FIVE QUARTERLY F A LL 2 015
POEMS Kate Welsh Lauren Camp Jessica Lanay Lisa Higgs H.R. Webster STORIES Edmund Sandoval Jessica Lanay Travis Dahlke Graeme Carey Chelsea Sutton
FOUNDERS Vanessa Gabb Crissy Van Meter ISSUE ASSISTANTS Lauren Polyakov Liz Merrigan
POETRY
Humans of New York: Where are your hands? Kate Welsh i deo issda eobsda language ttoneun dan-eo , geugeos-eun balo has a thousand cheoleom · daesgeul dalgi · 116 · 3.-eun uli moduga "uliga seolmyeong hal su sowon migug e geoju jung . wau . mannassda jeonjaeng geuneun migug gun-in ieossda. geunyeoneun du gaji ga iss-eossda daughters geunyeoui nampyeon Oleul who ban-ib hal su iss- eossda hangug-e geudeul moduleul tteonaya haessda never wanjeonhi munhwa e jeog-eung haji su speak yeong-eo geunyeoga halyeogo eolmana yeolsimhi jal sang-gwan-eobs-i . wae idong haji anhseubnida to amsibnyeonhu saeloun nala neun dangsin-i daleun salam eul pandan hag i jeon-e jeog-eung eul eolmanajal chamjohasibsio. machangajilo each other s amsibnyeon hu saeloun nala neun dangsin-i daleun salam eul pandan hoesin · 106 · 3 sigan West Indies . Yo ta chita nan pyès devan kay , yo bwè te li yo epi gade nou grandkids jwe ... Tankou · reponn · 82 · 3 heures alii Charles Wow! Cool Tankou · 2 · 3 heures Mari Lai Jantiyès se the inivèsèl language Tankou · reponn · 36 · 3 heures Judith our Tordoir Rappelle m ' nan koute chè family sèvant ki moun ki premye came to serve granparanmwen kòm yon jèn ti fi , yo te rete ak yo, li te wè pitit yo ak pitit pitit fèt, wè maryaj ak l anmò, ak te viv k ap sèvi soouo fidèlman, yon Chinwa ki kouri met deyò pou lavi l ', mari l' ak pitit perished in the boat yo te sou , l i te ateri nan Penang, it Port Swettenham ak had bound feet... li mennen m ' moute ansanm ak lòt moun, men depi m' te ogmante ak granparan m 'yo, li te zanj cheri mwen, itilize yo chante m' chante Chinwa kòm lullabyes mwen . Tankou · Reply · 35 · 3 heures mulgeon eun We lost hwagsilhi yeojaga maekkeuleowossda bihaeng-gi ui won-the n-e mikkeuleoun doeeo iss-eoyahabnid i saeng-gag · il ui sigan salam-eun nugungaga country yeong-eo pointeu ga nulag of hagseub haeyahaneunji yeobu e gwanhan our geos-ibnida. dangsin-eun dangsin-i common language geugeos-eul eod-eul su eobs-eulgeoya , geugeos- eul eod-eulhaji anhseubnida , geuligo mian yaseumi madeila to neukkim " geogie communicate I jungnyeon-ui hangug yeoseong ieossda. geunyeo ui moseub bangbeob- jeug jeonhyeongjeog-in hangug deulama ui held modeun jungnyeon yeoseong ui saeng-gag . uliui edo1 bulguhago unyeoneun na-ege satang , kkeom word eul jegong , geuligo maeu gin wrapped in foil FR nawa hamkke us- it was Wàimiàn lěng, wèn wǒ zàinǎlǐ my jacket Le. Wǒ gàosù tā, it was Hǎo ba, wǒ huì zhíjiē jìnrù tíngchē kù jìnrù my car. yeongyeol jungnyeon-ui hangug yeoseong ieossda. lol · 34 · 2 sigan ke moni chan gat-eun Sewed eossda saeng-gag · il ui sigan teuleisi lojen salam on my -eun nugungaga yeong-eo pointeu ga nulag hagseub body haeyahaneunji yeobu e gwanhan geos-ibnida. dangsin- An immigrant eun dangsin-i geugeos-eul eod-eul su eobs-eulgeoya , geugeos-eul i madeila neukkim " wrapped in geogie a Línjū shuí shì 70 duō suì de yà yì nǚzǐ bìng méiyǒu shuōhuà extraterrestrial Yīngyǔ, wǒ yě bù huì shuō guǎngdōng huà dehuà. Rán'ér, women zǒng shì huīshǒu wènhǎo, zàijiàn, yīdàn chénggōng de yǔ shǒushì de zhěnggè tánhuà, tā quàn wǒ conversation.
George: A Ballad Lauren Camp [When I answer the phone] my tongue says I’m sorry I’m looking for anywhere for some direction and the moon is watching the moon is an hour east of here with a way of listening / I can’t understand [three times I dreamt] how we were changed by the small years of talk and now looking out windows / looking at unopened mail at my breath the news now talks to itself with its internal pattern of wind [my thoughts remain tucked as his stories exit the blood] I have to remember it all / what he said and how he’d been fading for years / but one night we were in the city that night we were hungry / the rain kept on saying its favorite color we were lazy and satisfied with time / and the waiter was ready to diagram our happiness the blooms on the table we were not in tomorrow not in the reasons but / we began with a banquet [everything grand] and later / his body was still warm [it was a nap nothing] who knows how long since he’d been in the best way now it’s sunny the sun wraps around / us
and tomorrow strangers will tell stories with currency and snapshots in the instants poured over to multiple views and names of a man / you are broken don’t pretend you are not
10 Portraits of Colonel Sanders Jessica Lanay Portrait I Portrait VIII My uncle with mechanic’s hands on my knee, say, “Brown sugar, where’s yo’ Momma?”
Maybe Mr. Sanders is an Alexander Dumas case and the chicken is his way of coming home
Portrait II Portrait IX Has a kiss soft like an old blush, has a kiss like cloudy moonshine, in the back of his new silverado.
My father’s father is asking me if I speak that stuff Haitians speak, I say, “Yes.” He says, “I still love you.”
Portrait III Portrait X Wonder if Momma ever thought of Daddy like this, well Daddy, just about as red and raw. Portrait IV Laugh’s like he is coughing up feathers. Scheming. Mandolin and tatters. White on white on black tieMasterflex. Portrait V It is five o’clock Mr. Sanders, Is my grandma in the back? Is she done yet? Portrait VI This commercial is racist nostalgia, like John Wayne Portrait VII One little...two little… three little...fill in the blank with blanks, you know the rest
He says he’s back - sings it but, Isn’t that a bit morbid? The man’s dead. You can’t stop Massa from beating a dead horse.
NIGHT WATCH Lisa Higgs How many moons ago when the earth stood on its edge, grass half-greened and trees, like empty clotheslines creaking, their voices lifted in the fawn breeze, when the sharp, the loud, the clash of cloud and heat, the cracked, clumsy crash of dish or glass or fragile frame, when noise bit like shrapnel, splintered scrap of rock, metal, when reason for a rabbit to slip a corner, for a raccoon to reach out its hand, when the light did not frighten, the brilliant not seem essential, when the pace of earth toward the edge of spring smelled bitter as hyacinth, did sunlight slice as thin a reflection as tonight?
Ghost Status H.R. Webster I farted so loudly I woke myself up, and the dog. I let a stranger choke me in bed. I put lipstick on my armpit and my toothbrush in my hair. I think about you often. I think about your long dark wig. I am a grown-up. I ate fritos for breakfast. I think I look prettier when I hold a cigarette. I only stopped the stranger when the world began to silhouette. Dark pines marking up his walls, battalioning in close corners. I want my arms to be thin as a silver chain. Translucent as the rim of a tooth. I drank all the wine. I ate the sad little noise in the throat he broke. There is your ghost at the banister, hair silking to your hip’s absence. It is the noise in me, the velvet tendon, plucked. It is that flower girl, cancer, petalling your gut. I clicked on every one of your baby photos. Scans blurring towards darkness. I ate the sour bread which makes me sick. I like to be sick. I am sick. I let a stranger slap my face in bed. “Is that ok” he whispers, after the fact. Your eyes reflect back light— little blank moons. I put the cursor in one and tap. I sat down in the shower. I peed in the shower. I forgot again to wash my hair. I think about the two-headed calf. The way the moon breaks apart in the belly. The needle’s metal tongue inside your crook. The wad of cotton to forget it. I have a song in my head. I have a fray in my mouth like a cheap silk flower. I snapped the candles out. I tugged the splinter with my teeth. I am ok in case you were wondering. I am not ok in case you were wondering. I think about the calf’s split neck. Swallows tangling like curls at your nape. I recited the facts of your life. Counted out ratios against your lack. The blood unspooled from your mouth and ears like the string of a talking doll. I pray to your ghost by writing on your wall
FIC TION
WE DON'T THINK MUC H OF WHERE WE C AME FROM Edmund Sandoval But not tonight, tired today. The air dusty spider web tufting from attic lumber. Smell of crushed cicada shell, grass, other. I’ve got a face for nothing. There isn’t any cost in that. Not in the short run. There’s the moon, hiking up like a mom on a hill, slow and steady and overwarm and a little breathless, but still moving and then there, eager. All that sudden light you knew was coming, making the black leaves green for a spell, and slight shadows where there weren’t any before. There’s mine, spilling down the porch stairs and onto the sidewalk, where the dog lays and pants and scratches in the day.
The dog was a mistake. He’s a good boy, but he’s not right for me. He’s got his issues. I can see them coming a mile away. I hit him once. Stunned him on the low back, just where the tail sprouts. How he went into a sit. Just like that. Standing then pow then sitting. Thought it was a bug sting. How he u’d around and chewed at the point where I clocked him, those little front teeth nibbling away. We sleep in the same bed when she’s not around. And when she is, he warms the floor, cocks his head when the springs curse and jumble.
When he ran off, I watched him go, his stiff hind legs toggling back and forth. Fine, I yelled after him. See if you don’t come back! Of course he did. Circle of fur on the welcome mat, brambles and burr seeds woven into his hide, tick the size of a hailstone poking out of his ear.
When I think of my brother. When I think of us as kids. When I recall how I took a knife to him and how he just moved his fork through his food with his eyes closed. And how we drove together to the land that wasn’t ours.
She’s got the cards out and is bridging them between her hands then making them dance on the table. Her fingers are short but deft. We’ve got a glass bottle out and the bubbles are
hitting surface and popping. She said we should pretend being high rollers. That the cola was some fancy wine. That we were playing cash games. Ok, I said, then I’ll bet the limit, and pushed across my pile of pennies and nickels.
What’s it matter? Brother’s in Montana now, anyway. Or is it Wyoming. Same kind of look to the land from what I know. Long weeds and gray rocks jutting through it, and emptiness, and clouds. Gave up the short weeds and red stones and cloudless skies of New Mexico. That bowl of sky. Long curve of mountain road, rusted guardrail, mile marker dappled with birdshot. That rounded valley where we’d struck out then.
She’d written me actual real letters, with glossy photos between the trifolds leftover from the envelopes they were sent in.
When I drink my cola, I try to dredge up some other taste beyond sugar. It’s hard being dry. I read that this wasn’t the way you had to do it. That there was research that made it fine to go back in but slower, without the heavy foot. But she insists. Says you said so. And I did say so. I get up for another bottle and pour it out. I’m gaining weight with all this sugar and ice. I say let’s just call it was it is.
About those three years. Flatbacked in the dark and on the floor, receiver volume between the thumb and forefinger, up and down with the swells, the ceiling rotating, a heaviness between the shoulders and gut.
And she in the bed, the lights off, the rustle of sheets heard through the heat register. What could she have been mouthing? I didn’t adjust, kept on humming and turning the dial, patient enough to watch the dark crystallize, no other choice.
This was her handwriting. Like a song sung in a car when you’re alone on the road. Nothing held back. The joy, the communion of voices. On those letters, is what I mean.
Sometimes the pictures weren’t even of her. A set of potted plants, some old timer with a cane and a belt. Or were of her but weren’t of all of her. That one with the lens an inch from her skin. Could have been the top of her thigh.
The dog tripped running down the hill. Tumbled and went ass over tea kettle. When he got back on his legs, his snout was red and dusty. I went up to him and he licked my palm and when he did a tooth came out. It was yellow as beach sand. I held it up to him and he sniffed it, then went for my arm, licked the sweat that was beading there. He left his spit and blood and seemed happy. He panted. I put his tooth in my pocket. But then I took it out. Looked at it again. It was aged, like an old tree.
I can’t get any cards to make a hand so I bluff and bluff again. I smile when I do. Or set my face and stare off. Sometimes she calls. Mostly she folds. And sighs. And says why’d you do that? Gotta pay to play, I say. There’s water on the table from the glasses. I clap my thigh and the dog comes over. You old son of a bitch. It goes into a yoga pose and stretches its shoulders. Just like my brother did in the morning on the dirt when the sun was just a pool of colors and not an actual round thing.
I think about the one place where the center actually held. It’s not much. Just cold comfort. But it’s there. It’s something. And who needs a picture when you got it right there in front of you. Real as anything. More, sometimes.
WHALEDOG Jessica Lanay Georgia summers remind me of wild dogs. One minute they can be strolling lazily down the street. The next they would show you their gums and start hollering at you, their tails pricked straight up in the air. That’s how they let you know they aren’t to be fucked with. The first heat wave always fills my mouth with longings for tastes like peaches, watermelon, and blood oranges, things that drip when you bite them. Lavar and I would pass the summer sticking our fingers into the fruit salads momma left in the freezer, putting something cold in our mouths. Momma works long hours at the hospital. During the summer I only see her early in the morning dressed in her scrubs. She wakes me up, gives me directions and then pauses with my chin between her curled index finger and thumb. She studies me with her brown eyes with the blue circle around them then she bunches her thick mouth together to make her thinking face before stroking my cheek, kissing my forehead and leaving. “Call the police if someone comes up on the property.” She says as she runs out of the front door. Sometimes she is at the hospital until the next day. Today after she left, I was angry. Lavar lay on the hard, brown-carpeted floor in the small square living room. There is an old couch with big cushions, a TV, and an armchair. We haven’t had a coffee table since Lavar opened up his chin on one when he was smaller. He flipped through the pages of his dinosaur book. His skinny arms and legs looked like burnt up little branches in the long white t-shirts we wear around the house to keep cool in the summer. Something about the way Lavar swung his ashy, long feet while lying on his stomach, in his dead world of bones and dinosaurs made me mad. I began crumbling up corner after corner of the newspaper I took off the front porch. I balled it up with spit in my mouth and shot it through an old straw left on the kitchen counter. He didn’t move. It seemed he never did. Momma always makes me run, jump, cut, stir, and fold. I always ask her why Lavar never has to help and her answer is to let him be - he is too little to handle big jobs-boys
don’t like to do this stuff anyways. I didn’t want to learn or do the stuff she and my aunts did either. It wasn’t that long ago that she started letting me know the difference between my brother and I. I had not noticed it before, just the parts I had seen when we took baths together stood out to me, and our ages. But I did not see why momma was all of a sudden making me do things differently. I was getting into trouble for playing too rough, dirtying my cloths, sitting with my legs open. She did not want me outside as much; I couldn’t play fight with my boy cousins anymore. Sometimes I felt like that scene from Star Wars. Lavar was the big fat alien thingy and I was chained to him, feeding him grapes or some shit. Lavar and me watched that tape until momma brought home the DVD player with the complete Star Wars DVD set. She also brought the Land Before Time, which Lavar ran into the ground until just the music made me feel like it would give me nosebleeds. Besides Star Wars the only other tape is an aerobics one and no one remembers where either come from. Now the tapes sit dusty on top of the TV. This summer I am happy that momma is mostly gone, so she can’t bother me. So I can be off on my own without her making me believe I am something I’m not. Not saying that I’m a boy - I know better by now, but I don’t want to be whatever her and my aunties are. I am learning to cuss from the construction workers building up houses all around us. The land we are on belonged to a great uncle who grew peaches and pecans. The trees are still all around us, still dropping fruit, which falls to the ground and leaves behind the smell of alcohol. It was something when momma bought this land. She finished her nursing degree when I was around seven. She took all that money she was making now, walked into a lawyer’s office and slapped the money down. She fanned it out just like she did with the cards when she plays spades with my aunties. Our house was built up like a too big shotgun house. Door in the front, door in the back, four bedrooms, two bathrooms off the long, dark hallway; a living room and a dining room and of course a kitchen. Before we were living in an apartment that smelled like weed. There were always lots of teenage boys strolling through the parking lots. They never went to
work and they talked to grown women and sometimes to me. Nothing nasty, just asking me how old I was and about Lavar, one time one of them showed me how to hold a football and throw it. Momma always told me to never get off my bike, to stay on and hold onto it no matter what happened. Momma was real worried about getting me out of there before I was twelve. Twelve was her age for that and I didn’t quite get why. Later, when my cousin Sally got pregnant I thought it might have had something to do with my momma thinking I would do the same. We were out of the apartments by then, living on the new land. Momma spent a lot of time on the phone with my auntie, talking with sounds and throwing in an occasional, “Well you gotta watch them when they start they rag.” She would look over her shoulder at me when she said this and I would make faces at her. I guess I was a little stupid; it did not occur to me that the rag was something beyond my control. ⟰ I don’t know why, but listening to momma talk about Sally had made me sick. There was something sad about it, like a deep hole that you can’t see the bottom of may make you sad. And I knew I was going to have to see her soon. Sally was only two years older than me, 14. Our church was having a function down at Goodwill Cemetery late in the spring and with the way I heard auntie saying Sally needed Jesus loud enough that it came through the receiver I figured she would force her to come. Momma had come to get us out of school. My school was right up the street from Lavar’s school. We drove in silence over the newly paved roads lined with brand new churches out to Perry. The roads ran like the veins that stood up on the back of my grandma’s leg, dipping and wrapping and carrying up and over hills. The pecan tree fields stood clean, their fallen branches cleared away, arms straining towards the sky for rain. They changed into the soybean fields that eventually turned to clapboard houses sitting a half-mile back from the main road. If you looked far enough you could see chimneys standing like guards beside each other with their hundred year old clapboard fallen around them. We took off onto a side road only noticeable because of a hand painted sign made from wood that read, Goodwill. Some
yellow truck-machines parked along the side, the road became rough where they had pulled it up. Our car circled into the valley where the cemetery was. Momma parked with the rest of the cars. People dressed in black knotted around different family plots. The truth is that we are all married into the same area, the same town. Momma was dressed in black too. We left the car and followed behind momma down the red clay paths to the Jenkins-Squire plots. As momma laid out tulips and flowers I began to panic, my chest heaving. Sally, kind of rounder around her bellybutton, and my auntie came walking towards us. A group of old women I recognized from church floated by wearing black dresses with white collars, I heard them suck their teeth at Sally and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Sally stood before me with her chin in her chest, in a pink summer dress. It seemed stupid on her pregnant body. I shoved my hands into my school pants, blue khakis that I had chosen over the skirt. “Hey.” She said to me quietly. I wouldn’t look at her face, I watched the old ladies passing behind her. “Hi.” I muttered. My aunt's mouth became tight and she pushed us together, hard. “Hug your cousin Delilah!” And as she said it, I did it, my arms around Sally’s arms at her sides, I felt like I was holding a balloon. I also felt like she was contagious. Everything smelled like earth being ripped up, like the smell of tree sap, like the smell of pine needles when you rubbed them fast between your palms. Lavar crept towards me and leaned against me as I backed away from Sally who had big tears coming down her cheeks now. I wanted to change the subject so I spoke up, almost shouting, “Momma, why we here?” She sighed, glancing towards my aunt. “Someone big done bought the land, they are going to put a factory here.” I remembered momma telling me that this was the first blacks only graveyard - a lot of those tumbled houses were quarters where our great-greats lived. “Where they gon’ put us then?” I waited for her to answer me. I looked around I had been to so many funerals already here. Momma’s eyes glazed over like they always did when she wanted to cry.
We had family there sleeping, but some of the graves were so old that groundwater had drowned the corpses. In the holes where the concrete slabs had crumbled away I could see my reflection in the water. I wondered if Sally’s insides looked that way, like a broken stone filled with water with who knows what swimming around in it. Star Wars was easier to understand than this. Easier to understand than how all the women around seemed to work all the time or have babies all the time or be stressed out all the time. Where was Yoda? Where was Luke? Why couldn’t I be on Tatooine? The graves in the lower valley had already been washed away. They had already begun digging things up there. Months later a yellow bus company flattened the land with huge flattening machines, crushing everything underneath into dust, the next time I saw that place there were busses lined up one after the other. ⟰ Where we live now, it is just us. Many people come up to the house demanding my mother sell the land. We are in the middle of this big, what I heard the lawyer say is, a subdivision project. They are trying to make money on the empty country-land. I never got it; there aren’t enough people around here to buy up all of these houses. And unless you are a nurse like momma - you ain’t got no place to work, maybe a restaurant or a store in the mall. But the bus doesn’t go anywhere, just from one end of town to the other and only up one main road. The bus driver doesn’t even bother to make people pay most of the time, knowing he ain’t got nowhere to take them, not really. I looked at Lavar again; his big black circles were on me, without blinking. He tilted his peanut head and smiled at me with his teeth before looking around his body, “You better pick these up, momma gon’ whup on you.” I sucked my teeth, pulling my knees up, “YOU clean them up, nigguh.” He smacked his forehead with his open hand, “Why you talk like that? You don’t do it in front of momma.”
“Shut up...shit.” I was trying it out. I liked it. I had worse curses stacked on the back of my tongue, but to use them on Lavar would make him cry and tell. As long as he didn’t cry he didn’t tell. I took the remote and clicked on the television. I began pulling out the fray on my cutoffs as I flipped through the channels, finally landing on the science channel. There was a picture of a woman’s body cut in half, right down the middle, there were red arrows pointing at her titties, her crotch, her stomach and some other parts. Lavar whined, “Na-uh! I don’ wanna watch this!” I grabbed one of the throw pillows and put its name to use, “Shut up, nigguh.” He huffed, burying his head back into the book. I had been refusing to see Sally since my period started after they finished flattening the cemetery. Every time these shows came on I watched them, it was better than talking to momma who would tell someone new every time she remembered. Her tone with me changed too, like she was waiting on me to do something wrong. I had asked her once, “Does this mean I’m like Sally? I have a period now I can get pregnant?” “What the hell you planning on to ask me that question? You better not be like Sally.” The way she said it bit down into me, I felt like how I did at the corner store a little ways down the main road, the storeowner always watching Lavar and I even though we always paid. I am only twelve. I still can’t wear a training bra without it hanging loose off of me. And though all the girls at school had crushes, I had not yet figured out how they had them. Boys did not get me worked up as much as they annoyed me. The narrator-woman’s voice was clear like a whistle and she carefully spoke on each body part as if she was giving instructions on how to load a gun. She talked about the titties becoming swollen, and the woman’s blood becoming trapped in her uterus that was shaped like a basket. She talked about a woman’s body holding millions of half-live eggs that rolled down some tubes and buried themselves in the blood where there they waited for a man to spit tadpoles at it while he was inside the woman. My nose cringed. Who wants someone
sweating up all over them, spitting milky shit inside of them? Had Sally liked it? A boy from church named Willow and her had done it, now I couldn’t look at him either. The woman went on to say that if that didn’t happen, if the man did not spit his milk inside, then the eggs and the blood leaves, marking the end of what she called a fertility cycle. I felt like I understood something then, not sure what it is. I looked down at Lavar. I got up from the couch and crawled down onto the floor where I mounted him. I felt my neck and face cooking as I began to hit him and slap him. At first he laughed, giggled and I wanted to think that I was playing. But my hands became heavier, I began to beat on him, until he cried and wailed. I stood up, shoved my foot into his hip, rolling him away from me. “Stop crying pussy!” “Ima tell momma!” “You tell momma Ima burn these shitty little books you read! Fuckin’ things don’t exist anyway!” Snot bubbled up in his nose, tears bulged at the corners of his eyes and he softly continued to weep, glancing at the television. “Everything does that Delilah! Even the ocean! It is called red tide...ain’t nothin bad, why you hit me?” He hadn’t even noticed Sally and how she had changed, how her cheeks bulged, he just ran to her and rubbed up on her when he saw her. Hugging her tightly as if her new fat was meant just for that. What I wanted to know was why everything could happen to me and not to him. Why weren’t his insides all twisted up? Why wasn’t his crotch stuffed up in him and wet? He seemed to know, or at least have more reason about it than I do. The little shit reads a lot where I can barely listen through anything. Hearing his words, hearing him reason through everything made me feel stupid, how a nine year old boy know more about my bleeding than me? I felt like a monster. I sighed, knelt down next to him, wrapped my wiry arms around him, and kissed his temple. “Please don’t tell momma.” I rocked from my heels to the balls of my feet, my chin mushed on top of his head.
Lavar loved affection, attention, and softness. He would grab hold of momma’s hips and she would move around the house with him on her like that. He liked to try to hold his lady teacher’s hand in school. I tilted my face towards his; he wiped his wet eyes and smiled. I sat down behind him; he sat between my open outstretched legs. I picked up the dinosaur book and pointed to a yellowish colored monster with a crown of three points on its head, “What is this?” Lavar grabbed the book by the back and front cover, opening it up more. When he grinned I could see his two bucked front teeth, his finger touched the back of the animal. “This is triceratops. Because it has three points on its head.” I must have made a face because he frowned a little, I smirked. “These damn things would eat a little nigguh like you.” His face changed into a serious look, he took my fingers off the book one by one. His voice sounded confused. “It is an herbivore - it don’t eat people and I don’t think carnivores would like our taste. Sharks don’t eat us, they spit us out, we’re too salty.” I pushed myself to my feet with a huff. He has an answer for everything. I stretched and then flopped into the cushiony couch. I rolled over and opened the blinds. Across the tops of the greening trees were more large yellow machines like there had been in the graveyard. They ducked their heads down, tipped their mouths and scooped up dirt behind a tall chain link fence a little less than a quarter mile away. When their necks bent I could hear the engines turning. Lavar climbed up next to me, balancing his book on the sill as he flipped through the pages until he came to a picture of a t-rex. One of the larger machines seemed as if it could stand just as tall. Lavar’s eyes looked back and forth from the dinosaur in the book to the machine. “You wanna see it right the fuck close up?” I asked, hoping he would say yes. The bridge of his nose wrinkled, “Please stop talkin’ like that Delilah. You gon slip up in front of momma and she gon’ hit you, real hard. You don’t even sound good sayin’ it.”
I thought about pushing him onto the floor, but I wanted him to come outside with me and he would lock himself up in his room if I hit him again. I sighed heavily, sucking my teeth long. “Why can’t I sound good cussin?” “You’re a girl!” “Stop saying that! Great auntie Tina is a girl, she cuss and spit snuff! Great auntie Milly does too! She cuss!” I watched Lavar’s eyes become skinny, he was getting ready to beat me in my argument, his smug closed lip smile cut his face in two, “Dey grown, you little still.” “Nah - uh - uh!” “Why ain’t you little…?” “Because - Because...I -” I got up from the couch, I took him by his wrist and yanked him to his feet. I didn’t want to admit why I wasn’t little, why momma thought I may start acting grown. “We goin’ outside. Leave that book here.” He wrung his body away, twisting around like a rubber band. “No! I am taking it with me and stop telling me what to do.” He marched away and through the front door, still in his long t-shirt with tighty-whiteys underneath. His shirt looked like a dress. I followed him out, the sound of the machines in the distance becoming louder. I slipped my long feet into my canvas sneakers and then helped Lavar with his before we took off into the grass. It was still relatively early. A shiny fog had come down around the trunks of the peach trees. The thick green leaves were slick with the waters of the fallen clouds. The droplets dripping off on my shoulders and Lavar’s head as we pushed past the trees. I felt Lavar’s hand grab the tail of my shirt. He always said that the peach trees reminded him of people trying to pull themselves up out of the earth. The sun glare was blurry through the floating fog. I glanced back to see if Lavar was there, he was, aimlessly following me with a silly smile on his face. It dawned on me that if momma gives in to the people who want to
build houses that everything we were standing on would disappear like the bodies in Goodwill. Lavar stumbled. I tripped up along with him before roughly pulling away from his grasp. We came up close to the fence. A paved road on the other side ended right at the fence and extended into a street lined with pale blue, pale green and pink houses. Lavar darted off like a mosquito between the trees, I reached out to try to stop him. “Lavar! Tch, Lavar!” I turned back to the fence. Some tall, dusty men were standing near by. Their hats hovering on their heads. Their vests matched the yellow hats, like the machines. I stared at them, bits of their conversation floating over to me. “You think that woman is gonna sell all that land?” “Well I heard that the lawyer is planning to fuck her over if she does…” “That bitch should just come up off it, you know how much money they offered her?” I tensed. The dots connected, they were speaking about momma. My fingers clutched the chain link fence, making it rattle. Their heads turned and they paused, like Lavar does when he gets caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. They were not the same men I had spoken to a few times before, asking them this and that about one cuss word or another that they explained and then encouraged me to say. They had been around some months before when the land was being cleared. Maybe there were men to clear the land and other men to build on it. One came towards me, I backed away from the fence. “Hey - we don’ seen you sneaking around, you been goin’ back to your momma tellin’ her what we say?” I didn’t answer, I didn’t know they had seen me in the bushes, spying on their conversations. I took another step back as if the fence would not hold them if they did not want it to. “Hey gal, I’m talking to you.” “Leave her alone, now. Hey - what’s your name?” I swallowed hard, my hands wringing around my fingers in front of me as a different man questioned me. “Uh, Dee. My name is Dee.”
“Well hey Dee. We work over here on the houses.” “Y-yeah. I know - ya’ll tryina take over our land.” I suddenly stood straight becoming longer and taller. I poked my chin outwards a little bit, “But ya’ll ain’t gon’ get shit.” I felt them pause again, their eyes exchanged glances, their grins expanded, and they began to laugh. I thought of Willow, his skinny wrists, his stupid smile and his gray eyes with the long lashes all the church ladies always complimented. I wondered if he was the same as these men, or if even Lavar would eventually grow up to be like this. Sally and Willow had done it and somehow now the world was different, I didn’t know how to imagine it. Do I imagine it like two fireflies stuck together, gathering in the air? Do I imagine it like when I see one bird jump up and down on another while it tries to get away? I felt the same anger I felt earlier begin to ball up its fist in my stomach. They leaned over like birds pecking the dirt, they slapped their knees. Having blood come from within you without you dying had to mean I had some kind of power, something besides what women called getting into trouble. I ran towards the fence and shook it, the tallest of the three stood up. “Calm down little Dee. Your momma knows you talk like that? How old are you?” He was close to the fence now. He smelled like old limes, dust and salt - like rust. I backed away, I called over my shoulder, “Lavar!” I never took my eyes off of the worker. The others stood back, watching him closely. “I asked you how old you are…” “Old enough, bitch.” I spit towards where the chain link scraped the dirt. His forehead wrinkled, I had thrown the word he used on my momma back at him. He shoved his hand through the fence, trying to reach me and when he tried to pull it back, it got stuck. I grinned and backed up, snickering. “You know what lil girl, Ima go talk to my boss and we are gonna come tear up your shitty little house anyway, little fuckin’ smart mouthed cunt!”
Another hand jutted through the fence, one on a longer arm, the fingers skimming over my white t-shirt. The voice that went with the arm yelled, “Yeah we gon’ show you what a bitch do!” I turned my back to them. I hightailed like a comet off behind where Lavar had run. My cheeks apple hard with pride as I heard him rattle the chain behind me. I ran through the trees, the sun shredding its rays downward. The trees smacked my sweaty face with their hot leaves. The peach trees disappeared and I ran into a cathedral of pecan trees whose rowboat like arms and legs wobbled up and down with wind and weight. Whenever I run into the pecan tree fields I think about the time Sally caught me and a girl from church out in the old graveyard. A tiny yard with grassy patches sticking up in the red clay behind the tiny building, it was older than Goodwill. The girl, Felicia, had asked me to come out back with her and I did follow her, my hands in the pockets of my pants as usual. When we made it past all the graves she pulled me behind a big maple tree whose roots were tearing up the graves. Felicia’s momma had given her thick braids down her back, as we stood there she reached around and felt my ponytail. “The old ladies in church say you are like a pretty boy, like you could be a pretty boy or a pretty girl.” I stayed quiet, feeling myself blush because I had not heard anyone say that. Even though I know momma got mad when people confused me. She had stopped braiding my hair into cornrows at that point and made me wear a ponytail. Felicia stepped closer, smiling, I remember her mouth. “I think you pretty either way.” I kept still as she pressed her mouth against mine. My heart began to jump and bump in my ears and I tensed at first. But she smelled like oranges, and when my fingers touched her arms she felt like the silk stockings my grandma made me wash sometimes by hand. Just as I was about to lean in, Sally cleared her throat. And it was over. I don’t know if I can’t look at her because she saw me or because of her and Willow.
I caught up with Lavar who stood in his white shirt, looking downward into a ravine that cut from the drainage ditch near the road into our land. I continued running until I was close up on him and then came to a stop. I leaned forward with my hands on my knees. “Why didn’t you answer me? Whatchu doin' over here?” He pointed downwards and I followed the line of his arm into the red clay wall of the deep cut. Five curved bones, equally spaced apart jutted from the red scar. A small bony foot that looked like a dog’s leg, only a bit larger was also embedded in the red earth. I moved closer and jumped down before holding out my arms so Lavar could jump too. I touched one of the bones before gently beginning to rub away the clay. “Be careful.” Lavar whispered, he stood wide-eyed, his book pressed to his chest, “Should we call the cops Delilah?” I thought about the image of the woman cut in half, I shook my head, “Nah - this too big to be a person.” I looked to Lavar and his book. “Is it a gator?” He shook his head, rolled his eyes as more of the skeleton came into view under my fingertips. I had seen a gator skeleton before while visiting family in Louisiana, “Legs are too long I think, but it do look similar…” He whispered like he did whenever we were at church. His tiny hands joined mines in brushing away the dirt. His book of dinosaurs rested gingerly in the gully with us. After a bit, the almost full skeleton of the thing came into view. It was the skeleton of something with a head like a dog and a body like a gator. I sat down in the waterless river, pulling my knees up to my flat chest. Lavar gathered his book and started flipping through the pages. He stopped, placing his finger over an animal then passed the book to me. The image showed a skeleton that looked like the one we had found. Above that was a picture drawn to look like what the animal must have looked like before it died. “Prehistoric whale...amb - ambu-lo-ce-tus. Lavar, nigguh - ain’t no water around here.” Lavar nodded, “Delilah, all this was underwater like a bazillion years ago...this was the ocean. That’s why everything grows so good around here. This is the ambulocetus,” he began to read, “A
mammal that could walk on land and swim in water, proof that the whale derives from a land mammal.” I looked at the dead sea-monster. I imagined it deciding to swim instead of walk. What if I didn’t want to change? All around its corpse the earth was set with constellations of the bones of other tinier things that swam. The roots of the giant pecan trees mingled with the white pieces, snaking in and out, seeking deeper, their tips seeming to tremble with stretching, as if towards the ocean that Lavar talked about. Hanging over the gully, bowing down their heads were the same things that grew in our old cemetery, lilies of the valley, foxglove, hemlock, poison oak. All of a sudden I felt a warmth and a tightness overcome my lower back and thighs. I wrapped my arms around myself and hugged, wincing. Lavar placed his hand on my upper back and pat me, putting his face near mines, “Is it here? Did it come again?” I nodded without looking up. I imagined myself spreading out, becoming a red ocean that gushed down the gully and into the streets. The fog had risen and it was hot now, sweat falling at my temples. At the same time I thought of our house, a larger version of those hundred-year-old houses, the other machines with the huge shovels pulling earth up. Things under the ground seemed to last so much longer than what was above, unless that is, someone came digging. I grabbed Lavar and pushed him up out of the dry river by his butt and then scrambled out myself. We walked through the maze of the trees, avoiding the straight paths through the orchard, picking our path back home.
SOUVENIR Travis Dahlke
Getting to that Manor in Lisa's dad's old Taurus was a chore in its own right, but contending with wet denim is a whole 'nother beast. It is hardened twill bison with sand in its claws. A braying ox with cataracts so strong that you cannot see anything past the grey of her eyes. Lisa and Toby had both warned me about wading in with my clothes on, but I couldn't hear them over the triumph ringing in my ears. Removing an artifact from the mansion put something new, something savage in me. I marinate in anticipation. Sodium stinging every single undiscovered cut and abrasion.
The story of Dreyfus Manor is a tired account etched into the bases of commemorative statues, overseeing the pay-for-parking lots. It's small talk amongst locals and a little tale for tourists in between their drink and entree orders. It was the only beach house, or rather mansion in Wautuck that wasn't razed in an early autumn storm surge during the 30’s. Hurricane Nancy was tropical weather that came out of nowhere, just as the money from local textile mills started turning into rows of waterfront Victorian homes. Great, impossible hotels with pillars and turrets germinated all along the coast, only to vanish. Meteorological instrument buzzed and sang, before Nancy came and drew all that new architecture back. Took the timber of a dozen unfinished mansions back to the horizon, along with thirty or so unlucky people.
The mansion's Grecian carved, hickory floors are sand and mattress now, with bonfire craters that breed aluminum. One of those fires burned out of control, when it was a temporary sojourn for homeless people in the late 80s. It scorched out the basement and made the first floor permanently reek of thyme. I feel like the whole beach smells like a spice cabinet. Some shadows have been there so long that they have stained the corners. Or it could be soot, it's anyone's guess. My brother knew a kid that sprayed a mural of a large chested priestess
holding a sword, in the upstairs master bedroom. He's famous. As soon as everyone finds out what I took he will be a footnote in this town. A musty perfume sticks to us. I suspect it is emanating from my pocket. Old Dreyfus's buried treasure. I long for a time when homeless men roamed Wautuck.
On the ride back, an unpaved road jostles us around and our words jut out like scoffed up CDs, played in mono. There's only one working seatbelt in the back, so I tell Toby I will be the sacrifice. My window is up and honeysuckle seeps in as damp air through the vents. It's too late in the season for fireflies. This recollection won't have that magic to it - I'll maybe put them there in a few years when I look back. Insert glowing dots, like people who took photographs in cemeteries that developed with floating orbs. Our bodies are somehow resistant to dread tonight. Even with the New England jungle dark all around us and a thick mask of dusk that saturates everything with a purple tinged ink. We turn a corner, and jean rivet digs right into my leg. Right into the tendons.
“Our whole fucked up country's in trouble. Something's about to boil over, man,” Lisa warns us all. Our eyes graze each other in the rearview mirror. Jaded, girl in clumpy mascara and color-damaged hair. One fist on the wheel, showing off a rock collection of bracelets. She's the only kid I know who drives right at the speed limit. Some wisdom sleeps behind that mascara, I know it, but I never dwell on it enough to prod.
“This solo right here, listen to this solo,” says some girl in the front seat whom I don't really know, but I would guess is called Hoarse Neck. Her voice is raspy, like an elderly smoker talking through a younger vessel. We stop at a fresh water lagoon, where someone has spray painted '667' and 'desaparecidos' on a trout population control sign posted by the DEP. Larry whispers that her shirt is see through and she's being derivative, but I don't think he knows what derivative means. No one cares about drum solos or fashion, anyway.
We roost on boulders painted by yet more graffiti. I recognize some kids from my school, tipping cans of flavored beer and chucking empties into the dark. Everyone's hair has grown out to rest on sunburned shoulders. Everyone talks about how Lisa has gotten quieter, ever since her dad was caught going down on their house keeper. A Jamaican immigrant with skin tags under her arms. According to rumors she sued their whole entire family for sexual harassment. Now Lisa's dad sells printers at Staples with kids we graduated with.
“Does anybody want a s'more?” A stranger asks around. “You should get that checked, it looks like melanoma,” to Lisa. Someone mentions I look exactly like my older brother.
“Brann Hueller looks like he has an ankle growing out of his neck,” she says, pointing to a scrawny looking boy who, last year, was paunchy and always smelled like smoked meats. Now planted in between two dreary eyed girls in hemp everything. They're talking about how every thirty years the drifting, dead bodies from Hurricane Nancy circle around again due to tidal patterns.
“She is breathtaking,” Toby says, watching Hoarse Neck consume each s'more ingredient raw. Brann and his cohorts slink away into the bleakness of the forest. A lot of people have left, and we question just how long we can occupy this night. Toby tells me that Brann used to jerk off to oil paintings in our Art History books. Bodies don't get washed up. Pieces of the houses, maybe in the form of driftwood. Things that the bodies owned, returned all polished and smooth. I have no fucking clue where the bodies are and usually no one asks.
I dig deep into my pocket, and take out my keepsake. “Hey Toby,” and his drunk mug takes a few seconds to comprehend what rests on my palm. I put it back in my pocket, and he just watches the space where my hand was. I tell him not to tell Hoarse Neck or Lisa about what I took. He asks me where I found it and I can see him exploring Dreyfus Manor, in his head.
Scanning all those corners splotched by urine that are only washed when rain water seeps in through the wood shakes of the roof.
We point the Taurus towards town and of course we end up at 7/11. The kind that keeps a Crown Vic parked outside to ward off any potential attacks, like an automotive scarecrow. Hoarse Neck buys a hot dog bun with no hot dog, and plunges it into her strawberry milkshake. She tells me about the little red mites that some company uses to dye things red. She says they taste delicious, in her moth-eaten, native tongue. For a second, I can smell that poison spiced air wafting all the way inland. Thyme mixes with propane before disappearing completely.
A guy in a red polo walks out, clutching a tiny bag. My arms burn when I notice that under the neat black hair and gray beard of stubble that it's Lisa's dad. More muscly than I remember. None of us say anything. He strolls right by and maybe he doesn't notice us but maybe he just chose not to. Us in his former car. In his former backseat. I imagine him in the morning commute, with a veiny hand dangling out the window, where Lisa dangles hers. Questioning where he is going. None of us talk, but Hoarse Neck eventually turns up the music and comments on the weather. What her cousins are up to. People I've never met, and I swear we age two dozen years on the gray upholstery before revolving back to the bodies of teenagers.
Something keeps me up while Toby falls asleep on my shoulder. Safe in his seatbelt, like the big, wide eyed infant that he is. Is it the stinging must of the mansion still hanging on me? The voice of Nancy's victims. My briny sweat drenches the pictures in my head until I can no longer recognize them. We have to turn on the heat and it pushes out something from last winter that makes me sick to my stomach. It doesn't subside until I close my eyes.
It's midday when I wake up at my parents to the sound of a vacant house. My jeans are draped on a cold, iron radiator and appliances hum into emptiness. I stand on our front patio inside an open bathrobe, where the sun is already simmering behind storm clouds. Bulgy, violet things forming over where the mall is. The day stretches before me like the back of some great jungle cat in a blacklight poster. On the mantle is my trophy. My souvenir.
The neighborhood lets out a heavy, staggered breath. Some young kid in lime colored shorts pumps a super soaker while in pursuit of a fleeing girl. She spins around with her water pistol drawn and warns him. Pointing the barrel directly at his chest with her finger trembling over the trigger.
NO MAN’S LAND Graeme Carey
“Nah, man.” No Man said no—or rather, nah—to everything at first. He started every sentence in the negative even if he agreed with what someone had just said. “Yo, you love your mom?” “Nah, man. I love my mom.” “Yo, you think the Mets are gonna win the pennant?” “Nah, man. That shit’s a cakewalk.” “Please state your name for the record.” “Nah, man. Earl 'No Man' Wallace.” On this particular occasion, the question had been, “Yo, No Man. Can I get something from you real quick? I’ll pay you back tomorrow. You know I’m good like that.” And the answer had been a flat, “Nah, man,” and nothing more. No Man sat in the driver’s seat of the wheelless, black Pontiac Sunfire, with Pig in the passenger seat. Pig, at nearly six and a half feet tall, slouched forward in the chair, with his short afro squishing against the roof of the car so that it looked more like a flattop. One by one people would poke their heads into the window and say, “Yo, what’s good,” before handing No Man a ten-dollar bill. Pig, who was useful because of his giant, dark hands, which could be seen from a mile away, would then raise his arm out the window and flash the signal to the guy posting up against the wall down the block. The person who had given the money to No Man would then casually stroll down the street and, like a running back being handed the pigskin before taking off through the lane, receive a nifty little present from the guy waiting down the block.
At first people had been confused by No Man’s habitual “nah, man,” thinking that he was rejecting their request to purchase some smack, but over time they came to see it as part of the routine, eventually dubbing him The No Man, and then just No Man. “Yo, you get your shit from No Man today?” “Yo, where can I get hooked up around here?” “You gotta go hit up No Man.” Unsurprisingly, the block had become known as No Man’s Land, even by the regular civilians. They would even say it affectionately. “Yeah, I live up in No Man’s Land.” No Man tried not to let it make him too cocky, but that sort of thing was bound to make a person’s head swell up. In the two-minute walk that it took him to get from the burnt out Pontiac to the corner bodega, he’d hear his name called at least a dozen times. “Hey yo No Man. What’s good?” “No man, my man.” “Yo, how you livin’, No Man?” In lieu of a response he’d nod or, if you owed him money, simply suck his teeth. Unlike Pig, who, along with being tall was proportionately large, with broad shoulders that could cast a shadow over half a street (his friends sometimes affectionately described him as a “big, baggy monster”), No Man was not at all an imposing physical presence. He barely reached five feet while standing on his toes, with hardly any meat on his bones, and in his oversized blood red hoody, which looked like it could have been Pig’s baby sweater, he almost completely disappeared, with just his head poking through the collar. Some people who had never had the joy of speaking with him believed that he was called No Man because he looked almost as if he didn’t exist. But, still, this was No Man’s Land. Despite his lack of physical presence, No Man was still widely feared around the neighborhood, more so even than Pig, who looked and moved like a sloth and was worthless in any kind of physical confrontation unless the opponent stood completely still. No Man
garnered fear and respect, which were essentially the same things on the block, for his ability to tell a story. He could spin a yarn like nobody’s business. There was the story about how he and a guy named Squat—who nobody had ever heard of and who, according to No Man, had gotten his name because he always leaned back while walking—had somehow, after taking a wrong turn or something, found themselves over on the east side, which was a definite no-no for people from the west side, and so they inevitably ran into a guy who recognized that they were out of place and said something along the lines of, “Yo, man, you’re out of place. Why don’t you let me hold your money for a minute,” all the while holding a gun up to their faces. And, according to No Man, this guy Squat had pissed himself, not figuratively, but literally pissed himself. No Man had heard a splashing sound and turned to see a small puddle forming around Squat’s feet. And next thing he knew Squat, piss still streaming down his leg, took off running down the street. But No Man, who certainly hadn’t pissed his pants and wasn’t even really all that scared, truth be told, according to him, just stood there with his hands buried inside the pocket of his huge red sweater. The guy repeated, “Yo, man, let me hold your money real quick,” but No Man didn’t even flinch. “You’re gonna have to shoot me if you want it,” No Man said he had said. And eventually the guy got the picture, that No Man was not the kind of guy that you should fuck with, so he dropped his weapon and ran away even faster than Squat had. By some accounts, before the guy had darted away a second puddle had formed on the sidewalk, although this detail might have been an elaboration from other people retelling the story. No one had ever questioned the existence of Squat, even though no one had ever seen him around the neighborhood or heard of him, because No Man’s description of him, down to the way his right eye would twitch when he was lying, had been so detailed that it had to be true. And some people, after about the tenth time that they had heard the story, would even chime in with their own recollections of the man, saying something like, “Yeah, I knew Squat. That kid was a bitch.” Then there was the story about how No Man had killed a man, or was it two men? It changed depending on who was retelling the story. But the original version from No Man had
been about how he, while sitting in the Pontiac Sunfire alone one night, working, had been approached by a smack head who simply refused to take “Nah, man” for an answer. “Come on, man, just a dime, just this one time. You know I’m good.” “Nah, man.” “Come on. I’ll catch you tomorrow. “Nah, man.” “You gonna do this to a loyal customer?” “Nah, man.” Finally No Man, according to him, grown tired of the one-sided conversation, jumped out of the Sunfire with the crowbar from under the seat and bashed the smack head’s head in until it was nothing but nauseous goo. No Man didn’t used the term “nauseous goo,” but he did describe the sound made each time the crowbar connected with the guy’s skull, and how the sound got squishier and squishier with each blow, until it was as if he had been whacking away at a wet sponge. And he described the way the man’s heart kept pumping out blood well after his face was little more than a scattered mosaic of a former face, and how the blood had looked more like a licoricy dark purple than red under the amber streetlights of the pitch black night. Over the years this story had evolved and transformed quite a bit. It had taken on a life of its own, to the point that it seemed like everyone in the neighborhood had developed their own unique version of it. Sometimes it was one smack head, sometimes it was two, other times it wasn’t a smack head at all but a rival from the east side named Ramo, who had mysteriously gone missing a couple years back. No one had ever pointed out the fact that no one else seemed to be able to corroborate No Man’s story. And no one had ever pointed out the fact that there had never been even trace amounts of blood around the immobile Pontiac, let alone what must have been, based on No Man’s story, puddles of blood all over the place. He couldn’t be expected to explain every little detail of the story, so they would fill in the blanks using their imagination. “Yo, I bet No Man dumped the body in the river.”
“Nah, I bet he lit the body on fire. Why you think the Pontiac’s all burnt looking?” Of course, all of No Man’s stories were bullshit. But he was such a good storyteller that no one had ever challenged him. Part of what made him such a good storyteller was that he didn’t reveal everything. He let people draw their own wild conclusions and build up his legend. He knew that the more he said, the more likely it was that he would make a mistake. So he mostly focused on description. He figured that if he could be as descriptive and specific as possible—down to way the light bounced off a car window, or the way a guy bit his tongue as he tried to act tough—it would seem more believable. Pig, on the other hand, never lied, not really, at least. It just wasn’t in him. He always felt compelled to the tell truth, and if he would for some reason happen to be less than honest he’d immediately own up to it and say, with a mopey look on his face, “That was a lie.” Sometimes he’d even announce beforehand that he was about to tell a lie, so that those listening were aware of any possible fiction in his stories. The sun had nearly set. No Man and Pig sat in silence in the Sunfire, watching as the orange globe dipped beneath the townhouses at the end of the street. Both of them felt that end of day sadness but neither of them expressed it. No Man lived in a small apartment, beige-walled with the odd poster (one of a shirtless Tupac, one of a movie called Clockers, which he had never actually seen but he had heard that it was about drug dealers). Due to poor infrastructure and a particularly strong windstorm a few months back, the light pole outside his window now tilted inward on a seventy-five degree angle, right up against his living room window, shining bright orange light into the entire apartment at night. In an attempt to reduce the brightness, which had prevented him from sleeping for nearly a week straight, causing him to nod off during the day in the Sunfire, he had stapled a dirty sheet over the window, but the sheet, which was red, like everything else that he owned, had merely turned the orange light red, making his entire apartment look as though it had been smeared in blood, which he had thought was kind of cool at first, until it started to make everything else, even when he wasn’t in the apartment, seem as though it were tinged with a redness. Over time he had gotten used to the light and the color, and he
had learned to sleep in his apartment even though the intensity of the streetlight made it seem as though his eyes were never quite shut. Pig lived in an apartment, more like a closet, not too far from the Sunfire, just around the corner and down the block. He was neighbors with several of his customers. In contrast to No Man’s excessive light situation, Pig’s apartment was lit solely by floor lamps, since somehow the entire building had been built without any light fixtures. Neither of them had seen the other’s apartment. “Gettin’ kind of quiet,” Pig said, noticing that it had been several minutes since the last person had popped their gnarled face into the car window, which was unusual since heads were usually popping in and out like clockwork. As if in response to Pig’s comment, a dark and grinning face appeared in the window. With his right hand suggestively buried in the breast of his green bomber jacket, the man said, “I’ll be takin’ the money from that glove box now.” No Man and Pig froze. “Hurry it up,” the man yelled, slowly pulling his hand from his jacket to reveal the butt end of a .380 to show that he indeed meant business. No Man started shaking, with his hands gripped firmly on the steering wheel at ten and two as if he were trying to will the car into motion. Pig took the money, a full day’s worth, out of the glove box and attempted to hand it over to No Man, but No Man was too petrified to take his hands off the wheel and grab the money to give to the stickup man. “Boy, you better hand me that stack,” he said, sliding the gun out even more. No Man ducked and shielded his face as if the man was about to open fire, and said, “Nah, man, please don’t shoot, don’t shoot. Please, God!” The man laughed and calmly tucked the gun away, realizing that it wouldn’t be necessary, and reached across No Man to grab the cash from Pig. “I see why they call you No Man,” he said. His big laugh reverberated throughout the street as he strolled away. No Man stayed cowered in his seat for several minutes after he had gone, although he was now cowering from embarrassment instead of fear.
“Yo man, he’s gone,” Pig said, feeling a little embarrassed himself for No Man’s sake. No Man finally sat up in his seat, still trembling. Pig looked at him out of the corner of his eye and shook his head. The next day word had gotten out that the Sunfire had been robbed, and everyone had heard about No Man’s less than brave performance under fire. Some said he had cried, while others said he had wet himself, but all agreed that he was not the man that he said he was. They were disillusioned to his bullshit. And while Pig hadn’t exactly held down the fort and fought off the stick up man, and he had even admitted to a few people that he had been terrified during the robbery, at least nobody had expected anything from him. So there were no surprises with Pig. Which is why on that day the bosses had decided to switch things up, so now Pig sat in the driver’s seat of the Sunfire while No Man sat in the passenger’s seat, slouching down as far as possible so that he was barely visible over the windshield. The consensus was that No Man couldn’t be trusted.
THE DISAPPEARING Chelsea Sutton Somewhere in the apple orchard, Naomi Pearson has tied herself in a tree and she’s not coming down.
The crowd has gathered around the edges of the orchard, watching the trees and the fog through the Plexiglas fence. They’re full of apples and loud with elation. A few have collapsed to the ground, weeping, clutching an apple core to their chests.
Thirty minutes to go.
You’re the only one who notices Naomi is gone.
Every autumn, the orchard appears on an empty plot of land for six days. Then the fog comes through, swallowing the trees and the apples and everything else within the fence's boundaries, and it disappears. People come from all over to see it. The Disappearing.
You scan the faces of the crowd once more. You’ve memorized her face, her slanted smile when watching the fog roll in, waiting for the Disappearing. She never misses this.
People are crying. A few are stoic and shaky. Twenty-six minutes.
The orchard produces no ordinary apples. Multi-colored, cantaloupe-sized, they’re juicy and sweet with patches of sourness, producing drunken euphoria followed by visions and revelations unique to the eater, glimpses of the future, the past, innermost secrets and the ripples across their lives. Some handle it better than others.
Naomi came to the orchard late in the day. You sold her an entry ticket. The fake mustache you glued on was no longer sticking to the left side of your upper lip. Naomi lightly pressed the mustache back against your skin, holding it there for what seemed like days as you held your breath, your ears full and echoing like you were underwater. She smiled slanted and wandered away through the trees.
You ate an apple only once. As you chewed, you thought of her, hoping that maybe there might be a vision of some sort, something to hold onto. But all you saw was the hot, asphalt main street leading to the orchard, the blank faces of your family staring straight through you, the unbearable sameness of it all – and far away, in the tallest tree in the orchard someone you couldn't quite make out, waving at the town.
Twenty minutes to go before the orchard disappears for another year. Already the fog is rolling in and the edges of the trees are flickering.
When the apple orchard appears, the workers are always ready, in their overalls freshly washed, their beards brushed and shaped for the occasion. This is your family, the servants of the orchard, and you, who, at the age of twenty-seven, can still not grow facial hair without patches of baldness, wearing a fake mustache.
As the minutes count down, your cousins and brothers slap you extra hard on the back, muss your hair like you're a toddler, kick up dirt onto your overalls. You laugh absently, as your gaze leaps around the crowd, the trees, the edges of the hills. She's not there.
Your father and uncles come out of the orchard. “It’s all clear,” your father says. “Everyone’s out. Lock ‘er up.”
“But what about Naomi?” Your voice squeaks. No one hears you.
Your legs move before you've made a decision. You slip past the closing gate and run into the growing darkness of the trees, screaming her name. Your father shouts something, but it's lost.
Somewhere in the trees, Naomi whispers your name to herself. The orchard twirls its collective leaves around the sound and throws her whisper toward you. It slips along the chilled air.
As you run you imagine her around town, at the library, at the market, serving pancakes and hash browns to long-distance truckers at Mave’s Café. You look forward to these sightings of her. She can't Disappear.
Your legs feel spiraling and unsteady. You think for a moment that, possibly, the orchard is toying with you. Naomi isn't here at all. The orchard wants to swallow you up alone. You imagine the faces of your brothers reciting this story over dinner, laughing.
The whisper knocks against your skull. And you hear her. Your legs surge forward.
Your heart thumps a little louder at the surprise of her saying your name. You run toward her voice. Twelve minutes left.
You find her, high in the air. She’s tied herself to the branches and is holding an apple, but hasn’t taken a bite. You stare at her.
“What?” she says.
“Get down. The orchard is Disappearing soon.”
“I know,” she says.
“So get down,” you say.
“No thanks,” she says.
You start to climb. You’ve never been much of a climber and it’s obvious. The fog is getting thicker. Ten minutes left.
“What are you doing?” she says.
You struggle but finally pull yourself up to the branch beside her.
The fog twirls around your feet. You can’t see the ground anymore. Far away, you can hear your own name being called, your brothers’ voices.
“You’re crazy,” you say.
“Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like?” she says.
“Disappearing?”
“I feel like I do it every day anyway,” she says. “Just in smaller bits.”
“Well you’re terrible at it because I notice you all the time.” You’re surprised as it comes out of your mouth. “All the time,” you say again. The words roll around your mouth like marbles. A strange taste.
Naomi reaches out and pulls off your fake mustache. She drops it into the fog, which swallows it whole.
Six minutes to go.
The apple in her hand glitters and glows in the fading light. She cuts into it with a pocketknife, takes a piece and wipes it around your lip.
“There’s a bit of glue. Right there,” she says. “You look better. Without that thing.”
You shutter at her touch and let it wash over you. The sounds of the crowd, the voices of your brothers, it’s all fading. The orchard folds its branches around you both. The leaves twinkle. They're warm.
“I’m not coming down,” Naomi says. “I saw a vision last year. I saw myself tied here, in this tree, waving goodbye at the town, ready to disappear.”
“Did you see me?” you say.
She shakes her head and smiles. “I saw someone, far down the main street,” she says. "Could have been you."
There's movement below you - your father and two of your cousins, searching, panicked, among the trees. Your name echoes up to you.
"Maybe we'll never come back," she says.
"There are worse things," you say.
Naomi opens her mouth. You can see the words forming in her throat. The fog rolls around her lips and you watch your father and cousins stomp away, their steps crunching against fallen leaves. She closes her mouth.
Three minutes to go.
The orchard's leaves tickle your cheek, and you start to worry what Disappearing is going to feel like – like falling through a canyon or slipping down a giant's throat or being hit by lightning.
You can hear the voices of your father and brothers and uncles and cousins rumbling together, the creaking of the gate as it closes, a few shouts of the news of you, slipping as easily through the ears of the lookers-on as the fog through the trees.
The fog is thick now. Only seconds to go. Beyond the fence, the crowd roars and weeps together a final time. There are a few more shouts as the news travels to those watching from the hills.
Then silence.
Naomi leans closer, weaves her arms through yours, and, for a moment, you and the orchard and Naomi hold your breaths, as you Disappear, together, into the fog.
C ONTRIBUTORS
Lauren C amp is the author of two collections, most recently The Dailiness, winner of the National Federation of Press Women Poetry Prize. Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, won the Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press, 2016). She is a 2015-2018 Black Earth Institute Fellow and the producer/host of “Audio Saucepan” on Santa Fe Public Radio. www.laurencamp.com.
Graeme C arey is an English MA candidate at McMaster University. His writing has appeared in Grub Street Literary Magazine, and he was named a finalist in a Glimmer Train contest.
Travis Dahlke has been published in 'Love on the Road 2013' (Malinki Press), with other work appearing in Five Quarterly, Verbicide Magazine, Dead Beats Literary Blog and his own site, Manatee River Bank. He has a degree in Graphic Design which he currently uses as an immense coaster for beverages.
Lisa Higgs’ second chapbook, "Unintentional Guide to the Big City," was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in April 2015. Her full-length poetry manuscript, "Sounding the Margins," has been named semi-finalist for both the Crab Orchard and Elixir Press book contests. Her poems can be found in numerous literary journals – including Crab Orchard Review, Water~Stone Review, Midwestern Gothic and PMS: poemmemoirstory – and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards.
J e s s i c a L a n a y currently lives in Bronx, NY and works at a magazine for writers in Manhattan. She moved to the city from Macon, Georgia and was raised in different places throughout the South. Themes that trickle through her poetry and short stories are female protagonists, internal migrations, the investigation of violence, disappearance (of landscape or persons), and magic realism. Her poetry and short fiction can be found in Blackberry: a magazine, Linden Avene Literary Journal, and Duende. Jessica Lanay also has more work
forthcoming in Kweli Journal, Sugar House Review, Minerva Rising and As/Us. She is the founder of Jasper Collective, an editorial group comprised of women.
Edmund Sandoval resides in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Waccamaw, Hobart, Necessary Fiction, Nat.Brut, Pithead Chapel, the minnesota review, The Common, Fourteen Hills and others.
C helsea Sutton is a playwright and fiction writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Her fiction has appeared in Spectrum, Catalyst, Fictionade Magazine, The Best of Farmhouse Magazine Anthology (Editor’s Choice Award), Eclectic Voices, Bourbon Penn, andThe Cactus Heart. She was also the first place winner of NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Contest 2011. withcoffeespoons.com
H.R. Webster is an MFA candidate at the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. H.R. was a 2014-2015 writer-in-residence with insideOut Detroit Literary Arts Program, and a 2015 Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared in Harlequin Creature, Dirtcakes, and Devil's Lake.
Kate Welsh is a writer and an artist whose most recent work was included in PYRO Gallery's "Double Vision" show. She has published in all genres, including co-authoring “The Life of Joe Louis,” a traveling exhibit for the Muhammad Ali Center. She earned an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.
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