Crack the Spine - Issue 114

Crack the Spine

Literary magazine

Issue 114

Issue 114 May 21, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine

Cover Art by Ren Adams A Southern California native, Ren has been working in the visual arts for more than 20 years, with an emphasis on printmaking and painting, integrating traditional Chinese ink techniques with contemporary digital and mixed media concerns. She has a BFA in Studio Art (printmaking) from the University of New Mexico and is an MFA in Visual Arts candidate at the Art Institute of Boston (at Lesley University). Ren has participated in a number of regional and national exhibitions and continues active experimentation in hybrid printing techniques. She has also published visual art and poetry in a range of literary outlets. Ren’s primary body of work investigates the play of matter and non-matter, the emergence of being from non-being and the relativity of time and geographicaldigital space in network relationships.

CONTENTS Robert Wexelblatt A Shake of the Head

Mia Hood My Flight

Barry Head Pluto’s Orbit Lifetime

Jade Quinn Paper Therapy

Mara Buck Mud Season

David Dill 5 A.M. Blues

Pam Van Dyk Dreama

Jodi Adamson Telephone Blues Harmony

Robert Wexelblatt A Shake of the Head

The

police opened fire on the night of November 21 just as the snow began to fall. An affronted groan rose up from Rheinach Park but the gunfire went on and on. Then we scattered like cockroaches when the kitchen lights are flicked on.

After five days the protests had become routine, more festive than angry, with music and dancing, hardly any drinking. In the park we felt safe and empowered, nuzzled inside a crowd of the like-minded. The window-smashers and vehicle-igniters were

gotten under control.

The chanting and speeches became comforting rituals, like the Christmas masses of our childhoods. The government appeared hesitant, paralyzed.

Even with their shields and helmets the police did no more than form loose cordons around the nearby government offices. Many of the young officers even fraternized with their contemporaries. Foreign media and diplomats made gratifyingly supportive statements.

At any moment, we felt, the government must fall

and our world would be transformed. A stalled cold front notwithstanding, the crowds grew larger, more confident, and jollier every night.

In short, the shooting was a shock.

The three of us happened to be on the east side of the park when the snipers fired and police, looking like dismounted knights, started to close in. Leila, Georg, and I squeezed ourselves around Josef Krosst, a member of the organizing committee.

Though few would call Krosst eloquent, it was

what he said on the steps of the University Library that persuaded Leila, Georg, and me to “devote a couple of weeks to bending history.”

That’s the quaint way he put it.

We put our bodies between Krosst’s and the police. Leila, Georg, and I meant to protect him, but at the same time we wanted to follow him, to lead him to safety yet also to be led. At forty Josef Krosst was twice the age of Georg and Leila, those sweet undergraduate lovers, and more than a decade my senior. He kept his head.

“This way,” he said decisively.

The police kept advanced on Rheinach Park behind their medieval shield wall, then broke, swinging truncheons, shoving both the wounded together and the unscathed into trucks.

The dead they left in the snow. While the police stayed near the park, thugs in civilian clothing and armed with iron bars chased fleeing demonstrators.

Those they beat some people to death, male and female, were all young. They really hated students.

Krosst led us down back streets to the river and then in a dash across St. Vitus Bridge into the Bóriki. Shots, cries of

fear, anger, or pain carried across the river; even the thick wet snow couldn’t muffle such noises. Once across the river, we halted on the promenade to catch our breaths. Big flakes fell like cluster bombs through the glow of the old-fashioned streetlamps.

We were all winded, hands on our knees.

“Frightened?” I asked Leila.

“A little,” she gasped.

“I’m here,” said Georg stoutly.

Josef stood up and looked toward the bridge. “Come on. Time to move.”

I looked back. About a dozen people were

running across the bridge. The thugs were gaining on them. I saw two figures tackled and then kicked. I heard a woman scream, then two splashes.

We took off.

The Bóriki is a wealthy quarter of townhouses, villas, pleasant little gardens. I had never been in it before and even Josef Krosst seemed disoriented.

“I’ll bet half the government must live around here,” whispered Georg.

“We ought to burn it to the ground,” said Leila with surprising ferocity, then suddenly stopped running. “Sh,” she said.

“Listen.”

Boots crunching on snow.

“Think they spotted us?” I said.

There was a crack and a bullet ricocheted high off the wall behind us.

“Follow me!”

Josef led us down the narrow passageway between two townhouses.

Another shot. I tried to open a cellar door. Of course it was locked.

Josef reached up to a small window and broke its panes with his elbow.

He took off his glove, reached in, unlocked it, then rammed it open.

“You’ve cut yourself,” said Leila.

He grabbed up a fistful

of snow, rubbed it on his wound, then pulled his glove back on. “It’s nothing,” he said.

Leila was the smallest of us. We pushed her through the window.

She fell inside and a moment later unlocked the cellar door.

We heard indistinct shouts growing closer.

The three of us tumbled through the door and Josef shut it behind us as quietly as he could.

It was pitch black in the cellar. We crouched down. Georg held Leila.

Then a naked light bulb came on and we saw a stairway.

The door at the top of the stairs opened.

A scared person

attempting not to sound frightened will speak more loudly and quickly than seems natural, so as to avoid the telltale quaver, the uncertain catch. That was just the sort of voice we heard asking, “Who’s there?”

We remained very still. Then Josef said, “Madam, we mean no harm.

We’re merely trying to avoid being harmed.”

The woman put her foot on the first step then pulled it back.

“Mother?”

“Keep away.”

A girl of about fifteen appeared beside the woman. She struck me as more jubilant than frightened; in fact, when

she saw us she smiled and immediately.

Brushing by her mother, she clattered down the bare wooden stairs.

“You must be freezing,” she said.

“Mother, let them come up and get warm.”

“Are you crazy? Don’t you know what’s going on?”

The girl climbed back up the stairs and patted her mother’s shoulder as if to say that she would be taking charge of the situation.

“Come up where it’s warm.”

She gestured with her arm. “Quickly, so we can shut off the light. Don’t worry about the noise.

There’s nobody else here.”

We obeyed.

The house was warm, the carpet soft. I saw a lot of fine old furniture.

“Come to the kitchen,” said the girl. Her mother stood aside for us.

The girl told us her name was Helena and nodded to the woman.

“My mother’s name’s Leda.”

We took seats at a huge round table of light oak, the kind you might find in the country.

“Leda and Helena., “ I observed.

“Very classical.”

Leda scoffed.

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

We could no longer hear shouts or shots.

The kitchen was snug and still.

“Luckily, there’s no Clytemnestra—lucky for her,” Helena added happily as she lit the burner under a pot of thick lentil soup. She looked toward Leila. “I just love your coat.”

Her mother stood against the wall, arms crossed over her breasts.

Krosst addressed himself to her.

“Thank you for taking us in.”

“But you broke in.”

“Ah, correct.

Then thank you for not objecting to our breaking in. I’ll pay for the window, of course.

Just as soon as things quiet down.”

“You really think things are going to quiet

down?”

Krosst smiled and, with impressive assurance, said, “Tonight was an act of desperation. It’s the end for them. Believe me, we’ll win.”

“About time too!” exclaimed Helena.

Leda was trembling.

“My husband—” she began.

“Yes?” “He told us not to expect him home tonight. He told us not to let anybody in.”

I had a suspicion of what that meant.

“He’s with the regime?”

Helena ladled out a bowl of soup and gave it to Leila.

“My stepfather’s Deputy Commissioner Slavik,” she explained in a way that made clear that she wished he weren’t.

Leda looked at Josef as he took a bowl from her daughter. “Your hand!”

“It’s nothing.”

She left the kitchen.

Helena gave Georg and me a bowl of soup then sat down beside Leila.

“She’s a good mother, and she used to be a nurse. My real father was an orthopedist.”

Leda came back with bandages and a bottle of antiseptic. She wouldn’t permit Josef take care of his wound or allow any of us see to it. She took

Josef’s hand, gently cleaned it, applied the antiseptic and bandaged it. She did it all expertly.

“Thank you again,” said Josef.

I believe Leda Slavik blushed. “Do you really think the regime will fall?”

Josef laughed. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”

We others laughed as well and Helena joined in.

Leda looked dubious but I had the impression that she too would have liked to join in.

After we finished eating, Leda began to clean up. She washed the bowls and Josef stayed with her to dry them.

Helena ushered the

rest of us into the parlor.

“You have to stay the night. We’ve plenty of room. You can sleep with me,” she said to Leila. “It’ll be like a pajama party.”

“What if your father comes home?”

“My stepfather, you mean. Well, if he does come home then you can just tie him up. You can just tie him up and gag him until we’ve got a new government.”

Deputy Commissioner Slavik did not come home that night.

Josef was given the guest bedroom. Georg bedded down on the couch in the parlor, and I got a musty cot brought up from the cellar by

Helena and Leila. As they set it up in the dining room, the two of them carried on like the schoolgirls one had only just stopped being and the other still was.

I pulled back the curtains. The house was silent and the sky had cleared. The Bóriki lay under its blanket of fresh snow. Not a light was on. Across the river, however, events were moving fast. At dawn a brigade of infantry and six tanks occupied Rheinach Park and surrounded the Parliament building.

General Makarov went on television and announced that his men had not come to put

down the protests but to support them. By eight o’clock the police had evaporated and at three in the afternoon the government resigned.

Our country is great and beautiful, of course, but, historically speaking, it has displayed no gift for happiness. That week, however, was one of unprecedented euphoria, especially for the young. There were celebrations in the streets, and the University was decked out as if for Commencement, Carnival and Christmas combined. As soon as the provisional government was

installed—with General Makarov as Minister of Defense—the troops withdrew to their barracks, cheered by the populace, laden with hothouse chrysanthemums, plum brandy, strudel and sausages.

President Yasinski, formerly distinguished professor of political economy, declared a general amnesty, excepting only his predecessor and those directly responsible for the deplorable events of November 21. While, for reasons of prudence, the former president was allowed to join his family and his bank accounts abroad, the others would

be prosecuted.

Those under arrest included police snipers, as many undercover thugs as could be identified, the Interior Minister and his immediate staff, plus the Commissioner of Police and his three deputies.

Josef Krosst, once a student of President Yasinski, was appointed to the second position in the Ministry of Education.

A couple days after taking up his post, he phoned me and asked, in his determined yet humble way, if it would be convenient for me to come see him. Of course I agreed at once.

“Good. Another thing.

Do you know if Leila and

Georg are still together?”

“Closer than ever.”

“Then you can find them?”

“We had an Italian dinner together night before last.”

“Excellent.

Then please bring them along, if you can.

Would tomorrow morning at nine suit you?”

“Fine.”

We met in Krosst’s new office. A square, formal place with a colossus of a desk. He was dressed in his usual turtleneck and jeans.

“How’s the hand?”

Leila asked.

“All healed, thanks.”

He held it up to show us.

“Looks good.”

“No battle scars at all,”

he said almost with regret.

We all sat down.

“Look,” said the new second minister, “I want to ask you about something delicate.

Something confidential.

It concerns former Deputy Commissioner Slavik.”

“Yes?” “I believe I might be able to arrange for his release. What do you think?”

For a moment nobody said anything. Then Leila spoke up.

“I understand,” she said. “But before you do anything I think you’d better ask his wife and Helena.”

There was something

in Leila’s tone that made me ask if she knew something we didn’t.

Leila exchanged a look with Georg then shrugged.

“Very well,” said Josef.

“Then we’ll go to the Bóriki. Will you all come along?”

“When?”

Josef looked gloomily at the pile of papers on his desk.

“How about Saturday?

Helena won’t be at school. I’ll phone ahead to make sure Mrs. Slavik will receive us. Again.”

“And at the front door this time,” cracked Georg.

Saturday was overcast and unusually warm.

The sky was the same

gray as the melting snow. We took a cab across St. Vitus Bridge.

Though I was probably imagining it, the Bóriki seemed to me like an old aunt who had been caught with a bottle of schnapps—chastened yet standing on her dignity.

Helena was overjoyed to see us. She hugged Leila. Her mother was more subdued. The first thing she did was insist on examining Josef’s hand, which, again, she took in hers.

We sat in the parlor.

“Mrs. Slavik,” Josef began, but was immediately interrupted

by Leda.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot

to congratulate you on your appointment, Mr. Krosst.”

“Thank you. I have you to thank for being able to accept it. The men came and fixed the window?”

Leda nodded. Helena, sitting close to Leila, giggled.

“We’re all more grateful than we can say.

In fact, I would like to do something for you and your family in return.

But my friends thought I should ask you first.”

Leila moved a little away from Helena and leaned forward, looking hard at her mother.

“Yes?” asked Leda.

“Mrs. Slavik, Helena, would you be pleased if I could arrange for the

release of your husband and father—stepfather?

I think it might be possible.”

Mother and daughter exchanged a horrified look.

“Oh, Mother.”

Leda Slavik lowered her head and shook it just once.

Mia Hood My Flight

The day after my father died, my best friend hugged me around the legs and lifted me up to reach the pull-cord for the blinds of a window three feet overhead.

When he suggested this idea, I imagined grabbing hold of it and sinking down as I’d always imagined sinking down, slowly, holding the string of a helium balloon.

But, as it happened, he had to let me down to a steady landing onto the new square of light.

Barry Head Lifetime

Pluto’s Orbit

Nothing planetary here; the Pluto I’m writing about is my garbageman. He’s an alcoholic simpleton. I suspect that most villages the world over have one, and my neighborhood, though part of a large Latin American city, is much like a village unto itself. Many of its inhabitants have lived here for generations. It has its own shops for the essentials of life, like soap, cigarettes, chewing gum, and toilet paper; its own places to eat cheap home cooking; and of course it has its own church, the loud-mouthed San Matías, whose bell bellows in my ear when it feels like it from just across the cobblestone alley.

Garbage collection here is provided by the city on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so long as the garbage workers aren’t on strike. Or the schoolteachers’ union isn’t blocking

the city streets with busses. Or the taxi union isn’t blocking them with taxis. Or the disenfranchised from some rural region haven’t hunkered their bodies down across the thoroughfares. If all’s going well, I’ll hear the tinkling bell of the garbage truck about 6:30 in the morning as it takes up its position on a strategic corner two blocks away. Neighbors, all but unrecognizable in their pajamas, nightdresses, bathrobes, hustle out of their houses hauling their fat black bags to the waiting truck and then scurry back home as fast as possible with scarcely a glance or hello to one another—out of courtesy, not unfriendliness.

I’ve been there, done that, and I don’t do it anymore. Instead, Pluto, who’s built like R2-D2, comes with his hand truck, supposedly every

Wednesday morning about 6:45, rings the doorbell, loads up what I’ve got, and wheels it away to the collection point. He gets the equivalent of roughly a dollar fifty for his trouble.

Which he promptly spends on drink.

Pluto was born under-equipped with synapses but over-endowed with a thirst for booze. He’ll arrive at 6:45 happily in his cups already—or perhaps still in them from the night before. And if the night was sufficiently bathed in moonshine, he won’t turn up at all. When he next rings the bell the following week, he’ll plead he had a case of the grippe. I call his bluff and scold him. His broad, flat face takes on a reproachful, wronged expression, and that look, beneath the thicket of his matted hair shooting out in all directions, melts my irritation.

“What are we to do with you, Pluto?” I’ll say.

Sensing my softening, his expression shifts to one of abject

repentance. His shoulders, beneath one of his garish, grubby, extra-large football jerseys, go up to his ears and stay there for the count of five. I give him his money with a sigh, which, to him, signals all is well again between us. His usual expression returns—an inane, tipsy grin.

“Looks alike it gonna be a sunny day, Señor,” he’ll say with a giggle, and then off he’ll go with my garbage, talking to himself, clattering and weaving down the cobblestone alley.

Awhile back, I complained about Pluto’s unreliability to my neighbor and guardian angel, Concha. I told her I thought the time had come for me to look for someone else. Concha sighed.

“Ai, Pluto,” she said. “He is his own worst enemy. Even the Blessed Virgin must get tired of looking after him.”

“Does she look after him?”

“Oh, yes. For sure. Otherwise he wouldn’t still be alive.” She told me of the time when drunk Pluto stepped in

front of a water-delivery truck. The truck wasn’t going fast, but by the time the driver stopped, both a front and a back wheel had rolled over both of Pluto’s legs. They called an ambulance and propped him, unconscious, up against a tree on the sidewalk, no one daring to touch his bloody, torn pants for fear of disturbing the destruction inside. The paramedics, when they arrived, gingerly cut away the cloth, revealing some nasty abrasions but not, as far as they could tell, a single broken bone. But their careful attentions also revealed that Pluto wasn’t wearing underwear. As the medics swabbed and cleaned his superficial wounds, Pluto suddenly came out of his stupor, looked at everyone looking at him in his immodest attire. He let out a howl of obscenities, staggered to his feet, and limped off, presumably in the direction of wherever he was currently dossing down. The medics

shouted to him that he should go with them for X-rays. Pluto glared at them over his shoulder, shouted back, “Dirty perverts!” and hobbled out of sight with his hands held firmly in front of his genitals.

“But imagine!” she concluded. “Not a broken bone to show for it! Oh yes, Our Lady looks after that one all right.

But don’t ask me why.”

“So I shouldn’t fire the Virgin’s favorite, eh?”

“Do what you want to do, mi güero.

All I can tell you is that we think Pluto brings our neighborhood luck, and so we look after him as best we can.”

I, of course, continued to put up with Pluto’s foibles.

A year or so ago he rang the doorbell mid-morning on a nongarbage day. I was surprised to see him and dismayed by the state he was in. He was his colorful, disheveled, dirty self, but he was in tears, slobbery, with snot running from his

nose. He reeked of liquor, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what he was mumbling about. This I didn’t need, and I spoke to him sharply.

“For chrissake, Pluto, stop being an asshole! If you’ve got something to tell me, pull yourself together and get on with it. And if it’s money for booze, forget it!”

He blinked at me and shook his head. He took in a sputtering breath and scarcely audibly said, “My brother. I need money to bury him.”

Living in this country where everyone with a hand out for money seems, by coincidence, to have a mother who needs an operation, one grows a thick skin for hard-luck tales.

But, truth be told, I doubted our very own Pluto had smarts enough for guile. Gently, I asked what had happened to his brother.

“They killed him,” Pluto said.

“Drugs?”

Pluto shrugged. I was curious to

know more, but refrained from asking, figuring gossip would enlighten me in due course. “I’m sorry, Pluto,” I said and gave him a bill worth about ten dollars. “I hope this will help.” His head bobbed up and down. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and said, “Bless you, don Eduardo”—surprising me that he knew my name. I’d imagined that for him I was just the old güero painter in the big house.

Gossip, predictably, came in the form of Concha later that afternoon.

Poor Pluto, she said and thanked me for my generosity, which, somehow, like everything else, had reached her ears. She said I shouldn’t count on getting my garbage picked up; Pluto would probably be in mourning— here, she pantomimed swigging from a bottle—for a week. I asked if he really had had a brother. Concha assured me he had. She remembered when the two of them showed up in

the streets some twenty years before.

Pluto would have been about ten, his brother a couple of years older. They said they had no family other than each other, didn’t have names, either didn’t know or wouldn’t talk about where they’d come from, and began doing odd jobs in return for food and shelter. Soon after, Concha had gone to work in a distant city, where she lived for seven years, seldom coming back to visit. By the time she returned for good, the older brother had left.

Pluto, for his part, had become a neighborhood fixture.

“Was he always…how shall I say…simple?”

“I think so,” Concha said. “I remember him always tagging along behind his brother like a puppy, and he didn’t talk like the rest of us. The children used to tease him. If his brother caught them, he’d beat them up. He, and Telmo. You know Telmo, no? Telmo Santiago, who has the

Posada del Sol behind the bakery? I think Pluto lived with his family for a while. He’d remember a lot more about Pluto than I do. Oh, and he could tell you the story about his dog and Pluto. That’s a good one!”

I do know Telmo, but by his full name, Antelmo, not by the more intimate diminutive. His family has been in the neighborhood for many generations, and the Posada del Sol is a venerable institution.

Our relationship is formal but friendly. I was curious now to know more about Pluto, who was taking on an oddly shimmering aura in my imagination.

Antelmo, as Concha had suggested, could certainly tell me lots, but approaching him like a brash, investigative reporter would certainly constitute a breach of our understood etiquette. Antelmo himself solved the problem by ringing my doorbell one morning and asking if he might bother me for just a moment to talk about

poor Pluto. An hour later, I was far richer in information and poorer by about fifty dollars.

When the two orphans had turned up in the neighborhood, Antelmo’s uncle, Guillermo, had taken charge of them. Uncle “Yermo” was a university professor. He and his wife had no children. The priest of San Matías at the time baptized the brothers and gave them pious names, but it was Yermo who came up with the names that stuck: Demetrio for the elder and Plutarco for the younger. Those were the names they became known by.

“So, not the king of the underworld as I imagined,” I said. “And not the planet either.”

Antelmo shook his head ruefully.

“I’m afraid that once it became obvious that Pluto was different, the reason his name caught on had more to do with the Disney dog.”

Yermo had taken a personal interest in the boys’ education and

roped Antelmo, who was several years older, into acting as their afterschool tutor. Demetrio was smart as a whip and outshone his peers in school. Pluto seemed unable to concentrate for as much as a minute at a time and proved incapable of learning to either read or write. It was Antelmo’s opinion that nowadays he’d have been classified as profoundly and hopelessly dyslexic. But Pluto was eager, willing, affable, and funny. Yes, Antelmo recalled, the neighborhood kids often teased him. He cried easily, and that didn’t help.

“Concha said you were one of his fierce defenders. You and Demetrio.”

“I suppose so. The two of them were living with my uncle and aunt.

They became like cousins. When Pluto started putting on weight and muscle, the teasing finally stopped, thank heavens. But then the kids started finding it funny to get him drunk. You know how badly that’s ended up.”

Demo, it seems, left after a couple of years. He could read, write, do arithmetic, and scam tourists in the street. He could see his brother was in good hands, and he had other ideas about what to do with his life. He came back only once that Antelmo could remember. He was in gaudy clothes and snakeskin boots and had gold chains around his neck. He didn’t stay long, and when he left again, Pluto cried like a little baby. Now, it seemed Demo was dead. Four days before, a stranger had come to Antelmo in the posada asking for Pluto. He had instructions to give him a silver belt buckle, and a big hug, and to tell him from his brother, “Pónte laborioso y pórtate bien”—“Work hard and behave yourself.”

“And the body?” I asked. “Pluto said he needed money to bury his brother.”

“He meant flowers and masses in the church, that’s all. Everything done

the way it should be done.”

“Aha.” I got out my wallet. “I hope this will help, Antelmo.”

“Thank you, don Eduardo. You’re a good man.”

After a pause, I said, “By the way, Concha told me you had a good dog story to do with Pluto. Can you enlighten me?”

“Indeed I can,” he said with a laugh.

“It’s become a neighborhood legend and it guaranteed Pluto a special place among us.”

I knew that Antelmo has several dogs at the posada, all of the same, allegedly pre-Columbian breed.

They’re about the size of Labradors, but heavier set and covered in a tight, hairless sharkskin that’s unpleasant to touch. Their heads look larger than they ought to be, their eyes pale and bulging, their jowls wet and slimy, and they sport skinny, rat-like tails. I find nothing whatsoever to recommend them aesthetically. They must have

outstanding personalities, but I’ve never been around one long enough to get over finding their baleful presence downright scary. They’re reputed to be superb watchdogs, which doesn’t surprise me. And they are rare and very expensive animals.

The anecdote Antelmo told me took place a year or two before I arrived on the scene. At that time he owned a champion of that weird breed named Rolfo.

“A superb animal!” Antelmo said.

“Fiercely protective of my wife and me, tolerant but never friendly with the posada staff and guests, and a marvelous night watchman. There was only one outsider Rolfo ever befriended, and that, as you might have guessed, was Pluto.”

“The sweet scent of garbage?” I ventured.

“That might have helped,” allowed Antelmo, “but I believe they sensed a kinship on some level.”

Rolfo had one drawback: He was a roamer. If he could manage to get out of the posada or jump out of the car, he’d be gone for hours. He always found his way back to the posada, but his absences were a matter of great concern, because it’s common here for dogs to get kidnapped and sold to medical-research labs. Rolfo, being such a special specimen, would likely have avoided such a dire fate, but he’d have brought a high price on the pet market. Moreover, it wasn’t just his own value that was at stake: The equipment between his hind legs functioned like a lavishly generous and inexhaustible ATM machine. As a champion stud animal of that rare breed, Rolfo could command close to a thousand dollars a shot.

And so, when a posada guest one day unwittingly let Rolfo escape, and Rolfo for once failed to return by nightfall, Antelmo set off the alarms.

Using his wide-ranging influence, he

had the city’s entire police force and fire brigade alerted. He put announcements on the radio and ads in the newspapers offering a substantial reward, along with fliers pasted on lampposts throughout the city. There were some reported sightings of dogs fitting Rolfo’s description, but after a week, there had been no capture. Antelmo began to resign himself to Rolfo’s having been kidnapped and, by now, being in some far-distant part of the country.

Then, one afternoon, Pluto came ambling up to the posada door with Rolfo walking beside him—a bit thinner and thirsty, but no worse for wear. On their way through the neighborhood, they’d gathered a following of astonished bystanders, and Antelmo remembered coming to the door to be greeted not only by his dog and Pluto, but by some twenty neighbors, who broke into cheers and applause. Naturally, Antelmo asked

Pluto how on earth he’d managed to find Rolfo. Pluto’s now famous answer: “I ask Our Lady if I am Rolfo where would I go, and that’s where I went, and that’s where he was.”

“He’d found him in a park out on the edge of the city,” said Antelmo.

“It’s probably four or five miles from here. Don’t ask me the hows and whys of it all. All we know is that’s what happened.”

“Amazing. So I suppose he got to drink the reward,” I said facetiously.

“No, no, no, don Eduardo!”

Antelmo’s forefinger wagged like a metronome. “That’s where he gets his shirts and shoes and sweaters and rain gear and even a new handcart when he needs one. Until he dies.”

The unlikely coming together of things that constitutes “coincidence” has, I suppose, no theoretical limits.

Pluto’s finding Rolfo by coincidence, though, stretches my credibility mighty thin. Yet, without accepting

some far more outlandish hypothesis, coincidence is all that’s left. It’s also what made me start this tale of Pluto’s eccentric orbit in the first place, because another coincidental event took place here only two days ago.

I’d been out and about all morning, and on the way home, long before reaching my neighborhood, I recognized the unmistakable din of San Matías’ bell in the distance. It was pealing without pause, almost frantically, on and on and on in a way I hadn’t heard before even for a wedding. It was still hyperventilating when I got to my neighborhood’s boundary, and there was a crowd milling around in front of the church.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Go take a look!” someone said.

“That’ll teach him a lesson!”

The church courtyard has a pair of handsome, broad-leafed trees with arching branches that give shade to the benches beneath. From one of

these branches now hung, upside down, a human being. He was strung up by his ankles, his head a foot or two above the ground, his face too bloody for me to guess his age. He was a pitiable sight, trying to pull his shirt up over his bare midriff where it wouldn’t stay, begging to be let down, and all the while the good Christian folks of the parish—men, women, and children alike—were reviling and taunting him, some even snapping photos with their cell phones.

It turned out the young wretch, who wasn’t more than twenty, had been observed making a furtive exit over the roof of the Widow Zavaleta’s house, carrying a bulky shoulder bag.

(He’d done some work there, knew her schedule and the layout.) A cry went up, the culprit dropped to the ground and took off, pursued by a couple of out-of-breath older men with no hope of catching him. If he’d made it across the busy boulevard

that marks the neighborhood’s perimeter, and it was only a block away, he’d have made a clean getaway. But at the split second the thief was about to sprint past the last corner, Pluto rounded that very corner pushing his handcart ahead of him. I was told it was a spectacular collision. Tubby Pluto was knocked over backward but unhurt, and by the time the tangle of thief and handcart had come to a noisy, messy finale against a wall, the neighbors had caught up and made a citizen’s arrest.

They recovered the stolen items— money and some silver—and frogmarched the bruised, battered, and bleeding robber back to the church courtyard and strung him up to await more conventional procedures. San Matías broke out into a jubilant cacophony of triumph. A bemused Pluto, who still didn’t have a good grip on what had happened, was declared Hero of the Hour.

He came by the house yesterday right on schedule. It was scarcely light yet, but there was no mistaking the large bow of purple ribbon clipped to the top rail of his hand truck. He’d also had his head shorn down to a half inch of hair. I scarcely recognized him.

“Good morning, Pluto!” I said, astonished. “Great haircut! And it looks like your cart won first prize.

Congratulations!”

Up went his shoulders, down went the corners of his mouth, and he scratched his new stubble with one spatulate, filthy hand. “I do what She tell me, Señor, an’ go where She tell me to go,” Pluto said. “When the church opens, I give Her the ribbon.”

He cocked an eye up at the pearlescent sky. “My smart Lady. An’ looks alike She gonna give us another sunny day.”

Jade Quinn Paper Therapy

choking on the failure of fundraiser feasts, banquets of bleeding hearts ad clever campaigns that pretend to save, to serve, to create survivors— but they don’t taste the agony of the cure rising to lips like putrid poetry. they go home with a clear conscious and leave those they claim to support curled up under a monologue.

Mara Buck Mud Season (Linwood, down at the paper) “There are considerations that must be raised about this thing, this business, whatever it was. Such as why. And how. To know, to understand, to evaluate and to take stock. I just don’t think I’m the one to do that.

Despite the fact that words are my business, I myself don’t feel comfortable enough to even give it a name. Not at all comfortable.

Sometimes when something important has happened, or even if you should speculate something important

might possibly have happened, you need to look at that thing from different angles, get different perspectives. I report for this little newspaper here in Maine. Good job, doesn’t pay much. Still, it suits me and I only write what I know to be the truth --but sometimes truth can be a prickly thing to pin down. Whatever it was that happened, the why and wherefore of it all, I don’t know, but I’ve got this queasy feeling about it. So I’m relating everything I heard just the way it was told to me, the way I discovered it. Leaving myself out of

it and my conjecture too.

Don’t want to get involved in this business.

As I said, truth is a prickly thing. You be your own judge. I’m only passing it on.

There may be more parts to this story, the story of what really happened. Depends on how far back you’d want to go, and I suspect it goes further back than these folks can imagine.

I‘ve got these three interviews right here, right now, exactly as they told their recollections to me. If you want to find more, you can snoop around if you’ve got the stomach

for it, and I see by this last note on my desk that some nosy anonymous soul has done just that.

But I won’t be reading it, because even though I myself am done, I don’t believe there’ll ever be an end to the story.

That’s mud season in Maine for you. You just never know how long or how deep.”

(Dudley, lives west of Route Three) “Jeezum. Don’t know why I’m tellin’ yuh this, ‘cept I gotta tell somebody afore I go to the cops. Ain’t had much sleep since it happened.

Eatin’ me alive. Ayuh.

God’s truth. Keep seein’ him there in fronta me.

What’s left, that is.

I bin plowing snow now for forty year. One thing I’m good at. Never had much schoolin’ or felt the need. None of us did. Just runnin’ round til the war come, then we all went. Somethin’ else to do, is all. Jerry didn’t make it, but the rest of us did, ‘n then when we come back, well then we run round some more.

That’s when I married Donna Jean. Good ol’ girl, never no trouble til the cancer, ‘n then well, yuh know. It weren’t long. No suh, weren’t long at all.

Good ol’ girl. I still got her picture up in the trailer. Never had no kids. So I guess you could say I bin foot loose ‘n

fancy free. But never did feel like it. Not really.

In the summer I work construction some, but since my knee give out, can’t do what I used tuh.

But I still get by. The plowin’ comes in right handy. Don’t really need much. Trailer was paid for long time ago ‘n them taxes ain’t bad ‘cause it’s way off the road. Ayuh.

Just gimme a Bud ‘n some TV ‘n I’m one happy campuh. Me ‘n the dog. Until this here come upon me.

Makes me wanna bawl, ‘n that’s the God’s honest truth. But I don’t let no one see me bawl, least wise you. A man needs to keep some self respect. Yuh know all

about that. We was always straight with each other.

Got a smoke on yuh?

Left mine in the truck.

Tryin’ to cut back, but can’t do it right now. Not after all this. God-amighty, what a mess.

Wind was somethin’ fierce that day. Ayuh.

Most blew me double afore I got into the truck.

Lucky I’d got her all oiled up the night afore, ‘cause it weren’t no picnic that day. That’s the truth.

Some storm it was. Like the ol’ days. Don’t get that bad much no more.

But, nope, I was all set ‘n started out on my route, so’s to git them folks who gotta git to work first. Teachers. Office

folk. People like that. Got one doctor I gotta keep plowed out night ‘n day ‘cause he don’t never know when he’s gonna be called in. But he’s the only one. Doc Shapiro.

Jewish, he is, but a real nice fella all the same.

Couldn’t ask for none better. Recall he fixed up the Campbell kid real good after he took that wicked fall. Anyways.

I figured Doc Shapiro was still all set from the plow I give him a few hours afore, so’s I started up Rat Mill Hill to do the Johnsons. You know them? She’s some honey, but he’s a cock-sucker if I ever seen one, ‘n pardon my French. Always on my ass for goin’ over his

precious lawn, like I’d a done it purpose-like.

Hell, I ain’t got the time to be fancy, not when the snow’s really comin’ down. Gotta git to my route.

Once I got ‘em plowed ‘n I got turned round, she’s out there on the porch still in her robe ‘n waving to me with a check ‘n a hot cup o’ Joe. Real nice. I thanked her ‘n I told her, missus you best git back inside, you’ll catch your death ‘n she thanked me and give me a smile ‘n a biscuit for the dog. Coffee was in a paper cup so’s I could bring it along. Real nice ‘n thoughtful-like. Never saw him. Not that I’d a care tuh. Put the cup in

the holduh in the truck ‘n off I got. Susie put her nose to that biscuit, but she didn’t eat it. Not right then, anyhow. Yuh wanna turn down that heat some?

I’m just burnin’ up heah.

Well ol’ Susie ‘n me’s quite the pair in that truck, I’ll tell yuh. She ain’t never no trouble, just lies there on the seat the whole route. She ain’t too big, fits real nice on that seat with room to spare. Best dog I ever had ‘n that’s the God’s truth. But that day ‘cause o’ the wind maybe, she got herself right antsy.

I’d done a turnround at the Johnson’s place like I said ‘n I was headin’ back down the

hill, when all of a sudden-like, Susie comes alive ‘n raises up, barkin’ her fool head off. Well, I tell yuh, it scared me so bad, I spilled that hot coffee all down my pants ‘n for just a minute, mind yuh, my plow went clear off the road ‘n clipped along that shoulder for some ways. All the time, Susie was yammerin’ while I was yellin’ with that burnin’ stuff bein’ right where it hurt the worst, if yuh know what I mean, ‘n lucky I didn’t hit no trees. God-amighty. I did feel a bit of a bump under the plow, but at the time, I just figured I’d come up against some ice. Some wild ride, I tell yuh.

Damn, I could use a smoke.

Anyway, I bucked ‘er back onto the road ‘n I was some thankful I didn’t get ‘er stuck.

Woulda throwed my route all to hell. Susie settled down some ‘n the coffee stopped burnin’ quite so bad ‘n we was goin’ along down the road again pretty peaceful-like, but that truck seemed kinda sluggish. I was draggin’ somethin’ or like somethin’ got caught up underneath.

I downshifted into first, then cranked ‘er up again, thinkin’ I might clear out that extra snow. Sometimes that’ll help. Didn’t. Not that

time.

I looked into the rearview ‘n saw dark spots on the road followin’ the truck. Shit, I said to myself, I’m leakin’ oil. Must’ve bin that ice chunk I hit. Damn. Well, I pulled off to the side a bit, in case there’d be anythin’ else comin’, but ‘course there wouldn’t be. Only me. I climbed out ‘n went a few steps back to check how much oil was on the road. Hey, didn’t you never turn down that heat? Feels like I’m sweatin’ through my drawers heah. Okay, then.

When I bent down, I got the shock of my life, God’s truth, ‘cause she weren’t oil at all, no suh.

Blood it was. Kinda oozy stuff too ‘n some powerful stink.

I remembered about feelin’ that clunk from hittin’ what I thought was ice ‘n I said to myself, Oh shit, I hope I didn’t hit no dog. I love dogs, great critters ‘n I’d be some sorry to ahurt one. But when I checked up under the truck, I knew it weren’t no dog, cause there was clothes.

I can’t say what kinda mess it was, only that I lost my breakfast right then ‘n I filled my drawers some too. After awhile I stopped shakin’ a bit ‘n jacked ‘er up ‘n crawled under a ways.

Who it was, well he didn’t have no face no

more, plow’d seen to that, ‘n the couplin’ had gutted him pretty good, but I pulled out what was left of the guy ‘n heaved him on into the back. He was pretty nigh froze solid, but he weren’t leakin’ no more ‘cause most of that was left behind us on the road. I puked again ‘n got back in the truck ‘n started ‘er up.

I was still on Rat Mill Hill ‘n I eased ‘er on down in first, sweatin’ all the time. At the bottom there’s ol’ Jake Wescott’s drive leading back into his gravel pit ‘n I made it that far afore I had to puke again from the pure fright of it all. Susie never moved. The smell

scared her shitless. Sure you ain’t got a smoke on yuh?

Snow’d started up again pretty good by that time. I got precious little insurance ‘n I didn’t know the guy anyhow ‘n I was scared somethin’ fierce, so I rolled him outta the pickup right into that spot where all them kids always party, ‘n I backfilled some snow over him, ‘n I got myself gone. Sorriest day of my life, ‘cept when Donna Jean died, ‘n ain’t that the truth.

Even in the war I never hurt nobody. All’s I did was grunt work. This here’s bin gnawin’ at my insides since it happened. God-a-mighty.

Weren’t right to leave him ‘n run off. Hell, I knowed that. But he was some kinda dead ‘n my turnin’ myself in weren’t gonna bring him back.

Only thing still whole on him was his damn shoes.”

(Bambee, used to work at the mill) “Her given name was Urene. You can image what the kids at school called her. She’d learned to live with it, ‘cause once she turned fifteen, she got this terrific butt that more’n made up for her name. We all called her Reenie and she liked that just fine. When she grew a pair of boobs to match that butt, the boys

were coming out of the woodwork. She liked that even better. Every night there’d be a couple hangin’ round her ma’s trailer, talking shit and smoking, and her ma figured it was okay long’s there was more’n one.

She shoulda worried. Big time. And I oughta know, cause I’ve been Reenie’s best friend since forever. My name’s Bambee, the French spelling, you know.

Reenie ‘n me’d hang out in ol’ Jake Wescott’s gravel pit when we wanted to get down to business.

After she dropped out of school, she added the L for Lurene. Real classy-like.

Much better. Had that

initial L sewed onto some of her sweaters, ‘course with them big tits, it got sorta distorted-like, but hell, nobody was trying to read it anyways, if you get my drift.

Lurene got a job at the mill like we all did, and she was real careful with her pay, but with what things cost, she could hardly make do, so she got thrifty with her dump pickin’. Now there are some who think all trash is the same, but ‘course it’s not. You got your garbage and nobody wants that ‘less they got pigs. But then you got your decent stuff that just don’t fit into some folks’ houses, but

would serve somebody else right fine. That was what Lurene went after, and she’d visit the dump on a regular basis, and the guys’d call her Trash Day Lurene behind her back while they’d oogle her tits. I never told her.

No need to hurt her feelings. She got some mighty fine things, she truly did, and I even ended up with a few pots and pans and junk jewelry. Hell, I’m not exactly a Rockefeller myself. One time she scored a great pair of shoes for her boyfriend, Ralphie Johnson. Bates Floaters. Had some stink on ‘em, but she cleaned ‘em up real fine afore she give ‘em to him. Don’t

know if he ever wore ‘em or not. Bates Floaters as I recall.

She surely did like the boys and oh, my, they liked her back! Ha, ha, and her front too --know what I mean? I had my share, but it was Lurene they went for first. Then she got herself knocked up and ended up marrying Ralph. He never knew it wasn’t his and never found out the truth, especially when she lost it right after their wedding. She always figured it was payback from God for her lying ways, for her sleeping around. She said she deserved all the hard luck in the world. And

Ralph Johnson was more’n hard luck. He was a cock-sucking, scumbag of a pig, and you gotta apologize to the pig for them words.

Lurene and Ralph got themselves married right after Windsor Fair and right before hunting season. Ralph liked to bet on the beano at the fair and watch the hoochie gals and snag a bit for himself whenever he could, and missing a day of hunting season for a wedding was a blasphemy he wasn’t about to handle, so that sealed the date. Lurene’s ma went shopping with her and me at Miller’s General the day before.

Miller’s has everything a

body could need, and their second floor has quite the bridal department. You been there? Lurene picked her out a real nice gown with a puffy skirt and little plastic pearls stuck onto the lace at the neck. Had to be an extra large size seeing she was at least six months along at the time, but her ma’s eyes kinda misted over when she tried it on in that three-way mirror at the back near the ammo section. The sun came through those windows and made that polyester shine like it was satin on some high-class number.

Lurene’s eyes were moist just like her ma’s, but for an entirely

different reason. Miller’s always has a right fine meat counter, and that day pork roast was on sale, so we bought a big one and an extra-large suitcase carrier of Bud, bundled up the wedding gown into a plastic bag, and the three items on the store counter came to less’n seventy-five bucks. Can’t beat that. A budget ceremony, that’s the truth.

There never was any cake, but I’m her best friend, so I bought some confetti and balloons at the Dollar Store and with them leftover Christmas lights hanging on the trailer, it did look some festive come evening. By that time the groom and

his buddies was too damn drunk to notice, being up near the gravel pit trying to target shoot by the headlights of the pickup, but Lurene, her ma, me, and Ralphie’s sister Sherri sat around outside in the new lawn chairs from Walmart, and we discussed the day like it was really something. It was warm, but there wasn’t many bugs that late in the season. A couple moths fluttered around the Christmas lights, is all.

Justa couple moths.

After we all left, and her ma came and stayed with me to give Lurene and Ralph the privacy of the trailer for the wedding night, that was

the first night he punched her out. We tried to wash the blood outta the dress the next day, but it was all hardened into the lace and wouldn’t come out no matter what. Dress ended up on the dump.

That damn bastard Ralph shoulda ended up there too. She never even went to the hospital. No money for that. I truly hope she’ll find somebody nice some day and have some kids. I doubt it. I think Ralphie fixed that for good.

After about a year, they moved outta the trailer and into that place on Rat Mill Hill. For awhile, bein’ gone from the trailer seemed to

straighten Ralphie out, and he even started fixin’ up the house and growin’ a garden and tendin’ to the lawn. For a while anyways, and Lurene was some tickled. She was always nice to folks, extra little touches ‘cause she’s always been a honey. Too bad her own husband couldn’t a seen it.

Last time I saw her myself we was talkin’ in her driveway just afore that big snow. She was expectin’ more trouble from Ralph. That is, more’n usual, and that’s surely saying something, ‘cause all them two ever see is trouble. Don’t take much to set him off.

‘Shit, Bambee, she

says. I walked all over downtown yesterday with old-man’s beard in my hair. That gray fuzzy stuff grows on the trees, you know? Shit. I’d been workin’ in the woods by the house and no wonder people was lookin’ at me funny.

Probably thought I was on my back again! Damn.

That’s all I need. All I need after what I’ve gone through. Ralph finds out, he’s to have a fit for sure.’

Lurene was wearing a mint green chenille bathrobe that day.

Looked like the fifties kind, but she showed me the label from Sears.

Ralph never liked it. Said it made her look way too

hippy, but it was warm, and it sure washed up real nice. Couldn’t go too far wrong at half off. No, you surely couldn’t.

Anyhow, she was wearing that robe ‘cause it still weren’t real cold yet, and she was some worried about Ralphie’s temper and hadn’t even bothered to dress. If she’d been trembling, it wouldn’t a been from the cold. Ralph was back to his old ways, and I made out the bruises along her cheeks right through that heavy Maybelline concealer. I felt right sorry and scared too, but what could I do? She’d never called the cops about none of it. She was always too ashamed.

Bastard.

Next day she phoned and told me Ralph’d walked out and never come back home that night after he’d beat her up over what he’d heard in town. That was the night it snowed so hard, you remember? She sounded real sure that this time he was gone for good. She was cryin’ into the receiver, and said she didn’t rightly feel like seein’ even me ‘cause she looked so bad. Thought her nose might be busted, but it had healed-up a bunch of times before without too much trouble. Her arm was hurtin’ a lot at the elbow, and I made her promise to go in and

have it seen to at the clinic if she still couldn’t bend it by tomorrow. I’m surprised Dudley didn’t notice how busted up she was when he plowed ‘em out that morning. I ‘spect she was some mess, but I ain’t seen her since. Still ‘n all, Lurene’s got used to coverin’ things up real good. I just hope to God that sonabitch Ralph’s gone forever this time. Good riddance, I say. Ralphie Johnson always was trouble.”

since long’s anybody can remember, and I can tell you, ol’ Jake Wescott was some pee-od. Goddamn friggin’ kids leaving trash, used rubbers, and such unmentionables all the hell over the entrance to his gravel pit. Shit, he’d been a kid hisself once, but he’d had some respect. Oh, yessuh. He picked through the trash left over from that Saturday night’s festivities. Bound to find some returnables. Git enough for a pack of smokes. Maybe he’d find (Buster, went to school a full can of Bud. Told me up in Lincoln) he’d found one just the “Well-suh, my name’s week afore, along with Buster Poirier and I’m one very used copy of the deputy’s been Playboy. Jake used it patrolling Rat Mill Hill some more, I ‘spect.

Guess he musta missed that article by Norman Mailer.

That particular morning, bein’ mud season ‘n all, there was more a mess than usual, knee-deep over by a bunch o’ dry cattails on the north corner. Jake kicked his Bates Floaters through the weeds. Good shoes. Damn good shoes.

Found ‘em last winter just about that same area.

‘Course then there’d been other feet attached to ‘em. Dead feet. Hell, that hadn’t bothered him none. He’d rolled the frozen body for anything remotely of value, and that being only the shoes, he‘d called in the law. That’s

me. Jeez. After all, a body was a body, and unless the animals finished it off completely, there’d be some stink come spring.

Natural causes. Probably drunk outta his f-in’ mind and just froze to death. Anybody could see that.

I agreed with Jake about all of it. Why borrow trouble? Jake ‘n me, we stuffed what was left of the body into the back seat of the cruiser.

Hell. Weren’t no crime scene, ‘cause it sure as shit weren’t no crime. No need to bother the ambulance guys. That stiff journeyed with us to ol’ Doc Gilpin’s office down to Augusta. We shuffled him from one

vehicle to another, and we trundled him from one gurney to another.

Never did get an ID on the poor bugger. Way too banged up to tell. Face wasn’t more’n hamburger.

Animals already took the guts out. Wonder where he finally ended up? Yep, Bates Floaters. Stopped making ‘em in the sixties.

Can’t beat ’em with a stick. Don’t see no reason why Jake shouldn’t a kept ‘em.

Anyways. You still with me?

Now, the way Jake told it, suddenly that morning right ‘round mud season, his precious shoes encountered something soft and sticky over by

them cattails. Ah, shit!

But it wasn’t. Something much fouler. Deer guts. A whole stinking pile.

Shoulda seen them flies buzzin’. Shoulda known it was too early in the year! Damn! All over them shoes. Rinsed ‘em off right there in that slow-running creek. Jake was nothing if not resourceful, and he’d always considered Mother Nature to be the biggest resource of all.

Free for the takin’.

Jake finally decided if you can’t lick ‘em, you best join ‘em, so right after that, he put out his sign for Jake’s Park ‘n Party. Lettered it up right perky-like. Dollar bill got you parking in

his gravel pit for all night any night without no disturbances. Cost you double on Saturday, but don’t you know he had hisself a right nice business sooner’n you’d think. Got a lot of extra with them deposit bottles and whatever else folks would leave behind. I myself couldn’t see no harm to it. Kept ‘em all contained in one place. No neighbors to complain. Made my job some easier, I tell you.

Kinda miss ol’ Jake.

Nobody rightly knows what happened to him.

Getting’ on in years, probably just wandered off the way some people do.

Sorta neat that I found

his shoes though. Pretty good fit if I do say so.

Look some sharp with the uniform even though they ain’t regulation.

Bates Floaters. Don’t make ‘em like they used to. Great for mud season.”

garish flowered Mu-mu.

She might have looked pregnant, but Annie’s hair was a gray flag to her age, and when you came close enough, you could see road dust settled like concrete into the wrinkles of her face, the creases in her arms.

(Annie, she used to be Sure was hot, but Annie quite the character) was seldom concerned The woman shuffled, for the weather. She’d lurching bearlike, and always made do. She was kicked up the dust at shrewd, was Annie, and roadside. She wasn’t she waddled along, obese --- pleasingly- listing a few degrees to plump her ma used to the left from the weight say --- and she’d lost a of the bag over her few pounds lately. Her shoulder. Shrewd, she breasts rested was. Not crazy, never stubbornly on her round that, merely shrewd. stomach, forming a Ben was proud to have comfortable cohesive his own truck, finally, whole beneath her saving up his summer

construction money. A guy with a truck had status. Could do anything he wanted, go anywhere in life, and Ben had himself a few yearnings, a hankering to be somebody. Someday he’d have him a ride with AC, but this Econoline was the best he could do for the moment and she was some sharp all the same.

There was one hell of a nice breeze cutting through the cab and Ben was in no hurry. A hot day, but a beauty for sure.

He squinted along the shoulder to his right. A fat woman, an old one too, old as his grandma.

Ben had loved Gran, always his rock, but

she’d passed from a bad heart just that spring and he missed her something fierce. Jeezum, this lady ouughn’t to be out in all this heat, all alone.

Ben geared down, pulled over, and called out. “Ma’am, you need a lift into town? I’m going that direction. Too hot to be walking this time of day.” He could see the sweat glistening on the old woman’s arms, running right down her face when she turned to him.

“That’s right kindly, son. Much appreciated.

Old bones ain’t what they used to be.” Annie was nimble as a teenager when she climbed in.

“Snug yourself into

that seatbelt, ma’am.

Cops have your ass for sure if they catch you unbuckled. Guess it’s all for the best.” Ben smiled at Annie and his eyes watered from the stench.

More than clean sweat.

More like a swamp, muddy, stagnant. “You thirsty? Help yourself to that bottle of water. Ain’t been opened.” He eased back onto Route Three.

“Don’t mind if I do.

Ain’t many boys your age would stop for an old lady. You was raised up right, I can see that.

Mighty nice truck you got too. Mighty pretty color.” The truck was black, but Annie saw it as rainbows. She pulled the seat belt across her

stomach, but didn’t click it shut.

That just wouldn’t do at all. “Yessuh. Mighty pretty truck.

Always did want me one of these.”

Ben punched the radio to WFAU for some easylistening muzak, figuring an old lady wouldn’t be real fond of hip-hop.

Some of them lyrics could get downright raunchy. Gran had called it trash. She’d been strict, Gran had, but man, he missed her like hell.

“Hey sonny, mind pulling over right here? I feel a mite carsick. Don’t want to be barfing all over your nice truck.”

Annie put a hand to her mouth, and Ben responded right fast. He

had plans with Penny that evening, and he figured it would take a couple cans of Glade to air this lady’s swamp stink out of the truck before then, but he surely didn’t need to deal with a layer of upchuck as well. “This’ll do just fine,” said Annie as she reached around and pretended to click open her unbuckled seat belt.

When Annie had sashayed out of the Insane a couple months back, she’d lifted a few items that tickled her fancy --- a trick or treat bag stuffed with candycolored pills, cellophane sleeves of Hostess DingDongs, plastic leis

leftover from Hawaiian Luau Day that added a festive touch to her Mumu, and an ten-inch stainless butcher knife from the institution’s kitchen. The pills were soon gobbled down along with the DingDongs, crushed to unrecognizable paste just the way Annie liked them, although she actually preferred Little Debbies with the drawing of that sweet kid on the wrappers. The knife was a keeper, snuggled homey-like in her bag with an assortment of road-kill pelts, and it had come in damn handy when the cop picked her up near that creek next to ol’

Jake’s gravel pit. Kind of a nice guy, that cop, real gentle with her, said she reminded him of somebody, his ma maybe, and she hadn’t meant to hurt him, but he had these swell shoes, Bates Floaters, and Lordy, they don’t make them no more, so once he’d quit kicking so much and the blood had stopped gurgling from his throat, she relieved him of them shoes. He had no further use for ‘em, so waste not want not, and she’d driven the cop and the car, the whole shebang, right into the creek. She wiped off the knife on some convenient pickerel grass.

Now after all her traveling, them shoes still looked mighty fine, and she was in fact pretty upset this youngster hadn’t commented on ‘em.

Annie reached into her bag and in one motion, slashed the knife across Ben’s neck. He looked some surprised, for sure, but she’d grown to expect that. They always did.

She popped Ben’s seat belt, hopped out of the passenger door, trotted around the truck, and yanked him out onto the pavement. The engine was purring like a pet, and when she settled into the driver’s seat, she eased the pickup’s tires

over the body real gentle-like, so as not to make too much of a mess, so as not to splatter those shiny fenders --- and then she gunned it, laying down rubber on the patched asphalt. The rainbowcolored truck zig-zagged down Route Three like one of them dancing unicorns she’d seen in the break-room at the Insane.

Annie couldn’t resist another glance down at her Bates Floaters. Sure did look fine pushing on them pedals.

David Dill 5 A.M. Blues The wind kazoos the back patio door.

School canceled.

Lesson plans abandoned.

12 pack still settling.

Tickling in bowels and throat.

Stumble over clutter clothes chicken bone littered yellow plates still packed books in liquor boxes wind back door rain yet to ice, and snow, sputters against back windows.

Wood paneling quavers.

Bathroom smelling of lake, crumpled unwashed green shower mat unfiltered light.

Sit, breathe, stomach disagrees, The wind turns the back patio door into force lifts body to sink hurled over nothing coughing up furled over basin the second round sounds orange smells minor tastes blurry.

A man cannot help crying at the third, fourth, fifth

refrain.

Retched nothing still trying to let out anything.

Koff Hands grasp rim breathe wind kazoos.

Pam Van Dyk Dreama

Javier struggled to sit still. He felt as if there were a three-year-old boy inside of his man-sized body, and the little boy was about to throw a fit-to-betied tantrum.

“I know you’re upset, Javi, but it’s for the best. You can’t take care of her.” Javier looked at Doris, his mother-in-law of four months and three days.

“I’ve been taking care of her for months.” Javier wanted Doris to agree with him, but she only looked back at him as a mother would a small child who is sprawled on the floor in a rage, a look that is at the same time patient and exasperated.

“Javi, we talked about this.

Remember? Two nights before the wedding? You and I sat in this very place and I explained the signs. I told you to be sure that she took her

medication. I told you that if anything seemed wrong, if she stopped eating, if she slept too little or slept too much, if she seemed overly exuberant, to call me.” What Javier remembered was that he promised Doris he could take care of Dreama, and until three days ago it never occurred to him that he couldn’t. His confidence didn’t come from being a man or being Dreama’s husband. He felt he could take care of Dreama because when she held his face in her hands, Javier could feel the small, fragile bird bones of her fingers.

When he lifted Dreama up into his arms so that she met his gaze, her feet were a full six inches off the ground. It never occurred to Javier that someone so tiny could have needs too large for him.

Javier pulled the baseball cap from his head and ran his hands through

his thick hair. He thought about the events of the last month. It started a few weeks ago. Javier had climbed the stairs to their shabby walk-up and found Dreama waiting for him by the door, her small, naked body shivering, her hands working their way up and under his shirt and down to his belt buckle before he could remove his coat. Dreama’s needs overwhelmed and confused Javier. When he tried to make sense of it, his mind conjured images of Dreama as first a trickle of water and then a small stream, and then as a raging, whitecapped river.

When Dreama clung to Javier’s body, she seemed to be taking rather than giving. She was consuming his warmth and energy like a parasite and it frightened Javier. After those rushed, heated moments, Javier felt empty and drained, as if Dreama’s fluttery, birdlike hands had coaxed every last thing out of him and left Javier as a shell of who he was.

Dreama’s behavior continued in the same way for a couple of weeks until a few nights ago when, after arriving home late, Javier found himself once again at their door, but this time he hesitated, taking deep breaths and wishing like hell that he could be somewhere else. He worried about what he would find when he opened the door, and what he found there was Dreama, lying on the floor atop something green and feathery, her body splayed out as if a victim of a crime. At first Javier panicked.

Something was out of place, and his mind couldn’t sort out what was missing until he noticed that their once lush, plant-filled living room appeared desert-like. The green nest on top of which Dreama’s naked body lay was built from the leaves that Dreama had clipped from all of their houseplants. When Javier leaned down toward Dreama, she reached for him. I just wanted to be somewhere

green and alive, you know? He had scooped her up in his arms and carried Dreama to their bed and pulled the covers over her. When he pushed her hair from her face and leaned in to kiss her, she rolled away from him. He knew he should call Doris, but he didn’t. It was until Doris stopped by the next morning to share some tomatoes from her garden, let herself in with the hide-a-key when no one answered the door, and found Dreama in bed, hair unkempt and smelling of her own body odor, that Javier understood the gravity of his omission.

When Javier’s cellphone rang at work that morning, it was Doris. She had Dreama. They needed to talk.

Now Javier sat on the couch, feeling like he had thrown a baseball through the window. He wanted to come clean with Doris, but he could not find the words to tell her that the night he found Dreama on the floor, half

covered in the leaves of their now dying houseplants, he had been with Ivy. Ivy was Javier’s antidote to Dreama’s neediness. He met Ivy the week after Dreama’s first episode. It was hard to believe that so soon into his marriage, Javier was having an affair. He didn’t think he was that kind of man, but it seemed he was. On that afternoon, on a day that seemed to go on forever, Javier pulled the flatbed truck into the lot at work and went about hosing it down and locking it up before calling it quits. When he got into his car to go home, Javier found the car wouldn’t start, or rather he couldn’t start it. The engine was fine; it was Javier who wasn’t. It was as if something was pinning him to his seat, a sense of dread so profound that he felt if he started the car and drove home, he would become invisible to the world. It frightened him so badly that he couldn’t catch his breath. It

wasn’t until his boss, Grady, knocked on the window, and Javier finally rolled it down, and Grady gave him a salute that Javier snapped out of it.

“We’re going to Frankie’s for a beer.

Want to join us or do you have to get home to that hot little wife of yours?”

Grady made a grinding motion with his hips that looked so out of order on the fifty-something-year-old grandfather that Javier had to laugh.

The relief he felt driving behind Grady’s pale-yellow pick-up truck, like following a canary out of a coal mine, allowed him to push Dreama to somewhere not quite out of mind but far enough away from his consciousness, and he was finally able to breathe again. Javier gratefully counted each breath until, three hundred four breaths later, he pulled into the parking lot of Frankie’s Pub. It quickly became part of a nightly routine. He felt it was something he needed before facing another one of

those nights, nights he referred to as Dreama nights, nights when her need for him left him used up, invisible. He needed those visits to Frankie’s Pub, needed those couple of beers, to remind him that he was real. Now, as Javier sat on the couch with Doris, with Dreama just a few yards away and curled up in her old bed, Javier did not feel invisible. He felt exposed and guilty.

“I’ll take her to see Dr. Stein tomorrow. We’ll get her medication straightened out.” Doris placed a hand on Javier’s knee.

Dreama’s grandmother, Edna, sat across from him in the recliner and barked, “That kid is bat-shit crazy.

Only people who are bat-shit crazy need a shrink, and that kid is bat-shit crazy.” Javier watched the ash dangle dangerously on the end of Edna’s cigarette, her tiny eyes blinking behind her thick eyeglasses. If he didn’t know her better, he would have

sworn it was for dramatic effect.

“Ma. Please.” Javier could see that Doris was tired. She was an older, more solid version of Dreama, but her features were made softer by the twenty pounds she had over her daughter.

“Well, she is bat-shit crazy. Has been since she was a little girl. What kind of child carries around a clothes hanger and talks to it like it’s a doll baby? Sheez, it’s probably all on account of her name. Who names a kid Dreama? What kind of name is that anyway?” Edna went back to working on her scratch-off lottery tickets.

Javier could feel Doris starting to wither under her mother’s criticisms.

Doris and Dreama had lived with Edna since Dreama was two years old.

Javier never got the full story, but Edna would have everyone believe that she had been taking care of those two for years. Javier understood that it was Doris who bore the burden of

care for both her mother and her daughter and now, it seemed, Javier.

“Javi, go on home. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Well, can I at least talk to her for a minute?” Doris looked uncertain and Javier felt his anger well up again.

“Doris?”

“Just for a minute.”

Javier walked down the hallway to Dreama’s room. He tapped on the door but she didn’t reply, so he pushed the door open and peered in.

Javier saw Dreama, who sat on the bed staring at something Javier could not see, her legs pulled to her chest, her hair still wet from a bath. She wore Javier’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame t-shirt and knee socks.

“Dreama?” Javier’s wife turned to look at him, but there was something missing in her face, as if someone had turned the volume down to the lowest setting. He moved to the edge of the bed and watched her. “Dreama. I love

you, honey. Don’t you know that?” He reached for her, but she did not respond. Javier knew he should not ask anything of Dreama, but he couldn’t help himself. “Please don’t do this to me.” Dreama turned away. It seemed that only a week ago he had been desperate to be away from Dreama, and now he wanted to crawl into bed with her and stay until she was the Dreama he married, the one who found beauty in plants and animals, the one who could remember long, complicated jokes and deliver them, punchline and all, with a straight face. He wanted the Dreama who knew all the words to rap songs but put them to the melodies of old bebop. This Dreama, the one in front of him, looked soft and harmless, but she was slicing away at him piece by piece. He took off his baseball cap and placed it on her head. She looked too young to be so vacant.

Javier stepped back into the

hallway and felt his chest cave in. He would not cry. He made his way quickly to the front door, wiping his eyes and yelling from the front hallway. “Doris, I’ll meet you at Dr. Stein’s tomorrow.”

“No, Javier, go to work,” Doris yelled back. He could hear the television volume rise, Edna’s signal that their voices were disturbing her peace.

“I can take a leave,” Javier said.

“No, Javi, don’t do that. You could lose your job.” Javier knew Doris was right. It wasn’t that his boss, Grady, was a bad guy, but the work had to get done and Javier was replaceable. He sat in his car in front of Edna’s house.

He had five missed calls on his cell phone. All from Ivy. His phone rang then and he could see on the caller ID that it was his sister, Maria.

“How is she?” Javier heard the familiar voice of his only sister, who was three years his junior but had

always seemed to Javier to be the older of the two.

“Not so good.” Javier felt his voice catch. He didn’t want Maria to hear him cry. She had thought the marriage was a bad idea to begin with, but how could Javier explain to someone that the actual marriage part is irrelevant?

He would have been with Dreama with or without the marriage license.

Javier remembered the first time he saw Dreama. She was bent over an artichoke plant at the arboretum. At first glance Javier thought she was a little boy, because her blond hair was cropped close to her head. Dreama’s figure was slight and without the curves of a woman. When he approached her, she turned toward him, and her face, with its fine features, opened into a smile.

Javier remembered exactly what she said when he approached.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it? It’s hard for most people to imagine that the exotic

vegetable they buy in the grocery store comes from such a beautiful plant.” She pointed to the artichoke plant then.

Javier tried to appear interested, but he had trouble looking away from her.

Javier worked for a timber and mulch company, and they had been hired to lay timbers in the newer part of the arboretum. When he asked her out for a drink that night, she declined but told him to come back the next day, and she would give him the five-cent tour. “That’s all it’s worth,” she had said. “I am, after all, only a volunteer.”

“She’s going to be fine, Maria. Doris is going to take her to see her shrink tomorrow. I’ve got to get her back home, though. She’ll never get better living in that house with Edna. What kind of grandmother calls her own granddaughter bat-shit crazy?”

“You’re being selfish, Javi. Leave her with Doris. She’s been taking care of her since she was a little girl.”

“But I’m her goddamned husband.”

“Javi, I’m only saying this because I love you, but—” “Don’t say it Maria. Don’t say I told you so. You’re my sister and I need to still like you when all of this is over.”

“Okay, Javi. Call me tomorrow and give me the update?”

Javier dropped the phone in the passenger seat; the missed calls message blinked at him. He picked it up again and pushed the button for voicemail.

“Javi, it’s Ivy, obviously. I haven’t heard from you. Is everything okay?

Call me.” He pressed the button for the next one.

“It’s me again. Call me, okay? I’m getting worried.”

“Javi, I’m home all night. I’m here if you want to talk.” Javier listened to Ivy’s voice, which seemed to grow increasingly panicked with each voicemail. He pictured her curled up on her couch, surrounded by bookshelves, the musty smell of used

books taking up the room, an album on the turntable. He loved Ivy’s apartment. It was comfortable, comforting. Being with Ivy that first time hadn’t been an accident. He knew the minute he saw her that she might be the answer. Ivy was in Frankie’s Pub with a girlfriend the night Javier followed Grady there. Her laugh, loud and open, a full-toothed laugh, caught his attention. Ivy was pretty, that was true, but it was her laugh, and the casual way she walked around the pool table, missing shot after shot, then spinning in a circle when she finally hit the ball in, oblivious to the fact that it was her opponent’s ball—that was what pulled at Javier. It was the carefree flame that Javier was drawn to. It wasn’t that Javier wanted Ivy. It was more that he wanted to be her, be breezy, more of who he used to be. He had stepped up to Ivy and handed her a beer, bowing to her upside-down

victory.

“What’s this for?” Ivy said, taking the beer from Javier.

“That, madam, is for playing absolutely the worst game of pool I have ever seen.” Clinked her bottle against Javier’s.

“To the loser.” Javier and Ivy spent the next two hours in close proximity, never saying more than a word or two, keeping their eyes appropriately engaged when others joined their conversation. They both knew they were waiting out the night. As he stood up to go, so did Ivy, grabbing her jacket from the hook by the bar.

She followed him outside and the breeze blew her hair across her mouth so that Javier had to push it aside to kiss her.

The hours Javier spent with Ivy were restoring, a balance of giving and taking, and he always left with the strength to get through the rest of the night with Dreama. That is what he

told himself each time he left Ivy’s apartment, pulling the door behind him, catching a last glimpse of Ivy, lying alone where they had both just been.

Javier

spent the next few days in contact with Doris, dropping by her house to check on Dreama. He did not return Ivy’s calls, and by the third day Ivy stopped phoning him.

Javier listened to Doris explain. “It takes a while for the medication to start working. She just needs a little more time.”

“Doris, I want her to come home.”

Javier knew he sounded like a spoiled child who wanted his toy back, but he was saying it aloud so that he, too, would believe it, because there was something in the deepest part of his brain, some inner workings, that pricked at him and told him to move on. Something was whispering run. He was lucky that Doris was willing to

relieve him of his responsibilities, but the part of his mind that operated his mouth and, more importantly, his heart would not let him leave Dreama until she was well again. He wanted a Dreama of sound mind and healthy body, so that he could leave with a clear conscience.

Javier

looked in the mirror. His face was furrowed with lines, his once flat belly now a small paunch. If he looked carefully in the mirror, if he stared long enough, he could still find bits and pieces of his old face. Javier had learned to live his life in cycles, cycles of fun and exuberance which left him exhausted, cycles of dark and quiet where he worried for Dreama’s very life. Javier had made peace with all of this, or at least he had forgotten about the life he once hoped for, so when Javier passed Ivy on the street one afternoon, she seemed like something from a dream, not someone from his

past. “Ivy?� he whispered as she passed him. She slowed down and turned around, seeking the source of the voice and looking right through him.

In an instant Javier realized that he was no longer recognizable. He turned then and walked in the opposite direction. He caught up with Dreama at the bookstore around the corner.

When she saw him, her face opened in that familiar smile. He held the door for her, and she slipped her arm through his as they stepped back onto the sidewalk, bound for home.

Jodi Adamson Telephone Blues The phone Hung on the wall And rang and rang and rang Me insane until I holler Bad phone

Jodi Adamson Harmony Oh! To be a Seurat dot; Part of method, Part of art.

Contributors Ren Adams A Southern California native, Ren has been working in the visual arts for more than 20 years, with an emphasis on printmaking and painting, integrating traditional Chinese ink techniques with contemporary digital and mixed media concerns. She has a BFA in Studio Art (printmaking) from the University of New Mexico and is an MFA in Visual Arts candidate at the Art Institute of Boston (at Lesley University). Ren has participated in a number of regional and national exhibitions and continues active experimentation in hybrid printing techniques. She has also published visual art and poetry in a range of literary outlets. Ren’s primary body of work investigates the play of matter and non-matter, the emergence of being from non-being and the relativity of time and geographical-digital space in network relationships.

Jodi Adamson Jodi's poem, “Lost Civilzations,” won first place in the Alabama State Poetry Society Fall Contest. She also had her poetry reviewed by NewPages.com. New work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay, Clackamas Literary Review, Forge, The Griffin, The Old Red Kimono, The Prelude, RiverSedge, The Starry Night Review, and the anthologies "Dreams of Steam III" and "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night."

Mara Buck Mara Buck writes and paints within a self-constructed hideaway in the Maine woods. She has won awards or been short-listed by the Faulkner Society,

the Hackney Awards, Carpe Articulum, Maravillosa, and has been published in Drunken Boat, Huffington Post, Carpe Articulum, Living Waters, Pithead Chapel, Caper, Clarke’s, Poems For Haiti, The Lake, Apocrypha, and others.

David Dill David Dill is a high school English teacher learning just where the value in education is placed in America. His current location is not his previous locations of Philadelphia or Michigan and by the time he considers it home, rural Virginia will probably be a memory. He lives in dreams and the isolation of 5 A.M. but only on non-school nights. If you google him, you might find his website or his previous publications at places such as Apiary, Marathon, and Silent Things.

Barry Head Barry Head received his BA and MA from Oxford University and went on to work as a reporter for TIME Magazine. He left to establish a career as a freelance writer and editor. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Harper’s, Redbook, Mademoiselle, and Playgirl, he has coauthored five books and self-published a successful novel for children. He was the writer and artistic director of an award-winning television documentary for the Odyssey series on PBS and for many years served as vice president for creative projects of Family Communications, Inc., the producers of the landmark children’s television series on PBS, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Mia Hood Mia Hood is a doctoral student and graduate instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Practice at Relay Graduate School of Education. She teaches teachers. Previously, she taught middle school students how to read better and write better. She keeps a blog called Dinosaur Sweaters.

Jade Asta Quinn Jade Asta Quinn is a recent Graduate of SUNY New Paltz, where she received two B.A.s, one in English and one in Theatre. Well aware of her future in poverty, Jade wears her "starving artist" badge with pride. She carries her poetry like and addiction, bound in notebooks she never seems to buy, but that blossom in her hands anyway.

Pam Van Dyk Ms. Van Dyk's short story “Possession” was recently awarded honorable mention at the Writers’ Workshop of Asheville (2013) Fiction Contest. Her work has also appeared in FICTION on the WEB. She studies writing with Zelda Lockhart, North Carolina’s 2010 Piedmont Laureate, and Nancy Peacock, whose recent novel won Shelf Unbound’s 2013 Indie Book Award.

Pam lives, works and writes in Raleigh, North Carolina. She holds a doctorate degree in education research and currently works as the principal research and program evaluation consultant at Evaluation Resources.

Robert Wexelblatt Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a variety of journals, two story collections, "Life in the Temperate Zone" and "The Decline of Our Neighborhood," a book of essays, "Professors at Play," and a short novel, "Losses." His novel, "Zublinka Among Women," won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction. A chapbook, "The Derangement of Jules Torquemal," will be out in 2014 and a collection of stories, "The Artist Wears Rough Clothing," is also forthcoming.

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