Wortman did security at the community a convenient shadow, then pounce, as she
college where I used to teach an American had done that night, after my lecture on the
lit class once a week until— well, Wortman “jingle man.” E. A. Poe, “Imp of the Perverse.”
knew his stuff. He worked at Kmart for Next up next time: Emerson.
years before they went bankrupt. We did
the night shift, y’cud say, Wortman and me. “’S what they do,” Wortman told me later,
Wortman was with me the night I called it of stalkers, with a grunt of laughter over
a day. beers up at Teddy’s Top o’ the Hill, the local
watering hole. “They lurk.” I nodded like a
I’d summoned Wortman earlier, y’see, corrected schoolboy when he then cast off
when a student, well, not just any student, raspingly with flat colored eyes, “Don’t you
my nightsider I called her, the gaunt and know that?”
haunted Elsie, middled-aged and brain-
sick, suddenly stood like one of The Shin- What could I say? Nothing except,
ing’s Grady sisters in the oblong of yellow quoting to myself I thought, thinking of
lamplight dropping across the threshold of Elsie—or was it of Wortman?— “White like
my office, in just enough of it, the light, she a washline and an empty head.” Then, as if
stood, to expose—what was it in her boney he’d heard, Wortman’s good eye—or was it
unringed hand? A purse, a smartphone, a his bad?—fixed me like the narrator in “The
pocket pistol? Something small and grey Black Cat,” and he said, with the darkened
like a mouse, something that made my mind of a soothsayer, “Same difference.”
blood run slow and chill with fear. ’S why I
called Wortman. I finished my drink and, just like that,
never went back to orate on Waldo’s “Fate.”
Frankly, I don’t know why all this comes
back to mind or why I’m recounting it— “Go up to the clinic,” I urge my wife
could be Little Jimmy or “Big Blue”— but, from behind my mask, which shows Putin
in any event, after I fobbed her off, I said—I with a Trump puppet perched on his knee,
thought to myself—, “Thank God the crazy both wearing red bow ties. She waves me
bitch is gone!”. . . off with a stuttering bark, “I-have-no-un-
derlying-condition,” and adjusts her own
black-on-white “Grab Him By The Ballot”

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face covering that hides a sick pallor. Polit- make. Not a momentous decision, just, well,
ical—our masks? Oh, certainly. But more an accept or not to accept decision. Her in-
tenacious than that, metaphorical. Y’know, vitation, I mean, to be an usher at her wed-
the unquenchable human need to commu- ding.
nicate behind the masks we wear? . . .
Now, frankly, I viewed the proffered role
No matter, back to Little Jimmy Scott’s as a tad above being a factotum in a rented,
high, sensitive contralto I go, and a shot ill-fitting tux and bow tie. But—and here’s
or two of SKYY blue, to bring my restless the thing— the centrifugal force that is to
nerves to heel, don’tcha nu? “Dont’cha nu”? all of us second nature— custom and con-
’S a verbal tic I picked up as a child from vention—pulled me otherwise. I went back.
the—oh, there’s another one, article for Did I choose the straight line? Or was the
adjective, definite for possessive, “the” for straight line a “respectable optical illusion”?
“my,”—the father, my father, who, I guess, Thus, the paradoxical problem of freedom.
caught it in the old country and passed it See what I mean? . . .
on before passing on. It breaks out every
so often, kinda like oral herpes, linguistically I had no way of knowing, of course, it
speaking. Pay it no mind. . . . would be the last time I saw Carol alive. .
. . Ever, actually, come to think of it, it will
Once steadied I’ll turn to Sam Cooke to have been, if I don’t go back now. Or is it,
stir my soul. . . . really, to see yet again, if in an open casket,
her face? . . .
But I stray. What was I saying? Hmm,
father, mother. . . sister, brother. . . stalker, Of anything else, back there, back then,
crosstalker— oh, oh, I do feel I have strayed, I don’t—oh, wait, wait, yes, I do recall—but
drawing new mischief on by mourning mis- I’m not sure I want to go—okay, okay, for
chief past and gone, to give the Duke his what it’s worth. . . .
due, though that said, let’s cue the Count
No ’Count, who knew: “The past is never In my role of stuffed dogsbody, I do recall
past. It’s not even dead.”. . . amidst a late night interlarding table talk
with Sam, my brother’s wife, verklempt and
Oh, wait, wait— freedom! . . . Cape Codded, an affair he was having with
someone at work. A dispatcher, I think Sa-
I was about to tell, yes, I was about to mantha called her. He was a cop, y’see, my
tell you how my brother’s email has led brother was, as the father before him. . . . I
me willy-nilly into-into—what? well, a bri- listened a lot, said little.
ar-patch really— the paradoxical problem
of freedom. Let me explain. It won’t take They divorced . . .
but a —.
He remarried.
Take me, for example. I feel I am free
to answer my brother’s email or not, to The dispatcher? I can’t say for sure he
go back east or not. But am I? Or will an- married her. But I doubt it. Married men,
tecedent events dictate what I will do? Y’see de rigueur, never marry their mistresses,
what I mean? The paradox of freedom? . . . “N’est-ce pas vrai no?. . . Mais oui.”

When I was mustering out, my sister’s— Sam—oh Sam I lost track of, naturally. .
oh, I said that. Anyway, I had a decision to . . Well, “naturally” for the—well, my family.
For us divorce is for the ex, y’know, the kiss

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of death. Il bacio della. Not so for my wife’s. You see what I mean, though? I know
Y’cud say they shrive, we rive. But I don’t all of this about Fran and Alyce with-a-y,
want to get into—okay, okay. . . . but-but I don’t even know if Sam is living. I
mean I even know what Alyce with-a-y said
Take my wife’s ex-sisters-in-law, Fran and at Candyman’s funeral.
Alyce— “with-a-y,” as she unremittingly re-
minds us. “We just wanted to peer into the crater,”
is what she said, teary-eyed, over and
We know, for example, that after her di- over, like a child caught acting out, . . . or a
vorce Alyce with-a-y, who, btw, lives on pop- daughter slipping and falling to her death
corn and champagne, took up with some under Arches’ Delicate Arch because, in
ragtail bobtail candy man before rehabbing words last spoken, she just wanted to get a
and settling down with—well, some ragtail good picture of a flinty pinnacle—or was it
bobtail pharmaceutical vendor she actually a fin? or a giant balanced red rock?—what-
calls—well, called— “Candyman.” . . . ever, at dawn’s first trembling light. . . . I said,
didn’t I, that-that I didn’t want to go there—
But you see what I mean? I don’t where fate leaked in? Didn’t I? . . .
even know if Sam’s alive, but I do know
Candyman isn’t. . . . Thus the difference be- “‘It is misleading to compare the size of
tween my family and my wife’s. They stay these craters with larger, more famous vol-
connected. . . . canoes,’” Bryoni informs me from a leaflet
she picked up at the lodge. “‘Explosion cra-
As for Fran, the other ex—well, Fran has ters,’” she continues in her clipped British
some blood disease and, I venture, won’t way, “‘did not pile debris around their
survive the tumid and pestilent blundering vents to build impressive cones but instead
and writhing of our darkly crooked-minded, hurled vast quantities of ash and rock far
verbigerating President Bandersnatch’s and wide.’”
super-charged, kakistocratic plague. Why?
Well, for one thing, she keeps emailing ex- “Who woulda thought?” I interpose be-
clamatory stuff on the cause of COVID-19. fore she continues, “‘The Katwe craters
“5G Networks!” For another, well—enough buried an area far larger than that inun-
said. . . . ’Cept that Alyce, dear Alyce with-a-y, dated by Vesuvius around Pompeii in AD79,
makes me curiouser and curiouser about reducing Lake Edward to a soup of toxic
“the six impossible things I believe before ash.’”
breakfast,” which somehow are helping her
deal with the passing of Candyman. . . . There, in the hazy hodgepodge of
memory, we stand, peering under a vast,
They used to love visiting Italy, y’see, high-cobalt sky, a couple of “gapeseeds,”
Alyce with-a-y and Candyman did. Assisi, it she calls us, poised to see as with one eye in
was. mind’s eye the beginning of the beginning,
the saffron-robed twilight of Aurora, rising
“The birthplace of the Sun,” she still fast at a straight angle to the horizon, from
softly apposes nostalgically, as if entreating the bed of old Tithonus.
the palladium of Apollo.
“Kara” I used to call Bryony, because
She hasn’t been back since half-way up of where she’d taught before landing in
Etna for the umpteenth time, Candyman’s Uganda. Ankara.
heart gave out. . . .

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She liked that, my calling her Kara, and father’s thin lips, is it, are they, like mine,
my liking Little Jimmy Scott’s Falling in Love still forming interred words unspoken? . . .
Is Wonderful, which we wore out, though And, of course, of abortion, and of how now
why it smote me she never asked. One it’s but an enigma variation of the lost but
thing about Kara—she was never “nosy,” as unforgotten past. . . .
Mrs. McGrue would say. A woman could be
worse, that too. . . . Still, if you’ll permit an Elizabethan
waxing: “Though it be in the pale light of
Murchison Falls gets fast-moving and memory a stubbornly persistent illusion,
rumbling as it plunges from cliff through it nonetheless does not appease the con-
narrow gorge—like brute, blunt words said science of one making the crowd believe
through closed lips. Like “abortion.” Brute astonishing things.” Thank you. . . .
and blunt. Like that, spoken through closed
red lips. Not that I, mind you, ever was a priest,
but I once aspired to become one. But let’s
Did Kara say she had . . . had had . . . was not go—
going to have?
I prefer to revisit a typical musty evening
The simple past? the past perfect? The in Jinja.
future? . . . Ankara? Jinja? . . .
We are at the time, Kara and I, in the
Tchah, does it really matter in the end, grey convent on the hill, “sitting about,” as it
the wheres the whens—the should haves, were,“on divans, in pigtails, smoking opium
the could haves, the would haves, the and seeing visions.” Only sans pigtails and
modals of lost opportunity? I mean we all Gordon’s Dry Gin for opium. . . .
know, do we not, that the past is neither
simple nor perfect, that, as Thomas Lanier Why they left, the nuns, I don’t know,
reminds us, it just “keeps getting bigger anymore than why anyone leaves. But Gor-
and bigger at the future’s expense”? Pixi- don’s visions always elevated their where-
lated? Oh, I agree, Tennessee was that. Still, abouts to a question of great moment for
seems to me, with apologies to the “vulgar me. Why, as of so many things, I couldn’t
Cockney poetaster,” that’s all we know or say.
need to know. No? . . .
“What happened to the nuns, what hap-
But of a sudden they do matter, tenses, pened to the nuns?” I go, in the vapor of
and of late, for whatever reason,—Little the night.
Jimmy? “Big Blue”?— prepositions, too. “Of”
in particular. That wee relationship signifier “The nuns?” Kara laughs back, in the cool
I once addressed under duress, as in of the surface airs, dropping Sportsman smoke
father of eternal silence of infinite spaces, rings into the murky mixture of memories.
of gnome-guarded graves ’cross mutinous
waves, of stalkers of same differences, of “Yes,” I persist, dropping to my knees,
slips and falls and words last spoken, of fe- knuckling the hard floors, “the nuns, the
vers and coughs that won’t break off, and, nuns, who once knelt on these motus animi
of course, of course, of the steady state of continuus,—” “‘Motus’ what?” Bry—I mean
the underlying condition. . . . Is, I some- Kara— breaks in—“atoning for thousands
times wonder, of the pitiless line of the of blasphemies!” I finish, loud and brawling
like—well, like writer-rock star Norman
Mailer, I’d say, ’cept of course I don’t write

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or strum. Then I fall silent as a grave, be- Isn’t it semantic?
fore softly, prayerfully musing, “Where have
they gone?” Each locution parsed is like a lover’s kiss

Kara holds her cigarette in arching fin- Sweet symbols in the moonlight
gers for a marked beat, then goes, “Might as
well, mightn’t you, love, ask of the where- Do they mean fall in or out, to know I’m
abouts of the missing strawb’rries?” frantic

We used to exchange paperbacks, Kara Isn’t it semantic?”
and I. Penguins. Mine from the Peace Corps
provided book locker. Couples, The Spy Who —well, alright, alright, if I had to go there,
Came in from the Cold,The Naked and the but, frankly, it’s like asking Josef K.
Dead, Herzog, The Caine Mutiny, and such.
Kara’s—I don’t know where she acquired what he’s been accused of. But, okay, I’d
them, though now and again she allowed, say—what? how about a bad case of acne
“Oh, a duka in Jinja . . . or Kampala . . . or vulgaris? Yes, yes, why not that antecedent
Masaka,” as we sat about seeing aforesaid event? Who is to say it was not a bad case
visions, and, oh yes, passing time impro- of acne vulgaris that hurtled me into a sem-
vising lyrics to well known songs. She, not inary? Certainly not I. Escape as vocation?
me. Such as?. . . . Well, f’rinstance. . . . Yes, you could say that. A common enough
theme, after all.
“What about,” I go,—see, that was my
part, cuing Kara as if she were Etta James— Why I left I couldn’t tell you, any more
as we’re slugging gin and labeling the than why. . . . Let’s just say—what? when
sand-colored geckos scrambling on the my face cleared up my “calling” cleared out,
walls— “‘Isn’t It Romantic?’” “Rodgers and and leave it at that. . . .
Hart?” she returns, not a bit nonplussed,
quick as a pulsebeat, “You mean, don’t you, But of this I am certain: With the Se-
‘Isn’t It Semantic?’” Then, with a playful af- lective Service sighting another conscript
flatus, soto voce, she sings: for Nam, I bolted—or-or was I propelled?—
like a scared—or sacred?— white tail at the
“Isn’t it semantic? crack of a “thuddy-thuddy,” into the shrubs
and prickles of footnotes and C’s for F’s —
Muted in a moonbeam, a word that graduate school.
can’t be heard
That was—when?—oh, the fall of ’63?
Isn’t it semantic? Yes, I remember ’cuz shortly thereafter I
went into Kennedy’s Kiddie Korps. Why?
Murmuring under stardust the oldest Well, that’s somethin’ else I’m not entirely
magic word clear about. But I do remember the precip-
itate: that paper I wrote under duress— on
I hear the dry grass stirring under trees Henry James’s use of the preposition of in
above The Ambassadors.

While all the world is mulling what is Professor-Professor— ah! Clegg-Nuttal
meant by love was his name— Professor Marius Clegg-
Nuttal. He gushed orgasmically, he did,
Isn’t it semantic? “Polish this and it’s publishable!” To which Jett
retorted when I told him, “Better to perish.”
Oh to be unstrung on such a night as this

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Jett McGrue—’s long as we’re along into Good question. A very good question. A de-
this— was the landlady’s son. In graduate tective’s question.
school I rented his mother’s basement
apartment in the Bronx. Because of Bry, a softly-belted Polish
girl of very fair hair and smoky blue eyes
Jett prided himself on being “quite regu- of whom, of late, late night megrims and
larly gay,” at a time, mind you, before “out” schawarmerei ignite a beerdrunk despair,
was “in.” I mean well before the Stonewall always in block letters spelling out the fa-
Riots, and just a couple of years before ther’s “Plymouth”—well, the top bar of its
“Operation Starlite,” which they call, y’know, grille, curved to follow its cavity down to
the first “truly American” assault on the front gravel shield between emblem and
Viet Cong. Yay! we won 614 to 45! . . . Jett hood— under a depth of night that with-
was one of the 45 “losers” and “suckers,” as holds an old devil moon.
the “great leader” would call him. . . .
’S why she’s still, after all these years, my
“I am here and I am queer!” płomień, my flame, albeit one, for all I know,
long since extinguished. . . .
Jett. A real trailblazer, you could call him.
A man could be worse. Her father, y’see, would go on and on
about how he acquired a diamond tip stylus
For a sawbuck I used to sublet his moth- 365DS73 for the exact model, and shrill,
er’s basement to Jett for his assignations. . . . “Two, I’ve ordered!” as if the stylus were
going out of style. That’s how. . . .
Then the assassination.
But only, of course, of Little Jimmy Scott
I learned of it mid-Friday afternoon from and dancing, could we, Bry and me, amid
Cronkite, on the 12-inch portable Sylvania a gramarye of apples and pears and gold-
Dualette I’d picked up in some joint or other painted cones, could we, Bry and me, of
up on the Concourse. sweets in red paper with bright colored
ribbons, could we, Bry and me, all hung
I am not ashamed to admit I cried— un- without lights or tinsel or bunting from the
like today, honestly, if the entire Trump upside-down Christmas tree Poles call cho-
clan were Romanovved, I, unapologetically, inka, could we, Bry and me, could we….
wouldn’t care a tinker’s dam,— as landlady
McGrue, bless her soul, I’m sure would Funny the things that stick….
allow, had she not been brought down on
that very Sunday next that Ruby plugged Even now, amid soul’s sad lucidity, I
Oswald, which Jett and I witnessed live, up- wonder what she thinks, my płomień, if still
stairs, on the console Magnavox with cherry aflicker? I know, how foolish after all these
cabinet and radio, while Mother— bless her years. . . . like-like, well, the fat, middle-aged
soul!— was out gettin’ “Somethin’ speshal George Bowling of the once deeply femi-
for breakfast,” up at Sutter’s of course, on nine Elsie, with whom he was once “living
the Concourse, and bein’ crushed for us in sin.” . . . ’Cept, of course, I am rather thin,
under a bus — Bx 1 or 2, I couldn’t tell ya. . though not gaunt and haunted as my Elsie
. . just a bus, crushed, for us. had been.

How, after all this time, do I remember But still, that-that—what? long ago an-
the TV and its cherry cabinet and radio? tecedent event? It is beginning to seep in,

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yes it is, into whether to go back east or bold!”? No matter, no matter, I can feel it,
not— to Lower Binfield, so to speak. I can yes I can, the eejit that I am.
feel it, y’see, I can feel it, the eejit that I am,
the father would say, the ghosting old flame, ’S why, don’tcha know, I can open the
old desire, the pulse bumping in the wrist, other side of my fear. Yes I can, yes I can,
oh yes, I can feel it, the ever so softly heart ’cause the King, not the Queen, minja, or
beating under the Plymouth’s floorboards, the Godfather, but the King of Soul has told
as I tap, tap, tap at the bedroom door and, me so: “A change gon’ come, oh yes, it will.”
oh yes, hear return with lightspeed from He’s told me so. Yes he has.
I know not where: “Behold!” or is it “Be
“Brother,” he’s told me, the King, “you
have somethin’ to report.”

About the Author

After retiring from a career teaching philosophy, Vincent Barry returned to his first love, fic-
tion. His stories have appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad, includ-
ing: The Saint Ann’s Review, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Broken City, Abstract: Contemporary
Expressions, Kairos, Terror House, Caveat Lector, The Fem, BlogNostics, The Writing Disor-
der, whimperbang, The Disappointed Housewife, The Collidescope, Anti-Heroin Chic, and
Beakful. Barry lives in Santa Barbara, California.

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AROUND THE
CORNER

by Delancy Gunther

My heart beat fast against my chest as I ran Who cares?
down the halls of the office. What once was
my solitude now became a maze, twisting I didn’t until the phone rang.
and turning around every corner trying to
reach the exit. Tall cubicles, each divided And rang.
in equal space, about a foot apart at least.
Each one looked the same, square and beige. And rang.

Just a moment ago, I was sitting in one of I answered it after the third screeching
them, counting the endless sea of squares ring. Who could it be? They didn’t say, but
above me before spending hours endlessly their words shook me.
typing away on the keyboard. Day in, day
out, the clock ticking painfully slow as I sat “Come home.” The dull tone of the
there staring at the screen. Over and over, abrupt call droned on followed suit. My
type, type, type. hands shook, trying to make sense of those
words. Something happened, didn’t it?
The usual tedium, writing reports while
sipping on bitter, week old coffee in my Was it my child, all alone in my small
‘Worlds Best Mom’ mug. Surrounded by apartment? Did he need me? Was it urgent?
four white walls decorated in nothing but
Post-It notes, color coded binders filled with I had to go, my chair clattering to the
reports of the previous years, and a singular ground as I yanked my black velvet coat
photo of my smiling child. from its hanger, leaving a small tear. I would
certainly get an earful from Mr. Schneider
My world… for leaving without notice, but I didn’t care.
The exit was straight ahead.
My life…
But where was straight? Was it left or
Would I still be in this cubicle if I didn’t right?
need the money? For my child? For my
home? I turn a corner. Just cubicles, perfectly
aligned as always. Molly Ryans was fervently
typing away, curly hair frazzled, dark circles

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under her weathered eyes, and sipping on by more cubicles, more monotonous em-
her tenth cup of coffee. She had worked over- ployees like I had been. Where was even
night again, hadn’t showered either. She’d be mine in this endless sea?
like that tonight as well; nothing I nor anyone
else said would snap her out of her trance. Another corner was turned. More
workers, more repetitive typing, more
I turn another corner. More of them, damned cubicles! Francis turned to me with
rows and rows of them all across the hall. I a blank wordless look and said, “Don’t look
pass by Sebastian Grant, should’ve retired back.”
ages ago. He sat in silence, like he always
did, staring at photos of the past. His wife Her neighbor spoke up, “Do what you
on their wedding day, his son’s college grad- want!”
uation, his granddaughter’s first birthday…
None would be waiting for him, not any- Another cubicle worker chimed in,
more. “What do you want?”

“I should’ve done more,” he mumbled. “I A chorus of tired voices rose, all telling
should’ve done more.” me the same thing. My throat was numb,
voice hoarse as I managed to utter my
Poor man. words, “I want to live.”

Yet another corner I turned. Mr. Freedom awaited me, didn’t it? Just one
Schneider was in the hall, yelling at a subor- more corner, I turned.
dinate for being late, again. He then noticed
me, like a bull he charged forward. Wouldn’t you know? It was right there,
the whole time. There was my cubicle, in
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t the same state. And there was the exit, right
you working? Get back to work at once!” next to it. I reached for the door, pausing for
a moment.
Panic pulsed through my veins, drenching
my clothes and leaving me feverish. I go back to the cubicle. I reach for the
phone, tearing off the pink slip. Dialing the
I must leave. number, it rang.

Without care, I pushed my way forward And rang.
but Mr. Schneider blocked me. He threat-
ened to fire me if I didn’t go back. I didn’t And rang.
care. I pushed him aside and ran, passing
On the final ring, smile on my face, I said,
“Come home.”

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Empty Frame

Ben’s paintbrush danced across the can- enough for privacy without needing to hide
vas in unwavering arcs. Greens and blues the rest of the garden nor the chateau that
splashed together in vibrant harmony, a it resided in.
clear midday sky mixed with the bright
green leaves of a weeping willow tree ac- Marianne would remove her gloves,
cented by gentle hues of gold. A sunny day guiding her hand through the streams in
in a beautiful garden unveiled with each tandem with the wind. Gentle hums car-
stroke. ried a lingering tune as she twirled amongst
leaves and rose petals, even in the winter
Marianne would love this. Ben smiled, snow Marianne would dance like no one
touching up the details of a statue in the was there. But spring held a powerful magic
background. on this tree. On the lowest branch, over a
patch of green by the statue, was a swing
Beige and white colors blended with aloft with rope and white ribbons.
the terracotta pathway leading from the
back door to the central fountain, winding Marianne, barefoot while adorned in
around it before splitting off into two sepa- pastel dresses and matching sunhats would
rate paths. One led to Marianne’s cherished soar on this swing. Higher and higher, child-
rose bushes, peeking around the corner like laughter pealing with each timed kick,
like a mischievous child. She, like a doting hair sailing like a ship out the harbor. A
mother, would tend to them often, apron blissful time filled with warmth and sweet
stained and face damp with sweat from the fragrant roses.
long day. The other rested at the base of
the tea area where many a pleasant conver- All had faded once pungent paint brought
sation took place. Laughter filled the air as Ben back to his senses. Paintbrush halfway
Ben told a joke, much to Marianne’s delight. done with the swing, he added the finishing
touches and took a step back. Beautiful. Ben
Next were the benches, dark iron at- wiped remnants of paint off his cheek, damp
tached to bold wooden seats, two on ei- with sweat and stained by grief. How long
ther side of the fountain. How the fountain had he stood there painting, unaware of the
would glisten in the afternoon light before tears marring his face until now?
moonlight crept in. It was quiet, peaceful,
and empty save for two lovely souls dancing It was this place, this accursed land that
beneath the stars in only their silk night- no longer had a purpose, scarred by years
wear. But they didn’t care. of sorrow and neglect. Browns and grays,
broken tiles, standing water, and decaying
Finally, the weeping willow was all that rust were all that remained of his old home.
was left. Ben wanted to weep too, but he had No amount of paint could ever bring those
to finish this. The trunk leaned toward the joyous colors back, yet he still tried. On this
fountain, yet never did it touch, branches day for the past forty years, Ben painted.
reaching toward the sky. The leaves hung
like soft green curtains, enveloping the area He painted until the day was done,
then stowed it away amongst his growing

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