Crack the Spine Literary magazine
Issue 108
Issue 108 March 26, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine
Noelle Adamo
Ree Davis A Limitless Sky
Betsy Hays Hatshepsut: Lost Queen of Egypt
Eugenie Theall A Woman’s Journey
CONTENTS
Conduits of Information
Zach VandeZande A Testimony
Devon Gallant Moon, Grass, & Stars
Mollie McNeil Black Ribbons
Anna Halberstadt Instructions from a Monk
Noelle Adamo Conduits of Information
Every year at this time there is the tug from belly to earth. Snow disappears and the cord attaches itself out of nowhere, reaches through windows and walls, sharpens me to attention so that the more I try to pull into dreams the stronger it shocks me to the cold morning dew. And then when it rains nothing forms a straight line. All those streams now where there was flat ground a day ago, flowing past the vase of flowers left on my doorstep, splashing at my car as it pulls up to river contact back
to the giver. What lies between our houses is less than what lies between our minds, and so we remain connected by the things that separate each form erected by time roads, forests, children, desires, her daffodils in my kitchen, my car in her driveway, no promises, plans, or disclosures spoken, only the shape of the gesture, bright yellow and starry, the warmth and roundness of arms imagined, and the impulse to sing, wrap, press for root and for all that lingers in things waiting for spring ready to burst forth on the tips of our tongues.
Ree Davis A Limitless Sky
“Absalon’s
busted into the old Peterson place.” Rick burst into the kitchen with a blast of dusty wind. Sharp, plastered strands of dyed black hair lay against his pale face. “He’s gonna kill himself.” “No horse’ll kill itself,” Ben said, closing the door. The boy had been at the fringes of Lucy’s group since God knows when. Looked like a ghost compared to her pretty girlfriends and the clean-cut boys who seemed to follow them. They’d all crowded her room right after the
accident, but when weeks in that hospital turned to months in rehab, and it looked like Lucy would never walk again, Rick was the only one who still showed up. “Horses get loose now and again.” “Daddy,” said Lucy. She wheeled to Rick and grabbed his hand. The three of them—Alice, Lucy, and Ben—had been talking over breakfast about how Absalon couldn’t understand why Lucy didn’t jump on and ride him anymore. Calvin Hobbs had offered to buy him. The news seemed to shrink Lucy into her
chair and drove Alice out into the dry morning air. Ben had been watching Alice standing in the yard, her arms outstretched. The air of the plains moved around her, and Ben thought she looked lighter, as if it could lift her up and away. He scraped the eggs and toast from Alice’s plate. He prided himself in knowing how things work, how the tractor key needed two turns because the starter was weak, and how lift, weight, thrust, and drag had to be balanced to get the crop duster off the ground, but he couldn’t figure out how a one
hundred-pound woman family—as ordinary as had almost doubled in cornhusks and diesel oil—and the generations size without eating. of Alice’s people, who “Horse needs to be were made for bow hunting and harvesting, ridden,” Ben said. “Horse needs to be had come together to exercised,” said Rick. create this one perfect “We did plenty child. Like an alien landed from another yesterday. “Horse barn needs to world. And that perfect be latched,” said Ben. child, now seventeen, He’d been out there would never walk again. “He flew right over the himself last night, checking to see that hood of my car.” One of eyelids was they’d left everything Rick’s right. “You check that pierced, and he raised it, you’ve latched it. Then making Ben feel the acid in his own gut. “I you check again.” “Stop it,” said Lucy. followed him to the old From the first moment Peterson place. Went Ben held her, pink and right up the porch and in blue from a difficult the front door. He’s birth, he’d felt awe that upstairs.” Rick pointed at the generations of his the ceiling. He was wired
all wrong, as if anxiousness filled his veins. Anxiousness just didn’t seem right in a boy with dyed hair, tattoos, and pierced eyebrows. “Couple other folks saw too. Now everyone’s there.” “Ain’t possible for a horse to climb stairs,” said Ben. His body felt heavy. He’d been moving breakfast dishes to the sink, but pulled out a chair. A fly crawled across the remnants of eggs on his plate. “Who says?” Alice came through the doorway. Her face round like a wheel. Her skin taut like a kid. She held the door open. Outside air flooded in, arid but
alive, sucking the room dry as it lifted curtains and rustled the newspaper. “Horses climb steeper hillsides.” Ben wanted to say, now my wife’s against me. He wanted a cigarette, though he’d convinced Alice and Lucy he’d given them up months ago. He went to the window, as if it was possible to see the Peterson place. Alice’s grandmother had stood in the same yard with a staff in her hand and feathers in her hair. Alice and he stood at that same window, laughing at what a crazy, old bat she was. The wind picked up and blew dirt and dead
leaves across the yard. The sun rose above land that had been in their families since before the Dust Bowl drove everyone else away. The sky had always seemed limitless. This time of year, it’d be lavender at day’s end. “It’s a traffic jam,” Rick said.
“We’d better go,” said Lucy. Alice turned in the open doorway. Ben pushed past her. “You ain’t worked a horse in years.” Alice leaned against the back window. The air washed over her face and sent her dark straight hair across the seat. Ben sat on the opposite side with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He stared at his daughter sitting close to Rick. The urge to tell her to buckle her seat belt rolled around in the acid pool of his gut. They passed the makeshift shrine that marked the accident. No one looked but him.
Faded plastic flowers tumbled across the intersection. Washed out pinks and blues scattered in the nearby grass, null relics of the days immediately after, when they thought Lucy wouldn’t live. A few stands of trees broke the rhythm of farmland. Their leaves curled back from the dry earth. Trucks and cars lined the sides of the dirt drive that led to the Peterson house. A group of men near the porch turned as the car pulled up. Something about Rick and his daughter sitting up front in Rick’s old Plymouth Valiant—with a backdrop of every farmer this side of Route
2—made Ben realize he might be looking at those tattoos and that damn hair forever. But Rick lifted Lucy in and out of that chair like he was born to do it. When she was finally able to get out of rehab, he took her to Main Street and they’d lie on the sidewalks and draw cartoons in chalk on the squares of pavement. Lucy’d come home beaming and chattering away like the chair wasn’t even there. But Ben and Alice had had hopes for their daughter, whose ballet teacher had come to the house and said Lucy could dance her way right off the farm and into a big city ballet
company. Now she wasn’t even walking, loved by a strangelooking boy who drew in chalk. Dust covered the windshield in a beige film, like a screen against the eyes of the crowd. Calvin, a big man with hips wider than his shoulders, stepped to the car. Lucy looked away as Rick helped her into the chair. Ben prayed Calvin didn’t mention buying Absalon. “It’s the damnedest thing I ever seen,” Calvin said, his fingers tapping against his speckled scalp. Ben made his way to the porch with Calvin beside him. Alice
followed. He felt everyone’s eyes on them. Maybe they’d looked before Jerold Page’d had too much to drink, blown through that stop sign, and sent Lucy’s Blazer tumbling. If they had, the stares hadn’t felt the same. “Must be the storm coming scared him.” Calvin glanced up. “That barn of yours shoulda come down long ago.” “Nothing wrong with my barn,” said Ben. The crowd didn’t know where to look between seeing Alice Anderson, doubled in size since wheeling her daughter home a year ago, or the sight of a horse moving behind the
windows above. “I wouldn’t be going in there,” said Horace Greenhill, whose family owned the land closest to Petersons’. “The place’ll come down around you.” “That’s my horse,” said Ben, nodding at the window above them. As Ben’s boots hit the porch’s hollow wood, Calvin shoved the butt of a pistol against Ben’s arm. “That horse ain’t gonna make it outta there.” He nodded. “It’d be the right thing to do.” Ben hesitated, then took the pistol and shoved it into the back of his belt. He glanced over at Lucy. Her lips moved silently, no.
“Don’t think the place’ll hold that horse for long.” Ben didn’t know whose voice it was. “A horse and man together? Even worse.” “What I don’t need is a peanut gallery,” Ben said as he walked through the front door. The entry filled two stories; the house had been finer than most. He’d last been in it as a teenager. Breaking in was a rite of passage. He couldn’t remember if lore had the family leaving with everyone else in the 1930s or they’d died, but either way it’d been before Ben was born. Ben, Calvin, Horace, and a few others used to light a fire in the
fireplace of the upstairs ballroom and smoke cigarettes rolled from cornhusks. Once they’d spent the night on blankets carried in rolls on their shoulders and drank a bottle of whiskey they’d mixed together from shots collected from their fathers’ stashes over months. They were just shy of graduation, and all that lay ahead was the same thing their stubborn fathers, grandfathers, and greatgrandfathers had been doing since coming to this place in wagons and on horseback. Blood streaked along the strips of torn wallpaper. The faded
fleur-de-lis emblems had seemed grand as a kid. Now the graying peels brought a sad taste to Ben’s throat. Absalon had probably gotten cut busting out of the barn or during his flight across the fields, where on straight path, the horse would’ve had to jump at least three fences. Blood drops speckled the stairs, which were still solid despite breaks in the banister. The railing had once been smooth and polished, but now it snagged against Ben’s palm. The second-floor landing was over a dozen feet wide. A massive window smeared with dust let in faint patches
of light where the panes were gone. Flies moved in the corners, slow and nearly dead, or in vibrating piles beneath. Absalon’s breathy snort resonated in the vacant house. His hooves clomped against wood like the roll of close thunder. Or maybe a storm really was coming. Ben hadn’t ever seen a horse climb stairs, but Alice was right—horse paths to the west were steeper. Still, Absalon had to be pretty scared to make it up them. The double doors to the front room stood wide open, revealing oak plank flooring, plaster walls, mullioned windows, and the horse’s hind end. Ben
inched his way toward the room—the same ballroom he and his friends had sat in, throwing cigarette butts into the majestic fireplace, and talking like they might one day get away. “Hey, boy.” Ben hoped his voice would keep the horse from being spooked when he finally got to him. “You got yourself in quite a pickle.” Ben moved from one side of the doorway to the other. “There, there.” Absalon had worked himself into the back corner, opposite the fireplace, with his tail toward the center of the room like he’d been
stuck there by an irritated school marm. The room’s tall windows had lost their glass long ago. It seemed strange that someone hadn’t stolen the room’s massive chandelier. Where in hell would anyone around here put it? Alice had asked when he mentioned it. Ben put his hand on the pistol and pulled it closer to his right hip. Thunder clapped above them. “How about that?” Ben said. “We just might end this drought tonight.” The sky grew darker beyond the windows. If he looked down, he knew he’d see the crowd’s faces turned up. He thought of the dry-
rotted floorboards and how they might splinter when he got closer to the horse. His hand rested on the pistol stock. “You picked a fine time to take a run,” he said, inching closer. He clicked his tongue against his cheek. “Now you know I ain’t interested in getting kicked in the head anytime soon.” The horse snorted and lifted its head, its eye an enormous black marble. “You see me now, don’t you, boy,” Ben said, moving along the wall. The pattern of blood on the floor said that the horse was wounded on the opposite side, maybe the shoulder.
“Damn it, Ben,” Calvin called from below. “Get this over with. We all’re about to get electrocuted.” “They should want to dance out there if it rains,” he whispered to Absalon. The dryness had lasted all summer. That eye stayed on him. Finally, Ben was able to put a hand on Absalon’s rump. He ran his hand along the horse’s back and up its neck. It didn’t flinch. “We’ve had a tough year, boy, but you’re gonna be fine.” He let go of the gun and unbuttoned his work shirt. Abalson raised his head. “I always try to do the right thing.” Ben
pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around Absalon’s eyes, holding the shirt tight beneath the horse’s cheeks. “But right don’t always work.” Ben gave Absalon a gentle push on the shoulder. Absalon took a few steps back. Ben worked his way around to the horse’s other side.
A six-inch gash went from chest to elbow, with another smaller one to the forearm. The bleeding had stopped. “You’re gonna need some stitches.” Ben clicked his tongue against his cheek and turned Absalon around. The horse leaned slightly against him. As Ben led the horse under the great chandelier and past the windows, he thought he heard the crowd gasp. Maybe Calvin saying someone was a fool. “One thing I can promise is, you aren’t going to Calvin’s anytime soon.” Ben said, leading the horse out of the room with his shirt. They
passed through the double doors and into the second-floor hall. “When I was a boy, I came here. Thought maybe I was meant to live in a different time, maybe a time when they still had parties in that very ballroom, and I could dance with every girl in the county.” He hesitated at the landing. The open front door glowed with light. The potential for rain had passed them again. “Don’t know how or why in hell you got up here.” Ben pushed the shirt off the horse’s eyes but kept his grip. He stepped down two stairs, which had been designed for women in full skirts to
descend on a man’s arm or to stand in groups and greet partygoers on their way to the ballroom. Absalon took the first step, then brought his other front hoof onto it. They went down together, hoof by hoof, step by step, all the while Ben clicked in Absalon’s ear. The steps popped and cracked beneath them. At the bottom Ben paused with his grip still on the shirt harness and let out a long breath. “Good boy,” he said, partly to the horse and partly for himself. “What the hell?” said Calvin, his hands on his hips and his stomach stuck forward. Rick’d brought Lucy to
the side of the porch. Alice stood beside them. Ben walked Absalon down the porch steps, past Calvin. He noticed for the first time that a horse trailer was hitched to Calvin’s truck. “This horse isn’t for sale,” said Ben, walking Absalon so Lucy could reach up and run her hands along his neck. “Well, I ain’t interested anymore,” Calvin said, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning back on his heels. “Gotta be something wrong with that horse anyway.” Alice put her hands on Absalon’s back. “Poor boy,” she said against his cheek. “How’d you ever get out?”
It’d
been hot yesterday even with the sun going down. Ben had stood outside the barn watching the last of the day disappear as purple light filled the sky. The door’d been latched when Ben first went in. Absalon’s tack had been hung as it should. His brush upright in the nook above his stall, which was filled with fresh hay. As always over the last year, Ben avoided looking up. After the dance teacher’s visit, Ben and Alice had converted the barn’s loft into a dance studio, layering so much lavender paint onto its ancient boards that if they cut through the
wood, the color would be soaked through. Ben didn’t paint the loft because of what that teacher said. He painted it because of the look on Lucy’s face when she’d danced her first recital. Her expression didn’t so much say she was happy, but that he was. He and Alice would climb the ladder together and peek across the floor to watch Lucy, and in those moments it seemed like they all danced. “I think you should ride him home,” said Ben. “You said I hadn’t worked a horse in years” “But you’re our bareback rider,” said Ben. “And we haven’t got
a saddle.” “Mama, please.” Lucy’s face was as full as the moon staring up at them. “Come on, girl.” Ben took Alice’s hand and led her up the porch steps. “This horse’s hankering for a rider like you.” “I’m too heavy.” “You ain’t. Besides, he’s a horse. Don’t know what heavy means.” Alice mounted Absalon from the porch and walked him around in small circles. Then she grasped his dark mane and dug in her heals. Absalon jerked to attention with a flick of his head. He gamboled forward and the two flew off down the dirt drive. The crowd broke
into slow-moving groups that alternately stared at Absalon’s trail of dust and the varying sky above. They climbed into vehicles and pulled down the rutted drive. “That woman still looks good on a horse,” Calvin said, walking Ben to Rick’s car. “Yessir,” said Ben. Ben pressed his back into the seat on the ride home. He felt sore and tired, though the day was young. He twirled a cigarette in and out of the pack, which held only three. Lucy leaned against Rick. He couldn’t hear their voices against the roar of the air through the open windows, but he could
see smiles at the corners of their mouths. All around the sky turned a thick, purplish-gray. When they pulled up to the house, it looked older than just hours before. Dust flew in swirling clouds peppered with leaves. Great slabs of paint peeled from the siding. The dry cracks that spread across the yard like chicken wire yawned wider. Behind the house the barn door banged in the wind. Last night as he’d watched the sky, Ben hadn’t thought to turn back like he normally did to double- and triple-check the door. “I’ll get you inside.” Rick said as he patted
the hood of his car and strode around to the passenger side. “Looks like it might rain after all.” Ben went to close the door and heard something beneath the moaning wind. He leaned into the barn and could barely make out scraping and dragging above. It’d been a year since he’d heard those sounds, and now they wrenched at his gut. Streams of light filtered through the planks and picked up specks of dust. Absalon was in his stall, bent over feed. The wind beat against the barn in slow, hard bursts. Despite the muffled sounds of Absalon and from above,
the barn felt empty. Ben thought about standing in that same barn as a boy, how it had looked much larger and smelled of life and belonging. Rick’s car started up. Ben glanced outside to see it pull away. A kitchen light had been turned on. Ben had put down his crop duster in a patch of field near the house not meant for landing, but he could put that thing down anywhere. He’d jumped into his pickup and raced past the crash site. He’d run past Alice in the hospital waiting room, pushed aside ER nurses who tried to restrain him. He’d gotten to Lucy’s bed, to the
tubes, wires, and stitches that held her together. The earth fell away and spun like a siphon beneath him. Alice’s hand on his arm was barely enough to keep him standing. He’d visited Lucy every day, and when she finally came home, he carried her up the ramp they’d built. She’d laughed at him. What am I, your bride? she’d said. They’d turned the dining room into a bedroom. Bumped out the back wall and added a bath big enough for the chair. She’d adapted too quickly, like it was always part of her. Those moments gathered steam and velocity, and
now they tumbled across the loft floor above him like a wash over the cracked earth. He struggled up the ladder and peered across the studio floor. Alice never had Lucy’s grace, but she had her own way—the purposeful, rhythmic steps of her ancestors. Ben leaned against the ladder, the rough wood in his hands, the soft scrape of feet an undercurrent to her twists and turns. Wind buffeted the barn as if wanting to lift structure from its foundation. The door rattled with anger. Then a second of calm. Alice stopped and saw Ben standing there. Her
eyes said he was at once both stranger and family. Then, as if from nowhere, a gentle spatter of rain burst around them.
Betsy Hays Hatshepsut: Lost Queen of Egypt
"You
better
not
tell
Mom," she said. She was wrapped in a yellow bath towel pulled tightly across her breasts and rolled down over itself to hold it in place. Otherwise naked, she sat there outlining her eyes in black between taking drags off of her Salem light 100. The tip of her eyeliner, which had been warmed with her cigarette lighter, slid across her closed lid leaving a thick black line trailing behind. I imagined the heat of the soft wax felt like warm honey,
sticky and sweet sliding along the curve just above her lashes. When she finished her right eye it reminded me of King Tut’s mask, fierce and exotic. We saw it at the Field Museum in Chicago. Mom had piled us all in the back of our wood-paneled station wagon a year earlier and drove us all the way up to the city to see the treasures of the boy king. Our oldest sister and our brother took turns sitting in line overnight with Mom to get exhibit tickets, while us younger sisters giggled in our sleeping bags and read Teen Beat. I had
been so mesmerized by the decadence of the dark black eye painted against the rich yellow gold of his mask that I was almost left behind staring dumbfounded at it as my family moved on. It had been the beginning of a long family obsession that culminated in my sister and I sitting cross-legged with straightened out wire hangers suspended over my brother’s souvenir pyramid, waiting for its power to move them. I half expected her to keep going when she reached the outer corner of her lid and bring the mark up into a curl at the
side of her face like the Eye of Ra, but she settled for going back over the mark she had already made again to darken it even more. Tilting her head up, she looked down her nose into the mirror on her desk. She didn't turn to look at me when she said it, but I saw her eye shift slightly in my direction, checking for a reaction. She was only a year older than me, but right then it felt like ten. "Why do you have to go?" I asked. She pushed the smoke from her last drag out through her nose and smashed the butt of her cigarette on the side of
the flower pot she had retrieved from it's hiding place under the bed. Her other hand waved the smoke toward the open window. "I just have to." This time she didn't check for my reaction but stared into the mirror she had propped up against her Pre-Algebra book. We sat in silence as she began to draw on her other eye. She stopped halfway through, and I waited as she stood up, walked across the room and opened the top drawer of her dresser. I thought she was going give me something, something profound, of great value, something of
hers to hold on to. Instead, she pulled another cigarette from under her pile of panties. They were labeled for the days of the week in hues of pink, and yellow, and blue, but they were all out of order. I wondered if she would choose Wednesday instead of Saturday just because it was on top, or if she would bother wearing any at all. She stuck the fresh cigarette in her mouth and let it hang loosely between her lips. The butt
of the filter jammed up there suspended her top lip in a manner that made it seem as if she was about to say something. "How can you do it?" I asked. “How can I do what?” "How can you leave me here,” I watched her for some sign of emotion. “Alone?" She said nothing, but sat down and leaned closer to her mirror and began to apply her mascara. As her lashes became
more exaggerated something began to grow in my throat. It was games of ghost in the graveyard, the worn pages of our favorite storybook, “Where the Wild Things Are”. It was walking the beans on Grandma’s farm, our matching flannel pajamas, late night secrets told and kept, that first joint we smoked beside the garage. It was years of being called by each other's names, or sometimes a conglomeration of the two. It was comforting each other after nightmares and waking with limbs entangled unable to tell where I ended and she began.
Blurred identities. It was a tornado that ripped through our Fisher Price town, our plastic family scattered on the hard tile floor. It became so large in my throat that I could not breathe. I stood up from my seat on the edge of the bottom bunk of our bed and screamed, "You are NOT my sister." She stood up also. As she did her towel slipped off of one side exposing her breast. Her nipple was dark pink and hard and puckered around the edge I turned and walked out of the room we used to share leaving the door open, letting her smoke and nakedness seep into the hallway.
Eugenie Theall A Woman’s Journey
I was a shelf of unread books, the Easter bonnet on the snowman, the squeal echoing in the swing set tube, a conch no one brought to their ear. I am the cardinal resting in grass, yellow roses burdening the picket fence, the curve in a river bend, a map pricked with pins boasting where I’ve been. I will be a dried inkwell on a cluttered desk, silver strands in a hairbrush, a lazy Susan crammed with medication, a bottled secret rolling in surf.
Zach VandeZande A Testimony
One
day I woke up to blood all over the sheets. I panicked and kicked them off of me to see her asleep with blood all down her arms. Maybe she’s died, I thought, and felt a small electric spark of relief with it. But I shook her awake and she showed me: a perfect hole in each palm pouring a little forth with each pump of the heart. She said she didn’t know where they came from, but that worrying about it was kind of beside the point. I felt like that probably wasn’t the case, but she’d never been much for listening. I tried to get her to go to the doctor, and she said she wouldn’t. Anyway we didn’t have insurance, and it might lead to the kind of questions that I didn’t want to know the answer to. Where did these holes come from? Did you make them yourself, or did someone help? If you found him dead one morning, would you feel a little relieved, as if you had finally
gotten clear of something? She took it all in stride, smiling. The thing was she was a bright sider, honest to god. Everything a happy ending. It’s one of the reasons I loved her and thought she was good for me. I mean: it wasn’t automatic. I mean: you could see her making it happen. I mean: something awful would come along and her face would be drawn tight, her mouth a straight, hard line as she tried to remember that perspective is basically reality when you’ve got enough alcohol to go around. Both of us were drunks. Are drunks. Look, I don’t have to get into it with you. The point is it mostly took about three seconds before she was smiling again and thanking the universe. But you see, it took effort. That’s what gnawed at me most. That and all the blood. When she started bleeding from the forehead she quit her job,
which was tough. I tried to be understanding, but she wasn’t even religious. Or maybe she’d found religion, I don’t know. Most of our conversations during this time were pretty surface-level—what to have for dinner, who was fucking who, whether she’d remembered to water the plants. We tried to retain normalcy. Everything I said carried an unspoken question: who said you get to be special? One night I told all this to the angel that started hanging out on our couch. His name was Carmichael. At least I think he was an angel. He was just there in our apartment one morning. He didn’t seem to come from anywhere, and he didn’t pay rent. But also: she didn’t believe in locking doors. She said it’s more important to have a little faith. In truth, Carmichael was good for us, the way I imagine getting a pet is good for people. He was a distraction, plus I
felt a little charitable not asking him whether he was really an angel or not. Frankly, I liked him. He was a good listener. He seemed genuine. One thing that bothered me about him was the way she would pull him into the bathroom and close the door. There would be a few minutes of hushed talk, and when they came out she would look a little rattled until, of course, she reset herself. It’s not that I minded being excluded. I was used to it. What I minded was that I minded. I minded all of it—the ruined towels, the not knowing what any of it meant, the worry that her side was about to split open. I was rattled in my own home, though I pride myself on my ability to be easy-going in the face of most anything. I told Carmichael all of this over a couple of drinks, the way I’m telling you. I said I don’t think she’s being herself. I think it’s some kind of performance. He laughed once—a
sharp, quick laugh that bounced around us in the kitchen—and he shook his finger at me, three long wagging motions. He didn’t say anything though. He was always doing stuff like that. After a few minutes of silence, he went and got two more beers and a kitchen knife. He set a beer in front of me, sat down, and slid the knife across the table. You drive the tip in about a quarter-inch and twist it around. That’s the old-fashioned way. Or you can use the hand-press drill in the garage. It does a cleaner job. We stared at each other for a few minutes, maybe half an hour. I realized I was very drunk, the way it sometimes hits you when you’ve been sitting in one place for a long time. Don’t worry, he said, it’s just a performance.
Devon Gallant Moon, Grass, & Stars i opened my heart to the moon said, let us be one, two, three, four, one, is the moon of my heart, two, is the moon of my mind, three, is the moon of my eyes, four, is the moon of my soul, i laid back in the grass saw the stars in y(our) eyes and thought, “they’re alive, they’re alive, they’re alive”
Mollie McNeil Black Ribbons
Of
course, it wasn’t part
of her job description to sweep the front steps, but Emma took pride in every detail of the Janson library, including its tidy outward appearance. Before she was promoted to head librarian, she even designed and arranged all the front window displays. What bothered her at the moment, as she stood whisking away the dirty leaves, were the many cats, skittish and half starved, that were roving the neighborhood. She was considering calling animal control that very
morning when she spotted a woman standing in front of the dilapidated Victorian they streamed from. Emma stashed her broom and rushed down the street to catch the woman before she disappeared inside her house again. Coming at her so quickly, Emma frightened the cat she was holding; it raked its claws down the old woman’s neck before flipping out of her grasp and tearing off. Emma fumbled apologetically for a tissue. “Here, you’re bleeding.” The woman wore a
grimy bathrobe with mismatched buttons and worn pockets. She squinted at Emma with suspicion as she mopped her cut. Emma then noticed there was a black ribbon hanging loosely around her neck. It was frayed and threadbare, but it reminded her of an eccentric high school friend who always wore one, trying to look quaint and alluring at the same time like a Manet barmaid. “You’re not Tess Wheeler?” “Who’s asking?” Emma’s eyes widened. Tess’ striking auburn hair
was now wispy gray, her teasing green eyes cloudy, and her back slightly stooped. “Emma Mathews. We were in high school together for a year…” she paused, calculating, “almost forty years ago.” Tess extended a thin hand, and Emma caught it between her fuller ones. “Can you believe I live in San Francisco again? I’m working at the Janson library, here on your street. You’ll drop by and see me at the reference desk soon, I hope?” Tess extracted her hand. “Perhaps. But I’m very busy at the moment.” She turned abruptly, cutting the
conversation off, and hastened up her steps. She tossed a shaky wave over her shoulder and clicked the door shut. Emma remembered now how many other times Tess had pushed her away before, starting with their improbable friendship at St. Mary’s High in 1974. New to San Francisco and lonely, Emma filled her time by working after school at the tutoring center. Tess wasn’t much of a student and, lonely herself, ended up the unlikely candidate for Emma’s help. Emma liked Tess’ quirky style, and she admired how she didn’t seem to care about what others thought of
her. Tess slicked her hair back in a retro-chic fashion and wore designer skirts when everyone else wore jeans. Other kids read magazines while Tess seemed to walk off the page of one with the help of her socialite grandmother, flitting from charity galas to art parties all around the city. Emma’s social life in Madison had consisted of backyard fish boils or stuffy dances in the school gym. Tess seemed glamorous as a celebrity to Emma. Even the fact that Tess’ parents had been killed in a tragic car accident seemed romantic to her. Haughty and aloof around school, Emma felt
singled out as special herself when Tess invited her to dinner. After a uniformed doorman ushered Emma into the building, she nervously punched the elevator’s top button. At the penthouse, all the rooms had soaring ceilings, panoramic views, and velvet furniture. Everything was white and designed to lead the eye to the art—Japanese screens, Chinese scrolls, porcelain plates. Emma stepped closer to admire a small oil painting in the living room. She let out a low whistle. A Renoir. “Wow, you live in a museum.” “My grandmother
collects.” Emma continued to explore the apartment, hardly able to restrain herself from fingering the jade carvings or gleaming lacquer boxes. Tess looked amused. “Open that box if you like. Go on, have a piece.” Emma slid her hand in, pulling it out fast, her fingers coated in ash. Disgusted, she wiped them off as Tess laughed. “Just an old family pet. C’mon, there’s actual candy in this box.” Emma was about to take a chocolate when an older woman with a sharp nose, wearing a crisp white shirt, entered the room. The woman
stopped and crossed her arms. “Thirty minutes late.” “I’m sorry. I should have called. This is Emma.” “You are wearing wornout shoes.” “I must have been rushing.” Tess slid them off and held them behind her back. “Hand them to me.” “Please, Grandmother…” “I’ve told you before.” “But they’re my favorites.” “Now.” Tess backed away, but Mrs. Wheeler moved quickly, reached roughly behind Tess’s back, and wrenched the shoes
away. Emma flinched in sympathy. “We never wear wornout shoes. We do not rush because we are organized. If detained, we telephone.” Mrs. Wheeler strode into the kitchen and dumped the shoes down an old-fashioned garbage chute. The shoes thudded against the metal walls as they fell. “Maybe I should go,” Emma whispered. “Certainly not,” Mrs. Wheeler said on her return. “Dinner is nearly ready.” Emma followed Tess back to her bedroom, guessing that Tess rarely had friends over. Tess’
cramped room looked nothing like the rest of the house. It felt more like a cell with only a desk, a lamp, and a narrow bed. “I have trouble organizing, so my grandmother has me keep things simple in here.” She pushed her feet into some stiff loafers. “Better for studying,” Emma lied. Tess’ open closet caught her eye. In it was a table covered with dozens of small bottles, wrapped in thin strips of tape, yarn, or ribbon, wound round and around. Some bits were tight, some looser. They looked like little mummies. But there was something angry about
them too. “My grandmother doesn’t approve. She doesn’t even buy me supplies.” “Those look cool to me. What are they?” Tess shut the closet. The dinner bell had rung. “Art.” Tess led Emma into the dining room. Portraits of stern men in muttonchops and thin-lipped women in lace caps crowded the wall. Emma slid into her seat at the long table. She felt Mrs. Wheeler silently scrutinizing her. It made her self-conscious of her stained jeans, her scuffed Adidas. Looking down in front of her, she had never seen so many
pieces of monogrammed silver. “Vanessa tells me you’re from Wisconsin. Is your family in agriculture?” “No, insurance. My dad is helping open a new branch out here.” Emma scanned the different forks, not sure which to choose. “He must bring peace of mind to your little community.” “He’s not a priest,” sniped Tess. Emma selected the largest fork. Mrs. Wheeler cocked an eyebrow. Tess waved the smaller one in front of Emma until she switched forks. “I imagine in your part
of the world, the farmers use very large forks indeed.” “Excuse me?” “She’s referring to hay forks,” Tess said. ”She’s from Madison, Grandmother.” “Such attractive rolling hills out there.” “It’s a city,” said Tess. “I am aware of that.” “Her parents aren’t farmers.” “You may be excused from the table. Attend with better manners next time.” “But I haven’t eaten yet.” “You mustn’t correct me, Vanessa.” Rolling her eyes, Tess left the room.
Emma chewed her salad carefully. Numiko, the Japanese maid, brought in roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and creamed spinach. Emma scooped up hefty servings of each while Mrs. Wheeler tapped dainty ones on her plate. “A hearty Midwestern appetite, I see.” Mrs. Wheeler patted her lips. “How do you find your new high school?” “I’m not used to the prayers…not being
Catholic, myself.” “What religion are you then?” “Nothing really…my dad talks about Buddhism, but I don’t know much about it.” “Is he from the Orient?” “Pardon?” “From Japan? China? India?” “Oh no, Illinois. He’s never been out of the country.” Numiko reappeared. “I’m sorry to disturb
you, ma’am. A phone call.” “I will take it in the study. Give our visitor some ice cream in the kitchen.” Then she added sourly to Emma, “Numiko will show you which spoon to use.” Emma finished her dinner silently with Numiko in the kitchen, and then checked on Tess. Tess suggested Emma go home. Her face was splotchy red. Emma felt sorry for
Tess to have lost her parents and then to have to live with such a cold person. At school, Emma asked about her grandmother sometimes, hoping to draw Tess out, but she mostly dodged her questions. She was surprised when Tess invited Emma to a cousin’s debutante party at an elegant hotel. As the band played on the stage, young women swirled by in gardenias, satin, and pearls. Silver trays were stacked with lobster canapés. Handsome tuxedoed boys danced with Emma, and, dazzled, she wanted to stay, but Tess got bored, snatched a bottle of champagne,
and tugged Emma down to skinny-dip in the icy bay. As a joke, Tess hid Emma’s clothes behind a bush and laughed as Emma scampered, naked, cold, and humiliated, searching the dark beach for them. Despite Tess’ tricks, Emma remained Tess’ friend. She felt she had been trusted with some of Tess’ secrets: her art, her lonely home, her decadent social life. Even when Tess acted snobby at school, Emma believed she was searching like everyone else and felt protective of her. She hoped to stay friends with her after returning to Madison and was hurt
when their correspondence dropped off quickly. Emma continued to live in Wisconsin long after she became a librarian, but at midlife she became restless. Time glamorized that year of high school in her mind, so when a job opened in San Francisco, she pounced on it. Feeling nostalgic, she had even peeped in the microfiche and read in the papers about Mrs. Wheeler’s charity balls and tea parties before she eventually found her obituary. As Tess was never mentioned, Emma assumed she had moved away. But now that she knew
Tess lived nearby, she couldn’t stop thinking about her. As Emma passed her house on her way to work daily, she was curious about the bin of mildewed junk abandoned by the front door, the ivy thickening around the gingerbread gables, and the widening crack in her front window. She would occasionally slip up the steps and retrieve a forgotten newspaper and was tempted to knock, but something held her back. The shades were always drawn. One day Emma noticed a white sheet draped over the front porch railing. She wondered if it was
some sort of message, a white flag, even a cry for help. The doorbell was hanging off its hinges, so she knocked. No one answered. “Anyone home?” Emma rapped her knuckles hard and pressed her ear to the door. She heard scuffling and tried the latch. As she pushed open the door, two cats shot out between her legs, tripping her. There was a crash; a tower of old magazines hit the floor. “Tess? It’s Emma. Anyone here?” She held her arm over nose and mouth, trying not to gag from the stench in the room, which
looked more like a storage shed than a living space. It was dim and dusty and crammed with furniture and overflowing boxes. Things were perched in such a jumble that only a narrow corridor was available to move through. Emma walked toward the sound of dripping water at the end of the hall. She crunched on something as she made her way to the kitchen. It was dried feces. Tess sat at the kitchen table wearing what seemed to be the same dirty bathrobe she was in weeks ago. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Emma swallowed her discomfort. “I’m sorry to intrude on you…I was concerned. And I’m afraid I let some cats out when I came in.” Tess continued to sit at the table and said nothing. She was staring intently at a donut on a plate in front of her. Emma bent down awkwardly and peered into Tess’ face to get her attention. “When we last met, you said you’ve been busy. What have you been up to?” “The cats…and making things.” She gestured vaguely toward a room that seemed a tangle of
supplies. Reedy bottles, cracked vases, and mottled jars filled the floor. Sheets, rope, wire, and cords were piled in a corner. But in the back, standing tall, three or four feet high, were lots of figures with masked heads; they were wound around with tattered lace, bits of gauze, and other pale fabrics. Twine or rope cinched in necks and waists. They looked like an army of ghostly soldiers, battered and bandaged. They stood at attention, ominous and still, as if amassed for a fallen emperor. “My grandmother did love the Orient,” Tess murmured. “I feel her
spirit sometimes when I make them.” Emma noted how tightly some of the rope was knotted around the necks. The fabric gaped at certain places, sometimes revealing cracked glass. The figures seemed damaged and mended. Each one was unique. There was a muffled beauty in these wrapped figures. But Emma wondered about this activity that was crowding Tess out of her own home. “Where do you even sleep?” Emma asked. Tess gestured to a futon in the corner. Next to it, there stretched a long wooden box. Emma
found herself drawn toward the box and moved quietly to it. She peeked under the lid. It was filled with bones. “She appreciates their company.” “Whose company?” “The cats.” “These are cat bones?” “I have lost many over the years.” Emma took off her glasses and wiped the sweat beading around her nose. She had a vague recollection that the ancient Chinese buried pets with them to have in the afterlife. Emma scanned the room nervously for a humansized shroud but saw nothing that large.
“Tess, is there someone I could call? A relative? A friend?” “No.” “Maybe you’d like to stay somewhere nearby and have this place cleaned up?” She shook her head. “Did you put that white sheet on your porch for a reason?” “It’s her death day. She liked to wear white linen on her birthday and set a white table with lilies. I frosted her cake with icing and white powder.” “For her birthday or her death day?” “One and the same.” Tess’ eyes were glassy now. “You put on powdered
sugar…” Emma prompted. “She thought so,” Tess chuckled, “until she tasted it. It looked pretty, but tasted bitter.” Tess tapped the small box she had on the kitchen table. She looked up at Emma with a strange expression. Emma was confused by Tess’ look—until she read the box: rat poison. “You have rats?” Emma asked carefully. “With all these cats?” Emma wanted to yank the box away from Tess, but remembered Mrs. Wheeler grabbing the shoes so long ago. The memory stopped her. Tess needed delicate handling.
“I’m sure your grandmother loved you very much.” “She resented me from the day I moved in.” Emma tacked in another direction, anything to keep Tess from a desperate act. “Your artwork is so moving. Have you thought of exhibiting? I have a friend with a small gallery. I could ask her to look at your work.” Tess squinted at Emma. “I am busy. Show yourself out.” She sprinkled some white powder on the donut. Emma slapped the kitchen table with her hand, making the plate
jump. “You cannot eat that!” Tess chuckled again. “You always did have a big imagination.” Tess then reached under the kitchen table and brought up a cat with a tumor bulging from its neck. Its breathing was labored. “I’m putting him out of his misery; next I’ll wrap him in that sheet airing on the porch.” She sprinkled some more rat poison into a dish of cat food and mashed it up, adding pinches of the donut too. “Your face,” Tess chortled, “you should see it.” She laughed again harder. “You took such a keen interest in my
grandmother’s life,” she wiped a tear from her cheek, “I couldn’t resist making up that white birthday nonsense and stuff about her liking bones.” Emma’s face flushed. “You still wasting your time studying society columns like you did in high school? My grandmother died of heart disease.” Emma didn’t appreciate being toyed with or being condescended to. Anger rose in her throat; she wanted to tell Tess that she was the one with the diseased heart, the warped sense of humor. “What are you doing here anyway, Emma?” Tess’ smile was gone.
She stood up and put her hands on her hips. She was a tall woman when she straightened up. She leaned into Emma’s face. Her breath felt hot. She poked Emma’s shoulder sharply with her finger. “Want something?” “Of course not.” Emma backed up. “Just a voyeur then, eh? I’ve heard you on my porch. What are you snooping around for?” Tess poked her shoulder harder. “You some crappy tabloid reporter?” Emma had had enough. Hostility, hot and burning, bubbled up. Without thinking, she shed her controlled self and shoved Tess away from her with
all her strength. She watched her topple over and hit the floor with a crash. Then, a frightened girl, she fled down the hall, knocking boxes over as she plowed through the mess. “Trespasser,” Tess yelled from the floor. “Assault—I’ll have you arrested!” Emma slammed the door and scurried to her car. Back at home, as she paced, Emma slapped her hands against her thighs to keep them from shaking. Tess deserved it. She had it coming for a long time, she fumed. But what if she had shattered a hip? It wasn’t too late to
call an ambulance. Did anyone from work see her leave? Could Tess actually press charges? Would she do such a thing? Frazzled, Emma threw some clothes in a suitcase, called work to say she was coming down with the flu, and jumped in her car. She’d drive south and stay with her cousin for a few days. It was too late to go back now. Or confess. Who would the authorities believe anyway if she didn’t? A madwoman or a reliable professional like herself? Emma ended up checking into an anonymous motel and slept fitfully for several
nights. She was a wreck Monday morning when she finally pulled up to the library. Emma imagined the worst about Tess: a broken hip, internal bleeding, fainting, a fatal concussion, found by police, her fingerprints everywhere, a warrant for her arrest. Hunched in her car, Emma scanned the street for police and watched as her assistant filled the library display with new publications. Eventually, she stepped out of her car and examined the titles featured in the window. This month all of them were art books. Christo’s Legacy was propped up in the center, and next to it
was a wrapped sculpture. Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. She rushed inside. “Where’d you get that?” “The figure? One of the artists in this book is local, so I paid her a visit, and she agreed to loan us one for the display. Pretty cool, right?” “How’d she seem?” “The artist? She seemed odd and her house is really gross…but she was generous enough.” “She agreed to loan the piece to this library?” “Sure.” Emma’s shoulders loosened up for the first time in days. She clapped her hands together and
laughed out loud with relief. Then she grabbed Christo’s Legacy from the display and flipped through it until she found her photograph. Tess grinned out from her portrait, proud, a teasing look in her bright green eyes, a fresh black ribbon around her neck.
Anna Halberstadt Instructions from a Monk
You have to come to my house. Take the green train to Takayama walk up the hill climb 144 stairs bring 2 bottles of spring water 5 green apples 15 red grapes. Count the number of planks in the wooden fence on the right. After you pass the lilac bushes smell the aroma of jasmine flowers on the tree by the terrace. Bow 3 times to the little god of the house with green eyes and whiskers. Sit down close your eyes inhale the mountain air streaming through the open window behind my chair. Tell me what brought you here and what you want from me. Don’t ask me for a solution to your
problem instead repeat your question in voices of all your family members twice. Then go home go to sleep dream 23 dreams wake up and recall 5 fragments a cat’s tail wiggling from behind the corner your old lover lying in the tent on a cot like in a summer camp and whispering your name in the dark your mother’s blue crepe de chine dress with white polka dots a baby girl’s warm foot in your palm. These fragments will form a new dream write it down on a lined page of rice paper with a lotus water sign and bring it to me next week to help you decipher your puzzle. After we finish talking my learned crow will land on your left shoulder and whisper the answer in your ear.
Contributors Noelle Adamo Noelle Adamo is a stay-at-home mother with a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University. She enjoys the rural Upstate New York life and all the activities that come with it—hiking, splitting wood, etc.—and keeping a house full of family and friends. Ree Davis Rebecca “Ree” Davis’ writing reflects her early exposure to everyday life through odd jobs and short career bursts as a cook, dishwasher, produce deliverer, farm worker, seamstress, sample garment deliverer, office cleaner, typist, baker, stylist, software program designer, and sales clerk in divsere towns and cities. These jobs fueled her desire to explore as she spent years crisscrossing the country, and eventually traveling to Europe, Latin America and Asia. She then graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science, followed by ten years as head of research and development for Fortune 500 Company. She has since garnered master degrees in architecture and creative writing. Ree has lived on both US coasts and in Japan and China. She now resides in southwest Virginia with her husband of sixteen years. Her fiction echoes with the people, places and situations she encountered during her years on the road and overseas.
Devon Gallant Devon Gallant is the founder and publisher of Cactus Press and the author of 11 chapbooks, including "ABRACADABRA." His work has previously appeared in Carousel, Misunderstandings Magazine, and the Belleville Park Pages. As well as being a poet, Devon is also a chaos magician, pronoaic, and devotee of Narayani Amma. His forthcoming collection "S(tars)&M(agnets)" is an experimental blend of shamanism, concrete and erotic poetry. Anna Halberstadt Anna Halberstadt has published many works in the field of psychology but has found poetry to be a more adequate and condensed way to expand on the same themes—growing up as a child of Holocaust survivors in a country still struggling with past trauma, living in three countries (Lithuania, Russia, U.S.), and immigration. She is a finalist in the 2013 Mudfish poetry contest and her creative work has been published by Amarillo Bay, Bluestem, Cimarron Review, Forge, Good Men Project, Mudfish, St. Petersburg Review, Alembic, Permafrost and Tiferet, and translations of her poems in the Lithuanian journals Literatūra Ir Menas and Šiaurės Atėnai. Her collection of poetry “Vilnius Diary” is coming out in the Mudfish individual poet series, Box Turtle Press, in the summer 2014. Betsy Hays Betsy Hays was born, raised and raised her children in the Midwest. She currently lives in Champaign, Illinois with her husband and three dogs. She recently graduated from the University of Illinois with a BA in English and Creative Writing.
Mollie McNeil Mollie McNeil lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied art and English at the University of California, Berkeley, Mills College and University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently a writer, a visual artist and mother of two. Eugenie Juliet Theall Eugenie Juliet Theall completed her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, founded a children’s library in Nairobi, Kenya, and currently teaches creative writing and English to middle school children. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Carquinez Poetry Review, The Chaffin Journal, CQ, Curbside Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Eclipse, Flash!Point, Forge, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Illuminations, Lullwater Review, Mudfish, Oregon East Magazine, Passage, Quercus Review, Red Rock Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Silk Road, and Slipstream. Miss Theall’s work also won first place in the Elizabeth McCormack/Inkwell contest. Zach VandeZande Zach VandeZande is the author of "Apathy and Paying Rent" (Loose Teeth, 2008). His work has recently appeared in Hot Street and Local Lore, and is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal. He is currently a PhD student of fiction at the University of North Texas.
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