CRACK THE Spine
Issue Twenty - Three
Crack the Spine Literary Magazine Issue Twenty-Three May 7, 2012 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2012 by Crack The Spine
Cover Art “Rooftop� by Christine Catalano Christine Catalano is an English major who slipped into publishing through the back door as a graphic artist. She worked happily there for many years. Now liberated from daily deadlines, she keeps her muse satisfied with camera and Photoshop. Some of her artwork has been published in Fiction at Work, the San Pedro River Review, and Mused.
Contents Michael Gatlin…………………..….………….……..Finding the Source Candy Came George Sparling………...……….…….…………………….……The Son Clint Wilson…….……..……………....……………….A New Old Poem William C. Blome……….…………....…….….….Some Buttery Replica Tobi Cogswell………………………...…………..……...Bulls and Cows Patty Somlo……………….………………………..……...…..A Situation
Finding the Source By Michael Gatlin
everybody’s blood ran down my wrists as I plunged my fists into the guts of the world pulling out the sausage and the sauce
Candy Came By Michael Gatlin
she had candy in her mouth it was all tease and twirl coloring the lips, teeth, and tongue
didn’t see a crunch until the end came it was shatterproof, forty proof, and smile
boy had slinky blue crisscrossed his legs while driving squirming in impatient ecstasy made me candy to watch him steering
(kept a spare suitcase in the trunk, and oh yeah, a spare ideology too, ‘cause you never know who you’re going to need to be)
some sassy Shiva sucked a tongue from my ear wearing French perfume and seven rings on five fingers, fingernailing my face
the window had to be let down
“what are you doing? It’s freezing!” he said
“shut up and drive.”
boy had mild surprise in the curtains that draped him curly black feathers that fanned his blushing cheeks, tapped a workingman’s thumb against the wheel to the sad low squeal of another bumpkin junky petrified of his own reflected high lonesomeness.
The darkness and safety and warmth were too much for him. He clawed his way out, covered in blood and placenta and did not scream, did not shiver. The doctor spanked his bottom and the child spit up rich black meconium. Michael S Gatlin grew fast and soon developed a love for the sound and the fury of existence. He wrote songs and sang in a band. But alas was tone deaf and took to writing poetry. This led him to wander the depraved streets in search of experience to corrupt what was left of his innocence. After graduating high school, the last of his social obligations, Michael joined the carnival and traveled across Canada working for Bungee USA. He worked as a carnie for a half a year before settling down in Montreal. He wrote a memoir about his experience entitled "Carnivorous in Canada". The following year, after a stint in New York and Knoxville, Mr. Gatlin moved to Nashville and joined a cult: The First Interplanetary Church of the Immaculate Deception. Their motto is Absurdity Shall be the Whole of the Law. During this time he wrote a lot of poetry and performed on stage with a group of wild Plaguists led by His Assholiness Pope Jas, the First and Last. The characters he met there have been immortalized in his second novel "Heavenly Nobodies". Burnt out on too much LSD, alcohol and narcotics, but especially LSD, Michael decided to live in his car for a spell, so he traveled up the eastern seaboard and burnt his flesh on the beaches, begged on the streets, and slept in his car for three months until he reached New York and the air conditioned safety of his mother. Reminded of how much he dislikes safety and comfort, Mr. Gatlin took a four day train trip to Montana to visit some childhood friends. Here he found work for the National Forest Services clearing switchback trails. The winter came, and Michael decided to head for Seattle. In Seattle he found more drugs and sex than he could refuse, so after a few months he took a train back to Penn Station. After a few years, and a few odd jobs, Michael found himself owning a bar/restaurant/lounge on the Lower East Side with a couple of friends. The bar he named Verlaine, after Rimbaud. The bar opened in October of 2001 and has been going strong ever since. This year Michael and his beautiful wife Bonnie, celebrated the birth of their first child Ovid Miles Gatlin. Now the early mornings, hallucinating and covered in vomit have a much more precious meaning.
The Son By George Sparling
Those west coast turnarounds, amphetamine, I popped them all but I would not turnaround this van. I banged a caddie in Santa Cruz and did time for it and finished my parole. I shouted, “I need more wake ups,” and settled for two Adderalls, though it had neither improved my memory while casino gambling nor my losing streak playing Texas hold ‘em in Bakersfield. I immediately regained old habits and swiped two Stetsons, with silver and turquoise bands. I took them off a rack in a posh Santa Fe restaurant full of hustler businessmen. I needed gas money to visit Adele, my mother, in Houston. I sold them for $60 to a salivating guy reminding me of my covetous father, Mel, desiring not another man’s wife but craving assets, liquidity and fungibility, conversion common to all three. I roamed: Panama City, Sault Ste. Marie, Key West, Jackson Hole, Sedona. Seattle, Cancun, Akron, Camden, Tijuana. Powder diamonds, how its authority gave me control and dominance, amped and queer on crystal, doing four consecutive break nights, having a gaffus to inject crank, stoned on crills, soaring on BC bud, high until I popped necessary bluebirds or red bullets to come down, sometimes zooming weeblies. Stuck in Southern California, I ran through my trust fund. “Go to him,” Adele had said, pointing to Mel’s room. She backed away, waiting for me to walk through her perfumed wake and into his room. I stepped inside and said nothing to him. Death was just another word for murder. My stoicism, a spiritual condition, had stopped me from smothering Mel to death on his death bed. He waved as I stood at the door, Mel staring at the ceiling, he must have smelled bud on my clothes, and in a whisper said, “Talk to me.” I placed my hand over his eyes, waved, and slunk away. I arrived at Adele’s and tapped the heavy bronze doorknocker. The door opened: She saw a forty-one year old man with premature gray, thinning hair, an untrimmed,
chaotic beard, a paunch covered by a wrinkled, bright orange shirt, and an oily, holein-the-knee pants I recycled from a Dumpster. She hated people who never took off their sunglasses, especially mirrored RayBan’s. Slashed by a knife from the hand of angry poker player who said I cheated him out of $57 made me a stranger to Adele. She was about to shut the door until I said, “It’s me, Art.” I took off my glasses. “Is it the glasses?” “Everything,” she said, appraising me with the eyes of an avaricious auction bidder. “I tossed a fireplace poker in the air, playing Neal Cassidy who did that with a sledge hammer. I threw it high but missed and gouged myself,” I lied. Her face showed no recognition of either Cassidy or me. “You always were a damned doper.” “That’s behind me, I’m clean now, gambling too.” I raised my hands, showing my palms, as if that proved I was clean. The front door half opened, I slipped between her arm and door and into the house. I walked around, seeing a spacious living room with lots of cork, stainless steel and chrome. “A decorator did the walls,” she said. “He wanted me to think young.” “Do you?” I walked across the heavy-textured rug and sat in a curved backed leather chair. “I’ve kept in shape. A woman trainer comes every weekday,” she said, and sat down in a wicker chair in the corner. I sat as far apart from her as I could. “You look like you’ve been living in a bat cave full of guano.” “We never lived like this with Mel around.” I said the obvious, and flung my arm out and it swept around the small fortune that went into the interior. “He was always business, saving for retirement,” she said softly. “I’ll make some tea.” I looked at the paintings; they looked real, not prints. She returned with a pitcher.
“They’re authentic. The estate money bought them,” she said. Silence except for noise of iced tea as we drank. I should tell her about my life, I knew she expected it, but I held back. How many words for failure were there. Yet, except for the stolen Cadillac, I got away with uncountable misdemeanors and felonies: my triumphs. “Nice drink but nicer if you spiked it with Johnny Walker Red,” I said. “So dissipated, so young. At eleven you stole from Mel’s coin collection to buy pot and at twelve you came home with alcohol on your breath.” “My friends drank and smoked weed, so I did too.” “Mel once told me, after he rose from the couch and walked to the fireplace, put his arm on the mantel, and said, ‘That kid is already in the three rings of the seventh circle. Dante left children out of his Inferno’. Then you dropped out of college and here you are, begging for money I presume.” It was that obvious? “What were his final words?” Dying was on firmer ground. “I couldn’t understand them. He made a thick gargle sound and then died of toxic shock,” she said. “No heroic measures were needed.” “Septic?” I said. “Putrefaction, that figures.” During rehab, I told group I dreamt of pus rising out of Mel’s head and flowing down the sides of his bubonic cheeks after three days on meth. A kilo of Listerine might have cured him. “See that cloisonné urn,” she said, indicating with her eyes the sturdy cedar table it rested upon. A green dragon blended into brilliant blues and yellows. It stood about a foot tall. “Beautiful,” I said, pouring another cool iced tea, but I thought, Give me steak and baked potatoes and a big salad and a whole key lime pie, bitch. I stuck my closed fist into my mouth, trying to staunch my demands, and held back hunger rising in my blood. “Melvin’s cremated remains are inside it. It takes seven hours at 6,000 degrees to get ashes.” I ran my hands over the cloisonné vase, wanting to smash it to pieces, spreading his remains over the princely room, going down on my hands and knees and scooping up the whiteness, put him in my crack pipe and smoke his remains. Then
pull this house up by its roots and wrap Adele in my arms and dry hump the slinky dame. “The enamel is bonded to the urn.” “It’s death proof, then. I love the hand-scoring of the cloisonné.” How long would I have to prattle before I asked her to give me money. I scanned the room and saw no graven images---photographs of Mel. “I got a pittance and you got the big money.”Pittance=Pity: I always thought I was hard as a diamond. “You lack being, how to live. Lack causes craving.” “A jones, then,” I said. “You’re emaciated inside,” she said, “or maybe just a knucklehead who took the wrong street.” I gotta get oughtta here even if it meant mugging Adele to get what’s mine. “I’m busted, broke.” I wanted to strangle a reanimated Mel. “I have medical bills. I’m not liquidating the property to help you out.” “You’ve enough for a trainer.” I wanted crank. Now. “He left nothing for you. I set aside a trust fund for you. You’ll get nothing more but you may stay here overnight. Then leave.” “Is that table oak?” I said. Keep talking about precious things. “Poplar, with a marble top. Have a look.” I saw three small diamonds in separate, soft-cushioned boxes, each lined with royal purple. “They’re Melvin.” She handed me a loupe and I looked up close, imagining Mel’s pores on the diamond’s surface. “Melvin? Have you converted to Hinduism?” “It took 16 weeks under colossal pressure, but they’re natural diamonds.” Adele explained that a company guaranteed real diamonds made from a loved one’s ashes. “How many grams are they?” I asked. “Carats. One carat is .2 grams. All living things are carbon based,” she said. “Bet it cost plenty, these Marvins.”
“A small thimbleful cost $12,000.” Even with a loupe, I lacked competence to judge perfection or flawlessness. Adele rose and sat at her desk. I could see her write something. She came back and said, “Here’s a check for $2,000. I’ve changed my mind.” I never asked why. That morning, I sneaked downstairs early and just for the hell of it used a coke spoon to scoop up some of Mel’s ashes into an empty Sucret cough drop tin. Adele told me the bank opened at nine. The diamonds I put in a small plastic baggie. I gassed up after cashing the check and drove north. I bought new clothes and sniffed around towns, most spots on the map sold crystal meth, glass, high or low quality product. Once, knocked unconscious before I reached the van, Kansas farm boys got their rocks off, and beat me up. “I’m an attorney, for crissakes,” I yelled as they kicked in my stomach a few times. Attorney sounded better than businessman. My money ground to nothing, the diamonds the only hope. I found a pawnshop in a strip mall and placed the three Marvins in front of the little pudgy man behind the counter. He used a loupe, carefully gauging each one. “These are slightly included, a SI 1-SI 2,” the pawnbroker said, putting the loupe down. “See the flaws. They’re dull and lack brilliance.” “What’ll you give me?” He looked at them with his naked eyes, rubbed his chin, and said, “$150.” I had to make something happen. I paid the motel clerk a week’s rent; it was only twenty feet from a four-lane highway on the outskirts of a hinky town. Broke was simple; being broken was different. I went to the small stove and raised the broiler. Next, I reached down and undid the copper tubing conducting gas to the water heater. I whacked it with my hunting knife’s handle. The inlet broke open, releasing gas into the kitchen. I pulled off the small metal grating at the bottom of the heater and snuffed out the pilot light. I smelled gas and sat on the bed, then sniffed the last of meth. The top of my skull erupted like a volcano.
Damn farm boys gave me bad go. I reached into the tin box and razored two lines of Mel on its top and snorted it. Weird. I lay on the bed for minutes? hours? I had no idea. I had not blocked leaks to the windows and door in the creaky room. I struck matches but no ka-boom. Damn, on every piece of earth bombs exploded, but here, nada. Suddenly, a voice hollered, either inside or outside the room. From a great distance maybe. I lost my gyroscope. Glass shattered and a woman crawled through the window, dragging me outside. Vehicles made bedlam on four lanes of traffic. “I smelled gas outside your window,” she said. She looked in the kitchen and came back. “You botched your death trip,” she said. She massaged my temples. I coughed. Her name was Fay. She guided me into her adjoining room and I sat on the bed. She made greasy scrambled eggs and bacon. I drank four cups of her coffee too. “I’ve seen you skanking around here, looking for trouble,” she said. “Trouble? I don’t do that.” Coffee slopped from the cup. Both hands grasped the cup, and my hands shook. “Oh yes you have. I’ve done that too.” Her eyes watered. “I work at the rendering plant down the highway. I can get you on there if you want.” “Get it on,” I said. “No, get you on, get you a job.” My resume: Job history: Selling dope. She let me have her key, showed me the food, and said I could watch TV and listen to CDs. “Take a long shower.” She pulled out a drawer and gave me men’s trousers and a western shirt with snaps, plus clean underwear. After the weekend, Fay and I hitched to the plant. She told the manager that I was a good man, hire him, he needs a break. The plant renders animal fats into lard and tissue, meats, bone meal, tallow, fish oil, yellow and white grease, beef and chicken fat. Waste like heads, hooves, bones, blood, internal organs, dead animal carcasses from slaughterhouses get converted into
human foods. Without these plants, waste and disease will overrun the streets and the planet will transmogrify into rot, decay and death. I am just another bloody carcass.
He's been published in many literary magazines including Underground Voices, Istanbul Literary Review, Slow Trains, Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Unlikely Stories, Rattle, nthposition, Ascent Aspirations, The Pitttsburgh Quarterly, Drill Press, and Thieves Jargon. He is mostly reclusive, sometimes venturing out for long, undistinguished walks, mulling over all the pain he both gets and receives. He rides a stationary bicycle for exercise and meditation, counting numbers, rhyming words, driving himself crazy. He's under constant surveillance, but his psychiatrist and friends don't believe him, saying he's paranoid. He has just bought Kota Cola tea, craving energy bursts so that he may not only write but also get a cheap high. He is suspicious of cops, knowing they have stripped him of his dignity. Though he has a B.A. degree in social science, the only positive thing the degree gave him was working for the NYC Welfare Department in East Harlem. He has also worked in Northern California, scuba diving for placer gold. He has been a dishwasher, having to quit after three weeks because he had nightmares, pots and pans attacking him. His best job was working in a bookstore on Times Square, even writing about his experience, "Times Square and Other Delusions," in Juked, an online magazine. His philosophy: Life will only get worse but he hopes to live to age 95, accepting what the world has done to him, maybe even getting married in the ruins of a cathedral.
“Broken Glass” By Christine Catalano
A New Old Poem By Clint Wilson
Poetry brings to bear Latent pretention - or not so latent
A voice utters shallow Words which cannot capture intent, truth
Net cast on top, possessed, Weak attempts to own dispossessed words
But words must be desolate To be true, if they are ever true
And words must be free from The meaning-makers to be poetry
If anything in this world can still be poetry
Clint Wilson is currently completing a masters in creative writing at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is a graduate of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC and a native of Huntington, WV. His story, "Hyssop," was published in the journal, 3 to 4 Ounces, and his poem "The Hot End" is forthcoming in the Irish publication, Poetry Bus.
Some Buttery Replica By William C. Blome
“Dad, can’t you give her a break? I don’t think she had any idea that harness was cardboard. I saw it the other day myself--Rosita was the one who actually unpacked it and put it in the barn Thursday--and we didn’t have a thought in the world that it wasn’t a real saddle.” But Mr. Rancher ignored his daughter, and kept digging into Lenore. “You expect me to believe you put a phony saddle on Sunday and never noticed anything unusual about the saddle? Didn’t notice how lightweight it was, that it was a weird yellow color, that it stank to high heaven of pomade, and you never said a word to anybody?” Lenore was very near tears now. She pulled a handkerchief out of her jeans and began to dab around her eyes, but she said or did nothing to break the silence that was falling over the ranch at dusk. This protracted scene ended with Mr. Rancher slowly walking away, then going inside and slamming the back door of the house. That night he dreamt about being on a Caribbean cruise with Star Wagner, his favorite afternoon dancer at the Peekaboo. Though other couples on the boat were always wining and dining in formal attire, and though he and Star were continually welcome in their company, both of them were in the buff for the entire trip. Their nudity first registered on him when the two of them passed a full-length mirror, and because full-length mirrors were everywhere on this ship, from then on, he could not escape being aware of it. So strong a reality was it for him that it masked another reality in his dream: he and Star were on a cruise without cabin stewards. But unlike his and Star’s nakedness (which was never acknowledged or even recognized by anyone else), the missing cabin stewards became a main topic of conversation between passengers at breakfast by the second day at sea. Even here, though, there was a puzzling element to things, for veteran cruise-goers agreed that none of the usual cabin steward duties were being left undone or poorly accomplished. It was while eating cereal and fruit and chatting with Star and two British couples about the wonder of the
cabins being maintained so thoroughly without there ever being a steward in sight that Mr. Rancher woke up. The green glow of the face of the clock on the nightstand told him it was close to four in the morning. He rose and pulled on his jeans and slipped into a pair of loafers. Without turning on the light, he groped around in his nightstand drawer until he came across and pocketed a magnifying glass. He next went into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face, then he tread quietly to the back door, grabbed his large flashlight and his keys, and stepped outside into the clear and pleasant night. It felt good to look up and see the expected constellations, to hear the soft sound of leaves brushing against each other as breezes moved among the ranch’s tall pecan trees. He allowed himself a quick smile as he remembered that Star Wagner would be bumping against the front pole and the back pole later on in the day at the Peekaboo. Then Mr. Rancher briskly strode toward the stable, toward the overhead light and the frenzied moths above the barn’s front doors. He veered toward the side of the building and made his way somewhat more slowly in the diminishing light toward the back end of the stable, for it was in the rear part of the building, opposite the stalls, that tools, shovels, rakes, extra blankets and saddles were stored. He avoided using the large double doors, and with the aid of the flashlight, he unlocked the single door to his left and entered the barn. He would never permit a dog on his property, so he knew there would be no barking to worry about, and he knew he could make quite a racket and still not upset his horses, so there was no worry on that score either. All he wanted was to quietly and thoroughly inspect the yellow saddle on his own, and he easily located it among the other saddles that were each tied and hanging down on a rope over the barn’s lowest rafters. He reached up and untied the yellow saddle and carried it over to a work table. He jammed his flashlight into a space between the slats of the nearby wall and slowly started his inspection. To begin with, even though there were strong, competing odors within the barn (especially manure, straw, and neat’s-foot oil), the smell of bergamot pomade had been evident from the moment he entered the barn, and as he now hefted this saddle about, inspecting it in the cone of light from his flashlight, Mr. Rancher reasoned that nothing he looked at made as strong an impression on him as the smell of bergamot. He also recognized bergamot pomade as something he had used in his adolescence; he had the
temptation to linger some in memories of weekend dates and head-to-head kissing in dark theatres and parking lots. But the sound of a mosquito near his ear as he peered at the saddle erased or neutralized the charm of the pomade. In point of fact, he soon verified (more than independently inspected) characteristics and features of the saddle. Yes, it was very light in weight. Yes, it was true in size. Yes, it was pale yellow all over, and yes, it was completely made of cardboard (even including the strings, straps, stirrups, and cinch ring), a cardboard, as far as he could tell, that was no different from what corrugated packing cartons were made of. What he looked for and couldn’t find, however, was any indication whatsoever as to where, when, or by whom the saddle had been made; patient use of the magnifying glass all over the harness’s surface failed to yield the clue of any letter, number or symbol. Mr. Rancher decided to end his inspection just a little over twenty minutes from when it began. He retied the saddle to the rope, gathered up his flashlight and magnifying glass, and locked the door behind him as he exited the barn and returned to his room. He undressed and returned to bed, sleeping hardly at all and without any remembered dreams, before he rose to begin his day in earnest at sixthirty. As he went about his chores that morning, he could not avoid the feeling that the previous day’s confrontation over the saddle and his own pre-dawn confrontation with the saddle both shared the reality of being inconclusive. For him to conclude that items of explanation were missing was in itself insufficient, for it did not convey his substantial and growing need for some kind of closure. But try as he did for the rest of the day, he couldn’t define to himself the parameters of a satisfactory explanation of the yellow saddle, elements that would more or less remove it from his mind. His quandary continued that night and all of the following day, and it wasn’t until lunchtime of the third day that he broke his brooding silence and announced to the others his thoughts. The four of them—Mr. Rancher, his daughter, Lenore, and Rosita— were seated around the table, quietly eating cucumber or pulled pork sandwiches, vegetable soup, and cornbread. While never an occasion for much verbal observation or gossip, ever since Mr. Rancher’s confrontation with Lenore, mealtimes had become tense, awkward and silent affairs. But today he got right to the point. (He had hacked out a scenario with Star the previous day of exactly what he wanted to accomplish. She had been particularly helpful with her suggestions as to what kind of language he might want to
use to convey just the right tone as well as the substance of his thoughts.) So he began this way: “Now, Lenore, when the other day I did call you to my room and ask you to saddle up Sunday— that I might parade and prance about my property all the livelong day— I certainly had no idea that my saddle would be a falsehood, that it would be some buttery replica of a real saddle. Can you understand my surprise and my thinking?” Lenore smiled at Mr. Rancher, and without any hesitation replied that, yes, of course she fully understood his surprise and his anger. “I could guess you might not be wild about that yellow saddle, but I figured you really wanted to ride that day, and there wasn’t any other saddle in the barn at the time. It’s been my experience that when a man wants to ride, he usually really wants to ride, and doesn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer. I couldn’t think of any other solution, you might say, so I got Sunday ready to go. I mean, I figured you knew what the yellow saddle was there for.” Lenore paused and then said, “And you have to admit, Sunday looked really spiffy in that yellow.” “But did you not think about my safety on an obviously-cardboard saddle, that the chances were quite good when I hefted myself onto the saddle that it would start to split or come apart?” Then Mr. Rancher stood up and turned around so that his backside faced Lenore. He loosened his belt, and his Levi’s slid to the floor. He then pulled down his boxer shorts and cupped his hands below his buttocks. As he then spread his substantial cheeks apart, he bade Lenore to once more consider the gravity of what would have happened had he tried to ride Sunday by sitting atop the yellow saddle. “These bad boys would surely have busted that saddle. I do not think you could ride a cardboard saddle very far either without soon having consternation or trouble.” It was at this point that Mr. Rancher’s daughter had an idea. She put down her soup spoon, folded her napkin in front of her, and said, “Why don’t we go out to the barn and see how strong or weak the perfumed saddle really is? I’ll grab a pair of pinking shears, and we’ll see if Rosita can cut or punch into it. If Rosita can, then Daddy will be right, and Lenore was very wrong to not say anything. But if Rosita can’t, with all her might, slice or stab into the yellow cardboard, then Lenore was right, and Daddy was entirely wrong to get mad at Lenore. How does that sound?”
Perhaps because Rosita’s food was so good and they all were so hungry, no one said anything for about half a minute, but deliberate and ponder they did, and Lenore was the first to break the ice. “That sounds fine to me, and we can do it as soon as we’re done here, as far as I’m concerned.” Mr. Rancher then said he was so sure he was right that he wanted the loser to agree to submit to being spoon-whipped on the ass for not less than fifteen minutes by the winner, and right here at the dinner table next Sunday, in front of everyone, including his guest, Star Wagner. Turning to Rosita, he added, “And when you set the table, put out our best china and silverware.” So following hunks of pie and ponies of applejack, the four of them wended their way to the rear of the barn. Mr. Rancher’s daughter lowered the saddle, and he and Lenore held it firmly between them. No one said anything as Rosita first placed the edge of the saddle’s skirt between the pinking shears and almost effortlessly cut into the yellow cardboard. The odor of the bergamot got measurably stronger as she did the same thing to the fender and then severed the straps and snipped the strings. As Lenore conceded defeat, Rosita finished up by punching several holes into the seat and the fork. She then dropped the pinking shears in a motion almost simultaneous with Mr. Rancher and Lenore’s dropping what was left of the yellow saddle onto the barn floor. Then in what would have looked to all the world like a stately, somber, and formal procession, the group trouped out of the barn single-file and moved back toward the house, the line gradually dissolving, so to speak, as each person headed in the direction of the afternoon remainder of her or his daily chores.
William C. Blome is a writer of short fiction and poetry. He beds down nightly in-between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is an MA graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Amarillo Bay, Prism International, Taj Mahal Review, Pure Francis, This, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly. Blome prefers to create first drafts of his work in public places; railroad stations and fast food restaurants can often be particularly good spots. His favorite authors include T.E. Hulme, Gertrude Stein, and Frederick Barthelme. William C. Blome is also a fine collagist. No locale in the United States has had a more positive influence on his creativity than North Dakota (which he longs to see again someday).
Bulls and Cows By Tobi Cogswell
Mack’s other girlfriend Liz, the one Shawn discovered by mistake, tried to hurry her along. Politely evil like a giant bee with loud smile and hungry eyes she twists the knife.
70’s hair the color of pomegranates and piss, her fat ass juts as she elbows the bar and smokes a cigar. After 4 whiskeys The “L” on her pocket stands for “Lick” and she’ll be the first one to tell you.
Stalking and territorial she makes her claim…
Shawn flees to the land of
not a blue collar in sight and seeks a new religion. She follows a man for hours just because she cannot see the back of his neck, that filthy white smile.
She heals with time. Her sense of humor thaws. She sends lace curtains with barnyard animals from the swapmeet to the new happy couple…
They’ll never get it.
Tobi Cogswell is a two-time Pushcart nominee. Credits include Illya’s Honey, REAL, Iodine Poetry Journal, Slipstream, StepAway (UK), Turbulence (UK), Front Porch Review, Rufous Salon (Sweden), Alligator Stew (UK), Crack the Spine and Ballard Street Poetry Journal, and are forthcoming in Bacopa, Compass Rose, The Broken Plate, Border Crossing, I-70 Review, Incandescent (UK), Agenda Poetry (UK) and Pale House - Letters to Los Angeles. Her latest chapbook is “Surface Effects in Winter Wind”, (Kindred Spirit Press). She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review.
A Situation By Patty Somlo
“Don’t make no sense,” the man everyone knew on the street as Big Willy said. “No sense ‘a tall.” He was not speaking about the death of that woman, whose stiff corpse lay in the alley where Big Willy came every morning to relieve the bright orange metal containers of their cans and bottles. “What kinda sense this make?” Big Willy threw the question out, where it hung in the chilled air. “What kinda sense?” The woman was stiff as tin, her hand curled like a claw. She was wearing, of all things, a baby blue nightgown, and over that a ratty, frayed gray robe. Her matted hair was silver-blue and so thin, you could see the skin on her scalp. Green peeked out – a small corner of it – from the edge of her robe. Big Willy knew what that green signified. Why, he had survived on the street, in this very neighborhood, going on ten years. Big Willy never stole. No, he rustled up – cans and bottles, clothes and books, even boots and coats that people threw out. And he kept his eyes open. A man needed to be wide awake, if he was gonna stay in the game. Money, Big Willy had discovered, was meant to be found. Oh, there was that one day he was pushing his cart all stacked up – with soda and beer bottles, an old printer and a black wool coat – and right under his feet, he saw twenty-three dollars. “Slipped outta the pocket,” he muttered, when he bent down next to the parked car to pick that abandoned money up. Big Willy understood that the man who kept himself open to what the Lord bestowed would find that fortune once in a while decided to shine upon him. So, when he saw that little bit of green peeking out, he knew God was looking out for him.
Of course, a man like Big Willy also understood the problem. That was plain as day. An old white woman, he knew sure as he knew his name, was dead. Hands all clawed up. No breath coming out, when he stuck two fingers in front of her mouth. Laying there on the ground, the air so cold it had turned the puddles to ice. And here he was a black man. How easy would it be for the police to blame Big Willy? Killing an old white woman for her money. You can imagine how that little hint of green was teasing Big Willy. Cans and bottles, an old coat, boots were a means to the green. But they were not the real thing, the foldin’ money, as one preacher used to call it before passing the plate. Big Willy couldn’t help but believe that one teeny piece of green would surely lead to another. Why, there could be a million dollars waiting underneath that old lady’s robe. Big Willy searched the broken pavement around the alley until he found a butt that had a little bit of life left. He bent down to the ground and lifted that last inch of cigarette up. Funny thing, Big Willy wore a pair of wool gloves, his long fingers having poked out the tips, for picking through trash but he didn’t mind his lips kissing an old cigarette butt he’d found tossed on the pavement. He took a seat on a broken piece of concrete meant to be a curb and lit that butt. Smoke curled into the cold air and then Big Willy took smoke into his lungs. In moments like this, Big Willy enjoyed imagining that he was sitting someplace inside, on a big fat old chair, with the T.V. turned on. He’d never sat on such a chair, at least that he could recall. His life, he once told some social worker, wadn’t worth a memory. To be honest, Big Willy couldn’t even be sure how old he’d gotten to be. There’d been a daughter, he sometimes allowed himself to acknowledge, and a son, back in that life he had way too much trouble imagining. Their mother, as Big Willy liked to think of Charise in the rare times he bothered, was always nagging him. Big Willy couldn’t do nuthin’, he used to say, to make that woman smile. Big Willy reminded himself that there was a situation here he needed to wrap his mind around. He’d smoked the butt down to the filter and the heat suddenly stung his first finger and thumb. He flicked the butt to the ground before the fire singed his skin and blew out a last ragged line of smoke. “A situation,” he said. “I’ve got me a situation here.”
Now, it wasn’t a strange sight to find a body on the street, especially in this type of weather. Big Willy had seen his share of bodies frozen from the cold. Or beaten to death, all bloody. There had been, in all those years, some pretty sorry sights. It didn’t bother Big Willy. A person’s time comes, he liked to say, and that’s that. God decides. No, the woman being dead there in the alley wasn’t Big Willy’s problem. It was what to do next. If he hadn’t seen that bit of green peeking out, he wouldn’t have given the woman a second thought. How to get the green was the question, and without leaving his mark. But even more important – how to find out if there was more of that green hidden under the old lady’s robe. Big Willy hadn’t noticed the police car. For at that very moment, he was ever so slowly trying to heft his body up. It’s certainly true that Big Willy didn’t have the weight he’d once carried. Why, at one time, Big Willy was, as he sometimes liked to tell, an athlete. He said the word slowly when he told the tale, taking its two syllables and stretching them out to three, by adding a small a in the middle. Ath-a-lete. No matter how he pronounced the word, the story, unlike some that made their way out of Big Willy’s mouth, was true. They’d started calling him Big Willy when he was still a boy. Eleven, he must have been, and his mama couldn’t buy pants fast enough to keep them covering his ankles. She liked to say, “Boy grows a foot every night in his sleep,” and that did seem to be the case. By the time Willy turned thirteen, he was going on six feet tall and still growing. Being tall wasn’t the only thing Willy, who that year became Big Willy, had going for him. He knew exactly what to do with a basketball. No one was a bit surprised when Big Willy made it onto the high school varsity squad and in his very first game became its star. One of Big Willy’s favorite stories on the street was that he had once been in the NBA. When Big Willy boasted like that, some guy would give his arm a shove and say, “Sure. And I am the President of the U-nited States.” That’s when Big Willy would pull that guy by the arm and say, “C’mon.” He’d make that guy and his buddies walk ten blocks or so if he had to, with them complaining the whole time. Big Willy, for his part, would say, “Only a little bit more,”
and then, “Two more blocks,” until, finally, he’d let them know, “We here now. All ‘a you’se can shut up.” Here would be a basketball court, at the edge of a park. And Big Willy would walk out onto the blacktop, where a group of young guys were dribbling the ball, and make them stop. There’d be some hands raised and slapped, and then all of a sudden, Big Willy would own that ball. Years on the street and too much partying before that had taken a toll. But Big Willy didn’t need to run up and down a court for hours. No, he just needed to dribble the ball a couple of times and shoot it into the basket from the far right-hand corner. That was enough to prove his point. The one remnant of his basketball days, added to his time on the street, was that Big Willy now suffered from arthritis. He didn’t know this fact. All Big Willy knew was that it took him an awful long time to get up whenever he’d been sitting. And so he was concentrating on that, unfolding his legs and getting himself upright from that seat on the curb, and that’s why he hadn’t noticed the police car driving up. Neither did he see the car park at the end of the alley. He also failed to hear the driver’s side door of the car open and shut. Big Willy walked closer to the body, in order to sneak himself a better look. When he got close, he decided to stoop down, even though he knew he’d have a heck of a time getting back up. Big Willy couldn’t keep his fingers to himself now that the green was so tantalizingly close. Yes, he brought his fingers down onto the dead woman’s body and lifted the robe. “Oh, Lordy me,” Big Willy whispered. That hint of green was just the beginning. For underneath the robe – and Big Willy peeled that gray terrycloth back further to gape at more – the old lady had pinned green bills of every denomination. She’d pinned them every which-way, some with silver safety pins and others with gold. Big Willy’s heart started to pound, seeing what that old lady had done. Of course, he did not notice Officer Alma Robinson heading his way. Because at that moment, Big Willy knew he had better act fast. He removed his gloves, so the wool wouldn’t get in the way. And he began unclipping that money from the faded flannel nightgown.
“What’s goin’ on here?” Big Willy was clutching a wad of twenties, tens and fives in his left hand when he heard that voice. He looked up. The law was looking down. “I didn’t do nuthin’,” Big Willy blurted out. Thinking it might not be noticed, Big Willy stuffed the wad of green into the lefthand pocket of his coat. “You rob this woman?” the officer asked, as she grabbed and held onto Big Willy’s arm fast. “I tole you. I ain’t done nuthin’.” “Let’s get up now. I need to take a look,” Alma said, and then whispered into her radio that they needed to send an ambulance and some backup. Alma steadied her feet on the ground. She was slight and not too tall. As she held onto Big Willy with her left hand, she kept the right one poised above her gun. Big Willy took his time getting up. He did not want to shame himself here with this young policewoman but he sure could have used some assistance. His knees felt stiff, and he wasn’t sure there was enough strength left in those thighs to bring him off the ground. But he did finally manage. He had barely gotten himself up when that tiny thing whipped him around and clapped on a pair of cuffs. She called on the radio to her partner that she needed him to come. Then Alma told dispatch she thought they had a dead one. As soon as she’d transferred Big Willy to her partner, Alma got down on the ground. The old woman was stiff as a door, Alma verified that now. Alma put her plastic-gloved hand up to her nose, to keep the putrid odor out. Most likely, that big oaf hadn’t killed her. The old lady smelled like she’d been dead a while. Big Willy had left the frayed gray robe open. Bills – tens, twenties and fives – he hadn’t had time to unclip lay innocently across the body.
Big Willy ate a good meal that night – pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy. He pushed the bright green peas off to the side. The following morning, the deputy released Big Willy back out into his life. Big Willy thought about how good that first slug of whiskey was gonna taste. He stepped out to the sidewalk and dug down into his left hand coat pocket. “Hey,” he shouted, as his fingers fiddled and clawed the empty space. “Where’s my money?” At that moment, he considered going back inside and demanding to be given the bills that rightly belonged to him. But after all this time, Big Willy had learned one simple lesson. If a man takes his eye off the ball, even for a second, the game is lost. And so Big Willy started walking down the sidewalk. He aimed to pick up some cans and bottles, if only he could remember where he’d last parked his shopping cart.
Patty Somlo has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times and was a finalist in the Tom Howard Short Story Contest. She is the author of From Here to There and Other Stories. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including the Los Angeles Review, the Santa Clara Review, the Jackson Hole Review, WomenArts Quarterly, Guernica, Slow Trains, The Write Room and Fringe Magazine, and in several anthologies, including Solace in So Many Words, Being Human: Call of the Wild and Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration.
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