Faraway, Volume 2, Issue 3, Spring 2009

02 : 03

www.farawayjournal.com

A Journal o f A r t & Literature

Faraway :

A Journal of Art & Literature presents

C O N T E N T S 01 On the Other Promontory Davide Trame 02 Winter Passage For Billy Collins Michael K. Gause 03 Dwindling Times Gary Beck 03 Burden Gary Beck 04 A Work in Progress Benjamin Nardolilli, with artwork by Travis Jeffords 06 Paramecium S.P. Flannery 07 Her Shunted Complexion Ray Succre, with photo by James Berkshire 08 Beyond Organic Groceries Elizabeth Kate Switaj 09 “Behold I Am Oblivion” Terence Kuch 16 Titian on His Journey Home Davide Trame 18 The Book Review David Kentner 22 A Family Matter Josh Mitchell, with photos by Atina Thorning 28 Manic is the Dark Night Michael K. Johnson 30 Dwellings Luigi Monteferrante 31 The Whole History of Art William Doreski 32 Can I Get a Witness Eric McKinley

34 Betty With the Peacock Willow Healy 35 Fading Flurries Sean Wiebe

∞ Jeff Hendrickson 38 RedYellowRed Katie Rutherford 39 Conceptual Conflict Felino Soriano 40 Spirit Faces William Doreski 44 Roy Flint, Circa 1988 Jen Conley 56 Venge S.P. Flannery 57 Smack! James Berkshire 58 The Silent Signs Olga Zilberbourg with artwork by Gay Degani 70 Some Dark Blue Beth Mathison 72 Coming to America Shane Ryan Bailey 73 L.A. Harvest James Berkshire 74 Let the Dead Bury Their Dead Mark Konkel 88 New Grass Michael K. Gause 89 NEW Contributors Published in Southern California’s Inland Empire.

This is Volume 02: Issue 03.

Cover: Katie Rutherford Editor: Dimba Layout: SS

On

the

Other Promontory

Davide Trame And there were pools among the rocks by the sea, deep pools, dark blue, that would never dry in the sunlight, I had climbed to the cliff top and now stood among them, craters filled as if by surprise to the brim.

I put my foot in one -still February- but I was filled by an already strong sun.

And I didn’t mind the water’s sting, not so cold after all, and on my back I didn’t mind the lashing of each wave’s fringe.

I just stood and leaned then in the roar, on a rock’s edge, warm and light grey, with furrows like an elephant’s skin, the closeness of a herd passing, the mesmerising chain, trunk to tail.

On the other promontory, far off and inside, in the clamour of silence.

In the grip of the open stone of an Eden receding at dawn.

Winter Passage

For Billy Collins Michael K. Gause

It was from inside the humming cab December 4, 1992 The snow parted for a second (maybe two) And I was shown how New York ends its innocents A lesson in blood on the Lower East Side My gaze committed that scene to haunting Let it court me on side-blown flakes Home, it lingered in my gin It made love to me in repeated sheets until Years later It just became part of the snow that sometimes parts for us Same as the winters that never stop telling me You will never be alone again

Dwindling Times The gates of cities have fallen and battle is technic and unshining.

We are a somber, democratic age that has placed glory in storage, (But slaughter fifty years removed still awakens bold remembrance.) an ancient rite revived only for the chosen son of the suffering republic in need of heroes.

Gary Beck

Burden When midnight visions pass us on the street, opera, party, other brief retreat that should bring awe, like old biblical men in a visit that heralds promise, then, a puzzled shaking of a skeptics head, lose sight and slink home to poverty bed.

Gary Beck

A Work

in

Progress

Benjamin Nardolilli In one sense, the stor y of a publican e, a sentence left unfinished on the last pag the body, gives evidence of a plot, he had only one recourse ered pictures an imperfect rendering of hazily rememb ony combining into a sort of rhythmic cacoph the rejoinder I’m expecting to hear, a long way with individual words.

Five stars for audacity, ons to allegor y a clichĂŠd quasi-biblical myth with aspirati attempting to do a lot of different things rt just a monstrous waste of time and effo a bit of fun with his readers, down at the vestiges of culture. displayed The salesmanship that must have been the many interpretations spawned meaning here are impressive, if there is any definite it. then he failed in conveying a clear stor y, I rate highly the one who presents with and perhaps, in the end, makes you want to read the next page, changes your view of the world.

Untitled Work

in

Progress

Travis Jeffords

Paramecium S.P. Flannery Cilia pass victuals along the cell wall, victims caught adrift in a sea landlocked, encased in glass, where neighbors struggle for the few particles that were siphoned from the same pond by children eager to preview what humans cannot see without the aid of mechanics that extend perception beyond genetics, to witness what moves in a water-drop, beneath intense magnification the creatures persist without their own machines, the microscopes that are passed between students, who in puerile excitement drop the slide, on clay tile glass breaks, but a few small water pools remain.

Her Shunted Complexion Ray Succre which reminds me that spore, like bacteria, have no chlorophyll which reminds me that I require fuel to move and to think and to transfer which reminds me that the shelf-like fungus one finds attached to most trees are not to be used in a stair-fashion which reminds me that the parasitical woman in 21B has her own infestation that makes dark patches appear on her skin which reminds me that her children throw rocks at her door and don’t come home often which reminds me that a mushroom can foster out millions of their spore in a single night which reminds me of her shunted complexion

Photo: James Berkshire: Not Even Sure What The Next Plot Is

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Beyond Organic Groceries

filter me knit me as the subway turns cold spin off strips of my skin on borrowed spindles or recovered from dead woman’s sale dip strings of me into dyed vats of bees’ excess or soy wax for those who need to touch burn my fingers bones in incense holes rare scent smoke sacred beyond frankincense sandalwood patchouli & ocean breeze lilac relax -ation recycle all my fat & blood into my hair wigs for cancer survivors & dyers these are braids that were my eyes weave me purify Photo: Katie Rutherford: Exorcising the Apt. Demons

“Behold I Am Oblivion” Terence Kuch

Things around Duck’s Tavern had been pretty tense before, but not the catastrophe they later became. The tenseness came about because Duck’s, which I owned, was exactly halfway between Gallery One and Gallery Two in the Arts District, and the catastrophe resulted from the undying hatred the owners of these venues had for each other.

Gallery One had been in business several years, selling art that some people considered just a little more up-market than what you might find in the nearest mall. Leonard Hatton, One’s infrequently genial proprietor, made my place a regular stop on his daily route, had a drink or two. I supplied Leonard, not just with his daily cognac, but with wine for his openings, which was very good business for me. In the interest of maintaining relations, I was careful to have no opinions about art, where turns of fashion twist and fold like origami geese; but alcohol fuels the business of art forever.

Then, into Leonard’s world and mine, came Jack Brooks (who pronounced his name ‘Jacques Broooks’ when customers were about). Jack started his own gallery, with higher ceilings than One’s, whiter walls, fancier droplights, and a flair for publicity that Leonard couldn’t match. Jack tended to show large, polite canvases of Riviera towns. These pieces were said to evince a certain lack of artistic seriousness. But remember that I have absolutely no opinion about that.

Just for spite, I think, Jack called his venue “Gallery Two.” Leonard sued, but never did get Jack to back off about the name. So there was this simmering undercurrent between them. I was careful to cultivate Jack as well as Leonard as even-handedly as I could, because I catered openings at both galleries. I dealt with no more serious matters than whether or not to drape the wine bottles in linen to disguise their lowly provenance. A gracious lack of commitment, in this matter as well, suited me just fine.

Since Duck’s lay between the two galleries, a block from each, by unspoken consent it became neutral ground. Leonard and the One crowd gathered in one side of Duck’s, and the Two crowd on the other. They sipped alcohol of various pastel colors and cast baleful looks at each other, whispered in throaty voices about what they should do to the other side to preserve the holy canons of taste.

Any locals who happened to drop by were placed somewhere between them, forming a kind of living DMZ. Now, I wouldn’t be bending your ear or eye like this if it hadn’t been for the strange events that began one day in June. I had stopped in at One to discuss arrangements for Leonard’s next opening: how much he wanted to spend on wine; if he would need one or two people from Duck’s to serve; how fancily they should be dressed considering the expected quality of the guests or lack thereof; aand so on.

After we had done our business, I stood up to leave.

Leonard said he’d come with me, since it was a nice sunny day, and have a drink at Duck’s. I figured the sun had nothing to do with it: he wanted to scout out what Two was up to, since that was normally why he resorted to drink in the middle of the day. But hell, that’s business.

We were halfway to Duck’s when I saw an oddly shaped shadow on the sidewalk, but quickly looked up and went on. Leonard saw it too, but he stopped, looked down.

He walked all around the shadow, peering at it with his connoisseur’s eye. “That’s interesting,” he said.

“It’s just a shadow, Leonard.”

“But the shape – it’s human.”

I glanced around. There was no one near us.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Reminds me of roadkill.”

He ignored that. “It’s really odd!” he said.

“Lots of things are really odd, Leonard; doesn’t mean you have to take an interest.”

“No, wait.” Leonard walked a circle around the shadow, careful not to let his own shadow fall on it, glancing up at the sun to get the proper angle.

“What are you doing?” I asked impatiently. He didn’t answer.

Leonard carefully spread his arms, angled his wrists, moved his legs and head until his own shadow was a pretty close imitation of the one on the sidewalk. He held the pose, moved his eyes to study the gesture his own limbs were making. “What does this look like?” he asked, trying not to move his mouth.

“A statue? A manikin at the mall?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that. What does this

gesture mean?”

“OK,” I said, “looks to me like you’re fending off something.” I grinned. “Maybe the Holiday Inn over there. Now are you done with this?” I asked, although not too impatiently for, after all, he was a major customer.

“Apprehension,” he said, “and chance. That’s what the shadow is showing us.”

And, sure enough, Leonard’s right hand palm up, tilted face, and slightly bent knees did look something like apprehension.

Now that he’d mentioned it, anyway, I guess. He shifted around, moved his own shadow. It took him a few seconds to set his limbs until his own shadow was overlaying the shadow point for point.

A few people on the other side of the street were staring at us. A boy pointed at Leonard and laughed. Someone said, “He’s a mime!”

Leonard came out of his reverie, lowered his arms, reddened. “OK,” he said, “let’s go.” He took one step and jumped like he’d touched a live wire.

“What?” I asked.

“I felt something -- odd. A kind of -- click. -- Never mind.”

He moved away. The shadow wasn’t there any more, just his own. We both remarked on that, but continued on toward Duck’s. Leonard walked slowly, like a soldier trudging through sand. Just about the time we got to the tavern door, he stopped.

“I feel -- something’s dragging at me.”

“Seen a doctor lately?”

“No -- it -- it’s the shadow.”

“The one on the sidewalk? The one that isn’t there any more?”

“Yes. I think -- it’s -- with me now.”

“That’s your own shadow, Leonard.”

“No -- I think -- never mind.”

With these words he walked into the tavern, glanced sideways with slitted eyes to see if anyone from Two was present, sat down at a table on the One side. I moved behind the bar, nodded to Jimmy who was serving at this quiet hour, asked Leonard what he’d like to drink. He didn’t even hear me.

After a while, Leonard left. It was getting toward noon, and people were coming in from offices and shops for the sandwich-and-suds special. Jimmy and I served. I made a few mistakes on the orders because I was preoccupied trying to

figure out just what that shadow was -- perhaps some kind of performance art or laser projection -- and why it had disappeared. But about half past twelve there was enough trade that I forced myself to concentrate on beer.

By two o’clock I’d forgotten the whole thing, and it stayed forgotten for a week. I saw Leonard occasionally during that time. He told me he’d heard that that Two was planning a big exhibition of young German painters, and that Jack had, supposedly, told his staff, “That’ll be the end of Gallery One!” Leonard looked distracted as he told me this, as if it were just casual news rather than a major doom event for him. And during the week he never mentioned the shadow.

Not once.

The next Tuesday, however, Leonard walked into Duck’s just before happy hour, motioned me to come outside, looked around conspiratorially.

“I’m having an opening on the thirtieth,” he said.

“A big one. My biggest ever. An installation. Same time as those Germans at Two. Show ’em who I am.

I’ll need a big order of wine. Good stuff this time, not that Croatian moose-pee.”

“Haven’t seen any announcements.”

“Tomorrow, in the papers. Big ads. Getting interviews, too.”

“Who’s the artist?”

“Me.” “What?”

“Well, not really me. Shadow, you know.” The way he said “Shadow,” I could hear the capital ‘S.’ I figured the gallery competition had gotten to him, and he was well over the edge.

“Come on in, Leonard, have a drink,” I said.

“On the house. Single malt.”

“No time for that. Can you have enough really good wine for two hundred people by the thirtieth?

And enough servers?”

I considered. “Sure.”

“Dressed up, you know. No T-shirts and jeans this time.”

“OK, but the wine will cost you --.”

“Whatever,” he interrupted. “I’ll be rich and famous after this.”

I insisted on a deposit large enough to cover my cost, because I was sure he’d have a fiasco and that would be the end of Leonard, and One, and their joint and several bank accounts.

The thirtieth approached too fast for my comfort, because Jack had also asked me to cater his opening at Two, which was going to be equally large and elaborate. I rounded up all my acquaintances who enjoyed gallery openings, which turned out to be no one. Expanding my search to “those who liked free wine” roped in several. But in the end, I had to pay out of pocket to corral the last few servers I needed.

Came the afternoon of the great day. Jimmy and I took wine, glasses, and napkins to both galleries. Two was resplendent with freshly painted ceilings and newly shined fixtures. On the walls hung the proudest works of Stümper, Beschmutzer, und Kleckser, the Germans. The young men themselves, whom Jack had imported for the occasion, stood around nervously touching their straw-colored hair. It looked like Jack might have a smashing event, hopefully not including my wine glasses; he had insisted on real glass.

Gallery One, however, was another story. As I walked in, I saw that nothing had been done to disturb the dust or brighten the walls. A few light bulbs were out. The abstract pastels of Gladys Oglethrop, none of which had sold, hung forlornly.

Leonard gestured me toward the back of the gallery, and now I saw what he’d been up to: Leonard had cleared out his entire stockroom / kitchen / office and transformed it into an installation space. It was painted light grey top to bottom, except for a section of floor in brilliant white behind a crimson velvet rope. New lighting had been installed. But if this was an installation space, where was the installation?

Leonard inspected the wine, but didn’t enlighten me. “Come by later,” he said. “You’ll see.” I told him I had to be at Two early in the evening (he didn’t look pleased at that) but would show up at One about nine o’clock to give my servers a hand.

At six-thirty, I and three members of my pickup-labor force were at Gallery Two finishing the setup. Per Jack’s instructions, we hadn’t allowed the Germans to begin drinking before anyone else, although they badly wanted to. At seven, when the first few guests walked in the door, everything was ready and the bar was open. The Germans hurried over and had several glasses of wine, spilling a few in their nervousness. By eight o’clock, the Germans were volubly explaining the deep soulful significance of their oils while listing slightly left or right, or supporting themselves with surreptitious hands to the wall behind them.

Jimmy showed up at eight forty-five, as promised, to relieve me. “How’s it going at One?” I asked. “Big turnout?”

He gave me a strange look. “It’s pretty good, but -- well, you’ll see.”

Leaving him in charge of the wine service at Two, I hurried over to One. Opening the door, I saw no one but my serving crew. Carlos, the crew chief, nodded toward the back room. I entered the installation-space, and stopped cold.

There, on the floor behind the rope, was the Shadow, slowly forming gestures by turns controlled, graceful, awkward. Dozens of people stood in front of the rope, each imitating the Shadow’s gestures, puzzling out what each could mean, understanding, with sudden gasps of breath, the secret each gesture held. I was immediately caught up in this, couldn’t help myself. As I rather ineptly copied the Shadow’s figures with my body, I felt, with a wave of emotion, that I understood, wordlessly, what each of the Shadow’s forms conveyed.

Joy, then daring; embarrassment; yearning; hatred; desperation; love. Resignation, forlornness.

All this time an uncanny silence had reigned; all of us held our breath. But then Shadow turned its head sideways and we saw its mouth move as if crying, shouting. As one, we cried out, shouted.

Shadow’s face down cast; as one, we wept. Its face upturned; as one, we grasped the feeling of a crude, terrible power. It became a dance of arousal, exhilaration, frenzy. At the climax, I felt the Shadow show me -- a self I barely knew beneath my studied jokiness, my distance, my customed neutrality about so many things.

Just then, the Shadow slipped through the rope, eluded our reaching hands, crossed the outer room of the gallery, glided through the door, its shape forming gestures of running, leaping. It waved its arms for us to follow. The guests left, Leonard in the lead; but I, I held back, reverted to observance. Through the gallery’s windows I saw the crazed dance began anew on the sidewalk, spilling into the street. I left, embarrassed, avoiding the others’ gaze. From a distance I looked back, saw the Shadow elude the rest, slip off into a side street, making a disjointed, jolly dance the while.

Next morning, the Post’s reviewer dismissed Leonard’s opening in delicate and reserved terms as “lackluster” and “wearisome,” but I had seen this man, mouth open, tears flowing, knees shaking, the night before. The reviewer who covered the Germans at Two was scathing, calling their work “daubs,” “smears,” and “fakes,” perhaps because (as Jimmy related to me), Herr Beschmutzer had spilled wine on what the reviewer claimed was his only good suit, and then tried to wipe it off, spilling even more. Neither gallery lasted much longer after that, and Duck’s suffered a major loss of patronage from which it never fully recovered.

Summer turned into an autumn quickly spent. Leaves hurried down into the gutters as if just getting it over with. The Shadow was still in the neighborhood, on a sidewalk not far away. It was a little fainter, less distinct than before, slowly fading into the concrete. No one paid attention to it but me. No one, perhaps, even saw the Shadow, then, but me.

I took to visiting it every few days, standing beside it, watching the human shapes it made. It seemed to be glad to see me. Then it was winter, and cold, and rainy, and I stopped coming.

Long after the year had turned, I remembered that once, just once, the Shadow had made what I thought might be ‘regret’: lowered arms, palms up, head bent forward and to one side. I began to think that its advent was not what it had intended, that the Shadow had come for me, had never meant for Leonard to find it. There had been some mistake. I had missed something -- that I might have been. Should have been. Perhaps.

O I am nothing & to nothing must return again If thou withdraw thy breath, behold I am oblivion They wept to see their shadows

-- Blake

TITIAN ON HIS JOUR NEY HOM E The rhythm of the oars, the gentle lapping, wood dripping, in and out, the lagoon in the dawn haze, you gaze at the boat bow on ripple after ripple and above, with trained wonder, at gulls, geese and ganders, messengers in the air’s irises, the veins in your skin ready to meet the shore’s bounty, the first autumn reds and mauves after the summer heat.

On the mainland the screeching and whining of wheels, hooves in rich claps on stones, on grinding grit and slaps of squelching mud.

Canvases wrapped on the bottom of the cart, your brushes breathing whispers of grass.

A road then in a narrow valley, the pupils of the gravel and the margins of the rusty brown and red of branching hedges along eddies of river water, a bounty of flowing milk-grey and gorges in vaults of pewter.

You spend the night on the streaming earth.

And wake in the fir trees’ severe green.

Canvases ready for a crowd of leaves’ blood reds, your breath in the threads of the first mountain blades.

(continued)

Davide Trame

p gu n i t e oun ise g llag s m ach r tickin p. i k v n s e u sa our od on y the e tr he Tre you d, in e of t and n wo ns h y w tio wit e win silenc valle bro unda d h r in t ening ighe olishe ith fo t h nd glis n the ark, p alls, w rs rou a l a l e l d Th the e w k pil uts a rries e c om and our h te, thi chestn s of b i y e f s of olom es o e iri , ins d d nc -blu e a t a n of l n o g h ou son and crim e, the the m . e and abov ks of arbl le e m d tab an r che rred k a e oa silv of sc our , y n et, t i sk elv it a unted et v s k ou bl ha hic w y ll feel a go od’s t n’t, it is, o a N sti d on e g u c t as and r han ne, th it, yo aint i i you ew w dilute and p t t n of won’ rink i u d yo will . you rt red a he

e Meeting of of the painting Th (featuring snippets dne by Titian) Bacchus and Aria

The Book Review David A. Kentner He stood in the bookstore reading the review of the book he was considering buying:

“…is an abbreviated Proustian self-examination of a boy’s lonely childhood and the minutia surrounding his cipher self…”

The radio came alive with the dispatcher advising the Fire Dept of the need for an ambulance at the golf course clubhouse. A man had stopped breathing.

He was just passing that building on his way to check on a house while the owners were away on vacation, so he pulled into the lot and ran inside the building. He checked the man’s vital signs – no pulse, no breathing. He began CPR and instructed a woman offering to help on how to give the man breaths of air while he maintained the chest compressions keeping the blood circulating.

Focused on keeping the man alive, he didn’t hear the ambulance’s sirens. Only when an EMT tapped his shoulder and offered to ‘take over’ did he realize the Fire Dept had arrived with their cart and equipment. No longer needed, he returned to his squad car and continued on his way to check the house.

The next day he heard how the Fire Dept was congratulated for the quick response and use of CPR that had saved the man’s life.

“…It is, however, without the labyrinthine syntax…”

The dispatcher unemotionally spit through the radio, “Red vehicle, white male driver, firing a rifle, no further information.”

Since he was only two blocks away, he advised he would respond.

Turning his squad into the cul-de-sac he didn’t see any vehicles moving.

Turning off the car engine, he listened – no vehicle engines running, no one moving or visible.

Asking, he received the answer, “No complainant.” Not even anyone to talk to as to what happened. There were four red cars parked on the

circular street. He decided he would approach the oldest and junkiest of the cars first… his own prejudices were at work. Or was it really his own bias surfacing? He didn’t know. Odd to be thinking about that now. Fact was, it was the closest car to him. Nobody was visible in any of the cars and if he walked past it to satisfy himself that he really wasn’t condescending and assuming that the suspect was poor, if an armed man was in it, the shooter would have his back available as a target.

He pulled on the trunk as he reached the old red car. At the Academy the instructors always stressed a gunman could be in the trunk waiting in ambush. The trunk lid was locked down tight.

He turned his attention to the driver’s outside mirror and saw eyes staring back at him. The driver’s door flew open and the driver jumped out.

The driver’s right arm was swinging across the man’s chest. In his hand was a sawed-off rifle.

Ingrained training instincts shouted for him to draw his pistol and shoot this man. He never could explain why he opted not to listen and instead charged the suspect with the rifle now aimed at him.

Nor could he ever explain why he had no memory of anything that occurred until he came to his senses and became aware he had the man on the ground, was handcuffing him, and the rifle was six feet away.

Inspecting the rifle, he found it to be loaded and that a bullet was in the chamber. Examining the bullet, he observed an indentation on the primer.

The driver had pulled the trigger, but the rifle had not fired. He should have been dead.

“…Why did the police appear so complacent about it all, almost as if this occurrence was commonplace?…”

The dispatcher was calling for an ambulance to a house for a gunshot victim.

He radioed he would be responding and floored the accelerator to his squad car. He was more than twelve blocks away and somehow knew he needed to get there fast.

A teenaged boy was standing out front of the house waving him down.

He asked what had happened as the two of them ran into the house.

“She was looking at the gun and it went off.”

On the living room floor was a fifteen-year-old girl bleeding from the center of her chest. There was no pulse. The breathing was faint, short, rapid, panting breaths. He asked the boy where the gun was.

The boy pointed to his left, so he told the boy to move to his right and stay there.

He began chest compressions while praying in his mind for God to let this girl live. Her breathing remained the steady panting, which he knew was not good, but at least some oxygen was getting into her system. He pulled out his portable radio with one hand while continuing the compressions with the other and yelled into it that help was needed--fast.

Was it five seconds, five minutes, or five hours? He didn’t know. He just knew he was trying to give this girl a little more time to live until help arrived. EMTs and a flood of Police Officers filled the room. He kept up the compressions as the EMTs lifted her onto the cart. He continued the compressions in the back of the ambulance all the way to the hospital and into the examining room until the Emergency Room staff took over.

He sat in a chair at the far end of the Emergency Room out of the way, watching as the girl’s family members arrived and the medical staff continued trying to save the girl’s life. It wasn’t long before a nurse whispered to him that the girl “didn’t make it.”

The nurse let him go into the nurse’s office where he let loose the tears.

A few minutes later he was informed another officer was waiting outside to take him back to his squad car which was still at the house where the girl had been shot.

He held his head down as he passed the grieving family. He didn’t know what he could say and he didn’t want them to see his red swollen eyes. He didn’t look up as one of the family members said, “Gonna go get a doughnut to go with that coffee break, cop?”

The officer drove him quickly back to his waiting squad car. Dispatch had calls waiting and they needed to get back to work.

“…full of angst and confusion, each one asking ‘Who am I? Who are you?’”

Meeting with the family he listened while they related to him how their mother had been pronounced dead of a perceived heart attack earlier in the day. Their concern now was that they couldn’t locate her car. It was late enough that most businesses were closed and they had called the owner of the shop where her car usually was repaired. The owner had said he didn’t have the car. They didn’t know what to think and had called the Police.

Walking through the house he noticed two things that stuck out in his mind. The lady’s glasses were on the couch and absolutely filthy from sweat and dirty smudge marks. The house was immaculate. The dirty

glasses didn’t fit her lifestyle. The other thing was that on the end table next to the couch all of the pictures were arranged so they faced the couch – all but one. That picture was nearest the couch and was a photograph of her deceased husband. The picture had been turned to face away from the couch. His guess was that it had been knocked off the table and set back on the table to disguise that fact.

One of the reasons this Department had hired him was his prior investigative and crime scene processing experience. He told his supervisor that he really believed a detective needed to be called in to the scene. He suspected something was wrong here. The supervisor made the call and was told there wasn’t enough of a reason to call in someone this late. That was the end of it.

He told the family to call the detectives first thing in the morning and make the request themselves. He had done all he could do for now. He agreed that something was amiss and further investigation was warranted The next morning he was called to the scene from his home to assist the detectives with processing the scene.

A few days later a neighbor’s son was arrested and charged with the lady’s murder.

“… is a cri d’coeur… The writing is repeatedly brilliant…”

He placed the book back on the shelf. He figured that if he needed a dictionary to understand ‘the review,’ he probably wasn’t going to understand the author’s scholarly, institutionalized, self-absorbed, predetermined opinions anyway. Besides, he was just a ‘dumb cop’--how could he possibly comprehend complicated issues like life and death?

He looked at his watch. It was nineteen years and eight months before the hour of retirement.

The review excerpts were taken from a book review written by Duff Brenna as posted on the web site of pifmagazine.com on May 31, 2008.

The police accounts are factual and happened to the author during his first four months working with the Freeport, Illinois, Police Department.

A Family Matter

Josh Mitchell

Photos:

Atina Thorning

Christopher Caldwell crosses the space between the stove and kitchen sink for what could have been the fiftieth time tonight. He turns the faucet to fill the kettle he’s holding. Returning to the stove he starts to boil water for more coffee. He then hears the door open and close in the adjacent washroom. His brother Michael now enters the kitchen. It’s 11:40pm and a single light overhanging the tiny kitchen table illuminates the small room.

“You’ve been gone awhile,” Christopher says. Michael pulls a chair from the table and sits without saying a word. Reaching into his pocket he grabs a pack of cigarettes, pulls one out and places it between his lips.

Outstretching his arm, but without looking up, he offers one to his brother.

Christopher quietly accepts one and the two brothers light their cigarettes in unison, and both exhale large plums of smoke, Michaels slightly larger.

“Did you find him?” Christopher asks “Yeah,” says Michael, as he takes another drag and shifts in his seat.

“And?” The kettle starts to whistle and Christopher quickly makes his way to the stove before the noise grows loud enough to fill the room. Michael makes a response but Christopher can’t understand what was said.

“What? I didn’t hear you.”

“I said nothing happened.” Christopher moves and places a cup of coffee in front of Michael. He then takes a seat opposite his brother and puts out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table. He then proceeds to pull out a

fresh one from a pack he just pulled from his pocket and places it between his lips. Outstretching his arm he offers one to his brother. Michael accepts, he jump starts his new cigarette from his old one and asks, “Is she okay?”

“I think so. We should take her to the doctors in the morning to get her checked out.” Christopher picks up his cup and blows lightly on the steaming liquid before cautiously taking a sip. “He beat her up pretty bad,” he continued. “Her left eye is swollen shut and her lip is busted kinda bad.

I don’t know about her arm. It doesn’t look broken but she was having trouble moving it, even a little.”

Michael smokes from his cigarette and solemnly nods, as if he’d expected to hear nothing else. Without hesitating he lifts his still steaming cup of coffee and drinks without flinching, either unaffected by the heat or too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice.

“So what happened when you found him?” Christopher asks.

“I already told you. Nothing happened.”

“But something must have happened. I mean you said you found him right?”

“Yeah, I found him but I didn’t do nothin’.” Michael stands and walks to the kitchen window and stares into the night. “The drunken son-of-abitch had run his truck into a tree. He wasn’t hurt too bad. None that I could tell at least. The sheriff was already there with the doc. They hauled him out from the driver’s seat and put ‘im in the sheriff’s car.” He takes another drag of his cigarette and continues staring into the night, his eyes not focusing on anything in particular in the darkness. He then adds as an afterthought, “I didn’t get a chance to do anything, even if I wanted to.”

Christopher takes another sip and looks intently at his brother’s back, as if trying to decipher a hidden meaning in his last words. “I should have been the one who went.” He says after swallowing, “I’m the oldest.”

“Yeah well, I’m the bravest so I went.” Michael moves back to the table and takes another gulp of his coffee, avoiding his brother’s eyes, then moves to the stove to refill his cup. After a few moments of silence Christopher hesitates and then finally asks the question that has been bothering him since Michael first stormed out of the house earlier that night.

“Did you take the gun?”

“What gun?” Michael quickly responds, acting as if accused of a crime.

“Sally and Jeff’s gun. The one they usually keep in Jeff’s nightstand.”

Reminding Michael as if he didn’t already know.

“No. I didn’t,” Michael says. “You can check for yourself.” He shifts on his feet then walks to the refrigerator and opens the door.

“I did check. It wasn’t there. I looked when I put Sally to bed, once I got her to sleep that is, and it wasn’t there.”

“Well how the hell should I know where the goddamn gun is? It’s not my house for Christ sake. Maybe he took it.” Michael motions with his head to

the window and the darkness beyond. “There’s nothing to eat in this goddamn place,” he says, closing the refrigerator door forcefully enough to rattle the few glass bottles that are sitting on top. Looking in the direction of the noise he notices the label on one and pulls it down. Moving to the cupboard he opens it and takes out a glass, and pours a small amount of the brown liquid. He lifts the glass and tilts his head back with the flick of the neck. He pours another, slightly larger, and repeats the process. He pours a third drink and offers the glass to his brother. Christopher takes the glass and empties it in the same fashion.

“I’m going to check on her,” he says rising, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Michael doesn’t move from his position at the counter. He listens to Christopher’s footsteps leave the room and travel into the next and finally up the stairs. Reaching into his pocket Michael grabs another cigarette and lights it. Within moments Michael can hear footsteps on the stairs again and then coming back into the kitchen.

“She’s still sleeping,” Christopher says as he re-enters the room.

“Good,” is Michaels only response. Christopher lights a cigarette of his own and takes his seat back at the table. Michael finally takes his eyes from the window and sits across from his brother, taking the glass and bottle with him.

“What time did she call you?” Michael asks, exhaling smoke towards the overhead lamp.

“Around ten,” Christopher says, and then reaches across the table he pours another drink. “She didn’t say much. Just that Jeff was drunk and real angry at something. She was crying a lot so it was kinda hard to get much outa her.” Christopher takes a deep drag from his cigarette after draining the glass. He notices Michael staring at him from across the table. His dark eyes burning as he listens to his brother’s report. “I heard Jeff say something in the background and then the line went dead,” Christopher continued, holding his brother’s stare for no more than a few seconds then looks down into his empty glass before going on. “That’s when I called you and made my way over here.” The two brothers sit and finish their cigarettes in silence.

At that moment the telephone rings. Christopher jumps at the abrupt break in the silence then immediately goes to the phone that hangs from the wall nearby.

“Hello?” he says, “Okay. Yes sheriff. Okay. Will do. Thank you. You too. Goodnight.” Christopher places the telephone back and looks over at Michael. “They’re going to hold Jeff overnight, on the account of being drunk and crashing his truck.” Michael eyes Christopher and asks, “Why didn’t you tell him about Sally?” Christopher holds Michaels gaze and responds, “It’s not my place,” he says.

“Not your place?” Michael asks, his voice rising with the question.

“What do you mean it’s not your place? She’s your goddamn sister isn’t she?”

“She’s a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions,” Christopher says, his tone matching his brothers. “We’re not kids anymore for Christ sake,” he says as he moves to the other side of the kitchen where he takes up Michael’s old post at the sink, in front of the window, his back to his brother. “This is a family matter.” He adds, as an afterthought.

Michael stands and turns to face Christopher, who remains unmoved.

“But she’s still your sister. That’s gotta count for something,” Michael responds, his voice returning to a normal tone. “This isn’t right. We’ve gotta do something.”

Christopher moves his head to look at his brother. He draws a cigarette and lights it. Michael also draws and lights a cigarette of his own. “We already did something,” Christopher says, slowly exhaling. He turns and leans back against the counter, resting his left hand on the cool, smooth surface of the tile, while he continues to smoke with his right. “We’re here aren’t we? What more do you want us to do? This isn’t high school where you can just go beat up her boyfriends because they did something to hurt her.”

“And what would you know about that?” Michael asks, his voice now rising again. “You never did anything. If it wasn’t for me she’d probably have been killed by now, looking back at the guys she used to go around with.”

“Alright, just calm down. I don’t want to wake her,” Christopher says.

“So what then? Is that your proposal? To just go beat the shit out of Jeff?

Do you honestly think that will solve the situtation?”

“Who said anything about solving anything?” Michael asks. “I’m just sayin’ this isn’t right.”

“Hell, I know this ain’t right. This whole goddamn situation is one big helluva mess,” Christopher says, taking one last drag of his cigarette. “But I don’t think we should get too involved. Not unless it’s something Sally wants us to do.”

“I still think you should have told the sheriff about it,” Michael says, casting his eyes to the floor. He turns and smashes the end of his cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lights another. Christopher shifts his weight between his feet, then walks and sits down at the table.

“Look,” he starts, “I’m not sayin’ we should just walk away or anything.

I just think that if we tell the sheriff then that could make more problems for Sally later on. Especially if it’s not something she’s willing to do. What if she does want to stay with him-“ “Why the hell would she stay with him?” Michael demands.

“I don’t know why. I’m just sayin’ what if. Who knows why people do the things they do. She probably loves the son-of-a-bitch. I’m merely suggesting that if she does want to stay with him, then how do you think it’s going to be with Jeff when he comes home in the morning? After finding

out that we told the sheriff what he did to her? Do you think she’s going to be able to smooth things out?”

Michael continues smoking but doesn’t say a word. Christopher reaches out and grabs the bottle, pours a drink and offers it to Michael, who after a moment’s hesitation reaches out and accepts, and then Christopher continues, “I’m just sayin’ we keep cool for now. She’s going to have to talk to us about it.”

“And what if she don’t?” Michael asks leeringly.

“Then I suppose we have to talk with Jeff. And I mean just that, a talk.

Let him know that this better not happen again or we will report it to the sheriff.”

Michael slowly shakes his head. He pours a drink and with a quick motion finishes it and forcefully puts the glass back down. “You always think talkin’ is the answer,” he says with contempt. “That’s not always the answer ya know.”

“Well you go right on ahead and call the sheriff and tell ‘im if you want,” Christopher challenged angrily. He reaches across the table and takes the glass, that’s sitting in front of Michael, and pours himself a drink.

He sips slowly and holds the burning liquid in his mouth, then swallows.

He finishes off the rest in the glass in one smooth swallow, and then looks across the table to where Michael is sitting. His brother is smoking and is looking directly at him. His legs are crossed, ankle on knee, and his foot on the floor keeps tapping.

After several moments of nothing but continuous tapping, a door is heard closing upstairs. The tapping suddenly stops. The brothers both look to the ceiling, raising only their eyes. Christopher immediately gets up and makes his way out of the room. Michael starts to rise but Christopher cuts him short by telling him, “Just wait here a minute will ya?” and motions with his palm to sit.

Michael sits and watches Christopher leave the kitchen. He waits until he hears his brother’s footsteps clime the stairs before he then silently exits the kitchen through the washroom door and out into the night. After a few minutes Christopher returns.

“She’s just going to the bathroom-“ he starts, as he comes back to the kitchen, but stops short when he notices his brother’s disappearance. He then returns upstairs to help his sister back to bed. Several minutes later he returns to the kitchen. Going to a drawer he pulls out a small telephone book and sits at the table and starts flipping through the pages. Not far into it he stops and goes to the stove to grab the kettle. He crosses the space between there and the kitchen sink for what could have been the fiftieth time tonight. He turns the facet, then seconds later he’s back at the stove, heating the now full kettle.

He then returns to flipping pages in the telephone book. He stops on a page and traces his finger down the list until he finds one of Sally’s close friends, Dawn Reynolds. He moves to the phone and right before he picks

it up to dial it rings. The unexpected noise startles him and he jumps and retracts his outstretched arm, as if a snake had struck out to bite him. Regaining his wits by the second ring he answers.

“Hello?” Christopher answers, he sits silent while listening to the voice on the other side of the line.

“Yeah, he was here tonight. Left a little while ago. Why?” Again he sits and listens attentively.

“What do you mean he shot him? Michael shot him?” Christopher asks in confusion. “Jesus Christ. Is he dead?” The voice answers. Christopher’s cigarette, being left unattended between his knuckles, has a long stem of ash that can’t sustain its own weight any longer and falls to the floor. Christopher takes no notice.

“I can’t believe this. I had no idea he was going to do something like this,” he continues, “he was here with me all night until just a little while ago. When I came back down the stairs and he was gone.” He’s asked another question.

“He told me that he didn’t have the gun. Can I come down and see him?”

“Tomorrow? Okay, what time? Okay, I’ll see you in the morning sheriff, thanks for the call.” Christopher then hangs up the phone and stares blankly at his sisters kitchen wall, trying to figure out the night. He notices that his cigarette has burned out and proceeds to light another.

Manic

is the

Dark Night

Michael Lee Johnson

Deep into the forest the trees have turned black, and the sun has disappeared in the distance beneath the earth line, leaving the sky a palette of grays sheltering the pine trees with pitch-tar shadows.

It is here in this black and sky gray the mind turns psycho tosses norms and pathos into a ground cellar of hell, tosses words out through the teeth.

“Don’t smile or act funny, try to be cute with me; how can I help you today out of your depression?”

I feel jubilant, I feel over the moon with euphoric gaiety.

Damn I just feel happy!

Back into the wood of somberness back into the twigs, sedated the psychiatrist scribbles, notes, nonsense on a pad of yellow paper: “mania, oh yes, mania, I prescribe lithium, do I need to call the police?”

No sir, back into the dark woods I go.

Controlled, to get my meds. I twist and rearrange my smile, crooked, to fit the immediate need.

Deep in my forest the trees have turned black again, to satisfy the conveyer-the Lord of the dark wood.

Artwork by Michael Lee Johnson

Dwellings Luigi Monteferrante We live in houses Cut brick from salt There is no rain To quench our thirst We kill the beast And suck its udder Stir milk with blood And lie awake In the shade When once I was a child The sky’s tears Fell from the sky And now I am broke My bones like salt I wait for the flood To turn me to flower I am bark With no tree I am tree With no sap I am salt With no tears The tears They’ve gone dry I tear at the sky And tear it asunder And in comes The ocean

The Whole History

of

Art

William Doreski You’re painting a painting too big for your studio. You pin it to one wall of the reading room and spread a tarp to protect the lustrous nylon carpet. Meanwhile in a trustees’ meeting I complain that the library does too little to promote the arts. The other trustees groan like washing machines.

They hate my sermons on art, its subversions and plenitudes, its anger, lust, and repentance.

One bearded old fellow opines that allowing your massive canvas to dominate the reading room makes art enough for everyone.

But I want every child in town to abandon the love of money and cheer van Gogh as he slices off and trades his ear for sex. That’s how real art thinks. Meanwhile your painting like the one at the Spouter Inn maddens the reading room regulars, the duffers reading Financial Times, the ladies with gardening journals.

As your giant forms take shape their minds lope ahead, unbidden, discovering landscapes gross enough to accommodate such beings.

These are places no one human should inhabit. As you paint you smile that tiny hatchet smile and daubs of azure and crimson writhe on your smock. The trustees exit the Trustees’ Room. We gaze at the genius of your painting and the bearded old fellow drops to his knees. You turn and face us with the whole history of art glittering in your flat brown eyes and I’m almost proud to cower among the rabble you despise.

Can I Get

a

Witness?

Eric McKinley I opened the door without looking. You know how you do, like sometimes when you answer the phone without checking the caller ID. Then a week later you find yourself helping a friend move to a fifth floor walkup on a sweltering July Saturday, or attending your grandmother’s poetry reading at the nursing home. It was like that. I opened the door without looking.

“Blessed morning to you, sir.”

“If you say so.”

“How are you today?”

The woman’s smile was determined, expansive. Maybe they gave out pills at Kingdom Hall. I wish this woman, Delores, would simply tell me so.

She might get somewhere then.

“Delores, I’m gonna be real with you, I’m pretty friggin’ hung over.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Dee, you knock on my door every other Friday morning. You’ve told me your name. I’m off on Fridays. So, on Thursdays I go out and get hammered. It’s why I’m hazy. Why I look this way. It’s why every two weeks I fuck up and open the door for you.”

“Or maybe you think I have something you need to hear?”

“Or, maybe I like embarrassing you?”

“Sir, I’m doing Jehovah’s business. I can’t be embarrassed.”

“Evidently.”

Delores was right. As I stood there in my twelve-year-old, green, threadbare, terry-cloth bathrobe, failing to make eye contact, scratching myself, she stood on my porch in her tight black coat, buttoned up and with a pitiful fur collar. And she was undeterred.

“Do you know about the coming of Jehovah?”

“I didn’t even know Jehovah had a girlfriend.”

Delores tilted her head and frowned at me. “You should visit the Hall and hear some truth.”

“Dee, I appreciate it. But I’m pretty stocked up on truth right here.”

She ignored this. I noticed her shifting to the left, trying to see around me, perhaps looking to see if there was someone else at home she could talk to. Delores was out of luck. There was no one. I live in my dead mother’s house. My only friends are from meetings, which is the only way I can face them. No women have been by in a while. In fact, Dee might be my number one. I moved to my right to block her, and we sway, to and fro, as if we were dancers making time.

“What are you looking for?” I said.

Delores was startled. “Oh nothing. Just trying to take some weight off my feet. I’m on them all day.”

I smiled. “So they permit lying in this cult of yours?”

“It’s not a cult.”

“Yeah well, what is it?”

“It’s a calling.”

“You’re called to bother people at home, lie to them and snoop inside their houses.”

Delores checked the top button of her coat. It was still fastened.

“Are you embarrassed now?” I asked.

She straightened up some more. “I think I’ll leave you to your day, sir.”

“My day usually doesn’t start for another four hours.”

“Be that as it may . . .” She turned to go. Delores reached the second concrete step.

“Hold up,” I said.

She stopped.

“Can we make a deal?”

“What kind of deal?

“If I buy one of your pamphlets, will you promise not to ring my bell anymore?”

“No,” Delores said.

“No? What do you mean no?”

“I mean, I can’t do that. If you buy a Watchtowers, the Hall requires me to come back and discuss it with you, answer your questions.”

“The Hall requires . . . listen, I’m not talking about reading the thing. I’m talking quid pro quo. I get you a sale, you leave me be.”

“Sir, I’m not on commission.”

“You could’ve fooled me. And stop calling me sir. Never mind. I was trying to do us both a favor.”

As the sun burned my eyes through leafless trees, Delores pulled a loosely wrapped package out of her bag.

“There’s an interesting article in this latest issue about what it means to truly give, to give without expecting to get.”

“Dee, everyone’s giving to get.”

“Not Jehovah.”

“Shit lady, listen. I’m going inside to get my wallet. I’m going to give you ten bucks. In exchange, you give me as many pamphlets as you want and the satisfaction of sleeping soundly on a Friday morning. Now, do we have a deal or not?”

Delores nodded. Her face had regained its calm slack. She tapped her right foot.

“Okay, wait,” I said.

With that, I went upstairs for the wallet in Thursday night’s jeans. My steps creaked both up and down. My banister flexed when I held it. I made sure to re-tie my robe as I returned to the front door. There, I saw three Watchtowers on my door mat which read: OH SHIT. NOT YOU AGAIN. Delores wasn’t there. I checked my downstairs to see if she had snuck inside. She hadn’t. After picking the package up off the mat, I looked down my vacant street, sighed, and closed the door.

Betty

with the

Peacock

Willow Healy

Fading Flurries Sean Wiebe It is not the grudge but the grief that matters.

~Shamus Heaney Winter’s weather has firmly settled in, with thick freight train efficiency rollicking over the lines, even the stop signs are up to their necks in sheets of white quilt pulled up tight, as if promising a cozy night.

I write to take a holiday, huddled close to a few photos framed over the mantle, shadows dance around them, flick and twitter in the candle light. For one irrational impalpable moment, I want to believe that you are there, travelling in reverse, swept into my album of unkept promises. I brush off the dust from this page, waiting for a new thought that has been slow in coming.

The Atmosphere Here is Dark and Abstract, Yet Very Organic

Jeff Hendrickson

Then Everything Folded

in on Itself

Jeff Hendrickson

Red Yellow Red Katie Rutherford red and yellow imprinted on my eyes on everything i see. beckoning a seizure, the light bends swiftly around the left and then right side of each tree trunk, resting on my face. parallel lines. redyellowredyellowred.

Photo: Katie Rutherford: Arecibo

Conceptual Conflict Felino Soriano The doubter pushed his blanket of behavioral thought atop most worded matter.

Systematically within chiseled thesis spoke regarding his tongue lashing about truth, truth from the human ascertained as actual antithesis, or, interpretation of renamed manifestation, a newly clothed thought reborn and repositioned inside a light now covering dust of the other side of darkness. The doubter proclaimed what was spoken unraveled as to an actual unreality, a subjective spoken display of bird species ramming its head against the cliff of unknowing its natural bodily dispositional gift.

Spirit Faces William Doreski Touring graveyards in Chester, Grafton, Westminster, I consider the spirit faces engraved by eighteenth-century carvers probably inspired by Indian petroglyphs at Bellows Falls.

The hot afternoon looks insipid, cloud-hung but pale and naïve, the Great American Holiday unfolding in thousands of cookouts.

Not a day to regard the dead— their faces, round and dubious, rising from the weathered slate like soap bubbles blown by a child.

Their expressions embody doubts not only about the afterlife but about the aesthetics of death.

Even those rimmed with sun-like auras maintain at best a tentative gaze back into the world they’ve left and forward into the airiest notion of something better.

Here’s one clearly dropping a tear, the large but simplified eyes blank with self-pity. And here a married couple grimace in their separate but paired orbits.

And here angel wings levitate

a surly and unwilling old soul.

And last, in Middletown Graveyard in Grafton, an inflated face with pinched little features crowned by carefully marcelled hairdo and wearing a heart-brooch centered under its chin attracts attention from a pair of branch-bearing doves.

The heat dizzies. I slump on the grass and note that the ranks of headstones totter not like a mouthful of unkempt teeth but like bundles of illegible manuscript left to fade in some further dimension where no one has learned to read.

“Roy Flint, Circa 1988” Jen Conley

Roy Flint had just pulled his car up to the store front and turned off the radio when he heard a scream. As he got out of his car and stood up, he could see a large guy pinning his girlfriend up against his van.

His hand was on her neck. It was after nine at night and the only light came from some of the long fluorescent bulbs in the overhang of the strip mall. Roy walked towards the van, hearing the tense whimpers coming from the girlfriend. Suddenly, the guy pulled his arm back and swung it forward, whacking her in the face with his open hand. She cried out but he pulled her toward him and went to hit her again.

Roy jumped on his back and yanked at his arms. He felt the solid weight of thick limbs and a strong back as the guy arched and swung around to face his intruder. Roy was wiry, lean and quick, but no match for this hulking monster. Roy jumped back but then lunged at him again, only to be thrown against the van and punched in the face.

Stunned, Roy slipped to the ground, dizziness and nausea overtaking him. Then the girlfriend kicked him. “Don’t touch my boyfriend!” she screamed. Roy looked up and saw two and three visions of her angry face before she disappeared and the van raced away.

“Isn’t that always the way,” someone said, bending down. “You finally come to the aid of a damsel in distress, and what does the bitch do? She kicks you to the curb!”

Roy held his nose and felt wetness. “Shit!” he said.

“And now your nose is bleeding.” It was Darren (Dandy-Darren is what they called him in school) who worked two doors down at the Hallmark card store, which he had just closed up for the night. Darren held out his hand. “Come on. Let me help you inside.”

Inside Vinny’s Pizza, where Roy worked, Vinny appeared from the back kitchen. He threw Roy a wet rag and told him to go to the bathroom. “You’re lucky it’s a slow fucking night,” he said to Roy. “There’s a lull in my delivery calls.”

In the bathroom, Roy tilted his head back and held the wet rag on his nose. His older brother, Jesse, always told him to never get caught up in someone else’s business. “It won’t ever do you no good. Nobody’s ever thankful.”

When the bleeding stopped, Roy walked out of the bathroom and found Darren sitting in his usual seat—the middle red booth near the wall, right under the framed photo of The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

He was eating a slice of pizza and drinking an orange soda. Roy grabbed a Coke out of the cooler, sat down in another red booth and

lit a cigarette.

Roy knew Darren was gay. It had been obvious for years, all the way back to the third grade when he just was a little too neat and a little too delicate. Over time, he turned into a great gossip and the girls loved him, giggling with him in the halls of the high school and running to him when something unbelievable happened. Darren was going to leave this dump of a New Jersey town and live in New York City, he told everyone. That’s where it was all happening, up in New York. “Think about it—all the news, all the fashion, television, everything happens there. It’s the center of the world.” Roy thought that if Darren cared so much about gossip, then the center of the world was probably the best place for him. That’s why seeing Darren in Vinny’s Pizza night after night—a year after graduating high school—always seemed a bit on the strange side.

“How’s the nose?” Darren asked, wiping his fingers with a napkin.

Roy shrugged. “Just peachy.”

Darren nodded.

A few minutes later Roy’s girlfriend, Camille, walked in with Michelle Mazzoitti and Darlene Mahoney. They were all dressed in colorful short tube skirts and oversized shirts with heavy padding in the shoulders. Their high heels clicked against the linoleum floor of the pizza parlor and the sweet smell of hairspray from their wildly teased hair spread through the air like a thick haze of an insect fogger.

“Hey sweetie!” Camille said. In a second she added: “Holy shit!

What happened?”

Michelle and Darlene gasped and fluttered after Camille.

“Your boyfriend’s on the crack pipe these days!” Vinny yelled from across the counter. “Stupid fucking jerk. I got a business to run. I can’t have fights and bloody noses around my establishment.”

Roy took a drag on his cigarette, squinting his eyes from the smoke.

Michelle looked at Darren. “Did you see this?”

Darren nodded. “I saw the whole thing. This huge beast of a male was beating on his girlfriend and Roy jumped in and tried to defend her honor.”

Michelle and Darlene smiled. “Ooooh. How sweet.”

“She kicked me,” Roy explained.

Vinny laughed. “Never get involved in a domestic. Cardinal rule.”

Roy shook his head and then looked at Camille. She wasn’t smiling.

“Did you know her?” she asked.

Roy shrugged. “Never seen her before.”

“You’ve never seen her but you care enough to jump in on her and her boyfriend?” Her arms were crossed along her chest and her fingers were ticking, long pink nails fluttering under the lights.

Roy sighed. “Don’t start, Camille.”

Michelle grabbed a cigarette from Roy’s pack and lit it. “We’re going down to Seaside. It’s Ladies Night at the Bamboo. Wanna come?” Then she turned to Darren. “How about you?”

Darren shook his head and leaned back in the red booth. “No, but thanks.”

Camille looked at Roy. “You’re not coming anyhow. Your face looks like shit.” Then she marched out of the pizza parlor. Darlene shook her head in bewilderment and then followed after her.

Michelle sighed. “It’s probably menstrual,” she explained to Roy before leaving, the glass door swinging shut behind her. Within a minute, the flash of headlights swung across the pizza parlor’s windows and the screech of tires pierced through everyone’s ears. The telephone rang. A moment later, a paper airplane landed right in front of Roy’s can of Coke. Vinny laughed. “Yo, Rocky—delivery!”

It was almost ten-thirty when Roy got back from the delivery. Vinny was closing up for the night a little early because he was off to see his mistress, as he called her. “I gotta be careful,” he was always saying to Roy. “Her husband’s a state trooper.”

“Doesn’t that make you her mistress if she’s married?” Roy would ask.

“No, it makes me her lover,” Vinny would say.

Vinny handed Roy a pizza box. “One last one—over on Chestnut.

You can—will—give me the cash tomorrow.”

Roy nodded and took the box. “Give the woman a kiss for me.”

Vinny grinned, simulating a gyrating act, before disappearing into the back kitchen.

In the car, Roy passed Darren walking towards the railroad tracks just as rain started to knock against his windshield. “Shit,” he groaned.

So he turned the car around and pulled up alongside Darren. “You need a ride home?” he yelled.

Darren shrugged. “I live far.”

Roy shook his head. “It’s raining. Don’t matter.”

Darren got into the car and rode with Roy to deliver the pizza before they headed out of town, driving along the road that ran parallel to the railroad tracks.

Darren lived in a neighborhood about two miles away from town.

When Roy and Jesse were younger, before they had cars, they would use the railroad tracks to get to that neighborhood to visit and hang out with friends. They would walk along quietly, lobbing over the railroad ties, looking through the scrub pine trees as they went, searching for a red fox or a whitetail deer to spot. Most of the time, they just

saw some beady-eyed opossum waddling along the pine needles or a batch of dragonflies buzzing over the rails. Now and then one of the old trains carrying gravel and sand from the mines would rattle by, eight or ten quarry cars wobbling behind, slow enough to jump on and catch a ride.

“My brother, Josh, usually picks me up but lately he’s been getting neglectful—seeing some girl lately. I don’t know.” Darren said.

Roy nodded and lit a cigarette, cracking the window a bit to let the smoke slide out of the car. Darren spoke for most of the ride, talking about his brother using a fake address to attend another high school, one with a winning football team. “My dad just couldn’t handle the embarrassing losses from our high school’s team. Josh’s got a real chance at getting a scholarship to somewhere decent.” Then Darren laughed. “But my dad didn’t bet on Josh getting this girlfriend. She’s a bit of a diversion.”

Roy drew on his cigarette. All through high school, Jesse told him over and over again to get a job after school, not play football. “Get yourself started early,” he advised. “That way, when you finish high school, you have a something all ready for you.” But Roy didn’t want to do roofing work like his brother. Roy wanted something better, anyway, something more steady, more predictable, something that could get him a mortgage on a house or at least a truck loan. He himself was waiting for a job in the phone company. One of his aunt’s boyfriends worked there. Roy figured if he could get in the phone company he could buy himself a truck, save up for a house, and then marry Camille. It was a good plan, but he had to get into the phone company first.

Roy’s nose wasn’t broken. It stayed a little swollen for a day or two, but by the end of the week, you’d never know he had been punched.

Camille apologized for getting so upset. She said that sometimes she just got jealous and all. It was a girl thing. Roy brushed it off and told her not to worry about it. Then he took her down to his basement room—the one he had taken from Jesse when he had moved into an old rented house with his new girlfriend Lori—and they made up on his bed. When they finished, she got up to watch t.v. in the small den outside his room. Roy put his hands behind his head and sighed. Ten minutes later, Camille was back, standing over him and pushing his arm. “I’m not hanging around here all day. Why does it smell like cat pee down here?”

Roy sat up. “It’s dog pee. Jesse got a puppy before he moved out.”

Camille rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “It’s damp down here. Can’t we go somewhere else?”

So Roy took her to the mall.

A week later, Roy saw Darren walking down the road toward the railroad tracks again. So he picked him up and drove him home.

Darren talked some more about his brother’s girlfriend and the fight his brother and his dad had because his brother was late coming home the other night—he had a game the next day. “He’s such an idiot, my brother.”

The next time Roy saw Darren, it was in the pizza parlor. “If your brother don’t show up, I’ll take you home.” And so it went for the rest of football season.

One night, Roy asked Darren when he was moving to New York City. “That’s what you were always saying in school.”

Darren nodded and stared out the car window, looking as they drove by endless acres of scrub pine trees. “I’m saving up for my move.” He was quiet for another moment before adding: “Because once I’m gone, I can’t come back, you know. To all of this.” Then he gestured in the air as a deer darted across the dark road. Roy swerved and then caught the car so it righted again. It was a quick move.

When they got to his house, Darren thanked Roy and got out of the car. Someone opened the front door—his mom, Roy guessed. Roy waved to her but she didn’t wave back. He didn’t think anything of it and drove away.

At home, he found Jesse sitting in his room, fooling around with his puppy—now almost a full grown Labrador. The dog yelped and rolled on the floor as Jesse played with him. There was an open cardboard box on the chair and it was overflowing with two deer racks, some tape cassettes, a couple of rolled up posters, and a framed picture of their mother. She had died years earlier, when Roy was eleven and Jesse was thirteen.

“I’m getting married to Lori,” he said, standing up and pushing his dark hair out of his eyes.

Roy leaned on the dresser. He felt the room whirl a bit as he absorbed Jesse’s announcement. Finally he asked: “When?”

“Not for another year. But it will be a real wedding with a church and reception—you can be the best man.”

Roy thought about this for a moment. The two of them had been living with their grandmother and aunts ever since their mother had died of breast cancer. They hadn’t seen their father in years. “You haven’t even been seeing Lori that long. You sure about this?”

Jesse shrugged, pulling a tin of Skoal out of his back jeans pocket.

“It’s what I want.”

Roy lit a cigarette and nodded, trying to pretend the news didn’t bother him one way or another. But the truth was that he felt let down, hurt. Roy had always been sure the thing with Lori wouldn’t last long, never mind marriage. He even thought that maybe Jesse would move back into their grandmother’s house and they could hang out for a couple of more years. Roy remembered when their mother died, it was Jesse who bawled and punched the walls. Roy sat on the chair and watched him until Jesse’s knuckles were raw and cut up, and then Jesse sat down next to Roy and told him it was okay if he wanted to cry. “Guys aren’t supposed to cry but if your mother dies, nobody’s gonna give you any shit about it.” Roy didn’t cry then, but two days later, at the funeral, tears fell and fell from his eyes and it was Jesse who put his arm around him and held him up.

Later, before he left, Jesse warned Roy about driving Darren home.

“The boy is gay as a three dollar bill.”

Roy did wonder about Darren and his three dollar bill weirdness.

Not that Roy had any interest in Darren romantically—in fact, when he thought about it, he became repulsed, which made him feel a lot better. “I can’t be gay then,” he said to himself out loud. But despite that weirdness, Roy didn’t mind driving Darren home. He liked the guy.

He liked the way Darren chattered and the way he seemed to appreciate the ride. He liked the way he talked about the apartment he was going to get in Greenwich Village. “I might have to share with someone. But who cares, it’s New York, right?” And then he would go on about some stores or clubs he read about—places where celebrities went and where he was going to go. Roy never had anything to add to the conversations but it was something different to listen to, something he wasn’t really familiar with, having only seen New York City from the Statue of Liberty (a Boy Scout trip when he was twelve) and on the eleven o’clock channel four news his grandmother fell asleep to on the couch every night.

Once, Darren asked Vinny about Greenwich Village. Vinny, who still had family up in Staten Island, had a lot of strong opinions on AIDS and homosexuals. “I get uncomfortable in that area of Manhattan,” he explained. “So it’s not a place I gravitate to, you see, and therefore, this makes me unfamiliar with its landmarks.” Later, in the back, Vinny nudged Roy. “You and him got a thing going on?”

“Fuck you,” Roy snapped. Later, he told Darren he was sick and said he’d have to get another ride home. Darren smirked. “No problem. I’ll call a taxi.”

Of course, Darren walked home. There were no taxi cab companies within a fifteen mile radius.

It was also the last week in November and it had gotten cold.

One night, after returning from a delivery, Roy found Camille’s white car sitting outside Vinny’s Pizza. When he looked through the glass windows, he saw Darren sitting in his usual spot, eating his slice and flipping through a magazine. He saw Camille walking out of the back kitchen, her head down. She wiped her mouth and went into the bathroom. A moment later, Vinny flounced out from the back, fidgeting with the tie of his white pants. Roy backed away from the door and waited off to the side, staring up at the long, white florescent bulbs in the overhang. They made buzzing noises that seemed to grow louder in volume. His stomach tightened and rage overwhelmed him. He wanted to go in there and go off on her, but then he started to think maybe he had it wrong. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. If he accused her of anything then he’d have to back it up—he’d have to confront Vinny and that would be the end of his job. Roy knew

there weren’t many opportunities around town for someone like him— McDonald‘s or Burger King, maybe. His grandmother needed the rent money from Roy or she’d have to take on more cleaning jobs, which wouldn’t be fair. And until the phone company came through, he couldn’t misread a situation and then get all crazy-mad about it. What if he was wrong? Camille wouldn’t do that to him. He’d taken care of her. He’d given her money to fix her car. He bought her three gold necklaces and a bracelet. This was all a misunderstanding, he told himself again. Nothing happened, nothing happened. Roy counted slowly to thirty and then took a deep breath before he opened the glass door.

Now Vinny was in the front, pulling a pie out of the oven and Camille was sitting, sipping at a soda. She jumped up when she saw Roy. “Hey babe! Darlene’s having a party.”

Roy half-smiled at her and walked up to the counter. He dumped some money in front of Vinny. “Any more to go out?”

Vinny shrugged and gestured to the pie he was boxing up. “Just this one. And I’m closing early, so I’ll take it over. It’s a friend of mine.”

He winked at Roy and then nodded his head to Camille. “Take your lady to the party. She’s all dressed up.”

Roy looked at his girlfriend. Indeed she was. Tight red pants, white sweater, red heels, lipstick just applied, some of it stuck on her teeth.

“Let me go home first and take a shower,” Roy said to her. “So you go ahead. I’ll meet you there.”

Camille folded her arms and sighed. “I always have to wait for you.”

This irritated Roy. “What?” he snapped. “I want a shower. I don’t want to stink like shitty pizza.”

Vinny yelled at him. “Hey! Watch it, fuckface!”

Suddenly, Roy wanted to jump over the counter and tackle Vinny to the floor. He saw himself doing it, Vinny taken by surprise.

But he did nothing except stare at his girlfriend for a long moment.

“What?” she finally said.

He shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Do me a favor—give Darren a ride home.” Darren lived a few blocks from Darlene.

Camille was annoyed. She looked at Darren. “Do you want to come to the party?”

Darren smiled. “Sounds like a gas.”

Roy went home and took a shower. Then he sat down on the couch and watched the eleven o’clock news from New York with his grandmother.

A few days later, Roy found Jesse in the backyard shed, looking for some tools to fix his car. “Lori and me ran into your gay buddy Darren

the other day,” he said.

Roy pulled out a cigarette but Jesse chased him outside. “Grandma’s got a gas can in here for the lawn mower. What the hell are you trying to do, blow me up?”

Roy stepped outside and sat under a crooked pine tree—it leaned towards the shed as if it were going to crash against it. Dead, coppercolored pine needles littered the ground.

When Jesse emerged from the shed holding a metal tool box, he continued. “So, as I was saying, Lori and me ran into your buddy.”

“Gay buddy,” Roy said, lighting up his cigarette.

“Yeah,” Jesse nodded, putting the tool box on the ground and then bending down to open it. He rummaged through it, the silver tools clanging and clinging against each other and against the metal box.

“Listen,” Jesse finally looked over at Roy, pulling a wrench out. “When I saw Darren, I thought to myself, he just ain’t fitting in around here.

Not that you always gotta fit in with all the backwards idiots around here, but Darren just sticks out, you know?” Jesse twirled the wrench in his hand. “And then I thought, it can’t be easy for my brother to have a buddy that just don’t fit in.”

Roy flicked a lit cigarette ash on the ground. It landed on a pine needle, igniting it. Roy watched as the needle swelled red and then fizzled to black. A touch of gray smoke twisted up from the ground.

Jesse shook his head.

“And what did your future bride say?” Roy asked. “What were her observations?”

Jesse sighed and then chuckled. “Lori? Well, she just thinks he’s gonna try something on you. Catch you off guard—put you in an uncomfortable situation.”

Roy nodded and then took a drag of his cigarette, leaning his head back against the tree. The sky was heavy and thick with overcast, brooding clouds. “He’s just a friend I drive home because he doesn’t have a car.”

Jesse closed the tool box and stood up. “Fair enough.”

“Besides, one of these days soon,” Roy said, “Darren’s gonna move to New York City.”

Jesse nodded and pointed the wrench at Roy. “Now that’s a good future plan for that boy.”

It was a week before Christmas when Darren got out of Roy’s car to find two cardboard boxes of his things on the small concrete step in front of his house. Roy had driven him home, small bits of ice falling from the sky and hitting the car as they went along the slippery roads.

Roy was just about to pull away when he noticed that Darren had

stopped in front of the boxes. So he put the car in park and got out, ice nicking his face, hissing as it fell on tree branches.

He walked up to the house and saw that the boxes were filled with what looked like clothes and books, but it was dark and the Christmas lights had been turned out. Roy bent down and grabbed one of the boxes and told Darren to get the other one. On the ride back to Roy’s house, Darren revealed that his mother had caught him kissing some guy he had met at Darlene’s party. “I brought him back to my house and we snuck into the garage because it was cold.”

The ice came down harder and Roy said nothing. He gripped the steering wheel and focused on his driving. One slip and they could be in the woods, stuck for hours.

“Anyhow, she’s been at me for a couple of weeks and earlier today I finally told her I’m not changing. Church, God, counseling will not fix this problem of mine.”

At his house, Roy showed Darren to his basement room, leaving the wet boxes in the car.

Darren sighed. “Can you take me to Metropark tomorrow? I have some money saved up and all. I just need to go to the bank and then I need a ride to the train station. Maybe, if you have some old duffle bags, I can put my stuff in them. I can’t carry two boxes on a train, and I definitely can’t wander around New York with them.”

Roy went upstairs and woke his grandmother, who was asleep on the couch. She nodded and went off to bed. Roy watched the end of the news and noticed there was a note on the coffee table. It was from his aunt’s boyfriend. There was a phone number on it. Underneath the number was a sentence: “Call about an interview for the phone company.”

They woke early and ate pancakes his grandmother made. Darren chattered with her about New York and told her these were the best pancakes ever. She swiped him on the shoulder and said they were Bisquick. “Nothing to them,” she smiled.

Roy gave Darren two duffle bags to shove his stuff in, but most of it had been ruined from the ice. Only some clothes and two books were salvageable. They drove over to Vinny’s Pizza and dropped the rest of it in the back dumpster. Then Roy took him to the bank and soon they headed up the Parkway—an hour’s drive to Metropark.

Darren told Roy it was his mother who had the problem, that it was his mother who made him leave. “She says I’m not her son. My dad and my brother—big he-men football lovers that they are—they were okay with it. Well, not okay, but they didn’t think I should be disowned.” Darren looked out the window. “Aaah, she’ll come around

one day, right?”

Roy nodded. He thought about his own mother and how much he missed her. He especially missed the sounds of her—the way the brush grazed through her long hair, the way silver bangles on her wrists clinked and jingled, the way her clogs dragged along the worn wooden floors of their old apartment. But mostly he missed the way she talked. She had one of those gravelly voices—it sounded like the crackle of dead leaves when you crushed them in your hand. He missed how she would chatter on the telephone, gossiping with her sisters, using her raspy voice. Roy wondered if his mother would have put his stuff in two boxes on the front porch if he were caught kissing a guy in the garage, even though Roy knew he would never kiss any guy. But the question still bothered him. Of course it was disgusting and sick of Darren to be into men. Roy agreed with Darren’s mother.

But Roy was still disturbed by her actions. It just didn’t seem right.

Roy left the car in the concrete parking garage and walked Darren to the ticket office. He stood outside and smoked as Darren went inside and bought his ticket. When he emerged, he held up his ticket and grinned. “One way to Penn Station, New York.”

“How long is the ride?”

Darren told him it was only a little over a half an hour. Roy nodded and thought how weird it was to be so close to this famous city.

They walked up several flights of stairs until they reached the platform, where they walked until they found an empty bench.

Darren started to talk. “Roy, you should know that I really appreciate all you have done.”

Uncomfortable, Roy looked across the tracks, to the southbound platform. Darren continued. “I have to tell you this, though.”

Roy lit another cigarette and Darren sighed. “Here goes. I am going to put this as delicately as possible.” He took a deep breath.

“You’re a good guy and you deserve a good girlfriend.”

Roy stared across the tracks, smoking, and waiting for more but there was none. Darren just stopped.

Within a couple of minutes, there was a whistle. A slick gray train quickly appeared from the southwest, racing alongside the platform, slowing and then stopping. Darren grabbed his bag. He shook Roy’s hand, strong and solid, like a father might instruct his son to do. Then he stepped on the train, the gray doors sliding closed, the train moving forward, zipping out of sight within seconds.

Roy stood on the platform, a cold wind whipping across the tracks, most of the people gone, on the train heading for New York. He watched a squirrel hop over the rails and the ties, its head twitching as it looked to the northeast and then down again as it hopped away.

Roy got his job at the phone company, he bought a truck, and he moved in with—not married—Camille.

And then he found out that she had been sleeping with one of the managers from the local McDonald’s. She wanted to work things out, go to a couple’s counselor, see a therapist.

Roy shook his head because he finally decided he deserved a hell of a lot better.

“Well, I never could get close to you—that’s why I cheated.” She was standing in the kitchen of their rented apartment, crying. Roy ignored her. So she turned vicious. “I know you’re just dying to get back to Darren. You two did gay things together, huh? Maybe that’s why I turned to other men.”

Immediate and primal rage took over. Roy grabbed Camille and pushed her up against the refrigerator, grasping her neck with his hand, his other prepared to strike. Her eyes went wide and scared.

He clenched his teeth and took short, wild breaths, his nostrils flaring like a bear. He held her for half a minute before letting go and walking away. “We’re DONE!” he shouted.

So he left her and Camille moved away and Roy took up with a nicer girl, one who didn’t screw men in charge of food.

Venge S.P. Flannery

I drive the machine that scrubs floors through the glass panels because I am told not to stop, to keep going by supervisors adamant about securing their dominance, alpha status amongst the troop, show control to people above them, superiors who salivate at subordinate behavior, so to make them wet, I grind broken glass into the travertine limestone floor, then accelerate the machine towards where they stand, where they stood before I sent them over the edge.

Smack!

James Berkshire

Silent Signs Olga Zilberbourg 1.

My sister Zoe, a travel writer, had just returned to New York City from TelAviv or Riga or St. Petersburg when somebody told her I had three months left to live. The news struck Zoe as rather odd: nobody at the headquarters of the travel publishing firm where we both work could trace the source of this information or venture a guess as to the cause of my impending death, and Zoe is not the one to believe uncorroborated rumors. She brushed the idea aside, and proceeded doing business as usual: finished her report on the latest adventure, ordered new custom luggage from Signe Mou on Fifth Avenue, and went out for lunch with her boss, our chief editor Karen Everest. Karen is Zoe’s boss only nominally; in fact, Zoe herself hired and trained Karen during her own brief stint as the chief at Kongo-Roo. The job kept her stationed in New York for several months at a time—it was the longest period of time Zoe had spent in one place since college, and she almost single-handedly caused the demise of this 100-year old organization driving everybody crazy with her constant flow of ideas for radical change. It was she who opened our surprisingly successful West Coast office (hiring me as a technical editor), and immediately attempted to do the same in China and Ireland, I think. When those ventures almost bankrupted the company, Zoe announced that she was a travel writer at heart and turned her position over to Karen. They say that after two and a half years of tenure my sister’s office had remained a bare white-walled room without a single picture or personal item.

The counter-revolution enjoyed far more success than the attempted revolution, and ever since peace has been reinstated, the wisened office staff does everything possible to insure that Zoe is not in the office longer than is absolutely necessary to approve the final edits to her columns, process the paperwork, and receive an expense check. A week or two after receiving the news about my upcoming death, Zoe departed on her next trip to Patagonia or Tasmania or South Africa where she spent about two months of extensively researching and personally exploring the local art markets. A brilliant writer and more recently an art critic, Zoe insists on learning at least the basics of all the dialects within her itinerary; she is fluent in four languages, reads a dozen more, and can effectively negotiate with almost anyone on the planet. When she finally returned to New York armed with finds, enriched with stories, and suffering from an olfactory hallucination causing her to perceive the odor of coffee in everything from office supplies to recently printed gallery brochures, everybody from the

Untitled (Inspired

by

Silent Signs)

Gay Degani

30th to 35th floors was feverishly discussing the advance of my terminal condition. It was widely believed that I was in a very bad shape, yet nobody dared to contact me directly or made any attempts to inquire about my health and spirits. They were waiting for a sign from Zoe about the appropriate course of action. Zoe was unintimidated even when she realized that her next business trip was going to take her to San Francisco: my current residence and her hometown that she left shortly after college more than twelve years prior. Of course, she had no intentions of seeing me.

Zoe had another lunch meeting with Karen Everest during which she dropped a hint or two questioning the necessity of her presence in San Francisco, but straw-haired Karen is one of those perfectly amiable people who survive in this world by projecting their value system onto others. Karen believed so strongly that Zoe’s first goal in life would be to reconnect with her dying sister that she completely failed to understand the true meaning of those leading statements. Zoe simply shrugged her shoulders: she’d be able to avoid me as effectively in San Francisco as anywhere else.

Within two days, the 30th and 31st floors collaborated on a card—Dear Agnes, Get Well Despite All Odds, surrounded by flowery signatures of 42 employees and three interns. The 32nd and 33rd floors purchased a medium-sized wooden statue of what they thought was a Kenyan god of longevity but in fact was a Fish God. The 35th floor generated a check for my daughter Liza’s college tuition. All of this was packaged in somber colored paper and handed to Zoe (they barely caught her as she was entering the elevator). Deciding to dispose of it all upon arrival, she stuffed the packages, including the bulky statue, in her brand new Signe Mou trunk and boarded the plane. Upon landing, the luggage encased in beige leather and bearing two name tags—one on the outside, one on the inside—was strangely missing. When the matter became known, the West Coast people blamed it on the fake longevity god. The East Coast people cancelled the check and sent another one by mail.

Uniformly bad omens accompanied Zoe on her cross-country trip. She was unable to sleep and a Harry Potter or a Narnia novel she had brought along was missing the last three pages. A couple occupying the window and the middle seat of her row spent every moment of the six hour flight investigating the contents of each other’s mouth with their tongues. The position of involuntary voyeur caused Zoe slight discomfort by limiting her view to straight-ahead and into the aisle; the shock, however, awaited her upon disembarkation when it turned out that the woman and the man were both adulterers. The scene unfolded by the side of the barren baggage carousel, where he and she were pulled apart by their respective and equally unsuspecting significant others. The parting glances that the maladroit lovers managed to exchange amidst welcoming hugs and kisses from wife on one side and husband and children on the other side of the

moving platform flooded Zoe’s heart with memories of the lover from her past. She was overcome with longing for companionship (male, 30-50, athletic figure, likes to fish, good sense of humor) and a desire to get out of the airport as quickly as possible.

Lean, mean, and baggage-free, she took the subway to her downtown hotel. All through the ride she absent-mindedly fingered a large brass key tucked into the inside pocket of her jacket, but it’s a customary gesture for her and didn’t bring to mind the house on top of Telegraph Hill. Still, the good-faith fairies must’ve put up a united front against her, because she missed her stop and instead of the safe haven of her hotel room ended up directly by the Bay. As I understand, it was mid-afternoon on a sunny spring day. The water sparkled invitingly. There were dozens of sails littering the view on both sides of the Golden Gate Bridge. Supposedly, Zoe couldn’t resist. She had been a sailor and a surfer since before I was born, and even though she no longer practiced the life aquatic, she became immediately overwhelmed by the sight of this particular body of water. A more down to earth conjecture is that it was a beautiful afternoon and she had nothing to do. So when she accidentally ended up at the Bay, Zoe decided to use the time for pleasure and went down to the boating marina and cajoled her way on a yacht.

Meantime, an email from Karen taught me to expect Zoe—despite all odds, despite the fact that she hadn’t spoken to me or returned my phone calls or email in three years after a particularly lovely time we shared together in Hawaii. So at first I sat by the living room window of our old house, and then, when Liza came home from school, and my hope started to give out, I went outside and looked for her on the streets of the city, the parks and alleys, cafés and bars that we hung around as children and young adults. I also knew this to be a part of Zoe’s routine: every time she arrives to a new place, she starts crisscrossing it in all directions; “making a mental map,” she calls it. Somewhere along the way she picks up an actual map of the city and traces her route on paper.

Sometimes she takes pictures of random street corners and lampposts and “you are here” sign-maps, secretly believing in her own genius of photographing the mundane. As I roamed the city streets that night, I kept picturing what she would look like with a camera on a string around her neck, obsessively documenting everything from Victorian façades to Jesus Fish bumper stickers. Soon it got dark, but I continued walking through the night, combing the neighborhood from the Marina all the way down to the Mission.

I came home just before sunrise to find Liza asleep in her bed. She must’ve waited up for me, because she was still fully dressed, a desk lamp shining brightly directly on her forehead. I turned off the lamp, covered her with a blanket and went downstairs to sit in my favorite chair by the

window again. I could see the outlines of the city hills shaping down below in the early morning dusk and I kept imagining Zoe lost somewhere there. There, where it was still night, she wandered into Chinatown, and submitting to her tourist lot, shrugged her shoulders and bought a hot and greasy sesame seed ball from the bakery we used to frequent as children. She ate it sitting on the bench at a bus stop and waggling her feet in the air. Following this brief repose, she continued her directionless trek and—completely lost, purely by chance—walked by the apartment building where we lived when we were very young and the tree in the park on which she could still read our names. She walked by the primary school that grew even more decrepit with age. She walked past my house and saw Liza’s bike parked in the driveway. She still had absolutely no intentions of announcing herself to us.

I have examined and reexamined every moment we spent together on the island of Kauai in Hawaii three years ago to figure out what might have offended or upset her, but the details are simply slipping away from my memory. In any case, right now, I have bigger fish than my sister to worry about. I heard from Liza’s grandmother that my ex-husband Wash has been bitten by a shark while surfing in Santa Cruz almost three

months ago. Supposedly, the shark mutilated three of his limbs and most of the vital internal organs. He was taken to the local hospital and was doing better for a while, talking to Liza on the phone. We even planned a weekend outing so Liza could see him, but they needed to operate on his pelvic area, and that was more than he could handle. Yesterday, his mother called to say that he passed away on the operating table.

She was crying on the phone, and all I could do was offer my help in organizing the funeral that’s been scheduled for this Sunday morning, when Liza and I were going to go down there anyway. There are at least three other exes to contact that I know about. In any case, between funeral planning and trying to somehow mitigate Liza’s very vocal grieving, I don’t really have any more time to spy on my crazy sister and obsess about her heartlessness. Liza thinks I should send her an email to let her know about the funeral. It seems unlikely to touch her, since even the news of my own imminent death did not elicit any response from her, but I’m tired trying to second guess her actions. I’ll send her the same invitation as everybody else and let her deal with it as best she can. Perhaps despite her aversion to the past, she’ll find it in her heart to send flowers to Wash’s grave. They tell me that when people ask her about me, she does respond with “Agnes? I hope she’s doing well.”

I just wish I could stop thinking of her as a ghost walking past my house: thin, greasy hair, blank eyes moving from window to window but not seeing anything. She walks without pause and does not turn around, does not even slow her pace. Just one glance up—one look would make me shudder. No matter how hard she tried to erase us from existence, we’re still here, and her presence in San Francisco is a sign of acknowledgement.

2.

Three years ago—no, four, because all the planning had been done a year ahead—Zoe paid for a Hawaii vacation for her brother-in-law Wash and her sister Agnes in honor of their 10th wedding anniversary and Wash’s first show at a major gallery. She coordinated schedules, purchased the airplane tickets for the two of them, and rented a cottage on one of the most popular surfing beaches. Zoe arranged for their daughter Liza to stay with her grandmother for the duration. She even called the resort manager and asked her to treat the guests as newlyweds, with chocolate on the pillows, fresh flowers on the table, and towels formed into cute animals. She thought of everything.

It so happened that at the time Zoe herself was working on a series of extensive articles about the islands. During her brother and sister’s vacation on Kauai she would be staying at a lodge on another part of the island, at some distance from the vacationing couple, yet close enough to be available for a visit or two via a scenic beachside drive. It was clear

to all parties involved that Zoe had attempted to recreate—with an upgrade to the comfort and style—the circumstances when they all just met: she and Wash surfing, the three of them hanging out and making bonfires out of discarded wood and garbage on the drab and foggy Ocean Beach.

Unfortunately, two months prior to scheduled vacation, Wash received a series of scathing reviews for his first solo show at a downtown gallery, and subsequently ended up in court-prescribed rehab due to a drunk driving violation. A month prior to scheduled vacation, Agnes packed up her and Liza’s things and moved back into her parents’ house. Life was moving ahead at a very fast pace, and Agnes felt like she could definitely use a vacation.

The sisters met three days after Agnes got to Kauai. They had (the three of them, Wash included) dinner reservations at a kind of burger joint that takes reservations six months ahead.

“Where’s Wash?” Zoe asked when she found Agnes waiting for her at the booth, alone.

“We’re getting divorced,” Agnes replied.

Zoe was on the verge of laughing in her face, when she saw Liza hiding behind Agnes’s back.

“I thought this could be a good chance for you and Liza to get to know each other better,” Agnes offered.

Zoe glanced at Liza and averted her eyes.

“When did this happen?” she asked, clearing her voice.

“I filed on Friday, and hopefully he’s going to sign before we come back.” Zoe listened while Agnes recounted the events of the preceding weeks. Liza sat between the sisters, for the first time in her life actually wondering who indeed was her mother. She couldn’t figure out which of the two she liked more. Agnes was bigger and softer of the two, while Zoe was smaller and edgier. Zoe’s words came fast but distinctly articulated, every one of them was a shard of glass directed at her sister’s heart, and Agnes deflected the attacks by becoming as malleable as a marshmallow and overcompensating with good will and general sense of well being.

There was a tone of apology in Agnes’s words, as if her separation from Wash was a personal attack against Zoe. Both sisters avoided looking directly at Liza, although once in a while Agnes would put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Liza perceived almost as much mystery in the reasons why Zoe wanted to have nothing to do with her as in the fact that Agnes tried so hard to become everything to her. She also noticed that at the end, Zoe still refused to understand the gravity of the situation.

“I’m sure we can still reschedule Wash’s flight,” she offered. “There’s no reason he should miss this trip. All you need is just to schedule some time to be together. You’ve always told me how you never get enough time to be alone, just the two of you.”

“Zoe, listen to me! He’s still in rehab, and this is his second time

around, and I don’t want to stick around to see what happens the third.

I’m done.”

“He must’ve cheated on you,” concluded Zoe tightening her lips.

Agnes shrugged her shoulders. At the time, Liza thought that the gesture meant “I don’t really want to talk about this.” Later at night, as she was lying on the sofa in their cabin, staring in the darkness and listening to the sound of the waves and crickets outside, she realized that it also meant “Of course, he did” and “No use in being angry at me.” It was her father’s gesture, she thought, remembering his sun-bleached hair and eyes reddish from sand or alcohol. Missing him had become so customary to Liza in the last few weeks, that she new exactly what to think of next: his voice, his shoulders, his hands, and his surfboards that were gone, all of them, completely gone from their stands in their garage. She cried herself to sleep.

For Zoe, that dinner was the end of their long-coveted Hawaii vacation.

She left her fish taco untouched, and later in the week she actually called Wash’s mother who corroborated Agnes’s story in major details and dictated the number of the hospital. Zoe considered calling the rehab to find out if he needed anything, but then decided it would be more seemly to track Wash down after he’d finished his treatment. Agnes, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed her burger bundled with rice and Taro root, while Liza ordered a French vanilla milkshake for dessert, and the two of them made plans to go on a hike with Zoe the very next day and a visit to the spa on the following. Zoe had to work, but her sister offered to cook for her and Liza one of these days—and did, twice, after which they drank mai tai’s on the beach and talked about . . . well, anything but Wash.

3.

San Francisco is a city for young people. The steep, crooked streets take a toll on the heart, while intoxicating flowers that line and shadow them deplete the breathable air. I was young here once, and it was the center of the world for me then. Returning here now seems to pile the weight of the years on top of my shoulders. The ocean breeze does me no good: my back aches, my eyes water. Not a single familiar face, not one beloved face waits for me here. Alas, I’ve got a job to do. Even as I arrive to the city, my life seems to fall in the tracks of a realized metaphor as the airline loses my brand-new Signe Mou suitcase.

I was invited here to write about the opening of the New Art Museum and to anticipate the effect of its presence on the local scene. It’s an important gig, so important that even knowing my contentious relationship with this city, Kongo-Roo’s chief editor Karen had no choice but to buy me airfare. I had tickets to attend the opening gala and scheduled

interviews with the museum curator and with several gallery operators downtown, as well as in the East Bay and Peninsula. A freak mid-spring ice storm in Arizona that delayed the shipment of the central piece for the central hall of the museum ruined this week of art appreciation for me. Of course, I would still go on to have the scheduled lunches with the gallery people, but all conversations these days begin and end with climate change. Instead of the new museum, the local art community is abuzz with finding the new ways of fighting global warming and getting their voice heard across the continental divide. First and foremost, I get my turn to make an unsolicited recommendation to the curator of the New Art Museum, Mr. Semblant. Since the gala opening had to be postponed due to the storm, I suggest that he takes this chance to rethink the bulky central hall installation of ferrous metal and get on board with the movement by purchasing a whole bunch of green art from the local talent. I know at least one man’s work he could use. He needs to think about it, he says.

We’re sitting in a rooftop restaurant with the view of the Bay, the two bridges, and all seven hills. The place is quieting down after lunch.

Remaining customers are peeling oranges and sipping their coffee, discussing business deals in hushed voices and taking cell-phone pictures of each other. Mr. Semblant, a handsome man with broad shoulders, takes a glass of port and offers me a cigar. I am tempted to accept even though I don’t smoke: I am attracted to him, at least insofar as he reminds me of another. I let him smoke in peace and drift off to the street. There is a key in my pocket, a large brass key with two very quaint sets of teeth side by side, like a shark’s. A key that opens a single door of one house in San Francisco. This is what makes me feel like I own the city. I’ve been fighting off this illusion the whole week, and I’m beat. I’ve had a glass or two of wine and my mind is slightly clouded over. I search and cannot find the reason why it was so important for me to forget about this key, to don the innocent eyes of a tourist, to pretend I was just passing through. I slide my fingertips along the rugged edging, a customary gesture of frustration and anticipation. Once upon a time, the key provided protection; today it’s an empty symbol of lost hope, of hope that I must lose. I wonder if I am ever going to be able to come to terms with the idea that there’s no reward for all the suffering and hardship that awaits me down the road.

I am ensnared by the lore of all the traveling people; perhaps, I am no different than the others who have traversed the world to find that what they were looking for was hiding in their own backyard.

I make my way to the hilltop house by way of crooked streets washed with cherry blossoms. Here’s the school, there’s the bakery around the corner. Everybody’s doors and windows are open to take in the midafternoon sun. Music and laughter streams from all directions, but I climb further and further away from the commercial neighborhood and soon can hear only the heavy sound of my own footsteps. I stop to take a

breath. My back aches.

The house is drowning in rose bushes. The white and pink tea roses are blooming. The living room window is partially open and the tulle is billowing in the wind. There is a bicycle parked in front of the garage. I walk up the front steps and pass through the door. It’s cool and dark inside the house; a slight fragrant breeze roams through the rooms between the open windows. I take off my shoes in the hall, and step barefoot on the old Mediterranean tiles lining the floor. I make no noise. I find nobody in the kitchen and the kitchen itself remodeled: new stove, a dishwasher, Subzero fridge with a giant freezer. I go upstairs. The door to my daughter’s room is shut, and I don’t dare to knock. I wash my face in the bathroom, and then go to my parents’ room. Agnes sleeps here now; her clothes are in the closet, her jewelry on my mother’s dressing table. There are pictures: of me, of Liza, of our parents, of Agnes when she was a teenager and we just moved into this house. I look for more pictures. The heavy family albums are on the bookshelf downstairs; I find more pictures in Agnes’s own desk and inside the dresser; there are several pictures stuck to the fridge and several more, framed, on the coffee table in the living room. I go through them all.

As obsessively as I’m looking for a picture of Wash, my sister has likewise destroyed all the evidence of his existence. Once I’ve shuffled through the papers in the secret hiding place behind the stairs, there remains no choice but to search Liza’s room. I silently enter the room.

She’s taking a nap in my old bed with a pattern of starfish chiseled in the headrest. I look through her desk, going through locked drawers and diving into diary pages. I work quietly, but still she sleeps uneasily, turning from one side to another and struggling with her blanket. I flip through the pages of her books, one by one, and finally find what I’m looking for between the pages of her sketchpad. There were two pictures: on the first one Wash is on the beach. He’s taking off his wet suit, one of his broad shoulders exposed to the blinding sun and his straw-colored hair looking almost white. On the other one—well, it doesn’t matter. That’s not my Wash. I take the surfing picture and stuff it in my backpack, between the pages of my map.

Mr. Semblant is waiting for me where I left him, at a table of the rooftop restaurant with the excellent view of the city. He has finished both his port wine and his cigar and is now anxious to go.

“Shall I give you a private tour of the galleries?” he offers with exaggerated politeness.

I hesitate. It’s still Friday afternoon, and the water in the bay is sparkling in the sunshine. Still I refuse to give in to the inevitable.

“I would like to take this opportunity to rethink the placement of a few pieces, particularly photography. Your outsider’s perspective could be invaluable,” he adds noticing my hesitation. He’s got pale blue eyes and

pink narrow lips. He helps me to put on my jacket, and leads me toward the elevator.

I make a counteroffer, and although he’s initially flustered, we end up spending a pleasant afternoon together after all. There are plenty of yachts available for rent in the marina, and Mr. Semblant agrees that such a beautiful day calls for something extraordinary.

4.

Death is a game we play, a game of wordless signs and unanswered feelings. One day it might cease to amuse, but even then it will not lose the force of its impact. Agnes believes meeting death face to face is the ultimate test of one’s character, and Zoe holds category of character unimportant and death as integrated into the texture of being. My daughter Liza is still very young and has not been able to get past the terror that paralyzes her thoughts at the mere shadow of death, and I personally prefer to deal with it by refusing to think at all.

Agnes and Zoe were in the middle of the first round of this game in the spring of our first meeting. Their parents had just died, and the two girls were living alone in a mansion at the top of Telegraph Hill. It was an old house meant for a large well-off family, tiled floor in the hall, dining parlor, and in the kitchen, creaky wooden staircase upstairs, four sparsely furnished bedrooms littered with books and left-wing periodicals.

Zoe was older and had a degree in journalism. Agnes was younger, and didn’t know what to do. They went to the beach a lot and talked about love. Agnes read poetry and Zoe dreamt of far-away places. It wasn’t as romantic as it sounds: loneliness led them to loud and abusive fights with each other. More annoyingly, they were short on cash and Zoe was trying to finish school and Agnes was looking for jobs, and they relieved tension by screaming at each other about responsibility and obligations. They ended up at the beach one time when Zoe ran out of the house in tears and Agnes was angry and chased after her and they ran for fifty blocks crying and screaming at each other and then sat on the beach and talked about how they loved each other but couldn’t live together.

I’ve never met two people who were so similar, yet refusing to acknowledge that similarity in each other. Zoe slept with me because she saw me as a libertine and her chance to get away. Agnes slept with me because I was Zoe’s friend and she was feeling very lonely after Zoe went away. Both of them wished to get pregnant—strangely believing, in that way, they would be able to resurrect their dead parents within their own bodies. To them, I was a source of nourishment, a way to satisfy their craving for love they lost. They believed that once they had the baby, they wouldn’t need me any longer. Except they learned very soon that they had been deceiving themselves, that their desires ran deeper, beyond what

they could comfortably share with each other, and a baby girl could not satisfy them. They argued again, but still could not tear themselves from each other and divide property and possessions. Instead, Zoe went away, and when Agnes wanted her back, she found me again and invited me to share their house. When I agreed, Zoe understood this as a sign of my love for her even as she was on the other side of the continent. In every one of her articles, from the most junior pieces heavily edited by senior staff to the mature award-winning travelogues, she found a way of writing about me or Agnes or Liza. She did a whole series of articles about surfing; she played endlessly with the letters of our names; she endowed the characters of her articles with our body parts—it is amazing how many people around the world are graced with a dark mole to the left of their belly buttons.

No use: she still had to share me with Agnes, Agnes with Liza, all of us with my mother, with the whole world. No matter how far away Zoe traveled, she could not change the circumstances. She could not possess us and she could not get rid of us. And so Zoe was the first one of us to die. One day she simply disappeared—stopped answering messages or phone calls. When nobody at her office could reach her for over two weeks, they contacted the family. We traced Zoe’s route, and were surprised to discover that she vanished very near San Francisco: she was on a small yacht that stopped transmitting radio signals right off the coast.

We put together a funeral. Liza cried terribly—she had met her famous mother only once and never again. Agnes tried to rededicate herself to our daughter after that, but death had become an obsession with all of us.

Agnes achieved it by the power of will and imagination alone; and then I started drifting. I mean literally, I would just lie down on my surfboard and paddle for hours. I’d say that my relationship to death was contemplative: I was constantly aware of its presence. It’s a strange way of living one’s life, single-mindedly devoted to the idea of death. I can only hope that Liza will grow out of it.

Some Dark Blue Beth Mathison Manny wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

He had been over and over it in his mind, and still he didn’t know what to do.

He watched her from his seat at the bar while she sang at the back.

The piano player, a young man with a dark suit, swayed to the music as he played each piece, his fingers fluid over the keys.

She also wore dark. An indigo shift dress that rode low in the backand moved sinuously with her body. Manny had noticed the color when he had gone to the restroom earlier, steadying himself on the bar as he passed close to her.

Lavender. The subtle scent met him when he had walked past the piano.

Rising up above the sharp tang of alcohol and sweat and something deeper, more primal. The cloying aroma of human emotion in the dark mahogany tables, in the scuffed floor that even daily polishing wouldn’t remove. He was sure it was lavender.

Now, sitting next to Jack, Captain Jack to the regulars, Manny could not help thinking about the scent of lavender.

“Another,” Jack grunted, pushing his tumbler away from him. Jack had obviously had a bad day, his hair stuck up in all directions, dark circles under his eyes. Manny fingered his own drink, a scotch on the rocks, feeling the thin film of moisture coat his fingers.

He had thought he wasn’t a man who sat and reflected on life, on the nature of the universe.

But here she sang, her voice low in the dim light, the music light around her. And with it, he pondered the why of his existence.

The long, smooth reach of her leg. The way she brushed a lock of her hair from her forehead, her eyes uncovered and vulnerable. \ It wasn’t just sex, the way he watched her. It was part of it, there was no doubt. But there was more. Something that reached down into a part of him that was cool, and not often touched.

“It’s the time of your life,” Jack said, reaching for his refilled glass, its liquid amber in the ambient light. He lifted his glass to the line of bottles behind the bar. “To you and yours.” Turning towards Manny, he leaned over, his eyes wild and empty at the same time.

“You can be me,” Jack said. “It wouldn’t take much, but you could be me.” Manny noticed the yellowed stain around Jack’s collar, the frayed edges of his rumpled suit.

Manny looked away, suddenly scared of something he couldn’t name.

Damn drunk, he thought. Probably couldn’t remember his own name if I asked him.

And there she stood, leaning against the black shape of the piano, one leg crossed over the other. Looking at him through the dark film of the bar.

Manny stood, picking up his drink, filled with an unexpected confidence. Her dress was indigo, he knew. He didn’t know the why of the universe, and had ceased to care.

His focus was indigo, and the scent of lavender cutting through the night.

Original Photo: Ana Hernandez Manipulation: SS

Coming To America Shane Ryan Bailey

They left upon a raft constructed from wooden doors, inner tubes, canvas,

and oil drums, held together with bits of twine and wire and plastic. Friends and family stood on the shore, blessing them with prayers to the Virgin of the Sea, while watching them, the brave (perhaps foolish) balseros paddle away at dusk, with the intention to make it to America. They were leaving their island nation behind—a country torn apart by politics and poverty, where they had lived in slums, in trash (in fear!), where they had been regarded as mere dogs. There were eight adults aboard the raft—men and women—along with two small children. (It was forbidden to take children on the dangerous journey, but their parents had no intention of leaving them behind. Not even with relatives. The pain of separation would be too much for parent and child, alike.)

They drifted across the Florida Straits, being tossed about by waves whipped up by high winds, and when it wasn’t stormy, there was the threat of the sun during the day, beating down upon their bodies, drying out their skin. They had taken few provisions. There was no room on a raft to store many items. Besides, it was only a three day’s journey by raft from Havana to Miami. What little food they had, they rationed, and what little they ate often came back up, as their stomachs could not take the jostling motion of their watercraft upon the waves, the continual undulation, a perpetual cycle with no apparent end. They wept. They cursed the government of their homeland. They cursed the elements and the Divine. They cursed one another. They wept again.

What will it be like to live in America? (It was a question asked by one of the children, interrupting the adults’ lament.) One had to wonder.

Somebody spoke up and answered, and then others added their opinions.

In America, they would have beautiful homes with rooms for each family member and friend, and there would be pantries filled with food, and they would have green lawns and gardens overflowing with colorful flowers. In America, all of the adults would have jobs, owning their own businesses, restaurants, salons, and clothing stores, attracting patrons from all around.

In America, their children would grow up to be movie stars, professional soccer players, and government leaders, maybe even El Presidente de los Estados Unidos. In America, they would all drive big automobiles with the wind blowing through their hair as pedestrians smiled and waved at them, calling out greetings. In America, they would each have a telephone, and they would be able to look up the names and numbers of former friends and neighbors who had preceded them across the sea. (Surely they had made it safely across. No?) In America, they would be able to sleep peacefully at night, not worrying about the next day. Such was life in America; such

would life be for them, as well. These were the thoughts that filled their minds and poured out as speech upon their lips, encouraging one another as they clung to the sides of their raft, watching dolphins break the surface of the water and seabirds swoop and call overhead.

On the sixth night, they spotted a luxury cruise ship brilliantly lit up, moving across the horizon, and, not knowing at first what they were seeing (for it was far off, and they were weak from hunger), they began to formulate theories, saying that is was the shoreline of Miami, or the ancient lost city of Atlantis, floating upon the surface like a ghost civilization, or a vision of Heaven opening its gates to collect their souls. Eventually they realized that it was a ship, but it was too far off to rescue them.

The following day, the raft failed. Its fastenings came undone upon the choppy sea, causing it to break apart and dump bodies into the water.

Everyone panicked and splashed about in the water. Two of the men could not swim and immediately sank into the depths. One of the children floated away, appearing like a doll riding up and down the waves, screaming for its mother.

In the end, a remnant survived, pulled from the sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, upon whose boat they huddled together—wet, dehydrated, frightened, and safe—speaking frantically in their native language to anyone who would listen of their plight, how the waves divided them, and how they witnessed loved ones either drift away or become torn apart by sharks, as if they were nothing but refuse borne upon the waves.

L.A. Harvest James Berkshire

Let

the

Dead Bury Their Dead Mark Konkel

I The rain stopped an hour ago, but the wooden slats of Mrs. Webster’s porch still felt slick and spongy under my feet. I stepped firmly so as not to lose my balance. Water dripped from behind the gutters and plopped onto my hat, so I removed it, then stepped to the side and let the water resume its drip onto the dirty white and grey wood of the porch. Under my watchful eye, Deacon Charles struggled to park the black Cadillac Escalade on the wet pavement in front of Mrs. Webster’s house. I never tired of the constant and vigilant evaluation I have to maintain while training a young deacon.

Everything must work toward perfection. Men of God, especially black ones, did not have to be perfect, but they had to constantly strive to that goal, even in such a secular and mundane thing as parallel parking.

When Mrs. Webster called me to complain about her electric bill, I knew she didn’t expect Deacon Charles also, but I also knew her lament about the electric bill was just a mask for something deeper. Mrs. Webster was still mourning her mother’s passing, and Deacon needed to learn how to deal with a grieving parishioner. This was a custom ordered training opportunity.

“I didn’t think it would fit in there, Pastor James,” Deacon Charles said, closing the SUV’s door and walking up the steps.

“Don’t slam that door so hard,” I said, but in my thoughts, I admired the deacon. He had an exciting presence about him, something that was original, seminal, groundbreaking, the first of its kind, like a world class athlete or actor, but at the same time, he was familiar, comfortable, friendly, as if wherever he happened to be was where he was born and raised, instead of actually having been adopted to and raised by an older white couple in the suburbs. He was powerful, yet deferential, in charge, but ready to serve, a born minister. For who is greater, he who sits at the table or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet, I am among you as One who serves. Luke 22:27. These verses flash in my head like something familiar, but spectacular at the same time; like sunsets, the church choir, a new moon starry sky. They are just a part of me now.

“I got it in there nice, though,” Deacon Charles said.

“Nicely, Deacon, not nice. Nicely,” I said. He was still young, however, unrefined, rash, forceful.

“Yes, Pastor James,” he said with a grin, followed by, “I saw her through the window, sitting in a rocker. Rocking.”

“Yes, Mrs. Webster’s spent her whole life rocking, Deacon. Her own babies and dozens of others.” Deacon reached to knock on the door, but I grabbed the sleeve of his charcoal overcoat, just above the gold stitched monogram. He’s eager, too eager. It’s that smile of his, too wide and too easily lit upon his face, the smile of a boy. “What do we do before we continue, always, Deacon?”

Deacon grinned at his error. “Before everything, Pastor, from the rising of the sun, until the going down of the same, we pray.” I released the sleeve of his sally and we bowed our heads. The prayer flowed in a viscous gel from our lips, toothpaste from a tube, one unbroken word, me in the lead and Deacon a quarter cadence behind: Oh-Heavenly-Father-let-the-thingswe-do-today-be-in-accordance-with-your-wishes-and-your-plan-and-give-usstrength-that-we-may-glorify-you-in-the-Lord’s-name-we-pray. We said Amen in broad normal voices, then Deacon again sallied forth his gloved hand toward the door.

“How long y’all gonna stand on the porch there?” Mrs. Webster hollered from inside her living room. “Doorbell’s broke anyhow. Aint worked since Jeffery passed away nigh seventeen year now.” We exchanged glances with identical chuckles, having been startled so by her quivering voice, and Deacon pulled the security door open and we stepped inside.

A slight odor of rancid bacon grease permeated the home, as if Mrs. Webster fried some the week before and let the fat sit on the stove. All the lights in the house were off, including the one usually coming from the television. Mrs. Webster herself sat silhouetted in the old dishwater light of the front parlor windows. Several cats slinked out from behind the ancient floor length nylon lace curtains to rub against our woolen panted legs. “Well, are y’all gone sit?” Mrs. Webster asked. There was only the rocker and a small burgundy sofa too small to accommodate both of us. I nodded at Deacon, who promptly fetched a wooden chair from the kitchen to sit on.

My huge body sank slowly into the overstuffed imitation leather, air escaping from underneath me in a resistant whistle and whoosh. My eyes caught Deacon’s eyes, indicating he could begin.

“Let’s say a prayer, Mrs. Webster,” Deacon said, and the same prayer flowed from his lips again, while Mrs. Webster’s lips mashed back and forth over her dentures, unable or unwilling to pick up Deacon’s rhythm.

“He goes right along, don’t he,” she said, looking at me, when Deacon finished.

I grinned. “He do. He do.” I looked over at Deacon.

Deacon cleared his throat and leaned forward in the kitchen chair, which was of ancient bowed dowels and smoothed oak that shifted under his body. He spread his feet apart to settle the chair and set his elbows on his knees, then looked Mrs. Webster in the eye. “Mrs. Webster, we got a message about your electric bill. They’re—” “Well, they aint shut off my power yet, but they’s threatening to do it soon, if’n I don’t pay their bill.”

I remained quiet. “You have to pay their bill, Mrs. Webster,” Deacon said.

“But they don’t have to send me mean and heartless letters, like this one here,” and she held up a tri-folded white sheet of paper with lime green edging – the stationary of the local utility. Deacon reached forward to take the letter so he could read exactly what it said, but Mrs. Webster kept wav-

ing it around, her arm flying up like the handle of a stepped on rake, then down again, so he couldn’t grab it. She began to recite, apparently having read it enough to memorize it. “They’s regret to inform me that I need to call and apply for aaass-ssistance. I’ll give ‘em aaass-ssistance,” she said, “I’ll give ‘em a whupping on their aaass-ssistance.”

“Now, Mrs. Webster, if you’re trying to shock me with those words—” Mrs. Webster crossed her arms and looked at Pastor James. “I used them words plenty when you was growing up here, James, didn’t I?” I chuckled again, a laugh I used to defuse emotionally charged situations.

“I always said, time and time again, Mrs. Webster, you got me on the path to holiness.”

“Yeah, you was holy all right. A holy terror,” Mrs. Webster said with a laugh. “Did I ever tell you, Deacon, about the time he –” “Mrs. Webster, you don’t need to go into that –” I sighed internally, wondering which story it would be. She delighted in telling them all.

“—the time he tied fishing string around my two of my cats’ tails and let them run around? Them two toms nearly killed each other.”

Deacon smiled widely again, but didn’t say anything, just stared straight ahead. I appreciated his response, which acknowledged Mrs. Webster, but didn’t sow her responses into a fertile conversation.

“Mrs. Webster, why haven’t you paid your electric bill? You have money, I know you have money. Jeffery left you the life insurance and then there’s the city pension and Social Security,” Deacon said, taking gentle control of the situation. I released my held breath.

Mrs. Webster started rocking faster and her voice got softer, “The brakes on my car, you know, they been squeaking.”

“Mrs. Webster, brake repair shouldn’t be much more than a few hundred dollars,” Deacon said.

“My brakes is squeaking. Squeaking in G-flat.” All three of us laughed softly and unexpectedly at this. “Whenever I stop and they squeak, I start singing Number 121, Blessed Assurance, cuz that’s in G-flat, you know, Pastor James,” she said. “I can use my brakes, you know, even though they’re squeaking in G-Flat. I can use my brakes.” Then she stopped rocking and looked out the window. “I can still see my mother flying through the air from in front of that car,” she said, no emotion in her voice. “He couldn’t use no brakes and my mother went flying. She made it to be ninety three year old and walking to church every Sunday still and then—” She paused and brought her hand up to her mouth. “She was walking to church! Aint nobody should get run over walking to church.”

Deacon took Mrs. Webster’s ramshackle hand in his. Again her lips mashed back and forth over her dentures. She looked past Deacon to the kitchen behind him.

Deacon spoke precisely. “Mrs. Webster. This isn’t God’s fault. You know that in your heart. It’s the fault of that driver. Drunk at 8:30 in the a.m.” Her hand flitted over her white, permed hair. “You can’t lose your

faith,” he said. “God’s God. If you lose your faith, who will you believe in?”

She peered at him. He cupped her hand in both of his. She began to rock slowly.

“Mrs. Webster,” he said, “we don’t know why things happen as they do.

It’s not for us to know. Now, many years later, we know why Jesus had to die on the cross, but the apostles, they didn’t know at the time,” Deacon said. “And it pierced their hearts, just as yours is pierced now.” Tears dripped from Mrs. Webster’s chin. Deacon stood so he could rest his cheek near the top of her head, and sway back and forth with her rocking. She started singing, in G-flat, “This is my story, this is my song, loving you, Jesus, all the day long.” And they sang softly together for a while, and I joined in, then sang harmony.

When we got ready to go, Deacon turned on the parlor lamp and the room was filled with a soft yellow glow. “Mrs. Webster, I will place a call to the electric company and get your bill paid up to now, all right? And then you need to make sure it stays paid, all right?”

“All right, Deacon.”

Outside, after we were in the SUV and just outside of the city, the cell phone rang. “Pastor James,” I said. I listened silently, then said, “We’ll be right there.” I pointed to the next exit ramp. “Get off here, right away.”

“What’s the matter, Pastor James, you look as though you know the date of the Second Coming,” Deacon said.

“Head back to the church. There’s been a shooting. Dan Carver’s been shot in the church parking lot.”

“Oh, my God.” II I hear someone say, “Mrs. Carver?” and it takes me a moment to focus on the voice. It used to be against the rules for policemen to need glasses. I know because my brother wanted to be a police officer, but his eyes weren’t any good and he was denied. The very next year they relaxed the rule.

He would have been such a good cop and might have tried again, but he already had his garage on 75th Street open and was doing a good business. Still, he was so disappointed. I used to be disappointed for him. But not anymore. Because if they hadn’t relaxed the rules, this policeman with glasses wouldn’t be standing in front of me right now. He’d be standing somewhere else. He’d be standing somewhere else and wouldn’t be telling me my husband was dead.

Both of the policemen lean over me then and I see the ceiling fan behind their heads, which float in the air like huge dust motes wearing police hats.

Pain stabs my cheeks when I feel the floorboards on the back of my head.

Ma’am, ma’am, I hear them calling, loud and soft and far away and close, as if I’m the candle in the bottom of a pumpkin and they’re trying to blow me out. The hinge of my lip cracks when I say, my son, call my son,

but they don’t hear me and I feel weightless, and then a pillow under my head and the soft smooth nap of the couch under my bare heels. I don’t remember lifting my arm, but I see my fingers reaching out to the policeman talking on his radio while the other one leans over me again. Fainted, he says and I think yes, so faint, I can hardly hear you, and my lips brush against the curl of his ear when I say again my son, call my son. And to find my cell phone, he’s emptying out the contents of my purse onto the coffee table, my wallet, the utility bill that needs to be mailed, my spare keys, my book club copy of A Million Little Pieces. And I know things aren’t right when my spare tampon tops the pile and I’m not embarrassed. No one should go through a woman’s purse, not even her husband and especially not a stranger wearing glasses and a gun and a blue tie the same color as his shirt.

The VCR clock shows 7:45. I put the bread in just before seven, I think, so it’s been a half hour since Dan called, which is about the time it takes for him to get home after he calls, so he should be walking in now and my ear trains itself on the door. He usually works later in the evening and I appreciate the time alone to write a few emails, cook some supper and relax. And we have a quiet dinner in front of the TV set and I talk during the commercials and he listens and I read interesting things from the paper to him and we talk. My ear still listens for the door, like an amputee still feeling his toes itch, and the policeman holds my cell phone in front of my eyes. I whisper “Steven” and the policeman beeps through my address book. The phone dials. Ma’am, the other policeman says, we’ll get your son, Steve, here as soon as we can and then he says her pulse is good, her skin is warm and her pupils are okay, so it’s just mild shock. And I know he means shock in a medical sense, in a sense that I’m not dying which is amazing because I always thought that I would if anything ever happened to Dan. Mild? I try to say aloud, but the fragrance of bread on the edge of being burnt forces its way through to my nostrils and my hands signal slowly but desperately about blackened crusts and wasted dough. One policeman disappears before my eyes and then reappears in the dining room with his hands wrapped around two potholders and a loaf of sooty and smoking bread, which he lays on the table trivet. The dining room clock, which has always been five minutes behind the VCR clock, now shows quarter to eight, as if time hasn’t passed at all. I start to cry, not for Dan, not for me, not for Steve, but at the thought of time staying here forever.

And then I’m standing and hugging Steve. I don’t remember him coming in. “Oh my God,” Steve says, “Oh my God,” followed by “Mama, Mama.” My legs have no strength. Steve is holding me up while his body is wrapped around mine and his tears stream down the back of my neck.

I run my fingers through his hair and let him whisper everything will be all right, Mama, everything will be all right.

Steve lifts his head. “What happened? I mean, how…?”

“Your father was sitting in a church parking lot in his car when a bullet

came through the window,” the cell phone policeman says. “Appears to have been random.”

“Random? That means you won’t be able to catch him, right?”

“Well, actually –” “I mean, that’s police code for you might not be able to catch him, right?

Tell me the truth now.”

“Actually, Mr. Carver, there’s a very good chance we’ll catch him. It’s very likely that we will have forensic and ballistic evidence.”

“What you do mean, forensic and ballistic evidence? Somebody was riding in the car with him?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“It’s likely that the medical examiner will be able to recover the slug from his, uh, body.”

“Oh my God,” Steve says again, then, “Don’t worry, Mama, at least they can catch him. At least they can catch him.”

“But it would help, Mrs. Carver,” the policeman says, “if you could sit down. We’d like to ask you a few questions now if that’s all right.” He’s trying to be soothing, but his voice is much too naturally gruff, too full of bluster and bravery. That’s okay, though, policemen need it out there dealing with what they deal with every day, threatening criminals, abusive husbands, dangerous killers, hysterical housewives. Steve releases me from his hug and motions for me to sit down. A box of tissue appears on my lap and Steve sits down next to me and clasps one of my hands in his. When he was born, my mother said, you must have made this baby all by yourself because he looks just like you and nothing like Dan. And she was right.

Steve has my pale ruddy cheeks, the shape of my face, the beak of my nose, the round of my eyes and the glide of my cheeks, all of which always made me so proud, and all of which I would trade now if I could see Dan in him now, just once, just once.

“What was your husband doing in that neighborhood at this time of night, Mrs. Carver?” He has a small notebook in one hand and a capless black pen in the other.

Steve pauses, then says, “He worked there, at the church. Divine Word.

For about the last …”

“Since you were fourteen.” My voice wavers and sounds full of fluid, but I hold onto Steve’s arm. If you had told me those would be the first words I would speak after Dan’s death, I would have laughed.

“For the last eight years,” he says. “Almost nine.” Steve is quiet while the policeman writes in his notebook. “It’s the biggest black church in the city,” Steve adds.

“I know,” the policeman says. “That’s where I go.” And he keeps writing, then says, “We’d like you to come down to the station and identify the body.” I feel him look at me. “It’s only necessary for one of you to come.”

“Mama? You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Steve says.

I look at him and I can taste tears dripping past my lips and my voice

is full of water again and I hug him tight. Why don’t you change clothes, Mama, and we’ll go together. I pull my body away from his and go into the bedroom.

As soon as I open my closet door, I can’t remember what I should do next.

I call for Steve, who comes pounding down the hallway. Steve, Steve, I say, I don’t know what to do next. Mama, don’t worry about that now, we don’t have to figure out everything right away. No, no, I say, I don’t know what I should be doing right now. Mama, he says, you’re in your nightgown.

You have to change into some pants and a blouse. I look at him. Steve?

Yes, Mama? I can’t remember how to put my clothes on. Oh, Mama, he says, and then reaches into my closet and pulls out a sweatshirt and a pair of pants for me. If I tell you how to do it, can you put your clothes on? No, I don’t think I can. And he tells me to raise my arms over my head and he pulls them out of the sleeves of my nightgown, and then pulls the whole garment over my head, the fabric rubbing on my nose and hiding me from the world in a blurred sight and sound of soft cotton and I’m there, in front of my son, naked, soft puffy flabby all skin except for my panties. I look up at him and he is looking at the ceiling. Cover up your chest with your arms, he says, and I do it. He pulls the sweatshirt down over my head, then to my torso and helps my arms through the sleeves. Then he kneels down in front of me and holds my pants open and I step into the legs, leaning my hand on his shoulder for support. I stand and he pulls the elastic waistband over my behind and up under my sweatshirt, which he pulls down. He slides my feet into soft knee socks. Then he asks, where are your shoes? For some reason, I remember they are by my recliner. And they are.

He brings them and kneels down in front of me to put them on. I say, while he is lifting my foot by the ankle, I never liked your father working at that place, being the only white person in the whole place. He wasn’t the only white, Steve says. Almost was, I say. He could’ve worked any other place, I say, instead of down there with those people. Dad had to make his own life, Steve says. He did what he thought was right for him. Now it’s not right for anyone, I say.

At the police station, there is a short clanking metal stairway down to the medical examiner’s waiting room. An assistant in a lab coat greets the police officers and then explains to us in a very quiet but strong voice that Dan will be rolled out on a gurney behind the glass window. She’ll pull back the sheet and we should just signal if we recognize him. We don’t have to actually say anything, just a signal is enough. Which is ironic, I think, because Dan and I had many signals back and forth, as married people do. I knew when he was angry and when he was horny and when he was sad and when he was lying and when he loved me. And he knew the same about me. That’s my Dan, I’d say, and he’d respond, that’s my Janet. All of those signals were him, and they were me, and now, just one more signal to say yes, that’s him, that’s Dan. But it won’t be Dan. It won’t be. Even if it’s his body, it won’t be him.

While we’re waiting for the gurney to be rolled out, the two cops mumble softly behind us. I can’t hear what they’re saying and out of instinct, I turn from Steve’s arm and look at them both. And one is black. I don’t remember him being black in my house. All I can see is the cell phone at his ear, but I can’t see him, his skin, his hair, his lips. I recognize the ear of the other one, the white one, the one my lips brushed, and I want to ask him where’s your partner, but it doesn’t feel quite right, like I’ve eaten off the wrong plate at a fancy dinner party, so I don’t say anything.

The gurney noisily rolls in front of the window and I turn my face into Steve’s shoulder and grab his arm and wait and shudder. I feel Steve gasp and his head fall onto mine and I look up. Dan lies there softly for a second before she covers him again and I grind my fingers into Steve’s arm and wail. I know I’m being as loud as I can be, but I can’t hear it, like I can’t hear my own snores.

Then both policemen are standing in front of me again, just as they did in my living room. And I reach out to the black police officer and start to hit him. Not just once with a little tap of my lady fingers, but with a closed fist and on his head and I scratch and kick his shins and pull his hair before Steve and the white police officer can lift me away from him. Even then, I’m punching, reaching, clawing for him, yelling, “You…You fucking nigger!

You fucking NIGGER! You killed my husband! Take all your goddamned nigger ways and guns and crime and hatred back to Africa! Take it back.

Go back. Go back. Leave us here alone. Leave us alone.” And I’m on the floor, sobbing, wet tears dripping into a puddle on the floor. Dan. Dan. Dan. III Even before I was a deacon, I could get people to do things for me.

Things that they wouldn’t do otherwise. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but I could. I once convinced two drivers, right in the middle of a fist fight over a fender bender that they should give up the fight. They did. It wasn’t very hard. And this was after one’s nose was bleeding and probably broken. I stood on the side of the road, along with about a dozen other drivers caught behind the accident, when I realized that these two men knew each other before their cars smashed together. So I waited until they broke apart for a second to rest and I rushed in and grabbed one guy’s arms and said, “Hey! Where do you two guys know each other from?”

And they told me. And there were no more punches.

Pastor James says it’s my smile, my easy manner, my charisma. He also says it’s something I can’t be too proud of. When pride comes, so comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom, he says, quoting Proverbs 11:2.

At least I think that’s the right verse. I wish I knew the Bible as well as Pastor.

So I try to be humble, but it’s hard. Because I can get people to do things for me.

I don’t know where I got this ability. My father said it’s from how I was

raised. An adopted black boy, child of some almost forgotten and probably dead drug addict, raised in a white suburb by two ministers, husband and wife. That means I don’t really belong anywhere, I’m not a child of any one culture. But instead of isolating myself or seeking out other transplants, I acted as if I belonged everywhere, as if I were comfortable everywhere.

And people sense that. They take comfort in my comfort.

But now, I have an assignment that will test even me. I have to arrange for a funeral to be held in our church. Normally, this isn’t difficult, but this is a special situation because the family of the deceased, well, they don’t want to have the funeral here.

The human resources manager of our complex, Dan Carver, was shot and killed in our parking lot two days ago. According to the policemen who were first on the scene, the crime was probably an accident because Carver wasn’t robbed or even disturbed at all as he sat in his car alone in the parking lot. It was just a stray bullet, an errant incident, an unlucky event, one of these things in life that just happens. Three months before this tragedy, one of our parishioners, a ninety-three year old woman, was struck and killed by a drunk driver. These things happen. People say there’s a reason for everything, but when the life you’ve been riding suddenly leaves you like a dropped see-saw, it’s hard to believe in any sort of a Grand Plan from God or anyone else. Why do senseless tragedies happen? I don’t know. I don’t try to figure it out. I just know those affected need comfort.

And they need to grieve, Pastor told me when we discussed it, like Mrs. Webster, the woman whose mother was killed by the drunk driver. Then he strongly suggested that I visit Dan’s widow to offer our condolences. And to offer to have the funeral here.

I looked at him.

I’d like to have the funeral here, he repeated, well aware of what he was saying and seeing if I knew too.

I did, and told him so. No way could we have the funeral here. Dan wasn’t a parishioner and didn’t even socialize with anyone from the church.

He worked here a long time and got along with everyone and everyone liked him, but it made no sense to have the funeral here. Don’t take his funeral away from his family, I said, but Pastor insisted he wasn’t taking it away from them. They will have a funeral. It will just be here, he said in his voice of finality that energized me to argue more passionately.

But Pastor, I said, the widow attacked a black police officer at the police station. Called him a nigger and everything. And you want to take that woman and her husband’s body lying in a casket and put them that in a room full of black people, knowing full well she blames each and every one for his murder?

What better way to show we are not all murderers than to show her our sorrow and anguish at his death? His tone was genuine, but muted, as if he were trying very hard to cover up how much he was affected by Dan’s death. I’d seen something in his eyes and didn’t realize it was grief until right then.

We need to grieve, he said, just as they do. Dan spent as much of the last nine years with us as he did with them. We deserve a chance to say goodbye. And Pastor James’ eyes were tired and his cheeks were flat and I said, all right, Pastor, even as I wondered about his wisdom in this case.

I’d been around him enough to know that he was usually right, so I let things lay. He said, call the widow and tell her we’d like to come see her.

So I called Mrs. Carver’s home and asked her if we could come by to see her and express our condolences. She just said no and hung up. When I called back, a man who identified himself as Steven answered. This is Deacon Charles from Divine Word Church, I said in my best voice. Are you a member of the Carver family? He said he was. Dan was my father, he added after a pause when I didn’t say anything. I said, on behalf of everyone at Divine Word Church, I’d like to express our sincere condolences at your father’s passing.

After another short pause, he said, “We appreciate that.”

“I’d like to send flowers,” I said, “and to speak to your mother, if I could.”

And another silent pause. I just waited, resisting the urge to say “hello?”

Finally, he explained that flowers weren’t necessary, meaning they were a waste of money, and that the family preferred if we sent a donation to Dan’s college alma mater. Then, he added quickly, his mother really didn’t wish to speak to anyone, meaning that she didn’t want to speak to anyone from Divine Word Church now or ever again.

This was unexpected, so I took a new path. I asked if he and I could meet. There was another pause. It wasn’t exactly what Pastor wanted, but I had to start somewhere. Something like this had to be taken slowly. The problem was, there wasn’t a lot of time. According to the obituary, the funeral was in just two days.

And then, Steve said yes, he would meet me wherever I would like. I knew from the way he talked that he had no influence over the funeral arrangements, that he was meeting me more to satisfy his own curiosity than any other reason and that we were absolutely not to meet at his mother’s house. But he agreed to meet, so that was something.

“Can you come out to my church?” I asked. Another pause and then he said yes quickly, as if trying to erase his hesitation. I called Pastor on his cell phone to let him know that the widow would not allow us to come to her house, but that I was meeting with the son. Keep working it, Deacon, was all he said.

The next day, I greeted Steve at the door of the church with my smile and two handed shake, not overpowering, just friendly and inviting. Comfortable. His eyes were red, but clear, and he looked older than the twenty two years he said he was. I figured he’d aged a lot over the last two days. He looked around at the wide expanse of our sanctuary (we have seating for three thousand plus) and commented how large it was and we listened to his voice echo for a moment.

“Come and sit in the front pew, Mr. Carver?”

He told me to call him Steve and started to say Mr. Carver is my father, but stopped himself and I was embarrassed for both of us. “How do you like our church?” I asked quickly. “Come in and sit down.” I gestured lightly with my hands at the huge empty space.

He followed me up to the front and then sat for a moment, not too close to me. After a minute, he stood and started pacing slowly back and forth in front of me.

Our entire church family wants to express our deep sympathy over this tragedy, I said, and he slowly said, thanks, as if he had to think about it.

He held his hands in his pockets and looked away from me and toward the altar. He kept up his slow motion pacing.

“Have you made plans for the funeral?” I asked.

He spoke, but never looked at me or stopped sweeping his eyes around the expanse of the church, saying the funeral was going to be on Friday because they had to allow time for relatives to come in from out of town.

They had relatives in San Francisco and Texas.

“And it’s going to be at -- your father’s church?” I asked and he shrugged.

Until right then, it didn’t occur to me I didn’t know if Dan was religious at all.

Then Steve said his father – he called him Dad – really didn’t have a church and only went because Mom made him go, but yes, that’s where the funeral was going to be. And I could tell from his voice that the divide between his parents over religion was deep and longstanding.

“This terrible tragedy has really stunned us all,” I started. “We can’t believe it. It’s terribly unfair how accidents happen sometime. Why does one person live when another dies?” And he sort of smiled, the smile that people give when, in the midst of a debacle, you say to them, “you’ll laugh about this someday.”

I smiled sincerely, hoping that I’d made some sort of connection. “We’d like to have the funeral here,” I said, and he looked at me, questioning, and gave a surprised chuckle. I looked back at him, silently encouraging him to answer. He started pacing again, slowly, his hands in his pockets, and said, well, arrangements were already made, meaning no way before God and all his angels would the funeral be here.

“Perhaps if we had a second funeral here after the one at your church?”

I suggested. Pastor wouldn’t be happy about that compromise, but I thought he’d come to understand.

And he stopped pacing and for the first time looked at my eyes. “Did you know my father at all?” he asked and his voice was forceful, defiant. I did, I said, but not as well as I would have liked. And his eyes relaxed and he was clearly uncomfortable at having challenged me so. And he said, you know one of the reasons my father got this job was because Pastor thought him completely unprejudiced. I told him I knew that.

“And my mother, do you know her at all?” he said softly, adjusting for his earlier tone, and I confessed that I didn’t. “If you knew my mother,” he

said, “you wouldn’t ask your question.”

“But, Steve,” I said, “this is a horrible accident that has affected all of us, your family and ours, our church family. We should come together during –” “An accident? Is that what you think this was?” he asked.

I nodded. “The police said it wasn’t intentional. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yes, wrong place, wrong time, but no accident.”

I looked at him, encouraging him to explain what he meant. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said.

And he started pacing again. “Let me put it to you this way, Deacon Charles. If you jammed your hand suddenly into a bucket full of roofing nails,” he said, making a hard downward thrust with his open hand, “what’s going to happen?”

“Your hand will be cut to ribbons, I said, “roofing nails are sharp and – “Exactly,” he said, “and if you did so, getting cut wouldn’t be an accident, would it?” And he made the downward thrust again with his hand.

“No, it wouldn’t.”

Then he waved his hand in a circle, pointing to everywhere in the sanctuary and the world around us. “And this here,” and he looked around at whole sanctuary, “all this here and beyond to the whole neighborhood, is all a bucket of roofing nails. And my father thrust his hand into it. And he got cut.”

I opened my mouth to argue with him and then stopped. He walked toward the door and opened it, then stopped. “And it’s your fault, the leaders of your community that allow this to go on!” He was shaking with rage.

And he left, leaving the echo of the slammed door behind. And I felt clumsy and out of place. I knelt down to pray and did so for an hour, tears flowing over my cheeks and slipping between my lips.

Later, Pastor said it was a valiant try and he appreciated my efforts. We’ll have a memorial service at the same time as the regular funeral, he said, as if this was our plan all along.

I started to say that would be fine, but then I could see what to do. I knew it. Just as I knew what would keep those two men from punching each other after their car accident. This was a different situation, of course, but I could see it just as clearly. “Pastor,” I said, “we need to have a memorial service and then go to the cemetery.”

He looked at me with surprise and I said, please, Pastor, I know what to do, and he said, Deacon, are you moving too fast again?

No, I insisted. And if I am, you can stop it anytime, Pastor. And he said, all right Deacon Charles, repeating the all right as a skeptical mother would to a mistrusted child.

On the day of the funeral, about two hundred of our parishioners showed up for the memorial service, many more than I thought would come. Pastor gave a wonderful eulogy. Afterward, we traveled en mass, with funeral flags on our cars and our lights on, but without a mortuary limousine, to the

cemetery for the burial service. The burial was scheduled for 11:30 and we planned to arrive about 11:40.

At the cemetery, I saw the family gathering around the casket. Even with two hundred of us, we had to be discreet, we had to be quiet, we had to allow them their grieving process. The plan was to spread out single file and form a ring around the casket, but about fifteen yards away from it, so we could see the proceedings, but not interfere at all. We had to have several large gaps of people so that mourners could come and go without having to walk too close to us. And we had to be completely silent. Anyone who couldn’t be quiet, couldn’t come.

And so we did, standing in among the gravestones and trees in the cemetery in a huge circle around and away from where Steve and his mother and the rest of their family and friends stood. We could hear the minister orating slowly, his words a mush like warm oatmeal, and we could hear some people crying and others saying prayers. Every few moments, someone would look up and notice us, but we stood impassive, hands folded, eyes straight, heads slightly bowed. I picked a spot directly in Steve’s line of vision, so that when he looked up, his mouth opened a little in greeting and surprise. I nodded. He took his mother’s hand and squeezed it.

I thought how this juxtaposition looked to someone who didn’t know the situation. To them, we’d be second class citizens, waiting our turn at the grave, letting our superiors mourn first, before being allowed to mourn ourselves.

But it wasn’t like that at all. We stood back out of respect for Dan’s widow. We were the givers, not the scavengers of whatever scraps passed to us. This wasn’t respect for her hatred and prejudice, but for her right to sadness and mourning and grief. And we gave her this respect, even when she looked at us with disgust and anger, before lowering her head and keeping it down.

When everyone except our congregation and the family was gone, we moved forward, silent again, closing our circle of people, mixed with their people, around the gravesite, and watched the caretaker lower the casket and fill the hole with earth.

After a few minutes, the family started to move away from the grave and head to their cars. Some stopped and exchanged glad greetings and sincere condolences with more than a few members of our congregation.

I shook hands with two people, someone who said he was a childhood friend of Dan’s and an older man who identified himself as Dan’s uncle.

He said he was glad we could make it. I said I was glad, too. We both smiled.

Original Death Valley Photos: Ana Hernandez Manipulation: SS

New Grass

Michael K. Gause

With every line that is written something dies, replaced by something living.

New Contributors Shane Bailey, lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. When he is not at his full-time office job, he divides his time between reading and writing fiction. The authors who have influenced him the most are Joyce Carol Oates, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf, as well as a few others. His short stories have been published by Rosebud, Salome Magazine, Litbits, Debris Magazine, and Out of the Gutter.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook Remembrance was published

by Origami Condom Press and The Conquest of Somalia was published by Cervena Barva Press.

A collection of his poetry ‘Days of Destruction’ has been published in 2009 by Skive Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. He currently lives in New York City , where he’s busy writing. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines.

James Berkshire: Unshaven, Unemployed and Unclean.

Jen Conley lives in Brick, New Jersey, with her husband and son. She graduated from Elon College, North Carolina with a degree in English Literature, and has been teaching sixth grade for over ten years. She was born and raised in New Jersey, and lived in London, England, in the early 1990’s. Her stories have been published in RE:AL, A Journal of Liberal Arts; R-KV-R-Y, A Quarterly Journal; and SNM Horror Magazine where her story “Old Hag’s Syndrome” was selected as “Story of the Month” and will be printed in the magazine’s 2010 print anthology. Another story will be published in the upcoming Talking River Review.

William Doreski teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge.

S. P. Flannery was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and now resides in Madison. His poetry has appeared in Revival, Merge, Random Acts of Writing, Poetry Salzburg Review, Straylight and other fine literary publications. (not pictured).

Michael K. Gause writes in Minnesota. His first self-published chapbook, The Tequila Chronicles, received honorable mention in The Carbon Based Mistake’s 2004 Art Exchange Program Contest.

His second, I Want To Look Like Henry Bataille, was published in 2006 by Little Poem Press and to his knowledge hasn’t won squat. He is the creator and host of The Dishevel’d Salon, a monthly happy hour gathering of writers. His website is www.thedayonfire.com.

Willow Healy has had the good fortune to live and work in Asia, Europe and Africa. Her adventures and experiences having lived among such culturally-rich communities, in some of the most dramatically beautiful places on earth, has provided a deep well of ideas from which to draw from.

She currently reside in the greater L.A. area and is completing a mystery/thriller set high up in the Himalayas, near Mt. Everest.

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His brand new poetry chapbook with pictures From Which Place the Morning Rises and his new photo version of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom are available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: www.iuniverse.com/ bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7.

He has been published in over 22 countries. The author is also editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his website: http://poetryman.mysite.com.

David Kentner is an old new author having returned to writing after a thirty-eight year hiatus. He is a retired Chief of Police of Freeport, IL, as well as a former auctioneer, antiques dealer, and still performs estate assessments occasionally for specific clients. He has a degree in Law Enforcement and am a Federally Certified Instructor in ‘Communication for Community Policing.’ (Not pictured).

Mark Konkel earned his MFA at Vermont College in the summer of 2006, and has appeared or will appear in Quality Women’s Fiction (the special Men Write for QWF issue), Read This Magazine, Kaleidotrope, Abacot Journal, Cause & Effect Magazine, River Oak Review, Mississippi Crow, Nano Fiction, Heartlands, American Drivel Review, The Binnacle, Sinister Tales, Free Verse, Timber Creek Review, and Transcendent Visions. He’s thrilled to add Faraway to that list. (Not pictured).

Terence Kuch is an information technology consultant, avid hiker, and world traveler. His publications and recent acceptances include Abacot Journal, Commonweal, Dust, Marginalia, New York magazine, North American Review, qarrtsiluni, Slow Trains, Sonar-4, Thema, and Timber Creek Review. He has studied at the Writers Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and participated in the MidAmerican Review Summer Fiction Workshop.

Beth Mathison’s previous work has been published in The Foliate Oak (with a story included in their 2007-2008 annual “best of” edition) and 365tomorrows. (Not pictured).

Eric McKinley is a Philadelphian. He is a former public defender in the former most dangerous city in America, Camden, New Jersey. Now, Eric is an MFA in Fiction Candidate at Rosemont College. He writes a story every now and again. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Aurelian Literary Journal, The Battered Suitcase, Tuesday Shorts,

apt, audience, Pequin, Conceit Magazine, Forge and Weave. Samplings can be found at www.ericmckinleyfiction.com.

Luigi Monteferrante is a Canadian author/ singer-songwriter. Poems in: Neon, Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Yellow Mama, Word Slaw, poetryfriends, Poesia/Indiana Bay, kudoswriting, Sonar4, Poet’s Ink Review, The Battered Suitcase/ Vagabondage Press, Twisted Tongue, Danse Macabre, Language & Culture, Kritya, Burst Now, MOTEL 58, greenbeard, GLASS Poetry Journal, WOW. Short stories published in Chicago Quarterly Review (2), Happy. First novel, At the Hearth of the Devils Lair, followed by 2000-mile book tour on a VESPA scooter through Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Annapolis, Baltimore, NYC in 2002. Recently completed third novel on Futurism.

Benjamin Nardolilli is a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Clockwise Cat, Sheroes Rag, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com. (Not pictured).

Felino Soriano is a case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults in California. He is the editor of the online journal, Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, which focuses on International interpretations of experimental poetry, art, and photography. He is the author of three chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008), Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2009) and an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic motivation. Website: www. felinosoriano.com

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has been published in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novel Tatterdemalion (Cauliay) was recently released in print and is available most places.

A second novel, Amphisbaena (also Cauliay), is forthcoming in Summer 2009. He tries hard. For inquiry, publication history and information, or to read more, visit: http://raysuccre.blogspot.com Elizabeth Kate Switaj is the author of Magdalene & the Mermaids (Paper Kite Press), Shanghai (has more capital (Gold Wake Press), and The Broken Sanctuary: Nature Poems (Ypolita Press). She edits Crossing Rivers Into Twilight (www.critjournal.com) and has reviewed poetry for Galatea Resurrects, Experimental Fiction & Poetry, and Mad Hatter’s Review. For more information visit www.elizabethkateswitaj.net Atina Thorning is a child care teacher. She has recently become interested in photography. She is currently putting together a portfolio.

Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English, born and living in Venice-Italy, writing poems exclusively in English since 1993; they have been published in around four hundred literary magazines since 1999, in U.K, U.S. and elsewhere: “Poetry New Zealand” , “New Contrast” (South Africa). “Nimrod” (U.S.), Scintilla and Orbis (U.K). His poetry collection as a downloadable online book was published by www. gattopublishing.com in 2006.

Sean Wiebe is an assistant professor of language and literacy at the university of Prince Edward Island (http://www.upei.ca/education/wiebe). His papers and poetry appear in a variety of journals and book chapters in the areas of the arts, teacher education and curriculum studies. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal of Educational Thought, Standards, JAAACS, The Windsor Review, Poetry Friends, Apt, Inscribed, and Blue Skies.

Olga Zilberbourg is a writer based somewhere between San Francisco, CA and St. Petersburg, Russia. Her collection of short stories КофеInn was published in St. Petersburg in 2006. Since then, she’s been working primarily in English. Her short stories have been published in Thema and online in The Writer’s Eye, Clockwise Cat, ezra: an online journal of translation. A longer story is due to appear shortly in an anthology from the Drollerie Press entitled “Things that go BUMP in the night.”

She is an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine.

For information on other contributors, to download previous issues, comment on the blog or forum, or to contribute to future issues, visit:

www.farawayjournal.com

© 2009