Adelaide Award Anthology 2018: SHORT STORIES, Vol. Two

SHORT STORIES
the room while the light from the neon sign outside the window
reflected across her round bottom.

“We should go,” Beka said, holding up a newspaper pointing
to a small advertisement in the corner.

“Go where?”
“The Faulkner County Fair in Worley,” she answered with a
flirtatious smile.
“Why would we want to go to the county fair?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” she answered. “I just love cotton candy,
camel apples, and rides. Worley is at least forty miles away, and
no one there would know us. We could act like a normal couple.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to hold hands in public and pretend
we were a married couple?”
Claude had never thought of the life he had built with Mary
and his daughters as anything but perfect. Mary was good to him,
and she did a great job raising the girls. With only a trace of guilt,
he allowed his mind to imagine the dirt mid-way and the smell of
cotton candy. He imagined the way the waitresses hand would feel
warm in his against the coolness of the evening. He thought of the
way her hair would tickle his neck as she lay against his chest while
the Ferris wheel moved slowly around. By the evening’s end, the
two had fabricated a story that would allow Claude to be away for
the weekend.
The Worley Fairgrounds sat just on the outskirts of town. For
fifty-one weeks each year the grounds were nothing more than a
pasture filled with black and white Holstein cattle, but for one week
each year the cows were herded into smaller fields deeper in the
woods while the lights went up along with the rides and games,
and a mid-way was created that would be the envy of any cow in
Faulkner County.
The autumn evenings had been cool, but the mid-day sun was
warm as Bernie worked fervently with a large monkey wrench in one
hand an over-sized crescent in the other. He worked with a small
crew that had by afternoon erected a large steel disc that showed re-
semblance to a Ferris wheel. From his vantage point atop the mass of
steel, Bernie could see four pitchmen who had knocked off early and

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had a game of cards spread out on a flatbed trailer. The men playing
cards did not catch his eye, but what did was the sun reflecting off
a whiskey bottle that sat within reach of the men. By the time the
Ferris wheel was erect and complete with lights and signs, and the
safety list signed off by Bernie, he had made three trips to visit the
men playing cards. Each time he returned with a glass of brown
liquid. He showed little effort to hide the whiskey; he knew the boss
man with the giant mustache would not be in town until nightfall.

Friday evening the moon rose early over an already crowded
mid-way. Pitchmen beckoned the crowds, tempting boyfriends with
small stuffed animals, key-chains with beer openers, and goldfish in
small bowls. Children begged to ride the rides while parents held
their small sticky hands. As the overstimulated mass of thrill seekers
made their way down the mid-way, Claude and the waitress walked
among them as if they were a married couple or sweethearts from
their teenage years that never grew tired of one another’s company.

As the evening progressed and the crowds waned thin, Claude
and the waitress enjoyed the view from the top of the Ferris wheel.
With each full passage the disc made, the large carriage bolts that
held it stationary moved more. The keeper pins that steadied the
bolts lay untouched, unnoticed, in Bernie’s toolbox while he sipped
whiskey from a paper cup. On the big wheel’s final turn the bolts
gave up, and with a loud pop and eerie moan the largest ride owned
by Wilson Carnivals left its designated spot and traveled freely along
the mid-way. Some in the crowd screamed, some laughed, some
took pictures, but all were amazed that the giant wheel stayed up-
right. It could have been grace or luck, but the giant wheel stayed
upright, and because the crowd had thinned the only casualty would
be the corn-dog stand and a wire fence that kept the cows from
enjoying the Fair.

The next morning in Winslow was as typical as any Saturday.
Children ate cereal from bowls while watching their favorite car-
toons; mothers planned a day of shopping, and fathers loaded their
golf clubs into their cars, but the Peterson household felt a new
strain. The daughters had retreated to their rooms refusing to talk.
Claude and Mary sat at the kitchen table at first in silent unbelief.

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The local morning newspaper lay between them as an unimpeach-
able source of truth. The headline read, “Miracle at the County
Fair.”The paper had attempted to interview the owner of Wilson
Carnivals, but he refused to give more than a short comment, “Acci-
dents happen,” he said. But it was the picture that accompanied the
article that told the whole story. The photo showed the giant Ferris
wheel still standing but not attached to its foundation, and in the
foreground, a couple stood dazed and in shock. The black and white
photo on the front page showed Claude with his new comb-over
and the waitress with her head lovingly on his chest. Mary’s tears
dampened the newspaper as she struggled to find words to express
her grief while Claude wondered if all this pain could have avoided
if Mary had not forgotten to buy yellow mustard.
Wayne Hall lives in Conway Arkansas and has a great passion for
both writing and fly fishing. If pressed, he will admit he is a better
fly fisherman than a writer, but he enjoys the discipline both require.
His obsession with storytelling can be traced back to his childhood
listening to his grandfather along with other elderly gentlemen gath-
ered in the general store telling stories, each trying to outdo the
others. Wayne loves creating stories that tell of life behind the paned
windows of small-town America.

51



Sleepy Eye Days

By Dennis Nau

“Your Uncle Les never cried much as a baby, Tommie. Oh, you’d
hear a little moan here and a little moan there. Just a little moan
and he slept through the night, something mothers appreciate and
fathers do too. Not many babies sleep through the night. Your dad
certainly didn’t. Les learned to walk when he was nine months old,
likely because he knew he couldn’t hunt if he couldn’t walk. He
really didn’t go through the crawling stage. That worried me a little.
I thought it was kind of like learning algebra before you learn to add
and subtract. Your grandfather just laughed at me, said it was no big
deal. What are you going to do, MaryAnn, he said to me, crawl on
your hands and knees and teach him?

“Les was well-behaved growing up. There were a couple of
times I had to discipline him, but not many. All he wanted to do
growing up was hunt. I swear, the first time I held him in my arms
after he was delivered, he looked up at me and said to himself, I gotta
learn how to talk so I can ask mom where my rifle is.

“By the time he was eight years old Les could shoot anything
that moved. Everyone said, that Kryzmachek kid can shoot the eyes
out of a jackrabbit a half-mile away. They were right. There were
still some prairie chickens around back then. God knows we needed
the food. Les’ father, God bless his soul, died in ’37. Your grandpa
George couldn’t hunt worth a damn.

“If there was an elephant walking across our front yard your
Grandpa could shoot at that animal for three days running but he’d

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probably miss every shot. George could cook, though. It was some-
what embarrassing. He could cook better than I could.



“Your grandmother has a sense of humor,” Uncle Les once told me.
“I think she can make anyone laugh, always could, and it didn’t
matter how you felt back then or how hungry you were. She started
chewing tobacco, Copenhagen, when I was in second grade, the
only woman I’ve ever seen who chews tobacco. She could spit it
into a pail ten feet away. I’m sure she picked up the habit from my
dad, who couldn’t spit into an empty cup six inches from his mouth
without missing.”

Oh, I knew all about my grandmother’s sense of humor. I used
to visit her damn near every day growing up. I knew she could make
a person laugh. I knew about her evil eye, knew how she’d use it
when she felt she needed an evil eye. Just a glance with that eye and
you’d confess, even if you didn’t know what crime you had com-
mitted. That evil eye would never quite close, even when she took a
nap. She’s looking at me when she’s sleeping I thought. Can a poor
kid not get into any trouble in this house?

I knew about her smile, one eye slightly closed, her right lip
curled up. She could giggle and she could make a person laugh.
Sometimes she did it without even trying to make that person laugh.
She could chew tobacco, chew it and smoke her Lucky Strikes at the
same time. Best of all, she could bake cookies, chocolate chip mostly.

“Don’t do anything wrong and get her really upset,” my dad
once told me. “She can put chewing tobacco right in that space
between your eyes. You won’t even see it’s coming. It’s just bang.
Then it starts to run down and get into your eyes. That hurts. I know
about crossing your grandmother, Tommie.”

My grandmother had two dogs, Sparky and Freddie, both
mutts, scrawny little mutts. I loved them. None of this yip, yip, yip
stuff when I came over. They’d just rub against my legs and look up
with eyes that said pet me or I’ll kill you. Gramma treated them like
they were royalty. She hated cats though, one in particular. If that

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cat came anywhere near her house a glob of chewing tobacco would
land on its head.

“Cat repellant,” she would say.
I didn’t cross my grandmother and I didn’t cross my mother
either. Well, sometimes I did but I never got caught. After my dad
got a promotion my mother hinted that she wanted an automobile.
Lots of ladies were starting to drive in 1960. She only hinted at
first. Honest, Chet, I need to get out of the house once in a while. I
have things that need to be done. Doctor’s appointments. Grocery
shopping. We missed two dental appointments because you couldn’t
get off work. Sometimes, Chet, I just need to get away. The hints
became more direct. My dad rolled his eyes at first. Then kind of a
wintery frost gripped the house for almost a month.
My father said one night, “Your mother has our car now. She’ll
be driving you guys where you want to go. We are also getting an-
other automobile, a 1960 Ford Fairlane.”
I looked at my brother. He looked at me. Both of us were
thinking, two cars, oh my God, we must be rich.
I knew that my mother needed to get out of the house
once in a while. My little sister could cause extreme emotional
damage to fathers and mothers and even older brothers. She
could cause saints to become sinners back then and we were a
good Catholic family and the Pope advised against such things.
I believe, she still can inflict this damage but I don’t bring the
subject up at family gatherings if she’s present.
Alice, growing up, was really a little shit and she still is, even
to this day. She is four years younger than I am and as stubborn as
a red wine stain. My grandmother said that thing about Les, that he
was born looking for a rifle.
Alice was born looking for some boiling oil so she could use it
torture me and my parents using medieval torturing techniques. She
just ignored Jeremy, my older brother, and treated him like he was a
mailman or street sweeper and Jeremy was glad to be ignored. She quit
torturing the rest of us when she turned 24, not because she grew out
of the torturing stage, but because she found someone else to torture,

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a husband. That would be Claus Mrozinski, my old friend and school-
mate. Claus was tall and skinny and could run a very fast quarter mile.
He took the state title in ’67, but that accomplishment meant nothing
to Alice. He had one quality that Alice found attractive: Claus liked
to be told what to do. It didn’t hurt that he was in line to inherit his
parent’s auto parts store in Franklin, a good half hour away.

Well, we’ll still be able to visit them in Franklin, my mother
said after their engagement was announced. “It’s not as if it’s an hour
away,” she said and all of us were thinking, why couldn’t it be an
hour or an-hour-and-a-half or maybe two hours away.

“Well, we can see them at least on Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
my dad said, “though I imagine Clause’ parents will want the couple
to come to their house for dinner at holidays too. I was thinking, poor
Claus, maybe it’s my Christian duty to warn him. Love your neighbor
as yourself, the bible says. At that time he was living almost 16 miles
away. Not really a neighbor. And then there was the judge not, lest
you be judged rule. I shouldn’t judge Alice, I thought. Should I tell
Claus about our history with Alice? Not really, I concluded.

I remember the time Alice tried to set the house on fire when
she was three years old. She had a wicked sneer and a bad disposition
and evil intentions but remarkable hand-eye coordination as well.
A cigarette lighter is not a simple mechanism for a three-year-old.
Jeremy got the fire out after it consumed some curtains.

When my mother’s last remaining aunt died, not that she had
that many. I was about nine years old, at the time. She was a won-
derful woman, my mother said. She was wonderful to me when I was
younger. We have to go to her funeral. It’s a long way away

Do I have to go, Jeremy asked. I didn’t even know your aunt
and Uncle Les said he’d take me hunting in South Dakota. We’re
going to shoot pheasants.

Well, I suppose you can stay home and go with your uncle Les
to South Dakota, my mother said. Do I have to go to the funeral, I
asked. I didn’t know your aunt either.

“You and Alice can’t stay home alone. You’re just not old
enough and we’ll be gone for almost four days. The funeral is in
Canada, in Winnipeg.”

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“Can gramma take care of us?”
I could see wheels and gears turning around inside my mother’s
head. She smiled. I’ll check, she said, and it might be more like five days.
My mother was smiling because she was thinking that she and
my dad could be without kids for four or five days. Who knows,
maybe six.
My parents kissed the three of us when they left after my dad
got home from work on a Friday.
My grandmother was waiting for us as we walked to her door.
She spit out tobacco.
“It is wonderful to see you guys. We will have so much fun.”
After dinner, we played many very simple card games and ate
some popcorn and then it was time for bed. She had made up two
very comfortable sleeping spaces for us. I was tired. Alice said, I don’t
want to go to bed. You have to go to bed, gramma said.
I don’t want to go to bed. You have to go to bed.
I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED. I DON’T WANT TO
GO TO BED. I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED.
The screaming began. The kicking began. She bit me, some-
thing I was quite accustomed to at that point, so I know she didn’t
have rabies.
Gramma picked her up, held her up almost against the ceiling
upstairs and Alice got quiet.
“You have to go to bed now or you have to sleep in the chicken
coop. Your brother Tommie and I need some rest and we won’t be
able to sleep with you screaming like this.”
I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED NOW.
“Well, come with me. The chicken coop is fairly comfortable,
I think. The chickens seem to like it.”
My grandma had about 20 chickens back then. Lots of people
in town had chickens. It could get noisy around sunrise, but that
changed as the grocery store started selling chicken already skinned
and filleted and people would say to themselves that’s not a bad price
and I wouldn’t have to buy chicken feed and grit and clean the coop
and they wouldn’t wake me up early in the morning. I could sleep
later and stay up later and watch Johnny Carson.

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My grandmother had to bend down fairly low to put Alice in
the chicken coop. This straw is just as comfortable as a bed, she said.
“Wait right here, Alice. I’m going back into the house to get
you a blanket. It gets a little chilly towards dawn, even at this time
of the year.”
“I don’t want to go to bed,” Alice said in a more restrained
tone of voice.
Well, you can’t always get what you want, my grandmother
said or something to that effect, and she said it years before Mick
Jagger said the same thing.
She got the blanket and wrapped up Alice who had her jaw
set in such a way that meant, I will not be defeated by my grand-
mother and some stupid chickens. Grandma started to step out of
the chicken coop, then turned around and went back to Alice.
“I forgot,” she said. “This is my nicest blanket. Your grandpa
bought it for me on our tenth anniversary. I grabbed it by mistake.
“Tommie, would you run in and get a towel to cover up Alice.
Don’t get a good towel. The old ones are in the bottom drawer in the
bathroom. You’d better get two. It might get colder than I thought
and some of those old towels have holes in them.” I ran into the
house and found the towels in the drawer, all the while thinking that
I could hardly believe that she would leave Alice outside like that
and what would my mom and dad say about this when I told them?
They’d say you must be lying, Tommie, and we thought we
taught you better than that. Your grandmother is the sweetest person
on earth and she makes you cookies and popcorn. How could you
say such a thing about her?
Granma said thank you, Tommie, when I bought her the sheets.
She turned to Alice. “I’m getting old, honey. I’d bend down
to give you a kiss goodnight but I can’t really bend down that far
anymore. I’m going to throw you a kiss. Stay warm and sleep well.”
One more time Alice said, I don’t want to go to bed.
As we got to the door of gramma’s house she turned and looked
back at Alice, cuddled up in her towels with an iron stare. I could
see her face clearly. The night was just turning dark and the moon
was full.

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“I hope the chickens don’t peck your eyes out,” my grand-
mother said.

In the house we sat near the window screen. Gramma looked
at her watch. She winked at me. In about three minutes we heard
a little high-pitched, squeaky, humble voice call out in monotone,
gramma.

“Go get your sister, Tommie. Remember the towels.”
When we got back in there were cookies and chocolate milk
waiting for us. My grandmother handled us without a great deal of
trouble for the rest of our visit.
All that screaming wore my sister out and she fell asleep before
she finished the cookies. Gramma put her to bed. She gave me her
last cookie.
“I’ve been remembering things all day, Tommie.” Today is
my wedding anniversary. I and your grandfather would have been
married 56 years.
“Your grandfather was a real gentleman, Tommie, and he
treated me with respect. He’d open doors for me wherever we went.
Not just going to church or going into the general store, but every-
where. He’d even open the door for me when I needed to go into
the closet.
“And he was such a good father to your dad and your Uncle Les.
“God, I miss that man.”
I thought I could see a little hint of a tear in gramma’s
eye. It couldn’t be, I thought. My grandma doesn’t cry. My
grandma doesn’t even know how to cry. She was washing
dishes when she told me these things. She blinked a couple of
times. She sighed.
I believe it really was a tear.



Gramma got a call one night. The voice said she was a long distance
operator and this was a collect call from North Dakota and would
gramma accept the call? She did. You always worried about collect

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Adelaide Literary Awards Anthology 2018
calls back then. They were so expensive that nobody made frivolous
collect calls. They were serious calls and they scared people. You’d
panic, thinking, I wonder who died.

“Mom, we have problems with our car. We have to get it fixed.
I don’t know how long it’s going to take. I wanted to let you know.
I’ll pay for the collect call. I’m calling from a phone booth.

“And how’s it going with the kids?”
She said it was going as well as it possibly could.
During that seven day visit we found out about my grand-
mother’s eye. During breakfast the day before my parents returned,
gramma said, kids, we are going to Sleepy Eye today. I need to get
my driver’s license renewed. The county has an office there. You’ll
like the town. I believe it is the prettiest town in the state of Min-
nesota, though I’ve probably only been through maybe 15 towns in
the state. You are going to like Sleepy Eye.
“They have a Dairy Queen in Sleepy Eye.”
We had to wait a little while on the benches in the county of-
fices before the lady was ready to see gramma. Not too many women
had driver’s licenses back then. Driving was kind of considered a
man’s domain. A man drives to and from work. A woman does
laundry and cooks.
I’ve got something to tell you, gramma said, at the county
offices. Her voice got lower and she leaned close to us.
“I have one eye that’s not real. It’s made out of glass. Well, it
was glass at one time, way back. The one I have now is some sort of
plastic. Still, it’s called a glass eye. Whenever I renew my license I like
to play a trick on the person behind the counter. I don’t want you
guys to get upset when I do it. Just stay calm. It’s all in good fun.”
Gramma surrendered her current license, filled out her forms,
paid the woman whose badge said Mrs. Hughes the $1.25 driver
license renewal fee, and that same Mrs. Hughes said we just have
the eye test left.
“Left eye. Cover your right eye please. Please read as far down
this chart as you can.”
“J,L,Y,W,,H,B,Y,V,A,N…..”
She just kept going.

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“T,N,H,Q,W,E,R…”
She kept going all the way to the end. Why that is remark-
able, Mrs. Kryzmxczeck, Mrs. Hughes said. All the way to the end
without a mistake. I believe you have better than 20/20 vision.
“You don’t see somebody pass this test in such a manner every
day. If they do, they’re usually fairly young. Now, we’ll check the
other eye. Please cover your left eye, ma’m. Read as far down on the
chart as you are able.”
“A,A,A,A,A,A,A…”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Kryzmzcheck Is there something wrong with
your right eye?”
At this point gramma popped out her glass eye and examined
it with her good eye.
“Looks all right to me,” she said, popped it back in and Mrs.
Hughes gagged and probably wet her pants, not realizing that this
was all in good fun, apparently. Alice just stared at that woman with
a look that said I can’t believe you were scared by that. I didn’t know
government officials were so inept. I think I’ll grow up to become
a Republican.
“Kids. I think it’s time to go to the Dairy Queen.”



The day before my parents came home we did a lot of talking. I
asked gramma how she lost her eye. It was an accident, she said. I
was fishing with my brother. He threw out a fish line and somehow
the fishhook got into my eye. A doctor removed the fishhook, but
my eye got infected and had to be removed.

Gramma asked me about my classes. She asked Alice about
Kindergarten. She told us about the old days, about outhouses,
about listening to a radio for the first time. She told us about our
dad and how he could do this and that and uncle Les and how he
could do this and how he could do these other things.

She got up and went to the kitchen sink. They were great kids,
she said. She wiped off a plate.

“Of course, you kids are great kids too.

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“It’s just that I never thought things would turn out well after
your grandfather died. I thought that boys needed a father as they
grew up or they would turn out to be criminals. I was wrong. I re-
member when your dad married your mother. The wedding was in
New Ulm, 20 miles away. It was storming and raining when we went
into the church. A bad sign, I thought. But when the ceremony ended
and I went outside the sun was shining like it was the first day of May.
I think it was a sign that God wanted your parents to get married.”
My parents four-day trip turned into seven days when their
transmission went out in North Dakota on their way home. It went
out in a small town that had no real repair facilities, so it had to be
towed some 15 miles and parts had to be ordered and mechanics
had to scratch their heads for a while.
“I don’t know why your father bought a Ford, my grandmother
said. I think the Chevrolet is the king of the highway although I
know people with lots of money prefer Cadillacs. I’ve never ridden
in a Ford and I hope I never have to.
“Well, I will have to one day. Our funeral home has a hearse
that is a Ford.”
When my parents got home there were hugs all around and
explanations about transmissions and clutches and the price of motel
rooms and the condition of the roads in North Dakota. I think my
dad even talked about a muffler. Jeremy talked about the state of
the pheasant population in South Dakota. This was all boring stuff
to kids and Alice fell asleep. My dad took me aside and asked how
Alice did during the stay at gramma’s.
“Well, she didn’t want to go to bed one night. She just screamed
and screamed and screamed.”
“Did your grandmother use her chicken coop trick?”

Dennis Nau.  I started writing about 15 years ago. I’ve had about
a dozen short stories published in various literary magazines. My

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novel, “The Year God Forgot Us,” was published by North Star
Press five years ago. I write about serious subjects but I do like a bit
of humor. I’m 67 years old. If you are directed to a young audience
they may not have even heard about the movie stars I mention.

63



No Words

By Kathryn Merriam

Why was he forced to leave everything while I could have left
nothing? Why did God take him and not me? How did I not see
the glint of the rifle barrel? How did I not sense it? If I had died and
not him, Jay would be living the life that he deserves, the life that he
worked so hard to build. How am I supposed to tell him how much
he means to me? How am I supposed to deal with the fact that he is
gone, and I am here? And why? I don’t know.



Brothers. Plain and simple. And, if I may say, magical. Yet, no words
in the English language have the ability to accurately explain the
relationship Jay and I shared, the bond we established. I saw a light
in him that I never saw in anyone throughout my childhood. I saw
a life in him that I knew I wanted for myself. Luckily, he somehow
knew I wanted those things too.

“Hey, man! I’m Jack, but you can call me Jay; everyone does.
What’s your name?” He came on a little strong at first, but don’t
worry, I eventually developed the skills necessary to be able to step
up to his level of enthusiasm.

“Hey. Uh–-My name is Phillipe.”
“It’s nice to meet you Uh-Phillipe.” His smile took up most
of his face. So, when I say that his smile remains the biggest smile I
have ever seen, I only speak the truth. But then again, smiles did not
exist throughout my childhood. “Can I call you Phil?”

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“No!” My response carried more strength than I intended.
“Cool. Why you here?” Ignoring his improper grammar and
taking a millisecond too long to register what he meant to ask me,
I responded.
“Oh, you know: reasons.”
“Like what?”
“I just wanted to get away from the house, man.”
“You say that, but there has got to be more.” He slapped my
shoulder and smiled. “But don’t worry, we don’t have to get too
personal yet. I’m here because my ol’ man served in the military,
and I always did want to be like my father when I grew up.” As he
spoke, I yearned even more to have that opportunity to grow up to
be like my father. But that wasn’t possible.
“What branch did he serve in?”
“Why, the Marines of course! Hoorah!” He threw his fist in the
air with enough force to lift a car.
“Hoorah!” My force could have lifted a bicycle. Well, at least I
started to understand him, started to really desire to reach his level
of enthusiasm, his level of living.



Over the course of our final months of training and the first few
years of our contract, I got to know Jay pretty well, which means
that I got to know him really well. I mean, several things about him
remain a mystery to me, but life took him away, so now I will never
know. But I must admit that my favorite conversations revolved
around his family.

“Do you have a family?” I had to know if Jay - the Jay that
sat before me that day, the Jay that just graduated from boot camp
and signed a contract with the United States Marine Corps to do,
be, and serve whenever and wherever needed - became the man I
knew because of his family as much as I grew to become the man
he knew because of my family, or lack thereof. And believe me
when I say his very existence embodied his family, but not the
family I expected.

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“Aww, man! I do! I have a wife and a son on the way!” Hiding
that I meant parents and siblings, I asked him the next most popular
question.
“How did you meet?”
“My son? Well, we haven’t met yet! But we will soon.” I lost
control to a deep, belly laugh, partly because of his response, but
mostly because his response didn’t surprise me in the least.
“Is that how that works? I wasn’t aware.” Spending enough
time with Jay, I found that I tended to return some of his favors.
“Naw, man. I was raised in a wealthy family. Several expensive
cars. At least a couple houses, not to mention a few vacation homes.
Some would say I was a spoiled rich kid, and they would be right.
I got everything I wanted. My parents never told me ‘no’, or they
didn’t know how. So I lived accordingly. Expectations and all.
“That was, until I met Cammie. Oh, Phillipe! You should have
seen her! That day, she was an angel. I mean, don’t get me wrong,
man, she is even more beautiful and more of an angel today, but she
literally took my breath away. I mean, literally. When she walked up
to me, I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.”
“Woah, man. Don’t get too gushy on me. I didn’t ask for a
fairytale.” But he persisted.
“Her eyes are still the color of emeralds, and they always have
a story to tell. If you look long enough, if you want it enough, you
can see sprinkles of hazel in her eyes too. Like daffodils in a green
meadow.” Not wanting to show that I was impressed with Jay’s
descriptions, I just rolled my eyes. “And her hair still glows when
the sun hits it just right. I don’t know how, but it is always soft too.
Silky soft. I love to play with it.
“But her smile. It gets me every time. I just want to pick her
up and spin her around, forget about everything else, everyone else.
Every time I see it. Every time I see that smile,” he paused to chuckle,
“I just can’t help myself. I melt, man.”
“Naaaaaaw.” I fought the urge to argue with him, with his
logic, with his dreams, with his imagination. But somewhere in-
side me knew that he told the truth. I just couldn’t believe it. Or I
wouldn’t.

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“Ohhhhh yes. Just like I did when I first saw her smile in pre-
school.” Without my permission, my jaw dropped.
“Did you just say preschool? I must have heard you incor-
rectly.” He smirked and looked away, as if looking upon her.
“You heard right, my man. We are preschool sweethearts. Just
like high school sweethearts, but better.” I nodded, understanding
what he meant without need of an explanation, but felt no need to
make such a comment. “We met the first day of preschool and hit
it off, that is after I caught my breath. Best friends instantly! Foun-
dation of friendship established! Boom and boom!
“But don’t think that it was perfect, ‘cause our relationship
was off and on, due to what I now call ‘young love’, or frail and
flimsy affection. My entitled background clashed with her humble
upbringing. We remained friends through middle school but didn’t
become an official couple until our freshman year of high school.”
Now, I will not allow for any misunderstandings: the entirety
of what I call his “love talk” didn’t occur during one sitting. I re-
member this part of his love talk ended here, and we didn’t pick it up
until weeks later, after we flew home our brother, Corporal Logan
Boyd, in a casket draped in the American flag.
“After we graduated senior year, we took a trip to the moun-
tains, which is her favorite place to be, so she told me several times.
I planned it for weeks and was super nervous.” Jay chuckled. This
time, he even tossed his head back. “Man, I was more nervous the
morning of the proposal than the day I signed up to join and the day
of our first mission combined. The Marine Corps was actually a sen-
sitive topic between us, though. She felt betrayed and abandoned,
since I was going to be gone for so long, for unknown amounts of
time, and to secret destinations. I understood. But I couldn’t let her
go.” He let out a sigh. “It was actually what brought up our first
fight–-”
“Come on, man. Give me the good stuff. Just the good stuff.” I
slapped him on the shoulder to let him know I still loved him. Does
he know that my slap meant that?
“A’ight. You asked!” He smiled and slapped me back. Maybe
he knew after all. “I am grateful she didn’t want to let go either.

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Anyway,” he shook his head as if to get back on track, “back to my
original story. We went on a hike to the top of the mountain, and
that’s when I asked her. It was even worse when she didn’t respond.
And then she started balling. I mean, full-blown sobs. I was petrified,
man.”

Only a few people know about the mission that interrupted
the love talk here, so I won’t go into detail. Just know that it lasted
longer than it should have, and Jay’s love talk became the only thing
I had to look forward to.

“Don’t worry, man. After tears of joy - I’m assuming - and
gasps, she said yes. I am surprised that I was able to hold out long
enough to hear her answer; I was so close to passing out because I
was holding my breath.” He let out a laugh, which I really needed
to hear. It made me realize that I was clinging to his love talk more
than I will ever admit. It didn’t just keep the two of us entertained;
it kept us alive.

“Cammie and I got married a year after we graduated high
school. It was just before our first overseas mission.” He looked
off into the distance and smiled. “Have you ever seen something
so beautiful that you just have no words? I still don’t know how to
accurately and perfectly describe how absolutely gorgeous she was
that day. And man, she has gotten even more beautiful as the years
pass.” He looked back at me. “I cling to that day. I think about it
every day. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to keep going.” Then he
clenched his fist. I didn’t know how to react. Was he planning to
punch me? Did he sense the enemy? I chose to react in the way that
years of training had taught me: I froze. And listened.

“It kills me, man.” His fist unwound finally. And I kept lis-
tening. “The distance, I mean. She is thousands of miles away for
months on end.”

“I don’t know how you do it.” In all honesty, I still don’t.
“Sometimes I don’t either.”
I don’t know how long he would have talked about her. But I
didn’t wait to find out. Maybe I should have. “How did she tell you?”
“I was home. It was one of those times you stayed on base
during our leave, but I went home.”

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Grateful he knew what I meant when I asked that question, I
replied, “You always went home, Jay.” I smiled at him, knowing that
he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You didn’t.” I saw the hint of a twinkle in his eyes, but I could
also see a shadow of sadness appear.
“I didn’t have to. I was home, man.” That’s when I saw the
recognition in his eyes. After all, I couldn’t keep all of my past a se-
cret from him for long. He needed to know me. He needed to know
that my mom married her second husband when I was three. He
needed to know that as a high school student, I found no words, no
strength, no courage to stop it. I couldn’t stop the abuse. Every day
I heard her cries of devastation, her breaking bones, her unrelenting
anguish. Every day I heard his screams of control, his vile language,
his never-ending abuse. He needed to know that I joined the Ma-
rines to get out of the house, to get out of that life.
We had endured so much by now, for we just celebrated the
second year of our contract, which included eight missions overseas,
but none of them prepared us for what happened next. Everyone
grew silent in that moment, for Lance Corporal Hawkeye Larson,
another brother, stepped onto an IED. We couldn’t find all of him
to send back to his family. And I have nothing further to say about it.
“Anywho,” he clasped his hands together as if to get rid of the
dark cloud that had descended upon our moods, “I was home. She
walked down the stairs wearing a white sundress with yellow flowers
on it. I remember because I cried into it a few minutes later.” He
turned away, and I knew he attempted to avoid my judgmental gaze
of one cocked eyebrow.
“She said she had something to tell me. But I was worried be-
cause she was frowning.” He looked at me and grinned. “Well, she
was trying to frown. It was more of a constipated look, a mixture of
smiling and frowning and trying so hard - unsuccessfully, I might
add - to do both at the same time.” I couldn’t help but laugh. And he
joined me. It must have been so nice to have so many of those kind of
memories - the kind that makes you grin, smile, laugh, chuckle, live.
“I asked her what was wrong. And she lost it. She started
laughing really hard, probably at herself.” I could almost see the

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whole scene play out in his eyes. “She thinks she’s funny. Don’t tell
her, but I think that she is pretty funny too, maybe funnier than I
am.” He whispered it as if she would hear him.

“And then she just blurted it out. ‘We are having a baby!’” I
saw it. A tear fell from his eye, but he didn’t look away as a second
one fell. “I fell to my knees and buried my face in her dress. She ran
her fingers through my hair as I sobbed.”

Our next leave came too quickly. Gifted two weeks to do what
we wanted, to go where we wanted, I chose to stay on base. Again.
But what happened when he got back from going home that time
changed my life.

“Phillipe, I need to ask you for a favor.” Under fire, hunched
over, trying to blend into the forest surrounding us, we hid. And yes,
of course, Jay chose right then to ask me something. He chose that
moment to sound more serious than I had ever heard him.

“Anything!” Does he know that I would do anything for him?
Did I ever tell him?

“Can Cammie and I name our baby boy after you?” In my
head, the gunfire stopped echoing. The birds stopped flapping. The
wind stopped blowing.

“Me?”
“Well, we want to use your last name, but yeah, man! You!” I
didn’t know what to say. I tried to think of something really inspira-
tional, or witty, or thoughtful, but no words came to mind. Instead,
I just stared at him. Despite the fact that he blended so well into
the trees, I could still see him smile, and I knew that he knew that I
accepted his offer, his gift, his blessing.
I stood a little taller that day. And the day after that. And the
day after that.



The trees stood behind us and the open fields lay spread out before
us. I looked at the village that broke up the open terrain about fifty
yards due north.

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I started to sink into a crouching position in order to scope out
what else lay ahead when an unknown force pushed me vehemently
aside. I landed sharply on my elbow and groaned. But what came
next surprised me, to say the least.
A scream pierced my ears until I realized that horrifying, pet-
rifying sound came out of my mouth, out of my soul. Me. My cry
of anguish. My last shred of hope. The shot that came from the
village ripped into Jay’s head. Instead of me, it hit Jay. Instead of
me, that bullet flew through my best friend’s - my only true friend’s
- skull, tearing through his flesh. Instead of taking the man who
planned to devote his career, his life, to the Marines, it ripped away
the man who died two months shy of fulfilling his contract with
the Marines. Instead of taking away my life, it stole the life of my
best friend.
Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of what happened after that.
All I do recall includes someone yelling at me to take cover, maybe
to fire back. But I couldn’t do any of it. I couldn’t do anything.
Against my better judgment, I looked. No words. Just staring.
What else could I do? I stared at his uniform as it tried to blend into
the russet and rocky earth beneath him. I stared at the sweat, dirt,
and grass that caked his skin. I stared at his sunken face. I stared at
his white lips. I stared at his curly, dirty blonde hair that became
dyed with burgundy stripes. I stared at his eyes. Or rather, his eye-
lids. I stared at what remained of his forehead. I stared at the path
the bullet created through my brother’s skull. And I knew that all
the blame rightfully rested on my shoulders.
Despite my resolve to stay strong, to maintain my control, I
broke. I did not bend. I broke. I shattered. Sobs escaped from the
deepest depths of my soul. Instead of Jay gazing longingly into the
green eyes of his beautiful wife, he stared at the orange sky as the
bullet took him from his family. Instead of embracing his wife and
baby boy, he embraced death. Instead of smelling her strawberry
shampoo, he smelled the blood as it drained from his head. Instead
of holding his newborn son for the first time, he held onto dreams
of what it would have been like. Instead of hearing his wife’s joy at
his return, he heard my scream of terror and pure agony. Instead of

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watching Jay run to his wife’s open arms, I watched Jay’s red-stained,
stiff, cold form lifted onto a helicopter.



While my unit walked down the ramp towards the hearse, Sergeant
Nathan Bates raised his hand in salute.

“Present arms.” As we walked, fellow Marines saluted. As we
walked, more tears fell. As we walked, I saw Cammie.

As one, we stopped marching and faced each other. Green
eyes looked into brown eyes. Blue eyes looked into hazel eyes. But
beneath the colorful irises, I could see the darkness, the pain, the
sorrow that buries itself so deep, no one will ever hear it.

“Present arms.” We slid the casket into the hearse, stood at
attention, saluted, and at the command of Sergeant Nathan Bates,
our arms dropped to our sides.

I drove to the Arlington National Cemetery in silence. More
alone than I had ever been.

Fellow Marines saluted. Loved ones cried. We stopped
marching and turned to face each other. At the command, we set my
brother’s casket on the boards that served as leverage before it would
be lowered into a hole six feet beneath the surface. Wait! What? All
of his work, his love, his service just to be placed in a hole like the
ones we had built, slept in, and even lived in for the past few years?

I gently approached her. Everything inside me yelled at me to
retreat, to walk away, to not talk to her, for in the depths of my soul,
I knew that I killed her best friend, her true love. Stepping in front
of her, I bowed. I didn’t know what else to do. I found no words
that I could use to express my truest feelings. And I no longer tried
to control the sobs.

“Cammie, I am so sorry,” I whispered between breaths. It felt
appropriate to then wrap my arms around her, but I didn’t hold her
the way Jay would have held her.

“It’s not your fault,” she replied as she held onto me.
“That’s not true.” I stepped back. I said it even quieter than I
whispered the loaded apology. But she heard it.

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“Phillipe, do not say that. Do not put that on your shoulders.
Do not put yourself in that position for no reason.”
“I didn’t see–-” I looked down. And then I saw those green
eyes. Those green eyes with hazels chips dancing around to their
own tune.
“No, Phillipe. Don’t.” She said it quietly, but I heard the force
behind her words. I knew she wanted me to believe it, to live by
those words. If only she knew I couldn’t do it.
“If there is anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to
ask, Cammie.” I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder.
She rested her hand on top of mine and smiled. But didn’t say any-
thing. Or maybe she did. But I didn’t hear her.
Because just then, I saw him.
I saw Jay.
I knew I did not actually see Jay, but Alexander looks just like
him. I gave the faintest hint of a smile.
“He is beautiful.” I couldn’t hold back the tears. Again, I lost
control. But I didn’t care this time. I reached into the stroller to
stroke his chubby cheeks, to gaze into his green eyes. Jay would be
so happy to know that Alexander has his mother’s eyes. But I would
also want him to know that Alexander has his father’s curly hair.
“Thank you.” Several minutes passed before she uttered those
words, but I can certainly say they came as a surprise.
“For what?”
“For keeping my husband alive.”
Maybe she said that because I will never forget him, nor will
she. Maybe she said that because she felt confused. Or maybe she
meant it, but I will never understand it. I am just grateful she sees
him as being alive. Because I am not. Some say that war kills people.
But does it really just kill people? Doesn’t it murder souls? It soils
the purity of a soul. It murders the innocence that once lead that
person’s life. It tears at the outer layer of a soul until it is destroyed.
It paints the soul black as it engulfs the soul in regret, sorrow, grief,
and pain like never before.
But I believe - I hope - that Jay’s strength allows him to keep
his soul, even if his life no longer exists.

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Why was he forced to leave the love of his life and his young
baby boy while I could have left nothing but brief encounters and
avoidable loss? Why did God take my brother and not me?
How did I not see the glint of the rifle barrel that for months I
was trained to see? How did I not sense that, but I could sense when
my stepfather was abusing my mother?
If I had died and not him, he would be living the life that he
deserves, the life that he worked so hard to build starting when he
was in preschool, or most likely from the moment he was born.
How am I supposed to let him know how much he means to
me, how his friendship kept me going, how his smile gave me hope
for the future, how his loss leaves me in a darker place than I was be-
fore? And yet, I cannot forget or undermine how he changed my life.
How am I supposed to deal with the reality that he is gone
forever, that I will never see him again, and that I am still here? Still
here. And why? I have no words.

Kathryn Merriam.  From her birth in Utah to her college career in
Idaho, Kathryn loves life. Since her early childhood, she has shared
her passion for writing, but recent years have displayed more of
her current work. Her favorite thing to do is to spend time with
her family and friends, but she also loves smiling, laughing, loving,
serving, spending time at the beach, enjoying sunsets, watching
movies, and adoring Jersey cows. She will graduate from BYU-Idaho
in April of 2019 with a Bachelor’s in English and currently plans to
get a Master’s in creative writing in hopes of developing her writing
skills and becoming a book author.

75



Sirens

By Sam Gridley

A siren blared in the night. Faint in the distance, then swelling up
higher and higher till it screeched right under my bedroom window.
Like it was daring me to run out and scream back at it, but my legs
were glued down. Then it just stopped—this huge awful silence—
till in a few seconds another one started, a mile away, a half-mile,
coming closer, howling louder and louder … One siren after the
other, all night.

I woke up groggy, like a rock was banging my skull. I touched
the wall next to my bed—was it on fire? No. Sheets not burning
either. My legs came unstuck and I could move.

It had to be dreams—there couldn’t be that many sirens. I
mean, my little apartment’s on the top floor of an old house down-
town, so I hear lots of sirens day and night, police, emergency, fire,
but not back to back to back—not unless my building is burning
down, which I could tell it wasn’t. This was last Saturday, late
morning. When I opened my eyes, the leaves of my linden tree
were flickering outside my window.

She doesn’t care about the sirens. Miranda, my tree. Nothing
upsets her, she just stands there graceful and tall, towering over the
sidewalk. Right now her flower buds are ready to pop, and their
smell drifts everywhere, like a cloud of honey, you can catch it blocks
away. Some people don’t like it, claim it sets off their allergies. I
think they’re assholes. They pretend to have conditions just because
it’s cool to have a condition.

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Graceful and healthy, that’s my Miranda, because she grows in
the concrete sidewalk in spite of truck exhaust and dog pee and trash
at her feet. Down the block a big maple had to be chopped off last
year, and a neighbor’s lilac bush died this winter. My Miranda—
she’s not really my tree, of course, she belongs to whoever owns the
house next door—she doesn’t let anything bug her. I worried last
year when the trucks came around to trim branches near the power
lines, but they didn’t hack at her like the others. She doesn’t interfere
with the electricity, and they better not interfere with her!
She’s so strong and straight and beautiful, I count on her to
calm me down when I come home. I stop and rub her trunk, and
we sort of talk to each other, girl to girl. Not really talk, I’m not
crazy, but there’s something between us. This freaky woman in my
office—she’s into druids and goddess-worship—she said the linden’s
a sacred tree in some mythologies. I don’t know about that, but
Miranda keeps me from getting too frantic when the boss has been
ragging on me—“Don’t waste so much time on that graphic, we
told the client the site’d be live tomorrow!” Why do bosses have to
be asswipes, is it a job requirement?
Or, like, when I can’t sleep at night because of that prick from
the coffee shop I hooked up with twice who acts like he doesn’t
recognize me now. I look out the window and see Miranda in the
moonlight, she lets me know it’s okay. She just sways her leaves, this
way, that way, so smooth and gentle, and I drop off at last.
The sirens in my dreams, though, that’s something new. I’ve
got to stop watching the news at night, too many shootings, massa-
cres, toxins in the air, bomb threats, the talking heads talking round
in circles. I’m not a fearful person by nature—actually sort of an
optimist, or at least an anti-dramatist. I don’t suppose the Apoca-
lypse’s coming in my lifetime. I don’t think that weird-looking dude
will pull out an assault rifle on my block. Nothing that major would
happen to me.
Sure, there’ve been bits of drama in my life, but that’s true for
everybody. Like, my sweet-sixteen party, we were standing around
the backyard, Mom and me and my two best friends—kind of my
only friends at the time—but we had these tiny glasses of cham-

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pagne, Mom said she wouldn’t tell if we didn’t, and we were giggling
about—oh fuck I don’t remember what—and it turned out it wasn’t
all that far away, where Dad was staying then, but we never heard the
ambulance. No siren, nothing. Or if we heard it we didn’t notice.

So next week I turn 26, the tenth anniversary, which could be
meaningful except it doesn’t have any meaning. Dad wasn’t at my
party, he’d left a couple months before and never called us. And he’d
checked out emotionally when I was eight or nine. It was two days
before we even learned he shot himself, so we had to think back to
realize it happened while the party was on. Then I wondered for
years, did he remember my birthday, was he thinking about me?
Good thoughts or bad?

And what was I doing at the exact second he pulled the trigger?
Sipping the champagne? Opening presents? No way to know, no
sense getting chafed about it, it was all just something we heard
about. That’s what I mean, not much drama. The way I see it, him
blowing a hole in his brain was this anticlimactic climax to my child-
hood—and to my mom’s marriage, come to think of it. I didn’t feel
traumatized at the time, I wouldn’t call it that, more like disoriented,
confused, like I couldn’t feel what I was supposed to feel even if I
knew what that was, which I didn’t.

Lots of people go through worse. In the aftermath, my mom
got married again to a really nice guy, Ted, before I was out of high
school. He’s been a good husband to her and stepdad to me. Life
moves on, I saw that, which is positive in a way, and I also saw how
anybody can be replaced, which is kind of, I don’t know, sobering?

And since then, ’cause this is the way life goes, there’ve been
plenty of anticlimactic climaxes. Heh, I like that way of putting
it—especially for a certain prick who pretends to not recognize me.
If people get replaced, his substitute could be a Tootsie Roll.

… I don’t know what he says about me. If he says anything.
He can go fuck himself.
Miranda agrees. Loser, she calls him. Fucktard. I never shoulda
expected much.
The other day in the corner market, the cashier asked if I’d
found everything I was looking for. Used to be, employees there

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were never friendly; the new owner must be trying to change the
culture, or at least make the staff pretend they give a shit. I told the
cashier, yeah, milk and yogurt are all I came for, and then I added,
out of nowhere, “The secret to finding what you’re looking for is:
Don’t look for much.”

Did I expect him to laugh or something? He didn’t. A young
blond guy, he didn’t crack a smile. He only put my food in a bag and
gave me change for a twenty. I worried he thought I was strange, or
desperate for conversation.

My mother worries that I’m depressed: “It could be hereditary,
you know.” I deny it. I’m functional, I do my job, eat okay, don’t
smoke, don’t do drugs except TV. That’s a joke, TV isn’t worth shit
as a drug, it just makes me more nervous. If I “go see someone,” like
Mom wants, I’ll end up popping medications, right? Who needs
that garbage?

She meant well when she called last night. Asking if I had
plans for my birthday. “Can you spare time to hang out with your
middle-aged mother?” she wonders, like I have this fantastic social
life. “I’ll treat you to a really nice meal, give us a chance to catch up.”
Catch up with what? Sure, Mom, I told her.

I wanted to say, You don’t have to comfort me, Mother, I’m
doing just fine. But since those dreams last Saturday … I don’t
know.

The sound starts, this teensy vibration in the distance, and then
it swells up slow, slow, slow, like a tumor growing. Police or ambu-
lance or fire truck—if there’s a whole bunch of sirens, it must be a
fire. As the wail gets loud, I can see it and smell it.

This happens anytime, when I’m buying paper towels at the
drugstore, or ducking out of the office for lunch, or sitting on the
bus next to a fat lady with stuff spilling out of her shopping bags.
All of a sudden I’m thinking about the people the siren’s for. Like if
it’s a man that had a heart attack eating a peanut butter sandwich in
front of his TV. Or a lady whose toaster oven caught fire because she
didn’t read the instructions that say don’t use it for taco shells. Or a
teenage drug dealer that stabbed the competition. Or 27 people shot
at a movie theater. Or a 43-year-old corporate benefits manager that

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bought a pistol and blew out his brains on his daughter’s sixteenth
birthday.

So I get stuck in my imagination, a waking dream, I forget
where I’m going and walk right past the bagel place where I was
headed for lunch. Or I miss my stop on the bus and have to act
nonchalant when I get off like this is exactly where I wanted to be.

So, shit, Mom, okay, I’ll have my birthday dinner with you.
And we won’t talk about … that.

But I know what my real cure is: When Miranda’s flowers
open, I’ll breathe deep-deep, suck all that perfume way down in my
lungs, thick and sweet, it’ll be the medicine I need to blot out the
nasty sirens.

Because she’s not bothered by noise, my Miranda. Or police
cars or diesel fumes. Or screams on the street or people nailing ad-
vertisements through her bark or car doors whacking her side. She
stands there so serene and tall and even if she’s hurt bad you’d never
guess.
Sam Gridley is the author of the novels THE SHAME OF WHAT
WE ARE and THE BIG HAPPINESS. His fiction and satire have
appeared in more than fifty magazines and anthologies. He has re-
ceived two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. He lives
in Philadelphia with his wife and neurotic dog and hangs out at the
website Gridleyville.blog.

81



An American Mill Town

By Jonathan Maniscalco

While Massachusetts never had the manufacturing reputation of
the rust belt, it does boast a number of small factory cities, mostly
north of Boston. The most quintessential of these is Lowell. A town
that grew into a city from the textile mills that locals claim started
America’s industrial revolution.

Like the larger and more famous industrial cities, Lowell fell
on hard times when industry became obsolete or relocated. More
recently, Lowell was the setting of a famous documentary about
crack-cocaine addiction. A depressing proverbial example of the
open, festering, gash the absence of work had made. Now, a genera-
tion later, that gash has closed, but has left a scar that doesn’t appear
to be fading.

Since many men tend to be proud of their scars it makes sense
that they’d be proud of metaphorical ones too. Dennis Gallagher
was this type of man. He was a child to the generation displayed in
that documentary who indulged in his home’s rough present right
through to adulthood.

A large part of why he was so susceptible to this indulgence
was that his family’s personal situation was largely unaffected by the
city’s downward plunge. His father had worked construction until
his premature death from a corroded liver and had made a good, but
stagnant, living from it. Now Dennis did as well, and was just ap-
proaching the age where a wage ceiling and his mostly monotonous
life would become depressing.

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The job made him strong. This, coupled with his hobby of
competing in golden gloves, made him a dangerous contender to for
the many people he wanted to fight, a lot of which happened in the
townie bars he’d frequent. He’d sit at either a booth or the bar with
his friends, who were of the same mind as him. And together they’d
enjoy their Saturday night looking for a group of unbeknownst ri-
vals to emasculate, at which they were usually successful. This was a
masculine group, with Dennis being the most masculine.
And he looked the part with more than his large muscles and
fight scars. Dennis was tall, pug-ugly, and had mean eyes. He always
wore heavy boots, rough jeans, and cheap flannels with rolled up
sleeves. The nicest looking part to him was his two tattoos. One was
the name of his home written in large, stylish, cursive letters across
his left pectoral. The other, on the center of his back was a black
and white portrait of the textile mill. A building that had once been
the symbol of Lowell’s prosperity and identity, which was now a
museum, mostly frequented by neighboring schools to learn his-
tory. But the smoke coming from the tattoo’s stacks may have been
homage to the past or were maybe a hint at what Dennis wished for
his city, despite not really knowing it.
One Saturday night, Dennis and his friends were doing what
they liked to do when four football players from UMass Lowell
walked in wearing their school jackets.
“Look at them.” Anthony, one of Dennis’s friends, said,
leaning forward in his booth to put his elbows on the table and
cracking his knuckles.
“They’re big boys.” Agreed Mac, another friend, while he eyed
the players like a big game hunter.
Dennis drank a little beer from his mug and nodded at his
friends, who both looked enough like him to be funny.
The four boys sat at the bar, backs to their aggressors.
“Think they’re using fakes?” Dennis asked.
“Maybe,” Mac said, “I don’t think they’re gonna look at us
from here.”
Dennis nodded, again, “They shouldn’t be in a place like this
with fakes. Should’ve stayed on campus.” Then he downed his glass

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along with his friends and the three got up to surround the group at
the bar. Dennis went on their left, Mac and Anthony on their right.
Each bully stared daggers into the player closest to them. All four
noticed right away and did their best to ignore it. Finally, the bravest
one, who was second to the right of Dennis, made eye contact.

“You have a fucking problem?” Dennis yelled.
“What?” The boy asked, jumping back in his seat spilling a
little beer. “No, not at all.”
“Yeah?” Dennis asked, angrily, taking his arms off the bar and
turning his shoulders to face them. “Cause it looks like you have a
fucking problem with me, faggot.”
Now that the confrontation had begun, the football players
were remembering their impressive size and love of contact com-
petition.
“You were the one staring at us.” Said the one furthest from
Dennis.
Dennis grinned psychotically as he fed off the attention the
bar had started giving him, “You want to say that a little louder,
asshole?” He asked, slowly.
“Guys, break it up or get the fuck out.” One of the bartenders
yelled.
“I want to break it up but these faggots keep staring at me.”
Dennis yelled back to the bartender without breaking eye contact
with the boys.
“Call us faggots one more time.” The one Dennis had origi-
nally confronted, said, angrily.
“Or what?” Mac snarled, lining up next to Anthony, “You
pussies gonna do somethin’?”
“We’ll fuck you up that’s what.” Yelled the one who had been
quiet so far.
That was enough. The three descended upon the four, fists
first. Dennis punched one, and then hit another with one of the
bar’s empty beer bottles to keep the numbers even, while Mac and
Anthony kept to one each.
The three boys absorbed the initial blows, then jumped up to
fight. The fourth, who had been struck with the bottle, and was also

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the one who had taken Dennis’s bait, shrank to the floor in horror
over the blood leaking out of the glass lodged in his face.

The fight started out looking balanced to the ignorant. The
boys were hesitant, but larger, sober, and younger. The men were
eager, but smaller, drunk, and older. However, it didn’t take long
for the conflict to turn and reach its natural outcome. The boys were
players and the men were brawlers.

Dennis laughed hysterically as he was torn from his beaten
victim by two bartenders. Other staff separated Anthony and Mac
as well. Dennis shook off the bartenders. Then turned his head as he
wiped away the blood trickling from his nostrils give an intimidating
look, when he was tackled.

It was the boy he had hit with the bottle. Dennis was delighted.
Taking the well-practiced tackle from his old prey, he started his
second serving. Striking the top of the boy’s head, even while gasping
for air, after his back slammed into the hard floor.

Something was wrong though. The boy wasn’t punching back.
Instead, after they landed, he just jabbed at Dennis’s heart, only
once. Somehow it was all he needed to do. The blow seemed to
linger there, like it was now part of him.

Dennis’s strength started leaving him. The shaking boy broke
away and scooted back on his behind. Feeling woozy and numb,
Dennis looked down saw a knife sticking out of his chest as haze
started to overcome his vision.

The bar had gone silent. No one moved for a minute. Then
everyone was moving quickly. Dennis was unaware of everything
around him, though. All he could see was the knife protruding out
of his body. He slowly lifted his shaky left hand up to the knife and
wrapped his rigid fingers around the handle. Not knowing what to
feel, Dennis held the handle for a long second, then pulled. It slid
out of him like it had been lodged in microwaved cheese. Dennis
dropped the knife on the floor, forgetting it instantly, and ripped the
buttons off his flannel, then the chest of the wife beater underneath,
to look at the wound. It was done right in the middle of his tattoo.
The whole name of his home was covered in blood. Dennis looked
up at his, soon to be, killer, now backed up against a booth’s seat,

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still shaking. Dennis crawled over and started to paw at him like
he was trying to grip smoke. The boy shook harder and screamed,
putting his hands over the open gashes where the glass had been, as
he became covered in the blood he’d spilt with the weapon he had
only ever carried for indulgence.

It wasn’t long before Dennis gave out, falling face first onto the
floor. His blood continued to leak out of his heart, making a pool
around his body. Meanwhile, his other tattoo stared up from under-
neath his shirt, the smoke still rising from its stacks. Frozen in a time
when it alleviated the city’s symptoms, instead of exacerbating them.
Jonathan Maniscalco has taught English to ESL learners in Japan,
Spain, and New York City. A Massachusetts native, he is a graduate
of Boston University and a stringer for The New England Review of
Books. Ten Stories to Manhood is his first published book.’

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Ambergris

By Harold Barnes

For the Devil in you, from the mirror in my Heart…
The sound of an engine turning over sparked an idea in Fred-

dy’s head, but it was quickly stolen by Solani:
“My head hurts,” she complained, dismissing the divinity that

was almost his.
“So stop thinking,” was his quick reply. She so easily eclipsed

him, but it wasn’t his fault. He was doomed from the start.
Mr. Jenkins was backing his car out of his driveway. It was one

of those old Cadillac’s with the soft top, a Fleetwood. His house was
across the cul-de-sac. He waved to them as he drove away, coughing
into his embroidered handkerchief with his other hand. He was
always testing them.

Soon their father appeared, wrapping his arms around their
shoulders; they twitched in unison.

He told them what they already knew. “God is great.”
Soalni rolled her eyes. “What else is new?”
The wind gusted around them, making the leaves dance at
their feet.
“It’s cold,” Freddy noticed, rubbing his arms. His father took
off his suit jacket and draped it over the boy’s shoulders.
“I know, I miss home, too.”
Solani sighed at the word “home”. The family had recently
vacationed in Cuba, their native land. Transitioning from tropical
bliss to deciduous hell was unpleasant, to say the least. She missed

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the vibrance, the sticky heat, the exotic fauna. She closed her eyes
and scrolled back through her memories, putting the world on pause
until Freddy said something stupid to throw her off.

“I have to pee,” he snickered.
This made his father upset; they could tell by the way he
stroked his mustache. The wind picked up the leaves on the ground
and swirled around them like a tiny blizzard.
“Be calm, both of you. Your mother is still getting ready.”
Their mother, Angela, rushed for no man or army. Time
slowed down when she moved, a sort of temporal squeeze. The fates
themselves adjusted to her pace.
Solani was excited to go back to school. Her classmates were
like characters in a play. Of course, she was the lead. Hell, she was
the playwright. School provided many opportunities for Solani to
shine without causing too much hoopla. She got along with most
of her classmates, blessing those who were kind and cursing the few
who crossed her. Her teachers were well under her spell. She was “so
smart, so this, so that.” But she took the praise, the little good it did
her. It helped to keep her humble.
Freddy’s attitude toward school was almost antithetical to his
sister’s. He lived on the praise he received and loved to compete
with his peers. The teachers with whom he got along recognized his
genius but also his conceit. They had yet to determine, however,
which force was more powerful within him, or, worse, that the two
were one in the same.
Other kids started to wait outside for the school bus. They
would always wave at Solani and Freddy, as if they were celebrities.
Their father waved back for them.
“You should always acknowledge your fans, the little angels.”
The kids exchanged a look. They had no patience for plebeians.
A light went on in their living room. The three of them turned
as one to see Angela’s hair whip around as she gathered her shit. She
was rushing, but still looked like a dancer when she moved.
“What’s she looking for?” Solani asked her father.
“She’s just looking,” he smiled.
The sun rose slowly like a king cobra rearing for attack.

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“Looks like she’s almost ready.”
“Took her long enough,” Solani laughed.
Freddy was otherwise occupied. He was watching the birds do
their staccato stalk, the other kids across the street still half-asleep,
the intricate cloud patterns above. Then his nose twitched.
“She better hurry, the bus is coming soon.”
His father looked over his shoulder. “She knows.”
Angela scratched her head while she rummaged through her
drawer, searching for a bracelet she wasn’t sure she still had. Clothes
were scattered everywhere. As far as she knew, the bracelet could
be among the piles of shirts and pants she created, but she was too
invested in the hunt to second guess herself.
Solani was getting bored. “Should we help her?”
Freddy flared his nostrils. “She’ll be okay.”
More kids came outside, lining up on the sidewalk like zombies.
Freddy could practically read their minds. He had a perceptive eye and
a sensitive ear. His talents were wasted on the kids across the street,
though. They mostly dreamed of the weekend: pizza in the cafeteria on
Friday, Saturday morning cartoons, lazy Sunday afternoons. Life pre-
sented itself in neat and simple terms to them. Oh, what an existence.
“They’re like an army,” he said, “an army of ghosts.”
“Well, what does that make us?” his father asked.
Freddy put a finger to his temple, as if deep in thought.
“We’re the royal family!” Solani chimed in, her smile as big as
a watermelon slice.
Her brother scoffed. “More like the Addams family.”
The three of them snapped twice.
Angela’s ear perked up. She had abandoned her hunt for the
bracelet and was now applying her makeup. She was a perfect por-
trait of femininity, knowing how and when to show strength but,
more importantly, when and how to hide it. She was like a clam,
a crude but apt comparison. Her pearl was hers to covet, to shield
from an undeserving world.
“She’s almost there,” her husband noted, checking the hands
on his watch. He knew she liked to take her time and was mostly
at peace with the fact. He fancied himself a patient man. One had

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to be with kids like his. Freddy and Solani were like the air and sea,
at once the same but still wholly different; their mother was the
ground, mediating the two and suffering from the wrath of both. I
guess that makes their father the void, or perhaps the sun, still rising
from behind their neighbors houses.

“Morning, neighbor!” Solani squealed, waving at the star.
The kids across the street all looked at her with glassy eyes. The
brave among them waved back.
“Oh, no I didn’t…” she started, before her father put a finger
to his lips.
“No need, they could never understand you, baby.”
Freddy crossed his arms and scuffed the sidewalk with his shoe.
“Scoundrels!”
Angela could feel his indignation. It felt like terrible gas. Her
son was a tempest in a teapot in an active volcano. Very much his
father’s child, but almost an alien, not of this world. Freddy didn’t
talk, he dictated. He practically prophesied. The kid was a pain… he
was in pain. He rejected life from his first breath, much preferring
the confines of the womb, where his every move was swathed in
grace. Something like Nirvana.
She adored the boy, though. He did a great job of being vain for
her, that she might find humility, or something like it. Her son was
an idol, a pillar of perfection. He was her soul strained out from the
heavens into the material. She smiled. They were almost ready for her.
Now another kid opened his front door and ran down his steps
to the curb. Jason Grosden. He had a red kickball under his right
arm. He always brought it on Mondays. Solani was in his class. Their
teacher, Ms. Holly, took her students outside every Monday to per-
haps distract them from the miserable fact that it was Monday. Jason
always got a game going. He liked to play outfield. Solani liked to
watch. Whenever the ball flew in his direction, she would move her
left ear ever so slightly, a skill she picked up from her mother, and
Jason would always twitch and the ball would slip from his hand.
She wasn’t evil: she just liked to see him blush.
Freddy didn’t like Jason. He was too easy-going. His braids
were nappy. Jason never made the slightest effort, as far as Freddy

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was concerned, but everyone liked him, even his own blood! His
mother would tell him not to be jealous, but this would only send
Freddy into further hysterics. Jason was his nemesis, whether he
knew it or not.

“Oh boy,” he lamented.
Solani snickered.
Their father raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t often that his son
got hot under the collar. But Jason and his red ball did the trick
every time.
“He’s more like you than you know,” he told his son.
Freddy crossed his arms. “He’s nothing like me.”
The three of them turned their heads in phase. Angela was
putting her keys in her purse. The end was nigh.
Her husband checked his watch. It was 6:45. He furrowed
his brow. Something wasn’t right. By this time, ordinarily, his wife
would be out the door, soaking in the morning and radiating her
beauty out into the universe. But something was keeping her. Or
someone. He looked at his daughter. Her eyes were glued on Jason
, who didn’t have a clue. He just scratched the spaces between his
cornrows.
“It’s not polite to stare, Sol,” he reminded her.
“It is when you’re staring at art.”
He laughed his mighty, three-ha laugh. She was right.
Freddy was fuming, thinking evil thoughts. The wind picked up.
“Street art, maybe.”
“Revolutionary in its own right,” his father said, wagging his
finger.
But that didn’t stop Freddy from hexing Jason in his head.
There was no way that someone as slovenly as him was his equal, let
alone his better. He had crust on his shirt and paint on his shoes.
He stole the show by doing nothing at all, a remark here or gesture
there. The teachers loved him, the janitors, even the crabby lunch
ladies. Of course, they all adored Freddy, too, but what choice did
they have, he was perfect. Jason was poor, his father was a carpenter.
That they even lived in the same neighborhood was an affront to
Freddy.

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Angela liked Jason. He was kind. He had an honest face, a
spring in his step. But there was sadness in his eyes. His life wasn’t as
simple as her kids’. He worked with is father. They constructed over
half of their house together. His mother died shortly after he was
born, but she was with him, Angela could feel it; and if she wasn’t,
then Angela would be.
Freddy stared at the ball until it inevitably fell from Jason’s
hand. It bounded out into the street and rolled to a stop maybe ten
feet from Solani.
“FREDDY!” his father snapped. Freddy tucked his chin in
fear.
Solani’s eyes bulged. There it was, the mystery and allure that
was Jason, manifested in a tiny red ball. She motioned toward it.
“Wait, Solani,” her father advised, but she didn’t listen. She
was transfixed.
Angela was walking to the front door, her heels sounding
loudly on the wood flooring. She scooped her keys from the table
and paused. She sniffed the air.
“Hmmm,” she pondered.
Then a powerful urge overtook her. Her head throbbed fiercely.
She dropped her keys and fell to her knees, holding her head in her
hands, tears flowing from her eyes. And then it hit her: maybe she
should have found the bracelet.
Outside, Solani was making her way over to the ball. She had
everyone’s attention, her audience standing perfectly still. Not even
the birds twitched as she walked. Jason was practically drooling,
utterly clueless. The mythic girl of his prepubescent dreams was
walking toward him, or at least to his ball. His palms were sweaty
and his feet tingled as if they were asleep. Hell, he could very well be
dreaming. He saw Freddy’s face, twisted in an evil sour puss; Solani’s
father, checking his wristwatch, concern wrinkling his forehead; and
he felt a rumbling, in his gut perhaps? He didn’t eat breakfast. Or
was it the ground? Whatever its origin, it inspired him to move out
into the street, toward his destiny, toward Solani.
Angela could feel the drama elapsing outside. She had a mi-
graine. Whenever her morning routine was disturbed, her body

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would suffer the consequences. And when she suffered, the world
suffered ten-fold. But she tried to keep herself together, mustering
the strength to rise to her feet. Her face was purple and veins pro-
truded from her forehead like the roots of an oak tree. It must be
Freddy, she thought. Her first born.

Freddy was holding his breath, squeezing the life out of ev-
eryone in a ten block radius. Everyone but Jason. How!? How
could the wretched boy resist him? Why didn’t he die where he
stood? Freddy was furious, unconcerned with the consequences of
his manic envy. He didn’t notice that the school bus was fast ap-
proaching the cul-de-sac, nor did its driver notice that Jason was
slowly walking into the street.

Solani finally reached the ball. She bent over and picked it up,
rather anticlimactically. Her eyes glowed like lightning bugs at the
red orb in her hands. She squeezed it gently.

Jason’s heart skipped two beats. He was frozen where he stood,
at Solani’s mercy, the little she had. The girl could kill you with her
cuteness alone.

But that’s not what did Jason in. It was the bus. Angela
couldn’t make it to the door in time, to perhaps exert her majestic
maternal influence on the world and save his life. If only she were
more focused, less concerned about her bracelet, or her appearance
in general. If only Solani hadn’t lured the boy into her trap, unaware
of the breadth and depth of her influence. If only Freddy didn’t
hide his mother’s bracelet the night before, his youthful wickedness
uncaring of the consequences. He only desired more power, whether
he had to take it from his family or from an annoying neighbor boy.
Or, in this case, both.

So, the bus rolled into the cul-de-sac and plowed right into
Jason, who was about five feet from Solani. The driver was too
stricken by Freddy’s radioactive wrath to notice him. The bus kept
rolling and slammed right into Mr. Jenkins’ living room, unleashing
fifty kinds of hell in 100 places around the world. Angela finally
flung open the door, seeing the tail-end of the catastrophe.

“Dios Mio!” she cried out. Her husband turned to face her.
“It was only a matter of time,” he said.

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Harold Barnes.  I was born in Jersey City and am currently a sub-
stitute Paraprofessional for the New York City Department Of Edu-
cation. I briefly attended the University of Notre Dame, majoring in
Physics, then English, but i never graduated. Nowadays I write and
read avidly, work, and take care of my ailing mother with my sister.

96

After The Martyrs

By Brenna Carroll

Is this blood, or is it wine? Am I damned or am I divine?
The wild wind whistled through her nostrils, warming itself

for her lungs, and followed the breath in front of it out by the same
route. Sister Ida followed her own route, weakly cutting through
the wind on her way to the garden. She prayed as she walked, steps
keeping rhythm to the Hail Mary, counting the rosary beads in time
to her breath. The sky frowned down upon the sister, mirroring her
own expression of slight contempt and vague discontent, but its
dismal countenance was given away when the wind changed direc-
tion as if to aid the sister along on her path.

The garden appeared unseasonably vibrant against the grim
backdrop of the sky. Sister Ida’s small frame could be seen mean-
dering among the rows almost methodically, following a pattern
known only to her. In closer quarters, one would find the glow
on her bony cheeks contrasted with the gauntness of her face. She
brushed the leaves of each plant with delicate fingers as she wandered
past, debauched greenery feasting on her labors and that of others.
The place smelled earthy, clean and alive all at the same time.

It was an age without martyrs. Persecution had passed and the
time when one could seek salvation in the coliseum or on the cross
had drifted away like smoke off a funeral pyre.

That is not to say the world looked any different than it had
before; it had happened subtly and all at once. One day, the world
woke up to the news that Emperor Constantine had declared Rome

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Christian—there could be no more martyrs, as the persecutor had
become the proselytizer. Eight centuries had gone on in this way.
The world was the same, but the people had changed.

One would think that the world would rejoice after the mar-
tyrs, but this posed certain problems for religious folk. How could
one purport to follow Christ’s path if one could not follow it to the
end? How could one prove one’s absolute devotion to the faith if one
could not die for it? Anything worth living for is also worth dying for.

Some tried to do it anyway. They would beg Roman soldiers to
murder them in the street, commit crimes unscrupulously in order
to suffer the punishment, jump in front of carriages and dance
into lion cages. Then there were those who turned it inward. They
starved themselves, beat themselves, stopped sleeping but never took
fate into their own hands. They let nature do their work for them,
proving to the world that they did not need the world. Martyrs for
the church, perhaps not. Martyrs for themselves, absolutely.



Sister Ida worked in time to her hunger. That ever-present beast was
both her pride and her thorn. It was her strength and her weakness.
Strength, because she could deny herself such a basic need and defy
her own humanity; weakness, because her mind was consumed with
thoughts of food instead of thoughts of God. It occurred to her now,
as it had so many times before when her will began to wane, that she
needed to further purify herself.

Heroic hunger is how she liked to think of it. She was not
entirely free of the touch of vanity, and for this she felt sinful, but
it was minor in comparison to her larger goal. Sister Ida wanted
to escape her own human nature. The world chased her through
her nightmares, pursuing her ceaselessly and attempting to force its
cares and wants and desires upon her, but Sister Ida was stronger
than the world. She had long since forsaken it, declaring starvation
her salvation.

The sister departed from the garden and thought of salvation as
she walked. Salvation was always on her mind. Her hands trembled

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