Just Buffalo Literary Center's 2014 Members' Reading

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6 / 7:30pm 468 WASHINGTON @ MOHAWK

JUST BUFFALO’S 6TH ANNUAL MEMBERS’ WRITING CONTEST & READING

THE 6TH ANNUAL JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS’ READING Thursday, February 6, 2014 at 7:30pm Just Buffalo Literary Center 468 Washington Street @ Mohawk 2nd Floor Buffalo, NY 14203

Special thanks to Mick Cochrane 2014 Judge & Talking Leaves…Books

TABLE OF CONTENTS Carol J. Alaimo.......................... 1 Alan Bartlett ............................. 5 Larry Beahan ............................ 8 Kelly Bucheger .........................12 Louis Ciola...............................14 Jennifer Connor........................17 Paul Cumbo .............................22 Trudy Cusella...........................24 Alexis David.............................28 Regina Forni ............................35 Veronica Breen Hogle................42 Douglas J. Levy........................48 George Morse ..........................51 Khalil Ihsan Nieves ...................53 Michael R. O’Brien ....................55 Richard K. Olson ......................57 Pat Pendleton ..........................62 Patrick D. Reilly........................64 Scott Reimann .........................68 Wendy A. Reynolds...................73 Julianna Ricci ...........................81 David M. Smeltz .......................84 Josh Smith ..............................89 Susan Lynn Solomon ................91 Chera Thompson ......................96 Lisa Wiley................................98

The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Carol J. Alaimo #1 The Cat Lady Why is it, I would wonder, that once I say “Time for bed,” lay me down and turn off the light, and the cats pile on top of me, that they would engage in vigorous bathing? It was always a contest for position, with some hissing and swatting, until each cat found his or her niche. The long-haired grey would settle on my legs, the short-haired tuxedo in my left armpit, the blue bull’s eye tabby on my right shoulder, the calico on my chest and the smallest, most senior, the Siamese mix around the top of my head like a cap.

Many folks would find so many cats crowding into their space offensive, intrusive or allergic. For me, their cozy presence and soft purrs, once the bathing, swatting and hissing ceased, were like a glass of warm milk and a lullaby. Not that all these little ones were things of beauty. I loved each one for its precious uniqueness, and they returned my love, each in his or her own way. I am pushing 80 with both hands, a maiden lady with no children or man friend, in fact, only a few women friends, and my little ones aged with me. Priscilla, the Siamese, was with me longest – 18 years, and probably at least age 21. I had to lift her onto and off of the bed since her fragile legs could not manage it any more. My last adoptee was Rudolf, and that was over twelve years ago. None of them arrived with papers or history when chance and necessity beckoned them to my door. Other cats have come and gone. When I no longer could dig a proper grave, the Animal Shelter was kind enough to send someone to remove and dispose of, how I hate that word, the bodies of my deceased little ones.

I could not afford an investment manager or accountant. I owned my humble little bungalow from the days I was earning a reasonable living as a cook/waitress in a local diner, and it was mortgage-free but in no condition for refinancing. My Social Security and miserly interest on my dwindling savings account were my only income, and my major expense was the care and upkeep of my little ones. Four years ago I suffered a small stroke which pretty much destroyed vision in my left eye, and glaucoma limited vision in my right eye.

I failed the driver’s eye test and my license was revoked. I sold my ancient Buick Skylark for scrap. When I shopped for pet products after that, I took the bus to the store and a cab back, loaded with those 16 lb bags of food and 24 lb containers of litter. I tipped the cabbies extra to take the load into my house.

Life really changed without driving privileges. After the City closed the library three blocks away, I needed two busses to reach the nearest branch. The librarian showed me a device called the Kindle, which can store hundreds of books and show them on a small portable screen. A wonderful invention for someone with average sight, but I could read only the large print books and could not afford a Kindle anyway. Having to rely on bus and taxi for transportation really deterred me from travel and visit, culture and shopping.

Among my former circle of friends, most were dead or relocated, senile or immobilized in institutions. More and more, I sought comfort and entertainment in my own home with the radio and my little ones my best companions.

What with Social Security benefits frozen and interest rates minute, as the cost of everything skyrocketed, I had to watch every penny and take a hard look at my financial situation and future. I knew enough about dollars and cents to realize that my resources would be exhausted within seven or eight months unless something drastic changed. My first concern was for my little ones. I contacted all the humane shelters with no-kill policies, and they gave me a waiting list averaging 3 to 6 months, plus the advice that older cats, such as mine, were seldom suited to living in a cage and rarely adopted. As the weather gradually improved, I opened my doors and encouraged the cats to go out. Two disappeared without a trace, to new homes, I hoped. I was able to place Rudolf with a neighbor who admired him sitting in my front window, and my orange tiger Rex went to the mailman. ScatCat and Skitters, always inseparable, found new homes with my eye doctor. My vet, ever sympathetic to my situation, put Vanilla, an epileptic, to sleep for free.

Still I had nine little ones looking to me for their shelter, sustenance and medical attention. Then an unanticipated plumbing repair consumed what I had set aside for the local taxes, and still had a hefty balance due. I could wait no longer.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 2 of fiction by Carol J. Alaimo It was always my hope that when my time came, I would fall asleep one night in the dignity and privacy of my own bed, and never awaken. Very peaceful and quiet. But I realized that it would leave the little ones locked in a house which might not attract anyone’s attention for days. The only way to know in advance that one was to sleep the deep sleep was to plan and execute it oneself. The only way to spare my little ones the terrible risk of abandonment was to take them with me. All this came to me as I lay in my narrow bed as the cats sparred with each other over who would sleep where, on and around me. I considered poison, but memories of a dying rat foaming at the mouth in agony ruled it out. As I pondered my options, my ancient stove’s oven developed a gas leak. It presented itself as the answer to my dilemma. I secured as well as possible the windows and doors. I had no idea how long it would take for gas from the stove to fill the bungalow’s five rooms, but I anticipated staying in bed until the final roll call. I hoped the cats, being smaller, would succumb before me, in their sleep, painlessly and peacefully.

I chose a Saturday night, so the mailman would not come around until Monday at noon. I put a note on my mailbox to notify the police to enter the house cautiously. I turned on the burners and the oven without lighting any flame, and smelled the gas come surging out. I brushed my teeth and inserted my partial. I took the rollers out of my hair and combed it into a style. I put on my best “go to hospital” nightie and a fresh Depends pad. My kitchen and bathroom were spotlessly clean, my furniture dusted and rugs vacuumed, and my closet and drawers in order. I dumped the garbage and used kitty litter in the outside trash can. My financial material was in a manila envelope on the kitchen table, with the name and phone number of the attorney who drew my Will eleven years ago. I was ready. I called the cats into the bedroom, put Priscilla on the pillow and lay me down. Before I turned off the light I watched my little ones with love and tenderness.

They did not quarrel as usual, but seemed subdued, ready to retire without their usual bathing. Perhaps they know, I thought, or the gas already is affecting them. “Sleep, my darlings, and sweet dreams!” I whispered. I extinguished the light and closed my eyes, hoping it was for the last time.

I awoke in the hospital with an oxygen mask over my face and tubes attached to a needle in my arm. I lifted the mask and asked the nurse nearby, “What happened? I’m supposed to be dead!” She appeared shocked by my gasping statement.

“Well, Grandma, you’re not! And don’t try anything so dumb in this hospital or they’ll put you in a straight jacket!” No bedside manner from that starched shirt! She strutted from the room, and a young intern replaced her.

“Mrs. Holcombe, you’ve inhaled gas from your kitchen stove….”

I again lifted the mask. “That’s Miss, if you don’t mind. And I deliberately turned on the stove to end my life. What happened to prevent…. And my little ones – Are they all right?”

A policeman came into the room, an Officer Banks. “Lady, you drew the wild card! A rupture in the main gas line late Saturday required a turn-off, and not enough gas entered your house to be lethal. And the broken window let in fresh air….”

Again the mask, really an annoyance. “What broken window? Who broke it? I had no broken window…” I felt like I was babbling.

The policeman smirked. “Why, the burglar, of course! He broke the window to gain entry, smelled the gas and vamoosed, but had the decency to call 911 about the gas. If we catch him, he’ll get a reduced sentence for that act of charity.” A second policeman motioned Banks to the door and they spoke in hushed tones as I fiddled with the mask and the intern tried to stop me. Banks returned.

“The long arm of the law has embraced your burglar, Mz Holcombe. A cab driver who has given you rides and knew you lived alone with your pets….Feel up to an identification? He’s in custody in the hall, right here!”

“Miss Holcombe, please! What’s the rush? Afraid I’ll die?” I snorted through the mask.

“Well, it’s clear you tried once, and may try again, right? So how about it?” Banks was persistent. I nodded.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 3 of fiction by Carol J. Alaimo The policemen escorted a middle-aged man, shabbily dressed and unshaven, into the hospital room. He looked vaguely familiar, but then with my poor eyesight, nothing was too positive. What impressed me most was the pathetic expression on his face. Unbidden, he began to speak.

“I worry ‘bout you, Ma’am. Livin’ alone an’ all. So I come by and look in the kitchen window and the living room window now and then, on my way back from a cab run, to see all’s in order. I’m no burglar or thief! I saw two cats pawing at the kitchen window, meowing like the devil that somethin’ was wrong inside.

So I rapped on the window an’ rang the doorbell, but got no answer, so I broke the window an’ smelt the gas.

I got real scared an’ ran back to my cab to call in the 911. Then my dispatcher sent me on another pick-up so I had to leave. Honest, Ma’am, I meant well. You see, I did time in Juvie Hall, an’ I vowed to go straight….I support my wife an’ three kids driving cab an’ work a second job as a janitor at the pool hall. Besides, I know you’re poor as a church mouse with all them cats! What’s to steal?” He was breathless when he finally stopped.

I felt immense pity for this innocent who was dragged into a pit of trouble by my suicide attempt. The policemen seemed impressed, too, and whispered among themselves. Banks stayed while the other officer took the man, Herbie Wells, into the hall. Banks placed a call and relayed briefly what Wells had described, nodded and said, “Sure.”

“Miss Holcombe, do you wish to press charges against Herbie Wells? Apparently the only damage was the broken window. We are aware that you attempted to take your own life, and you should receive psychiatric evaluation before release, right?” He motioned to the intern, who was scrunched against the wall rapidly learning lessons in life that had little to do with medicine. The intern, who appeared utterly useless, nodded.

I finally dislodged the mask. “I can’t say I recognize that man, but my eyesight is just about gone. It appears a big question mark whether his intentions were good or ill, but he did me no harm. I do not wish to press charges. Nor do I want a psychiatric evaluation. I am perfectly sane, extremely poor and with limited physical capacities. I have no family, no able-bodied friends, and no prospects. My only comforts are my cats. Now tell me how and where they are?” Banks shrugged.

“Can’t say. Not my department. Maybe they left through the broken window.” With that, the officer of the law departed my room and my life. Herbie was not prosecuted for breaking and/or entering. A neighbor repaired my broken window, the City repaired the gas main, and I passed my psychiatric evaluation with flying colors. Still, no one could account for my little ones. I even considered contacting Herbie Wells, to see if he could care for them while I was hospitalized. I feared, upon my discharge, that very bad news awaited me, but I was wrong.

“Miss Holcombe!” The intern, whose tag said he was Joe Bennett, trotted down the hall as the aide pushed my wheelchair toward the exit. “Are you going to be all right? I know you were worried about your cats. I want to assure you that they are all okay! I go over before I go on duty and make sure they are fed and have water and clean litter. I know I should have asked permission to enter your home but I thought it would upset you. They are really nice cats. They like to sleep on my lap when I fix myself a cup of coffee or take a nap on your couch. You see, I’ve stayed overnight sometimes on your couch when I was too tired to go back to my flat. I have two roommates who are noisy when I need to sleep. That little Siamese cuddles around my head, and the grey one straddles my ankles. They’ll be really glad to see you again.”

I stared at him in amazement. The supreme nerve, to move into my house and insinuate himself into my little ones’ affections. Still, I must pretend gratitude for his care and attention to their needs. I must feign appreciation for this gross invasion of my privacy. I was at a loss for words, and just nodded. He extended his hand, which I did not want to shake, but which contained my ring of keys. I took them in silence. He walked alongside the wheelchair, commenting about this cute habit of the bull’s eye tabby and that trick by the calico, until I tugged on his sleeve. “You may visit us if you wish,” I whispered. “Keep the keys. I have another set.”

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 4 of fiction by Carol J. Alaimo I am blind now, and another stroke has paralyzed my left side. The State pays for me to occupy a bed in a nursing home, where my roommate babbles and drools, the laundry loses my slippers and house coat, and the meals are glutinous mush. I need assistance with most functions, but my mind is as clear as a bell. I deeded the house to Joe Bennett, who is a full-fledged doctor now, but remains dedicated to my little ones.

Priscilla went to her final reward last summer, but Joe had her cremated and her little urn is on my shelf.

When he can, Joe brings the calico or the long-haired grey to visit me in the garden under the rose arbor. He supplies some decent food for my snacks. He takes me occasionally to a restaurant, and better yet, back to my old home to visit all my little ones at once. I must live day by day relying that his devotion to the little ones and willingness to assume the expense of my old home and its precious occupants will continue as long as the last one lives. Joe is young, and shy, and content for now to live in a ramshackle house whose only current feature is a new gas range, with a hood!

This week Joe informed me that Herbie Wells was arrested and charged with murder during the commission of a felony. He broke into a senior citizen’s lower flat and raped her at knifepoint, but her screaming produced two results. It drew the neighbors, who apprehended him, but not before he stabbed the woman to death. Funny how people can fool you.

“No fool like an old fool,” I told Joe. “Or a young one,” he responded. “I only hope to one day be as wise as you.”

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Alan Bartlett #2 Wrapped in calico The cleaning lady found Marion lying on the dining room floor. She called 911 and then called me.

The coolness of the hospital room was no match for the coldness of the doctor’s want alternatives, “Mr. Bartlett either Mrs. Welch goes to your house to recuperate or she'll have to go into a nursing home.” For me there was no option. Of course she would come home with me. Ruth loved Marion and so did the kids.

Marion's hand lifted tentatively off the sheet, and her parched mouth softly rasped, "I want to go home." Dr. Whitman did not respond, nor did his eyes ever leave her chart as his hand scribbled resolutely across the lower margin. Perhaps he had not heard her, but I suspected he didn't trust her but did not want to say so. He had amputated her toe the prior month; and once back home on her own, Marion stopped taking her insulin and antibiotics.

The doctor’s didactic review with Marion's home care contained no sugar coating, “She will need injections of insulin twice a day and glucose levels taken three times a day. She is to have neither salt, nor any sugar. I have put a five day supply of syringes in the box along with the materials for the dipuration of the amputation, her prescriptions, and a list of dietary instructions.”

I faint at the sight of needles, and the thought of cleaning up necrosed skin repulsed me. I could feel my brow furrow and my mouth sucking a gasp of air. Thank God my sons were with me. Andrew piped up, “I can do that. Can the doctor show me what to clean and how?” Too quickly, I said, “Doctor, Andrew might like that.” I tried to stop the words, but they flew out of my mouth too fast. I tried not to embarrass myself further, but it was too late. My mouth was on a roll, “I'll give take care of her needle of shots.” If Andrew could master the cleaning, then the least I could do was to learn how to load a syringe and administer Marion’s shots. Deadpan, the doctor suggested, by an orange and practice on the feel of the needle piercing the skin is exactly the same. "Her next shot isn't due until eight o'clock tonight." Nonplussed, I just nodded my head and grabbed at the papers and wished for home.

We turned our den into a hospital room. Andrew, my 10-year-old, became Marion's nurse. He took cotton Q-tip saturated with hydrogen peroxide and cleaned out the petrified tissue from deep within the gaping holes so that it could properly heal from the inside out. My oldest son, Joshua, kept Marion's room in order. He changed the sheets, tidied, sterilized, vacuumed, and emptied bedpans. In between nursing and orderly duties, both boys spent hours playing board games with Marion. Marion loved to play card games.

She relished the pace and conventions of bridge, canasta, and whist. Actually, she enjoyed all board games.

She sat for hours helping the boys find the correct placement for each piece of 1000 piece puzzle. "Always start with the corners first, and then do the straight sides, ‘That's it. Good. Andrew, so I owe you fifty cents for your spelling test?"

Marion kept up a nonstop conversation during board games. From the kitchen, I listened to the shuffling cards in the kibitzing between the bids. So much of what she said, and how she said it, was exactly as I remember that from my childhood. Marion's habit of changing the subject without warning might trip up lesser mortals, but she never tripped Andrew, "What,? No. Not this week? Here. Here's a side piece," he would quickly counter.

Eventually Marion understood that her fifty cent bribe, or even a $5.00 bribe, could not get Andrew to learn his weekly spelling he was, also, just as good at C.O.S. (Change Of Subject) as she was. Eventually she took on the task of practicing the word list with them, and they developed a Friday night ritual Marion would ask, "Andrew, do I owe you fifty cents? Three diamonds."

"Three hearts," from Joshua "I forget, Three, no trump, " Andrew bid back.

Marion's counterbid, "Andrew, do I look like a fool? Four spades. Show me the paper."

Then they would laugh, and laugh again, no matter what his score.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 2 of fiction by Alan Bartlett When the boys got home from school each day, Marion listened intently to them tell her about schools, sports, friends, and whatever else was on their mind. Later, in the evening, while playing board games, Marion maintained a running dialogue of reminiscences of the family and the interrelationships. Aunt Lydia was your great-grandfather's aunt. She married Henry Webster from down Maine. They lived down the street from great-great aunt Sarah. Your great uncle, Eph, lives in on Sarah's house now. As a child I learned my families interrelationships from her exactly the way she taught my son's; orally, during a card game.

I adopted both of my boys. Although not biological brothers, they share a common background. They both survived poverty, multiple placements, and abuse. Marion gave them an additional heritage to consider their own. Exercising matriarchal primogeniture, she wove them into our lineage as no one else could. With the lineage, came artifacts as well. Over a game of bridge she mused, “The mantle clock came from the Connecticut side of the family.” Over puzzle parts she shared, “The cameo shell of Saint Andrew the Dragon belonged to your grandfather's great aunt Lidia. She bought it in Italy while on a grand tour in 1873.” Over one eye-jacks-are-wild she confided, “The pearl and emerald jewelry has come down from my great-great uncle Henry Webster, and the Hudson River paintings from your grandfather's cousin W.H. Bartlett.” And so it went through the winter. Marion gave faces to generations of ancestors, a place in history, and a matching heirloom.

About the time the crocus began to bloom, Marion began to get feisty, “Alan. It’s time for me have dinner at the table. I’ve been cooped up long enough. I’ll help get supper ready.” Henceforth, the family would sit down and eat together.

As the warm weather arrived, she announced her decision to return to her own home. She was close to her old self, a gracious patrician accustomed to giving directions. I felt uneasy about her being on her own.

But, she would not let it go. “On Sunday you can take me home,” she said in her demanding way. She did not sound like a patient anymore.

“You have to promise if anything goes wrong you'll call me. Promise, I ordered, but even I knew I was pleading.

"Don't be silly."

"Marion, promise."

"Okay, but I don't want Mary interfering."

"Marion, she has to clean. You can't do it, and someone has to."

"I know that. I just don't want her meddling. She's always poking around. I don't like it. Never have."

She was definitely her old self. There was the self-assuredness about her voice that had been missing for a long time.

“Marion, I’ll speak to her and to the new nurse.”

“I don't want a new nurse. And just who is paying for this nurse?”

“How about eating on the porch tonight?” It was my turn for C.O.S. Six months and two days after the call from the hospital, my wife, two sons and I drove Marion back to her home. When we said goodbye she was sitting at the dining room table. All 1000 pieces of The Thames at Windsor spread across the table surface.

Three days later Mary called. She had found Marion in bed.

Marion had gone home.

Because the executrix did not feel up to the task, she asked me to take responsibility for the disposition of Marion's estate. So, throughout the middle of the summer, I commuted between my home and Marion’s house. With a combination of sadness, guilt, and relief I watched as her lawn withered brown and the flowers wilted under the summer sun.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 3 of fiction by Alan Bartlett When I was a child Marion paid me a penny for every dandelion I dug up. Now I walked past them and up the front steps. The large home of my youth had stripped awnings, and its windows were always open to the ocean breeze. Now, it appeared forlorn and moribund. Each time I open the front door a blast of dry, dusty, midsummer heat confronted me; and no matter how often I walk over the threshold, I never shook the feeling that I was a trespasser.

Part of my life forever closed off as one room after another emptied and an echo replaced its contents.

Sitting on the floor, in the middle of an empty room, I could barely touch the memories each held. I sensed the events, yet I felt increasingly distant from them as the sale date for the house approach. The house, which in my childhood overflowed with endless wonder, joy, and happiness, now held boxes, shells, closets, and rooms smelling of dried oak tinged with sadness. Fortunately, none of it was tainted with regret. Much of her jewelry sat jumbled together. Pearls, diamonds, cubic zirconia's, rubies, emeralds, and pop together bead necklaces were in a jumble. Likewise, books lining the shelves held first editions adjacent unheralded reprints. Closets contained old home movies of people I did not recognize, and some that I did. Photographs of postwar picnics, ornate albums of antebellum director types, and Civil War era photographs filled a hope chest. Marion would've known every relative picture.

By the time I began cleaning out the attic Marion had been dead for five weeks. When I was a child, the attic, with its high vaulted ceiling and Palladian windowed gables, was my rainy day playground. Steamer trunks and cedar chest laden with memorabilia from eight decades sat in an irregular line on the right-hand side. On racks of the far end, top hats, and egret feathered bonnets, spats, and celluloid collars, and train sets, sat piled next to rows of bound National Geographic magazines . The house would soon be empty, and I needed to sit back and touch something that I knew. I reached for the 1952 bundle. It always was my favorite pile. I saw them first when, as a very ill seven year-old, I recuperated on Marion’s sun room couch. The July issue included India, the great Buddha, and children playing in pale gray mud. As I thumbed through the familiar pages my reverie yielded to something in the corner of my vision.

Barely within my reach sat a faded and tattered calico covered box. Covered by a fine layer of dust, it lay close by the magazines. I had never noticed it before. With a twinge of curiosity, I stretched out for it and open the fragile lid. Nestled under a pair of wire rimmed spectacles were several leather bound small books. I lifted out one and then another. Great-grandfathers diaries beginning in 1861, my grandfather’s entries beginning in 1883, and my aunt Marion starting in 1909 laid neatly one on top of the other.

I sat in the down amidst of the dust and summer attic heat and began to read. Relatives who had lived only in my aunt’s stories were actually real. The handwriting told of their daily lives, wishes, dreams, losses, expectations. I read tales of fishing at Billing Pond, the fliver that cousin Elston drove, dancing at the Cordage Company ball, and train rides to grandfather's office on State Street. One hundred years of family history lay between the supple leather covers. There was one small journal page for each day of the year.

Some of the entries were short, “It rained today.” Some were mundane, ”Tatted handkerchiefs for Uncle Elston. He paid me fifty cents.” While others were fascinating, “Went into town today with Addie. Met Mrs. Tom Thumb. She is staying with the Eunice Summerfield. Count Majori was with her.” For over a century generations added their own stories to those written before.

Marion has been gone for 12 years and my boys have grown into manhood and started families of their own. My house is quiet, and around me are many of the family heirlooms that once filled Marion’s home.

Just as she held them in safekeeping, so do I. My son’s now hear the sound of their great uncle's mantle clock chiming the hours just as they once heard it in Marion's. Aunt Lydia's cameo still sits among family photos on the antebellum piano. And, on the top shelf of the guestroom closet waits a calico covered box.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Larry Beahan #3 Tom Sawyer to the Rescue My first real job was as a “Relief Teacher” at New York Mills K-12 Central School where I became “Miss Schmitz.” I had always been “Lyn” or “Lyn Schmitz.” Thank God they didn’t call me “Horse Feathers” like they did poor old Margaret Horace, the 3rd grade teacher, who fell asleep in class. “Ratsy” was the name they used for Thelma Rattigan, if she wasn’t close enough to hear.

I remember how Ratsy slammed the door to the 6th grade room and left me with those fifty-three 6th graders. Some of them looked old enough to be in high school if not the army. She bee-lined to the tiny faculty bathroom for a cigarette. “Your job is to contain these savages long enough for me to knit my raveled brain back together,” she had confided earlier. “I’ll be back to pound a modicum of history and arithmetic into their dear little brains.”

As soon as the door slammed behind her half of them were out from behind their wooden desks. Two of the boys resumed a shoving match they started in the school yard over who gave the first shove. I raised my voice. I had never needed a loud voice. “All right boys and girls, back in your seats. Take out your readers.”

One or two faces turned to look my way. The boys had given off pushing each other in favor of throwing balls of crunched-up paper. In a moment most of the class had joined in a paper-snowball war. Four girls drifted to the back of the room in disgust to compare lipsticks.

I tried again. “Will you all please take your seats? Recess is over.” My sarcasm was wasted. I appealed to authority, “We have a reading lesson to complete before Miss Rattigan returns.”

Someone hissed at the back of the room, “Why don’t we get a smoking break like Ratsy?”

I ploded ahead, “Barney Szelengowski please bring your book to the front of the room.”

Little Barney Szelengowski appeared at the side of my desk, forlornly. I was flattered. He was there.

One of them had done as I instructed.

“Miss Schmitz,” he said. “My brudder threw my book in a pond.”

I had become “Miss Schmitz.” This little boy expected me to find him another reader. I was supposed to teach this whole room-full of hooligans how to read. I opened my 6th grade reader on Miss Rattigan’s desk to the section on Hiawatha and the Six Nations. Kids always like Indian stories, I reasoned. “Barney will read the Hiawatha story,” I shouted. “Follow along in your books. Hiawatha brought peace to the Indians right here in the Mohawk Valley.”

I have no idea whether anyone else got it but Barney and I struggled through that marvelous story. I prayed for the assistance of a Hiawatha as I stared past Barney through the dirty school window, past a monotonous row of company houses toward a Julliard textile mill. The truck-loading dock had been long abandoned, its brick chimney no longer spouted soot. The Julliards spent all that money on a fancy music school in New York City but they abandoned the Polish and Syrian families they brought from overseas to man their New York Mills textile empire.

I had always loved school. Give me the smell of sharpened pencils, the crisp pages of a new composition book, the clang of Sister Eileen’s brass assembly bell and I was already in heaven. I didn’t need to file into church for mass before school.

I always had my hand up to answer questions. I was so smart everyone told me to follow my ambition, go to med school and be a doctor. In high school and college I got a little off course between sororities and dances and boys.

At twenty, I had my Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the great University of Buffalo and a certificate in teaching from a twelve-week summer course at the same great institution. The course was all about the theory of teaching. It left us enthusiastic, inspired to do great things but ill-prepared for the waiting challenges. I was ready to go back to school-heaven, ready to teach little kids all they needed and wanted to know about that big wonderful oyster of a world out there. After a week at New York Mills, I wanted to go home.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 2 of fiction by Larry Beahan At Thanksgiving, Margaret “Horse Feathers” Horace, our elderly 3rd grade teacher, offered me a lift back to Buffalo. I easily convinced her to let me drive and she dozed most of the 200 miles from New York Mills, which is just outside Utica, back to Buffalo.

Home on Thanksgiving with that big family dinner, Aunt Elizabeth’s turkey soup, Gramma’s apple kuchen, a date or two and no kids, I decided; this is the place for me. I’m not cut out to be a teacher, I’m not trained to be a teacher, I hate teaching, I am never going back to that poor miserable crumbling mill town.

Well, Aunt Elizabeth persuaded me that I had to go back and explain.

News of my intention to quit apparently preceded me. Old Ratsy Rattigan reacted with horror, “You can’t leave me. Kids throw a few erasers. You were doing great.”

In the hall outside the principal’s office Barney Szelengowski put a piece of bubble gum in my hand and looked up at me, “Miss Schmitz, please stay.”

The principal listened sympathetically, then made a counter offer, a different schedule. I would teach reading and spelling to groups no larger than fifteen and I would have my own classroom. I said, “I’ll think about it.”

He didn’t say that my students would be the behavior problems, the dyslexics, the meagerly-endowed left-behind dregs of the school.

My classroom was on the second floor of that old red brick building, right over the front door, which is the location of the bathroom in many houses. The room was furnished like a Popeye cartoon. It had three tables of different sizes and shapes and an odd assortment of chairs.

My schedule worked. That is, it was survivable. I didn’t have training as a reading teacher but I did what the manual said to do. The kids were far behind grade level. Hulking August Zalta was fourteen and hadn’t mastered the 1st grade reader. He was a big kid and he liked me so he kept order. We eventually got him into the 3rd grade reader.

That winter I spent a welcome football weekend at Cornell. I came down with the worst case of flu anyone ever had and the school nurse got the town doctor to come over and give me a shot. Lunch at school was subsidized with free government cheese and potatoes so I gained 15 pounds. I chose not to escort the seniors on their New York City weekend. The previous year a cheerleader came back pregnant.

One day I thumbed through Mental Floss, a teacher’s magazine. I found a short children’s play based on the whitewash scene from Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.” The play called for a cast of 7 boys and one girl, which fit my 6th grade reading group exactly.

I read the play to them. They laughed at how Tom hood-winked the others into paying him to paint.

They got a big kick out of Ben Rogers going, “Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, chow, chow, toot,” imitating the steamboat, Big Missouri. Barney Szelengowski put up his hand and said, “It’s a play, it’s a play. I want to be Tom Sawyer.”

August Zalta asked “Can we do it?” My only girl student, Sophie Nowakowski volunteered, “I can be Aunt Polly.”

August told Barney, “You’re too little for Tom Sawyer. Let me? You be Ben Rogers. You can be like a steamboat, toot, toot.”

I wasn’t sure that August could handle Tom’s vocabulary but Barney picked up on the steamboat idea so I let August try.

That first read-around was a rough go. These bottom-of-the-barrel 6th graders were eager to read the Tom Sawyer script but school and I had prepared them for the task no better than the University of Buffalo had prepared me to be a teacher.

But for a change we all had fun. There were no pointless Dick and Jane stories that day. At the end of class they made me promise that we would do it again.

I stayed after school and used the rickety school typewriter to make up ditto copies of the play. It wasn’t very long. When my eight 6th graders arrived in class the next day, I had Sophie pass the scripts around.

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Page 3 of fiction by Larry Beahan Future linebacker August Zalta looked up at me smiling, “Miss. Schmitz, are we really gonna’ do the play?”

I said, “Why don’t we give it a try?”

They smiled and laughed and poked each other.

“I’m gonna’ be Aunt Polly,” Sophie said, “that’s for sure but who else is gonna’ be who?”

Barney said, “I want to be Tom Sawyer today. I can read all the words.”

August said, “Miss Schmitz, let me be Tom. I can learn the words.”

Bobbie snickered, “Bring in a dead rat and you can be Tom.” Everyone laughed, as I puzzled about how to handle the casting. “Maybe we can take turns,” I said.

I knew in my mind that for all of them, ever, to be able to read these pages, would take more magic than even the Marvelous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County could muster.

“Class,” I said. “Take out a pencil. The first thing we have to do is mark a script for each character.

Barney and August, you work together and mark scripts for both Ben Rogers and Tom Sawyer. We will decide later which one of you will be who.”

I assigned the other five parts, we got the underlining done and then we tried a read-through. Barney did Tom Sawyer the first time around. August did Tom the second time. He fumbled the lines a good bit but he never broke up and he pantomimed painting the fence so that it was hard not to believe he had a dripping paint brush in his hand.

By the end of the class I was so pleased with the way these new-born thespians were play-acting that I announced, “We are going to work on this a lot more. Everybody take your script home and read your parts.

If you have trouble asks your parents for help. Look over the rest of the play and read what you can of the whole thing. See you tomorrow.”

They left class tooting and choo, chooing. Sophie called to one of her friends in the hall. “Want to paint a fence?”

Thelma Rattigan heard about the project. She approached me on cafeteria duty. “How’s about we give the little dears a break and let the whole 6th grade class see your show.”

August’s older sister came in with him. “I have never seen him so excited about school.” She said. “I’ve been helping him read the Tom Sawyer part. I do so hope you will let him be Tom.” That was hard to refuse.

The kids got up and walked around with the scripts in their hands. They mimed painting and exchanging items for the privilege to paint. Aunt Polly leaned over a table as if she were calling from a house window and then we realized we needed props. Barney said, “To do this right we need a can of whitewash and a paint brush and some other stuff.”

Sophie said “I can get an apple.”

The class named off the items we needed. I tacked the list on my bulletin board. During the next few classes a brand new paint brush, a bucket smeared with white paint, a jack knife, some spectacular marbles and a few spotty apples collected on our prop table. I spoke to the shop teacher. He had the sophomore carpentry class build a piece of picket fence and a square of two-by-fours for a window sash.

When we were ready we canceled the last period of the day, arithmetic. The kids could not have been more pleased. They hated arithmetic.

My little troop of eight players met in the morning for our regular session and ran through the play twice. They had it down pat. Sophie brought her grandfather’s old straw hat to class for August. She handed it to him saying, “You look just like I imagined Tom Sawyer would look. This hat will make you look perfect.”

“Hat, I don’t want to wear no hat. Tom Sawyer wouldn’t wear no hat,” he said, pushing it away.

Sophie was crushed. Barney stepped in, “Give me the hat. All those old time kids had straw hats.” That helped but Sophie used her disappointment to put a bit of mean edge on her Aunt Polly performance.

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Page 4 of fiction by Larry Beahan At last period, we gathered in my room again, picked up our props, the picket fence, apple, paint brush, marbles and a jack knife and made our way to the sixth grade classroom. I could hear Miss Rattigan threatening, “If you can’t be quiet and stay in your seats I will cancel this whole thing.”

We filed in. Some boy in the back of the room hooted, another snorted and then a low rebellious laugh started. Miss Rattigan stood up frowning. But when August walked in things changed. He looked fiercely in the direction of the disturbance and there was silence.

I introduced the play and the kids delivered it enthusiastically. There was one hitch. Barney was playing Ben Rogers and was holding the apple that he was supposed to trade for a turn at painting. He forgot a line so he started eating on the apple. The audience took it that Ben was trying to get as much good out of the apple as possible before he gave it to Tom. The line finally came to him and he blurted out, “Give-you-thewhole-apple-if-you-let-me-paint.”

He brought down the house, when holding it by the stem, he handed August not much more than the core.

August was no Laurence Olivier either but he remembered all his lines. The kids in the audience laughed and applauded. We were a success.

It went so well that Horse Feathers, Margaret Horace, asked if we would do the play for the 3rd grade which had two sections, a total of sixty students. The principal heard of it and we wound up performing on the auditorium stage. My eight little angels were thrilled. Sophie summed it up, “I’m gonna’ be a movie star.”

The next week though we were back to the grind. I was on duty in the cafeteria and in a lull between breaking up fights, I addressed a generous plate of macaroni and cheese garnished with mashed potatoes.

A uniformed police officer was assigned to our school and made a regular appearance in the cafeteria mainly for dessert and to flirt with Miss Rattigan but, incidentally, to help keep a lid on things.

Miss Rattigan had finished her lunch and stood at the end of the table at which I was eating. The officer approached her with a wink. “How ya’ doin’ Ratsy,” he said.

She shrugged and said “I’m doin’… how about you? Solved any murders?”

He laughed, “No, the Chief’s on me about shoplifting at Kepler’s Hardware. Little stuff: paint brush, kid’s marbles, a jack knife.”

I said not a word, hunched down and relished another forkful of macaroni and cheese.

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Kelly Bucheger #4 Corkscrew, 1981 “How do you say corkscrew?”

“No idea,” I said.

We sat on either side of a small round table in a shabby courtyard. Alex squinted through her bangs as she inventoried the table: cigarettes, lighter, two wine bottles (empty), three glasses (empty), one unopened bottle of wine. Zero corkscrews.

It was getting dark, the end of a hot August day. An hour ago the courtyard was full of people, some bearing corkscrews. They left to attend a concert. I was blasé about the concert. Alex was blasé about everything. We were drinking wine. We were on our own.

I stood up, feeling awkward and tipsy. “I’ll get one.” Alex pushed away from the table, brushing hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ll come too.” She was small. She’d matched me glass for glass, but she seemed steadier than I was.

We pushed open the huge wooden door and turned right, out of the courtyard, onto a narrow street. We didn’t talk. I thought I should say something, but I was trying to remember: “What do you call a corkscrew?”

I knew how to ask for a beer or, later, a bathroom.

We took another right at the corner. A sad-eyed old man, quiet and dignified in a hat and dirty suit, sat cross-legged on a large piece of cardboard over a grate in the sidewalk, scritching the ears of a huge black mutt on a leash. Written in large letters in French on the cardboard: “I’m hungry.” Another thing I knew how to say.

Across the street was a brightly-lit shop not much larger than a walk-in closet. Inside you could find everything you would ever need: cigarettes, cheese, wine, toothpaste, band-aids. A stocky, balding man stands smoking behind the counter. He glances at me, then looks Alex up and down. “’Scuzez-moi,” I say. He looks back at me, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. In French I say “We have need of,” put my fists in front of me, swiveling one of them in what I hope is a recognizable pantomime of opening a wine bottle, and say with emphasis “pour VIN.” He says something.

“Comment?,” I reply. Without taking his eyes off me, he reaches under the counter and with a flourish reveals a corkscrew, as if executing a magic trick. He repeats the same something he just said.

I point at the corkscrew — “Oui!” — and give him a thumbs up.

Smiling, he says something else to me. He looks at Alex and winks. She smiles back. “Oui!” she says.

He punches some numbers into the cash register, then points to the price on the display.

We’re splitting this, maybe? I look at Alex. She smiles at me, motionless.

I pull a bill out of my pocket, the last of my francs aside from some coins, and put it on the counter. The man takes the bill, drops it into the register, puts the corkscrew into a paper bag, then counts out the change and puts it on a little tray on the counter. He places the bag beside the tray.

I pick up the bag and the change. It’s 12 francs short. How much is 12 francs? Math is not working in my head right now. Is it worth even doing something about? Yes: I’m poor.

I hold out my hand with the money and say “’Scuzez?” His eyes widen, and he freezes mid-puff. He looks at me with a pure, open, waiting face, as if he’s having his portrait painted.

I point to the change in my hand. He takes a drag from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“It’s not correct,” I say in French. He frowns, shrugs his shoulders, and makes an uncomprehending grunt.

“Douze francs,” I say.

“Shoo-shoo-shoo,” it sounds like he says, out of the free corner of his mouth. Frowning, he looks at Alex and says something. She smiles. She has no idea what’s going on.

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Page 2 of fiction by Kelly Bucheger He turns to me, arches an eyebrow, and says loudly in a slow, pained voice, “MON-sieur!” He leans over the counter and motions for my hand with the change. I show him the money in my palm. Suddenly he grabs my wrist. I’m too shocked to pull away. His hand is surprisingly moist and warm, and his grip is very firm. For a split second I have the impression he’s about to spit in my palm.

He sighs. Gently, like a dad explaining numbers, he fingers with his free hand the various coins I’m holding, tallying them up. As he announces the value of each coin, cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth, he gestures for me to repeat the French words.

Stunned, I do as I’m told. We go through the change in my hand, him counting off in French and me repeating, a math lesson and a French lesson.

For some reason, I get tears in my eyes. I glance at Alex. She is watching our hands, mesmerized.

He is finished. He releases my hand. Blinking, I look down, trying to focus on the coins. I have the correct change.

“Sorry,” I say. He’s looking at me intently. The lesson over, Alex brushes the hair from her eyes and looks up at me. “Je suis,” I start. “Je regrette.” I stop. I have no idea what to say, and no idea how to say it.

“Sorry,” I say again, in English.

“O.K.” the man says. Alex says “Merci,” and the man shrugs and half-waves, “O.K., O.K.” as we turn to the door.

We cross the street. As we walk past the hungry man and his dog, Alex asks “What was that?” We turn the corner at rue de Fourcy.

I have NO desire to talk about it. “Weirdness about the price,” I mumble.

“Tears?” Alex starts to say.

“What?” I interrupt her, defensively.

We stop walking, and she looks at me frowning, trying to make sense of me. “Teer something?,” she says carefully. “The word for corkscrew?” We start walking again, more slowly. “I thought you spoke French.”

“I’m studying French,” I say. “I don’t speak French.”

“Okay,” Alex says mildly.

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Louis Ciola #5 Hogmanay “At least the table looks good.”

It did – everything was shiny and perfect. The other preparations were coming along, too, though there was much still to do. With luck, they would have it all ready in time.

Jayrus McCloud stood in the open doorway, bourbon in hand, and glanced at the brightly decorated scene in the dining room and shook his head. His live-in housekeeper, Martha, had been working overtime preparing for their annual Christmas dinner. Somehow, this year, though, his heart wasn’t into the holidays.

Sadly, he staggered back along the long dark corridor leading to his office, went inside and closed the door.

It was the winter now, and Christmas Eve in the middle of a blizzard. Jayrus McCloud sat at his large mahogany desk, staring out the tall windows of his large wood paneled office at the snowflakes falling to the ground in heavy blobs of white. The wind howled and swirled, and pummeled a never-ending sea of white against the frosty glass.

It was the end of life as he knew it at Hogmanay, the fabulous home that he and his wife, Norma, and their four children had lived in the last twenty-five years.

Monday morning, after the holidays, Jayrus McCloud and his far-flung enterprises would file for bankruptcy. Everything they owned would go on the auction block. The house and all its contents, every stick of furniture, their clothes, their mementos, everything would be lost.

Only last week he was on top of the world. He had fame, fortune, his own private jet, and a real estate enterprise that stretched across the globe. Locked in a bitter takeover bid for World Capital Enterprises, he had borrowed heavily against his far-flung holdings and his brokerage accounts, $2.5 billion dollars to be exact, to do the deal. Then, when market crashed, dropping more than 600 points in a single day there was a margin call against his accounts and no money to pay it back.

He glanced over at the fireplace and stared at the flames dancing and crackling against the logs. He had built this home for his family during earlier happier times. Every square inch of this home contained memories. The floor to ceiling hearth was special limestone found only near the Faeroe Islands off the Northern coast of Scotland.

He leaned back against his red leather chair, dropped a few crystal ice cubes into a short tumbler, and poured himself another two fingers of bourbon. The booze was a special blend made for him at a distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. He liked it so much he almost bought the place years ago.

He reached into the custom humidor at the top of his desk, which once belonged to President Kennedy and helped himself to one of his last three Cuban Cigars. He clipped the end off, then put the cigar to his lips and lit the tobacco. He puffed on the cigar gently and took another large sip of bourbon bracing himself for the disaster on Monday.

“Where had he gone wrong?”

When he was twelve years old, his father died. From then on, he was the sole support of his mother and two sisters. First, he delivered newspapers. Then, he attended high school during the day, and worked full time nights in a factory. There was an endless series of bill collectors, shut-off notices, and finally the bank foreclosed on their home.

Then, through some miracle, he graduated high school, and got a scholarship to Albany College and Albany Law School. There, he managed to meet and marry Norma Smith, a fellow student.

Then over the years, as each of their four children were born, he became more and more of a workaholic. He worked non-stop, first as a successful trial lawyer, and then graduated to the world of high finance.

He shook his head. Now, he was all alone. Norma had left with the kids only last week after they had quarreled about how much he had been working. He took another puff on his cigar, and glanced fondly at his most prized possession, an inkwell and quill pen which once belonged to Charles Dickens.

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Page 2 of fiction by Louis Ciola He had always wanted to become a writer, but never had the time. After each child was born, he worked harder and harder, and kept promising himself that he would somehow find the time to write, but he never did.

He glanced around the room, and saw the mementos of his family. There was an abandoned oriole’s nest on a special stand, which his son Nick had found when he was only ten years old when they were hiking together on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. Along the wall by the fireplace were two oil paintings his other son Mark painted when he was at summer camp. Finally, there was a picture of his wife Norma and their two daughters, Emily and Sarah, white water rafting in Colorado.

He thought about all the wonderful times the family had at Hogmanay. There was always the fall and the brightly colored leaves, and the wonderful holiday celebrations.

The words of Hamlet buzzed through his drunken brain: To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.

He could see the headlines now, “Famed financier, Jayrus McCloud, files for bankruptcy.”

He reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out his loaded Colt .45 automatic. It belonged to his father. His mother had given it to him during the 1960’s when he shipped out to Vietnam. The weapon had saved his life on more than one occasion when his was on patrol deep in the jungle.

With military-style precision, he pulled the slide, which cocked the hammer back. He took one final look around the room, and then brought the barrel of the pistol upward and pressed it squarely against his right temple. His finger was poised against the trigger.

Daisy, his black Labrador retriever who was sleeping peacefully on the hearth by the fire opened her eyes.

“You’d better look the other way girl,” he said to the dog. Suddenly, she stood up and froze like a statue.

“Grrrrrr -GRRRRR!,” loud and louder!

What on earth was upsetting the dog?

“Here’s a biscuit .... What’s the matter? You don’t want it?”

The growling continued. The hair on the dog’s back stood on end as she glared at, but did not approach, the door. ........

Suddenly, the wind howled and gusted down the fireplace. The flames flickered, and then roared back to life. There was a puff of smoke and a loud explosion.

“Stop, you silly goose!”

Jayrus put the gun down.

He looked up, blinked hard and forced himself awake. He studied the apparition from head to toe. The room swayed but there was no doubt, this was Charles Dickens. The beard and the English long coat were un-mistakable.

“What are you doing here?” Jayrus said.

“The question ought to be, my good man, what are you doing here?” Charles Dickens glowered.

“I’m trying to end my wretched life.”

Whether it was the shock of this apparition or the effects of the liquor, Jayrus McCloud no longer felt obliged to keep up appearances. His whole life had focused on looking good in the eyes of others. Now, for some strange reason, he didn’t care anymore.

“And, why might that be?” Dickens drew closer.

“I’ve lost everything and I don’t want to live anymore! My wife and kids are gone, every dime I have in the world has vanished and now, I face bankruptcy on Monday morning. The press will have a field day.”

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Page 3 of fiction by Louis Ciola “I’d rather die than to go back to that again!”

“You silly goose!”

“When I was twelve years old my father went to debtor’s prison and I had to support my family. I worked at Warren’s factory in London, ten hours a day, six days a week, making bootblack. And even when our debts were paid, my mother forced me to remain there while my sister went to music school.”

Jayrus McCloud eyes widened.

“Poverty dogged me my entire life, until I started writing. And, no one knew of my impoverished childhood until after my death.”

“You see that silver inkwell and quill pen on your desk? The prop you use as an adornment to your fancy lifestyle? That was my ticket out of poverty. I never let a day go by without writing. I would write for several hours, then go for long walks about the countryside and stop at my favorite pub. I wrote story after story and as I wrote, my soul healed from the pain and poverty I had to endure and the world loved me for it.”

Jayrus McCloud nodded.

“Write your heart and soul. Write about everything that is near and dear to you this Christmas. Write about the good times and bad and the world will love you for it. Your creditors may take away your prized possessions, but they cannot take away the most prized possession of all, your love for your wife and family, and your love for all humanity. “ “Now, having said all that, I will leave the final decision up to you. ‘To be or not to be’ I heard you say several moments ago. It takes more courage to live than it does to die. You might not know this, my good man, but I see a bright future ahead of you not in business, but as a writer. This is a blessing in disguise. You have lost everything, including all the silly distractions, which have kept you from the muse.”

“Now, start by writing to your wife. Tell her of your love, and invite her and the children to Christmas dinner. Celebrate the season and the real meaning of Christmas.”

“Then, I suggest that you start work on a novel, based on your life as a financier who lost everything.

Soon you will be back on top. This time, there will be one small difference in your life. You will be happy at last. Mark my words, young man, put that inkwell and pen to good use!”

With that, Dickens turned and faced away from Jayrus.

There was a puff of smoke, and the apparition vanished up the chimney, never to be heard from again.

And true to his word, Jayrus McCloud wrote every day for the rest of his life. Monday morning he filed for bankruptcy and lost most of his earthly possessions, but in the process of his new found insight he regained his wife and children. He worked hard at his craft. It took him five long years to write his first novel, but from that day forward the silver inkwell and quill pen never left his side.

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Jennifer Connor #6 Tidepool, Breath On the other side of the country her nana gazed into her saucer of tea leaves. A letter was coming, she was sure of that. Not from the old country but from a faraway place. She put the cup in the sink and then crossed the room to the stove. She opened the oven door and upended the saucer over a tray bearing piles of other leaves as well as shriveled tea bags. The door clanged shut, its spring worn. She reached behind her back, untied the apron strings and then lifted the loop over her head. She always hung her apron on the corner of the Blessed Heart frame, the one with the prayer to the blessed heart of Jesus buttressing a molded statuette with an exposed red bulb in his chest that glowed red between his cupped hands. The picture plugged in. She switched the overhead light off so that only the red heart glowed. “Ah, Joe, why’d ye have to go?” she asked aloud as she had been asking for twenty-five years. She touched his photograph gently as she passed the television where it sat.

Once in her room she sat heavily on the bed. Her feet were so far from her now. She remembered when she could hop like a young thing and, immersed in those memories, sat perched on the edge of the bed for a long, long time, shoes unlaced but still on her feet. The arthritis. She waggled her fingers. They had knitted the white cardigan she now folded into the drawer. They had sewn the curtains that hung at the windows. they had mended the nightdress that she pulled out of the dresser. On a green metal tray-table by the head of the bed a blue plastic rosary coiled between the block of telephone and the box of tissues. She scooped it up, clasped the beads tightly, rattled off a Hail Mary with a quick addendum to watch over the living and give her best to the dead, and then she was between the covers and dreaming.

She snored softly under the crocheted coverlet. Grape, hot pink and aquamarine vied for attention with specks of chartreuse vibrating in the background. She did like the colors. Flowers the size of dinner plates climbed the wallpaper over her head. She dreamed in bold blooms. Her granddaughter also burrowed into her dreams, though under an earth brown blanket on another coast. In Valencia’s dream she set three pies to cool on the windowsill: pumpkin, peach and apple. She smelled their fragrance. She never ate these pies.

She set them on the plain wood sill, three perfect circles marked with arrows on a humble stage.

Grandmother and granddaughter rocked in the cradle of sleep, linked by their cognizant slumber, while their missing link, their in-between, their daughter-mother fought sleep mightily from her brow to keep time by a book. At the kitchen table Kerouac and Basho alternated excerpts between her intermittent dozings.

Somehow Sarah’s foray into the Beats had led her to the monk-poets of Japan. The transition had gone something like this: On the Road, which she had begun the same year she went to see the scroll in Lowell, to Dharma Bums, to Gary Snyder, character in Dharma Bums who had gone on to from the Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics to Nanao Sakaki- there was the Hokkaido connection there, remote mountain region of northern Japan, same latitude as New England, and from there to the haiku masters.

Her house hulked around her, holding her furniture, her china, her photographs, a host of objects. But none of these things were hers as much as the hours between twelve and two a.m. when her other self came into being, sparring with drowsiness.

She worried less at this time. The possibilities narrowed. Her daughter was safe and well. Her own mother would not call with confusing requests. “The hair dresser? Again? You know we were there yesterday, right?”

“I thought it was looking thin on top. Maybe I’ll check the wig catalog again.”

“Ma, you don’t need a wig. It looks fine.”

“Maybe you’d like one too. For dressing up.”

“That’s okay, Ma. Go look at the catalog. You can call me later.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Take care.”

That was from earlier in the day. Sarah reeled her thoughts back in and steered them into the snowhushed haiku of Issa in his home village, nursing a sick father while surrounded by venom and hate in his family and village. Just now Basho had buckled under pressure from his father to give him the cup of the sake he longed for in spite of the doctor’s orders. The father seemed to have cancer. The ailment was not

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Page 2 of fiction by Jennifer Connor easy to discern but the treatments of the doctor were surprisingly specific and sophisticated considering it took place in the 1500s. Issa sweated over the decision. His family berated him for withholding from his dying father one of the small comforts in life. Then, after he gave him the single cup, they berated him for trying to kill his father with poison to his fragile system. His father, too, berated him, insisted that the small cup had only served to whet his appetite for more. The spare haiku he wrote in this time read like delicate brands heated in fire and stamped on the reader, five hundred years later and still leaving marks for life.

There is the time in my life before I read Issa and after, or Kerouac: before and after Kerouac. Sarah might live in the same suburban home, make the same tuna sandwiches, wear the same terrycloth bathrobe, and underneath would be the subtle difference.

In the ocean of land known as America a grandmother lay in repose, elegant in waking and in sleep.

She loved her family, if by loved you mean believed nothing ill of them unless she made it up herself, remembered them in her daily prayers unless she forgot she hadn’t said them although that was more than made up for by the days she thought she said them two or three times to be sure. “Aren’t you the fine one” she said to the rat in priest’s garb who had her by the ear. He led her to a waiting curragh. “The devil’s in the church! The devil’s in the church!” Red flames lit the church from within.

They rowed out into the dense fog. She danced in the boat looking back at a row of lights diffused through the particled air. A stream of sheep passed alongside the curragh. “The rat! The rat!” she cried.

She smelled coal smoke. Only some had the coal. Then she realized that the boat listed in a peat bog, its surface cut away in a square around where they sat to reveal its gleaming wet blackness. The boatman was gone. She pulled her shawl tighter around her.

Often Catherine woke, not knowing the time, or even the era, and did what was second nature- no nature, just being: she went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. Valencia’s grandmother used a kettle over a gas flame until recently her daughter had the gas turned off. In her early days she had filled the kettle with well water, brackish after storms because of the low water table, and set it atop the stove. She then fed the stove with several bricks of peat harvested throughout the year from their section of bog on the mainland.

Now she had an electric kettle, upright and white. Quiet. Easy. She often boiled the water three or four times when the demure click of the off switch failed to penetrate her relived memories or daytime dream reviews: the glistening peat bog, the listing boat. No one around, all of a sudden. The loneliness. Click.

Sometimes she startled.

She put the cup and saucer on the table and selected a square bag of Red Rose black tea out of the box, the one hundred count. She dropped the bag into the bottom of the cup and, releasing the electric kettle from its stand, she poured water to just below the brim. The sugar bowl nested in a wreath of letters and circulars and she extracted it, adding a few more crumbs to the table. She stirred the sugar in clockwise and laid the spoon to rest on her saucer. Through the kitchen window she could see the traffic light turn red then green then red again. From this height and distance it looked like it belonged in a model train set. Down by the light was the papered shopfront where the gypsy family used to come live for a few months in winters. She stirred and watched the inky bloom in the water. From her aged refrigerator she removed a pint of milk. The quarts were too heavy for her now. The milk swirled and clouded the tea. With her crooked fingers she hooked the handle and lifted the teacup. As she lifted it her arm steadied. Thoughts of the many friends and neighbors she had shared a cup of tea with both warmed her and touched her with the coolness of solitary life. The clock ticked on the wall. The traffic light changed. She didn’t know when she had last seen someone. The only time that existed for her now was the present and the distant past, and the only record, her kitchen table. Green, yellow, red. Green, yellow, red. Her whole life here she had watched that light, in day and at night. The bitter milkiness of the tea filled her mouth. Was someone coming? Should she heat the water again? She set her cup down and reached over to the kettle. Click.

Sarah also sits alone in her house. Why do so many sit alone? Is it modern American civilization? In another time and place they would group; the group of grandmothers at the coffee klatsch, a matriarch whose brood is gathered within sight. The act of America is dispersal, the opposite of the melting pot. It is an alchemy designed to extract one from the next, like splitting the atom, tremendous energy released at the

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 3 of fiction by Jennifer Connor separation. Cleaving. Sarah would not characterize herself in this way. Sarah reads with a sense of mystical connectedness. Somehow in spite of being a child in the age of Beaver Cleaver she feels like she shares more with Kerouac. Snyder. Burroughs. Or, earlier still, Issa, other wandering monk-poets. Although she wouldn’t say that exactly either. She would use the word fascination, as in: I have a fascination with Issa.

The phone rang. Sarah started. She hurried to pick up the receiver. “Sarah?” Her mother’s voice sounded strange, disjointed.

“Ma?” “S’rah. Where. Cold.”

“Where are you, Mom?” Sarah asked, panic in her throat. On the other end her mother made mewing sounds, a voice that should not be. “Mom. Listen. You’re going to be okay. I am going to call an ambulance. I am going to come over now.”

“Sarah” she spoke more clearly. “Someone stole all of my shoes.” Sarah’s heart sank and at the same time a fluid clarity ran through her.

“You will be okay. Don’t move. I have to hang up.” Yet she hesitated. Hang up? she was going to hang up? “You’ll be okay. Just stay there. Just stay there and you can say some decades to yourself.” She wasn’t sure what her mother was understanding. She would take the sedan, after she called 911. But first, she had to hang up. “Bye, Mom.” She fit the receiver back in to the wall charger.

Her mother didn’t hang up. The phone was too high up, and from where she lay she just couldn’t reach it. Also she was in a place where there were no phones. Immediately when the sense jolted her like lightning that she was in jeopardy, she had gone deep within, and there she stayed. From that place she had watched her hand reach for the phone and dial Sarah. From that place she saw the door open and strange people walk in, surround her, and then other strange faces who called her mom. They lifted her body onto the stretcher and carried her out through the sitting room, past the television with the photograph on top. Did he wink at her? The panic went on all around her but she was at the center in a bubble of love and calm. She wasn’t even herself anymore, she could tell. Where were her hands? Were they still down there? It seemed that someone held one. She wasn’t sure. She scanned the faces again for the faces of long ago and far away.

Indeed they were long gone but then she thought maybe they were hiding like she was hiding, inside the people, and it was only for her to recognize them. A joke. A wag.

She was the queen and they were taking her off. Queen of the fairies being flown away. She hadn’t thought of the fairies in years. Back behind the cowshed was the best place to trap them, with an old milking pail, or a shell she’d picked up on the beach.

Where had she gone? Imagine that you are in a boat in the waves. At times you sink down in the troughs and the undulating rumpled silk gray surface parachutes up around you. Then it inverts: suddenly the rumpled silk bellies upwards, pushing the craft over the heads of the waves. Then back down again, where the foam eddies and the water looks like stone. Water blows into the boat, jumps the gunwale, wets your clothes. Imagine that you may have been here forever. Imagine that equally so, you have just arrived.

Perhaps you trail a net, and you may have just checked it, or you may have not reeled it in yet. There could be a silver fish at your feet. Now stay there. One moment. Two. A hundred years.

Cate held on to the wooden frame of the currach with two hands. This was her first time out in the boat.

It wasn’t the women who went out, hardly ever. Her father rowed in tandem with the islander.

The nurse wrapped the blanket around the old woman’s shoulders more tightly. It was a hospital blanket, warm but synthetic with a pharmaceutical logo stamped on it in blue. The old woman shook slightly, shivering, her lips blue and her breathing ragged. “We’re trying to keep a handle on the accumulation in her lungs. That’s why you see the tube. She hasn’t been conscious yet.”

Sarah put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Ma, it’s Sarah. Your daughter. You’re at City Hospital.”

“Press the call button if you see any change” the nurse said, and left them.

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Page 4 of fiction by Jennifer Connor Sarah had studied many a set of lungs in the course of her biology degree, some of them laid out on the kitchen table when she ran out of time in the lab. The fetal pig, for example, neatly wrapped and carried home on the subway. On layers of newspaper she had cut with her blade into the gray tissue of the shriveled lung mass, its accordion folds, seemingly fragile and dry. She could picture the healthy pink tissues of the healthy lung, moist, leaching air from moisture. Now her mother’s lungs struggled for they welcomed too much, didn’t know what to keep out. It was a tide, ocean waters breaching the sea-gates to trickle slowly in to the open lungs, salty waters on the rise, an internal deluge. Sarah brushed her mother’s cheek with her hand. The skin was soft as silk, with subtle shades and fine lines criss-crossing. Her hair fine, as well, almost see-through. Her mother was disappearing. And yet she was so present that even in her unconscious state Sarah would not mistake her for being anything other than there. I wonder if she can hear me, Sarah wondered. I wonder if she knows I am here.

My daughter, my daughter, Catherine wanted to say, one part of her, as she drifted, currach, island, open sea, the old sod. She curls her toes deliciously into the soil. My daughter, my daughter, I know you are here.

Let me hold your hand the way you hold mine. Let me tell you I am still here. Let me tell you I am fine, my body heavy, strange, but also my body as a child, light, free, running up the path to my own mother who waits for me to return from my first time away, my mother who was not the touching type, who catches my chin in her hand and then pulls me to her apron. Sarah sits quietly, exhaustedly. A thousand miles away Valencia doesn’t hear the silent call to come home. A thousand miles is too far to hear.

Catherine could feel the film between the world that seemed so real to her and the one that also was unquestionably real. She floated and sank at the same time. Sarah held her hand tightly. She could see the stubble on her father’s face by the firelight. She felt the excitement. Tonight, St. John’s eve. Tomorrow, the midsummer fair. She curled her toes in excitement. And yet, tonight, the constancy of choking. The gurgle of her lungs. The stiffness of her hands.

“Da, we’ve heard it before” Johnny said. “Loads.” He looked at Gerald. “Do you have one from the island?”

“I want to hear King Lyr” Cate said.

“Here is the story of King Lyr” Brendan began, and the story unfolded: the sorrowful king; the lost and beloved children, the mysterious swans.

The told stories would be the oldest if they were not also the newest, sprung from the tellers mouth in new form, gashed, bloodied, bowed, be-rigged. Perhaps the story was put on a diet for generations, or forcefed empty calories. Maybe it was carefully dusted and polished and never lifted down from its high shelf so that when it finally came down the shape left on the wood of the shelf was a sun-print rather than a clearing in the dust. It might be the shape of a roosting pelican, a tangled knotty ball of yarn, or a sleeping cat. It might be all three.

Cate’s eyes saucer, drinking story lines like salt water to the brig of a vessel: seeping in at the seams, sloshing around in the dark, unbidden, remaining until asked to leave. A weight that slows the ship and also keeps it upright. Forgotten, at times. In the saucers reflect the bonfire, lit as it has been lit for ten thousand years to open the midsummer’s door, to step through to the other side of summer, to the wane, the decrease.

In and out the liquid of her lungs rattles in Catherine’s labored breaths that beat their way homewards under Sarah’s watchful eye. Sarah, who will empty her mother’s house, from the furnace room on up to the hidden saints in the attic, Sarah, who will lay china piece by piece into tissue, who will at last climb to the high shelf, who will see the sun-marked absence and wonder: what was there? Not realizing that she herself is now a teller of old tales, She has closeted old tales in new unlikely places, over the wash bin or in the hamper of dirty clothes with which she barricades the washer. Washwoman, watchwoman, we believe in your perfect memory and do not understand how it could be otherwise.

Beings whose form is born out of the land, land whose form is born out of beings. While the farmers scrape and toil the baleen whale slides through the bay disturbing streams of flounder and plaice. A pod of bottlenose dolphins nudge the wake of a fisherman returning from checking his pots. He throws them some stray fish as he sorts through his catch and they dive and play, falling behind the boat. By the shore

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Page 5 of fiction by Jennifer Connor corncrakes skim low. Brill live and die and float and fart and eat or are eaten in turn, galaxies of them, throughout the waters, invisibly populating the sky-mirror. The teeming arm of bay enfolds the land, is enfolded by further land, which in turn is scudded by the stormy Atlantic which beats and tosses ships and peoples onto the shore. Rocks are the outer crust of the place, it’s only defense. The ocean has formed and demanded defenses of the people and land. Geologic exterior like an exoskeleton, soft middle, the way good bread comes out of the oven. Bread is too warm and easily filling, though; a kidney pie might do better, something spongy, absorbing, absorbing people and flora and fauna into its interior. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. Cut it open and let them fly.

How long does the soul hover near? Does it watch a dear daughter as she calls the relatives, bravely not crying, as she tries again to call her daughter and wonders whether to leave a message? Does the soul know of whom her daughter speaks when she says “passed?” Does the soul ever linger longer of its own desire or other’s unspoken wishes? Does Sarah feel its warm and loving presence over her shoulder, out of the corner of her eye, a pressure on her shoulder or elbow like the comfort of a mother?

Does the soul fly free? Is it plastic and rewired? Is it marionetted by attachment? Can you let it go?

Sever the cord? Does it have a music all its own? A theme song? Farewell number? Does it tiptoe out, or jig? Could I recognize you slipping out the door? Could anyone? Did you say goodbye to me or anyone?

Do you remember me? Do you look down on me from a place in heaven? Do you live with the saints? Do you make them laugh?

Sarah replaces the receiver. Everyone has been called. Her own family waiting on the other side of the door. She is the placeholder. She stays. Her mother has gone. Her body lies in the bed. Sarah is the new generation. She feels how time has pulled her this far and will continue to carry her, unrelenting, without grudge. She puts her copy of On The Road into her bag, her article on Gary Snyder, her unwritten letters, her to-do list, gum, tissues. She tidies the table. She exits.

Silence. No breath. No movement. Distant hospital noises, hushed voices in the hall. At this time of the morning the sun has entered early and has already traversed the wall, then the sheets, and now casts one square on the floor like a trapdoor to illumination. No one is there. The sheets cover her form, small, slightly sunken, downy white hair, tissue-soft skin. No one is there.

Heard in the burble of blood. Indistinguishable and powerful locutions in the pump of the systole as infinite cells open and speak to each other and a divine spirit inhabits the breath that pushes and pulls them.

It is heard in the magnetic motions of saltwater and the motion of mist to shore, to sea, to shore, to sea. It is so obvious as to be silent when gone. It is so necessary as to be disastrous when ignored. You can hear it, anytime, at least a glimpse from the corner of an inward listening mind. You can hear it on purpose or not, as in waking, or the moment on a long walk when you both stop paying attention, and start.

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Paul Cumbo #7 Silverback She was a young girl, not more than seven or eight years old, and she had just taken the tiniest nibble from a chocolate bar when she stopped chewing and stared directly into the eyes of the four-hundred-pound silverback. Intent on unwrapping the candy bar, she’d been only half focused on the gorilla behind the thick glass, barely noticing as he’d loped nearer to her with a few surprisingly graceful lunges from his perch on the boulder a few yards away.

Now his face was less than three inches from the glass, and she could see the exhibit’s lights reflected in the dark orbs of his eyes. His brow was furrowed and he seemed to be deep in thought. Startled, the girl drew in a sharp breath, nearly inhaling the bit of chocolate, and took an involuntary step back. When she did, the gorilla raised his eyebrows—she’d never realized that gorillas had eyebrows—and absently scratched the side of his head with a long, pointed, leathery finger.

The girl looked quickly around, her eyes darting to either side and behind her. She was surprised to discover that she was alone in the exhibit. Where had her brother gone? It was a cool, overcast day, one of the last days of summer, and the throngs of visitors had gradually tapered off since mid-July. But her brother, who up until just a few minutes ago had been at her side, was nowhere to be seen. She could hear voices outside—a mother calling her children, a couple of kids shouting, some music from the carousel nearby. An elephant made a loud noise, and people cheered. No doubt her own mother wasn’t far. She and her brother were supposed to be back at the carousel when the big hand was on the twelve. And when she’d taken the candy bar a little while ago—when her brother had dared her to steal the candy bar, that is—the big hand was already almost there. She’d only been allowed to wander the zoo if she promised to hold her brother’s hand the whole time, and it was only for a half hour while her mother gave the baby his bottle under the shade trees near the sea lion pool.

Well, her brother was ten, and full of trouble. As a matter of fact, he was nothing but trouble, and he was always getting her involved in his trouble, like the time when he’d forgotten to close the basement door and blamed it on her. Now it’s true that she had been playing in the basement as well (that’s where they kept the dollhouse her father had built for her) but she’d come upstairs for a glass of milk, and she’d closed the door behind her. It was her brother who’d forgotten when he came up later, but their father had yelled at both of them. The baby would tumble right down those stairs and break his neck, he’d told them. Is that what they wanted? They’d both been sent to their rooms with no dessert even though it was Friday, and they almost never had dessert, only on Fridays. And it was vanilla ice cream with peaches, which was just about her favorite dessert in the whole world.

Her big brother was nothing but trouble.

She turned her attention back to the glass. The massive gorilla was still sitting there on his haunches. His eyes shifted ever so slightly, and she followed them a few degrees to discover the focus of his gaze. He was looking, quite intently, at the chocolate bar in her hands, which she still held near her chin.

She’d taken only a small bite, and a half-moon was missing from the corner, little tooth-marks along the edges. The silver foil still covered most of it, though she’d torn off the brown paper label and stuffed it in her pocket. She could make out the little square segments through the foil. She ran her tongue across the edge of her top front teeth, still tasting the slightest bit of sweetness.

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Page 2 of fiction by Paul Cumbo She was plenty old enough to recognize guilt when it crept over her. It usually came with a coppery taste, like old pennies in her mouth, and a funny twisting feeling like when you go down a rollercoaster. She’d felt it when she broke the music box last year, even though it was an accident. That time, her brother had nothing to do with it. It was all her fault. She wasn’t supposed to play with that music box. She’d been told at least a hundred times. It was a gift from her father to her mother from before they were married, and he’d carried it all the way home from Paris or someplace far away like that. Now it was broken because she’d turned the key too many times. It still played its song, but it always skipped the first two notes, which made it sound funny. She remembered the moment when she’d realized it was broken and that it was her fault. That coppery penny taste was terrible at first. She’d panicked, frozen and not knowing what to do. It got a little better after she’d told her mother what happened through tearful sobs, but it was pretty awful for a while.

And now, as the huge animal looked from the chocolate bar, to her, and back to the chocolate bar, there was no more sweetness in her mouth. It was all pennies. The gorilla squinted slightly with one of his eyes and tilted his head to the side.

The girl looked down at the bar. It was beginning to feel soft in her hand. Outside, she heard a group of children shouting as they ran past. She looked back at him. He crumpled his mouth into a sort of grimace and took a deep breath that caused his chest to rise and fall. It was then that the coppery taste became too much, and the girl thought of her mother and the baby and the basement door and the music box and the chocolate bar and the nice old man who worked at the concession stand and how she’d slipped the bar into her pocket while the man was busy, and she began to cry. It wasn’t the heavy, breathless, uncontrollable sort of crying like when you fell down off your bike or when you broke your mother’s music box. It was more a slow welling up of tears, like when you’re filling up the watering can in the sink and you forget to turn off the water and it overflows.

Suddenly, the dim room became bright as the heavy door swung open and in stepped her older brother.

The gorilla stood up and looked past her. She turned. Her brother stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright sunshine. He had his mouth open the way he did when he was about to say something. Usually something bossy. He started to say something about the big hand being near the twelve.

But he didn’t have the chance, because his sister rushed past him through the door, dropping a half-eaten candy bar at his feet. He looked down at the crumpled, half-melted bar with the corner missing, then up at the massive gorilla behind the glass. The black eyes gazed at him. He narrowed his own eyes, skeptical, and stared back, unfazed. The gorilla was behind the thick, unbreakable glass—and he was not. After a moment, the gorilla ambled back to his boulder. The boy picked up the abandoned chocolate bar, brushed it off on his jeans, and turned to walk outside as he took a bite.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Trudy Cusella #8

Kiss me and you will see how important I am.

Sylvia Plath Slippery Blisses

Lenny Bruce considered his drug addiction tantamount to “kissing God”; Chico Marx called a kiss, “a whisper in her mouth”; Keats defined kisses as “slippery blisses”; Rupert Brooke likened his bed blankets to "a rough male kiss"; Tony Curtis kissed Marilyn Monroe and reported it was “like kissing Hitler”; and to prove their loyalty, Lyndon Johnson invited colleagues to "kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.”

“Let’s get started. It’s time for my thousand kisses.”

My brother emerged from the bedroom, opened his arms and shouted the command in his best army major baritone. His three children sat around my kitchen table like early spring blooms in the family garden.

My brother, his wife and children had traveled across the country to visit me and live in my home for ten days. Every morning, the children rose early, followed faithfully by their mother who labored over Frosted Flakes and Pop Tarts, the bathtub and tooth brushes, flashing neon sneakers and Osh-Gosh jeans. Sometime, in mid-morning, my brother joined us.

“You heard me,” he said. “A thousand kisses today.”

“Oh Daddy,” the six year old said. She tossed her head of auburn locks and curled her lower lip, her disgust at his silliness apparent.

“We’ll never get our thousand kisses in if we don’t start right now,” he replied.

Reluctantly, she offered a cheek and he blew raspberries on that porcelain skin, followed by rapid-fire kisses that seemed to add up in the hundreds. She pulled away indignant but with a gleam in her dazzling blue eyes. Next, the four year old, a shy, dark-haired, black-eyed boy ambled up to his father. My brother lowered his tall frame down on one knee and offered the other knee for his son to climb on. The child planted a half-dozen kisses on his father’s cheek.

“Where are we going today, Daddy? What are we going to see?” he asked My brother responded with a bear hug and a long kiss on his cherry-pink cheek, a kiss that took the time of a hundred quick kisses.

Then, he stood up, his presence filling the room.

“Where’s my Lilies?” he bellowed as if she weren’t in plain sight.

Coyly, she looked up—her dark, heavily lashed olive eyes, a stark contrast to her baby baldhead. Her father plucked her out of the high chair and whirled her around the room and when she giggled, he nuzzled her neck and began the countdown to her thousand kisses.

My sister-in-law never looked up from the table where she clanged the cutlery cutting up her son’s pancakes. My brother placed his daughter back in her high chair and sat down to eat his breakfast.

Uncle Aidan stands up at the family's Thanksgiving dinner table. He raises his whiskey glass and sings the old drinking toast in a bad imitation of an Irish brogue: Here’s to the smoke that curls in the air Here’s to the dog at my feet; Here’s to the girls who have gone before, Gad! but their kisses were sweet!

“If I ever marry again, she will be a good kisser,” he says as he drains his glass, "the right kiss gets things started the right way. Nothing like a woman who knows how to kiss her man.”

“Yes, sir,” Uncle Aidan says as he reaches behind him for the bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the oak sideboard, “my next wife is going to kiss like Maureen O’Hara, Marilyn Monroe and Katherine Hepburn all in one.”

Family members laugh and my father tells Uncle Aidan to sit down and ease up on the hooch. Aunt Fiona sits across the table, elegantly set with her Donegal Irish Rose china. She cups her mouth to speak into my eleven year old ear.

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Page 2 of fiction by Trudy Cusella “Tis the Judas kiss he offers me every time,” she whispers in her real Irish brogue. Her solemn blue eyes blink back tears.

My cousin, Junior, knew with certainty that if he could just learn to spin the bottle the right way, to exercise total control over its speed, know fully how it would twirl on every surface—the vagaries of each surface—he knew he would get to kiss the girl of his dreams. He lusted after a long, languorous, lewd and, in his case, lucky locking of luscious lips with Lucy LaBelle.

He went to the corner store, bought a bottle of Coca Cola, drained the green tinted glass bottle, took it to St. Ambrose Church, rinsed it in the big marble font of holy water and began his mission. He practiced every day after school and on Saturday, a two-finger spin, a flick of the wrist spin, a full hand spin, a hand and wrist spin. He practiced on freshly mowed grass in the backyard, the cement floor in the basement, the gravely lots at the end of the street, under the weeping willow in the LaBelle’s side yard and on the wooden floor of Jimmy Healy’s make-shift cabin.

Finally, one crisp fall evening, after weeks of practice, he knew he was ready. He stole a dab of Uncle Aidan’s Brill Cream and slicked his hair back into a duck’s tail. He folded a pack of Lucky Strikes into the sleeve of his white T-shirt and looked in the mirror one last time. He joined his friends in the empty lot at the end of Harding Road. Junior knelt down in the middle of the girl’s circle, one knee in the dirt. He produced the bottle from the pocket of his black faux leather jacket. He placed the bottle carefully on its side. He brushed away any pebbles that might send it spinning out of control. He gauged his spin. He used the twofinger spin. He watched the bottle spin, once, twice, three times. Perfect. Just the way he had planned. But w hen he looked up, the bottle wasn’t pointing at Lucy. He could have sworn Lucy stood in front of the thistle bush, where the precisely spun bottle pointed. So intent was Junior on spinning the bottle that he hadn’t noticed when Lucy and Lucy’s best friend, Cathleen, switched places. Junior stood up. He delivered a careless brush across Cathleen's lips, more pout than kiss.

Each time he kissed Cathleen—the fiery kisses, the boring kisses, the reluctant kisses, the obligatory kisses, the harsh, bruising kisses—Junior wondered what would have happened if he had mastered that spin, if he had practiced a little longer, if he had been good enough to kiss Lucy LaBelle. Through high school, thirty odd years of marriage, the conception and birth of five healthy children, right up to the crisp fall day when he lay on his deathbed and his wife, Cathleen, pressed her lips to his in a final kiss, Junior wondered.

My sister blamed it on the first kiss. It was the deliciousness of that first kiss. She had tasted forbidden before but not like that.

She claimed to be a daughter raised without a father’s love. The old man favored me. I was older, bigger, played the princess and always got my way. The household chants never addressed her—Daddy’s darling girl, Daddy’s pet, Daddy’s favorite.

The first kiss tasted like vodka and reefer and it lasted a very long time. She kissed my husband and kissed away twenty-four years of being the forgotten one. It was a sweet kiss, a fun kiss, a rewarding kiss.

She had earned that kiss. I was the problem. It was my fault. I was selfish and greedy. I thought I should have him all to myself.

Six-year old Lucy, stood behind the cherry wood dressing table and peered over her mother's shoulder.

Lucy’s chocolate brown eyes and honey blonde hair sparkled in the make-up lights surrounding the blue glass rimmed mirror. Her mother sat on the coordinating cerulean satin bench cover. She studied her image in the mirror. In preparation for an evening out, she smoothed creamy red lipstick over her lips. She went beyond the contours, over the boundaries of her thin lips so her mouth formed a red heart. Lucy asked her mother the color of the lipstick. Her mother turned the golden tube upside down.

“Naughty Red,” she answered reading the label and laughing. “Why it’s naughty, just like you.” She blotted her lips and left a Naughty Red kiss on the white Kleenex.

After her mother left for the evening, Lucy’s father, Jake LaBelle, sat her down at the dressing table and drew the same red heart on her mouth.

“See,” he said, “now you’re my pretty, kissable, naughty little girl.”

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Page 3 of fiction by Trudy Cusella He trailed his thumb over Lucy’s lips and put his other hand down his pants. The next time he painted Lucy’s lips, he pulled his pants down. He told Lucy to kiss a heart with her mouth on his balls. Lucy left heart-shaped, Naughty Red kisses on his hairy balls.

Jake suffered a stroke, lost his speech and the use of the right side of his body. He was transferred from a hospital to a nursing home. After her mother died, Lucy had found a half-used tube of Naughty Red lipstick in the cherry wood dressing table drawer. Lucy shaved the side of her head down to stubble. She opened the golden tube. She painted a puckered, heart-shaped Naughty Red kiss into the stubble of her shaved head.

Lucy visited Jake at the nursing home. She sat in profile next to his bed.

My friend, Richard, a gay man, greets me on the street with an affectionate kiss on the cheek. We arrive at the restaurant the same moment as the other couple joining us. Richard shakes the hand of the young woman, takes the hand of the young man and moves forward to kiss him on the lips. The wife smiles a weak smile. I don’t know the couple well; I only know the story Richard told me. They invited Richard for dinner and while she cooked gourmet in the kitchen, her husband and Richard drank wine in the living room.

“One thing led to another,” Richard said “and then we were kissing.”

Richard told me many such kissing stories and all the stories involved married, straight, bi-sexual or otherwise unavailable men.

When Richard’s parents travel across country for a visit, he asks me to meet them for dinner. At the restaurant, Richard takes my hand and moves forward to kiss me on the lips. His parents hug me warmly, expectantly. His mother glances at my left hand, finds it ring-less and immediately launches a polite inquiry into my personal statistics.

In the middle of dinner, a young man greets another man sitting at the table next to ours. They lock eyes, reach for each other and share a kiss on the mouth. Richard’s mother wrenches her gaze away from them.

She closes her eyes and bends her head. Her steel gray shoulder-length hair falls around her face.

She begins in a soft voice, “If a man lie with mankind, as he lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.”

Richard’s father takes her hand and bows his head, “They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them,” he continues.

My friend's watery eyes glance across the table at me. He fidgets in his chair and shrugs his narrow shoulders. A crimson mask creeps from his ears around to his cheekbones.

“Abortion is a mother’s kiss of death," the red-headed parish priest repeated—righteous and proud. I blessed myself and said a prayer for all those sinful mothers kissing away their dead babies. This was back in the early days before I understood what the parish priest was talking about.

When mercifully, I was able to forget the abortion—my body remembered. My body held my sin within its deepest recesses. The pre-menstrual cramps and swelling were always worse and the bleeding heavier in February and March. My breasts ached; my mood a certain misery.

In the dream, a boy with The Eyes of Laura Mars who would have been six years old on March 21st appeared to me. How did I know my child was a boy? How could I identify a child with supernatural eyes as my own? I just knew. He was mine.

I sat on a stool, in the middle of a small square room lit by extra-long tubes of fluorescent lighting and hemmed in by walls and ceilings painted white and scrubbed to a glossy finish. The sun beamed through a tiny window and its glare on the white walls hurt my eyes. A red headed doctor, dressed in scrubs, leaned on a gurney stationed next to a thick metal door. The boy, his emerald eyes ablaze entered the room through the door, walked to where I was sitting and paused in front of me. He leaned toward me and inhaled, as if to identify me by scent.

The doctor said, “He finds himself in your shouts of anguish in the night, in your sudden despair in the month of March, in the tentative spring kisses you give your chosen children."

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Page 4 of fiction by Trudy Cusella The boy took my face in his hands and kissed my cheek. He lingered and I felt the softness of his skin against my skin. The redheaded doctor nodded at the boy and wheeled the empty gurney out of the room.

The boy followed him. The metal door clanged shut. I placed a hand on my face where he kissed me and wept.

Kisses I remember best: My Uncle Pruge on his way into surgery at the Veteran’s Hospital, pointed to his cheek and said, “plant a lucky smooch right here, baby girl”; old Mrs. Talty’s German Shepherd, Boo, slurped her cheek with big sloppy kisses after she fell down the porch steps; at my wedding reception, my mother and father danced to Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon and topped off their dance with a dip and a kiss; my grateful lips crowned my son's wet, sticky, forceps-bruised head; a kiss to my father’s forehead, cold and rigid, lying in his casket; a quick peck on my sister’s cheek after three decades of estrangement.

Aunt Fiona dusts her Hummel collection, the soft cloth caressing each ceramic figurine. The chamber music string quartet always captures her imagination. She envisions the flutist, the cellist, the violinist and the clarinetist accompanying her as she sings the verse of her favorite song from her favorite movie, Casablanca.

You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh; The fundamental things apply, As time goes by.

Aunt Fiona sings her song through a sterile, white paper mask. After her son, Junior, died, Aunt Fiona’s cancer returned. Her oncologist told her she had to wear the mask for the duration of her chemotherapy treatments. The mask shields her from the threat of airborne infections and dutiful kisses. The mask protects her mouth and nose, cups her chin, and settles in under her eyes, highlighting their luminescent blue clarity.

With the mask to shield her, Aunt Fiona is learning to say no.

Aunt Fiona says no through the mask, in and out of bed, whether Uncle Aidan is drunk or sober, whenever the word ‘no’ pleases her. Her lips pucker when she winces with pain, whistles her favorite song, or purses her lips to say no. Her lips pucker under the mask for her alone.

If you are a single woman of a certain age who doesn’t get kissed often and you lack confidence when you are kissed, you know it. You’ve waited a very long time to kiss this man. You’ve waited your turn, through his rancorous divorce, his rebound relationship, and the endless of hours of reeducating him from being his friend to seeing you as a woman. You’ve learned to ignore his bad habits—the one drink too many at every outing, the trifling remark that hurts your feelings, his lack of initiative concerning relationships.

You forge ahead and plan well for this kiss. You wait for the perfect date, when kissing is inevitable— New Year’s Eve perhaps, when everyone kisses and gets kissed. You dress well, better than well: an emerald, taffeta skirt and clingy velvet top, a tourmaline bracelet circling your wrist, your hair the perfect salon blend of black and silver. You are gorgeous or you look like you did at your senior prom. You are not sure which but when you enter the room, you note a slight startle in his otherwise precise composure and you construe it to mean that he is impressed. You are ready for the first kiss, the low risk kiss, the second half of your life is just beginning kiss.

At midnight, he stands tall, tuxedoed, handsome and mute beside you. You reach up and angle an arm around his neck. You say, “Happy New Year” and you kiss him on the mouth. His frame, like a life-size cardboard cutout, leans back with your weight. His lips remain a hard, straight line.

Later, you think about Lauren Bacall in the movie, To Have and To Have Not. She sits on Humphrey Bogart’s lap, kisses him once, sits back, looks him over, moves in and kisses him again. Then she says, “It’s even better, when you help.”

Asian Flu symptoms disturb the sleep of my children. After the divorce, I purchased the king-size bed for just such occasions. Like big, warm, soft pillows, a feverish child lies on either side of me. They sleep soundly after ministrations of aspirin, cold compresses and murmured reassurances. I bury my nose in my daughter’s fine straight, charcoal brown hair and kiss her damp scalp. I turn and push aside a blonde ringlet from my son’s neck and kiss the tiny mole under his ear. My arms reach for the heavens in a gesture of thanks. I revel in the midst of a thousand kisses, kisses I trust, kisses that never disappoint, bliss that doesn’t slip away.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Alexis David #9 Wonder Like a Warm Bath That Surrounds You My mom is a peacock and I am her youngest child. My mom is wearing a red dress and flaming red lipstick. My mom has bright blue eyes that are glowing. My mom is laughing so hard that I can see the tendons of her neck scrunched together. She is wearing feathers in her hair. She has silver make up on underneath her eyes. My mom lives in an imaginary world where ideas float around like the suds that surround us now. I wonder if these bubbles will pop. I wonder if my mom will come down from this dream cloud she is on.

I wonder. I wonder. I wonder.

Wondrus the dog is covered in suds. We are washing him inside. He is in the bathtub. I am five years old. I won first place in last year's Halloween contest competition. I dressed up as a squid. I put jelly in my hair so I looked slimy. I got rave reviews at school. I told people I had thought of it completely myself, but actually, my brother, Linden and I were talking one day and he said he was going to be an octopus, so then I thought of it. I don't tell other kids this. I do not tell other kids this. I tell them, "This is my costume that I thought of completely myself." I wonder if this is lying. I think it isn't lying. Lying is more like saying, "I didn't steal that banana," when in fact, you did steal the banana.

My mother is still laughing and she can't stop. The feathers in her hair are coming out. They are floating down onto the floor.

"Mommy? Are you okay?"

She keeps washing Wondrus—washing him and washing him. The bathroom is full of suds. It smells like coconut. Wondrus looks very confused. He is a bit scared because my mom keeps tugging at his ears. I am a bit scared because the look on her face is getting weirder and weirder. Her laughing is so loud that it is flooding the house. Her red dress is full of suds. She takes the suds and puts them on my hair and then she pours water over me. I am completely wet. There is water on the floor. My dad would clean this up in two seconds.

"Mommy!"

"What? You look like an aquatic creature!" She is whooping with laughter.

"Have you been drinking alcohol?"

"No! I can't drink alcohol, honey."

Now, I am completely wet.

"I don't really want to take a bath."

"Oh okay," she is calming down a little bit. "You don't have to take a bath. I was just thinking how fun this is. Isn't this so fun?"

Then, my mom gets out the hairdryer and she starts blowing me dry and my hair is flying all over the place and I do have to admit that this part is kind of fun. I am having a good time. I am having a really good time.

This is like a vacation from my real mom and all of our real things that we do. Tonight we ordered three pizzas and three boxes of chicken wings. They are downstairs on the table still. When the pizza man came to the door, my mom told me to put on my best dress because he might be royalty. She said, "Sometimes royalty dress in fake costumes so they blend in with normal people." I didn't know what to do, so I put on a yellow dress I wore to my cousin's wedding. I couldn't tell if my mom was joking or just being strange.

Maybe our whole family was going to be selected to be royalty too; I didn't want to look weird. I even brushed my hair really quickly. When he came to the door though, he was a teenager who seemed sort of bored. The pizza smelled delicious though.

My mom keeps drying my hair and Linden comes out of his bedroom. He is wearing pajamas, "What are you guys doing?" I can tell by the way he is looking at us that he half wants to join us and half wants us to go to sleep. It's late at night. My normal bedtime is eight o'clock.

"Let's make popcorn!" my mom says.

"I want dry clothes," I say.

"Oh. Yes."

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Page 2 of fiction by Alexis David "Mommy, we should all sleep," Linden says.

"I haven't slept in three nights and I think I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much," she says.

"When does Daddy get home?" Linden asks as he starts to use the toilet.

"In two days."

"Should I call Granny?" he says. Linden is eight years old but he has his own calendar where he keeps appointments. He picks out his own clothes in the morning and has decided that he is vegan.

I look up at my Mom, "Wait, why would we call Granny? What would she do?"

"I don't know." My mom thinks about this for a minute, "I think we should go for a walk outside."

"I'm calling Granny right now. Mom, you need to take your special medicine." Linden says and goes downstairs to get my mom's cell phone.

"What's Granny going to do?" I look up at my mom and I see that her eyes aren't quite focusing correctly. I see that she's kind of dreaming. She says, "I should take that medicine."

I hug her and she hugs me back, but I can feel beneath her shirt that she's thinking of something else.

She's slowly drifting away.

At school, there is yellow paint on the walls and we are told to stay in lines.

"Can I be the line leader?" I ask; my glasses fall down on my nose a little bit. I need to wear them because of my lazy eye. I once wrote a poem about my lazy eye. I think my class really like it—especially Brendan Murphy. He has a lisp.

"Not today, Miss Nora. We selected Miss Latisha this morning, remember?"

"Oh yeah," I say. I look at my shoes. They need to be tied up but I can't risk getting out of line and getting in trouble. I have to just keep walking: very carefully.

Mrs. Brompton said we're going to a place called "special." This sounds fantastic. A teacher is standing at the door, but she doesn't look like a teacher. She has long brown hair in a long braid and lots of rings on her fingers. There is strange music coming from her room. She is wearing checkered shoes and blue corduroys that are rolled up. I can see her ankles. She has a tattoo that is a photograph of a family. They are wearing the same kind of clothes the people in that restaurant, "El Dorado" wear. Her room is full of birds hanging from the ceiling. They are made out of newspapers. When my class walks in, they flutter.

"Sit! Sit! Sit wherever you'd like!" Her voice goes up and down, up and down. It is like a song. She has an accent. She is from some place else. I want to know where. I sit right in the front, so that I can take a good look at this Ms. Velaz. She isn't wearing any makeup, but her eyes are very clear green.

All of a sudden, the lights and music go off and there is the hum of a projector in the art room. Ms. Velaz has pulls down a huge screen; a painting of a woman and a child appears on it. The woman is washing the little girl's feet. There is a pitcher and basin of water.

The class laughs because the little girl isn't wearing a shirt, but the girl is the same age as me, and we look the same as boys. I don't know why everyone is making such a big deal about it. Ms. Velaz says, "La Toilette by Mary Cassatt."

And everyone is quiet. Then she waits a moment before saying the next word, which is a sentence, "I want you to look at this painting and I want you to describe it to yourself in your head."

Jack starts talking out loud. He says, "bath time" and Ms. Velaz has to tell him to think quietly.

I think, A mommy washing feet.

I don't remember if when I was really little, like a little baby, if my mom washed my feet. I wonder how my mom acted when I was a little baby. It's like I didn't even know her then. There is so much I don't know about my mom. Worlds of information I don't know about her. For instance, I only found out like a year ago that my mom's name is Donna and she asked my dad to marry her. This is when they used to live in a different city. They met on an airplane and when my mom asked my dad to marry her, she asked him on an airplane going to San Diego for a vacation.

"Nora, what does this painting make you think of?"

I grab the desk. I'm not used to teachers just calling on their students. I look up at Ms. Velaz and I see she has a crooked smile. Her teeth are kind of lopsided. She doesn't look like anyone I know.

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Page 3 of fiction by Alexis David "It makes me think of my mom," I say.

I hope that Ms. Velaz doesn't ask me anymore because I feel a little bit of a tear coming up and when I look up, I see Ms. Velaz looking at me and she catches my eye and she smiles and she asks the rest of the class what they think.

Other kids say things about taking baths and how they hate taking baths but I don't mind taking baths and this painting makes me want to take a bath and it makes me want my mom to wash my feet.

We stay on this slide for a while, but then it changes to another painting and Ms. Velaz tells us we are going to begin painting. We will first be coming up with ideas of things we want to paint and I immediately know I want to paint Wondrus. I want to paint him when he is on my bed at night and protecting me from all my dark dreams. When my mom is my real mom, she tells me that Wondrus knows what I'm thinking at night and growls at all the dark thoughts and bites them and eats them up.

Now, Ms. Velaz tells us it's time to go back to Mrs. Brompton. She says, "Okay class. You are the next painters of the world! You are the future. Enjoy the rest of your day!" Mrs. Brompton is there and she has sailboats on her sweater and she smells like fake vanilla perfume. She takes Latisha's hand and we are out the door.

When we are back in the classroom and we are sitting in a circle on the blue rug, there is a phone call.

Mrs. Brompton goes to answer it and tells us to be quiet. She nods and nods, saying "Yes. Okay.

Absolutely," and she looks at me.

Brendan Murphy means to say, "You're the chosen one," but instead it sounds like, "You're the chothen one." I smile at him and wonder if he's going to ask me for my autograph because I wrote that hit poem.

"Nora. They need you down in the office. Ms. Cynthia will you walk her down?"

Ms. Cynthia is the eighty-three year old grandmother that helps out in our room. She always wears pins with roses on them. It takes her a while to get up out of the tiny seat that she is sitting it, but then she says, "Okay Dora. Let's go."

"Nora."

She smiles at me, "Let's go" and holds out her hand. It is very wrinkled when I hold it and I can see her veins. She has pretty purple nail polish on her fingers. We walk down the hall and Ms Cynthia hums a song under her breath. When we get to the office, she tells the main woman and drops me off.

The main woman is in the middle of eating a powder donut, "Oh sorry. Excuse me!" She chews for a little while and I stand there wondering what she is going to tell me. I wonder if I'm in trouble. I see the principal is in her office with someone who is wearing a suit.

"Okay, Nora Burns, right?"

"Yes." "Your grandma is coming to pick you up."

"Oh." "There is a small family emergency."

I know right away it's my mom, but I don't say anything. Instead I say, "Oh. It's probably our dog. He's been sick. We think he has Typhoo fever" The woman looks at me a little suspiciously, but she says, "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's okay."

"Did you bring your backpack with you?"

"No." "You'll need to go to your cubby and get that."

"Oh okay."

"Do you need someone to walk you there?"

"No. It's fine. I know exactly where it is."

The woman eyes her donut again. She licks her fingers, which are covered in powder, "Okay. Perfect."

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Page 4 of fiction by Alexis David I leave the office and walk down the hall. I smell something coming from the room to my right. I walk up to the door and I peer in the window. I look inside and I see a woman sitting at a table. I see her ankle.

It's Ms. Velaz! She is reading a book. She looks so calm. The room has real curtains and there is a couch.

There is a wall with all these photographs and quotes. I crack open the door and the food smells so good. I wonder if I can go in. I never open doors in my school. The teachers always have keys and they always have the doors open. I really want to open this door.

I turn the handle and push the door open. Spanish music floods my ears.

“Nora!” Ms. Velaz looks up. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. I just smelled something good.” I back up out by the door.

“It’s okay. You can come in. Why are you not in class?”

“My grandma's picking me up. My mom is really sick.” I put my hand up to my mouth. Oh no. I hadn't meant to say this. I revealed what I wasn't supposed to reveal. What will my dad think? What will my mom think when or if she becomes normal again?

Ms. Velaz motions for me to come over. She pushes out a chair, “I’m sorry to hear that."

She looks at me very quizzically, "My mom got very sick when I was growing up. She had to have her leg amputated."

“Really?" I come closer to her. "Mine is a sickness that runs in our family. I’ll probably get it too.” I try to show that it's not a big deal, that it only requires Mommy to spend nights in the hospital with all those other people who are wearing slippers and comfy clothes at four p.m. eating pudding and little bags of cookies.

“Oh.” Ms. Velaz stirs her food. It is peppers over rice.

“That looks really good. I’ve only been eating take-out food.”

“Would you like a bite?” Ms. Velaz gets up to grab a fork from the drawer."

“Sure.”

"Are you allergic to anything?"

"Um. I think I'm allergic to alcohol."

"Really? How do you know that?"

"Because I'm not supposed to drink it."

"Oh. Well you can have a little bit, but don't tell anyone!"

In my mouth, the food tastes like a trip to Mexico. It is flavored with cinnamon and paprika. It is warm and has a sauce over it. “I probably shouldn’t give you any of my lunch. We aren’t supposed to share food with students."

I smile. I am the chosen one! I see that Ms. Velaz has a book next to her, "What does that book say?"

"A Gift of Love: A Parent's Guide to Adoption."

"Who are you going to adopt?" I stick my fork into the rice and peppers and chew very politely. I hope not Latisha. She already got picked today for line leader. I cross my legs. I smile. I bet Ms. Velaz knows how to salsa dance. She could teach me and we could look at paintings in books at night. I bet she would wash my feet and tickle my toes.

"I don't know yet. Perhaps someone who is a refugee."

"Oh. I think my dad's half of my family is refugee. My mom's half is Swedish."

Ms. Velaz looks at me quizzically, "Refugees are people who are displaced. They usually don't have very much money and need help. Sometimes they are from war torn countries."

"Oh." Tomorrow I will dress in my worst clothes and I won't comb my hair.

Then, the principal walks in. I quickly hide my fork underneath my legs. Ms. Velaz gives me a little grin. She slides her Tupperware back over to her side of the table.

"Good afternoon, Tina."

"Good afternoon, Principal Powell."

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Page 5 of fiction by Alexis David "Hi, Nora?"

"Hi." I squeak. "I was just getting my homework assignment from Ms. Velaz."

"Oh?" The principal smiles, "Lots of homework in first grade art?"

I don't say anything.

"More than you even know," Ms. Velaz says and continues to eat her peppers.

The principal smiles and then leaves.

We both start laughing after she is gone.

"I almost dropped my fork!" I say as I take my fork out from under my leg.

Ms. Velaz laughs, "Yes. That was a close call."

"I bet refugees would have dropped their forks."

Ms. Velaz pauses and then smiles, "You should go back to your class pretty soon, Nora." She touches my hand, "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," I look at her clear green eyes. "Could your mom still walk?"

"She could walk with a crutch." Ms. Velaz thinks for a minute, "She hated the crutch but then I painted it. I painted it in really bright colors—reds and yellows. It looked like a Mexican sunset."

She pauses and takes a bite and then speaks again, looking at my right in my eyes, "Nora, do you like being a kid?"

I smile and then say, "It's weird. Sometimes I get to be a kid and sometimes I don't. I think I'd like my life more if I could always be the kid. You know, like always eat Spaghetti and get taken care of all the time."

Ms. Velaz nods, "You are incredibly smart."

"Thanks." I take this opportunity, "If you need someone to adopt . . ." I let my words trail off.

Ms. Velaz nods in understanding, "Got it."

There is a pause and we eat the rest of the meal together. I wonder if this is my new life. I will probably be a celebrity at my school.

"Thanks for the snack." I push in my chair and hand her back my fork. I leave with the spicy taste of peppers on my lips.

In the hospital, there are many other patients around. One man touched my hair and said I looked like an angel. Linden told me to keep walking.

We find my mom's room and she is sleeping. She wakes up and is groggy. She puts her feet into the slippers the hospital has given her. I can see that all of her make up has been washed off. Her hair is messy.

The nurse has a big smile on her face and says, "Here you go Mrs. Donna." She winks at me, "We're going to get your mom all taken care of here. She's going to feel so much better."

My mom smiles weakly and takes the pill the nurse hands to her. She drinks some water and then shows the nurse her tongue.

"Alrighty-almighty! I'll be back in four hours to find you," the nurse says as she leaves.

I smile at my mom and she motions for me to come over to me, "I'm sorry, my little Nora." She breathes into my hair, "I'm going to get better." Then she stops and looks at me, "Has any royalty come yet?"

I don't know what to say, so I just shake my head, "No." "Oh," she says and she seems disappointed.

Linden reaches out and takes his hand in mind. He squeezes it twice. I squeeze back once.

We leave the hospital and we go to my grandmother's house. It is warm inside and she makes tea for Linden and me. Then we eat mashed potatoes and gravy and fried salmon patties. Linden changes into his Superman pajamas and sits in my grandmother's living room.

I walk upstairs and look at all the pictures on the wall. My grandmother comes up from behind me. She is washing her hands with a dishtowel and smells like dish soap. I see that she still has a few suds on her hands.

She points to a picture in a frame, "This is a drawing of you when you were little."

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Page 6 of fiction by Alexis David I look at the drawing and I see that it is of me, only a much younger me.

"Your mom drew that." My grandmother takes the picture off from the wall and wipes the dust of off it.

"Granny," I say, "it's kind of weird that I can't tell people about mom."

My grandmother nods.

"Can I take a bath at your house?"

"A bath?"

"Yeah."

"Sure, dear. Let me run the water for you."

My grandmother gives me her floral robe to wear and she makes me a bath that smells like lavender.

On the side of her bathtub are all these soap bottles and they have the price stickers on them. Some of them are eight dollars each!

When I put my feet into the bath, my whole body gets warm from the steam. My grandmother sits next to me, reading her book called Daylilies for Mildred.

In the steam of the tub, I feel like I am an aquatic creature, just like my mom said. I wonder what she is doing now—all the way across the city in that hospital. I wonder if she is drawing or sleeping. I wonder which world she is in: the real one or the imaginary one.

"Granny?"

"Uh-huh?" She looks up from her book.

"I think my teacher wants to adopt me."

My grandmother closes her book. I can hear Linden watching TV in the other room. I can hear my grandmother gently chewing mint gum as she sits there for a moment. "Do you want to be adopted, Nora?"

"I don't know." Then, I sink down underneath the water and let it go all the way over me and I open my eyes. I see my grandmother looking down at me. I smile and stay there for a moment looking at her blurry face. The water feels warm and good around my body and in my hair. I pop out of the water and smile. My grandmother smiles back and says, "The water is getting cold. Come on out and get snuggly for bed, my little Nora."

I get out and go into the towel that my grandmother is holding. I wonder what it's like at Ms. Velaz's house right now. There are probably paintings all around the rooms. I bet she has little treats out on the counters. I bet she would tuck me into a big bed with a big comforter, like the kind they have in hotels. I bet she would give me hot chocolate with whipped cream. I bet the whipped topping would get on my nose. I wonder if I should pack my clothes in my schoolbag tomorrow. I wonder if I should ask to go home with her.

The next day I wake up at five o'clock in the morning and put all my clothes into a bag. Then, I pull my grandmother's floral robe on and it drags behind me on the stairs. I walk by all the paintings of my family. I see black and white photos of my great, great grandmother. I see pictures of my mom when she was a little girl. I see pictures of her dog, Bea. I find my grandmother sitting at her kitchen table. She is eating oatmeal and reading the newspaper. It is very drafty in the room. "I don't think I can go to school today," I say. I feel like I am about to cry.

"Oh! Nora!" My grandmother is startled that I am there. "You're up early."

"I can't sleep. I think I have either the measles or maybe Scarlett Fever, or maybe a combination of the two. I feel really sick."

My grandmother comes over to me and looks at my stomach, "I don't see a rash."

My whole body sinks, "I don't want to go to school though. I don't feel well."

She stands there for a moment and I see that her oatmeal is steaming in the cold air, "If I let you stay home from school, do you think you'll be able to visit your mom later?"

"Definitely."

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Page 7 of fiction by Alexis David I stay for the whole day on the couch—looking at old photo albums and having my grandmother read old letters to me from when she was little and had to go to a boarding school far from her parents. We eat mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch and have Jell-o for dessert. Then my grandmother says we can go visit my mom.

When we get to the hospital, she is sitting in the main room and she is drawing something and drinking coffee.

"Nora!" She says my name so delicately it makes my stomach feel flooded with warmth.

I walk up to her and curl up on her lap.

"Hi Mommy."

"You didn't go to school?"

"I think I have Scarlett Fever."

My mom looks at me and smiles, "Oh. Well, we're both sick then."

"Yeah, but I'll probably go back to school tomorrow."

"Good."

"Will you be home tomorrow?"

"I'll probably be home in a few more days. The new medicine is working really well. They just need to find the right dose."

"Oh," I fold my head just underneath my mom's chin and I feel her heart beating.

"Mom?" "Yes, my little one."

"We saw this painting in school. It was of a mother washing her daughter's feet. She was very little."

"She was having a bath?"

"Yes." "Oh." My mom leans her chin onto my head. "That sounds lovely."

"Mom?" "Yes?" "Will the medicine make you completely better?"

"No. It will help though. Maybe I'll get all the way better eventually."

"Mom?" "Yes, my love?"

I can hear in her voice that she is getting tired.

"I think I'm going to paint you for my art class. Would that be okay? I want to paint you giving me and Wondrus a bath."

My mom smiled, "That'd be fine, Nora. As soon as I'm out. . ."

Her voice drifts away into the air. I look up at her and she is taking a deep breath in. I see her face and see how ordinary she looks. How ordinary and how lovely she looks.

My mom is not a peacock and I am her youngest child. My mom is wearing a wool sweater and pale blue pants. My mom has bright blue eyes that are glowing. My mom is breathing so deeply that I hear her soft inhales and exhales. She has her hair down. She isn't wearing any make up at all. My mom lives in the ordinary world where love floats around in the molecules of air that surrounds us. I wonder what the rest of our life will be like. I wonder how many people I will love as much as I love this person.

I wonder. I wonder. I wonder.

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Regina Forni #10 False Eyes The beer arrived sweating. It was only her second cerveza, but Darla was already feeling the edges of decorum begin to fray, first around her fingertips which repeatedly flicked bits of bread from the outdoor table into the shallow water so she could watch the blackfish charge stupidly at each other to get to them.

Then around her mouth which began to sing the Old Spice commercial she remembered hearing on TV when she was a kid. Except now the words were lines from a poem about a sailor which some teacher had made her memorize once and which she had no idea, until this very moment, matched the Old Spice tune perfectly.

“Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion,” she sang out. She looked around. The only other person on this tiny patch of an island was the Kuna woman in the kitchen slicing fruit, and she didn’t seem to notice, or maybe not to care.

Darla drew in a chestful of air and sang across the water in a nasal, low-life, eighteenth-century-sailor voice.

“Die after die, die after die, we stook, nur breath nur motion, as oidle as a pinted ship upon a pinted ocean.”

Silence. Chop, chop, chop from the kitchen. Swish plop from the ocean five feet away as another couple of blackfish fought or maybe mated with tremendous urgency.

“Another bee-yootiful day in paradise,” she said, mimicking the drunken businessman who had sat bellowing in the lobby of the El Panama three nights earlier. When he had said it for the twelfth time, she decided she needed a little vacation from the Tres Rios Travel Agency and its pretentious hole of an office in the lobby of Panama City’s most pretentious hotel. It was time to get away from the failures of her marriage and her body and her life. It was time to find something authentic in this wanna-be-a-yankee country, where even the currency is the U.S. dollar. To find something true, something without American thumbprints all over it.

Forget the nearby Pacific, its tourmaline beauty, its implausible sea-breeze climate. The Atlantic, she thought to herself, now there’s an ocean for you. Moody, often gray among its swatches of Caribbean blue, with famous storms descending when you least expected it. It was the off-season for tourism and perfect for a few days of solitude. She pulled some strings as a travel agent for this last-minute trip to San Blas province on the other side of the isthmus. And when she finally set foot on this perfect miniature island of Ispakup she exhaled so forcefully she thought she might faint.

Darla was familiar with the culture of the Kuna people. The rest of the country had been capitalizing on their fabric artwork for years. Three years earlier, when she’d first walked through the Panama City airport, she saw so many posters of the colorful cloth panels called molas that she expected to find them draped like slip-covers over everything in the country. She imagined a nation bursting with brightness and texture and intricately stylized images of the tropics. From the airplane, Panama City had looked like Miami, a cumulus of glass and concrete, sleek with prosperity, rising from a lip of land with the canal on its west and the wide Pacific on its south. Its modernness and massiveness seemed irreconcilable with the homespun mola. And, in fact, the only places in the city she could find molas were upscale souvenir shops that sold faux-molas produced by machines. At first, they looked identical to native molas with their mortised layers of cloth and carefully beveled folds. But the stitches were always too big and too uniform, their patterns too geometric, and their overlapping colors too contrived. They were ornament, not art, a sort of Panamanian flag.

As Darla finished off her beer, the Kuna woman brought out a dish of melon wedges. Darla got a good look at the mola on the woman’s blouse. The maroon fabric behind the branching design was of an uneven shade, as though part of it had spent too much time in the sun. It also showed some food spots and, in an unadorned corner, the tracings of a ball-point pen. Whoever fashioned this mola either didn’t finish sewing it or decided to leave one area blank.

The woman smiled and went back to her work. Darla would have loved to ask about her mola and then about her life, but the only language the two women had in common was fragmented Spanish, which offered no hope of getting them beyond food and drink preferences.

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Page 2 of fiction by Regina Forni Darla picked up the compact binoculars that she had purchased for this trip and scanned the view from the open-air restaurant. She focused past the crooked wooden landing dock and beyond the thatched hut where she slept. Several islands similar to Ispakup could be seen. The nearest one was within swimmable distance and was, like most of them, uninhabited. It sat shimmering on the water about two hundred yards away. Its central grove of palm trees shot up skyward, with a skirt of white sand beach at its base, making the island seem more tall than wide.

In the other direction lay Udukseni, the village island. Covering every square inch of ground was a Kuna shantytown. There were no beaches, no trees to be seen, just a huddling of thatched roofs and cement blocks ringed by canoes tied to poles sticking up out of the shallows.

Another shift brought the mainland into view. It was mostly jungle, green and uncompromising, except for the tiny airfield cut from the land at the ocean’s edge. As she watched the mainland treetops curl and uncurl in the wind, she noticed a gray shape deep in the sky, then heard the hum of an engine. Sure enough, a plane was approaching, maybe the same as the one that had dropped her off two days earlier. She was not supposed to be picked up until this time tomorrow, and she felt a mixture of panic and anger at the prospect of being plucked away before she was ready to leave.

Then she noticed that the long red canoe that transported guests to and from Ispakup was waiting at the dock on the mainland. If the plane were coming for her, the canoe would be here and not there. The little plane landed. Someone got off, and he and his bag were led to the canoe by a young Kuna man. Through the binoculars, the two men in the boat seemed flattened against the green forest. The floating tableau in the lenses grew in size until it reached the island dock a hundred feet away from where she sat.

The passenger was obviously North American, fiftyish, tall, with dark hair, tanned arms and white legs.

He studied the dock for thirty seconds before getting out of the canoe, then perched so carefully on the step leading down that Darla expected him to break into a ballet. Finally he hopped to the ground and brushed off the tops of his socks underneath his sandals.

By this time, the Kuna man had gathered up the bulky black bag and was making his way to one of the sleeping huts. The bag’s owner watched for a moment, then loped along behind.

The sun dropped out of sight at 6:15 PM as it did every night in Panama, and the sudden darkness signaled the onset of dinner. Darla crept back to the restaurant from her hut, fearing what she felt certain she would find: that someone else was there for dinner too. Her only hope was that he’d be seated off in a corner, but unfortunately he was smack in the middle of the empty tables. She nodded and moved quietly toward the chair nearest the water, but within two minutes he was at her table as though beckoned by spirits, introducing himself as he sat down.

“Hello. I’m Manny Ludwig.”

“I’m Darla Mackenzie.”

“American! Great!”

The Kuna woman arrived to take their drink order.

“Wine, for me,” said Manny. “I mean vino. That’s it, isn’t it? Vino blanco?”

“Vino blanco,” repeated the Kuna woman. “Y para Usted, señora?” She smiled warmly at Darla.

“Otra cerveza.”

“Wow,” said Manny. “You speak Spanish. I wish I did. Though I have to say I’ve been doing OK since I’ve been here. Of course, most of my trip so far has been in Panama City attending a conference and everyone speaks English there.”

Darla nodded politely at this information.

“So,” he continued, “are you in Panama on business too?”

“No. I live here. Not on this island of course, but in the city. I’ve been here over two years. I must confess, however, that my Spanish is rather brutal.”

The Kuna woman returned with the drinks. Manny unfolded his paper napkin and smoothed it onto his lap. He smiled at Darla so ingenuously that she had trouble hanging on to any resentment at his intrusion on her privacy. He reached for his glass of wine and held it up ceremoniously.

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Page 3 of fiction by Regina Forni “Cheers,” he said, and she had no choice but to hold up her beer bottle in reply.

“It’s pretty breezy out here,” he went on. “But it’s still hot. Well, hotter than what I’m used to.”

The Kuna woman brought out plates and flatware and then returned to the kitchen area.

“But not for these Kuna people,” he continued. “I mean, look at that woman. She’s wrapped from head to toe. And she doesn’t seem to mind a bit. Must be used to it.”

Darla could hear the blackfish splashing in the distance.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “I suppose you can get used to anything, if you have to.”

Manny took this as encouragement. “It can’t be easy, making those skirts and blouses from scratch and then stitching all those molas in. Then winding those ribbons, or whatever they are, around and around her legs and arms. Then putting all that jewelry on top of everything. Must take her hours every morning.”

“Well,” Darla reflected, “she doesn’t sew new clothes every morning.”

“Yeah, I know, but still, all that wrapping and winding and...accessorizing. They could make it a lot easier on themselves if they’d tattoo their skin instead. Think of it. They could still be covered with all that colorful design, but they’d save so much time and expense. True, they wouldn’t be able to change their looks too easily, but maybe they could work that in. You know, make it all part of their culture or religion or whatever. Tattoos can be really useful. I read about this tribe in Indonesia that tattoos giant eyes on the tops of their hands. Then if anything attacks, like a snake or a vulture or a komodo dragon, they just hold out their hands, like this, and bam! they’ve got automatic false eyes and they scare off whatever it is. There was a photo of it. It was like this.”

Manny took a felt-tipped pen out of his shirt pocket and reached for Darla’s hand. She quickly pulled her hand onto her lap.

“No, no, that’s all right. I get the picture.”

They both sipped their drinks while the Kuna woman approached with two dishes of something. Darla retreated into silence.

Last week, she hadn’t hesitated for a moment before telling her boss she was leaving to spend three days in San Blas.

“OK,” Paco replied. “No problem.”

She wondered what agency Manny had used to book his trip. Maybe the Tres Rios. She imagined Paco giving him the same Jungle Tours package that she had, but at a substantially higher rate. Good old Paco.

Every Saturday he’d buy lottery tickets for everyone at Tres Rios out of the “monedas pequeñas” he’d accumulated from such transactions.

The hut was hotter than the previous night and everything felt stickier. Darla pumped a small stream of water into the sink and began to brush her teeth.

“Oh, shit.”

She picked a flake of white off her tongue and examined it closely. That crown they put on her front tooth four years ago was beginning to crumble.

“Crumbling. Something else, crumbling.”

At 51, it was her marriage. Thirty years with Charlie, gone. Thirty years of following him and his job around the Americas, of forgetting she ever wanted kids, of letting her sense of self shrink to nothing.

At 52, it was her body. First, blood pressure, then that ridiculous tendonitis that had her limping for weeks. Then, the tumor. The ultimate betrayal. Her uterus gone berserk. The revenge of the mother she never was.

Darla thought of a quote she once saw in a neighbor’s kitchen back in San Diego. It was embroidered on cloth and framed: I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other -- Jane Austen.

“What do the rest of us deserve, Jane?” she wondered.

At 53, she was out of answers. If nothing else, this free fall into the unknown was also a liberation.

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Page 4 of fiction by Regina Forni As she settled into bed, she ran her fingers over a miniature mola sewn into one corner of the white pillowcase. Tomorrow morning, there was a tour of the Kuna village on Udukseni. She felt vexed at the thought of having Manny there along with her. Of all the people to be stuck with. An immigration lawyer from Connecticut whose job it is to transplant people or block their way.

Darla ran her tongue over the fault line in her front tooth, and stroked the mola on the pillow. She resolved to make the most of this little excursion tomorrow. She had fallen in love with these people.

Whenever the Kuna woman who worked on Ispakup came into view, Darla couldn’t take her eyes off her.

Everything about her seemed so clear, her hair and face and teeth so shining, her colors so distinct, while everything about Darla seemed clouded, bits and pieces floating in all directions, the skin of everything falling apart.

“And another thing, you really shouldn’t take pictures of them. Or if you must, at least offer them a dollar. Something in return for the bit of soul you’ve snatched from them. Twenty years ago, you would have needed to get permission from the chief. You may still need that for videotaping. But ordinary cameras have become fairly commonplace, especially with the rise in tourism to San Blas.”

Manny nodded and rubbed another squirt of sunblock onto his arms. The red canoe was moving smoothly in the open water about three-fourths of the way to Udukseni.

“Do they all look like the ones I’ve seen so far? Are they all so small and are all the women so dressed up?”

“Pretty much. It’s a matriarchal society. The women are so much more visible than the men. The children go everywhere with the women, but they’re usually dressed in cheap rags so they’re not as noticeable. Except for the white ones.”

“White ones?”

“I heard about them from a missionary I met once in Panama City. She’d been working in San Blas to teach health care to the Kuna people. She said that there’s a high incidence of albinism among them, probably due to inbreeding. The Kuna people just about worship the albino children, call them ‘Children of the Moon.’ The missionary could never get them to understand the danger of exposing these kids to the sun.

The adults believe that albinos die young because they’re returning to the gods. Parents of albinos feel privileged to have them. They are visitors from the moon.”

Darla fastened her fanny-pack around her waist and adjusted her binocular straps. The canoe slid alongside a boat dock, and their Kuna boatman-guide hopped out to secure it with a rope. The man was young and friendly, but he spoke even less Spanish than the Kuna woman on Ispakup, so most communication with Darla and Manny was managed through gestures and signals.

Their tour of the village took about thirty minutes. The Kuna guide walked quickly and wordlessly through the narrow passages that served for streets, as though leading the two visitors in a foot race. It must have seemed strange to him that anyone would want to pay to do this, but he’d long ago given up trying to figure out gringos. Darla and Manny puffed along behind, every once in a while stopping to get a look at something, and then sprinting to catch up to their smiling guide fifty paces ahead.

The village was a crazy concoction of native exotica and downright slum. A dozen boys in underwear played basketball in an open space. Straw and wood shacks sat ten feet from the pathway with wire fences around the front yards. A child in front of a hut proudly displayed a dead turkey-like bird. And women could be seen everywhere, some in extravagant Kuna outfits, some in thin blouses and polyester shorts.

Every once in a while, she would see a woman sitting on a chair in front of her house sewing a mola. There would be a basket of fabric pieces next to her and a long spool suspended from a window ledge on which five or six bright colors of thread were wound. The woman would stitch, look up, smile, then go back to stitching.

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Page 5 of fiction by Regina Forni Eventually, the guide led Darla and Manny to a rubble-filled clearing in which a makeshift market was set up. A crowd of children followed them as they wandered among women sitting or standing in front of piles of molas. The women chattered away with one another while the children stared at the foreigners and laughed. Darla looked at mola after mola, noticing little differences in tracery and stitching. Almost every mola, regardless of condition or workmanship, had the same price written on a bit of masking tape: $10.00.

Darla settled on three molas she felt she had to have. They were all done by the same woman, a chubby little thing whose attention was taken up by two toddlers in her lap eating fruit. Darla waved two twentydollar bills in front of her and held up the molas to show her the purchases. The woman smiled at her and said something incomprehensible. Then she took the money, and produced a faded ten from somewhere under her skirts and handed it to Darla. Darla shoved it into her fanny-pack and looked around.

She could see Manny on the other side of the market buying what appeared to be a score of molas. A few feet away stood their guide, yawning. Manny was making payment for his bundle just as Darla reached him. The guide immediately sprang to life. He whistled sharply for them to follow him and pointed excitedly to their island, shouting, “Ispakup! Almuerzo! Ahora!”

“What’s he saying?” asked Manny.

“He says we’re going back to Ispakup for lunch.”

When they reached the red canoe, a group of five or six boys was waiting nearby, as though to say farewell. They jogged closer to Manny and Darla, and broke into a clamor of insistent remarks. Tallest among them was a white boy, not Caucasian but albino-white. He was shockingly ugly compared to the other boys. His skin was mottled white and pink, with large red areas on his bare back. Here and there on his torso and neck, she could see blackened ulcerated sores as big as nickels. He was bony and awkward, but he behaved just like the rest of the boys, hopping up and down and calling out incessantly.

Darla felt she had to offer something, and waved the group toward her. They bounded closer but stopped short a foot away from her. Except for the albino. He walked right up to her and grinned.

Darla picked up the binoculars hanging just above the fanny-pack that pouched at her midriff. She made a show of looking through them. Then she extended them to the boy so he could take a look. He grabbed them and moved his body right up against hers to peer through. Darla could smell him now too, dirt, sweat, and something else, something almost sweet, almost rancid. And she could see the crustiness around his eyes, patches of skin peeling from the swollen lids.

The boy began talking rapidly to his friends and laughing while he aimed the binoculars at each of them one by one. Darla slipped the strap over her head and took a step back.

“Para tí. Un regalo,” she said. The boy looked up at her and blinked. “A gift. You keep it.” She pointed to the binoculars and then to him. “Para tí.”

One or two boys babbled what must have been a translation of her Spanish. The white boy shouted, “Ay!” and laughed in an odd gutteral way. Then without saying anything resembling a thank-you, he spun around and ran off as the other boys chased behind him. And so Darla’s brand-new binoculars skipped away behind a cinderblock wall with a Child of the Moon.

All the way back to Ispakup, Darla had to put up with Manny’s expressions of horror.

“Did you see the melanoma on that kid?”

“He’ll be blind in six months.”

“He’ll be dead in twelve.”

“Don’t they have witch doctors?”

Darla just sat and listened. What could she say to Manny? Yes, he was right. The boy’s condition was dreadful. It was a crime. But how could she explain to Manny that what she felt now was mostly gratitude, and that she wasn’t even sure what she was feeling grateful for?

When they docked on Ispakup, the Kuna woman was walking near the little beach. The man jumped from the canoe and they exchanged words and smiles while he tethered the boat. Darla had never before seen her from head to toe in full sunlight. Every color imaginable could be found on the clothes she wore and every shade of gold on her necklaces and bracelets and anklets.

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Page 6 of fiction by Regina Forni “Por favor, señora,” Darla called out. When the woman turned to face her, Darla pulled a small camera from her pocket, stood up, and snapped a picture. Then she reached into her fanny-pack for the ten-dollar bill. It wasn’t there.

“Manny, did I drop some money down there?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. He scanned the floor of the boat. “Not here. What did you lose?”

“I put a ten-dollar bill in my pack at the market on the other island. I saw it there just before we got back into the canoe.”

“Was it there before you talked to that boy?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it there afterwards?”

“I don’t know.”

But she did know. It wasn’t there. She recalled briefly noting its absence on the boat ride back. She looked at Manny, and saw in his face that he knew too and didn’t want to say.

Darla sat back down in the canoe. She took five deep breaths. Then she got up, got out, and ran across the island and into her hut.

Lunch was late because she was. Darla brought her bags to the restaurant to avoid having to go back to the hut again.

“One hour,” she thought grimly. “Then I’m out of here. I can manage for one stupid hour.”

Manny was seated already. She hoped her dark sunglasses would hide from him how she was feeling.

She gave him a pinched, closed-mouthed smile and slid into the chair opposite him. The ocean around them was sparkling. It was the first truly cloudless sky since her arrival. Another beautiful day in paradise.

Manny was silent for a few seconds. “I ordered you a cerveza,” he said abruptly. Darla nodded in acknowledgment.

“Actually, I ordered you two.” Darla focused on her breathing. She knew that if she even thought about crying, she would.

“I thought you could use it.”

Darla risked a glance at his face. The look from his sympathetic eyes felt like a knife to her chest.

The Kuna woman arrived with the drinks.

“Oh, yeah,” mumbled Darla, groping for something in her pants pocket. “Muchas gracias, señora.”

Darla handed the Kuna woman a dollar bill. “Por la fotografía.”

“Mucho gusto.”

“She seems like such a nice person,” said Manny as the woman returned to the kitchen.

“Yes. Most of them do. At least the women seem nice. It’s hard to say about the men.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Manny said, nodding his head. “I used to live with a woman who wore a button that said, ‘If we can send one man to the moon, why not send them all?’”

Darla laughed.

“What?” he said in defense. “You think just because I’m a man I don’t know about them -- us? Listen, I’m a lawyer. You should see what I have to put up with. Liars, cheats, thieves. Sometimes the people you least expect it from.” So far he wasn’t making things better for her.

“What can I say?” he continued. “With people, you get what you get.”

Darla put down the beer she’d been working on. “That’s hardly an original thought,” she said.

“Well, nothing’s really original, you know. Except for the Big Bang,” he replied contemplatively.

“And maybe not even that. But how should I know? Who am I, Stephen Hawking? I’m just some guy with a morbid dread of ever being late.”

Darla smiled at him and took off her sunglasses. “I can see why you’re good at law.”

“Yeah, the old lawyer’s trick,” he said, smiling back at her. “Re-define your terms and you can get away with anything.”

The Kuna woman served them each a large plate of cold salad made from rice, fruits, and thin strips of something else, probably chicken.

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Page 7 of fiction by Regina Forni Darla and Manny remained quiet for a minute or two, neither of them eating. He looked at her with his lips pressed shut, as if to say, “Your turn.”

“I don’t know why it upsets me so much,” she began. “I can’t tell you how violated I feel. I guess I expected more from these people.”

Manny seemed about to argue a point, then just settled back in his seat.

“If that boy is so privileged in his community, why does he need to steal my money? He was probably after the money all along. I feel like such a fool.”

“Well, yeah,” said Manny, “but maybe he did it because he’s so privileged.”

“Manny, it’s O.K. You don’t have to take on all this -- re-define all this -- on my behalf.”

“No, really. I mean it. Put yourself in his shoes. From day one, they tell you you’re a god. They treat you like you’re larger than life. Then they inform you you’ll live your life in pain and die before puberty.

How’s that for a mixed message? Who knows what you’re likely to feel entitled to by the time you’re ten?”

Manny started stabbing hungrily at his salad.

“People are who they are,” he continued while he ate. His voice became quieter, measured, steadying.

“If you deal with people, there’s always risk. Nobody is ever what they seem at first. Not even to themselves. And it’s really hard sometimes to let go of what you want from them. Or what you want from yourself. And that’s when you get yourself in trouble. Well, not ‘you’ yourself. I mean ‘anybody’ yourself.

You know.”

Darla listened silently. Manny put his fork down and looked at her.

“And no matter how hard you stare something down, you never know if your eyes are playing tricks on you. So what do you give up? Looking? Trusting? Maybe expecting. There’s no use in living your life as one long reaction to a world that may not be real.”

Without her binoculars, Darla could make out very little on Ispakup. The plane headed straight over the island but was also increasing altitude, so what she gained one way she lost another. Still, she pressed her forehead up against the plane window to see as much as she could. She saw the red canoe pulling up to the dock. She saw someone, maybe the Kuna woman, walk out from the restaurant. She saw the figure of someone else, with a broad-brimmed Panama hat on, standing on the beach, bending over from the waist, as though examining something he’s not yet sure he’ll pick up.

Sharply, the plane swerved all the way around and headed for the skies over the dense green forest. The sight of the ocean was wiped from view, as if it had never been there at all.

She tried to visualize the village, tried to remember how it smelled, how it sounded. She reached into one of her bags and drew out the three molas she had bought. One she wanted to have framed, and another she’d send to her mother in California. The third she thought she’d use as a gift, only she wasn’t sure whom she’d give it to. Maybe Paco.

She tried to nap but the noise wouldn’t let her. The thrumming of the engine was so loud it sounded like the plane was howling. She checked the date on her wristwatch. Sure enough, it was Saturday. Paco would have given out the lottery tickets by now. He’d be locking the door of his office, then heading over to the florist, as he did every Saturday afternoon, with the money left over from the tickets. And tomorrow he’d be putting fresh flowers on his wife’s grave, just as he did every Sunday.

What else did Manny say last night about those Indonesian people, the ones with the tattoos? That they had a saying, “Either you eat life or life eats you.”

Darla started to hum along with the roaring plane.

“I could sing out loud,” she thought, as they buzzed over the slopes of the cloud forests. “I could dissolve into the sky and come out singing on the other side.”

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Veronica Breen Hogle #11 An Afternoon in Brandon Manor “Hello Mrs. Donnelly, let me help you take off your coat,” the receptionist smiles and eases the slight woman out of her purple wool coat. Mrs. Donnelly watches how the woman carefully hangs her coat on an oak wood hanger. She values real wood, fresh flowers, anything made by hand, and down-to-earth people.

“I’ll keep me little hat on,” she says and taps the rim of her red beret, hugged in place by her short silver curls. Fine gold-rimmed glasses circle big eyes that were the color of emeralds when she was young. She still wears the vivid Monet colors. While she’s now up in years, she remains active and has the air of a woman who lives life to the fullest, and knows exactly what she needs to do to continue to enjoy a full life.

But since she fell and broke her hip over a year ago, Mrs. Donnelly is finding it hard to keep her old house up.

It’s Thursday, the day her son, Brian, drives her to visit an assisted-living facility. She’s spending the afternoon in Brandon Manor, a full service retirement village for people over sixty years of age. It’s located in Clarence, about ten miles from Buffalo. From what she’s read about Brandon Manor, she thinks it might be just the ticket. Today, she has an appointment to have an interview with the manager, enjoy afternoon tea, tour the facility, and be a guest at dinner. While she sits and waits in the reception area, classical flute music floats down from the Cathedral ceiling, and the smell of home-made bread wafts around in the air. Even though it’s February, last summer’s geraniums, growing in white pots, still shoot out their brilliant red ponpon- like blooms. As the grandfather clock chimes, a young woman approaches her.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Donnelly. I’m Miss Gray, the manager of Brandon Manor. I’m also a nurse practitioner. Let’s go into the parlor so we can talk.” She leads the eager visitor into a room decorated with red velvet arm chairs, and small matching sofas. The champagne-colored walls have painted portraits of the founders, smiling out from their gilded frames.

“There now, I’ll put you in that armchair, and I’ll sit in this one across from you.”

“Grand, grand,” says Mrs. Donnelly. She’s happy Miss Gray does not barricade herself behind a desk.

She is looking forward to a nice little chat. There is nothing she enjoys more than a real chat. It could be about anything, so long as it tickles the heart for a few minutes, and in blissful moments, touches its deep core. When she has this experience, she feels connected, contented and whole. From her first impression of Brandon Manor, she ranks it a five out of five. Maybe…just maybe this lovely place will become me new home she says to herself, and her heart quickens with suspense and excitement.

“Mrs. Donnelly, we have your application, health insurance information, and your doctor’s letter stating that apart from arthritis in your neck and hip, you’re in good health. We’re happy you’re considering coming to Brandon Manor, to let us look after you, so you don’t have to worry about maintaining a house,” Miss Gray says while shuffling papers on her lap.

“Yes. I’ve read your brochure. You offer classes an’ speakers on thought-provokin’ topics, provide transportation ta doctor’s appointments, social events, shoppin’, an’ a course, your restaurant received four an’ a half stars from The Buffalo News, when they did the Sunday color feature on your French Chef, Monsieur Marcel Les Ponts.”

“Yes. We provide all that… and more.” Miss Gray says and looks at her watch. She is preoccupied while searching through a fat folder on her lap.

“But I’ve been in me own house now for over forty years. It will be an awful change for me ta leave it just the same…” Her eyes look worried.

“It will, but people do it every day.” Mrs. Donnelly winces at the tart reply. We’ve a bit of paperwork to do. We want to get a picture of what you like and don’t like so that we can give you a home- away- fromhome here at Brandon Manor. Oh, here’s our tea.” A parlor maid wearing a pristine white apron over a black dress, a starched cap and cuffs, wheels in a mahogany tea trolley.

“We’ve tea and scones every weekday afternoon around this time and High Tea on Sundays. Mrs. Donnelly, let me pour. Do you take sugar? Cream?”

“I take both. There’s nothin’ like a cup a tea an’ a scone in the afternoon .”

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 2 of fiction by Veronica Breen Hogle “You look lovely in the red hat.”

“It’s one a me favorite colors.”

Mrs. Donnell watches while Miss Gray flips through the folder. She’s finds it distracting, and is relieved when the manager pulls out a four-page document.

“Now, I’ve found our intake questionnaire. Are you ready for me to ask you some questions?”

“Oh, fire away, fire away.” She butters her scone and spreads raspberry jam on it.

“Now, what is your full name?”

“Anne Marie Donnelly. Anne with an E. Don’t forget the E. Me maiden name was Murphy.”

“Where were you born?”

“I was wondering what you’d ask first. Well, I was born in Waterford.”

“What state is that in? State and zip code?”

“Oh, that’s in Ireland. Waterford, Ireland. Where they make the crystal. Do you know about the Waterford Crystal? It’s world famous!”

“No, my mother gave me a Lennox vase when I graduated from Buffalo State College.”

“Lennox? The best of American china. Well, I was born in Waterford, Ireland, a Viking town.”

“When were you born?”

“Oh, I was born on an historic day. I was born the day Winston Churchill was named Prime Minster a England. The whole world was at war.”

“But what date was that? What month and year?”

“Oh, don’t ya know the date? All a Europe was fallin’ ta the Germans. Churchill took over an’ saved the world.”

“No. I don’t know the date.”

“Ah, well, maybe you’re too young ta know. Still, World War Two must be in the history books be now…”

“Be specific. Just answer the questions. What date was it? What year?”

“It was a year ta remember. Historic in every way… It was 1940. May 10, 1940.”

“Five, ten, forty,” says Miss Gray writing it down. “I wasn’t even born then,” she says.

“What is your marital status?”

“Widowed. I’ve been a widow since 1977.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that. Do you have any family in this area?”

“I’ve me three grown children an’ four grandchildren .”

“Ah, great. It’s good to have family nearby.”

“What is your religion? Catholic I suppose… coming from Ireland?”

“That’d be a good assumption. But no. I’m not Catholic. I’m Unitarian Universalist.”

“Unitarian Una ...what?”

“Universalist. Unitarian Universalist.”

“What kind of a religion is that?”

“Well, it’s non-denominational. There’s no dogma. We follow our own hearts about matters. We’re interested in social issues. Issues a justice an’ injustice, livin’ in harmony with the people an’ the animals we share the earth with, preventin’ environmental destruction. Our current focus is to reduce poverty.”

“But, do you worship God?” “Well, some do, an’ some don’t. People have their own credo.”

“Oh, I see. I see…” Mrs. Donnelly feels the young woman does not see at all.

“You said you were born in Ireland. When did you come to the United States?”

“I came in the winter time. I came on Trans World Airlines an’ I’ll never forget the captain with the lovely American voice sayin,’ Ladies an’ gentlemen, we’re approachin’ New York City. If ya look out your left window, you’ll see the Statue a Liberty, given ta us be France. If ya look ta the right, you’ll see .....”

“OK, Mrs. Donnelly. It sounds like an interesting arrival. But we have to finish the paper work. What date was that? Day. Month. Year?”

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 3 of fiction by Veronica Breen Hogle “December 6, 1965.”

“12. 6. 65,” says Miss Gray out loud, writing it down.

“Why did you come to the United States?”

“I got an offer of a one-way ticket ta Houston.”

“An offer of a one way ticket? Was it a lottery? A newspaper prize?

“No, Miss Gray. I met a man an’ he offered me a one way ticket.”

“A man! Was it legal? I mean …”

“Oh, yes, it was legal. Ya see, I met him one Sunday in Paris. I lived in France for 18 months. I was helpin’ a friend ta move from her apartment an’ he showed up ta help as well. He walked in the door, a lean six footer, reddish hair, a beard, an’ dancin’ blue eyes. He looked like a Viking!”

“Did he give you the ticket?” Miss Gray leans towards Mrs. Donnelly.

“He did. Not that night a course. After a few months, he said that he’d pay for me ticket if I’d come over ta Houston an’ marry him. He said I could come an’ see America anyway. But, if I wanted ta go home, I’d have ta take care a gettin’ back meself,” Mrs. Donnelly gives a chuckle at the memory of it.

“How did it all turn out?”

“Well, I took the offer a the one-way ticket an’ came ta Houston. We got married nine months later. He worked as a salesman for a big steel company. His company transferred us ta Buffalo. The steel mills were still belchin’ then. In jig time, we’d three children. We were so happy together we thought there was only the two a us in the world. But my dear husband had diabetes. One day at work, he slumped over his desk. He had a heart attack an’ died there at work. We were married only twelve years. It was a terrible shock for me.”

“Oh, I can imagine.”

“So I was left rearin’ three children alone. It was hard on ‘em too. There were no grandparents, uncles, or aunts ta take an interest in ‘em, or give ‘em a bit a advice. They had no little cousins ta play with. But when they grew up, they all stayed in the area an two a them have children. So now, I’ve four grandchildren, ages four to eighteen. They live in Amherst, an’ Kenmore, an’ I live in North Buffalo.”

“What kind of living arrangements do you have now? Do you rent? Own a house?”

“Well, I have me own home for over 40 years. Me handy-woman’s delight, I call it. It’s a corner house with leaded glass windows that lets lots a light in. I’ve a wood burning fireplace. I’m in a family neighborhood where I can look out the window an’ watch the children conductin’ the business a children.

An’…” Miss Gray’s cell phone rings. She looks to see who is calling.

“Sounds very nice Mrs. Donnelly. Now we’ll have a little break, and then carry on with the questions.”

Miss Gray says “Hello,” into her phone, gets up, and leaves the room.

Mrs. Donnelly studies the flames that lick the artificial logs. She thought it was queer Miss Gray asked her if she lived in an apartment or a house. She told her in the beginning that she’d been in her house over forty years. She thinks Miss Gray doesn’t understand how devastating it is for a woman to have to leave her house, the place to where she brought her babies home from the hospital. She thought Brandon Manor might be what she was yearning to find. She’d been so looking forward to a good chat. A feeling of disappointment creeps over her. She sinks down deeper into her armchair. She’s lost in thought about the pros and cons of moving into Brandon Manor. After about fifteen minutes, Miss Gray returns with a fresh pot of tea and Mrs. Donnelly comes back into the moment.

“A little more tea?” Miss Gray offers.

“Yes, it’s very nice. Grand. It’s a good cup a tea too. Nice an’ hot.”

“Now back to our questions. What kind of work did you do?”

“Oh, I’d more jobs than ya could shake a stick at. For thirty or more years, I was an executive secretary, an’ I worked me way up ta bein’ a manager, an’ a director in various organizations. I’ve been retired a number a years.”

“In what kind of organizations did you have a manager’s position?”

“Educational institutions, cultural groups. International organizations. I even worked for the State Department for a number a years.”

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 4 of fiction by Veronica Breen Hogle “Was it the State Department as in the US Government State Department?”

“The one an’ only. I met many dignitaries from all over the world in that job. I met presidents, members a Parliament, and other high level elected-officials. I arranged their study tours, accommodations an’ social activities. Often, I’d take delegations ta Washington, D.C.” “Really?” Miss Gray looks at her watch.

“What kind of hobbies did you enjoy?”

“Oh, I’d a lot a hobbies. When I was young, I loved ta dance. I was a swimmer, a long distance swimmer. An’ I loved ta travel with the youth hostel. That’s how I got ta France in the first place. I hitch hiked over there,” her eyes smile off in the distance, remembering.

“What kind of hobbies do you still enjoy? What are your current interests?”

“I’m still interested in international affairs. Belong ta two French groups. I keep up with me French. I collect hand-made lace, an’ I give talks on Irish lace an’ the important role it played durin’ Ireland’s potato famine. I’ve a flower garden, an’ I’ve good luck with roses. I received the “Buffalo in Bloom” recognition the last four years in a row. I’ve an eggcup full a me mother’s ashes sprinkled around the lilac trees. I planted a Japanese Cherry Blossom tree in memory a me brother. Me garden has lots a roses, all in memory a people I’ve loved who are now departed…”

“Are you interested in learning anything new or different?”

“I’ve started ta knit an’ crochet again. I can send an’ receive e-mails, but I’d like ta be better on the computer. I love ta watch epic movies. Long ones, with an intermission in the middle. I enjoy a beverage durin’ the break. I travel all over the world an’ learn history be watchin’ the epic movies.”

“Give me an example of an epic movie.”

“Gone With the Wind! I love war stories with lots a drums an’ guns. An’ a big love story in the middle.

Did ya like Gone With The Wind?”

“It’s been so long, I don’t quite remember it.”

“Well, it’s an American classic. Written be Margaret Mitchell. It’s a love story that takes place durin’ the American Civil War. There was one scene I’ll remember all me life in Gone With the Wind. The father, Mr. O’Hara, took his daughter, Scarlet, out ta look over their sprawling plantation. He said ta her, ‘Land. It’s the only thing worth fightin’ for -- ‘cause it’s the only thing that lasts!’ Powerful scene that was.”

“Oh, yes. I do remember seeing Gone With The Wind, starring Clarke Gable. What other movies do you remember?”

“Me favorite a all is Dr. Zhivago. Did ya see that one?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, it’s a Russian love story. Dr. Zhivago was from a well-ta-do family. He was a poet, a medical doctor, an’ he was married. He was sent to tend the wounded on the battlefield. He fell in love with Laura, the field nurse. They’d a child together, a little girl. He and Laura became separated during the massive upheaval. He’d a bum ticker. The brutality a the war, an’ the icy-cold weather killed him before the revolution was over.”

“What happened to the child?”

“Laura had ta put her daughter in an orphanage. Some time after that, Laura died. But her brother knew about the child, an’ he searched for her for years. He came across the girl when she was about 17 years old, workin’ in a factory, where he was the boss. He asked her some questions, but she had no papers ta identify herself. He showed her a photo a her mother. But she just shook her head. She had no memory a her at all.”

“Really?” Miss Gray looks at her watch.

“At the end of the interview, when the girl was walkin’ away hand-in-hand with her boy friend, the man shouted after her.

“Oh, by the way…do you play the Balalaika?”

“Does she play the Balalaika! She’s marvelous at it!” her boyfriend shouted back.

An’ the man knew then, she was his sister’s daughter. Laura was gifted at playin’ the Balalaika,” Mrs. Donnelly says and looks dreamy.

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Page 5 of fiction by Veronica Breen Hogle “So you enjoy war stories? You like a lot of violence?”

“History is violent, an’ we learn about it through epic movies. Countries measure their success be the number a battles they’ve won.”

“I see.” Mrs. Donnelly looks into Miss Gray’s cement-gray eyes and thinks they’re cold.

“Mrs. Donnelly. What kind of a room would you like here at Brandon Manor?”

“Well, now. I’d like a room where I could look out me window an’ see tall, leafy trees for birds ta nest in an ’a bit a greenery ta shelter ‘em in winter. I love ta hear the birds chirpin’ at daybreak, an’ the crickets singin’ at night. I enjoy watchin’ the seasons unfold. Gardens are like four act plays, ya know. When one scene fades out, another comes on.”

“My - my Mrs. Donnelly… you’ve a great imagination!” Miss Gray checks her cell hone.

Now, about your room. Would you like a private room or would you like to share?”

“I’d like a room where I could have me library a the movies we just talked about, an’ all the other things I told ya were important ta me.” Miss Gray bends her head and writes in her big note book on her lap. Her cell phone rings. She looks on the caller ID. “Excuse me, I have to take this call.” She gets up, places the book she’s been writing in open on her chair and leaves the room. Mrs. Donnelly has always been a nosey parker. She wonders what Miss Gray has written in the book. She thinks it’s time to get up and stretch her legs. She stands up and walks the few feet to Miss Gray’s chair. She looks down at the open book and reads: ‘Mrs. Anne Marie Donnelly has difficulty focusing. Out of touch with reality. Delusional. Belongs to a religious sect. Addicted to movies with violence and illicit sex. May abuse alcohol. Would require level three high maintenance care. Her insurance will cover.’

Mrs. Donnelly feels as if a bucket of cold water has been thrown over her head.

“Oh me God, Miss Gray thinks I’m just a crazy auld women!” she says out loud to no one, and flops back down into her chair. She looks around the room and her eyes land on the portraits smiling at her from the wall. From her life experience with people, she knows they are not the kind of people she would be happy being with. Her face loses its animated glow. Her eagerness disappears. She’s aware that the questions took her on a journey back over her life. She didn’t mind sharing her experiences. But the young woman asking the questions did not come one step of the way with her. She didn’t share anything at all. All she knows about Miss Gray is that her mother gave her a Lennox vase for her graduation from college. She’s about 30 years old, has no interest in movies, history, or people, and she has a nervous habit of looking at her watch every few minutes. In spite of all its grandeur and services, Mrs. Donnelly’s experience being interviewed by Miss Gray leaves her feeling she’s just another unknown person being interviewed for admission. To benefit from getting the most health insurance, Miss Gray has given her an inaccurate diagnosis.

She stands up again and grabs her cane. Her body has a stance of determination. A new energy surges through her. I’ve got ta get outa here, she says to herself. I’ve got ta get outa here fast. The door opens, and Miss Gray and an older woman, who is wearing a white coat are standing in front of her.

“Mrs. Donnelly, I’m Dr. Stevenson, chief of staff here. Miss Gray tells me that you’re an interesting woman. We’d like to .......”

“Well, Miss Gray --- now, that I’ve had a chance ta talk with you, I realize that I’m not yet ready ta leave me old handywoman’s delight. I can still get up an’ down the stairs.”

“Mrs. Donnelly, on your birthday, we will make you queen for the day. We give lessons on how to use Skype, get on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll teach you how to set up and use your own blog. We’ll show you everything to keep you connected.”

“Grand. You’ve a lot ta offer a person. Now, if you’ll be so kind, please have the receptionist phone me son an’ tell him I’m ready ta go home. If I change me mind in the future, I will phone you.”

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Page 6 of fiction by Veronica Breen Hogle Mrs. Donnelly puts her arms out and glides like an old silver falcon towards the reception area. Dr. Stevenson and Miss Gray follow her. The receptionist overhears the conversation and calls the son, who works a block away. She helps her to put her coat on. The aroma of home-made bread is back in the air. The flute music is still floating down from the high ceiling.

“But, you didn’t see the spacious rooms. They have their own baths. You are our guest for dinner this evening…we serve French wine with dinner every night…” Miss Gray says and her voice trails away.

Mrs. Donnelly does not answer. She waits with her eyes on the door. Her son arrives and she scurries out and gets into his car.

“Brandon Manor is not state- a-the-art in the people satisfaction department,” she tells Brian. Mrs. Donnelly smiles to herself as she watches the snow capped trees flying by. Tonight she’s going to watch The English Patient,” the war story set in exotic Egypt. She wonders if Miss Gray saw that scorcher.

“Brian, ya can be off now. I’m goin’ ta cook beef Wellington for me supper, have a beverage an’ watch a movie after dinner.” She pours herself a Sandman Sherry. She admits to herself she hasn’t wanted to move at all. She loves her old house with its shimmering windows, doors that don’t close, and windows that won’t open. To help her keep her place up, she’ll take in a lodger. He’ll also be company for her. A man who is a Mr. Fix-it will be ideal. While she watches the English Patient, she sips a few more sherries, and is back in Egypt. With dreamy eyes, Anne Donnelly relives the two weeks she spent in Cairo, with the French government official, who was wild about her when she was a young student in Paris, fifty years ago.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Douglas J. Levy #12 The Oligarch Lives Upstairs “I have some news to share that I think you’ll find exciting,” said Dad one evening after we had finished dinner but before the plates were cleared. “It turns out that a distant relative of ours, Cousin Dave, is coming to stay with us for a few months while he works on making the company I work for more profitable. I think it will be great to have a formerly unknown member of our family living with us so we’ll be able to get to know another branch of it better.”

Dad was smiling, but the rest of us just stared at him for a moment, except for Mom; she looked like she was about ready to explode. “Why is he coming here?” I asked.

“Cousin Dave is a private equity investment manager. His firm bought Acme Manufacturing.” Acme is where Dad works as chief financial officer. “They think that Acme has been underperforming, and it is his job to see that we put the necessary changes in place that will make it more profitable. It is a really exciting opportunity to see how the big boys in finance work.”

“Where is Cousin Dave going to sleep?” asked my younger sister Molly. Although our house was pretty large, there were only three rooms and a bath on the second floor, where my two sisters and I each had our own bedroom. Mom and Dad had their bedroom suite off the living room. “Upstairs,” Dad said. “You kids will be moving down to the basement for as long as Cousin Dave needs your rooms. A moving crew will be here tomorrow to pack up your stuff and move it and your furniture downstairs. Cousin Dave is taking over all three rooms: one as his bedroom, one as his office, and one for his personal assistant, who will also be living with us.”

“I don’t understand why he has to come and live with us,” said Mom. “He could stay in any hotel in town. Christ, he could buy any hotel in town!”

“First of all, family is very important to Cousin Dave,” replied Dad. “He really wants to get to know us and spend time with us, which, given how small and spread out our family is, I thought would be a good experience. Also, Cousin Dave believes that every thing he does should be an investment that will bring him some kind of return. He doesn’t want to just spend money on something and get nothing back.”

“So, how is living with us going to make money for him?” asked Karen, my older sister.

“Ah, this is the part of the deal that is really exciting and will profit all of us,” said Dad. He explained to us that a couple of years ago, some Wall Street banks and other investors had bought mortgage-backed securities that turned out to be junk when a lot of the people who got the mortgages couldn’t make their payments. Many lost their homes to foreclosure, and the flood of ownerless homes on the market brought down the value of all other homes, including ours. “It turns out that our house is worth in today’s market two-thirds of what we paid for it, but we still have to make mortgage payments based on its value when we bought. What Cousin Dave is going to do for us is pay off the mortgage so that we’ll own it free and clear.”

“Actually, Cousin Dave will own it,” said Mom, tapping her fingers on the table.

“Well, yeah, that’s true, but we’ll have a promissory note from him stipulating that, if and when he sells the house, we will receive back at least our down payment and accumulated equity at the time he came to live here. If we get a selling price equal to what we paid originally for it, we get a percentage of that as well.”

“And if the house sells for more than what we paid?” I asked.

“Cousin Dave gets to keep the profit. But for the time he’s here, it’ll cost us nothing except utilities and taxes.”

“And what happens after he leaves?”

“We’ll pay Cousin Dave rent, but at a rate way below market,” said Dad. “He also promised me that, however things go with his restructuring of Acme, I will always have a job there.”

The next day after school, Molly, Karen and I found all our belongings neatly piled in the cellar, along with our beds, dressers and desks. It was fairly dry down there, with the help of a de-humidifier, the roar of which kept us awake at night until we grew used to it. The few bare bulbs hanging from the floor jousts overhead didn’t give us much light by which to do our homework, so we usually went upstairs and sat at the kitchen or dining room table.

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Page 2 of fiction by Douglas J. Levy Cousin Dave turned out to be a pretty nice guy. He was a big man with a round face, gray hair and wirerimmed glasses. He liked calling me “Bucko” for some reason, and that became my name for as long as he lived with us. Part of the deal was that he got to park his Bentley in the garage where Mom usually parked, and since the other bay was filled with the lawn mower, snow blower and our bikes, Dad had no other choice but to park on the lawn (our town had an ordinance prohibiting all-night parking on the street.) The grass soon looked pretty chewed up and rutted, like an army had rolled through our yard.

Cousin Dave spent hours up in his rooms when he wasn’t at Acme, coming downstairs to join us for dinner and watch some television. He always asked if we wouldn’t mind watching the Fox News Channel at least for an hour or two, so that he could catch up on the day’s events. He’d sit there, at first giggling, but soon howling with laughter at what the people on the TV were saying. “That O’Reilly, he really kills me,” chuckled Cousin Dave through his tears.

One evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table working on a paper for social studies class when Cousin Dave came in and got himself a beer out of the fridge. “What are you working on, Bucko?” he asked, sitting down across from me.

“I’m writing a paper describing how each one of us, because of what we do, helps to make our democracy work. By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you do?”

“I make money,” he answered.

“No, I mean, what do you do or make for which you get paid?”

“I make money from money. That’s all I do,” he said. “I take some of my own money and add to it money from other investors like me, and then I go looking for a company that I think isn’t producing up to its potential and buy it.”

“That must cost you a lot.”

“Not really. I put in a little bit and then go to the banks and get loans against what I say the company is worth. This is called leverage. Anyway, I pay myself and the other investors some profits from the loans we got from the banks. So, I start making money before I have done anything to help the company get profitable again.”

“How often does that happen, companies coming back and being successful, I mean?” I asked.

“Oh, every once in while. We’ve had some really great success stories, but usually our attempts at restructuring fail, and we’re forced to sell off parts of the company that do make money, or close the company entirely, in which case we get its cash assets, like any money it put aside as a pension for its employees. Either way, I and my co-investors make money, which is the point, you see,” he said, smiling.

“What happens when a company closes? What happens if you aren’t successful with Acme Manufacturing?”

“Everyone loses his job, but don’t worry about your dad and Acme. I promised him and I promise you he will always have a job. We’re family, remember. I always look out for family.”

“I’m confused,” I said, “about what you told me about your work and how that fits into my assignment.

How does what you do help make democracy work?”

“Okay,” said Cousin Dave, “tell me what democracy is.”

“It’s a form of government in which the will of the majority is expressed in laws the government passes, while respecting the rights of the minority.”

Cousin Dave then laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall off his chair. “Bucko,” he sputtered, trying to regain control, “you’ve got it exactly, totally, one-hundred eighty degrees turned around wrong.

American democracy today has the will of the minority running things, and without giving a tinker’s damn for the rights of the majority. Let me explain it to you.

“Over the last thirty or so years, men like me – people who want to make money from money – have gotten control over a lot of what government does. If we want a piece of legislation to never see the light of day, or a regulation taken off the books, or a tax loophole written specifically for us, we make campaign contributions to legislators, who are later visited by our lobbyists. The lobbyists tell them what we want, and they do it.

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Page 3 of fiction by Douglas J. Levy “But our greatest innovation was making the Tea Party the base of the Republican Party. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting the formation of Tea Party groups all over the country, and convinced Republicans that bringing these folks in would be good for the party. Of course, it actually has had the opposite effect, but that doesn’t really matter, because what men like me created was a minority that now runs the show. A few dozen Tea Party true believers in the House of Representatives and Senate make it impossible to get anything done. And nothing done – no change in the status quo – means men like me can go on, making money from money, amassing more and more of this nation’s wealth, undisturbed. A minority in Congress runs the government, and we, the so-called one percent of the one percent, run the minority.”

“But Tea Party people always talk about the intent of the Founding Fathers and a strict interpretation of the Constitution,” I said, “that they want to make a smaller federal government that doesn’t cost as much to run, and thereby reduce taxes.”

“And they’ve achieved that by making it impossible to get any fiscally reasonable or responsible thing done. For example, the minority, by allowing the sequester to take effect, has effectively reduced the size of government permanently, and what we are left with will be starting point for more cuts to come.”

“Can’t they see the mess they are making?”

“Perhaps, but it doesn’t matter, Bucko. These guys have tasted power, and they want to stay in office much more than to do the right thing. And that’s fine for me and other investors like me: for as long as Congress is dysfunctional, the country’s wealth is ours for the picking. That’s how what I do makes democracy work, at least for me. Put that in your paper, and I’m sure your teacher will be impressed. Now, I’m going to say goodnight,” and Cousin Dave got up, mussed my hair as he walked by, and went upstairs. I looked at my paper, and began to rewrite it.

A week later Cousin Dave moved out, and Molly, Karen and I got our bedrooms back. Not long after that, it was announced that Acme Manufacturing had been sold and the local plant was closing. Good to his word, Cousin Dave made sure Dad still had a job: he’s the night watchman at the shuttered factory.

And my teacher gave me a D on my paper about democracy.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

George Morse #13 Lefty, Fats, and Stinky My father and I sat outside at the nursing home. Dad wore a Red Sox cap and a spring jacket. A folded red blanket lay across his knees, and a clear tube snaked from the green cylinder on the back of his wheelchair to the cannula at his nose.

We sat in comfortable silence for a while, until I observed, “Looks like good weather for Opening Day.” Dad pondered the idea, and then turned his watery blue eyes to me. “I remember when you played baseball. You were first baseman … Lefty was the pitcher … Fats was the catcher, and that little guy, Stinky, was out in right…”

I did play baseball, back in Little League, and I was a first baseman. But ... Lefty? ... Fats? … Stinky?

After a few seconds, I realized that Dad had somehow placed me on his own team, a gang of neighborhood boys who played on the sandlots of his youth. At age ninety-three, his mental landscape featured brightly illuminated islands of memory surrounded by a thickening fog. He was dying--he went, peacefully, a few months later--and sometimes I felt as if I could hear the machinery grinding down, the wiring shorting out, the synapses snapping apart.

A couple of years later, it’s mid-afternoon on a beautiful spring day, a blessed return of fine weather after a long, rugged winter. I’m recently retired, with no obligations for the day, and I decide to amble down to the neighborhood park, on the whimsical notion that the ghosts of Lefty, Fats, Stinky, and the rest of my father’s old gang might be hanging around.

I arrive at the park and take a seat on a wooden bench. At this time in the afternoon, the place is nearly deserted--just a few women with strollers and a handful of toddlers. The stylish strollers boast cup holders, mobiles, and storage pockets. The women cluster on benches, chat, and watch the kids. One by one, they stare my way, and I understand the scrutiny. Is the old man on the bench a kidnapper? A perv? Is he eying the kids? Anticipating the questions, I’ve brought a book, and some minutes of ostentatious reading appear to ease the women’s concerns.

After a time, I look toward the baseball field and note that it appears shabby and poorly maintained.

The chain-link backstop is rusty, punctured in places. The grass is long. Stones, broken glass, cigarette butts, and debris fill the rutted base paths.

A few kids whose ages appear to be in the late single-digits arrive at the new all-plastic playground.

Elementary school must be out. A few years ago, community volunteers built a wooden playground, a giant complex of forts, castles, and pirate ships. Then, somebody found the wood to be leaching arsenic into the soil, so the village tore out the complex and replaced it with a colorful, but much more modest, collection of plastic slides, climbing walls, and balance beams. The difference in apparatus doesn’t seem to matter to the kids, who unleash a whirlwind of pent-up energy. They climb, jump, run, chase, shout, argue, cry, hide, and run some more. It’s all a blur.

Soon, middle school-aged boys and girls gather near the playground, clearly too old to play there, unsure of what to do with their time. Even though it’s a cool day, with a high in the upper fifties, they’re all wearing shorts and t-shirts. Some of the girls have very short shorts. (Middle school, really?) By my count, one in three kids is on a cell phone. A few boys arrive on bicycles. The conversations are loud and easily overhead. Clearly, nobody is called Lefty, Fats, or Stinky anymore; everyone is “Dude,” even the girls.

Today, I suppose any kid who calls another “Fats” or “Stinky” is going to find his name in the school “Bully Box.” On the other hand, anyone on the playground who’s not “Dude” seems to be “Asshole,” so go figure.

The crowd splits up; a few boys go to play on the basketball court, while a cluster of girls drifts over to watch. A handful of boys head off to play a new video game that is clearly “awesome,” while some girls leave for the shopping plaza.

The first high-school kids to arrive are the smokers, clearly desperate after a day of abstinence or furtive criminality. They huddle near the backstop, saying little, puffing away. The group lounges in the same place before school, even in the depths of winter. I sometimes drive my grandson to middle school, and as we pass the smokers, he laughs and calls them the “Honor Society.”

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Page 2 of fiction by George Morse Next to arrive are some high school boys who take to the basketball court. They begin shooting with the middle-schoolers, who quickly concede one end of the court to them. As more high school boys arrive, they organize for a full-court game and the middle school guys call it a day. I’ve seen this before. Later, around dinnertime, a group of college-age and adult men will take over the court and it will be the high-schoolers’ turn to skulk away. Big fish, little fish.

As the middle school boys leave the playground, a few middle school girls stick around to watch the high school boys, who have stripped off their t-shirts and are warming up with the occasional dunk and a lot of theatrical razzle-dazzle. Then, a group of high school girls arrives, and the middle schoolers drift away.

Big fish, little fish.

Out in the baseball outfield, a boy and girl wearing “Village Recreation” t-shirts lay out a playing field, delineating its boundaries with series of orange cones. More village people arrive, followed by a gaggle of early-elementary boys and girls. This must be an after-school program. Quickly, the supervisors divide the kids into teams, and a soccer game begins. Both teams include boys and girls, all with modest skills, but conspicuous enthusiasm.

As dinnertime approaches, a few dads arrive, mostly in business attire--suits or sport coats, ties, tasseled loafers. They join their wives on benches by the playground, or stand on the sidelines at the soccer field.

Soon, families will pile into minivans, kids will drift away, and the only denizens of the park will be the serious hoops players … and an old man pretending to read a book.

I haven’t seen Lefty, Fats, or Stinky, but I wonder what they would think if they came back to the park.

Would they shake their heads at the condition of the baseball field? Exclaim, “Soccer? In the outfield? With girls?” How would they react to cell phones? Video games? Plastic playgrounds? Minivans? Short shorts? A universe of “dudes” and “assholes?”

I surrender my bench to a pregnant woman pushing two kids in a stroller. She looks tired, and I’m ready to head home for dinner. The old gives way to the new. It’s the theme of the day: things change, society evolves, some changes are for the better, some for worse, and some are a little of both.

I’m happy with my day; didn’t see the ghosts, but saw a few things clearly, connected some dots.

No signs of fog.

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Khalil Ihsan Nieves #14 planting olive trees Musa lifted his old pickaxe overhead, then swung it down in an arc, its metal edge striking rock, cleaving clay, the clacking then echoing in the valley before being enveloped in the distant thunder of artillery shells falling on a village 50 miles away.

When he had dug two feet deep and just as wide, Musa put the pickaxe aside, and pushed his shovel into the soil. He then lifted the soil clearing the hole, and molded an upward cone of soil in the bottom.

Now he stopped, momentarily, turned to his grandson, touched his hand, and spoke gently.

Ayat, planting an olive tree is like creating a nation. They can live for hundreds of years, so you must plant properly and cultivate the tree.

He paused, sometimes the boy’s mind drifted, and he wanted Ayat’s full attention.

They need rich soil because you are planting for generations. When possible you must avoid the rocky hills and soil. However, sometimes you have no choice. So, if the soil is too rocky, it will seem as if the rock is unyielding. Still, you must remove them. Often one by one.

As Musa spoke, black smoke from the distant village mushroomed towards the open blue sky.

Some of the rocks will bruise and scar your hands, and that soil will twist the tree trunks, stunt the tree branches, and the olives will often be small and diseased. However, some trees are stubborn, building up resistance, growing stronger. This is our heritage.

The two then moved up the hill for the next planting.

My grandson, here, look carefully at the soil on this steep hill, it is exhausted. Hard years have slowly eroded it. So, you steel yourself, and bring many shovels of compost to give it new life. You must also be economical and use the uprooted rocks to build terraces, so the terraces can harvest sudden rain storm waters, causing the water to return into the earth, drawing the roots deeper. This way, even in the coming dry seasons, those trees will bring full olives.

A pause.

Perhaps, after many years, maybe generations, even battered orchards can heal.

Listen, in those early days of 1947 my grandfather gave my father three acres. My father planted his trees on the hills one by one, in rain or sun. When they walked those hills, my grandfather would stop at a particular place, take the soil in his hand, then taste it. Telling my father if the soil needed compost, wood ash, or simply, time. More time.

When I was ten my grandfather taught me to plant, often as the morning sun slowly lifted the dew bringing hope to my heart.

This is how I remember my grandfather.

Ayat, you plant the tree on top of the cone of soil, tamp down the top soil, then put the clay around the top mound. As for the rocks you do not use in the terrace, set them aside to be used in the stone walls of your house. Use the ash from the old trees you had cut down, or the ashes from the trees we burnt after the Zionists bulldozed the olive trees from my father’s land declaring, a land without people, for a people without land. Take those ashes and put them on the rocky hills around the trees.

So, Ayat, as my grandfather taught me, you can sometimes take the bitter and make it sweet.

Musa paused, looking at Ayat. You had asked, Grandpa, do you seek vengeance?

No. All I ask is that my grandfather’s land be returned to me, that my children who were forced to leave, be allowed to return home, and that when my children look to the sky, they only see sunlight or rain. No warplanes.

I also pray that one day when they run in our olive fields, there are no mine fields. But enough of this dream talk.

As for the Jews, the Quran demands that we protect them and the Christians. So, we had always welcomed them as when the Spaniards expelled them in 1492, stealing their land, money and honor. Or when the Poles had killed them, or the Russians, or the Germans. We always accepted them telling these refugees we did not fire the ovens at Auschwitz. So, where does all this hate come from?

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Page 2 of fiction by Khalil Ihsan Nieves They both looked at more black smoke mushrooming in the distance.

My grandson, in the first spring blossoms will come. They will be white. White like the house the Israelis blew up in 1948. Or bombed in 1967. Or bulldozed in 2003.

Still, I will always cross the fields to touch them, worrying, that a late frost, a sudden storm, a strong wind, or a bulldozer will kill them.

Ayat, we have known many cold winds that blew across or land. When the Zionists came, a blizzard cut across our land. They were like the locusts God sent to destroy the Egyptians.

When these European Jews came, they hated native Jews. You see, most government posts are held by the European Jews.

Yesterday the Israelis bulldozed Sayyid’s land. It was immediately after the American president made yet another speech supporting Palestinian rights. I took Sayyid into my stone house, gathered the ashes from that burnt soil, and put it around the trees in my rocky field, telling Sayyid, his wife and three children, my house is your house.

So, no, I do not hate the Jews. Our Prophet married a Jew. You ask, Why do I plant now in my seventieth year?

Musa’s brow furrowed deeper, and he spoke slowly. Slowly.

I will tell you. A wise man once told a caliph. Others planted so that we might eat, we must plant so that others can eat.

And I pray that one day, Ayat, my great grandchildren will harvest olives in the fields, throwing their laughter into the sun, this laughter filling the skies with each child’s laughter encasing the other’s laughter.

And from those trees, one day, God-willing, my great grandchildren will eat bread soaked in olive oil.

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Michael R. O'Brien #15 Aidan and the Animal A short story The trumpeter hornbill makes the most inhuman of noises. Just as Aidan was pushing his tiny, marina sauce covered hands against the glass door, a trumpeter hornbill cracks the air inside with that ferocious bellow. Aaaww-aw-aw-aw. Awww-aw-aw.

“You canth get meee” teases Aidan, as he turns and closes the door with both palms, unwittingly sealing off the outside world. He giggles and runs across the concrete floor, past the two massive chain-linked cages in the massive concrete room, each holding the hornbills, some red-eyed doves, and a small colony of the large rodent-like rock hydrax. He twirls in his toddler way, floppy pizza in hand, toward the metal bar barricading the public from this exhibit’s major creatures. His tiny feet make a soft pattering against the cold floor. A smell finally makes Aidan stop and wrinkle his two-year old nose. Something he doesn’t recognize.

A synthesis of feed, feathers and bleached manure.

Aaaaww-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw. The bird! He hears an echo of skittering rodent feet in the fake trees of the chain-linked cages, then the cooing of doves and the hissing of a rock hydrax protecting its territory. The room is loud and thick with living breath. Yet, there are no other kinds of sounds in this concrete savanna.

He hears no rumbling of cars, no tinkling of iPhones, no happy chirping of cartoon muppets on his father’s computer. There are no sounds with which Aidan is familiar. Now, Aidan is scared. He looks around, the edge of the plastic mask atop his scalp creates a brim of shade, from which he can peer out. He knows this place. He has been here before, but always holding his mommy’s hand when there were other children and grown-ups and people complaining and talking and making other familiar noises to drown out the unsettling bird and rodent calls. Now he is alone. Aidan and the animals.

The door is closed. The zoo is closing. Aidan only wanted to play hide and seek from his parents, now he is lost. The angle of the fluorescent lights, suspended from the twenty foot ceiling, cast long, crossing double shadows from each of the rock hydrax. “Despite its appearance as a large rodent, the Rock Hydrax is in fact most closely related to the elephant,” he would read on the posted placard, if Aidan could read.

“Look for its two small tusk-like teeth.”

Hhhhhhhaaaaaaaa. One of the creatures jumps up against the fence its tiny rat-like paws gripping the links, sharp hideous fangs hissing beneath brown fur and anger. Aeden stumbles backwards, bumping his diapered bottom against the concrete. The hydrax and the hornbills and the red-eyed doves scatter and flap in a circuit within each cage. Two cubic meters each to his left and to his right. Aidan arches back on the ground and cries, taking the tantrum pose for which he hopes an invisible adult will wrap hands under his armpits and carry him away. But the animals cry louder than he can cry.

As he lay looking up at the lights and the circling shadows, a face appears high above him. It turns and peers and looks at him. Big black eyes with black eyelashes, ears angled back and outwards, a brown and tan patchwork on its square forehead, two little antennae or antlers or horns, and a snout. It makes no sound.

It just looks right at Aidan. He has seen a thousand cartoon versions of this being and he even has a plush one at his grandma’s house. But this one is just starring at him. There from 16 feet above, this one is different. This one is real.

“Go ‘way gi-affe! Go ‘way!” The giraffe just looks at him, tilting its reticulated head slightly this way and that, studying the strange small creature lying on the floor. Aidan stands up. He does not like it when his parents or toys do not do what he tells them to do. Another placard reads, “The Giraffe House at the Buffalo Zoo was built in 1967.” Its square shape and reticulated architecture remain relics to zoo design from that era. In the towering, aqua-green walled concrete room, designed to just barely fit these magnanimous creatures, Aidan’s smallness is most readily apparent. He feels small compared to his parents, but they at least exist in his same plane of reality. These creatures, the three of them, are from another world entirely. Their legs are thin trees with rot knobs for knees and tails like vine from which a tire should swing.

Their necks another world tall. Their snouts are not smiling, not frowning, just peering at this tiny human specimen. “Go ‘way!”

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Page 2 of fiction by Michael R. O'Brien But they do not go away. The tallest one remains starring at him. It has darker almost black spots that have the shape of squares, instead of pentagons and octagons and other -tagons that Aidan hasn’t learned yet, that the other giraffes have. Aidan is still learning the way to control things with the sounds you made with your mouth. He tries something his parents have been working on with him for the past few months now.

“Pleeease, Gi-affe, go ‘way?” It does not move. “Please.”

The tongue of the silent creature curls up past its emotionless lip, an inhuman purple-black tongue. Its eyes, like outerspace, peer deeper into the boy. It does not speak. At least not in the way that Aidan’s parents do, but Aidan feels he maybe can understand it. He shakes. No. He is learning the words that humans use, and he will use them now. Aidan has seen his neighbor command a dog to sit , lie down, rollover and heel, all with only his mouth. “Gi-affe, sit down! Sit down Right Now!” The purple-black tongue just licks the other lip.

The trumpeter hornbill and the hydrax are still cawing and clawing. Their racket mocking this idle human quest. That’s it! Aidan grabs the edges of the plastic mask he wears atop his head with both hands.

He pulls the mask down over his face, so his eyes just barely peek out from the holes in the plastic. He feels with his fingers over the pointed ears and the pointed nose on the mask face. He makes the sound of the wolf the mask says he has become. Aauuuuuoooooooooo! Aa-au-aauuuuoooooo!

The rock hydrax and the hornbills and the red-eyed doves quiet down in spiritual reverence. Grrrrrr!

Grrrrwwwwlllll! Only the wolf can quiet the jungle. The black eye of the giraffe twinkles in recognition.

Aauuuooooooo! Aidan skitters and scurries about on all fours, howling at the towering beasts. His imaginary tail shaking and curled, his jacket becoming fur that stands up on end. The pizza, though, still slides on the edge of his cupped hand and he drags it along the concrete floor.

The giraffe, the tall one with the dark square spots on its neck, bends its head down, curving like a rainbow, and nudges toward the wolf-child. Aidan now on his knees and front paws, offers it his pizza. The animal sniffs and rejects this unnatural thing. Instead, it bends its impossible neck back up toward the ceiling, reaches its black tongue and mouth into a metal nest holding moistened hay, and grabs a bite.

It brings this mouthful back down again to Aidan. Offering it to him. Aidan pulls up the mask. On his knees, in the position parents take in church on Easter, Aidan receives the hay from the giraffe’s mouth into his open palms. He eats it. With the purple-black tongue, the giraffe licks Aidan’s forehead. There in the silence, Aiden understands the giraffe.

Three humans suddenly open the sealed door. The smog of the city seeps back into the Giraffe House, along with the metallic sound of its inhuman machines, the trucks and automobiles and construction equipment clamoring in from Parkside Ave. “Aidan! My God! Aidan!” His parents and a zoo keeper, clad in a brown and tan patchwork flannel on square shoulders, rush in. The parents swoop up the kneeling child.

The zoo keeper beats back the bent beast with a broom or a stick or some such thing. “Giraffe! Back down!

Back down right now!” Aidan and the rock hydrax and the trumpeter hornbills are crying, but no one can hear them. The human demands are echoing too loudly off the concrete and paint. Aidan’s parents clear the filthy hay from their child’s mouth, the wolf mask gets torn off and lost in the storm. The drum beat of “Aidan, Aidan, Aidan, Are you ok?” drowns out every other type of music. As they scuttle him out through the glass door, Aidan looks back at the tall giraffe with the dark square spots on its neck. Its eyes are simply black again. It says nothing.

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Richard K. Olson #16 Listening To Leo I’m sitting in the living room, in the dark, when my wife Caroline comes home. My buddy Leo is long gone. Caroline never liked him, but as long as he was married to her friend Karen she was able to tolerate him. Barely. So on nights when Leo is coming over I let her know and off she goes. Usually to Bingo, or out shopping. Which is fine with me. I like it when Leo and I can kick back and relax. So what if he’s a little screwed up. Who the hell isn’t?

I’m smoking a cigarette when Caroline walks in. All she can see is the light from the tip of it.

“Is that you still here, Leo?” She’s being subtle as usual. Then she sees me.

“What’s up with the cigarette?” She’s flipping on every damn light in the house.

Before I can answer her I start choking on the smoke. I didn’t mean to inhale, I forgot.

“Leo left them here. I thought I’d try one.

“Are you all right?” She walks by me and takes the cigarette out of my mouth. Then she starts jabbing it into the ashtray.

“You know I’m allergic to smoke.” She starts out to the kitchen with the ashtray. I’m thinking to myself, one of these days Caroline. I’m thinking about brute force, only I’m not saying anything out loud. I’m biding my time.

“How was Bingo?”

“I lost. Mary Ellen won again though. I told her I was gonna sit in her lucky seat next time. She doesn’t need the money, but she always wins.” This Mary Ellen friend of hers is absolutely loaded. The lucky Bitch.

I take out another cigarette, but I don’t light it up. I’m holding it though, like I might light it at any moment - like I haven’t decided yet. The living-room has glasses and plates all over the place. It’s a mess.

Caroline comes in and starts picking up, like it couldn’t wait until the morning. She wants to know what happened to Leo - if we got all his stuff moved in. He’s moving to Montana. Naturally she doesn’t want to seem interested in someone she can’t stand. After a moment I say: “Well, we got everything moved in.” She pretends that she doesn’t·know what I’m talking about.

“What’s that, Hon?” She’s stacking up some plates.

“We moved Leo’s stuff in. He didn’t have that much and it all fit down in the basement. It sorta looks like his old living room. It’s amazing, you can work for all those years and not accumulate much. God, I’d hate to have to empty this place with all the garbage we have.”

“Garbage?” She gives me one of those looks of hers. “The only garbage here is that junk you and your buddy moved in here. The bastard. I hope he enjoys himself in Missouri, I only wish it were farther away.”

“Not Missouri-” I tell her, “he’s moving to Montana.”

I don’t tell her that Leo is going to live with his old high school sweetheart. At least that’s his plan. And I sure don’t tell her that he’s always loved this girl. Not that she’d be listening anyway, but if she was she couldn’t get on the phone fast enough to tell Karen about it.

She’s had it in for Leo ever since he got divorced last year. It spoiled her Saturday nights, and she blames him. Sure it spoiled Saturday night-but for all of us, even Leo. But like he says, if you don’t love your wife anymore-the only thing to do is get the hell out. And he did. But it’s hard to forget the good times, playing cards, or going out, or just visiting. Those good times were like clock-work. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Then everything went wrong for him. He lost his job, and when he did get another one it didn’t last long.

Nothing went right for him. For some reason once things got really bad he started talking about Vietnam. It must have been building up inside of him, because he never mentioned the place, or if he did it was something funny, or stupid that happened, not the war parts. The girls hated it but I didn’t mind. In fact I was interested as hell. I never went myself, and I’m kind of sorry now because I really think it builds a man up. It gives you character to have been in a war.

“Quit talking about it,” Caroline said one time. And no matter what he would say she kept on saying, “I don’t like the war. I don’t want to hear about it.” And she would put her hands up to her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear.

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Page 2 of fiction by Richard K. Olson “Listen to me, Caroline, or I’ll’ get the box and show you the war-” “Oh no, you won’t Leo,” Karen said right away. “You bring that out here, and... well, I don’t know what but-” “What’s in the box?” I said. I want to know what they’re talking about.

“You don’t want to know, believe me,” Karen said.

“Listen to me, Caroline. I didn’t like the war either.” Boy was he getting pissed. “But what the fuck over, I was a nineteen year old piece of meat for their meat grinder over.”

It was shortly after that that our wives started going out to bingo, or shopping on Saturday night. Leo and I would have the house to ourselves. That’s when he really started to give me the lowdown on Vietnam.

I remember this one night in particular, right after our wives left for bingo Leo went into his bedroom.

He came out with this little box like you have for jewelry, and handed it to me.

“Don’t open it yet,” he said. “Let’s get a beer first.”

I was curious as hell all of a sudden.

“Come on Leo-” I said. “What the hell’s in here?”

“All in due time, my boy. Hang on to your little...” but he didn’t finish. He handed me a beer and we went into the other room and sat down on the floor by the stereo.

“Open it,” he said, taking a long slup from his beer. “Go on. It won’t blow up.” He had this grin on his face.

I opened it and looked but for the life of me, I had no idea what it was.

“What the hell is it·?” God, was I naive.

“It’s an ear,” he said. “I cut it off a VC in Nam.” I’d known this guy for years, yet this was a side I’ve never seen. But I was fascinated.

“You’ve had this ear all this time?” I was thinking, hey, this guy is my best buddy and he’s got secrets I don’t know about.

“Yeah. Karen flips out when I show the ear to anyone. She doesn’t want to hear about the war. She won’t even go near my dresser drawer. She puts my shorts and stuff on top of the damn dresser, and I gotta put them away.” He looked at me for a moment. “I’m not sure why I keep it. But I can’t seem to get rid of it.

And I sure as hell don’t know why I did it. It was just war, and you ended up doing a lot of shit that doesn’t have an explanation. Not that anyone would listen anyway.” He took another drink of his beer. “It’s strange, but it makes me feel like I did something once. Like I was - I don’t know - doing something for my tribe, my people. And it counted for something. But I don’t know anymore. My buddy Tom Burke, our Machine Gunner used to say something like, ‘not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.’ I think about that a lot, but sometimes I just seem to get lost in it. Words. Fucking words. But who the hell listens?”

I was never in the service myself. In fact I worked hard as hell to get a student deferment. I didn’t care. I wasn’t putting my ass on the line for anything. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t believe in it. I still don’t, but listening to Leo I’ve become mesmerized by his ear and his damn war.

“You warrior,” I said to him. “You combat veteran. I don’t believe this.” It was like he grew about three feet right there in front of me. He made me feel so inexperienced. I wanted to hold the ear. I wanted to pick it up and, it sounds weird, but I wanted to put it next to my ear and listen, or something. Even if it was defunct, but instead I reached up and pulled my own ear. We looked at each other and I reached over and touched Leo’s ear. Ever so slightly. He was looking at me and damn if we didn’t crack up laughing.

“It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Did you kill this guy?” And I could almost picture Leo in the jungle with all that gear on that they have to wear, with the jungle boots and all. I’ve seen some pictures of him with his weapon and ammo, and he’d be standing there in the middle of nowhere with his flak vest on and that hat they’d wear, and he’d be brown and manly looking as hell.

“Come on, tell me about it, Leo.” I was feeling envious as hell.

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Page 3 of fiction by Richard K. Olson “Let’s grab another beer first,” he said. I put the cover on the box and brought it with me. We got our beer and then headed back into the living room. Leo put on “Who’s Next.”

He was diddy-boppin’ around to the music, turning out all the lights, except for the lava-lamp and the light over his fish tank. Finally he sat down and pulled out this bomber that he must have rolled earlier and lit it up for us. We passed it back and forth, listening to the music and watching the fish. This one male swordfish was chasing after a little female. He kept on trying to poke her, but she was swimming faster than he was. The poor bastard just couldn’t nail her.

“Typical female,” I said. “Don’t know what’s good for them.” We’re both laughing about it, but we know it wasn’t that funny. Because I was thinking - once you get married, once you’re hooked, a lot of women start getting away from sex. Once they have you they’re not that passionate anymore, and you’ve got to actively pursue the sex thing if you ever want to be satisfied.

I looked down at the box again. Leo was watching me and when he saw me he reached up and pulled on his ear again, but this time it was almost scary.

“I want the story on this ear,” I told him. “Was this like hand to hand combat or something? Don’t even tell me you killed someone face to face.” I was sitting there with him, looking at the fish tank but I was thinking of the Mekong River, and wishing I was out on patrol with him.

“Never say ‘kill’ all right?” He had this look on his face, almost painful, like I hurt him or something.

“Because killing is not polite, Bud. You kill someone here and you go to jail. In war you waste people, but you don’t kill them.”

“I’m sorry, Leo,” and I was, if I offended him, “I’m just talking...”

“I know only I don’t like the word kill. We’re raised never to do that. So in a war-like situation you have to waste people. Wasting is SOP in War. But no, it wasn’t hand to hand,” he said, and took a drink of his beer. “If you get into a situation where it’s hand to hand, it’s not war, it’s just fighting, just John Wayne stuff.

War is more about fire power than boxing or something. Anyway, we’re out on patrol, in this place called the Plain of Reeds. The monsoons had started only a few days earlier but it seemed like it had been raining forever. Forever. Choppers dropped us in that morning. Search and destroy. Nothing fancy or complicated.

All we ended up doing though was hump our gear around for hours. We got so tired after a while our Louie he was cool, said the hell with this, and we all set up a position and called in some arty so we could relax awhile. Well, the bastards must have been watching us all the time. You gotta remember, eyes are always watching, ears are always listening. There are forces all around you that you don’t know about.”

“Whada ya mean?” I said. “They attacked you?” I opened up the box again, and I’m thinking about picking it up. I want to pick it up.

“Go ahead,” Leo said, “Take it out. You can touch it Buddy. You’ve got two of them yourself. If this fellow had listened more carefully he might be alive today, and not wasted meat.”

“I can’t,” I said, and I really couldn’t. “I want to, but it’s human. Even now it’s still human.”

“No,” he said, “listen to me. Your ears are human, this one, this little ear is beyond human - it’s further than that. What’s human is what you do with your ears while you’re living. That’s what’s important, not what happens once you’re wasted. This little guy...” he says picking it up, “this little guy is simply dead meat.” He was gentle as hell with it. Almost tender. He held it out to me almost like a gift that you would give to someone. I could hear him breathing it was so quiet all of a sudden. “Take this Brother...”

I reached out and took it. “It’s light,” I said. It’s fragile, so I’m being careful as hell with it. I’m holding it, but I’m looking at Leo. “You’re holding a sort of power. It wants to communicate with you, but you gotta listen closely, if you ever hope to hear what it has to say. It’s power, but you make it good power or bad power. It’s what you hear inside of you when you hold it. It’s power if it helps you learn a lesson from the war, otherwise it’s just wasted meat. All those guys and villagers dying, screaming during the war, and yet who the hell hears them...?”

I heard him but I wasn’t paying very good attention to Leo then. I wasn’t listening right, I was feeling like I had some sort of secret, or something in my hand.

“I’ve gotta tell Caroline about this,” I said. “She won’t believe it.”

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Page 4 of fiction by Richard K. Olson “Well, don’t tell her until you get home.”

“But I want her to see it.”

“Karen will go through the roof if I pull this out in front of company. She doesn’t understand about the ear. She still thinks war is about killing - I try to tell her that it’s about wasting, not killing, but she still doesn’t get it. No one seems to get it. So really - wait until you get home. Then tell her if you want to, but people who haven’t been there don’t get it, believe me.”

“All right.” I could see where he had a point. Women are funny about shit like ears and stuff.

Leo went and grabbed another beer for us. I could hear him singing to himself in the kitchen. “I’m in tune, right in tune and I’m gonna tune right in on you...”

While he was gone I did something funny. I smelled the ear. I don’t·know why I did it. I smell things that’s all. But it didn’t have any smell. Not Oriental, or American. It was blah smelling.

He came back in and sat down. I put the ear back in the box. It looked - I don’t know - interesting there on the white cotton. Almost like jewelry.

Be careful with that little ear,” he said to me. “Are you ready to hear the rest of the story?” He stopped for a moment. Then he whispered real quiet like, “Listen up. If you don’t listen in war, eventually you get wasted, so listen. We finish our chow and are relaxing when all hell breaks loose, and the bastards open up on us. Fortunately we react quick enough, and let loose with everything we got. After, well I don’t know how long, but it seems like fucking forever it’s all over. We didn’t see anyone. They might as well have been spirits, or maybe shadows. Hit and run. That’s the way it usually is during a fire fight. And let’s face it, there’s no reason for them to stick around for us to call in arty on. We’ve got the power, but they’re fighting a different war. Once it quiets down we start to work our way over to where they were. Slow as hell in case they had any mines set out or anything. But there’s nothing. Finally one of our guys finds this body. Beat up to shit. From what you could make out he looks even younger than we were. Like I was nineteen, but this guy was only around fourteen or fifteen. It’s kinda hard to tell when you’re so damaged. I took out my knife and cut his ear off. Not to be sadistic or anything - because I had nothing against that kid-I did it to remind myself that it’s important to always listen. I don’t know, maybe I drink too much, or, maybe I think too much, it’s hard to explain. I only took the one ear though - the other side of his face was almost blown off anyway. One was enough. It proved a point.”

I just sat there watching the fish swim around. That damn male was still trying to knock off a piece, and the female was not cooperating.

We heard the women coming up the stairs laughing about something. I handed Leo the box and he put it back in his bedroom before the girls came in.

It wasn’t long after that that their marriage fell apart completely. The next thing is Leo is living at home with his parents. Then he tells me he is moving to Montana.

“What the hell is in Montana?” I ask him.

“Donna,” he tells me.

It turns out his old high school sweetheart is there. She had jilted him before he went to Nam. “Well, at least we won’t have to put up with him anymore,” Caroline says when I tell her. She doesn’t seem to mind that he wants to store his stuff down in our basement though. “Anything to get rid of him,” she says.

I don’t say anything though. Because I’m thinking this guy is probably the best friend I’ve ever had. All my other friends seem to have gone their different ways one by one. There’s no one to talk to, no one around anymore to listen to.

“Vietnam did some damage to him,” Caroline says.

“It hurt us all,” I tell her. But she doesn’t say anything. She goes back to her television program. I open a beer and go down to the basement. I go over and sit down in Leo’s chair and look at the empty fish tank for awhile. Then I remember something.

I look down at my tool box near the chair and reach under the wrenches and screwdrivers I take out the small jewelry box. I don’t open it up or anything. I don’t need to. I just sit there and finish my beer.

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Page 5 of fiction by Richard K. Olson Earlier that night while I had walked Leo out to his car, he got the box out of the glove compartment and gave it to me.

“I want you to have this, I don’t want to bring it with me. You keep it.”

And he left. I stood out there a long time.

Christ, I’m thinking, those guys were all kids. They should have been home hanging out on the corner with the fellows, and ribbing on one another. Our guys and theirs. They should have been making out with the girls, and trying to have some fun. Not only our guys but theirs as well. Instead they had some old bastards send them off to fight one another. And what the hell for?

I’m thinking how much I hate old men in power. Old men who never listen to anything. I’m running my fingers over the lid of the box, not that it could bring me any sort of luck or anything. Because there is no luck in it. Just wasted meat. Wasted. No one to talk to. No one to listen to.

I finish my beer, put the box away and go upstairs to bed. I can hear Caroline downstairs laughing about something on the television. It’s probably something stupid. I try to go to sleep, but I can’t. I’m thinking about my own life and how damn much I’ve wasted along the way.

What I end up doing is close my eyes and try to picture Montana. I bet it’s not half bad in Montana.

Nice and warm and everything. Then I try to listen - real careful like. And if I don’t move and if I concentrate I think I can almost hear Leo driving to Montana. I can almost hear him singing very quietly to himself as his foot relaxes on the gas pedal just a little and the road hums underneath his tires, spinning around and around.

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Pat Pendleton #17 Breaking Eggs “Paleo was the most googled diet of two thousand thirteen. Did you hear that show on NPR?” Claire tends to a pan of sizzling bacon as Dean ponders a crossword puzzle.

“I’m all for more bacon and eggs.”

She removes items from the refrigerator and imagines curried egg salad and frittata made from the Alice Waters cookbook. He fiddles with the radio antenna to ease the static and turns it off.

“What is an odorous residue—seven words ending in V-I-A-L?” Claire never liked crossword puzzles, but likes helping him while doing other things.

“Stench?”

“No. E-F-F-L-U-V-I-A-L. That’s it. There was an effluvial quality in the Army Navy store my Dad took me to as a young boy. I still remember that smell of war and men—a mix of gunsmoke, tobacco, and gasoline.”

Dean has a habit of reading out loud to Claire from the newspaper, books, magazines, or food labels.

The ongoing journey into all this information is both enjoyable and draining.

“Skinny paper this week--listen to my horoscope. ‘You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world? It’s all the people who never find out what it is they want to do or what it is they are good at or who they can be. Take heed if that description applies to you even a little bit, Libra.’ No, Mr. Astrology. The real tragedy is not getting paid to do what you are good at. Otherwise, maybe it’s best not to know in the first place. Some will never be paid for any work at all. Don’t get me started.”

The growing income inequality is one of their pet gripes and frequent topics of conversation—all roads seem to lead back there. Claire moves about the galley kitchen of the loft like a dancer. She leaps from stove to sink to fridge and back again. Listening to him read from the other side of the oak table, she lifts an egg from the green foam dozen pack. Dean has moved on to the local news page and recites: “Here comes the egg-breaker, the entrepreneur. His job is to crack the handout paradigm.”

Claire grabs a paper towel.

“Crack it with ‘Basic Income Guarantee.’ Everybody gets $1500 at the start of the month—like in the Monopoly game. Wait…Did you just say egg-breaker?”

“Yeah, talk’in about the richest guy in Buffalo.”

“What is an Egg-breaker?”

“Somebody willing to take a risk.”

“Look at this, Dean. I broke an egg just as you said the word egg-breaker.”

He put down paper and glances under the table at the blob of yellow with white chips of shell on the wood floor.

“What are the chances of that?”

Claire mops up the mess with a paper towel and cracks another into the bowl.

“I can’t remember the last time I did that. The egg slipped out of my hand just as you said egg-breaker.”

She dishes out the sautéed cabbage, crisp bacon, and scrambled eggs.

“Here’s your caveman food. Too bad the only things that we hunt and gather are found at AmVet’s or Goodwill.”

Dean places his palms together as if to pray and offers up their usual grace.

“Bon Appetite!”

Claire could not let go of this egg-breaking moment. She would have to unravel all the possible threads of meaning and synchronicity.

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Page 2 of fiction by Pat Pendleton “If our lives were woven into a movie, we would see ourselves in flashback scenes as two strangers circling the same territory of Manhattan during the 1980s…sitting on the steps of The Met, drinking Rolling Rock at Puffy’s, eating blintzes at Kiev. The scenes would dial forward through your time in Texas and my time in Colorado to arrive at our unlikely alignment in Buffalo. The flashbacks would always return to this table with shots of snow flying across the window in the background. What do you think about the title, Sixty-Something?”

He pushed aside his plate to flip open the android notepad.

“Okay, Melanie Mayron. The title makes me nostalgic for Thirty-Something. Two wives and five kids later—way too much to slog through before winding up in this moment.”

Claire wonders about the precise motives for doing anything. She loved the beauty and light of Colorado--the exact reasons for moving back to Buffalo have become vague. Back then, she suspected that she was literally dying, a perception that has proven to be mistaken. More likely, the particular arrangement of the life she found herself in had lost relevance.

“We say someone ‘winds up’ somewhere. Is it wind up like a toy or old watch that simply ticks out the minutes? After all, there is cause and effect. We act and the universe responds. Somebody actually brought you here, Dean, and you stayed. I brought myself back to a place I had no intention of ever returning to.”

Dean looks up from the screen and grabs the crossword puzzle.

“Help me get this last one. What is destiny—four letters ending in an E?” Claire carries plates to the sink.

“FATE--synchronicity’s lazy cousin. When you believe that life is either predetermined or random, happy coincidence is nothing more than serendipity. Synchronicity is a play of energies—thought, intuition, intention, and action. Look at us. Our lives moved in parallel lines until they crossed and overlapped. Then I broke an egg and entanglement ensued.”

Dean shook his head as he gets up to pour more coffee into their yellow mugs.

“Hmmm. You broke an egg?”

“I invited you over for dinner.”

“Well, that was pretty unexpected.”

“You see, cause and effect.”

“Highly effective…and I am still here.”

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Patrick D. Reilly #18 Retiring to my study What a party! I haven’t been to party like that since our wedding. I couldn’t have asked for a better send off. It did prove a bit reflective at times as most retirement parties must. Sitting on display for all of my coworkers, friends, and family watching a slide show of myself through the years, left me slightly conflicted. On one hand, there was the excitement of a new chapter in my life and on the other, a pensive review of a large chunk of day-to-day now behind me. Clichés embraced, it does go fast.

My wife and children did a spectacular job of organizing the tribute. Coming down the hallway to the event space, I could hear the low murmur of voices and the gentle ringing of ice against glass like so many tiny wind chimes. Traditional Irish music clung to the background. Everyone hushed and turned their gaze toward our uncharacteristically formal entry. Everyone smiled knowingly as we glided through the room as if on a monorail. Pleasantries where exchanged and even a tear or two was shed. Which admittedly, I thought was a bit dramatic for the setting, but hey, who am I to criticize how someone displays their emotions? I guess that my leaving was taking a heavier toll than I had realized.

Finally seated atop my designated perch, I was free to survey the entire scene. Formal wear was the uniform of the evening. Men in dark suits and women in dark dresses. Maybe I should have retired during summer so that there would have been some color splashed amongst the crowd. Next time. What color there was sprung from a few tastefully designed and placed bouquets of cornflowers, which have always been my favorite. They symbolize life and fertility and reanimation. Just perfect for that night as I closed one tome and began drafting another. The blue hues, as they've faithfully done since time immemorial, calmed some of my nervousness and swaddled me in contentment.

The chimes re-announced themselves and I snapped back into focus. It would appear that whiskey was the libation of choice. Uisge beatha (ish-kah bah), water of life. And much like its purer variation, this water in reasonable portion can cause life to flourish; but in excess, can extinguish the flame it so proudly fuels. I had had my fair share of the water as a younger man and as such, I now furrow a much more arid field. However, the sweet aroma hung in the air as peat smoke on a humid day so lazily does, and it brought me back to those long gone days. The days of immortality that led into nights where time stood still and we shrunk from the rising sun. I didn't resent this reminder, I appreciated the momentary review. I love stolen moments.

I wound up working the room a bit, dropping in and out of conversations, always leaving them wanting more. I saw my wife from across the room and she seemed distracted, almost pensive. I thought it odd under the circumstances and started to make my way toward her. But being the life of the party made an otherwise straight line more of a mountainous goat path. I was quickly distracted and verbally detained by people who had only the best of intentions. I couldn't rush them for that would have been rude. I listened as they shared their memories.

After what seemed like an eternity and no time at all, I set back upon my initial purpose to seek out my wife. A survey of the room produced no results and I stepped outside onto the peristyle in hope of stealing a few quiet moments with her. While I found the outside to be deserted, I did not feel alone. A velvet cape of honeyed whiskey aroma shrouded me against the chill and my old friend the moon smiled down upon me. I knew the night was frigid in that the snow glistened blue-white, and the lunar light danced in the reflection of an entire universe of diamonds scattered carelessly and deliberately all around me. The cruel sting of the air should have glued my nostrils shut but I was impervious to its attempts. I have always been more comfortable in the cold rather than the heat. That night was no exception.

It is a humbling experience to remove one's self from such a vital and animated engagement in order to simply observe it. Standing in the frozen night, backlit by my old companion, I watched through the window as a group of people, all with their own lives, loves, and troubles, amassed to celebrate my work.

It was truly humbling, but also a touch unsettling because for a moment I had the nerve to wonder if this is what God feels like? I was instantly uncomfortable with the level of ego required to equate my retirement party to the life of God. Quickly, I overcame the embarrassment and pondered the idea.

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Page 2 of fiction by Patrick D. Reilly Everyone in that room was there because of me. They were there to celebrate me. I was the only thing that bound them all together. That moment was completely and utterly unique. I was able to step out of my life and observe it in two ways: one, as a moment in my life custom tailored to the experiences leading up to it and two, as a moment where I didn't exist at all and I was spying on the lives of others with no right or invitation to do so.

A private whimper re-centered me and I was back in the present. My wife was out on the peristyle, initially cloaked in shadow but now comforted in moonlight. Her breath visible in the chill, forming literal shapes to her words as they gently stumbled downward out of her precious mouth. She was uncertain about the path our lives were about to take. She was feeling old.

I put my arm around her shoulders in an attempt to warn off the cold but it did little good. I suggested that we go back inside to the warmth and love of the people gathered there. Wordlessly, she complied.

Together we persuaded the giant oak door to abide our bidding and were suddenly awash in a hubbub of laughter, glassware, and penny whistles. The night sky stayed behind, waiting for our return.

Once inside, I reapplied my party face and submerged myself in the drapery of remembrance. Some stories effectively blocked out the blaze of the noon time finality of my relationships with some of the attendees, while others loosely swayed in the gentle breeze of the knowledge that I would be seeing certain folks shortly. Naggingly though, the finials of the curtain rod of doubt that my wife had confided, refused to be ignored.

I have always thrived in social situations and mostly defined myself by the effect that I had on people, and them upon me. Removed from the day-to-day inclusion of all of these lives within mine, would I continue down the path that I had so fiercely carved out? Would I become alone? I took great comfort in the knowledge that my steadfast bride would remain so, but honestly, I can be a bit much at times. Without resentment, I know that she found relief in my inclusion of others within my zeal. If I'm not careful, all of me could topple down onto her shoulders and that would not be fair. She's so slight, and I haul my fair share of heft.

Not being privy to the subtleties of proper social decorum, I relied on George Costanza's doctrine of going out on a high note. I delivered, in my mind, a complete toast. A heavy body of sincere gratitude and humility bejeweled with twinkles of humor and self-deprecation. Before the applause had completely subsided, my love and I retreated to the quiet glow of our home. Reviews of the evening were put on hold in exchange for sweet sleep for tomorrow, we really go home.

Born from the nothingness, I awaken to my wife's humming. She enters into, and retreats from our room with nervous purpose. I know that she wants this trip to be perfect. She wants that for me. She has had to weather my daydreams and ponderings for what seems like innumerable lifetimes. She knows that I have a tendency to idealize most of life's happenings. It places an unfair burden upon her to attempt perfection where there rarely is any. This burden was never consciously heaved nor received, but toil under it she does. I wish that I could refund this unintentional toll.

My love of musings and idealizations has led me to a delightful treasure trove of stolen moments but I must tread lighter now. Too many stolen moments could lead to a stolen life, and if I'm not careful, my wife could lose herself in me. I hope that this is not at the root of her distance. She's still a bit off since that moment on the peristyle.

The travel, while taking the entirety of the day, was hastened through the filter of sleep. It seemed like we were just standing in our bedroom, and now, we're walking off of the plane into Shannon Airport.

With a head full of aerial tourism videos and a small but vocal expectation of perfection, I breathed in Ireland. I felt her in my cells.

Having arrived past dark, we wearily wove our way through the shy countryside toward the sanctuary of Doolin. The true grace of the place would reveal itself with the confidence that the sun bestows.

Everything that we've done, the planning, the party, the travel, is for tomorrow. The excitement of it all is almost visible in the twinkle of the stars. They seem just a little bit mischievous tonight. They're as excited as I am.

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Page 3 of fiction by Patrick D. Reilly Near dawn, I become oddly aware of a shift in self-awareness. There is an etherealness here that I can't quite grasp, and the harder that I try, the slipperier it becomes. Try picking up a ball of water. It's like that, and as the hand remains wet, so does my psyche. I'm becoming ever cognizant of a vibrational murmur. I hope it's not my heart.

The hydrogen bonds in my DNA are twitching. The actual fibers of my being, the amber of my essence, is opening up to this place. The stardust elements that so kindly fall in line to assemble my simple mind recognize a tone here. There's a song coming in from out over the ocean that has my light swaying like the kelp forests that we're about to glide over. This homecoming is so much more profound than travelling back to one's childhood home. This is so much bigger than I am, I just wish that my parents were here to share this with. I wonder if they would feel it too, or if this song plays only to me?

I feel my wife stir next to me. Was it a dream or a memory? Through the haze of hindsight, does it really matter? Don't they both leave the same mark? I am invigorated by my experience and am eager to commence the day, for today we go to the Aran Island of Inisheer. Just shy of 5 miles out to sea, the easternmost of the Islands has been inhabited for over 5000 years and boasts a population of around 252 Irish speaking souls, give or take. I have always wanted to experience its isolation, to see what it feels like to have nothing but stone, sun, and sea. What did this world feel like to my ancestors? What will it be like for my descendants?

The ferry gently heaves at the end of the pier and I quicken my gait as a child would. In addition to the final destination, I am eager for the leisurely pace that the ferry affords, granting us a gloriously long look at the Cliffs of Moher from sea level. Seven hundred and two feet of sheer rock face either welcomes you or sees you off. Under constant assault from the sea, they stand a formidable rampart against the inevitable victory of the tide. Just how long will it take for the whole of Ireland to slip underneath that infinite wave like so many of her children before her? Will the reunion of mother and her lost fishermen be joyous or will they still hold resentment against her for having been within sight but so out of reach?

With a plume of diesel smoke, we nudge our way into the surf. The boat carries few passengers and we are afforded the luxury of personal space. I take a deep draft of ocean air and look up to the sky. It is a clear day of vivid blue sky and sparse, wispy clouds. The sky looks just like it does back home. I don't know why this strikes me, why would I expect the sky to look different here? The child in me must be having fun with this too.

From the look of our attire, you would think that there was a decent chill in the moist air, but I don't feel it. My hand knit woolen sweater laughs at the wind's attempts to instigate a shudder. Clouds of Puffin, Kittiwake and Fulmar dip and swirl like the schools of fish that avoid them below. A peregrine falcon lazily rides the thermals, feigning disinterest in the cornucopia at its feet. I wonder what has its eyes on the falcon then? What holds the next place in this stack of life undulating before me?

It's me. From the plankton to the fish, to the birds, to the raptor, to me. Onward and upward. This one tiny scene is this one tiny moment contains most of the magic that is life on this planet. Another stolen moment. In appreciation and sudden, overwhelming love for my wife, I turn to kiss her cheek. As my wind and sun chapped lips brush her cheek, the ferry suddenly breaches and pitches me well on my way to going overboard.

Oddly, my first thought is concern over the sweater. This is one serious, heavy, expensive souvenir and I should not be getting wool wet. Secondly, I need to remember to get out of the sweater as soon as I hit the water so as to not be overtaken by its weight. There's enough plankton out there for the fish, I don't need to add to that bounty. And as these thoughts casually meander through my mind, it dawns on me that I'm still not wet.

My mind dilutes as it tries to apply logic to this present. As my back leisurely bobs on the surface of the water, my front seems to be brushing the falcon. It's as if I'm growing like a thunderhead, expanding and churning and gaining strength and power. But this growth is counterintuitive because with it should come the heaviness of added mass but instead I feel lighter, airier. I'm confused by the contradictory sensations but an ease falls over me and I give myself over to whatever is happening.

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Page 4 of fiction by Patrick D. Reilly A silent wind cradles me and me alone. It doesn’t seem to be affecting the ocean or the birds, but I feel its gentle suggestion. I start twisting and spinning and unfurling. I reach down into the reflection in the fish's eye and up to stars hidden behind their veil of blue. I turn to my love who has been watching all along and try to describe to her what this feels like. As I fail to do so, I realize that it was a good day to play with words; but that it was time to put them away, for even they knew that they were useless now.

With a twinkle in my eye and a sparkle in my heart, I scatter like so many ashes from an urn.

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Scott Reimann #19 Clouds in the Basement The Liberty Building wouldn’t do. It was too tall, too bright, too visible. The basement of the former Harris Screw Company would though. It was in a neglected part of town. It had cloudy windows and lots of dust. The bulbs were low and hung from the concrete ceiling by their exposed, limp electric cords. The dust that draped the bulbs had the consistency of the dust that sat thick on the floor. From where the paint was flaking off the walls irregular, erratic splotches of gray paint grew.

As Shawn waited he looked at the flaking paint and tried to read the walls. Recently, unaccountable things had been happening to him. He thought it strange to be here waiting to meet someone he’d never met before. He was here waiting. He was told to wait. He wasn’t told how long to wait, but he was told not to leave until the person he was supposed to meet arrived and they spoke. When he first walked the steps down into the basement and after his eyes adjusted to the masked light, he noticed the paint flaking off the walls.

He didn’t give this much thought until now. He had been staring at them to try making sense of them, create some order. He hadn’t yet made sense of them. So he continued to stare at the splotches. After a while he thought they did make sense. When he stared at them fixedly he thought he saw a rough outline of the United States bookended by the Pacific and the Atlantic. The faint blue paint had chipped away enough to reveal coastlines. The oceans were the negative space. Or, was it the other way around?

Under bald bulbs in this abandoned old factory in the poorest part of town Shawn paced. His cracked, grease-stained work boots stirred the dust and dirt covering the floor. Flakes of paint and rust, dust and crumbling bricks’ sand clung to the bald rubber soles of his boots.

The bulbs were at ten feet intervals and their weak light would overlap in spots. He paced under some lights in a basement no one, it appeared, had visited in a while. Occasionally, where the bulbs’ light overlapped two of Shawn’s shadows would meet and cross paths as well. In these instances, and depending on his foot falls, Shawn would walk on two of his shadows. He didn’t realize he was walking on his shadow.

He didn’t like waiting as long as he was waiting. But he needed money, so he stayed and paced over his shadows.

When he heard the first rusty creaks of the old heavy door he braced himself for the reverberating thunder the slamming door invariably would bring. But it never came. Shawn was confused. When he entered through that door he had not anticipated the soul-shaking slam of the door hammering closed. Now there was no roar.

Descending down Rocky was weighty on the teeth of the metal grated stairs. He walked with a deliberate pace. He did not wait for his eyes to adjust to the light. Before he saw Rocky’s plumb square features, Shawn felt his deep barrel voice call.

“Shawn-ee? . . . Shawny-boy? . . . How the hell are ya?”

Does this guy know me? Does the voice sound familiar? Shawn tried to place the voice but couldn’t. It seems he knows me, Shawn thought.

“Yes. Hello.”

“Yes, Shawn. Yes.” With heavy footfalls that blew up airy puffs of dust—the kind you see after a building has been imploded—Rocky walked directly toward Shawn and stopped close in front of him.

Looking down into Shawn’s white eyes, Rocky jolted out his right hand offering an open palm and said, “Yes, Shawn. I am Rocky Tumbler.” Vigorously pumping Shawn’s hand Rocky continued, “Good to meet a solid guy like you. MacNamara tells me you’re a solid guy. Salt—well pepper—of the earth. Haha!

That’s a joke Shawn! Laugh with me! Don’t be so sensitive. Not what I expected from a guy MacNamara promised was solid. You are solid aren’t ya, Shawny?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Well, a solid guy answers another solid guy’s questions. And, I asked you how you were and you haven’t told me yet.”

“Right, sir.”

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Page 2 of fiction by Scott Reimann “Well, Shawn? How are ya?” Rocky’s voice dropping a couple octaves to elongate and whisper the short last syllable.

“Good, Mr. Tumbler, real good. How about yourself, sir?”

Finally, releasing Shawn’s hand Rocky stuck out his chest, tilted his head back, and said, “Shawny, I feel great and I’m doing great”, as full sharp teeth pushed their way into Rocky’s face, Shawn thought he heard Rocky’s jaws audibly creak.

“Well, sir, that’s good, right?”

“You’re damn right that’s good, Shawny. It’s good for me and for you and for others, perhaps.”

“Well, then, if you’re doing good then I’m doing good.”

“Good, Shawn.” And Rocky started right in, “Now what do you know about fires?”

“Like campfires, sir? Forest fires?”

Rocky shone a bemused thin smile at Shawn’s dissembling.

“No, Shawn. Like house fires. What do you know about fires that start in a house and destroy that house?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Rocky, suddenly roaring, “God damnit, Shawny!” Shawn was reminded of the factory door when he first walked in and didn’t know to ease it close. “MacNamara told me you were a solid guy! And you just told me you’re a solid guy! Now I’m not the fucking po-lice—no badge,”—here Rocky opened his charcoal striped suit coat revealing a bare spot where a heavy metal shield would have been mounted—“no cuffs.”

Here Rocky fully peeled back both sides of his coat revealing a belt with no bright, silvery metal hooped cuffs, but a gleaming black holster whose leather seemed molded to a bulging, black gun sleeping silently inside did not escape Shawn’s gaze. “I’m just a businessman. I make deals. Sometimes I need to make things disappear to get my deals done. But, when they get done we all have a few more leafs of cabbage in our billfold. Now, be the solid guy MacNamara led me to believe, and like you said you were, and tell me what you know about house fires.”

The whites of Shawn’s eyes were pushing against and almost drowning his irises, Shawn looked directly at Rocky who was looking directly and intently down at him and said with a flatness that ran through every word, “what do you want to know about house fires?”

The full brutal smile returned and Rocky fully and distinctly pronounced each word, “I want to know what you know.”

Regaining his composure Shawn took a step back, straightened himself and began to speak.

“The most efficient fires begin in the attic. Once the flames catch the rafters and beams then the roof starts to burn. Hopefully, after not much time the attic floor collapses and the second floor begins to catch fire. So now the roof and the second floor are on fire at the same time. One of two things can happen next, just depends on the house and how quickly the fire works. Either the roof collapses onto the second floor.

When this happens usually the second floor collapses onto the first. Or, before the roof falls onto the second floor, the second floor itself collapses and falls onto the first floor. Also, the speed of the fire depends on how much crap’s in the house. If there’s a lot of cardboard, newspapers, cushions, mattresses, and shit—I mean stuff—like that, then that’s more food for the fire. Without that”—slight hesitation—“stuff the fire can still work, it just might take more time. But, you have to be careful because I found that too much of that stuff can hurt the fire—cause it to take longer to bake. If that happens then you run the risk of the FD showing up. But, if you do it right, the house will quickly be full up and all that’ll be left is the paperwork.”

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Page 3 of fiction by Scott Reimann Rocky stood rapt. He didn’t speak. He stared at Shawn with joy, amazement, and wonder. Shawn had never had anyone look at him that way before. He looked at Rocky, but felt uncomfortable with the way Rocky was staring at him that he couldn’t hold Rocky’s eyes for long, so he looked at his shoes making designs in the dusty floor. He would look up at Rocky hoping Rocky wasn’t still staring at him in that crazy way. Shawn had no other way to describe Rocky’s gaze. But, when he peered up past his eyebrows at Rocky he was still beaming at Shawn in that crazy way that made Shawn feel uncomfortable. This seemed to Shawn to go on for a full minute. A full minute of silence with this well suited, armed man in this forgotten part of town sat heavy on Shawn’s mind. It wouldn’t take too much, Shawn reasoned, for Rocky to make him forgotten.

Finally, Rocky broke his trance, “Shawn-ee boy! Speak the truth! Preach on! Amen, brother! Amen!

Hallelujah! I feel your spirit!” Shrinking back from Rocky’s boisterousness Shawn was not sure why Rocky was shouting in this way. First through Rocky’s looks and now through his words Shawn was becoming more perplexed by Rocky. “Yes, Shawn-ee! Yyeeeesss! You’re a beautiful man!” Like a piston Rocky was pumping his arm with a clenched fist. “And you speak beautiful words! You speak the truth!” Rocky paused for a moment to catch his breath, then he continued. “I came here wanting to believe. You spoke those beautiful words—the truth. And now I believe. I believe, Shawn. I believe. You have cleansed me with your words. You have rejuvenated me! Reenergized me!” Now Rocky was escalating many more octaves. In the deep, dark factory there seemed to be many of Rocky’s voices. “You have renewed me! I feel reborn in your words! I feel renewed, Shawn-ee! I feel renewed! I am a new man! I see things differently now!” He began to punctuate his sentences by stamping his feet and clapping his hands. “So much truth right before my eyes! And you delivered it, Shawn-ee! Only you could deliver the truth. The true words that would bring me to my salvation! My renewal! My new life! I now see life with new eyes!

Yes! Clearer eyes! You are the way, the truth, and the light! You have showed me the way and I believe!”

Rocky shook himself from his reverie. When he came to he noticed that Shawn was some distance from him, further than he thought he was. He looked at Shawn and reset his gaze so his eyes weren’t so large. He straightened himself. He reflexively checked his tie knot, grabbed his coat’s lapels, and pulled them downward tauntening his suit coat. He spoke in soft tones. “Shawn. Come here, Shawn.” With his right arm extended and his right hand making circular loops, like it was some winding machine, he was waving over Shawn. Shawn hesitated. He looked around the industrial basement. He saw that it was long and deep.

There were parts where the light didn’t reach. He wondered if during the day the sunlight ever reached those neglected corners. Fatherly, sweetly Rocky continued, “Shawn, it’s okay. Come here.” Seeing Shawn’s hesitation, Rocky started shuffling toward Shawn. “It’s okay. Come here to your buddy, Rocky. Atta boy.

Come on. A little more.” Like a thief grabbing his booty Rocky snatched at Shawn catching him around his neck and thrusting him into the crux of his arm. Shawn seemed to disappear in the ruffles and folds of Rocky’s outsized suit.

“Shawn, do you know what I do?”

“No, sir, I don’t. I don’t ask questions. I didn’t ask MacNamara what you do. It’s none of my business.”

“It’s your business if you want to make it your business. Do you want to know what I do, Shawn?”

“I don’t much see how that concerns me.”

“Yet. You forgot to say the word yet. You don’t see how that concerns you—yet.”

“Sir?”

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Page 4 of fiction by Scott Reimann “Shawn, I’m a businessman. I work in business. I do business work. I build things. I get shit done. I make money. I make lots and lots of money for myself and my acquaintances. I know people—many people. Here and elsewhere. I am a big, important man, Shawn. I know a lot. And it’s not just that I’m fucking smart. I’m fucking smart, I know a lot of people, I know about a lot of people, and most importantly, I know a lot of things about a lot of people. I have many people working for me. Some know they work for me. Others do not know they work for me. The people who work for me are old, young, black, white, European, Latino, Vietnamese, African, the list goes on. They work for me in many capacities.

As a businessman I do many things. I have many pokers in the fire, as they say. Have you heard that one before, Shawn?”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“That’s okay, Shawn-ee. That’s okay.” And Rocky continued to pat Shawn on his shoulder and head a few times as Rocky dripped these words over him.

With a large intake of air through his European nose he contentedly looked down at the man he was squeezing in the crux of his arm. Smiling down at Shawn he began again. “Shawn, I like you. I think you’re a solid guy; a man’s man. I need you to be my man. So, tell me, Shawn, will you be my man?”

Drenched in uncertainty, his voice shaky, Shawn replied, “Um, I’m not sure what you mean, sir?”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You know. You’re either my man or you’re not. Which is it?”

“I’m not sure, sir. I mean, I’m not sure what you mean when you say be your man. I don’t want to anger you, but I don’t want to be your um—I’m just not into that stuff.”

“Shawn! What type of guy do you think I am? I’m not into that faggety-ass shit!” Shouting now, “are you calling me a faggot?! I’m no fucking faggot!” Then, as rapidly as he became belligerent, Rocky tempered his tone. “Shawn, what I meant is that I want you to work for me. I want you to do a job I need done. And you’re the only one who can do it. No one has done more. No one is as successful as you.

You’ve made it into an art. I just heard you speak about it. You know how to do it right! You’re the man for this job. I don’t think anyone else in the city can do the job I need you to do as well as you can do it.

You’re the best. So, if you accept you will be my man for this job. That’s all, nothing more. You are my man for this job.”

“I don’t know yet.” Changing his tone to something where Shawn couldn’t pinpoint the exact emotion he asked, “Shawn, how are your daughters getting on at City Honors?”

Shawn froze, struck with gripping and unexpected recognition. He looked solemnly at Rocky. He delicately released himself from Rocky’s grasp and stood back a few paces. His stance changed, became firmer. His posture changed, became straighter. Emotion drained from his face as his forehead, eyes, and mouth slackened. There was an absence of noise in the industrial basement heretofore unknown to Shawn.

“Fine, sir.”

“You imagine that in a couple years they’ll graduate from there, right?

“Yes, sir.”

“I hope that dream doesn’t become deferred?”

Rocky appraised the indignation coloring Shawn’s face.

“Shawn, do you know what it means for young, black women, such as your daughters, to apply to college with City Honors on their applications?”—Rocky’s voice escalating now—“Hell! Do you know what type of colleges they can apply to?”

Shawn stared back at Rocky with a vacant, empty look in his eyes. Each time he blinked nothing changed about his visage. His registration was zero.

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Page 5 of fiction by Scott Reimann “Think, Shawn, think!” He was moving around Shawn now, kicking up old industrial dust as he moved about which formed low level clouds that obscured them from the waist down. “Think, Shawn! Think of the possibilities! I know you went to some trade school, but I know you’re bright. I know your mind wanders.

It must! You must have seen the horizon! Or if you haven’t you must have imagined what it might look like! Think about it, Shawn—the horizon! So vast, so wide, so endless!” Rocky was swirling and twirling now. The dust kicking up, floating, hanging in the air a moment, then falling like the wind’s whisper intermingling with newly agitated dust, commingling in rising and falling clouds, like rising waves meeting receding ones. Rocky’s feet were shuffling and swishing like shoes on a clay tennis court. “It’s too much, Shawn! It’s too much! Can you feel it?! Can you see it?! Vanderbilt! The red brick soft under the late afternoon Tennessean sun! Emory! It’s white stone blindingly beautiful in the tall Atlanta heat! Dartmouth!

Cornell! Princeton! Yale! Oh, the ivy! The ivy! Do you see it, Shawn! It’s right there in front of you, boy! Do you see it! Stanford! The low, inviting buildings with their soft, creamy sandstone walls and red tiled roofs! It can be yours! It can all be yours! It is there for you and your daughters! Whichever you like you can have! See them there, Shawn! I can see it!” Now the dust was all consuming. Approaching behind Shawn and putting his right hand on Shawn’s neck Rocky startled Shawn a bit, and had to hold him firm. He directed Shawn’s gaze to an unfixed point in the swirling dust. “There, Shawn! Right there! There’s Aisha strolling the green quads in Palo Alto! Oh! And there! There is Karma among the dazzling autumnal foliage in Ithaca! Oh, they’re happy! They’re full of life! Their whole lives are ahead of them! Do you see the doors, Shawn?! Do you see them?! There’s so many! Their horizon is so wide, so full!” Rocky had dropped to his knees bringing Shawn deeper down with him into the densest clouds. The clouds were everywhere, above, below, and in Shawn’s eyes. They began to water and the cloudy haze grew greasy.

“It’s so much, Shawn! It’s so much! They can have it all! They could go anywhere! D.C.! New York! L. A.! Boston! Chicago! Atlanta! San Fran! All the doors are there! There is no end!”—Rocky appeared to be weeping now—“There is no end, Shawn! No end!” Shawn could hear Rocky say these words as he trailed off and lowered his head between his heaving shoulders.

Rocky’s echos reverberated throughout the large floor, through vacant hallways and unlit corners, finding their end in unseeable stairwells and open elevator shafts. Shawn allowed them to see their end.

Then, leaning against Rocky’s rigid, broad shoulders, he told that mass, “Mr. Tumbler, I’ll be your man.”

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Wendy A. Reynolds #20 Making It Count The stain on the chair next to him was, frankly, revolting. Large, brown, and clearly fresh, it only served to remind him how helpless he was. How helpless they all were, in the grand scheme of things. He doubted the fat Hispanic woman with the sponge was a nurse. While she was wearing surgical gloves – two layers, in fact – she wasn’t wearing scrubs, just jeans and a T-shirt that strained against the rolls of flesh at her hips, accentuating them. Housekeeping, probably – which of course is just a euphemism for cleaning woman. He sat very still in his chair in the overcrowded waiting room, and pretended not to notice that as she rubbed at the spot it smeared a little.

My ass hurts, he thought to himself. The least they can do is give you a comfortable chair, if not a clean one.

There was a daytime talk show on the huge television mounted on the wall in the far corner of the room.

Almost everyone was watching it, or at least trying to distract themselves with it. The show was just as boring as the beige walls, the faded beach landscape with the lighthouse that hung opposite, and the ripped magazines that were lying around. Still, everyone did their part and stared at the screen, coughed into their sleeves, and spoke to each other in whispers. Waiting room etiquette is not dissimilar to wake etiquette. Both are strictly adhered to, as if adherence will shield us from death. If we sit very still, and very quietly, and mind our own business, it will pass us by.

The woman struggled with the stain, grunting a little. She brushed her hair off her sweaty forehead with the back of her wrist. As she looked up, she locked eyes with the pretty young receptionist who was safe behind her plastic partition.

For a brief moment, the resentment, the hatred that passed between them was palatable.

And Jarislaw Pulit recognized it, and understood.

“Mr. Pulit?”

The nurse calling his name didn’t look up from her clipboard. She just leaned against the door, the doorknob digging into the small of her back, as Jarislaw slowly eased himself out of the chair and walked toward her, and then past her into the empty corridor.

The hallway was a long tube of white linoleum and closed doors. A large, south-facing window at the far end flooded it with unexpected brightness. He was blinded by the late August sun, and had to squint as he made his way to the doctor’s office.

Son of a bitch. Looks like I’m heading toward the light after all.

Forty minutes later, he boarded the number 20 Elmwood Avenue bus heading downtown, and sat in an empty seat near the front, shivering a little from the air conditioning blowing down on him. It was nearly noon, and the bus wasn’t very crowded yet, so Jarislaw had the seat to himself. He stared out the window as his world, narrow as it was now, passed him by.

Or am I passing it by?

He would be seventy-four in a few weeks. It wasn’t strange to have been told that he was dying, or even all that unexpected. It had been, after all, his second opinion. But he resented it. He resented it bitterly. The chemo hadn’t worked. The radiation hadn’t worked. He’d suffered through them for nothing.

He’d been so angry that he really hadn’t paid attention when the doctor tried to explain his options.

They were really just a recap of what his own doctor had told him two weeks before. He’d heard “managed care” and then pretty much let his accelerating pulse pounding in his ears drown out the rest.

I’m seventy-four years old. I don’t want to spend the time I have left in a hospital bed, just so those idiots can lie to themselves and say they did all they could.

The bus pulled over at the next stop. A skinny college-age kid sweating through an ill-fitting suit got on and sat down next to him. He opened his messenger bag, pulled out an iPad, and was quickly engrossed in it.

His sweaty hands left faint streaks against the screen.

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Page 2 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds Look at him. There’s people, girls – all around him there’s real life. And he’s trying to reach Wonderland through a looking glass instead of experiencing it. Just like all the rest of them. Stupid.

He recalled the words “quality of life,” “pain management,” and “hospice” were mentioned toward the end of the consultation. He’d thanked the consulting doctor politely and left, carrying the handful of pamphlets he’d been given as far as the nearest trash can.

He’d put the painkiller prescription in his pocket, though.

“Mr. Pulit, would you like to make another appointment?” the receptionist called from behind the partition. Her manicured nails tapped halfheartedly against the plastic. “Mr. Pulit, sir –“ Then the phone rang, distracting her.

He kept walking until he reached the cleaning woman, who had moved from shit stain duty to rubbing an old mop across the floor under the television.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

“Sorry?”

“Thank you for trying clean it up.”

“Ah, yes. Yes. OK.” She nodded vigorously, trying to move away, trying to disappear back to that safe place where she was unseen, invisible.

It saddened him now as he remembered her embarrassment and her fear. But it also fueled his anger.

Everywhere he looked – the cleaning woman, the kid sitting next to him, the people in the cars that tried to maneuver past the bus in their hurry to get wherever they were going – all of them were afraid to be seen, afraid that death would notice and take them.

Seventy-four goddamn years. It went by so fast.

He reached for the cord along the window and pulled it, signaling his stop. But he kept his seat until the bus driver pulled over. One too many times he’d gotten up beforehand only to have a driver brake hard, causing the bus to lurch forward so violently that he almost fell. He pushed past the kid’s knees as he continued to stare at his screen, oblivious. Then he walked to the door.

“Thank you.”

The driver grunted, impatient to get going.

Jarislaw stood on the sidewalk and watched as the bus pulled away.

Whatever is left of my life, I’m not going to waste it just dying.

The Elmwood Village is filled with contradictions and secrets. Along the two-mile section of Elmwood Avenue referred to as the Strip, tree-lined streets filled with boutiques, coffee shops, cafes and restaurants twinkle with holiday lights and beckoning warmth throughout the long Buffalo winter, and buzz with sidewalk patios in the fleeting weeks of summer. They are staffed by an endless parade of college students who grow younger every year, it seems. Buffalo State College, their alma mater, bookmarks the neighborhood to the north, Allen Street to the south. And their youth, energy, and disposable income are the neighborhood’s lifeblood as it courses up and down the Village’s main artery.

Those with an interest in culture and a taste for urban living have gentrified the neighborhood in recent years, moving into the side streets off the Strip and renovating them – to an extent. As the previous generation of Bethlehem Steel retirees and tenured professors dies off, writers, graphic artists, and white collar workers looking for something “different” buy their Queen Anne and Craftsman houses at hugely inflated prices, just to be part of the 14222 area code and all its hipster glory. Dazzled by the leaded glass and hardwoods, they can’t believe their luck at first. Then they realize the steep property taxes each year don’t leave much to fix the leaky roof above all that charm they just paid for. But you don’t hear many complaints as you stand behind them, waiting for a latte at Spot Coffee or in line at the Lexington Co Op. Instead, they refinish their front doors, plant flats of peonies from the Home Depot in their yards each summer for the area’s Garden Walk, and grit their teeth as the rain pours into their attic and floods their basements.

It’s a walkable area, but not too walkable – and the residents bitch constantly about the lack of parking on the weekends. There’s crime, but not too much crime. And there’s character, but not too much character to be ostentatious.

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Page 3 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds It’s manageable, if you can still manage these days.

Nothing is ever what it seems on the surface. The trick is to accept, make do, move on, and have a sense of humor about the whole thing. And no town in America does it as well as the Elmwood Village.

Jarislaw Pulit had lived in the neighborhood since 1964, when the college it revolved around still only granted teaching degrees, not those for the liberal arts. He remembered when extended families still lived in the houses the students now rented. And he remembered when the crazies at the Psych Center were inpatients behind the huge wrought iron gates, and didn’t try to bum a dollar or a cigarette from you at every turn.

It had not been his choice to spend his life there. He had wanted to live in South Buffalo after they were married, near their parents, in the heart of the Polish community he’d loved. But Maggie loved the Village – the elm trees up and down the Strip, the proximity to the college, and the house they’d looked at on Ashland just to humor her, or so he thought. So, they settled down, settled in, and became part of the community. His son had graduated first from Lafayette with honors, then Buffalo State, and became a high school math teacher. Then Peter got married and moved away.

Maggie died.

He stayed.

Jarislaw crossed the street when the light changed and walked a half a block to his apartment. The building was about eleven stories high, a nondescript brick bunker among all the charming storefronts up and down the Strip. It wasn’t fashionable to call it “senior housing” any more, although that was clearly what it was. Instead, it was advertised as “semi-assisted urban living for renters 55 and older.”

Central air, maid service, and wheelchair accessibility were available to those who could afford it. And the weekly shuttle trips to the supermarket, Walmart, and the casino in Niagara Falls provided a sense of independence, particularly for those who found the suburban sprawl outside the city limits too difficult to manage as they grew older.

Residents died a lot in the winter months, and in the spring there was always a wave of new tenants who replaced them, ready to begin the end of their lives. Jarislaw didn’t notice the changeover much after nine years.

He pushed the large glass door open and walked to the elevator, trying to avoid Jacob, who was checking his mailbox. But the elevator doors closed before he could reach them unnoticed, and Jacob walked toward him, leaning heavily on his black and silver cane. “Jarek! Jarek, wait.” He reached out to shake Jarislaw’s hand, and Jarislaw felt the Parkinson’s tremor through his arm.

“Hello, Jake.”

“I thought you didn’t see me. How did it go at the doctor?” His blue eyes betrayed his concern. Jarislaw saw it, and was touched. But he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk, period.

“You know. Same old shit.”

“Yes, I know.”

Jarislaw pressed the call button again impatiently. “Any news from your son?”

“No.” The old man sighed, shifted his weight. “You?” “No, I haven’t heard from Peter in a while.”

When Maggie died and Jarislaw sold the house, his attorney had told him that it would be better if he gave Peter the money right away, instead of leaving it to him in his will. This way, Peter would avoid the burden of death taxes. So Jarislaw gave his only son the lions’ share of his money, and made due with the little that was left, living frugally on what amounted to a fixed income. He’d only seen Peter a few times in the years since, and always with his sour-faced wife. They checked in every so often on the pretext of giving a damn, but he knew not to expect much, and didn’t let himself think about it a lot.

His son was close to retirement now, and they were making plans to move to a two-bedroom golf course condo in South Carolina. They’d also made it clear that the second bedroom in Charlotte was not for him.

It was a common enough story in the building.

The elevator door opened, and the two men allowed a frail, birdlike woman in a wheelchair to pass, assisted by her ever-present health care aide. They nodded politely, then stepped into the elevator.

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Page 4 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds “You want some tea, Jarek? Some coffee, maybe?”

“No, I’m a little tired. It’s a pain in the ass taking the bus to the clinic, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. I understand. Stop by later?”

Jarislaw nodded. The door opened.

“You sure you’re okay?” Jacob touched his friend’s arm as he stepped out of the elevator.

“Yes. I’m okay, Jake.” He smiled as the door closed again. Then, slowly, Jarislaw walked to his door, slid the key into the lock, and stepped into his apartment.

It wasn’t until he’d locked the door behind him that he felt the dampness on his cheek.

The early afternoon sunlight filled his studio apartment, the only saving grace of the place. He wasn’t much of a homemaker. Maggie had always made things comfortable. He missed it.

He’d loved the way she’d always move the couch at Christmas, so that they could light a fire and watch Peter open his gifts under the tree. There was the sweet, yeasty smell of bread baking in the kitchen on Thursdays, like clockwork. The pictures she’d hung. The colors she’d used. They all blended together into some sort of alchemy that drew friends and family in, close to her.

She was his first and only love. And when she died, it hurt so much to be in the house they’d shared together that he called a realtor the day after the funeral, and moved into the spare bedroom in Jacob’s apartment.

He never slept in their bed again. He couldn’t. Not without her.

Jacob had pressed him to move in.

“It’s too big for me, since Sadie died. You stay here, we can split expenses and save a little.”

“It’s a tempting offer, Jake. God knows I appreciate it.”

“But?” “You know, I think I need to really be by myself just now.”

“You sure?”

Jarek nodded.

Jacob thought for a minute. “Okay, so we don’t room together. But what if there’s an apartment going?”

He leaned across the table and laid a hand on top of Jarek’s. “What do you say? You interested in being neighbors?”

Jarislaw nodded. “Neighbors would be great, Jake.” His voice was thick.

Jake patted his hand. He understood. He’d felt the same way when he’d lost his wife the previous year.

“Okay then. Neighbors.”

Together, they filled out his application for a studio of his own.

The house sold in a matter of a few weeks. Peter came with a moving van, and he and his wife took what they wanted. Jarislaw made sure he put aside the things he was keeping for himself before they arrived, because he knew if he didn’t she’d take it all. Sure enough, she rummaged through the boxes he’d packed, curious.

“Are you sure you need that vase, Dad? After all, it’s a small studio. You might not have the room,” she’d asked, eyeing the crystal hungrily. It had been Maggie’s favorite, an anniversary present he’d filled with flowers often, just to see her smile.

He looked at his son, who said nothing. Instead, Peter busied himself with wrapping a table lamp in bubble plastic.

“I need it. You can have it when I’m dead. Fair enough?”

“Oh, Dad, don’t be like that. I didn’t mean –“ “The things in these boxes are mine. The furniture I’ve marked is mine. Take the rest.”

He stood his ground. He’d never likes this snotty woman, who acted as if she’d married beneath her and had had to pull his son up from the gutter. Maggie, who loved everyone on the planet pretty much, never mentioned her name. She simply resigned herself to the truth in the old adage, “Your son is your son ‘til he takes him a wife.”

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Page 5 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds The week before their wedding, they bought a four-bedroom house in Williamsville, an affluent suburb just fifteen minutes away. Maggie was thrilled, convinced they would fill it with children. But a year went by, and then another, without so much as a word about a baby. When Maggie finally got up the courage to ask if something might be wrong, the woman loudly proclaimed that she and Peter didn’t want kids, just each other. It broke his wife’s heart.

It broke his, too, if he was honest about it.

When they’d loaded the last box into the U-Haul, Jarislaw asked his son when they were coming back to help him move into the apartment. Peter was surprised by the question. “Well, we only rented the van for today, Dad. I thought you had everything handled here…” His voice trailed off.

“Don’t concern yourself.”

“Dad, if you need –“ “I don’t,” he snapped. “As you say, I will handle it.”

A week later, standing alone in the apartment for the first time, he saw he really hadn’t brought much at all. Still, it was overwhelming. He’d tried to envision what Maggie would do, how she would set up this strange, open space he was to live in.

There was a kitchen area off the front door. A dorm-sized refrigerator was hidden underneath a short grey Formica countertop. A small sink sat in the corner. Next to that was a tiny gas stove, with a microwave on a shelf above it. There was a small, narrow floor cabinet for pots and pans, and a drawer or two for cutlery. Two white overhead cabinets completed the amenities.

He’d grabbed their old red tea kettle out of a box and set it on the stove.

It’s a start, I suppose.

The bathroom was immediately to the left of the kitchen area – no tub, just a shower stall and toilet against the back wall, a cabinet sink directly opposite. If you opened the bathroom door too wide, it banged against the sink. The deep dent in the side of the cabinet was clearly the result of years of repeated slams.

The remainder of the apartment was open living space. There was a full-sized Murphy bed in one wall, and next to that on the left was a deep, narrow closet. He’d realized that day he would have to leave enough floor space open to pull the Murphy bed down to sleep in, and was glad he hadn’t brought much in the way of furniture.

The walls had been freshly painted a flat landlord white. There was one overhead light for the entire room, and a second one in the bathroom.

Jarislaw had mentally kicked himself for letting Peter take the lamp.

The window was huge, almost floor to ceiling, with a long enclosed radiator in front of it, doubling as a window seat of sorts. The aluminum blinds were dingy and a little bent, but they worked, and Jarislaw had been pleasantly surprised when he opened them to an expansive view of Elmwood Avenue. He was on the ninth floor, considerably higher than the building opposite, and the natural light streamed in.

He’d unwrapped the few dishes and kitchen items he’d brought, and put them in the cabinets. While he did so, he’d noticed that his lone frying pan was too large for the stovetop, and his baking tray was too wide for the apartment-sized oven.

It was as if he’d moved into some sort of bizarre dollhouse where no one came to play.

He’d hung up his clothes, set his underwear and socks in their respective drawers, and put the suitcase in the bottom of the closet. The closet was so narrow that it almost didn’t fit, but he’d managed.

The bathroom was easy: he’d put his toiletries in the medicine cabinet, a fresh roll of toilet paper in the holder, and he was done. When he saw there wasn’t a linen closet, he used two drawers in his bureau for his sheets and towels. He’d been a little proud of himself for figuring out this workaround, until he remembered he needed the drawers for his sweaters.

The sweaters ended up in the suitcase in the closet. When he realized he was almost done unpacking, he was a little disappointed. The place still looked empty, as if he’d merely moved into a motel room.

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Page 6 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds He’d moved his favorite armchair around, set her vase on the radiator, arranged a few bits and pieces she’d polished and cared for, and tried to recreate her magic. He couldn’t. They were just things in a room now. Just things.

But when he unpacked her photograph that first day and set it on his dresser, he’d noticed that the afternoon sun hit it in an unusual way.

The black and white glamour shot was his favorite. She’d had it taken in AM&A’s department store when they first met in 1963. He could still see where she’d smudged the ink a little when she signed it in the corner in her schoolgirl scrawl, “With all my love, Maggie.”

It was the only picture he’d brought with him to the apartment.

The light streaming through the plate glass seemed to bring out the picture’s long-forgotten features, including a hint of a dimple in her right cheek, and the glimmer of fun in her eyes. It took his breath away, just as it had the day she’d given it to him and said she loved him for the first time.

He’d arranged the entire studio apartment around that corner, so that wherever he was in the room, he could see her face as it came alive on sunny afternoons. And, over the years, he’d grown used to the place.

There were books, papers, a portable radio in the corner. In a more generous moment Peter had bought him a flat screen television, and he’d hung it on the wall opposite the Murphy bed. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he would lie in bed and watch it.

That was a luxury he’d never had before. Maggie forbade his having a television in the bedroom.

Now, leaning against the front door, he thought for a moment about calling Peter. He’d have to tell his son at some point.

Not now. Not yet.

The central air was set on a timer, controlled by the management. It had kicked in, and the room was cooler now. He sat down in his chair and looked at his wife.

Maggie, baby, I’m dying. Can you believe it?

He waited as the sun traveled slowly through the room toward its goal.

All that for nothing. I went through it all for nothing.

He kicked off his shoes, and rubbed his feet against the nubs in the carpet. He noticed the hole in his sock.

Yeah, I guess I should sew that, huh?

He smiled at his wife, and she smiled back.

I suppose I have been letting myself go lately.

He glanced at his watch. Any minute now.

I just want to make some plans, take care of some things. Live a little more.

The light glinted across the frame, across her face, and he saw her glow.

Home.

I’m on my way. Wait for me, okay?

He stood at the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil. Opening the cabinet for the tea bags, he sighed. They were generic, crappy. Basically dust in a filter.

He rummaged around a little. Then he opened the tiny refrigerator. He didn’t have much in the way of food. All of it was crap. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t been able to keep it down, anyway.

He dumped two of the tea bags into a mug and poured boiling water over it. Maybe if I let it steep for a while… no, then it will just be cold crap.

He carried the mug to the table and sat down.

I need a plan.

He reached for his notepad and pen, and adjusted his glasses.

He drew a line down the page, making two columns, and labeled them “Problem” and “Solution.”

He took a sip of tea, made a face, and set the mug aside. He began to write.

Problem #1: I’m dying.

Well, that’s a fucking big problem, isn’t it?

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Page 7 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds Problem #2: They want to shove me in a hospital bed and pump me full of crap until I don’t know who I am anymore – and I’m still going to die.

For Problem #3, he wrote, “Peter.” Then he crossed it out.

Problem #3: I don’t have much time left.

Okay, he thought. Time for some solutions.

Solution #1: Accept it.

It was actually easier to write than he thought it would be.

Solution #2: Don’t let them. Take control.

Okay, then.

The timer on his pill box went off in his pocket, vibrating against his leg. He fished it out and opened it.

Shaking the half-dozen different capsules into the palm of his hand, he realized they were the last he had, and he would have to go to the supermarket and refill all of his prescriptions.

I don’t know why I should waste the money. It’s not like they’re helping, obviously.

He stared at the medication.

Take control.

He slipped the capsules back into the box, stood up, and walked over to the calendar hanging on the bathroom door. He took it down and brought it to the table.

He circled the date, August 31. Then he flipped the page over to September.

He thought about what the doctor had said. How the tumors were growing, and the pain was increasing.

It was a matter of maybe a month. That hospice was best. They’d be able to make him comfortable.

I don’t want to just wait to die with strangers, just to make it easier for everybody else that gets to live.

He circled September 13.

Two weeks. Split the difference.

Okay. Now, resources…

He found his checkbook and a calculator, brought them to the table. He was about to sit back down when he suddenly grabbed the mug, walked over to the sink, and dumped it out. He fished the tea bags out of the sink and tossed them in the trash.

No more wasting time. No more settling. I’m on the clock now, dammit.

He sat back down and opened the checkbook. He had not yet paid September’s rent, which included his electric and gas.

That’s an extra nine hundred right there. He wrote it down on the pad.

Then he calculated what he would save by not paying his cable, cell phone, and prescriptions. He shook his head at the money he’d wasted each month. He rarely used the cable. He never used the cell phone.

And the prescriptions, well, clearly they had been a very expensive joke.

Who else can I stick it to?

He dug around the pile of mail on the table.

Visa. Okay. And what’s the available balance? He added the amounts to the list.

Savings account. Checking. They went on the list.

Life insurance.

He hesitated. The policy wasn’t much, just enough to cover final expenses. He decided not to add it, for the moment.

His fingers tapped the calculator buttons. He had about twenty-five grand in ready cash, including the available credit on his Visa card.

How about it, Maggie? I think I can burn through that, don’t you? And I’m going to start right now.

He picked up the pill box and the bills and threw them in the kitchen trash can. Then he opened up the cabinets and threw away everything in them, generic or not. He cleaned out the contents of the fridge.

The garbage bag was a little heavy when he lifted it out of the can.

I literally don’t have time for this crap. It’s got to go.

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Page 8 of fiction by Wendy A. Reynolds He tied it tightly with a twist tie, and carried it outside to the garbage chute. He managed to stuff it in and sent it toward the incinerator. He was winded from the exertion, and felt a warning twinge in his abdomen. He ignored it.

He went back into his apartment and used the bathroom. He looked at his reflection in the mirror as he washed his hands. He looked tired, was tired, and he had clearly lost weight. His hair would never come back. But most old men are bald. He couldn’t do anything about the yellowness of his skin, though. Maybe people wouldn’t notice.

I still look all right, relatively. If you don’t look too closely.

He felt for the painkiller prescription in his pocket.

Take control.

He walked to his bureau, rummaged around, and grabbed the envelope. He had to hide it all the time, in different places. As much as he liked Lily, the woman who came and cleaned his apartment twice a week, he didn’t trust her completely.

He counted it. Seven hundred, mostly twenties from the bank machine. It was a start.

As he walked past the table on his way out, he looked at the list. He picked up the pen and wrote – Solution #3: Make it count.

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Julianna Ricci #21 Home is Not a House first January How odd. Before, I could feel every breeze, every flutter of an insect or bird flying by. The deer passed through but they stepped so lightly, I didn’t mind. In these wintry months it has been surprising to both shrink and expand, to watch walls growing up around me and stairs create a destination, rising closer to the sun and stars. I wonder if she of the sky-blue eyes senses me when she walks through the unfinished, almost-finished space that contains me. She smiles as she runs her fingers over the new countertops, slips off her shoes and glides across the freshly laid floors, opens and closes the sliding patio door as if rehearsing for her grand entrance on a light-infused stage. The day they installed the bay windows, she stood there in the semi-circle they made and gazed out at the trees as if she had never seen such beauty.

And the wonder of the skylights, their rectangles framing blue and cloud. One day raindrops kissed the glass; on others, snow flakes murmured their hellos, creating ever-changing portraits as they melted. Where did she come from that she should marvel so at the simple things that I have always taken for granted? We are being born into a new world together, I think, and we have much to learn from each other. first July We’ve been together for nearly six months now, and I can barely remember the time before her presence. I had openness then, but it was empty; my freedom a weary infinity. Now I am enclosed, and I am full. At times she is so still that I hardly know she’s here. Then there are the ringing noises followed by onesided conversations or visitors walking through the front door. They are instantly drawn down the hallway toward the bay window. Enveloped in the calm, they follow the golden floors to the soft furniture. I feel their breathing slow and their eyes soften. She has designed our home well.

It is a pleasure to follow her outside to the deck she built for us in back. There is a glass table there etched with leaves and a wide green umbrella to give her shade. There are days when we sit there for hours, or move to a lounge chair to soak in the sun and nap. She reads or writes or gazes into the rustling trees and I watch her, enjoying her sandalwood scent in the warm air. I’ve learned to read her thoughts and understand her wordless sounds, the subtle movements of her face. She is such a comfort to me. I try to comfort her in return on those nights when she paces or stares or when tears touch her pale cheeks and I know she is thinking of him. He was only here twice and that was months ago. She loved him. That I also know. She writes poems about him sometimes and wonders why he never came back. I wonder, too.

Some days she leaves our place and wanders down the road to the bluff overlooking the lake.

Occasionally there are others there and they chat and laugh. Other times she just stands as close to the edge as she dares, her hand embracing the bark of a small tree nearby and breathes in the sound of waves crashing on the shore fifty feet below. She is at peace then, and I am glad.

Last week there was a party on the deck that spilled out over the grass. There was music and a birthday cake and young people and a blond-haired daughter who opened gifts. Two others, sisters judging from their resemblance, teased and sang to the third. Before they all left, there was a rush of hugs and kisses and shouts of “I love you.” Later, she cleaned up smiling and remembering things from before in the silent, near-dark. third January The snow is piled everywhere, and we have been sitting in candlelight in front of the fire, trying to keep warm. He was here three days ago, before the storm. They talked quietly and had coffee. When he left, they hugged, and that worried me. When she closed the door after watching him pull away, I heard her sigh, “Thank God. He doesn’t own me any more.”

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Page 2 of fiction by Julianna Ricci We love these wintry nights – just the two of us in the warmth with our books. There is nowhere we need to go and no compelling reason to stir. The power came back on about an hour ago, but we are still sitting in the semi-darkness, gazing up through the skylights at the brilliance in the black sky. Last night she woke up and wandered into a pool of light in the living room. The icy full moon was shining in the windows, illuminating the whole space. She just stood there, eyes closed, arms encircling the light, radiant.

I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.

August She’s been spending a lot of time in the basement lately. It’s not my favorite part of our home, but she seems to have created some kind of workspace down there. I see her bent over the pine table, bending the neck of an old desk lamp to focus on various parts of whatever she’s working on. Once in a while she walks over to the utility sink in the corner and rinses brushes or dumps out mugs of cloudy liquid and refills them with clean water. I watch as she blinks and rubs her eyes, stretches her back and neck, and I wonder how many more hours she will keep at this. There is the soft glint of gold when she tips the board and squints to measure her progress, and I see a glowing face on the white surface. What is it, and why is it so important to her?

I heard her talking on the phone tonight. “I understand,” she said, “and I agree. It has to be acceptable to all of us. More than that. It has to be true. If an icon is a mirror, that is what it must reflect – the truest possible image. It must be a window clear to divinity.”

An icon, an image, truth. That’s what she’s been doing. That’s why it’s so important. When she goes away for that week every summer, I miss her terribly, but now I understand. She has been practicing making icons. They feed her soul. Every day I understand more about her, about myself, about everything. Before she built this structure for us, I had no limits, but I was missing love – I just didn’t know it. Now I know. fifth January A stranger has been coming here, disrupting our quiet. Not so much at first, but now he is a constant presence. And she has been gone more, sometimes for whole weekends. I have heard talk about a place called Greece and something called a cruise. It doesn’t sound good to me, but surely it’s only another temporary absence they’re discussing. She seems excited about it, so I should be happy for her. She deserves good things in her life, but I miss her being near. Am I not enough? I need to pay more attention.

September It’s been days. The calendar has a line through 13 of them – I counted – so 13 is an unlucky number after all. That leaves at least 5 more lonely nights before she returns, if she returns. No, I can’t think that way. When she returns. When she returns, I have to remind her how much we love this place, how content we have been here. There’s no place like home. That was in a movie they watched! Now I remember. And the girl did go home - to stay - despite all her adventures with strangers. That’s what this is – an adventure with a stranger. When she comes home, she’ll see this is where she belongs – in the home she created for us to live in forever. Oh, I can’t wait to help her see the truth. This space is another icon that she has made.

June I don’t understand. All this packing and carrying and throwing away. All our favorite places being torn apart. The basement table folded up and the chairs stacked against the wall. The books, our beloved books, smothered in dark boxes. Almost all the dishes wrapped and crowded into wooden crates. The pantry and closets nearly empty. The shiny new ring she has been wearing. What does it all mean? Am I powerless to stop this?

July It has been very quiet this week. My heart is broken. I have seen her wander through these wonderful rooms now stripped and barren, touching the walls, staring at the ceiling, climbing the stairs and gazing through the skylights at the leafy trees visible there. I have watched her come half-way down the stairs, crumble on the middle step and weep. Is her heart broken, too? I will never understand the human heart.

After all these years together, how can she leave? Does she understand that I can’t go with her? That all she will have is fragments and flashes of what was?

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Page 3 of fiction by Julianna Ricci If she is gone from me, how will I endure the emptiness, the awful confinement that once seemed so spacious, such a blessed sacrifice? Perhaps I can find consolation in remembering, in drifting through her creation, searching for a scent, a sound that was part of her. But I will be alone. And nothing, nothing will ever be the same.

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David M. Smeltz #22 Excerpt from The Adventures of Sidney Sawyer: The Father of Waters.

(In Buffalo, New York, in 1913 the ancient scoundrel, Colonel Sidney Thomas Sawyer, writes his scandalous memoirs. In March of 1863, posing as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, he flees Confederate forces down the Cold Water River with a group of desperate runaway slaves.)

The river tended west for the rest of the day but I knew it would soon take its bend to the south. That is when we’d have to set out cross-country to the Mississippi. I explained the flow of the rivers and told the pilgrims as much. Brutus and Sweet Pea grew still as the desperation of our situation sank in. Janny, bless his wooly head, didn’t have the wit to worry. It was Gus whose reaction surprised me.

“Boss, we gots to stay on de water. We be catched fo sure, we take to de swamp.”

Cheeky coon!

“Boy, we stay on the river and at the end of it there’s a lash for you and a rope for me. The river goes south. We’ll go cross-country for the Mississippi. No more sass.”

“Boss, we can take de water to da Miss’sippi. Take de Yazoo Pass. It go down through Moon Lake to da levee.”

Moon Lake? This sounded like some local darkie legend or other such nonsense, but I figured what the hell and told him sharp to explain himself.

“Marse Bunyan, he hire me out with Cicero an’ Titus an’ Felix to work on da levee long de Big River– six year past. Dat where I lost dis arm. It got tangled in de chain on de stump puller.”

Maybe there was something to his story after all.

“Took five days from Eudora to de Pass. It be a little crick. Take us to Moon Lake an’ dat take us to ’nother crick dat take us to de Miss’sippi. We done built de levee to cut off de floods from de Pass.”

Well, this sounded better than floundering about in the Delta swamp with the hounds snapping at our arses, and after a quarter hour milking Gus for every remembered detail I was feeling better for our chances by half. It seems the Pass was handy for the local hicks to float their corn and whiskey to the Mississippi, but every other spring the Mississippi would flood through the Pass and put cotton fields underwater half-way down to Yazoo City. The Mississippi Legislature put an end to these floods by throwing up a levee that only cost them the rent on a few hundred slaves and Gus his arm. Not one darkie in a hundred knows the lay of the land five miles from his plantation, but me and my pilgrims were blessed with the company of one of them. Gus said it took five days. We’d been on the river for two. The current was slacking as the land about became more flooded, but if we manned the oars we could keep ahead of any pursuit and duck into the pass with no one the wiser. We slept in the bateau that night and the next, nibbling through our rations. As we swept farther south there was less and less dry land about to camp. I knew it was a damp winter but the flooding beat anything I ever struck. By the fifth day the current had all but stopped, and Augustus was squinting at the forest on the west bank where the water rippled three feet up the tree trunks. As Brutus sullenly pulled at the oars, Gus looked in vain for the Pass in a world under water.

“Don’t know, Boss Sam,” the brute whined with a look of bewilderment on his ugly face. “It all water.

Know it round ’bout here somewheres. It gots to be.”

By God, this was too much by a long drop. This black bumpkin had suckered me along with his tale of a magical pass through the wilderness to salvation on the Mississippi, and here we were in an endless flooded pine swamp with a posse behind with rope and lash. Before us was two hundred miles of twisting bayou with a secesh army at the end.

“You damned one-armed ape!” I was scared from here to next Sunday, lost in the bayou, my gunpowder turning to mush in the damp, and Sweet Pea hadn’t given me a civil look since the trestle. “If you hadn’t put in your shovel we’d be safe with the Union Army at Helena by now. Yazoo Pass my lily white arse, you ignorant black scoundrel.”

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Page 2 of fiction by David M. Smeltz I was building up a head of steam and blithering along in fine style. “I’m staff– West Point ’59. I know the rivers. I know the lay o’ the land. Yazoo Pass? You African hound– there ain’t no Yazoo Pass! If there was I’d a’ heard of it.” I was shouting and I believe my nose was running. “I know the River from Saint Petersburg to Grand Gulf. Your Yazoo Pass is a darkie barnyard myth. I’ve seen the maps! It ain’t there. It’s just one of your blasted n––r stories that’s as hollow as your wooly skulls.”

My pilgrims weren’t taking this well. Janny, with his hair leaning three points to larboard, sat with his big lips quivering. Brutus stopped his rowing and sat tense with his huge neck bulging like a bullfrog. Sweet Pea’s eyes were wide, her hand to her mouth in the attitude of an outraged virgin, and Gus’s face turned from deep black embarrassment to cold gray anger in the time it took me to rant. I was glad I was the one with the guns even though I wouldn’t trust the damp powder beyond a threat.

“Rot your socks, you silly field hand. You an’ your blasted Yazoo Pass!”

At that moment a smart little Rebel packet, decks jammed with Johnny militia and a bow chaser before the pilothouse, steamed from a hidden creek on the right. Gus had found Yazoo Pass.

I shoved the tiller to the right, swore at Brutus to pull with a will, and made for the flooded wood that was the west shore. The packet was only three hundred yards down-stream, but we were well between the trees before the bow-chaser boomed and a solid shot skipped over the water like a flat stone. It skimmed past our bow and thunked into a tree sixty yards beyond, shaking a family of coons from the limbs. Raining raccoons would have been droll if I didn’t know the secesh bluejackets were reloading with canister the better to sweep us out of the bateau. It takes less than half a minute for a good crew to charge a field piece, for that’s what it was, a twelve-pounder Napoleon lashed to the deck. I’d heard that waspish crack enough before to recognize it for what it was. I counted to thirty, using the frantic splash of the oars as a time piece, counted another five for the graybacks to draw a good bead and yanked the tiller hard, scooting us off to the right.

“Down! Down!” I screamed as the cannon cracked and the canister whipped the water to foam where we would have been if my count had been wrong.

“Row, damn it. Row!” I yelped and the pilgrims flailed away with their hands as Brutus bent the oars.

We were getting deeper into the woods now and the flood was down to two feet and the sweeps were skipping on the ground and bashing the bark off the pines. I lost count of the seconds. The trees were getting thick about us and we were still in the range of the canister.

“Abandon ship!” I yelled. “Duck behind a tree. On your life!”

I grabbed the carpetbag with my kit, cartridges, and shot, and floundered into the icy knee-deep water.

Gus and Janny followed my example as I squatted behind a stout pine. Sweet Pea grabbed the fowling piece, took a step, tripped over the gunnels and measured her length in the swamp. If the load wasn’t sodden before it was useless now. Big Brutus, brave boy, kept to his post with his sweeps churning the bottom to mud until the Napoleon boomed again and I felt the thud of a heavy lead ball smash into my tree as the bateau was splintered and Brutus was flung like a rag into the water.

I’d had the finest of military educations and have always been cool under fire. I knew just what to do.

“Run!” I screamed, high-stepping through the knee-deep water clutching my bag to my breast like a pilfered chicken. “Run, they’ll be on us as fast as they can launch the bum boat. Feet don’t fail me now!”

I heard the pilgrims, minus Brutus, who would spend this spring feeding the snappers and bullheads, splashing through the shallowing water after me. In fifty yards we were up from the flood and plowing through mud fit to strip off my boots. The barefoot pilgrims, unencumbered with brogans, passed me as I lumbered along. I had a moment’s sick feeling that they were going to leave me behind and alone when skinny gallant Janny was at my elbow, half-lifting me from the gumbo and hustling me along.

“Dis way boss– over dis way. Follow Gus. Dat Yazoo Pass be dis way.”

He was right of course. It was either the Pass or the swamp.

“Bless you for a good boy, Janny,” I blithered. “Follow Gus. Got to get to the Pass. We’ll be safe then.”

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Page 3 of fiction by David M. Smeltz That’s when a loose volley of fire from shotgun and rifle boomed out from off to our right and we heard the high-pitched frenzied bark of a pack of dogs that were going wild at the sight of their quarry. I actually stopped and looked back like a fool. Any shellbacks from the Rebel gunboat would be behind us, wading through the flooded shore. Who the hell … ?

Sweet Pea grabbed me by the front of my blouse and almost yanked me off my feet.

“It de slavers. Run, white man– run!”

And above the yelping of the mutts I heard Mess Call on a bugle and knew it was Purdy Stark and Marley’s gang of beauties, and they weren’t back on the river, they were right there coming through the pines less than four score yards behind with a pack of hounds off their leashes and reloading as they ran.

I drew the old cap and ball Colt, used both thumbs to set the cock, took a bead on the mob and squeezed the trigger. The antique went off in a stink of smoke and a mutt from the middle of the pack leapt straight up and tumbled headlong into the mud. Great shot, but I was aiming for the men who were twenty yards behind the dogs. I cocked and let fly again but the cap sparked on damp powder and all I got for it was a sickening “fizz.” With a start I realized the posse was spreading out into a skirmish line and coming on like grim death.

It was a race now and the devil takes the hindmost. The Yazoo Pass couldn’t be more than a quarter mile ahead. The packet boat had to come from there, but what salvation we would find in that bayou was anybody’s guess. As I galloped along I had a vague notion of swimming for it as the darkies nicely drew the attention of the hounds by floundering in the shallows. I almost sobbed with relief as the ground gently sloped up and we left the flood and the mud behind. We flew along with the posse gaining no ground. When my wind is up I’m a fast man over broken ground, but I knew there was no way we’d outrun the dogs. And sure enough, there they were, spewing foam from their jaws and fangs, and snapping at our shins. As I ran, I cocked the big pistol and stuck it into the flank of a big brown brute that was trying to get a grip on my britches. The pistol gave another weak “fizz” and I bashed at the beast’s head with the barrel as I cocked it for another try. This time it merely gave a click and I gave a scream as he sank his teeth into my hindquarters. I cocked it again and this time the antique gave a bark and a kick that almost broke my thumb, and the hound fell away, yelping, and snapping at its own guts. The other dogs, well-trained animals that they were, went after the darkies as they should, and as I watched, Sweet Pea brained one with the butt of the dripping shotgun. Gus and Janny weren’t doing as well with their mutts and the boy was limping along screaming, his hands over his ears with a dog snapping away at each of his skinny bleeding legs. At this rate Purdy Stark’s bastards would be on us in seconds and to emphasize the point, I heard the crash of a shotgun and felt the sting of pellets ripping into my other arse cheek. As I leapt in pain I heard Purdy Stark shout and Marley Drews holler.

“Ye winged him thar Purdy, but take ’em alive. The Yankee’s tender for the n––rs an’ I got something to show ’em. Take ’em alive.”

By God, they were close and the dogs were around us in a frenzy, but now the ground was dropping away before us, and we were back into the swamp over our knees. The dogs followed and Janny grabbed one of the monsters by the ears and held its head under the water. It was a grand notion, I would have gladly drowned every cur in Mississippi, but they were still coming at a run and I floundered into the flood sobbing with exhaustion.

Behind me I heard a rough scream. “My dog! He’s drownin’ my dog. You black son-uv-a … ” His last word was lost in the boom of a rifle and I took a quick glance back to see poor skinny, silly Janny sink down on top of the dead hound.

The three of us lurched deeper into the swamp as the rest of the pack floundered back to their masters.

Gus was spent from bites and the effort of fighting off the dogs with only one arm. Sweet Pea was half holding him up by his rope belt as he struggled through the water that was now up to his thighs. We were only thirty yards into the flood and not likely to get much farther. When the posse reached the swamp they had only to stand on firm ground, keep their boots dry and cripple us with their scatterguns.

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Page 4 of fiction by David M. Smeltz We were done. I could feel the cold metal of the shackles being riveted around my neck and legs. I’d be forced to watch while the flesh on the backs of Gus and Sweet Pea was ripped down to their spines by heavy lashes as Marley and Purdy Stark took turns mocking me and slashing at them. I’d see that fat little swine Marmaduke practice with his blade on the tendons and hams of my pilgrims. The Marshal County provost would give me a drum-head trial, and the rope would go over the branch, and the knot would be tightened about my neck, and then …… And then I heard that blasted bugle again and the hair rose on the back of my neck. I sank down into the cold water in despair because the bugle was before us now and all hope was gone.

As I slumped in the water I stupidly thought it odd that Cousin Marmaduke had finally learned another tune. It wasn’t Mess Call. It was The Charge and then there was an earsplitting blast of a high-pitched banshee scream and high in the branches, no more than fifty yards ahead, two black stacks floated through the treetops with bright yellow rings painted around. I reckoned I was going mad. What was a Pook turtle doing in a Mississippi backwoods swamp, and what was the Masonic square and compass doing floating in the clouds of dark gray smoke billowing out of the stacks in a shower of sparks? Another blast came from the gunboat’s whistle, and from the woods to our right a platoon in a skirmish line came plowing through the swamp with guns held at high port before their blue uniform jackets.

I haven’t thought about Januarius in almost fifty years and why should I? He was only a dizzy darkie, one of thousands of colored folk who died making their bid for freedom seeking shelter under the wings of the Union Army. I knew why I ran. I ran for my life. I knew I couldn’t just sit about Eudora Pond pinching the brandy, rogering the help, and trying to get under Linda Lou’s skirts. The War would catch up with me there, Union or Confederate, and either side would see me in a prison camp or standing before a wall puffing on my last cheroot. I had to get back to the Union Army before they noticed I was missing and no mistake.

That’s why I ran, but my pilgrims didn’t have to run. They could have hunkered down and waited for the issue to be settled by the white armies, and if God was good, the Yankees would win and they wouldn’t have had to run after all. But they did. They ran to be free. All over the South by the hundreds and then the thousands, and finally in a black mass, they fled to wherever the blue army was marching. And thousands of them like Janny and Brutus, died for it.

Amy’s at church, the big Episcopal pile down Delaware Avenue with the Tiffany windows and the mahogany woodwork.t We’re Baptists, and our church is a barn compared to the opulence those Episcopal blue bloods bring to Jesus. Once a month or so my Amy and the girls like to rub elbows with what passes for quality here in Buffalo. Anyway, when she’s out I can punish the brandy to my heart’s content, and when I’m in the sauce it’s easier to write gospel.

The gospel is, those runaway Negroes like Sambo, Janny, Brutus, Gus and Sweet Pea were heroes. The pack I had met the year before in Virginia fleeing on the Underground Railroad, fat Button, brother Walnut and Sojourner Ursa Major– they were heroes, too. They all had more sand than the likes of me could ever muster and Sojourner was the bravest woman I ever met.u Walnut lost his life to the Virginia provost. Sambo was caught and slaughtered like a hog. Brutus was torn to pieces by Rebel artillery, and Janny was shot down on top of a drowned dog in a Mississippi swamp. They died, as thousands of them died, but they didn’t die as slaves. They died as free men and freedom’s a fine thing to die for. They were free the second they ran, and even though they made a hash of it, they were free as any citizen of old Rome or any English yeoman who went buccaneering on the Spanish Main against the Dons in the earlies. Black man or white man, with freedom it makes no difference. You’re free the second you snap your thumb at the consequences and take that first step away from your shackles.

t

Sawyer is referring to Trinity Episcopal Church at 371 Delaware Avenue. It is splendid and has windows by both John LaFarge and Tiffany. It is just over one mile down the Avenue from the Sawyer mansion, which is now the Erie County headquarters of the National Organization of Women. u For the story of the Virginia runaways refer to the third packet of the Sawyer Memoirs titled The Adventures of Sidney Sawyer: The Year of Jubilee.

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Page 5 of fiction by David M. Smeltz And it wasn’t just the runners. A hundred thousand darkies put on Yankee blue, chipped in their antes like men-o-war, and came at ol’ Marse over the blade of a bayonet.14 At first the white troops hooted them as trained apes fit only to peel spuds for their betters, but I never did. It was a darkie wench named Button who had pulled me half-drowned from the Potomac rapids in ’62 while Reb bush-poppers drew their beads from the Virginia side. It was another darkie wench, Sweet Pea who propelled me through the swamps in ’63 when I had dog bites in one arse cheek, birdshot in the other and Mississippi man-hunters coming on in a rush. It took the rest of the Army until ’64 and the Siege of Petersburg to realize a colored boy could assault the works and stop a minié ball every bit as good as a white boy, but I already knew.

And I knew why they did it. They did it because they were men, and men long to be free, and men have the courage to reach for it and grab it whenever there is any glimmer of a chance, even if it means they could die in the reach. And when it comes to freedom and courage the color of a man’s hide isn’t even a speck of weight on the scales. All men long to plot their own course and trim their own sails, and I thank God that I was born with a white skin because in this world that makes freedom as easy as birth. I don’t know if I could ever have the courage of a Januarius or a Sweet Pea and seize my freedom on a dare like those cotton delta darkies did during the Civil War.

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Josh Smith #23 Longnecks and Rednecks I was handcuffed to a bench in Munich, Germany. Blood from my nose was painting the sidewalk. I leaned over and said, “Charlie, you’ve really fucked us this time.” Except, it wasn’t Germany, and it was I who had fucked myself.

I took a calculated risk that night when I’d walked into the tavern. I knew that the odds of ruffling feathers were high. I knew that I would be outnumbered. I’d calculated everything, but a woman is the one thing you can’t calculate.

It was a quarter past ten when I walked up to the place, hadn’t seen a phone for miles. Thieves were no doubt picking apart my Chevrolet where I’d abandoned it, but I still had to make it to the city before sunrise.

I pulled open the tavern door, and it creaked like it was an outsider alarm system.

As it closed behind me I counted ten cowboy hats. I just kept moving towards the pay phone and trying not to test my luck. I woke up the town’s only tow-truck operator. He arrived ten minutes earlier than expected, but thirty minutes after the cops got there. If Gunther hadn’t had to trade chickens for gasoline, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten my nose broken in the meantime.

I approached the bar, my only option for killing time. The beer hadn’t had time to dull my senses when I saw them. I knew the pair was no mirage. He was a mountain of a man, stood over me by about two inches.

He dragged her at his side. The cord wasn’t visible, but she was dragged. The twitches in her smile were like Morse code, signaling a SOS. He jabbed at me with the butt end of his pool stick and hollered, “I’ve done beaten everybody in this bar ‘cept you boy, you’re next!”

Now, you ought to know I’m a damned fine pool shooter. But I know better. The house always wins in cases like those.

I fished a twenty from my pocket and thrust it out in front of him. “Here, consider me beaten. I’ve got beer to drink.” I knew he wouldn’t take it. It was my best try, but I knew he wouldn’t.

He wasn’t amused, “What kind of man are you? I’ll tell you what, queer. You beat me, I’ll give you a night with my gal.”

That line drew riotous laughter from the entire bar. At that point, a game was my best option. I thought I might be able to draw it out long enough to stall for the tow truck to arrive. I skulked over to the table. We were surrounded immediately.

The mountain of a man with the green teeth shoved his woman into me as I struck the cue ball.

Evidently I wouldn’t be able to stall this game. She recoiled upon contact and clutched her arm, a tell-tale sign.

Despite interference, I gained a two ball lead. It was that second ball that caused Green Teeth to strike his woman. “Goddamnit Becky, what good are you!”

I’d seen enough.

I inverted my pool cue and placed the butt end under his throat. With a hand on the back of his head, I slammed the tip hard into the ground. I didn’t wait for his friends to back him up; I cracked the nearest guy next. A stiff shot across the bridge of his nose sent him to the ground.

I went to a place in my head that I hadn’t visited in years. Victims had no faces, actions had no consequences. The actions I was taking were unconscionable. I was taking shots, but feeling no pain. I was bullet-proof.

I swung my pool cue like a baseball bat right into the jaw of some short guy. I kneed another in the groin and gave him an uppercut into the jukebox. I told the woman to run, I don’t know how many times.

She just kept sobbing over the fallen Green Teeth, moaning loudly.

I’d cleaned about six of them out when everything went dark. That was when I woke up in the police station. I was handcuffed to a bench that looked a lot like one in Germany. Charlie and I had gotten into a fight with off-duty police officers there.

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Page 2 of fiction by Josh Smith He wasn’t around to save me that night in Georgia. His last fight was a losing effort against cancer.

Charlie taught me an important lesson, time and again: you shouldn’t complain about the things you can change.

I saw my opportunity for change that night in the tavern. No woman deserves to go through the life she lived. Or should I say, the hell she suffered through. I changed it alright. So how’s that for a legal defense?

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Susan Lynn Solomon #24 Sabbath “Damn rush hour traffic’s brutal,” my father complained, though the words he actually used were a bit more colorful. Forehead wrinkled, he slammed his hand on the steering wheel.

For all the movement on it, the Belt Parkway to Brooklyn might as well have been a sculpture garden.

Car engines revved next to us, in front of us, behind us. That September afternoon was unseasonably hot. As if the rubber had melted and fused to the pavement, tires strained fruitlessly to inch ahead. No auto airconditioning in our 1961 Buick Roadmaster, the windows were cranked down to allow an ocean breeze to cool us. Except there was no breeze, and the only relief from the monotony of an endless train of cars was a few billowing sails on the Atlantic beyond the wide sandbar that lined the road.

“Damn,” Dad repeated. He shoved his palm on the horn, leaned on it.

The acrid odor of smoke from tailpipes drifted through my window. Maybe the carbon monoxide would kill me, I thought. Hoped. Dead had to be better than what loomed ahead. Sabbath dinner with my grandparents. Boring. Instead of a night with my friends, I’d wind up watching television while my parents and grandparents talked about old people I didn’t know. Couldn’t have cared less about if I did. If my prayers were answered, the traffic would annoy my father enough that he’d turn us around, head back home.

“Knock off the attitude,” Dad said.

I screwed up my face. How did he always know what I was thinking?

One day short of fifteen, I sulked in the back seat. My brother, four years younger, squirmed next to me, hair Brillcreamed back, shirttail pulled from his chinos. “Get off me!” I hissed at him.

He reached for my hair.

“Ouch! Make him stop,” I whined.

“Robert, don’t tease your sister,” my mother said without turning around.

My brother stuck his tongue out then tried to hug me. There was a bump when I shoved him against the door, as far from me as he could get and still be in the car.

“Stop it, Susan,” my father said.

Fine. Now it was my fault?

“Put your lip back in,” my mother said. “What’s the matter with you?”

Robert started up and I got blamed—what did she think was the matter?

“Can’t you do something about this, Lou?” my mother said. “Pull off at the next exit, take side streets.

We’re going to be so late.”

Dad stared straight ahead.

“Wouldn’t be caught in this traffic if you’d have let me stay home,” I muttered. As if the parkway wouldn’t have been jammed if I weren’t with them.

“Susan!” Dad said.

“What? It’s Friday. All the kids are gonna be at Kathy’s house,” I said. “Not me. I’m gonna have dinner with Grandma and Grandpa.”

My father’s shoulders tensed. Reflected in the rearview mirror, his lips were as tight and thin as the line of cars in front of us.

Mom touched his arm then twisted to look at me over the back of her seat. “Grandma specifically asked to see you.”

Three weeks ago my grandmother had been rushed to Downstate Medical Center, lungs filled with fluid.

Congestive heart failure, my parents had called it. That morning the doctor had signed her release.

“I can see her any time. Why’d it have to be tonight? Kathy’s having a party.”

“Because tomorrow’s your birthday,” Mom said. “She’s afraid she might not be here for many more.”

“Yeah, but” “That’s enough, Susan!” Dad said. The thin line of his lips twisted in anger. His blue eyes were locked on the road ahead, searching for a break in the line of traffic, a clear space he could race into and get to his mother a moment sooner.

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Page 2 of fiction by Susan Lynn Solomon Just before sundown, we arrived at the wood-frame house in Bensonhurst. It was faced with grey shingles—some cracked, others missing. Stained parchment shades were drawn down on the windows of the enclosed sun porch. An antique mezuzah was nailed to the doorframea gift from Grandma’s father when she married in 1911, and left home to live among strangers in America. “So you never forget who you are,” he’d said when he put it in her hand. I didn’t know if the great-grandfather who was only a picture on my father’s dresser had really said that, but that’s the way Dad told the story. And he told it to me every time we went to Bensonhurst.

Laid out like a railroad flat—one room leading to the next in single file—the inside was heavy with furnishings my grandparents had brought with them from Russian Poland. Their house always smelled of a mixture of mint and antiseptic. But that night it was filled with a different aroma. Fresh baked challah. I smelled it as soon as I came through the front door. Mom noticed it too.

“Papa!” she scolded my grandfather. “Mama’s supposed to be resting. Why’d you let her bake?”

Grandpa’s laborer’s hand ran through his tuft of white hair then rubbed the stubble on his round chin.

With a long-suffering sigh, he raised his eyes as if asking God to explain the difficult woman he’d been married to for fifty years. “Zat voman,” he called her—that woman. “Zat voman,” he said again, exasperation in his voice. “She wouldn’t sit still a minute. ‘Challah, Hymie,’ she says to me, like that says why she wouldn’t sit.”

We followed him into his living room, crowded with a sofa, wingback chairs, a china hutch, and a credenza. On each end table was a lamp with tasseled shades and cut-glass bowls filled with coffee-flavored sucking candy.

Grandma’s voice, insistent, commanding, floated in from the kitchen. “Shabbat without challah? A shanda!”—a Yiddish word that translates as something between a crime and a sin. Drying her hands on her apron, her backless slippers clopping on the wood floor, she shuffled into the room. Gaunt after her illness, Grandma’s floral housecoat appeared to have been made for someone bigger. Her eyes were sunken and lined with dark rings, the blue in them clouded behind thick glasses.

“Leban.” She sighed my father’s Hebrew name. Stretching on tiptoe, she brushed back his brown hair and kissed his forehead. She hugged my mother and brother then turned to me. “Shenah maideleh, my little one, grown so much and so pretty. Let me look on you.”

I fidgeted with the waistband of my dress, annoyed that I’d been forced to wear one just to have dinner in Brooklyn. “My name’s Susan, Grandma, not Shenah…whatever,” I said. “And you saw me in the hospital two weeks ago.”

Mom pinched my arm.

I shot a look at her. “Well, I haven’t grown up or beautiful in two weeks.”

Hiding behind Dad, Robert snickered. He mimed pinching me with his thumb and forefinger.

My mother turned her back on us. “Come on, Mama,” she said, wrapping an arm around Grandma’s shoulders. “Let me help you in the kitchen.”

“Nah, nah, Jeannie.” Through her thick accent, it sounded as though she called my mother Dzinny. “The gefilte fish is made, challah’s in the oven. Everything done. Only the Shabbat candles to light.”

Again Grandma wiped her hands. I wondered if the dishwater on them ever dried.

“Gefilte fish? Papa, she’s supposed to be resting!” Mom said as if she were the parent. As if Grandma wasn’t in the room.

Shrugging, Grandpa looked again to God. What could anyone do with zat voman? he might have said had he not been in zat voman’s presence. “When I visit her yesterday she says to me, ‘Hymie, don’t forget— go to the fish store. Buy fresh and live.’ Fish swimming in the bathtub all night. How could a person wash with fish in the bathtub?”

Ignoring him, Grandma lifted a shade and peered through the window. “Sun’s down.” Twisting her neck to look at me, she said, “Shenah maideleh, light the candles.”

I slipped behind my father. Quickly, Mom struck a match. “I’ll do it.”

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Page 3 of fiction by Susan Lynn Solomon “Nah, nah, Dzinny,” Grandma said. “Tonight Shoshona will light.” Shoshona is the Hebrew word for Susan.

Face scrunched, I whined, “No… Ma―” Reaching behind my father, Grandma dragged me to her side. The woman had been ill; how did she have the strength to do that? “The prayer,” she instructed.

Again I looked to my mother for help. She pushed me toward the credenza where Grandma’s twin silver candlesticks waited.

“Do it already,” Robert said.

Mom handed me a lit match. The wicks of the tapers crackled when I touched it to them. Rolling my eyes, I slurred ancient Hebrew words that held no meaning in my world. “Baruch…atah…adonai—can’t I say it in English?”

“The prayer, the way we always say it.” Grandma insisted.

“Why can’t Robert do this?” I complained, wanting to smack the smirk off his face.

“It’s a woman’s right to thank God for giving us these candles to light,” Mom said. “You’re a woman now.”

Sighing, I started again. Might as well get it over with.

Hand on my shoulder, Grandma corrected each slip I made. “Ya, ya. Ist gut”—it’s good—she said when I was done. I didn’t return her hug.

Grandpa smiled, removed his hat, and said, “A-men.”

“Can we eat now?” Robert said.

Instead of discussing people and foreign places I didn’t know—which was something I could thank God for—talk through dinner was of Grandma’s condition.

Spoon raised above his bowl, Dad asked, “When do you see the doctor again?”

“Eat, Leban,” Grandma said. “Eat while the soup is hot.”

“Mama, Lou just wants know” “I go when I go. Papa will take me when it’s time.”

Grandpa shook his head. “Zat voman,” he mumbled, and stood to carve the chicken—clearly an easier task than cutting the stubbornness from his wife.

Robert pushed his plate aside. “I hate chicken.”

“Shut up and eat it so we can get out of here,” I whispered.

“Susan!” Dad said.

“I just told him to” Mom spoke over me. “Mama, I think I ought to go with you. I want to talk to the doctor, find out what we should do to take care of you.”

“We go at three o’clock tomorrow to the office,” Grandpa said before zat voman could stop him. Eyes flicking toward my father, he grinned.

Grandma grunted. She said little more until dinner was done, and we’d cleaned the pots and dishes.

Then she wiped her handsthis time on a damp windowpane toweland pointed to the ancient Philco television in the living room. “You men, go watch your cowboy pictures,” she said. With her towel she shooed three generations from her kitchen.

I looked at my wristwatch. “Aren’t we going home?” I whispered to my mother.

She shook her head. Grabbing my shoulders, she pushed me toward the dinette table.

Grandma took my hand. “Come with me, shenah maideleh” “Susan, Grandma,” I said.

“Ya, ya. maideleh, come with me.”

The kitchen was warm, smelled of roast chicken. The linoleum curled up in a corner. We sat at the bare table on hard-backed chairs while Grandma placed relics of her past before us. A jade ring, faded sepia photographs, a cast-iron skillet she’d carried from Eastern Europe, a hand-sewn lace tablecloth. Across each she spoke of my family’s generations, of the people who’d given her these treasures.

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Page 4 of fiction by Susan Lynn Solomon “Mein zeyde,” she said, stroking the gray bearded face in a picture. His arm rested on an anvil. A broad chest made the man’s leather apron seem little more than a patch on his shirt.

“Your grandfather?” I asked, drawn to his kind face despite my resistance.

“Ya, ya.” She nodded. “He was…Dzinny, what’s the word?”

“A blacksmith, Mama.”

“Ach, such a man he was, un edelgentle. And strong. Wise. Our village looked always to him. And my bubeh, she couldn’t wait, he should come home. See,” Grandma pointed to the old woman with soft eyes who stood next to him. “This is my bubeh. Emma. Such a beryah” “That means a wonderful wife,” Mom explained.

The lines around Grandma’s eyes became less noticeable when she smiled. “Always her house in order,” she said. “Her table heavy with food that would make your mouth water. Six kinder─” “Children,” Mom said.

“I know that.” I made a show of looking at my wrist.

Grandma covered my watch with her hand. “—All taught by her to read and do sums,” she continued.

Trapped, unable to escape back to the twentieth century, I surrendered. Pulling a photograph from the stack, I asked, “Who’s this?” The young woman in the picture glared defiantly at the camera.

Grandma closed her eyes, a wistful smile on her lips. “Shoshona,” she said, and caressed the faded photo. “Zaydeh’s sister.” She touched my cheek. “You was named to remember her. Eingeshparht she was— just like you.”

Mom laughed. “Stubborn,” she said, looking squarely at me.

“I’m not,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Mom and Grandma said in unison.

“Just like Shoshona,” Grandma said. “To force her to do something was like trying to make a mule climb a ladder.” It was a Yiddish idiom my mother translated for me.

At that moment, I didn’t want to climb any ladders. I just wanted to get home. Might still be able to get to Kathy’s house before her party ended.

Grandma glanced at Mom. “She’s old enough,” she said.

Looking now at me, clutching the photograph to her chest, Grandma, said, “Shoshona lived near Livadia. The Tsar, he came to his palace there. His Easter, for us it’s Pesach. A Shabbat night. His officers came to her village to move the Jews away, so the Tsar shouldn’t have to look on us. What do they call it, Dzinny?”

“A pogrom.”

“Ya, ya, Pogrom.” Anger burned in Grandma’s eyes as she described horsemen thundering down dirt roads, into yards. Into houses. Swords slashing. Men, women, children, clutching what few possessions they could carry from their flaming homes. “Shoshona said she wouldn’t leave her home. Not even when those sons of the devil put torches to it.” Grandma stopped, sighed, eyes moist. It was as if she again saw her aunt disappear into the flames. “Like at Masada, a pager―” “A martyr,” Mom translated.

Nodding, Grandma took my hand, held tight to it. “This is who you come from, Shoshona. This is who you are.”

The next afternoon Mom and I took Grandma to the doctor. As we drove along Ocean Parkway, I leaned over the front seat. “Tell me more about Shoshona,” I said. The woman had attached herself to my imagination. I’d been given her name. I was connected to her, to what she’d done.

Grandma laughed. “Come again on Shabbat, we talk more.”

A few years later Grandma was gone. She hadn’t died. Not yet. Alzheimer’s had stolen her memory. I was old enough by then to understand the family she’d told me of on the many Sabbaths I’d sat beside her.

The more she’d recalled, the more she showed me her relics during our after-dinner talks, the hungrier I became to learn more. “This is who you come from,” she always began.

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Page 5 of fiction by Susan Lynn Solomon Now, as her memory died, I would sit beside her on a hard-back chair in a kitchen that no longer smelled of challah and roast chicken, and tell her of the family that made up her past. My past.

Grandma’s stories remain with me, though each year her voice is less distinct in my mind. Still, I recall the sweet perfume of her Sabbath challah that, once sliced, steamed and melted on my tongue. Still, I feel the velvet of her fingers tracing mine while she spoke of the people I was born to. That connection gave me as a college student the courage to take a long walk to Birmingham, and spend a frenzied night in Chicago’s Grant Park while politicians convened to decide my country’s fate. It taught me to sing protest songs in Greenwich Village clubs, and We shall not be moved at countless sit-ins. Seems my parents were right to name me after Grandma’s Aunt Shoshona. Eingeshparht.

I’ve been thinking of this since last Friday. That afternoon my daughter and son-in-law had driven from New Jersey for Sabbath dinner. As they came through the door to my Garden City home, I heard a whine from behind them.

“Ma, why’d I have to come tonight? The kids are all going to the movies.”

That was my 13-year-old granddaughter, Sarah. She was also named after Shoshona.

I grabbed her hand, and pulled her, resisting, into my kitchen. “I want to show you some photographs,” I said.

On the sideboard in my living room were twin silver candlesticks—handed down from Grandma. That night Sarah would recite the prayer to welcome the Sabbath.

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Chera Thompson #25 Riderless Horse “We should cancel,” I tell my husband. I read him the headlines. “Tourists slaughtered by Islamic extremists in the lobby of their deluxe hotel.” I envision blood gushing over bright woven carpets, spattering marble walls. I hear the smashing of crystal chandeliers. See the bodies in sneakers and Bermuda shorts sprawled across the lobby. With sunglasses, credit cards, Fodor’s guide to Cairo.

“It’s the best time to go,” my husband says. “Heightened security.”

Our friends and family shudder. Why take your children to such a place during such a time? But the airline tickets are non-refundable.

At our hotel, I check the locations of the exits. Double check cell phone batteries, street maps, American embassy numbers. Dust fills our lungs as we walk along the traffic choked streets toward the museum. Cars and motorcycles blow exhaust in our faces. Mules wobbling under bundles of cooking wears, watermelons, linens, are poked along by stick-carrying men in loose cotton trousers and tunics. Open-bed Lorries are piled high in a hodgepodge of laborers, goods, and animals.

Women draped in black walk by, staring out from veiled eyes. Like a shroud. They shuffle behind men and boys dressed in tee-shirts and jeans. What do they see? Even in this oppressive heat, I follow the guide book’s advice to cover my arms and legs. But my eyes are open wide, my curiosity exposed, as I walk in step beside my husband. What do they think?

Our son and daughter gape at the Uzi- carrying guards standing on every corner. Not a movie. Not a video game.

“This is great,” my husband says when we reach the museum. “No long lines.”

Our footsteps echo down empty hallways lined with mummies. I stare at the wrappings. Being…then nothingness. Anxiety quietly sucks on my lungs.

We meander around the pyramids at Giza. The ones we recognize from the television documentaries on Cairo. Desperate-eyed vendors follow us around, besieging us to buy brass trinkets, tea, camel rides. Their livelihood has been obliterated by tourist cancellations. There are just a few of us. They’ll give ‘big discount.’

Soon there’s only us.

“A once in a life time shot!” My husband says, taking pictures unobstructed by other people’s heads or bodies. The kind we’ll hang on our living room wall in Ohio and show to our friends who told us not to come.

The desert sun beats down white heat onto us as we wander. And wonder. My energy drips down my long sleeved blouse and twists with my skirt around my ankles. My husband and son disappear into one more tomb. I can’t take another narrow crawl into darkness, so I wait outside in the open with my thirteen-year-old “If I see one more dead body I’m going to puke,” daughter. We drink our bottled water and wordlessly gaze out at the dunes in the distance. Not a tree. Not a sound. Not a soul. Only sun and sand.

Then I see him in the distance. Galloping over the dunes on a black steed, pulling a riderless horse behind him. Am I hallucinating? I put up my hand to shade my eyes. His lone image rolls in with the heat waves, white turbaned and belted tunic. Flowing jodhpurs tucked into black leather boots, He skids in front of us, sand flying.

He points to the horse. “Horseback ride? Over sand dunes?”

I shake my head no, nervously smiling and frantically scanning the landscape to where my son and husband had disappeared underground.

“Your daughter?”

I jerk my head to see my redheaded daughter staring at him. Her green eyes light with excitement darting to me with hope.

“I, well…I don’t know,” I stall for time, willing my husband up out of that tomb. If I say no, an Uzi might be yanked from the saddlebag and do us both in on the spot. If I say yes…My stomach pitches into my mouth.

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Page 2 of fiction by Chera Thompson He sits waiting. I inhale. Fine grains of heat slowly burn my throat. I look up at him. Penetrating dark eyes under straight black brows look intently back at me. Oh where have those eyes traveled before this moment. Have they stared out between the crevices of the mountains scanning the divide of Gods and Prophets in this land? Have they seen tourists lying in a pentagon on the hotel lobby floor, bullets through their heads?

His leathered hands grip the reins. Have those hands grasped machetes and Uzis? Have they held hookahs behind the curtained cafes where men plan and dream of a Westernless world? His boots burnish black in the sun’s glare. Have these boots marched through villages massacring freedom?

He watches my reactions slide across my middle-aged white wife of a businessman’s face. They reflect fear. Of that culture. That religion. That obsession. But they also reveal a trace of longing. To trust. To understand. To hope.

My daughter walks over to pet the riderless horse. My words mull in around my head. Stick in my throat.

I gaze beyond and picture her flying over the dunes, red hair and blue jeans streaming in this country of dark skin and white linen. Innocent jubilation. Unbridled joy. I flash forward and see her opening her eyes and mind to the significance of her once-in-a-lifetime ride. Discovering the power of trust.

He reaches into his saddle bag. I tense, here comes the knife. He pulls out an apple and gives it to my daughter. She smiles and takes it, then offers it to the horse. The horse gobbles it down and looks at my daughter with gentle devotion. She rubs its neck, its nose, its ears. It nuzzles her back. Could such a horse belong to a ruthless killer? My inward eye gives a leap of faith. Taking one last look around, I nod.

He swiftly gets down from his horse and swings my daughter up onto hers. Then he walks over to me and we stare eye to eye. Soul to soul.

“My family starves with no tourists,” he says. “If I see any religious fanatics…I’ll kill them myself!”

He mounts his horse, gives a swift kick and the two of them fly off toward the dunes. I see my daughter holding on for dear life. Dear… life. The weight of the words leaves me breathless. Breath…less.

I watch them fly over the dunes and evaporate under the parched sky. I drop to my knees. Oh my God. Anyone’s God.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Lisa Wiley #26 The Open House She should not be here. She should not be standing on these oak planks, but April Montgomery had adored the yellow Cape alongside the hill years before the For Sale sign popped up. She drove past it on the winding road to Main Street every day on her way to work. The porch with gingerbread house trim invited her with open palms, and yellow, her favorite color. The new flower boxes with red geraniums added to its curb appeal. It belonged in a sleepy, beach community. Not here, way upstate. She had always wanted to cross the threshold and curl up with a New Yorker and decaf tea. This was a sign. Not just For Sale, but an Open House.

At an open house, she could slip in and out without an appointment and little conversation. But if a neighbor saw her silver Prius parked in front, she would say she was house hunting for an out-of-town cousin moving to the area. April had even invented a name for her, Tessa, a newlywed in need of a starter home.

“Tired of renting,” she would say, “thinking of starting a family soon.” She’d come armed with every cliché in the book and quickly bypass the guest register.

April had never done anything out of sequence. College, law school, marriage, children. Her life was as linear as one could possibly be. She wouldn’t even live with her husband Henry before they married. He would wonder what she saw in this simple house. Why had she stopped for a self-guided tour with her already overcrowded schedule? Why wasn’t she at the grocery store sizing up organic produce?

She had to walk on the floorboards of this village Cape just once. That’s all she planned to do: walk in and walk out. Yet a certain music wrapped around her like a comfortable shawl the moment she strode through the front door. She loved the way her feet echoed on these wide planks. It was a beautiful, almost holy sound she had never quite heard before.

She paused before the mantel as if it were a makeshift altar. No personal photographs belonging to the current owners adorned the shelf, or she might have lingered longer to invent their stories. Just two glass candle holders with long, white tapers in front of a mounted mirror added to the room’s depth. Her face looked softer in this light.

She glided from the living room to the kitchen in back. She heard a note with every step. The planks seemed to be strumming a freedom song. The windows over the ceramic sink faced the sunset and postagestamp yard. These clean, white walls painted for a fast sale would look lovely in tangerine or saffron— colors Henry would never allow. “What about resale value?” he always quipped at her pallet. If she taught a class at the law school, she might afford poured concrete counters like a creative friend’s she admired. She would love to see her children here in the glow of this light doing their homework while she cooked; the table not big enough for him, and she would cover it with exotic dishes flavored with tarragon and turmeric he would never eat.

She noticed immediately the house was big enough for her without him. With three bedrooms, it was big enough for the children if the boys bunked, and it was in their school district. Maybe she could remain a good mother after all, since they could maintain their teachers and friendships. The children would fit upstairs, and she could patrol downstairs alone from the tiny master meant for an office, but she could make room for love. Love prefers close quarters. This bungalow was as much house as she could possibly muster on her public defender salary.

There were no lovers, she thought as she checked the condition of the appliances. Someone could cook a mean Spanish omelet on this gas stove. No one to be branded with a scarlet “H” for home wrecker.

Nothing was terribly wrong with their marriage, but nothing terribly right. Of course, he didn’t drink or hit her, but he didn’t love her anymore, the way she needed to be loved: adored, as someone courting. That kind of love was possible, she knew. It’s difficult when you see movie screen love every day in your best friend’s equally long marriage. The thought of the next half of her life with him made her not want to get out of bed in the morning, yet she refused to pop pills and turn into a zombie to salvage the union. She’d already tried to break the job down like one does with any daunting task. Maybe she could last until the kids graduated high school. Maybe middle school. Maybe till the end of next week.

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 2 of fiction by Lisa Wiley The children sensed something askew. Something had been off for years. She often wondered what a priest would advise but couldn’t muster the courage to speak to even the young, hipster priest in the parish.

Was it a sin exactly to fall out of love? Could he absolve her with a text? She knew a relationship demanded work, but it shouldn’t require absolute blistered labor and the fortitude of an Iron Man. The refrigerator seemed new enough and perfectly suitable; she smiled at a child’s finger painting of a yellow house attached to the door with heart magnets.

They weren’t even separated legally, and here she was looking at a house she could afford. Really looking from top to bottom, like her father would inspect. She examined the roof shingles and crept down to the basement seeking evidence of water damage, and checked whether the second upstairs closet could accommodate her teenage daughter’s wardrobe. If she’d had a tape measure in her purse, she would have measured to see if the piano would fit between the doorframe and plaster wall. The property had no garage, but its inviting melody offered hope of more dancing and a new stability.

Maybe the music of the floorboards would cease if she sank into a living room armchair. What was she doing here? She wouldn’t even be in this yellow house if he loved her like he did before they married. Zzz, zzz, her cell phone vibrated. Where are u? he texted. She didn’t respond. Why didn’t he wink at her anymore like they were the only two in the room? Why didn’t he kiss her before leaving for work? Why didn’t he kiss her when she returned home after her long hours at the office? Kissing at these junctures would surely improve earning potential, and it might improve their skin, she once heard on NPR. The view of the spring grass out the window only urged her to move forward with this vision of a new life. She couldn’t see them making it to the silver lining of a 25th wedding anniversary. He would be more likely to remarry, find someone on ChristianCrapMingle like a young RN who cut coupons in this couponclipping town. She’d be plump, practical, down to earth; his parents would immediately love her more.

April realized she was willing to open her children to this potential stepmother’s influence, tired of resisting it. The yellow house gave her this new confidence, this sliver of hope from the moment she opened the front door that she might have a kindred spirit somewhere waiting for her. A sliver of hope was better than none.

The open house proved others had an interest in her yellow bungalow. An expectant mother with a bowling-ball stomach filed down the stairs in a tight, heather green sundress. An older father accompanying his 30-something daughter, likewise, nodded approvingly at her yellow house. Their expressions announcing it would be a wise investment at this particular juncture in their lives. She wanted to scream, “Everyone, out of my house!” and sit with a glass of merlot on the couch before the nightly news.

Was it her heels she heard clicking faster on the glossy floorboards? Those short, staccato, grace notes.

She darted through the kitchen to find the real estate agent with the severe cheekbones and dark bob on the back patio facing the dropping sun. April reached for her elbow with sudden resolution, “I’d like to place an offer today. Full asking price.”

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

LIST OF CONTESTANTS 1

Carol J. Alaimo...................... The Cat Lady

2

Alan Bartlett........................... Wrapped in calico

3

Larry Beahan......................... Tom Sawyer to the Rescue

4

Kelly Bucheger ...................... Corkscrew, 1981

5

Louis Ciola ............................ Hogmanay

6

Jennifer Connor..................... Tidepool, Breath

7

Paul Cumbo .......................... Silverback

8

Trudy Cusella ........................ Slippery Blisses

9

Alexis David .......................... Wonder Like a Warm Bath That Surrounds You

10 Regina Forni.......................... False Eyes 11 Veronica Breen Hogle ........... An Afternoon in Brandon Manor 12 Douglas J. Levy..................... The Oligarch Lives Upstairs 13 George Morse ....................... Lefty, Fats, and Stinky 14 Khalil Ihsan Nieves................ planting olive trees 15 Michael R. O’Brien ................ Aidan and the Animal 16 Richard K. Olson ................... Listening to Leo 17 Pat Pendleton........................ Breaking Eggs 18 Patrick D. Reilly .................... Retiring to my study 19 Scott Reimann....................... Clouds in the Basement 20 Wendy A. Reynolds............... Making It Count 21 Julianna Ricci ........................ Home is Not a House

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The 6th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

22 David M. Smeltz .................... Excerpt from The Adventures of Sidney Sawyer: 22 David M. Seltz ....................... The Father of Waters 23 Josh Smith ............................ Longnecks and Rednecks 24 Susan Lynn Solomon ............ Sabbath 25 Chera Thompson .................. Riderless Horse 26 Lisa Wiley.............................. The Open House

SELECT YOUR FAVORITE FICTION AND ENTER THE NUMBER IN THE BOX BELOW

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