Fourth River, Issue 3 by Jeremy N

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The Fourth River

Poetry Barry Ballard Ouyang Bin Heidi Elizabeth Blankenship Michelle Boisseau Patrick Carrington Neal Dwyer Janice Moore Fuller Stephen Haven Terrance Hayes Dong Jiping Jeff P. Jones Peter Kahn Jo Ellen Nakles Mary Orovan Iain Haley Pollock Rachel Richardson Stephen R. Roberts Fernand Roqueplan J.D. Schraffenberger

Interview Ted Kooser

Karen Schubert

Nonfiction

James J. Siegel

Jill Christman

Lianne Spidel

Christy J. Diulus and

Skaidrite Stelzer

Amanda Raczkowski

Fiction

Robert Stewart

J. Malcolm Garcia

Devin Corbin

Bill Vernon

Christine Hemp

Linda Dyer

Lynn Wagner

Daiva Markelis

Stephanie Gayle

Ben Westlie

Lars E. Peterson

Mary Lotz

Crystal Williams

Peter Pierson

Jason Rizos

Lydia Winter

William Reichard

Roseanne Thong

A publication of the Chatham College MFA in Creative Writing Program

Autumn 2006

Issue 3

Autumn 2006

Editor

M S Nieson Managing Editor

Christy J. Diulus Editorial Consultant

Amanda Raczkowski Fiction Editors

Amie Kathryn Fox Ryan Kelley Shana Oakes Rachel Payne Nonfiction Editors

Amanda J. Bejot Stephanie Marie Chizik Rebecca Kulchak Michael Reitema Poetry Editors

Elizabeth DiGiulio Lesley Dame Verity Earl Anna Gullickson Mary Riley Stefanie Wielkopolan Cover Art: Paul Katz

XXIV: Mine Eye Hath Play’d the Painter, V: Those Hours, IX: Is it For Fear Cover Design: Krista Showalter Design: Leslie Karon-Oswalt Special Thanks: Sharon Bates and Kathy Greenwood

Art & Culture Program/Albany International Airport

The Fourth River (ISSN 1559-310X) is a production of the MFA in Creative Writing at Chatham College. We welcome submissions of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that explore the relationship between humans and their environments. Writings that are richly situated at the confluence of place, space, and identity, or that reflect upon landscape as culture, and culture as landscape. Subscriptions: The Fourth River is published biannually each Spring and Autumn. Rates: $18 (1 year), $32 (2 years), $10 (single issues). Submissions: Please address all correspondence, business or editorial, to The Fourth River, Chatham College, Woodland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Further guidelines at http://fourthriver.chatham.edu Reading period: August 1st – March 1st. We do not yet accept email submissions. Copyright© 2006 by The Fourth River. All rights reserved. Reproduction, whether in whole or in part, without permission is strictly prohibited. Printed in the U.S.A. by Morris Publishing, Kearny, Nebraska.

Table of Contents Lydia Winter Two Thousand and Three .............................................................................................. 9

Jo Ellen Nakles The Potter, Pittsburgh 1934 .........................................................................................10

Neal Dwyer The Violin Bridge ..........................................................................................................12

Jeff P. Jones Raise It Up in the Mind of Me: One Poem, Eleven1 Footnotes2.................................13

Lars E. Peterson Neighbors but Foreigners .............................................................................................14

William Reichard North .............................................................................................................................19

Linda Dyer Navigating Change ...................................................................................................... 24

Peter Kahn Pillow .............................................................................................................................33

Terrance Hayes The Red Balloon ........................................................................................................... 34

Robert Stewart Headlights in the Pasture ............................................................................................ 36

Patrick Carrington Knives ........................................................................................................................... 38 Holy Water ....................................................................................................................39

Roseanne Thong Subtitles ........................................................................................................................ 40

Daiva Markelis I Was the Child of Teepees ...........................................................................................47

Rachel Richardson Nocturne .......................................................................................................................55

Lynn Wagner Steps We Take to Ise Shima ........................................................................................ 56

Ben Westlie Lessons in How to Drive ............................................................................................. 58

Fernand Roqueplan Pro Bono Publico ..........................................................................................................59

Jill Christman A Stone Pear................................................................................................................. 60

Jason Rizos Harvest ......................................................................................................................... 64

Bill Vernon Last Morning ................................................................................................................75

Lianne Spidel Virgin Forest .................................................................................................................76

Crystal Williams Marathon: Ars Poetica .................................................................................................78 Beauty........................................................................................................................... 79

Christy J. Diulus and Amanda Raczkowski Interview with Ted Kooser ......................................................................................... 80

Ouyang Bin, translated into English by Dong Jiping Li Po .............................................................................................................................. 84 Wall .............................................................................................................................. 86

Karen Schubert The Viking and the Field Mouse................................................................................. 88

Stephen R. Roberts To the Woods Alone..................................................................................................... 89

Mary Orovan The Autumn of my Discontent ................................................................................... 90

Mary Lotz Funeral Wreath ............................................................................................................91

Christine Hemp The Sound of Sense ...................................................................................................... 94

Heidi Elizabeth Blankenship Arrowheads ................................................................................................................ 100

James J. Siegel Bilingual ......................................................................................................................101 Saturday Afternoon Horror Movies..........................................................................103

Janice Moore Fuller Ouija ............................................................................................................................105

Peter Pierson Saskatoon ....................................................................................................................106

Stephanie Gayle Lost Boy of Passadumkeag .........................................................................................119

J.D. Schraffenberger November ................................................................................................................... 125

Iain Haley Pollock Instinct ........................................................................................................................127

Skaidrite Stelzer Kalamazoo ................................................................................................................. 129

Devin Corbin Cut Jumping ................................................................................................................131

J. Malcolm Garcia Leaving Afghanistan ..................................................................................................140

Michelle Boisseau Looking from a Satellite .............................................................................................151

Stephen Haven Skunked .......................................................................................................................153

Barry Ballard Blue Heron ..................................................................................................................155

About the Authors...................................................................................................157

From the Editor Where does a river begin, precisely? The source of the Mississippi, a river that surely looms large in this country’s geography and collective conscious, is generally attributed to Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. The U. S. Geological Survey maps the coordinates at Latitude 47.25, Longitude –95.25. Yet if you were to visit the site, you might learn the local Park Service slightly relocated the river’s headwaters back in the 1930s to better accommodate the influx of tourists. Instead of having to wade through a swamp, visitors could now nimbly walk across a line of rocks at the mighty Mississippi’s origin. Beyond that fabrication, there are those who’ll argue that Lake Itasca itself is fed by other waters, by nearby Elk Lake or Nicollet Creek. And of course the debate could continue further upstream, on into the more diffuse surrounding watershed … as if, what, one could conceivably locate that first droplet? Perhaps a more sensible source for what we define as the Mississippi might lie in the Ojibwe word from which it derives, misi-ziibi, suggesting “great river or gathering of waters.” A word that allows for implicit tributaries. Long after having first learned to scrawl my ABCs, I found myself in a small lecture hall where David Hamilton, editor of The Iowa Review, was giving a talk to a group of young and eager writers. Among the incoming tide of questions concerning cover letters and publication rights and how to best propel one’s career, David quietly stepped back from the lectern, then redirected the conversation. He spoke about the varied aims behind putting together a given issue of a literary journal, about each edition’s unforeseen synchrony of voices, and about how all the journals across the nation, across the globe, collectively formed a quilt of commentary, both contemporary and ongoing. Publishing, he gently reminded us, was no more nor less than offering up one’s words to that current. Among the many pages submitted for this issue of The Fourth River, our editors noted a certain pattern emerging in the fine silt that finally settled on our banks. An undercurrent that was addressing borders — whether of geography, politics, translation, or identity — writings that were revisiting and questioning such words as “Afghanistan” or “north” or “me.” Perhaps other such voices are gathering in our sister journals. Perhaps they reflect a glimpse of something that’s been lagging, or on the horizon. Or again, merely ongoing. I first stumbled upon the paintings that grace this issue’s cover while awaiting a plane at Albany International Airport. Paul Katz’ canvases literally dotted the terminal’s hallways, bright beacons among the grey flux of travelers,

redefining their horizons just as he’d translated Shakespeare’s sonnets into red pools of light sifting through to the forest floor. To date, he has finished some forty of Shakespeare’s total 154 sonnets. At 64, he admits to some doubts as to whether he’ll have the “ordinance” to complete the task, yet his tone doesn’t seem to imply any concern or regret. Andy Goldsworthy, another artist whose delicate sculptures have long reflected both the ephemeral and the timeless, has said it another way, “The river is not dependent on water, we’re talking about the flow.” This year marks the 30th year that David Hamilton has been stewarding The Iowa Review. At some point, sooner rather than later he concedes, he’ll need to pass on the helm. In his wake, no doubt, will be many, many indebted writers and readers, yet as he might be the first to admit, the larger mission is never accomplished, certainly not under any individual’s watch. The maps keep shifting, as do the line breaks. I’ll conclude with some words of Sven Birkerts (who, as it turns out, was once an undergraduate at the same university where David Hamilton was then teaching) quoted from the introduction to the first issue of Agni that he edited: “I start and end this reflection in the first person singular, but in fact the most vital realization of all has been of the importance — and pleasure — of the plural pronoun, the “we” that makes everything possible.” He then went on to recognize his predecessor, and his spirited staff and volunteers and interns. I echo his sentiments and thanks wholeheartedly. “A magazine,” he wrote, “is, figuratively speaking, a receiving dock for the products of our collective dream-life.” Read on. Dream on. Marc Nieson

Lydia Winter Two Thousand and Three

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to paint those crows coming in to roost at dusk in Loring Park in February. An image half-formed in places and suddenly specific in others. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to begin such a thing, painting something right before me. I only know taking up a brush when the mood is upon me and granting the paper stewardship. Where would I begin? A grey wash, ghosts of ultramarine and medium yellow. How do I capture the mood and feel and texture of something like four thousand beating hearts and eight thousand grasping feet, eight thousand wings making just as many tiny vacuums? Black and crimson, black and knuckles, black and negative space. How do I color a kaleidoscope of glinting eyes and the weight of so many feathers on so many branches? And then the trees themselves, twists of burnt sienna, viridian lichen and sap green; if not burdened, surely sometimes exasperated. How do I mark down how it feels to be nest to so many, host to such hoarse company? And in the middle, the lake the small eye of a black hurricane; still and silent white the only peace the only place not alive with constant twitching and preening. And in the middle the small lake the sleepy neighbor wishing to hell the party would end so he could finally get to bed.

Jo Ellen Nakles The Potter, Pittsburgh 1934

today human worries hang over sidewalks aimless people loiter the east end apartments behind company homes hunky slums grow on mud dotted hills dry ditches and weeds outline spindly gardens and haphazard boundaries of rusted wires and rotted picket fences aimed at a pale mill-stack dragon rises in the murk of the green river blows a blanket of soot over the city automobiles that putter the crumbling bricks and ruts of the road are rare but He sees most of them from his second story window in the long moments where he sits until his coffee is cold his cigarette an ashen stick

next to the only spot left to rest the focus of his fingers bent in plea grip a tawny lump beaded with moisture slick with power cold with sleep rocked and hypnotized and turned turned on and on until it dries and his hands go limp lines in creamy silver palms and callouses fade into soft wrinkled scars wounds of salt and musk mix bitterness in the clay, caked and cracked the side of hair coated where he hold his head shreds strings of his flannel shirt coil draw curious shapes in the black dust of the floor

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Neal Dwyer The Violin Bridge

The Drug Rehab Counselor said, Draw a bridge! The inmates started sketching. Grand bridges, stone and concrete bridges, massive draw bridges opening for ships heavy with goods. Off to the left, one inmate’s face is inches from his pad. He’s drawing the bridge of the rented violin when he was ten; a bridge that carried four strings; a slow sound, screechy sometimes, sometimes deep and strong. From heaven, his mom said. So he’d practice till heaven came over that bridge. Heaven came best when he closed his eyes. So he drew that bridge. When the Drug Rehab Counselor said, Pencils down! the inmates put their pencils down; turned their papers in. Leafing through, she offered commendations all around. Such detail, such realism! And you know, she said, we are each of us responsible for building bridges just like these. We are each of us connected in some way, after all. But her voice dropped when she got to the violin bridge. She frowned, shook her head. You’ll never learn to follow directions, she said. He turned his face from hers to the cinderblock wall. No difference. All he could do was whisper, Nope.

Roseanne Thong Subtitles

The TV blares as I approach the familiar mustard-yellow gate. Clouds hiss with electric charge; the road buckles with heat. Years ago, a gnarled mango tree stood here next to the god’s altar, dwarfing the house and half of the next. Bing, my ex-husband, climbed it as a child, plucking armfuls of freckled, overripe fruit. Then on an evening just like this, lightning sliced it in half. It was gone in a flash, like our marriage. “Kin, it’s me! Wo hui lai le!” I’m back in Malaysia, staying with my ex-mother-in-law, while attending a seminar on “Sales Productivity in Times of Economic Crisis.” My firm in New York sent me, but I wanted to come for “old time’s sake.” At least I think that’s the reason. Kin’s front door—a retractable accordion grill—is locked, but I know what lies beyond. A cane settee with thin, lumpy cushions. Red bolster pillows for good luck. Kin sitting bra-less with a threadbare shirt opened to the fourth button to maximize the breeze. There’s a Kung-Fu drama on Channel 3 about Mongol invaders, or perhaps a Qing Dynasty romance—a spiraling orgasm of drums and violins. “Kai mun lah. Open the gate. It’s gonna rain!” I picture her craning her head down the hallway, winding her wispy gray hair into a bun. Smiling innocently like a child pulled from slumber, buttoning up two buttons to be proper for company. Kin reaches for a bundle of keys behind the door. The first lock snaps and lifts, then the second. Footsteps near, and the gate yawns open. “Becca!” Her husky voice cracks. “You’re here!” Her arms mimic a wheel of uncooked roti, stretched to its elastic extent. Doughy underarms wobble and enclose me. But what else would I expect? Even in the beginning, when Bing and I snuck kisses in the pantry, she treated me like family. “So, you’re healthy, ah? Healthy. And a little bit fat.” Kin slows her words and repeats everything twice, thinking it’s easier for me to absorb Chinese this way. My Mandarin’s rusty—I have no use for it in Manhattan—but at least I try. More than some Westerners who can’t order a laksa mien to save their lives.

Before I can answer, thunder booms. Droplets snap around me like gunpowder caps. I run for the house as Kin locks the gate, a faint clang overpowered by the TV’s Chinese musical score. “Ba working tonight?” I ask, eyeing the empty house. Bing’s father is a traveling salesman for Dettol Soap, who keeps the countryside reassuringly clean. “New Year office party,” she says, sinking into the settee. “He thinks he’s going to win the lucky draw.” Kin eyes the wall clock anxiously—ten minutes left of her show. Then, a string of requisite questions: How’s everything at home? Your parents doing well? Her allegiance wavers between my unspectacular news and a flashy battle scene. Armor clanks and a fawn-eyed maiden sobs. The square-jawed hero is wounded. “I’ll go change clothes,” I say. She smiles thankfully and turns back to her show. In the bedroom, I peel off layers of drenched cotton and click on the ancient ceiling fan. This was my husband’s childhood room; the name B-I-N-G H-U-A carved into the hardwood door with a penknife. His school desk hunkers in the corner—now a caddy for musty quilts, towels, and 64-count boxes of bargain toilet paper. A few personal items remain: Standard 6 math books, a Parcheesi game, and two sets of wooden drumsticks. His mother’s permission for lessons opened the door to the rhythms of Keith Moon and Charlie Watts—to the West. The drums themselves are long gone—a fine set of Yamahas, from what I’ve been told—purchased from “Do Rei Mi Sound” down the street. I imagine Bing at age twelve, pounding away in his room, competing with household noise. Blaring TV ads and hollered arguments down the hall; aunties and uncles braying mahjong winnings late into the night. Nothing a good set of Yamahas couldn’t conquer. Standing here, I don’t miss Bing at all, which leaves me both surprised and relieved. The truth is that we fought all the time—loud, noisy fights. Everything about him was loud. I needed quiet time to think. To separate work from home. At my Manhattan office, horns blared incessantly and bus brakes screeched down the street, not to mention jackhammers from nearby construction. At night I yearned for serenity in our tiny studio loft. But Bing would listen to CD’s, pounding out rhythms on his desk while TV froth spilled out in all directions. I’d open up a book, endlessly losing my place. I used earplugs. “You hungry?” Kin calls. “Curry’s on the stove.” When I open the door, she’s back on the settee, porcelain bowl propped upon a sagging thigh. She looks at me vaguely and pats the empty cushion beside her.

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When the rain stops, I retreat to an outdoor ledge behind the kitchen that I refer to kindly as ‘my balcony.’ It’s a mere two feet by six, overlooking a drainage canal swarming with mosquitoes and feral cats. I squeeze in a tiny stool between split bamboo poles, decomposing beams, and legless tables. Kin has a history with wood. During World War II, she was sent to collect kindling by the railroad tracks each morning, a fiercely competitive task. She’s never thrown out a piece of furniture since. I’m glad she hasn’t—there are few markers of the past in a modern household of over-bright plastics and new microfibers. I am drawn to this reject space, this sanctuary for the flawed and discarded. It’s a habit from the days when Bing and I lived here, fought here, cooled off on this balcony, and threw fish bones to the cats. Security through repetition. A place to sit and think. The sunset fades and family members come home. Doors clank shut. Neighbors eat, wash and prepare for bed. Cats whimper and scamper away. Sounds, I realize, I love. The next morning at 6:00 a.m., doors creak open and household lights flicker on. Kin stretches in the hall, swishing circles with her arms. Ba’s still in bed, weighed down by layers of banquet food. He got back late—I vaguely recall the jingle of locks and keys. He’ll jump-start a few seconds before he’s due on the road. I lace up my track shoes and prepare for my morning jog. “So early!” Kin protests. “It’s dark-lah. Snatch thieves hide in the bushes.” “But it’s cool now,” I retort, and fill my water bottle. Kin learned long ago that I won’t bend like a rice stalk in the wind—I’m too Western for that. Luckily for me, she’s searching for something important, the TV remote, I think. She roots under cushions and cairns of newspaper as I fumble with locks, tumblers, and chains. Finally, I escape into the soft palm of dawn. It’s still dark at 6:00 a.m. and will be for another hour. I float past the mustard gate and inhale deeply. There’s a billowy jasmine tree at the first corner and incense sticks on family altars. Red candles along Jalan 20/12 wink like eyes of peacock feathers. The slow pull of the müezzin’s prayer—a thick, sonorous wail—lifts me above myself. On the third corner, mandi water trickles to the floor. Arrival here is gradual. The dawn hovers slowly before landing, like the plane that brings me back. At lunchtime, Ba comes home, strips down to his white ribbed T-shirt, and flips on the TV 4 news. Sound waves smash the air, stab furniture, and ricochet off walls. “Becca?” He peeks outside, eyeing my three-legged stool, laptop computer and sweat-stained brow. “Why not come inside? So hot today-lah!” I jump to my feet, glancing momentarily at my sunburned knees. “How are you, Ba?” I say. He smiles, nods his head, and motions me to follow him inside. I’m blinded temporarily by the darkness.

News tunnels through the hallways, amplifying as we near the living room. Torrential rains in Tanah Merah. Giant python kills plantation worker. Kin flips the channel. Her favorite show, The Chosen, is on, a drama of godlike Kung-Fu masters. The title track blares, then a long parade of ads. Ba flops onto the settee, while I grab a matching chair. He’s turned towards me, mouthing alien words as a commercial overlays his voice: Tired of the drizzly day frizzles? I reach for the control to crank down the volume. “What did you say, Ba?” “Here’s the one.” He holds up a well-used cassette of Chopin’s Greatest Hits. Etude in E, Polonaise in A-Flat, Waltz in C-Sharp Minor. “Can you get it for me in New York?” “I didn’t know you liked Chopin.” “I didn’t either. This chap at work let me borrow—got some good songs.” A battle rages on TV. Swords flash. Horses grunt. Kin thumbs the volume control. Ba extends his torso towards me like a plant seeking light. “Aye—ahhhhhh! “Where do you listen, Ba? “Huh?” “You’ll pay with your life!” “The Chopin—” Ba detaches for a moment, grabs a cassette player from the coffee table, and fast-forwards. There’s a bending of sound, ghost-speak upon battle cries. “Where do you listen to the music?” “One of my fellows—” Rifts crest and plunge. A waterfall. A soaring bird. A play of shadow and light. “What?” “Shi-fu! You can’t die now!” My mind shatters—small pieces of glass cascading onto a ceramic floor. “Turn off the TV!” I holler. “I can’t hear a thing!” “Off?” There’s a long pause and an awkward silence. Ba clicks the ‘play’ button. The tape begins its scratchy journey. Then, side-by-side, avoiding eye contact, we listen to Chopin. The first movement kneads pressure from our chests, lets us breathe. Then clouds gather slowly. They swirl and churn, lunge back and forth and open up. Lower notes bash and tremble. Electricity shivers. High ranges tinkle and splat. Then drops pound upon corrugated tin. Kin rushes to close the windows. Bing bought the TV six years ago. After that, he brought home a fridge and washing machine. Long-held wishes fulfilled. A filial son doing his part. Now, with dual speakers, surround sound, and a 63-inch screen, his parents live in suburban bliss.

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They had a second-hand Black & White before, but it required endless thumping and readjusting, so Kin listened to the radio instead. Eighteen hours a day. Weather report at dawn, herbal remedies at 8:00 a.m., cooking shows all morning, and English hour at lunch. Moral tales for sloggy afternoons and saucy chat shows for evening company. Kin was the perfect consumer—home all day, devoted to household chores and heavily advertised brands like Milo and Jacob’s High-Fiber Biscuits. When the big TV arrived, she was ready. The next morning on Jalan 20/12, I feel alive again. Blossoms carpet the road—a gift from last night’s breeze. Baubles of jambu ayer sway like tiny lanterns on dark branches. A man hums at the Kopi Kedai, wiping sap off plastic outdoor tables. Maybe this is what I’ve come for. Mornings that are stirred to life slowly, like coffee in lazy hands. My seminar starts today, a transition to the world of crisp air-conditioning, posh function rooms, and carefully managed speeches. There is order in the setup: information presented in turn, careful choreography of speakers. One voice at a time, thoughts pile up in neat rows. Globalization is a colorless export. After the afternoon wrap-up, I take a taxi halfway home. As we round a familiar corner, I beg the driver to stop. I crave the warm, humid air that the conference denied; the clanking of woks from unnamed kitchens and the rhythmic slap of sandals heading home. I go the last two kilometers on foot, passing the decrepit bus stop where Bing waited for the Bas Skolah each morning. How I hated that bus stop the first time I saw it—my first day in Malaysia when Bing wouldn’t let me sleep off my jet lag. Instead, he shook me out of bed, dragged me by the arm, and made me visit childhood soccer pitches, toy shops and his favorite curry stalls. With unaccustomed first-world eyes, I noticed only decay. Chipped blue tiles of the bus bench. The stench of a nearby drain. Unchecked grass and weeds pushing through the sidewalk. Now, I see different things. A line of cars flank the mustard gate—I’ve forgotten that it’s Lunar New Year’s Eve. Kin’s tiny kitchen table holds a feast for thirty. Around it are four generations of voices, snooping, prodding, tattling, boasting, and out-doing. The kitchen has no fan, and bodies sweat like bowls of steaming curry. Endless arms reach for the Yee Seng, a New Year fish tossed for luck. I rush towards the comfort of my balcony, pull up my stool, and face the gentle breeze. Wind chimes tinkle, and a dragon dance sounds in the distance. Cats dine on whole fish remains, the best morsels of the year. Like a fruit bat, I take off soaring above the drainage canal, into the endless purple-black dusk. Dip and glide; hear, taste, feel, smell and see. “Hey!” I yell towards the kitchen. “The breeze is great out here!”

Nobody moves an inch. I lean into the kitchen to make myself heard. “Come on outside—it’s the best seat in town!” “No good,” an uncle yells back. “There’s no extension cord.” “It’s time for The Chosen,” yells Ba. The crowd gravitates towards the sitting room, where sound roars and throbs like the air below a jet. I return to my private space. Minutes later, I feel a tap on my shoulder. “Why not join us?” asks Ba, hovering above me, the smell of whisky sharp on his breath. “It’s New Year’s Eve.” “There’s no room to sit,” I hear myself explain, “and the actors speak too quickly.” “Use the subtitles,” says Ba. “They’re all you really need.” I follow him into the living room. It is a drama, after all, ninety percent action. Scenes reduced to clipped, symbolic phrases: “He’s dead,” “It’s all over,” “She’ll survive.” The story is crystal clear. “Kin and I are getting old,” says Ba. “We don’t go out like before. Ma’s terrified of snatch thieves. My knees are bad. This is what we do together.” The next evening, I head out to the balcony, listening to shallots crackle on Kin’s stove. There is beauty in the sound, clarity amid chaos. Sometimes we have to sift through layers of noise to hear our own voice. For now, I’m satisfied for the first time in years. The cats below, inhaling the aroma, are satisfied as well. They discuss a formula: Shallots + curry = leftovers. Kin opens the packaged mix and stirs. No more labor-intensive grating and chopping. Everything is easy these days. Microwave dumplings. Frozen roti. Curry in two easy steps. I once asked Kin how things were different before the war. “Pounding spices,” she said. “We used to get up before dawn to make chili and galangal paste. You didn’t need an alarm clock back then.” She motioned to the homes behind the canal. “Mortars and pestles. Pound, pound, pound at 5:30 a.m. Now, they’ve all disappeared.” On the last day of my conference, I put on a pinstriped pantsuit, forgetting the swelter at Kin’s breakfast table. She has really gone out of her way: white bread and jam, roti canai, and assorted dim sum. Outside, a motorcycle revs and a clean voice hails, “roti—iiii, roti—iiii.” The bread man is here with his medieval incantation. “Roti—iiii!” I’ve heard other business ‘jingles’ as well: the fishmonger, the everything man (mops, feather dusters, buckets), and the newspaper collector with nursery rhyme ditties. Even with the air-conditioned Jaya Supermarket just around the corner, the roti man still survives. He allows Kin and every other housewife in town to sit behind thrice-locked gates, watching endless Kung Fu dramas. He drops off his fluffy white loaves just before the first morning show.

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On the way to the airport, my decision breaks hard and fast like a summer monsoon. I’m moving to Malaysia, a place that whispers with the subtle voice I crave. No more clamor. No more Bing. Something new, yet known. I’ll get a job teaching English—my own tongue, which in this part of the world, is money in the bank. I’ll find a home upcountry in Penang, in an older neighborhood with canopies of cool mango trees and neighborhood shrines. Far enough from Kin and Ba where I won’t be expected each week. Close enough where I can visit now and then, to enjoy my balcony or an episode of The Chosen. But first, I’ll go back to New York and wrap things up at work. I’ll buy giant cardboard boxes and organize a garage sale or two. It’s not as radical a change as one might think. After all, what is home? Something comfy like a well-worn settee. A rhythm, a habit. Simple things, simple words. I’m reading the subtitles now: jasmine on an early morning jog, the sultry calm before a storm. The challenge will be filling in the text. Back in New York, I clear customs by 10:00 p.m. and rush to find an open music store. I’ve forgotten—it’s Saturday night—that’s not a problem here. Crowds pile thick on the sidewalks, as shoppers move with indifferent brusqueness. Feet pound cement without grass between the cracks. There is no lounging at kopi kedais. No lazy slap of sandals. At the first store, a girl with a pin-studded tongue reports that she doesn’t cater to the over-40 crowd. At the next shop, I fumble through seas of hip-hop and gangsta rap until I find a small ‘classical’ shelf. Chopin’s Greatest Hits is right there, filed alphabetically between Beethoven and Debussy. It’s a CD, of course—no cassettes in this sleek gadget world—but that shouldn’t be problem for Ba. Bing will surely buy him a CD player this year, along with a home Karaoke entertainment system. The shopping list will grow longer as a filial son gets promotions and grows fat. Old teapots, stools, and woks will be relegated to the balcony, in favor of Japanese hot water dispensers, massage chairs, and multi-function cooking crocks. The balcony, alone, will speak of the past. For the first time in months, I fall asleep with ease. I dream of Ba lying on the sagging bed he’s used since before the war, shadowed by a wobbly ceiling fan. He studies the wall map of the Federated Malaysian States and a portrait of Lao Sho Xing—the Longevity God. Relaxing with his feet up on a pillow, he watches blue veins course blood through his grayish, tired feet. He has turned off the TV to listen to Chopin, to relax on a sultry Sunday afternoon before the storm hits, and when the first drops pound the tin roof, a piano player’s hands will crescendo, bringing a cool, blue deluge that makes the world real again.

4. This is the room you and I made love in under a white-lighted Christmas tree, deep in the scruff of the blue woolen rug. Smell of pine, small sound of needles sprinkling floorboards. You left this house long ago. 5. And water colors the wood: dark / shine / dark / shine / dark, washing scuffs and stains awayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Rorschach of dry spots blooming islands that swallow the sea. 6. Down on my knees, I trace lemon oil loops as florid arcs of scent. And when I rub it in, it is the body of the tree I am touching, all tongue and groove now. How thin the floor boards have become, splintering along the grain. 7. Ise Shima abides between now and twenty years hence. Now, the inner and outer shrines lie on this side of the courtyard. In twenty years, one hundred men will raze them, then rebuild the shrines across the way. There is never a nail. It is eight years work. 8. On fallow ground the Shinto priest places stones in the outline of an inner shrine that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t there. When pilgrims come they pass through three gates. They wash their hands. They wash their mouths. They stop. They go no further.

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Ben Westlie Lessons in How to Drive

It was a petal blue, rusted polka dotted make from the seventies. The crumbling floor showed snapshots of the pavement and the dirt it traveled over. Spider webbed windows caused by brave rocks and weather that forgot its place. Cushion bursting through leather, a radio that only played the words of country and cigarette smoke was the scent that lingered longer than the man who sat behind the worn, chipped steering wheel. He would let the sun soak his hair while the wind blowing through the car tossed it around like a hurricane. His face was withered skin that knew unhappiness, that knew the wrong choice. I watched from the passenger seat with my bubble gum and soda, reveling in my childhood luxuries. I stared at him like an accident that just happened two feet away from me or from him. I sat quietly and hoped for the mesmerizing sun to stumble behind a cloud and for the wind to forget about open windows, because maybe then my father would look at me.

Fernand Roqueplan Pro Bono Publico

Thus, little by little, I became conscious where I was; my infancy died long since, and I live —St. Augustine Place me in a quiet, gambrel-roofed parsonage painted white w/blue trim & set so far back from the gate it disappears into roses, elms & Lombardy poplars where the clamor & infection of innovation is powerless. America, where all things flourish but genius: the extended British empire senile & fat; soil fertilized with native blood, slave’s sweat, and West Indian rum—I plant a garden to soothe the spirits and an orchard though I’ll be old when it bears. This morning a crow gobbles the Turkey figs, a bus sluicing through mist spooks him & he hops about, rotted fig dripping from his beak. Forgive my bitterness, it’ll pass with the rain. The harvest I await is a renaissance—these dark ages shall brighten, this republic of the setting sun will be reborn: a congregation of astronomers shall lead us into the sky. I’m preparing for the pageant, jarring strawberry preserves from bought strawberries; the crows can keep the figs. My pride is for the people I love.

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Jill Christman A Stone Pear

The first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayishpink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam. I suppose I was about four. — from “The Measure of My Powers” (1912) by MFK Fisher On every visit, my great Aunt Mollie warned me that the fruit in the bowl on her dining room table was not real. Table and bowl both were carved from a deep, dark wood and I remember still how irresistibly smooth the table felt beneath my fingers. This wood glowed, which I now know must have been the result of housekeepers wielding soft rags, but as a child I marveled at how these made objects showed off their glistening curves and joints, telling the story of their journey from the shaded forest to this well-lit stretch of dining room in New Milford, Connecticut, and seeming— somehow—more real than real. So real, they were magic. I couldn’t stop touching them. The long, rectangular table stretches in my child’s memory to seat at least twelve, and placed at the center, the focal point of the room, was that beautiful bowl, and in that bowl, the exquisitely fashioned fruit: two kinds of grapes, green and purple, two tawny pears, a handful of nectarines and a single red apple. The fruit is fake, my aunt would remind me, not for eating. If I was hungry there were oranges in the icebox, or we could go down to the garden, duck under the bird nets, and pick some blueberries for breakfast. Yes, she’d continue, after we swim, let’s go down to the garden and get some berries. Aunt Mollie didn’t tolerate a slugabed, and we swam bright and early, before seven o’clock, in a sunken pool lined with flagstones and croaking with morning frogs. I stayed mostly below the surface back then, preferring the cool, pale blue of underwater, but Mollie swam laps back and forth in a careful breast stroke, her gray hair tucked neatly under her swim cap and her head held at a perfect angle to the water, as if she were swimming with a book on her head.

I cannot remember the exact day I tried to eat one of those pears, but I’d guess I was seven or eight, and that my aunt was probably having her afternoon lie down. For lunch, we would have sat at the long wooden table and eaten soup made from garden vegetables and served in bowls with round handles. I remember clutching that handle and scooping spoonful after spoonful because the soup was so sweet and peppery and fresh. And because at the scraped bottom of the bowl I’d find an animal—a rooster, a pig, a frog, a horse or a cow. After soup, we always had Pepperidge Farm cookies, two each, and some more of Aunt Mollie’s special iced tea (her secret was using the pestle to grind the sugar into the fresh mint and then soaking it in frozen lemonade). And then it would have been quiet time. By then, I’d probably have been through all the tiny boxes in the miniature roll top desk, crayons and postcards and stamps from faraway places, and I was bored. I wasn’t allowed outside by myself, and for once I didn’t feel like reading. I remember the rich smell of the dark wood and oil in the dining room and how one whole wall was made of glass to look out over the stone patio. The view was out of a fairytale, sloping down the terraced landscape, ridged with flower beds, and landing at the bottom with a break in the lilies: a shaded opening leading off the stone path to the pool. All of which reminds me there’s another character in this story I cannot forget: I had a verifiable wicked stepmother. By the age of eight, I’d overheard her telling one of her many sisters on the phone that I was a “little bitch.” My stepmother cleaned without ceasing. She’s the one who taught me how to make beds with taut hospital corners and then apply the quarter test—if the quarter doesn’t bounce on the finished bed, rip out the tucks and begin again. Sometimes she’d be fun, a water balloon fight or a trip out for ice cream, but then she’d switch, fly into a rage, let me know the mint chocolate chip was headed straight for my thighs and I’d better watch it. Summers with my father and stepmother were not happy. I know now that my stepmother’s wickedness was the result of mental illness, and I’m guessing this was true for Cinderella and Snow White as well, but back then, she was just plain mean. All summer long I was sick with nerves and when Aunt Mollie called my father to ask if I could come out and stay for a week, I begged to go. So, try to imagine a bookish girl enjoying a respite away from her distracted father and wicked stepmother, a pair right out of the books, in their city loft that baked in the summer heat. Imagine this girl transported to the cool wood of a shaded heaven, with a kind old lady napping a room away. Imagine how anything might have seemed possible. If there could be a house with chickadees skipping at the windows, bullfrogs croaking in the pond, and trees dropping sour crabapple treats, then a pear made of stone might well become real in the right moment. After all, I was a girl who lived at least half my life in books. Hadn’t Lucy stumbled into Narnia through

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the back of a wardrobe? Hadn’t Mrs. Whatsit sent Meg and her friends through a wrinkle in time? And what about Pippi Longstocking? She got to live in her own house with a monkey named Mr. Nilsson and a horse named Horse and she was strong enough to lift them all—house, monkey, and horse—without breaking a sweat. Despite Aunt Mollie’s warnings about the fruit, I was convinced of the possibility. The pear I chose—a model of a Bosc, although I did not know such distinctions at the time—was made of stone. The convincing indentations in the smooth skin had been carved and the shading near the stem, a sign of ripeness, had been painted on. The pear felt heavy in my hand, not at all pearlike, certainly not ripe. I must have pressed on the fleshy looking belly of the pear and met total resistance. My hands should have told me not to bite the pear, so why did I do it? Why would I try to bite a pear I knew wasn’t real? I don’t know, but sitting at my writing desk, almost thirty years later—thirty years!—I want to think my failure to read the signs of the physical world had something to do with hoping I was part of a larger story and believing in the possibilities of that story’s creation. I didn’t bite down hard, didn’t break any teeth, and despite what we might now read as a failure of possibility, I don’t remember feeling at all disappointed, probably because I never hungered for anything when I was at Aunt Mollie’s. Not really. I remember my reaction went something like this: Yup. Aunt Mollie is right. This is not a real pear. This pear is a rock. Still, I was impressed. So life-like, that rock pear. So beautiful. I held it in my hands, rubbing away my spit, and looked out over the patio and down to the path. I couldn’t wait until Aunt Mollie woke up from her nap. We were going down to the garden to pick snap peas for dinner, but first we’d stop by the pond to look for bullfrogs. In Aunt Mollie’s final years, a dementia made her paranoid and she misread the cards I often sent her: thank you, thank you, sweet Mollie, for the magic of early morning swims and leaf tracings and homemade granola with just-picked blueberries. My cards came too late for her to believe in them, too late for her to know my gratitude was real and full of juice. Sadly, I heard she read any such notes as a ploy for inheritance, and that she died trusting no one. When I was twelve, I had moved far, far away, all the way across the country to Washington state, and I only saw Aunt Mollie once as an adult, some ten years later, mere weeks after I’d lost my fiancé in a car accident. Instinct alone told me to go to her. I needed something to believe in again. Most of that final visit is lost to a blur of grief and comfort, but I remember consciously refusing any evidence that the world Mollie created, and Mollie herself, were more complicated than what I’d known. In my mind, perhaps, I wanted to stick

to the storybook archetypes: kindly fairy godmother rescues miserable child from evil stepmother. A simple story. Aunt Mollie had made a world where a wounded child could believe in magic, and her mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s final betrayal of her heart seemed to me a cruel irony. In my unprotected girlhood, her home was a place of art and love, a place where a beautiful stone pear refused to yield yet still did not disappoint. Those summer weeks she gave meâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;could it have been more than a couple of months all together if strung end to end?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;may have, most literally, saved my whole life. Thank you, Aunt Mollie. You were more real than real.

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Jason Rizos Harvest

For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption. —Galatians, 6:8 Ted Montgomery was a Mycologist. He explained this was a mushroom doctor the first time we met. Ted was a very peculiar individual, with a sense of humor I could never quite grasp. When he told me this for the first time, I said mycologist? And he said, no, your ologist. I said your ologist and he laughed. But I did learn a great deal about mushrooms from Ted Montgomery. My wife Rosa and I had a small apartment at Tatum Point but it was bent. It was what they called a “cliff hugger” because it was built into a steep slope. The management girl assured us that although some settling had occurred we were in no danger, and she explained how the grade of the slope was just slight enough that it was not a cliff, but a glade. This made for a great view of the County below, which was an unbroken puzzle of subdivisions and shopping malls stretching all the way to the horizon. The temporary agency didn’t mind that I lacked a car because I was always willing to take whatever job they couldn’t otherwise fill. I enjoyed walking down the County boulevard each morning with my neighbor Daryl, an older gentleman, a black man who was very good at quoting the Bible whenever something relevant came up. I liked the way the road felt under my feet, the grind of gravel, broken glass, and blasting caps. We were always surprised by the treasures we would find along the sides of the road. I once spotted a tiny porcelain teacup with Japanese Kanji circling the inside of the rim, without even a scratch or chip, like it had been gently set on the shoulder of this four-lane boulevard. Daryl had an eye for jewelry because he had been a jeweler in what he called a former life. I gave the cup to Rosa with the promise she would one day have a floor-to-ceiling buffet filled with the finest china. But Daryl could spot a diamond-studded earring in a pile of broken glass as we walked along the highway. Who would allow themselves to lose such expensive things? What I would do to have so much jewelry it was falling out of my car, I said. Daryl said a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of things and I said that the abundance of things sure wouldn’t hurteth.

Daryl carried a loupe with him and I always wondered what the commuters thought when they passed us at dawn, standing on the side of the road, Daryl holding a ring up towards the sun and scrutinizing it with a jewelers loupe, shouting out letters that measured their clarity and color. Did they think this was some ramshackle jewelry outfit? A low-overhead outlet mall? Daryl the artisan and I his customer? Would they one day stop to shop with us? I remember the morning of April 12 because it was rainy. It was the first genuinely warm rainy spring day of the year. Later, Ted Montgomery said this probably had something to do with the mushrooms, but I never did understand his explanation. The temporary agency had me sign a non-disclosure agreement, but by now it no longer mattered. This meant that if I took the job with Ted Montgomery I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I did, not even Rosa. I laughed when the temporary agency girl told me this because there was never anything interesting to report that Rosa had not heard before. No matter how fancy the restaurant, the dishes always looked the same when they came to the wash station. The undesirable bits are stripped of their elegance when revealed under the bright fluorescent lights, mashed between layers of porcelain and blasted into a gray soup of detergent and copper scouring pads. The dust from polished showroom floors filled the same shallow black pans, no matter the brand of automobile that lorded over it. The temporary agency girl didn’t like my response to the non-disclosure agreement and she said so do you want to take this seriously or not? Because this is kind of a big deal, she said. The government is involved, she said. I told her of course I would respect the wishes of the government and with my hand raised I solemnly swore not to speak a word of it. She said whatever and just sign the form. Ted Montgomery was already in the building, wearing his indispensable white lab coat and pacing back and forth in the next room. This too was unusual. He came to the temporary agency to pick up workers like somebody might decide on a whim to rent a power washer. Daryl and I had worked many assignments together and we were the only two people to show up at 7:00 a.m. without any guarantee of work. The rest of the temporary agency contract workers were teenagers, the sons and daughters of the wealthy. They only arrived if called and only if after 11:00 a.m. Understanding the difference between the quality of life they had grown accustomed to and what they earned hourly as receptionists and dock loaders warped any sense of work ethic they may have had. They never lasted long before joining the growing number of young, unemployed, and uneducated aristocrats dedicated to the County’s many night clubs and coffee bars. Daryl signed the forms as well, and then the temporary agency girl introduced us to Ted Montgomery, adding that this was all she has got. I grimaced, but it wasn’t like we weren’t going to take the job. She had learned to treat us

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as commodities. Ted Montgomery said we were perfect. He put on a pair of glasses with tiny lights propped on either side. He turned on these miniature lights and lifting his arms said, Gentlemen, let’s roll. Ted Montgomery put us in a very large windowless van that had the state seal printed on the hood and a brown license plate with only the number 42. There were no backseats, so I let Daryl ride in front and I sat down in the back with an enormous gray trashcan that was more like a long miniature dumpster on wheels. I could tell right away that Ted Montgomery was the kind of person who liked talking about his job. He said there were a number of things we needed to know about mushrooms in order to do this job. Number one was that we never pull them from the floor, that we cut them gently at their base. Number two was that we never stack them because they were way too fragile to support any weight. Number three was that we always wear gloves and never let any of the mushrooms get in our eyes or mouths. Whatever you do, don’t even think about tasting them. Poison is fungi’s raison d’être, he said. It’s their way of trying to communicate with us. At best they give us visions, wash away reality and reveal the primitive parts of our soul, but sometimes they get it wrong and kill you, he said. Ted drove us to a mall, the fancy mall that I had always been too intimidated to visit. But I had been there on temporary assignment before. When the shoe store closed down I was hired to tear apart their racks and displays. It was a shame to tear up and throw away such clean and expensive looking displays. But it had no other purpose than displaying shoes, so I guess they were at a loss for doing anything else with them. They gave a team of us a bunch of axes and saws and we cut everything apart, ignoring the screws and bolts and the painstaking assembly. We made everything small enough to drag through the back door, those secret catacombs that the shoppers never saw. At the loading docks, we threw them into a garbage trailer. Nearby, trailers unloading replacement displays and merchandise. It was still hours before the mall would open when we showed up. Daryl and I unloaded the plastic dumpster from the van and we wheeled it through the access doors and into the dark catacombs. It must have been luck that we arrived at the former shoe store we had gutted. The store was now called Dee Breeze, which sold hair clips and other accessories for young girls and teenagers. A nervous manager greeted us with questions, all of them having to do with whether any of this was his fault and whether he should tell his corporate office. Ted Montgomery told him not to, that he would take care of the whole thing and it was probably best left a secret so that it didn’t harm business. You never know what the press could make of this, he said. The manager asked if it was dangerous. Ted Montgomery sighed, he put his hands on his hips and spoke with a very serious tone. We just don’t know, we just don’t know. When the lights came on, I first thought they were part of some fancy display. A dozen plastic five-foot mushrooms stood between the aisles and

merchandise racks. Ted Montgomery began taking pictures of these mushrooms. O.K., he said, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s get these out of here. Inside the dumpster he had placed three steel machetes, which were old and ragged, with wooden handles and corroded blades. He later explained that he had to buy them from the army surplus store because machetes were hard to come by except as souvenirs of another time and place. He handed one to me and said did you know that more people have been killed by machetes than by any other weapon in history? I said wow, really, and he said no, not really, but probably. It did not matter that the machetes were extremely dull, in fact somebody had taken a grinding stone to the edge so that they couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even be considered weapons. But it did not matter because the green stalks of the mushrooms were hollow, thin, and made of wax. The machete passed through them like soft butter. The wax blended with fiberglass rising up the stalk and the caps were bright red fiberglass. They were not like fiberglass, they were fiberglass. Large six-inch circles dotted their surface, lightly concave and full of a pastel paste. I took my glove off and reached a finger toward this paste and Ted Montgomery yelled that I not touch it. Later, after Ted Montgomery did his lab tests, it turned out that this was eye shadow. Daryl and I cut them off at the bottom of the stalks. Ted Montgomery removed the teardrop stumps from the carpet, which left a hairy little divot on the floor. Once we were finished, there was no evidence except these divots, one of which was not in the carpet, but in the hard plastic base of a merchandise rack that had cracked and splintered when Ted Montgomery pulled up the stump. When we set them in the back of the van, the powdered eye shadow flaked everywhere and eventually streaked my work pants in shades of violet and lavender. I thought this would be a hard thing to explain to Rosa when I got home. Later she only smiled and said that I always manage to make a mess of myself, which I guess was true. Better than dirt or tar, I said. That evening we cooked a large batch of barbacoa with our homegrown cilantro. We only had windows on one side of the apartment, but they faced mostly south and we had good sunlight all year. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have much, but herbs thrived in our little home. It felt scandalous that we should have something for free in the County. We made fajitas and watched the sun set on the County below. I told Rosa I had a good job, and hopefully Ted Montgomery would sign me on full time. Soon we will have nice things, I could just feel it. We would have nice things and then we could have a family, I said. Nao preocupacao she said as she often did. No worries. Although the builders of Tatum Point drove steel beams deep into the side of the glade, the sideways foundation had buckled since the complex was built a decade ago. The apartment alongside ours was situated on a beam that did not buckle and this had caused its walls to crack so badly that management stopped bothering to patch it and instead used it for storage. The privacy was nice, but our floors sagged toward the County below. Before

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long it too would be uninhabitable, and perhaps after another few years all of Tatum Point would slough onto the homes in the valley bellow. For the time being, I reassured myself that the foundation was safe, that should the complex collapse, it would not happen suddenly. I was determined to get Rosa and I out of this place and into our own home. The County was a place of opportunity and the temporary agency girl spoke of companies buying out temporary labor for permanent employment, and with this she said there usually came a big raise. I was pleased to see Ted Montgomery’s van outside the temporary agency the next morning. Once more, Daryl and I were the only people to show up waiting for work. Ted Montgomery asked us if we had said anything to anybody, or if we had been approached by anybody. It took a little bit of convincing before he believed we had not. We had not even discussed it on the way to work, but seeing how concerned Ted Montgomery was, I almost wished we had. Daryl quipped that he’d keep his mouth shut about a great deal more than just mushrooms if a steady paycheck were involved. Once convinced we would keep quiet, Ted Montgomery told another joke. Why did the girl mushroom marry the boy mushroom? We told him we did not know why the girl mushroom married the boy mushroom. Because she was knocked up, he said, eyebrows furled. Then he told us it was supposed to be a joke. We told him we got it. He took us to a strip mall on the far side of the County. We stopped at Futon, Faucet, and Further. The door was unlocked, and inside there was no sign of the manager except for a loud, animated voice speaking into a telephone. It kept saying well put him on! Then, well put him on! I don’t care if he is busy, put him on! Because the lights were off, Ted Montgomery gave us flashlights to search the store. Just as we agreed to split up and search he reached for my shoulder and said hold on a second. Whispering, he said it was also because he was a fun guy. Get it? Fungi? We whispered that we got it and that it was funnier now, but I didn’t laugh because I was nervous prowling around this big store in the pitch black, the only sound this angry voice, ordering somebody to put somebody on. We found the mushrooms in no time. In the beam of the flashlight, they cast tall phallic shadows on the wall. This time they were nearly seven feet high, with thick silvery stalks and wide shallow caps. The undersides were all we could see. Silvery metallic gills radiated from the stalk like thin sheets of foil. I chopped away at the metal base of the stalk as Daryl guided the mushroom to the floor. It felt exactly like cutting through an aluminum can, but even thinner. The dull machete had no trouble with it. A couple hacks and it was on its way to the floor. Daryl had a hard time easing it down because the cap was top-heavy. It fell and struck the tile floor hard, sending a tinny report echoing through the empty store and leaving a large flat dent in the cap. The stalk blended from silver to gold, and the cap blended from gold to dark gold.

Daryl pointed to the rings and asked Ted Montgomery if that was what he thought it was. Ted Montgomery said that it would probably make most sense that these are rings of some complex alloy, anything from tin to titanium. The mushrooms were clustered together in the food processor department, five total. We laid them down as gently as we could, but the manager must have heard them strike the floor. He turned on the lights and came rushing out to meet us. He waved his arms and said we no longer need your services. Ted Montgomery loaded the mushroom and wheeled the dumpster toward the front door, contemplating a response until the man finally blocked our path. Ted Montgomery showed him his permit from the Department of Natural Resources, and he summarized it as authorization to withhold any fungi that presented a risk to the general population. The man took the papers, looked them over, and scoffed loudly. This is nothing more than generic crap, the man said. These belong to Futon, Faucet, and Further and we are not going to let you leave with them. Ted Montgomery started going on about science and research and something about breakthrough speciation, but this wasn’t working so he turned instead to noxious vapors and deadly spores. But his Mycology was no use because a security guard showed up for his shift and it was clear that this man did not care about Mycology. He wasn’t dressed as a security guard, but instead in red flannel and blue jeans, which made him look like a sort of vigilante security guard, especially when he folded his arms tightly and spread his feet apart. He was prepared for fisticuffs and Ted Montgomery could tell by the look on my and Daryl’s faces that we were not going to fight, even though we had them outnumbered. Instead, Ted Montgomery escalated the incident to his superiors. We waited an hour and a half for Ted Montgomery’s superiors to call him back from the State Capital. The angry manager and the vigilante security guard pulled the remaining mushrooms straight out of the tile they grew from, exactly what Ted Montgomery told us not to do. Up with the stalks came large pockets of tile, insulation, and cement. The silver and gold mushrooms disappeared one by one to the rear of the store and then the angry manager began preparing to open for business as employees showed up one by one, bleary eyed and staring at the three of us. The State Capital called back at last and after a long talk with Ted Montgomery we were told to leave the store because we were urgently needed at a restaurant on the other side of the County. The restaurant had about two dozen mushrooms, about four feet tall. Ted Montgomery was very excited about these. At first we were afraid the restaurant would want to try and keep them, in case they were worth something, but instead the Greek restaurant owner was upset that we might not get them out fast enough. He even cursed at us in his native tongue as though all this

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were somehow our fault. These mushrooms were not like the others. They were of a uniform material, thick gray glass. Ted Montgomery retrieved a laptop computer from his van and attached a cable. He took a steak knife from a nearby table and cut the end off this cable, stripped and frayed the wires. He cleared the restaurant staff out of the dining room and as the machine warmed up, he shook his head and said wait until you see this. Then he turned on his computer and played a movie on the screen. It was a panoramic view of mountains and pine forests with new age music in the background. Then he took the cable and touched the frayed ends to one of the mushrooms. The entire mushroom flickered, illuminated, and became wrapped in the video of the mountain scene. It was hard to make out the picture as it curled around the stalk and wrapped over the cap, but it was the same as what played on the computer. Ted Montgomery explained that it was a plasma mushroom, that it understood the order of the pixels and the signal from the video cable, that it was not just a batch of molecules all mixed up. It’s as if it wants us to know that it understands our technology, he said. I tried to tell Rosa about it, I knew she could keep a secret. But when I tried to describe the mushrooms, the way they lit up like light bulbs, and how just for a laugh, Ted Montgomery put a plaid pattern on his laptop and connected it to make a plaid mushroom. Rosa thought for certain I was just kidding with her. She had other things on her mind. The apartment had shifted again. I put the level from my toolbox on the kitchen counter and for the first time I could no longer see the bubble. Outside our bedroom window we could see the ground directly below, the slivers of vinyl siding and broken plaster that littered the backyards and roofs of the luxury homes. I called the management girl and she told me she would send maintenance over to make sure we were not in any danger. The maintenance person turned out to be Daryl, who explained that he received a good discount on his rent by performing odd jobs around the dozen-unit complex. You folks ain’t got nothing to be worried about, Daryl said. We’ve got fifty foot I-beams running into this hill and this place ain’t going nowhere for a long time. I asked him how long until it did finally fall over. Well, he said, probably another ten years, but this wasn’t anything the engineers didn’t understand from the beginning. Big money, he said. Some significant money to be made before it falls apart, price of real estate what it is. I’d say this place has another two or three good years before you’ll need to saw the legs of your table short to one side. God fixed the earth on its foundation, never to be moved, but God sure enough didn’t build this place, he said. Rosa and I couldn’t afford to move from Tatum Point, yet. I swore to Rosa the day I married her that we would not be in the city. Each morning Ted Montgomery was waiting for us. We stayed very busy, packing our van with mushrooms from retail establishments. All such reports of the phenomena were routed to the Department of Natural Resources and

finally to Ted Montgomery. But we began to suspect that many places were not reporting them. This was because of the robbery reports. The newspaper called it a crime wave, then they called it the crime of the century. A department store manager told a reporter on the television that he had hundreds of customers returning tubs of empty facial cream, still sealed from the factory. Another manager of a major consumer electronics chain showed the reporter dozens of big screen TVs with their insides neatly picked out. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the only valuable part, the manager confessed, waving his hand within an empty black shell. A number of jewelers reported their inventories missing, too. Sometimes not just the stones, but everything including the display cases. Most retailers were quiet about their losses, hoping a disappearance one day could mean a surprise the next. It became increasingly likely that they could show up one morning to find a treasure had sprouted from their showroom floors overnight. But in reality, there was far less treasure than just plain junk. Mostly, we found plastic mushrooms, sometimes spotted with brand logos. Or caps made of pleather and lined with polyester, their gills rows of zipper. Ted Montgomery was good at identifying them even though each batch was seldom alike. He even figured out the ones that were from purple holographic DVDs. But it was clear that they were no longer reporting the valuable ones. The asbestos mushrooms were particularly unpleasant to remove; brown, soggy, and dripping with sap. The concrete mushrooms were no picnic either, and they were the most common of all. They crumbled into dust the moment I tapped them with the machete. I began to feel a sense of urgency, as did Ted Montgomery. We knew that eventually the role of mushroom removal would be taken from the government and businesses would learn to harvest the mushrooms themselves, while figuring out a way to sell them back into the market. Three weeks had passed since our first discovery, but still it remained a secret from the public. Ted Montgomery told us not to worry, he said there would be plenty of work. He said that we were doing a service for the community. This is bigger than you think, he said. Quite literally, he said. Mycelium, he explained. These were invisible microscopic mushroom roots that Ted Montgomery believed had a network throughout the County, penetrating every surface, from tile floor to steel safe, from glass door to asphalt highway. The mycelium was the body of the mushrooms, and they intermittently fed on products and fruited when conditions were right. But Ted Montgomery had no way of predicting when or where. Ted Montgomery did not know whether it was the substrate, the humidity, the light, or even the phase of the moon. We only knew they grew quickly, and only at night. The only thing they could not navigate through was earth, wood, or any organic material. He showed us a copy of an article he was writing for a prominent Mycological Journal. He explained that once they published his findings they

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would have no choice but to issue him a great national award. Did you know that there is a Nobel Prize in Mycology? He asked. No, I said. Of course there isn’t, he said. He pointed to a section he had highlighted and read to us while he drove: Evolved from the effluvia of our man-made synthetic environment. That’s a good sentence, isn’t it? That’s what they look for, he said. A few days later a call came in from a country club. I didn’t even know there was a country club in the County, but it turns out there was, complete with a golf course. It lay tucked away in a neighborhood where all the residents had Plexiglas windows and scurried to their automobiles under heavy umbrellas because the fairway was too narrow to trust even the best golfers. At the main clubhouse, we were greeted by a man with a pencil thin mustache and a tuxedo with tails. He lifted his left eyebrow very high and introduced himself as the Master of Ceremonies with a deep bow. He had an unlikely mixture of politeness and boredom. I guess he had important things to do. He led us to a place in the basement he called the chapel. The basement of the clubhouse was small, with thin hallways that we could not hope to lead our dumpster through. Ted Montgomery said we would have to carry them out in tarps. The Master of Ceremonies thought about this for a moment, seemed to pick at the corner of his mouth, and then said that appropriate accommodations would be provided. He then opened a small door to reveal a much larger room, which was lined with brushed steel pews, somewhat like a chapel, but very modern and expensively decorated. The walls were covered in murals, but instead of gothic images of saints and angels, there hung a series of neat silver frames. Within each were bas relief renderings of different corporate logos. The relief was cut into solid brass, with black enamel highlights. I asked Daryl what sort of church was this and he said for our sake he hoped it wasn’t any kind of church at all. Toward the far end of the room there stood an altar made of solid brass with lecterns on either side. The roof above the altar was domed and almost forty feet high, but without any windows or stained glass. Instead, the dome above the altar was a solid chrome bowl interlaid with a grid of pulsating red neon lines. It was such a marvelous sight that I overlooked the eight enormous mushrooms growing in a perfect circle around the brass altar. These were almost fifteen feet tall. Our first fairy ring, Ted Montgomery said. We hacked at the base of the first mushroom. The stalks were at least three feet thick and made of a supple black foam rubber. We didn’t expect them to be top heavy, though. My machete passed through the base of the stalk and the mushroom quickly toppled over, the cap shattering into a million pieces. Ted Montgomery quickly explained to the Master of Ceremonies that we had never seen glass and rubber come together in a single species before. The Master of Ceremonies was not bothered, however, he just asked that we hurry up and clear them out of the chapel posthaste. He provided Daryl a broom and Ted Montgomery placed the broken stalk onto a long mail cart along with

the fragments of the cap, covered it with a tarp, and wheeled it out of the chapel, the Master of Ceremonies following along. Once they left, Daryl said psst! You know what this is? he asked me and I told him it was probably glass. I’ll tell you what this is, he said. I picked up a piece of the broken cap and told him it was probably glass. No, he said. Watch. This is pure sapphire. Daryl took the fragment and looked around the room. He found a glass candle holder on one of the pulpits. He pressed the shard to it and it left a nasty scratch. You see? He said. This is the hardest of minerals besides diamond. I quickly began filling my pockets with these shards. No, no, you fool, he said. They ain’t worth nothing uncut. Ted Montgomery returned and we loaded another mushroom onto the cart. He and Daryl wheeled it out, leaving me alone in the chapel. I took off a glove and felt one of the stalks. As I suspected, it was that super-soft foam rubber, the kind they make those expensive Swedish mattresses out of. The foam rubber formed a sort of sponge around the stalk, as light and soft as whipped cream. It felt like touching a cloud and left a light powder on my fingers. I ran the edge of the machete vertically down the mushroom and reached my arm into the fold. The hollow center felt tingly on my skin. It was warm and inviting. I pulled my shirt over my head and pressed my way into the crease I had cut. I slipped in and the stalk closed around me. Looking upwards I could see faint light penetrating the sapphire cap and it bathed me in a blue glow. I stared at the crystal ceiling, basking in comfort and serenity. My body went numb and I fell limp, but the walls of the stalk cradled me. I felt myself rising toward the cap like a bubble. Liquid. Floating. Time and space vanished. I could feel the tendrils, that mycelium, attenuating, reaching out and wrapping delicately around the earth. I could feel a billion mushrooms gazing at me, more profound and intelligent than anything human. They greeted me as a newborn, but they didn’t know what I wanted. They searched my brain for my deepest desire. I thought of Rosa, our crumbling home and the urgency of escape. I wanted just one thing, I wanted wealth. Then I felt Daryl’s machete connect with my ankle. We thought you had run off, Daryl said. I grinned sheepishly as my senses returned. It wants to help us, I mumbled. Daryl pointed at my face, lifting his hand to his mouth. Your teeth, he said, your teeth have turned into sapphires! It was true, my teeth had turned to sapphires, faceted and perfectly cut, but it was only the beginning. I kept my mouth shut so Ted Montgomery would not see. He took me back to the temporary agency and I never returned again. Today, Rosa and I own a home. We have a very nice house on the south end of the County, far from Tatum Point. I only wish the best for Rosa, and I can take comfort in the fact that she will be happy the rest of her life. I,

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