August 2017

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The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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VOLUME: 2 - ISSUE: 5 - AUGUST - 2017

Notes from New Delhi : Dibyajyoti Sarma

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Columns:

Sotto Voce -Indira Parthasarathy 07

Letter from London: John Looker

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P&P - Yonason Goldson

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The Wanderer - Andrew Fleck

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Poetry:

Marianne Szlyk 58

Flash Fiction: Sunil Sharma 74 Fiction:

Mark Zipoli 24

Patrick Fealey 39 Gerald Arthur Winter 46 Julia Benally 62 Novella:

Serkan Engin - Part-III

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Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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NOTES FROM NEW DELHI

Vijay Nambisan: The last of the sages

While discussing RK Narayan’s The Guide in the classroom,

Dr R Raj Rao of the University of Pune had explained to us the difference between ‘sage’ and ‘saint’. As opposed to the Judeo-Christian connotation of ‘saint’, in India, we use both the words interchangeably, to mean someone who is wise and who has discarded the worldly concerns. However, as Rao explained, in the context of the eventual journey of Raju Guide, there’s is a difference between being a saint and a sage. A ‘saint’ remains tethered to the world in some way. A ‘saint’ needs disciples, followers (as in the case of Raju, after his con becomes a reality for the villagers). A saint needs to make something happen (as Raju needs to make rain). But a ‘sage’ elevates these saintly concerns. A ‘sage’ turns himself into a perfect being, where nothing matters, not even existence (as Narayan implied Raju achieving this at the end of the novel).

As I heard of Vijay Nambisan passing away, I was thinking about this distinction in the context of Nambisan as a poet (people tend to forget that he was also a brilliant essayist, a form largely forgotten today. He also wrote the most original treaties on ‘Language as Ethics’ and looked at a Bihar with a fresh pair of eyes before talking about ‘New Bihar’ became fashionable in the 2000s, in ‘Bihar in the Eye of the Beholder’. He has also translated classical Sanskrit poetry, a language he knew well).

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

4 My Face book timeline was flooded with quotes from Nambisan’s poetry. It was an interesting development considering it was Nambisan, the most reluctant of poets. He was one of the key poets of the second generation of the Bombay School of Poetry (if you consider Ezekiel, Kolatkar, Jussawalla and others as the first generation), a generation which under the influence/tutelage of Dom Moraes, focused more on intellectual rigour rather than the socio-political concern of a changing India of the previous generation.

Nambisan’s contemporaries, Jeet Thayil, CP Surendran, Ranjit Hoskote, among others, are all established poets today, with several collections to their names, but Nambisan seemed to have lagged behind. His first published book of poems was Genini (a two-poet project published by Dom Moraes; the other poet was Jeet Thayil) in 1992. His second and last, and the only solo collection of poems First Infinities was published in 2015. Simply he did not want to publish a book of poems. He was already well known, since his poem Madras Central won him the first ever All India Poetry Competition award organised by the Poetry Society of India and the British Council in 1988.

He wrote in Madras Central: To think we have such power to alter our states, order comings and goings; know where we’re not wanted And carry our unwanted mess somewhere else.

He was an aberration to the norm. He did not need fame and recognition. He would accept it if it came his way, but he wouldn’t crave for it. He did not need the outside to validate his existence. He did not run from the outside either. Largely a private person, he wasn’t a recluse, but a gracious host when the occasion demanded, ever willing to talk poetry, and literature in general, with a witty sense of humour — a great company to spend time with.

This is how I remember him.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

5 I met him and his novelist/doctor wife Kavery when the couple settled in Lonavla in the outskirts of Pune sometime in 2000s, thanks to my teacher R Raj Rao who knew Vijay from the Bombay poetry days. I don’t remember him as a poet, but as a lover of poetry, who would be the happiest to give me a tour of his personal library, filled with books signed by their authors. He inspired me to collect autographed books. He inspired me to reread one of his favourite poets Robert Graves, including his autobiography ‘Goodbye to All That’.

Most of all, I found him to be the generous and humble man I have ever known. This humility was hardwired into him as a man who is extremely erudite, knew it and did not expect others to be as smart and well read as he was. He was a perfect teacher any student could ever hope for, though teaching was not his thing.

Once, he was invited to give a guest lecture to the MA students of the University of Pune. At first, he was uncertain. He had nothing to tell the students, he said. Finally, he decided to discuss one of his favourite poems with the students — WH Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’. It was not a surprising choice. Auden wrote: About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: I think Vijay understood this more than anyone.

Personally, for me, he was a source of inspiration until the very end. When I first met him, I was working on my second collection of poems. When he heard that he offered to look at the poems. At first, I The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

6 was uncertain. He was a poet of rigour and discipline. I wrote poetry to let off steam. I was sure he wouldn’t even bother to go through the manuscript. Finally, I sent him a hard copy of the manuscript and three months later, I received an SMS. He was in Pune for a few hours and he would like to see me, as he was carrying my manuscript and he wanted to talk about it.

I was certain he would ask me to junk the idea of the book.

Instead, we sat in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying and went through the poems, page by page. At some places, he had made comments. He said some poems did not work, and most were largely fine. Then he gave me a crash course in poetry — the importance of music in poetry; the dangers of mixed metaphors and most importantly, the need to edit poetry.

Now, you take this manuscript and keep it away safely for one year, he said. Exactly one year later, he said, open the manuscript, sit on a desk and work on it. Make sure that you sit on a chair and use a table, he insisted, not on bed, or elsewhere, where it’s more comfortable.

Then go through each word, each sentence, and each line. After that, if you are satisfied, go ahead, publish the book.

It was the most inspiring moment of my life. And since that day, I have been shamelessly recycling this advice.

The book was finally out four years later, and I was happy to hand over a copy to Kavery during the launch of Vijay’s book First Infinities in Delhi (He was busy being a host). Kavery said Vijay would be happy to see the book and I trusted her.

The last conversation I had with Vijay was late last year, on email. When a publisher showed the interest to publish my short story collection (the publisher was in a hurry, she had grand plans, nothing of which came to fruition; it’s a different story!), and needed a blurb from a ‘famous author’, I could not think of anyone other than Kavery Nambisan. So I dashed off a mail, without expecting The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

7 much, because I knew that she had been busy with her job as a surgeon and with her writing.

Vijay and Kavery shared the email ID. Two days later, I received an email from Vijay. He read the manuscript, liked it and he would be happy to give a blurb if I would have one. Of course, I said yes, and he gave me a glowing blurb. But he had a caveat. The stories are great but it needed another round of editing. I could do it for you if you have the time, he wrote. Unfortunately, I did not have the time; the publisher was unreasonably in a hurry (I would regret not asking him to edit the book for the rest of my life.) Okay, then, I will edit your next book, he said. I said okay, I will finish my next book as soon as I can.

The book is not complete and Vijay is gone.

People would say he was a genius who never received his due.

It may be true. But I don’t think he wanted his dues. I don’t think he had any expectations. He was what he always was — a sage.

Dibyajyoti Sarma 20 August 2017 New Delhi

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Devotion as drama

Any literary work, once it is branded as a sacred religious text, gets

stagnated as such, relieved of its possible other multiple aesthetic dimensions, that it can be read as a play and as glorious poetry.

‘Tiruvaimozhi’ by the ‘vaishnavite’ saint Nammazhvar is one such work that, in fact, transcends its ‘branding’.

In ‘Tiruvaimozhi’, the poet has delved deep into the several layers of consciousness for a mystic experience of God that is expressed in various dramatic forms. To start with there is a vision and the devotee wants to experience this moment stretched into eternity. But, interrupted by the values of space and time, the vision recedes to make this separation a vital, dynamic force, to crave for achieving it more and more. This is what that gives the work a dramatic form. There are romantic confrontations, dramatic tensions, pathos, reconciliations and finally resolution in the form of bliss, all emotions captured at various psychological levels.

The dramatic theme of separation and union is used alternatively; separation leading to alienation and union to spiritual ecstasy.

The ‘hero’ (God) has many roles to play; his incarnations used as a motif for this purpose. The exploits of these incarnations can be shown on the stage as beautiful visuals. The ‘heroine’ (‘Atma’) is multi-faceted, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

9 joyous, sad and angry, but solely dependent on the hero (God) for her sustenance. Like the ‘cut radar’, the poet intervenes on appropriate occasions, to describe the hero’s various attributes – this reads like a dramatic interlude - to provide the reasons for the heroine’s insatiate desire for the hero. There are also other characters like the foster- mother of the heroine, the heroine’s companion, and the various birds those are requested to go on a mission to the hero, carrying the heroine’s message of love for him.

After having written the first three works, (“Tiruvirutham’.

‘Tiruvaciriyam’, and ‘Periya Tiruvanthathi’), Nammazhvar could have composed ‘Tiruvaimozhi’ to integrate the individual elements of these poems in a comprehensive manner to produce this masterpiece, which, in its total and holistic form reads like a play.

‘Tiruvirutham’ deals with the theme of love in a dramatic form in the true ‘Sangam’ tradition. ‘Tiruvaciriyam’ dramatizes the various forms of worship. And, ‘Periya Tiruvanthathi’ dramatizes the divine vision and continuing happiness in this terrestrial life itself. In ‘Tiruvaimozhi’ the play of divine love is enacted to make the human life on earth as a unique meaningful dramatic experience.

Here is a short scene in ‘Tiruvaimozhi’.

The heroine in the state of ‘separation’ from the hero, runs after a snake and cries ‘oh! It is my lover’s bed’ (‘Vishnu’ in snake-bed).

Later, she showers all her body with mud and says, This is the earth, my lover measured with one step’ (Vamanavatara). Like this. she goes on visualizing all earthly objects as manifestations of her hero and as such, the earth is the holiest place for any dramatic adventure. ‘The world is a stage and every object in this earth has a dramatic meaning in relation to God. Everything is the body of God and all have God as their self. Everything exists for Him and He exists for everything. Let us enact this play and be blessed’.

The concept of metaphysical truth is dramatized in material form to capture the popular imagination and perhaps, to relieve it of its intellectual abstraction. The Indian aesthetic theory of ‘rasa’ is largely responsible for dramatizing our religious concepts. ‘Bkakti’ is described as a ‘rasa’. Etymologically, ‘rasa’ means anything that can The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

10 be tasted or enjoyed ONLY in drama; the various aspects of rasa can be fully realized and as such, the bhakti poets, for whom, devotion was more a dramatic than a religious experience.

‘Bhakti’ is a Dravidian concept (Dr. Gonda, Dr. Zimmer) The early ‘Tamil way of life and its philosophy’ is very earth oriented, as evidenced by the ‘sangam’ poems. As most of the major ‘puranas’ were compiled in the South, according to Dr.Zimmer, they were able to translate the spontaneity of blissful living in a mystical and dramatic idiom. This helped evolve a humanistic concept of God, which is the bottom line of romantic love and aesthetic devotion for divinity.

Saint Ramanuja, who held, that the Tamil ‘prabhandas’ were equal to the ‘Vedas’ in content and quality, chose to call ‘the Eternal Player, for whom the ‘Universe is a stage’, as ‘Bhuvana Sundara’. A new ‘avatara’ was introduced called, ‘arcavatara” (a new character in the eternal play) i.e. the incarnation of God in the icons.

This led to an experience of aesthetic joy, which found expression in the innumerable festivals, and such artistic forms as music, dance and drama in the temples.

Ramanuja is said to have initiated a new dance-drama genre called ‘Prabhanta Natyam’ that dramatized the sequences found in the love poetry of the ‘alwar’ hymns. Sadly, this dramatic form is now extinct.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of

R.Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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Letter from London - 10 from John Looker

Literature and the Spiny Lizard

Have you ever stepped into a lift in a seemingly empty building

and then had immediate regrets in case the thing got stuck between floors?

My wife and I have recently spent eight weeks in a UNESCO City of Literature on the other side of the world. I like to think that if we could take a lift from London down through the world’s crust, right through its core, and out again we would emerge in Dunedin, New Zealand, where two of our daughters live with their families.

The alignment is not quite a neat as that but the pretence has some validity.

And Dunedin, this Victorian and Scottish city so far away, was the eighth city in the world to be given the UNESCO designation. The first was Edinburgh, where Dunedin has historic roots.

Among other claims to this title Dunedin is the site of the Otago University Press, which publishes New Zealand’s longest, established The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

12 literary journal. The lift I actually stepped into, with immediate second thoughts about my safety, was the one that took me upstairs to their offices.

Nothing about the entrance did justice to the prestige of this institution. I had walked up and down the street looking vainly for the entrance before discovering it to the side of a drab modern building on the edge of a car park. The sign saying Otago University Press was inconspicuous; there were no posters or displays of their publications, no reassuring nameplates inside the lift and no one about. I emerged however, on a deserted corridor and immediately found my way into the publisher’s reception area. Here at last was the reassurance needed: shelves displaying their publications, a table laden with publicity material and a bell. I rang it.

It was evidently a quiet afternoon at the OUP. One deadline was comfortably behind them and the next had yet to arrive.

The administrator whom I had hoped to meet had popped out. The editor of their literary journal was working at home. But a tall guy, who could have been in the Highlanders rugby squad but who was in fact a poet and their marketing and publicity man, came out of his room and welcomed me: Victor Billot. We chatted about London, Dunedin, their literary journal (Landfall), the new poetry collection I am slowly working on and his own books.

Victor Billot has written many poems about his city. Many are regretful or critical – you can sense the underlying ambition he has for his home town – but one poem (Dunedin) begins “Everything is spun from clean lonely air” and concludes: ... look north from Mount Cargill to the vibrating song of the coast and feel your heart grow like a swelling fruit.

The journal that his office publishes has just celebrated its 70th anniversary. It was nearly called Tuatara after a spiny lizard but thankfully the final choice was Landfall. This seems eminently appropriate. New Zealand was colonised twice. The first time was by the Maori: waves of Pacific Islanders in formidable sea-going canoes that were really small ships; later by the Pakeha or Europeans. The The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

13 founder of the journal, Charles Brasch, was returning to his home country after the second world war – yet another landfall. Maybe there was also a feeling in the air that it was time for literature and the arts to make their own distinctive entry into these islands.

Charles Brasch was a prominent poet in New Zealand but he was equally interested in art and when he died he bequeathed 400 paintings and drawings to the Hocken Collection in Dunedin. Brasch had a vision which would be understood in any ex-colony.

He wanted New Zealand to develop its own poetry and literature, and therefore ruled out suggestions that early editions of Landfall should feature prominent British writers like Edith Sitwell; he also encouraged the Hocken Collection to collect contemporary paintings by national artists.

We could see the success of this policy. There’s an exhibition in the Hocken Collection at present which shows the collaboration

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14 in the 1940s and ‘50s between writers and artists in New Zealand, encouraged and supported by Brasch. There are cabinets displaying documents and photographs from the early days of Landfall and its founders. And on the walls, art works incorporating poems.

Literature is not usually very evident to the eyes. As you move around Dunedin you might assume that it would be chosen by UNESCO for art: many large-scale murals have been painted on blank elevations of city centre blocks, and bus shelters out into the surrounding hills have been painted with scenes of local life. One of the few visual reminders of literature is the statue of Robert Burns in the central public space, the Octagon.

I discovered another however at the airport, and it was one I particularly liked.

In the departure lounge a poem has been printed and framed. This is Saddle Hill by David Eggleton who is not only one of the foremost poets in New Zealand at present but also the current editor of Landfall. Saddle Hill is a local landmark – as his poem puts it: Hill telescoped and named by James Cook, sailing in the eighteenth century, for a horse saddle.

Times change however and, as David Eggleton goes on to observe, this is today: Hill clambering now a slumped dome, dug-away, quarried megaphone The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

15 trumpeting change, over which jets hurtle north for the big smoke.

The poem is displayed close to a small exhibition on the geology and wildlife of the Otago region and on the history of its settlers, both Maori and Pakeha. The poem feels exactly right just where it is placed.

Not many city airports would give poetry such a place of prominence. It was refreshing to see Saddle Hill on our way out of this UNESCO city and back home to Britain.

Incidentally that journey required 26 hours of flying time.

Pity there’s no lift!

John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England.

His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 by Bennison Books (through Amazon) and was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and in online journals, on local radio and in ‘When Time and Space Conspire’, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs. wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

There’s a sparrow in the apple orchard Sipping dandelion wine, Singing of a memory, A dream I had, that you were mine.

There’s a tulip in an onion field, A sane word in a Van Gogh print The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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Seen only by dark eyes that hold Fiery sparks from virgin flint.

There’s a dewdrop on a spider’s web, That glistens in the setting sun A whisper from the checkered past That all we are can be undone.

There’s a heartbeat in the catacomb A sign of life beyond the pale A furtive breath, a wistful sigh, To set the course and fill the sail.

There’s no answer, there’s no sound at all, No voice, just echoes in the dark; Who else could know but you and I: It is from here that we embark.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, keynote speaker with 3,000 years’ experience, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri.

He is a former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, newspaper columnist, and high school teacher.

His latest book, ‘Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages’, is available on Amazon. Visit him at yonasongoldson.com The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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The Wanderer Andrew Fleck

Tomorrow, at sunrise, at the hour the fields pale, I will depart. You see, I know you are waiting.

I will go through the woods, I will go through the hills.

I cannot stay so far from you any longer.

I will walk, eyes fixed only on my thoughts, Without seeing a thing, without hearing a noise, Alone andanonymous, my back stooped, hands crossed, And sad – the day for me will be as the night.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

19 I will look at neither the falling gold of evening, Nor the distant sails going down to Harfleur, And when I arrive, I will place on your grave A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.

The above poem is a translation of an untitled poem by Victor Hugo (1802-1885) which was written to commemorate the death of his daughter, who had died a few years earlier. Hugo addresses his daughter plainly and directly, speaking of the act of devotion he will pay the next day; for the reader, however, especially the reader who reads the poem without knowing what it will be about, the import of these lines, and of the poet’s behaviour does not become apparent until the very last lines, when the destination and the reason for the journey is revealed. Despite the undoubted sincerity of the poem’s sentiment, there is art in this concealment and revelation.Hugo assures his daughter that he will not pay attention to the scenery – but again, for the reader, the very words he uses to do so evoke the landscape which his unseeing figures traverse. We could, if we were so minded, talk of a conflict here between the sincere and simple emotion of the mourner, and the necessary artifice of the poet, the same man, describing his own act of mourning. But this would be to impose the ideas of our own more sceptical age onto Hugo’s world view: 19th Century France, despite the revolution, was still a country of deeply Catholic habits of mind, and we can see that in the importance attached towhat is, in effect, a kind of ritual. Such ritual is not only a comfort to the grieving, but helps to bridge the gulf between the living and the dead. For Hugo, this was an enduring preoccupation – in later life he took an interest in Spiritism, and participated in séances.

Although Hugo is both beautifying and publicising his act The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

20 of mourning, this is a very personal poem, and there is something in it that remains forever private and hidden. He walks fixed on his thoughts, he tells us, but he does not tell us what these thoughts are.

Exactly by alluding to the landscape he walks through, although he is not looking at it, he is diverting our gaze away from him and his private grief. Those distant sails in the last line fascinate me. Hugo’s daughter died alongside her husband when a passenger boat overturned on the Seine. Hugo must have been painfully aware that this was the very same river on which those sail boats head towards Harfleur and the sea. To methe boats headed for the sea seem suggestive of souls departing this world, and perhaps, very faintly, of that link between the living and the dead that Hugo wants to make.

The English poet and playwright Ben Jonson (1572-1637) left two epigrams about children he had lost.Jonson was seen as the great formalist of his age, especially in comparison to his contemporary William Shakespeare who broke the classical rules of drama that Jonson was eager to cleave to. But despite the great variety of his art, Shakespeare the man remains rather mysterious, while Jonson’s poetry affords us glimpses of his own deepest joys and sorrows. This poem was written about his daughter who died at six months old: Here lies, to each her parents’ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth: Yet, all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due, It makes the father less to rue.

At six months’ end she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven’s queen (whose name she bears), In comfort of her mother’s tears, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

21 Hath placed amongst her virgin train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth.

The poem starts with a frank and simple admission of the he and his wife’s pain at the loss of their daughter, and yet for the English poet Ben Jonson, the certainty of an afterlife mitigates the pain of loss. Jonson was a sincere Christian believer – indeed, until the ‘Gun powder Plot’ (which involved friends of friends of the poet) made it awkward to be a high-profile Catholic. Jonson was a practising Catholic.

‘Mary’ was, of course, a very Catholic name to give a daughter, and the Marian imagery he plays with reflects a very Catholic view of the mother of God. He imagines his daughter Mary in the train of Jesus’ mother Mary,‘heaven’s queen’, among all girls who have died virgins.

The last lines of the poem need a little explanation: Christians believe that a person consists of a body and a soul, united in life but separated in death –‘severed’ as the poem puts it– so that the body remains on earth, while the soul ascends to heaven. Not until the Day of Judgement, the end of the earthly world,would the body and soul be reunited again, and at the end of the poem, Jonson is asking the earth – not capitalised as a deity ‘Earth’, just plain old soil ‘earth’– to look after his daughter’s body. And yet for all the poem’s great faith, and its acceptance of God’s will in taking a young child, the last lines bring back to mind the sorrowful image of the infants’ dead body.

Jonson wrote in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when infant mortality was much higher than it is now – indeed, most married couples would expect to lose babies or young infants.

One could ask whether the very regularity of such losses would make them less painful, but the very fact Jonson wrote these poems, and the emotion that comes through them, suggests that the death of an infant was no less a loss to seventeenth century parents than it is to modern couples, even if it was less of a shock. Indeed, repeated grief must have been wearying for the couples involved. Jonson’s poem about his son, who was taken by the plague at seven years old, shows us something of the toll taken on such parents: The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

22 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.

Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I lose all father now! For why Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon scapedworld’s and flesh’s rage, And if no other misery, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

Ben Jonson’s son was named after his father, which explains the ninth and tenth lines. It has become a bit of a cliché, even when sincerely meant, for parents to say to their children, ‘you’re the greatest thing I have ever done’, but it surely counts for a little bit more when your parent is one of the greatest poets of a great poetic age. At the same time, it points to a world-weariness on Jonson’s part. As much as in the first epigram, Jonson is reconciled to God’s will– or, to put it in less religious terms, the irrevocability of death, but he has been left a changed man, a man more spiritual but colder to the world, never again to put too much hope in the world or its inhabitants.

The great Romantic poet William Wordsworth (17701850) also suffered the death of two of his children, a three-year old daughter and a six-year old boy only a few months later.

‘Surprised by Joy’ was written to his daughter: Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

23 But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

There is scant consolation in Wordsworth’s poem, of a religious nature or any other. The title, ‘Surprised by Joy’, sounds cheerful – but this joy only comes because he has, momentarily, forgotten that his daughter is no longer with him – he turns to share this moment of happiness or joy, only to remember that she is not there, rather long buried in the silent Tomb, / That spot which no vicissitude can find.

That line is like Jonson’s writing his son has scaped world’s and flesh’s rage, but even then it is somehow bleaker in tone. There is something strikingly modern in Wordsworth’s poem – he articulates the same feelings about a child’s death that I think a 20th or 21st century parent might: the sudden absence of joy in life, the guilt and self-reproach when one briefly allows oneself to forget, the pain at never again being able to meet. The poem implies that Wordsworth does not believe in an afterlife in which one is reunited with one’s loved ones. It is a psychologically acute and uncompromising description of the poet’s own grief.

The American poet William Stafford (1914-1993), who lost a grown son to suicide, wrote the poem ‘A Memorial: Son Bret’ to his deceased son. Although he is disturbed by the mystery of his son’s suicide, the poem is not as raw The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

24 and devastating as Wordsworth’s, and unlike the forlorn Englishman, he allows himself to take pleasure in the memories he has of his child. Like the other poems here, he addresses his dead child directly – he realises, I think, that he can do no other. Early in the poem, he writes: In the pattern of my life, you stand Where you stood always, in the center Jonson, in his poem to his son, lamented O, could I lose all father now! He wishes he could lose all sense of fatherhood, now that he lacks the son on whom he had foisted his paternal affections. This is understandable – but Stafford more calmly realises that this would be impossible: although he cannot, like poets with strong religious convictions, believe that he can meet his son again, or that the child is in some sense ‘still with us’, he realises that the mental habits of fatherhood, specifically the sense of being father to this particular son, will never leave him.

Credits The poem Demaindèsl’aube, à l’heureoùblanchit la campagne is from Introduction to French Poetry, A Dual Language Book, Ed Stanley Applebaum, Dover, New York, 1969. The translation is my own, though influenced by that provided in the book.

The Jonson and Wordsworth poems are available on the Internet.

‘A Memorial: Son Bret’ is from The Way It Is, William Stafford, Graywolf Press, 1998.

Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher, proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writes on poetry and history at sweettenorbull.com. Currently, he is working on a historical fiction set in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a project that he hopes will come to fruition at some point in 2017. Originally from the north east of England, he currently lives in South Korea with his wife and two small children. www. sweettenorbull.com.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

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FICTION

Mark Zipoli

The cloudless midday sun often punched her eyes into humility,

reminding her that-in Los Angeles- staying indoors was best. Eight blocks from where the downtown bus let her off in Boyle Heights, she marched as if she carried a hot iron on her forehead and a blow torch at the back of her neck. Past one lawn after another of droughtburned grass, she moaned under the sun’s glare when she thought about losing her sunglasses and forgetting to wear a hat.

Arriving in front of the County Crematory and Cemetery, she was taken aback by the main gate’s desolate grimness. It was bleak.

It was scary ugly. Wiping her brow, her discontent growled with the knowledge that this stretch of Boyle Heights was the hottest sweep of land she’d encountered in years, except of course Death Valley, but Death Valley at least had a view. This place, she thought, was a sandpaper rug. Nothing but brown patches topped with numbered The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

26 markers of the nameless dead: Lena Rhodes could be poetic when she wanted, especially about things she didn’t like.

Lena thought Vincent Price himself should be holding the front door open for her, when in fact it was only a guy named Ray. He looked like the actor James Whitmore, with an apple pie face and the facility of an unmarried uncle-a man with a quiet, officious charm that usually went unnoticed.

‘I hope you don’t mind, ma’am, that it’s so cold in here,’ he began, as he let her through. ‘I like air conditioning to prove itself.

My name’s Ray, welcome to the Crematory.’

‘Ray,’ she said entering the darkened foyer, ‘You’re a man after my own heart. After all, we are not cacti. We need water and a good Westinghouse refrigerator. Oooh, I have to reacquire my sight here, it’s so dim,’ said Lena.

The hall’s shadowy vagueness gave her the same all-or-nothing punishment that the sun did a minute before, only this was an acceptable mistreatment of her senses.

‘Sometimes people feel the less they see the less there is,’ said Ray, ‘especially when it comes to the dead.’

‘I don’t see or hear a thing besides you and me, Ray.’ ‘Not another living soul besides me and you for at least 500 feet in any direction,’ he smiled his broad James Whitmore smile. ‘It gives me great comfort,’ he said, and showed her to the registration desk, apologizing for the lack of a guest’s chair.

‘You ever write for the movies, Ray? Or are you just source material for James M. Cain novels, or Raymond Chandler perhaps?’

He smiled at the compliment.

‘No, ma’am. But I’m glad to know someone else besides me appreciates the finer art of a cool, clean catacomb. Let me bring up the database, Miss...’

‘Rhodes. Lena Rhodes. The deceased, my husband, is...was Tommy Rhodes.’

‘My condolences, Mrs. Rhodes.’

‘Not to worry, Ray. It’s been a while since I laid eyes on him.

Not to worry.’

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

27 Their transaction was perfunctory; the payment, the issuance of a receipt, all as official as loneliness could afford.

Four-hundred dollars was a lot of money. She’d brought with her the tips she’d been saving for a few special, unidentified, personal needs; and for insurance, she also put a little aside to pay for things she wasn’t prepared for: Losing a runaway husband as quickly as she did was one of those things. A telephone call at the café, out of the blue, the county worker’s voice full of relief in finding a next of kin to Mr. Rhodes, his remains were waiting, and there went her money.

Ray escorted Lena down a long, barely lit hallway to the reclamation room.

‘We, or well, I, like to call it the Library, ’he explained, and he left the door open for her. ‘You see, each box contains a life. Each life has something of a story in it. No matter how boring or uneventful it might have been, you can still make a narrative out of waking up and having your breakfast before you go outside and drop dead.’

‘Kind of literary, don’t you think, Ray? You sure you never wrote for ‘Law and Order’ or ‘Dragnet,’ something like that?’

He shook his head.

‘Still, I can see a thinking man like you ending up here.’

‘What, in the boxes or at the front desk?’ he asked.

‘That’s up to you.’

‘Your husband is number fourteen-sixty-four,’ Ray said.

There was solicitude between them. He recognized it the moment she walked through his door. Lena gave him a warm intimate grin as if to acknowledge an obvious understanding that they could say certain things to each other easily, like kindred souls: He and his apple pie face, she and her aversion to the sun. They each saw it in the contours on one another’s face, the red outlines of each other’s eyes.

‘That means there were a thousand four-hundred and sixty-three before him?’

‘So far this year.’

‘And they’re all still unclaimed?’

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

28 ‘No, not all. Most, though, Mrs. Rhodes. Most of them.’

He positioned a small step-ladder in front of the stacks.

‘You know you didn’t have much time left to pick these up,’ ‘These? I’m only picking up one husband.’

‘No, I meant the ashes. I refer to the deceased in the plural, because ‘the He’ has been reduced to something like a billion particles.

You know what I mean? Next scheduled burial is Saturday. Still, you left him for the last minute. Why’s that?’

‘I’m not here for a lecture, Ray.’ ‘Sorry, but it gets personal here. I’m by myself with these souls. I get kind of attached to them,’ he descended the step-ladder.

‘I have feelings for them. I have hopes.’

After her husband Tommy had left her, Lena often wondered if he’d ever had enough feelings for her. And now, stuck between time and silence, it had been made very clear to her that he didn’t.

Ray approached with the box, then placed it gently on a short, knee-high table. Lena bent over the box, turned it this way and that. The six by six by five inch cardboard container was tagged with a stainless steel ID disc engraved with the County’s name, the year of death, and the number 1463. She looked up at the top shelf, saw the remaining box, and looked at Ray. ‘This says fourteen-sixty-three.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Ray climbed back onto the step ladder, and retrieved #1464, placing it beside #1463.‘That could’ve been a big screw up. I really am better at my job than that.’

She looked him in the eyes.

‘These boxes are cruddy,’ she said. ‘Lots of dust on them.

Lots of dust everywhere, Ray.’ ‘I know, Mrs. Rhodes. That reminds, me,’ he said. ‘I need another rantihistamine before I refill my coffee. I’m feeling kind of low, my nose is kind of runny.’

She smiled at his mispronunciation.

‘Forget about low. You keep mixing your ‘rantihistamines’ and coffee. Soon that combo will work your heart so fast you’ll be feeling kind of dead.’

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

29 He laughed and shuffled over to a briefcase lying on a counter in the corner of the room. From the case he extracted a white pill and downed it with a few swallows of coffee from a cow-shaped mug.

As he was about to take away #1463, she held his hands to stop him.

‘Wait. Who’s in this box?’

‘TCC 1463? Bill Somebody. Let me look.’

He walked back to his desk and consulted his computer, a machine smudged with dust, dirt, and obsolescence.

‘What’s TCC?’ she asked him.

‘Temporary Cremated Remains Container. Okay,’ he began reading from the screen. ‘William Renner. Gulf War veteran, in the Navy. Says here ‘refused by family.’ Mmm, some other technical stuff.

Says here ‘severe breakdown of internal organs.’ Police found him with gang symbols spray painted on him. Hmm. Internal breakdown alright. Died.’

‘Well of course he died, Ray. He’s a pile of ashes in a box.’

She lined up Bill’s and Tommy’s boxes, their numbers facing her. Ray came back, stood beside her, a strain of pride holding him upright.

‘Yes, that’s our Bill,’ he said. He looked at her wavy hair and her small, quiescent breasts, which were charmed--he thought--by an involuntary slouch.

‘What do people do with them?’ she asked.

‘Put ‘em in urns. Throw ‘em in the sea. Pour ‘em into a brook or sprinkle ‘em in a field. Then they walk away,’ he said.

‘You sound jaded,’ she said, and pulled her fingers through her cheaply permed hair; it still retained its half-blonde half-brown murkiness, and never got longer than her disobedient slouching shoulders.

‘You should let your hair grow long, Mrs. Rhodes, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘Hell, no! If it gets any longer it’ll just highlight my boney ass, ’Lena replied.

Ray laughed. ‘And I’m not jaded, Mrs. Rhodes, it’s the cold, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

30 dry air. I’m working with corpses that we blasted at eighteen-hundred degrees. Just thinking about that kind of heat dries you out.’

‘Hmm,’ she sighed.

‘The lava at Mount Saint-Helens was two-thousand degrees,’ he said, aghast at her sigh.

‘Okay, but then what?’

‘Here, when folks are forgotten about,’ his voice was softer now, as in a reasonable conversation in a parlor, ‘or dismissed as the case might be, like Bill, all the boxes of unclaimed dead, they all get placed together in a small grave. Annually. You know, once a year.

Only marker you get is the year of the burial, not even the year of your expiration.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. You’re gone. No more you. Bunch of priests, monks, rabbis, say whatever it is they say for the restful repose of the dearly departed; sprinkle a little olive oil or water on the ground. Then they have lunch on the County. Otherwise, nobody would ever know you once were.’

‘Except in the memories of the people trying to forget you,’ she said. ‘Somehow it doesn’t seem like enough. They end up together in a big hole in the ground? That’s it? What’s gonna happen to him?’ She pointed to the box not containing her husband.

‘To Bill? Like I said, he’ll join the others this weekend, out there in the field.’

‘That’s kind of sad,’ Lena said. ‘He was ill, Ray. He was a soldier, Ray. He fought in a war. His family rejected him, Ray. It’s not his fault.’

‘Ma’am, it’s just true. It’s not anybody’s fault,’ he turned, extending his reach to the stacks. ‘It’s just true.’

Lena looked at Ray as if she were looking at a tour guide.

‘Why don’t I take him?’ she said finally.

‘You want him?’

‘Yeah, why not. But I don’t have another $400.’

‘Mrs. Rhodes, I don’t care if you paid for one or for one hundred. You have a receipt. You can take what you want. I’ll even The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

31 give you a shopping bag with the County logo on it.’

She walked back to the bus stop at Lorena and First Streets, now carrying her L.A. County canvas tote bag with its two new occupants. Listening to the drone of traffic and the slight breeze ruffling the palm trees above her, she began to think. These were definitely thoughts for her book. Thirty years ago, when she was just sweet 16 and had moved from Vermont to Los Angeles, she’d wanted to publish a book of her sentences and declarations to help others with Life, using lines about how suffering sunlight could weigh you down; how dreading the heat, the dryness, could kill your spirit. On the other hand, it goes without saying that Lena’s point of view regarding the Southern California sun and weather was not the prevailing mood surrounding her. She was someone who simply resisted the hegemony of the sun. She knew her book wasn’t going to be a bestseller.

Normally, when she boarded a bus, she would glide into a depression, rapidly changing her like an iguana stepping into the bushes and turning green. Today, however, she felt blistered with a giddy aftershock of the everlasting sugar of life: She was alive and her fly-by-night husband wasn’t. She had a hint, too, of the pointless devolution of oneself: Him ending up as a box of ashes somewhere east of the Los Angeles River, she sitting in a flurry of purpose with a dead husband and a Gulf War veteran on her lap.

She hadn’t known Tommy Rhodes long, and their wedding vows had played out only slightly longer than their acquaintanceship.

A marriage quick in happening, and quick in ending, was served up with the speed of a fry cook. As a result, with nothing of Tommy’s to hold onto except his incinerated afterlife, she willingly, enthusiastically grabbed the ends, the remains, the life of someone else she’d never known, creating some kind of meaning to her marriage, even if it was summed up as a snub.

But four hundred dollars, plus a whole day’s work lost, she muttered with a bitter, self-conscious nod.

Lena worked at the Eastern Star Café; she worked hard, long hours of overlapping shifts. Benefits were few, but she liked its constancy, she liked its people. She’d even got her coworker Helga to The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

32 cover for her, but that meant tomorrow in recompense she was going to have to listen to Helga talk on and on about her perfect daughter Christina, who took perfect dance lessons, and of whose perfect face Helga spent hundreds for perfect photographs to serve as evidence of a perfect childstar. Meanwhile Lena spent her long-suffering tip money and rode this downtown bus for an hour-an hour to go four miles-for a man she hadn’t seen nor spoken to in years. That was a sacrifice to be sure, buta victory, too, and she felt elated, like Mel Gibson freeing the Scots from those English bastards.

When her husband Tommy left her, more than three years ago, Lena had gone--as they say in the modern media--off the grid.

She got paid in cash, so there was no need for a bank, and no income taxes. She owned no credit cards, paid her rent in cash (electricity and water included). She didn’t vote, and she dumped her telephone, using only the one at the café. Tommy had disappeared, and so had she disappeared, while remaining in place. Remaining a good and constant employee at the Eastern Star Café, a reliable tenant in a confining apartment, a fixture in the four square blocks of neighborhood filled with mature singles, aging aunts, retirees, disenchanted and dethroned older brothers. In large part, it was as happy a place and pace for Lena as she could find, a mere step from the bothersome twilight of seclusion and discovery.

Her husband had left her, not out of anger nor out of deception, but from not knowing what to do with her, or what to do about her.

‘I don’t know what to do about you,’ he’d said, less circular about his mysticism than about hurting her feelings. For there was no mystery in their marriage; husband and wife existed, plain and simple. There was nothing to think about. Then at the end of a perfectly satisfying day at the café, looking forward to the evening coming alive with coziness and easy words, a vodka tonic, a cigarette, the sports channel, a hand sifting through her curly hair, she’d understood that he wasn’t late. She’d sat alone, knowing he didn’t have an accident. Knowing he wasn’t coming home. There wasn’t going to be anyone else there with her from now on. Nothing but her burning The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

33 cigarette, the fizzing vodka tonic, and a note she’d found in the bathroom. As the late afternoon had retreated, once the vodka drifted by her, absorbing her nerves like a river about to flood, and she, wading in the marshy parts with leaves and sticks and lost frogs and turtles, hoping that the flood would pass her by, leaving only her, she looked at the note: Goodbye.

No amount of clouds floating by the open kitchen window could have made her feel more content, or more complete now, as she sat at her cheap dinette table, on which lay a small stack of National Geographic magazines that she’d rescued from a pile of books next to a dumpster. Besides the magazines, there was a water-stained tumbler, a pack of tissues, and an apple. Next to these she seta halfbox of donuts on top ofthe two boxes of ashes-Tommy her husband, then of course Bill the veteran.

With a round of self-congratulation, she got up and took out from beneath the sink a large plastic bottle of Popov vodka. She poured a shot and a half into the water-stained tumbler, tossed it down, then separated the boxes by the space of a foot; she focused her attention on Bill.

‘Tommy’s address was nine miles away, Bill,’ she said, taking a honey glaze donut from the box. ‘To me he was nine light years away, in just another part of the L.A. desert. You know, when they took him to the morgue, they did an autopsy. It was because he fell down the stairs and he was too young to die. Probably like you, too young when it happened. Well, you know, Death.’

She opened Bill’s box and looked at the powdery grayness.

‘Didn’t even have the decency to send me a post card to let me know where he was staying. I never knew. Coroner didn’t know.

Even if he did know, I wouldn’t have had the money then either. I had to earn all the little that I don’t have. He had to stay put. And besides, Bill, he walked out on me.’

She put her right hand, sticky from the donut, into the mix and felt around the box.

‘Died two years ago, and him keeping company with the God-awful remains of runaways, soldiers, and inmates from the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

34 lock-up- those poor, homeless, insane people.’ She wiggled her fingers. ‘You know what it’s like, Bill. Have to be insane to be poor and homeless.’

Lena poured another quick shot of vodka and got up from the table, grabbed another donut, and left the apartment. There was a sometimes-working pay phone outside the 7-Elevena block from her room, one of the few pay phones left in the entire country she assumed. She needed to call her sister collect to tell her what she did.

There was an accomplishment to brag about, to get credit for.

‘Your husband is dead? He died? How can that be?’

‘Well...it goes like this...’ Lena swallowed the dusted donut and began her story.

‘No,I don’t want to know the details.’

‘Of course not. You never want to know the details.’

‘You piss me off.’

‘Why?’ Lena said.

‘You don’t call me for two months and then you call me with this?’

Lena said nothing. The smell of urine around her was beginning to make her gag.

‘Was there a lot of ashes? He was skinny wasn’t he, Tommy was?’

‘Skinny or not, sis, there’s just so much you can fit into these boxes. I have the ashes of some other guy, too.’

‘What? Who?’ ‘A Gulf War veteran,’ she said, shifting the phone from her right hand to the crook of her neck. She brushed some of Bill’s ashes away from the phone’s push-buttons. The receiver felt slippery, what with being coated in the veteran’s remains. She clapped her hands and watched the mist of dusty ash fall to the ground.

‘Name’s Bill.’

‘Who was he?’ her sister asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Lena replied.

‘It seems to me the ashes of one man would be enough for a single person to carry.’

‘I’m not carrying a damned thing.’

‘I’m just saying. ...You gonna toss ‘em?’

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

35 ‘No.’ ‘Did the Gulf War veteran kill himself? You know, they’re all so unstable.’

‘No, he was killed by some gang over on Sunset Boulevard.’

‘Wrong place at the wrong time?’

‘With gangs, sis, there is no right place.’

‘Hm.’ ‘You’d know that if you paid attention to the world.’

She bit a fingernail from her right hand, felt the gritty gray cinders between her teeth. She was ready to hang up.

‘What’re you going to do with them?’

‘I don’t know. It’ll take some thought.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Well, I paid for them. I get to decide.’

Returning to her room with a bottle of sweet iced tea and a packet of Doritos, Lena found a cat sitting in Bill’s ashes. It belonged to her neighbor upstairs. It blinked twice at Lena, whose immediate impulse was to shoo the cat away, but that might upset the box and spill everything onto the floor. So she froze. Unsure of how to exorcise the animal without spilling the contents, she decided to take careful steps and sit down slowly.

‘Must be nice,’ she said to the cat, ‘to sit around and be stupid all day.’

The cat purred, blinked, and with deliberation stepped out of the box, leaving tracks of powdery cat paws on the table. It gave Lena a slight pleasure, so she poured herself another shot.

‘It’s poetic,’ she said, looking at the paw prints. ‘Like fancy wall paper.’

She poured and drank two more shots in succession to clear the light out of her throat, the light which she felt was choking her.

‘You know, for a few months, when we were first married, he turned eternity upside down for me.’

Then she opened Tommy’s box.

‘I don’t know if that’s true, now, really, but it’s more lines for my book.’

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

36 She slowly immersed her right hand, feeling the slag sift through her fingers.

‘Send them to my sister is what I should do, she’s so concerned,’ she laughed and squeezed the ashes tight, letting clumps fall from her palm. She stood up-her right hand pressing down now on the powder, forcing a compactness that mirrored her mind.

Thinking of her sister made her hair itch. She dug in and circled her nails, made figure eights in her itchy, arid scalp, blending the two men’s soot on her hand into the hairs and skin on her head.

‘Lena and Tommy lived in dreams,’ she said while she scratched, ‘and the bitter angles of a ruined heart. Oh, yes, that’s how the first page will begin. Oooh, this hair’s driving me crazy.’

The cat was back on the table.

‘Bill was a sailor,’ she told the cat.

With a spoon she scooped some of Bill’s ashes and poured them into the bottle of iced tea. She shook it, dissolving much of the gray particles. There was enough room for a shot or two of vodka, so she dumped that in, shook the bottle again, and drank half of the concoction in one, full swoop.

‘That was disgusting,’ she burped. ‘Hey, cat. I wonder if there’s a difference between Bill’s ashes and my Tommy’s?’ The cat looked at her and then at the boxes. ‘I wonder if I got his DNA, now.’

Lena scooped a pile out of each box and placed them beside one another on the table. She wiggled her fingers in one pile, then in the next. The cat joined her and sniffed at both piles of ash, dabbing a paw here, a paw there, its tail rubbing against the dusty sides of both boxes.

‘What parts have I got here,’ Lena smiled as she realized there was a slight coarseness to the veteran’s soot; naturally, the veteran was a hard man. He saw war. ‘Maybe it was his hairy back.’ Whereas Tommy’s ashes felt more like the talcum powder from her Evening in Paris tin.

Holding her piles of the past, she looked around the room and then out the window. After her husband had left, she’d convinced herself that she would never be able to love another man again. It was a terror that she knew such a fact even before he died.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

37 ‘I hate knowing things,’ she said to the cat, to the boxes. ‘But I suppose when you’re always awake there’s bound to be a downside, ‘cause you’re the only aware person in the room.’ That’ll go into my book, too, she thought.

Her momentary creative reverie was disturbed by the most awful flapping, pounding noise.

‘What now?’ she said aloud, jerking out of the chair, upsetting the table with her carelessness. She took her iced tea bottle with her to the open window and watched as two low-flying Air Force helicopters ripped apart the quiet afternoon. She could feel their blades almost slapping her face.

‘Too low,’ she said to the outside. ‘That’s illegal, I’m sure.’

Gulping more of the vodka-ashed tea, and being inattentive to the table, she turned and walked into it.

What did she have here before her? What had she held in her palms and smudged along the table, spilled onto the floor, wiped over the phone, and allowed an animal to traipse through insincerely?

About a third of each box’s contents had fallen into the cracks between the floor boards, on her feet, in the cat’s face and on its tail. The sifted dunes of Tommy and Bill had now become a simple, beveled moraine on the tabletop. It was enough to make her cry, and she hardly ever gave herself over to that release, but now she did. Maybe it was the vodka, maybe it was those nasty low-flying helicopters. Standing over her boxes, she felt as if she were naked in public, no clothes to hide the lie she was trying to tell, no screen to veil the embarrassing dislike of someone she wished was dead and who finally was.

‘Ooh that thought hurts,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m still going to keep it, though.’

Lena reached back inside the cupboard under the sink and grabbed the whisk broom and dust pan. On her hands and knees, she swept the sooty mess into the dust pan, leaving behind whatever was stuck in the floor’s cracks. She wiped her teary eyes with her dirty dry hands and stepped on the pedal to open her stainless steel trash can. Emptying the dustpan, she caught sight of her reflection in the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

38 shiny lid. Her face was a mask, painted with powdery streaks. Like the Dinka men of Africa, she thought, remembering her National Geographic. Hey, I’m a Dinka!

Lena closed up both boxes, stacked one on top of the other.

The escaping dust made her sneeze, which scared the cat away.

‘I’ll take them to Santa Monica. I’ll take them to the pier.’

She could do it. Two cities couldn’t have the same hateful sun, she thought. That would just be selfish. She would pour the ashes into the bay. There’s always freaky characters there. No one would notice.

‘Time to go,’ she sighed aloud, and sneezed again. She put the Doritos into her bag, along with a sweater, the apple, and the freshly infused bottle of iced tea, ashes, and vodka. Then she took the boxes, sneezed a third time, and walked out the door.

She began her walk to the express bus stop with a satisfying intention, because a dead husband and a Gulf War veteran under her arms were not going to make life easy.

The bus ride to Santa Monica took an hour, and within that hour, a queasy alertness struggled within her against the vodka’s now determined dissipation. She stepped off the bus, somewhat sleepy and shaky on her feet, and found that the sun still stalked her. With a block to go before she reached the Santa Monica pier, Lena walked preoccupied with thoughts of possibility and rest to come after she disbursed the ashes. Which was why she failed to see one of the many spectral men who make dirt and the milk of human kindness their home. She tripped over a man sleeping under a blanket, then tumbled and cried out, losing hold of both her boxes and her bag. The foul, disgusting man woke up with a loud groan. He cursed Lena and scratched his crusted hairy belly, demanding his rights to peace and quiet. All Lena could hear was the pounding in her head, joined by the wet sense of blood trickling down her cheeks, and the sight of her boxes open, tipped over, the contents fanned out upon the pavement before her. Bill and Tommy were all over the place.

Pigeons and seagulls had moved aside so as to accommodate her fall, then closed in to peck at her belongings. They pushed the boxes with their beaks, scrutinized the ashes. Their ugly feet left tracks The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

39 all over the mixed, thrown heaps of her husband and the veteran.

‘What the hell?’ she said, sitting on the sidewalk, ignoring the birds, squinting through her blood-messed bangs, sniffing back her running nose.

She ripped open the Doritos, ate a few, and extended the bag to the seagulls. The birds pecked at the chips, broke them up, and scattered the pieces around her, mixing them with the cinders of her two men. More birds arrived and quickly took off with their share of Doritos covered in ash. They carried Tommy and Bill to Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. They carried them to Malibu. Some of the dust even ended up in Joshua Tree.

‘What the hell,’ she exhaled again. The swift whoosh of a bus spewed exhaust and grime into her face. As she looked around in outrage, she was suddenly aware of the sun’s conversion to shadows.

She noticed bars of slanted, orange-gray light transformed into somber metal legs extending from the alley behind her. She shuddered with embarrassment amid the indifferent steps of strangers, as if the failing sun and ascendant weakness of twilight were planning to whip her one more time. Standing up, her heart in her throat, she saw the nothing that was left of boxes 1464 and 1463, and watched the seagulls plodding around her, waiting for more.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Mark Zipoli has lived in Florida, Illinois, New York, & Virginia. He received his BA in English from Queens College/City University of New York, and has lived in Santa Monica, California, for the past 27 years. His novel, The Long Habit of Living, was published through Createspace.com in 2010, and his short stories have appeared in Uncharted Frontier, Hirschworth, Writing Tomorrow, Blue Monday Review, The Blotter, and Catamaran literary magazines. Mark was the administrative director for Travelers Aid Society of Los Angeles for 18 years; he is currently employed with Extraordinary Families (a nonprofit foster family/adoption agency in Los Angeles).

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

40

FICTION

Patrick Fealey

The shower passed and the sun burned down. We

sat there, the raindrops growing finer on the windshield. Caught in Bronx summer traffic without an air conditioner, we rolled down our windows and watched the steam rise from the pavement.

Two blacks were running through the cars.

They crossed the highway in front of us. They ran like they’d stolen an apple pie. Two cops appeared beside our car. The blacks ran up the sloped grass of the overpass and looked down. One of them threw a rock at the cops. It flew over the cars and over the heads of the two cops. If you were going to be jammed in traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

41 you couldn’t beat this. The cops wore dark blue jackets with heavy black belts, very serious and helpless looking public servants. Rocks fell on them as the other two blacks joined in. The cops did not chase the men. Their car was on a nearby access road. Standing on their hill, the black men laughed. I couldn’t hear them laugh, but their teeth showed smiles while they threw rocks. The cops were losing this one in front of an audience of stalled drivers and fortunately, none of the rocks hit our windshield. What was this about, anyhow?

The blacks laughed and continued their bombardment, delaying their escape to make the insult. Then one of the cops unbuttoned her holster and took out her pistol. She held the automatic high and stepped forward. The blacks ran to the top of the overpass and vanished up the road. The cop put away her gun. It had been entertaining until the woman brought a gun into it. I guess it was one of those moments you’ll never see again. The blacks were having fun. The cops were obscenely helpless and afraid.

We sped through the Meadowlands, where the grass grows yellow under a sunless sky, except in blackened spots where there have been brush fires. Smokestacks reined the horizon and the wind cradled a nightmare. It was then that I noticed we were running low on gas. I took an exit for a gas station. In New Jersey it doesn’t matter which exit.

I filled her up and paid the Indian sitting behind an inch of glass. He took my money through a metal drawer. He did not say a word, but he looked out from behind the glass, safe with the cigarettes and scratch tickets. When I say Indian, I mean from India. Not the people who were living here when Columbus arrived looking for India. Columbus had made a mistake. The people who had greeted him had made a mistake. The guy behind the glass gave me the right change.

I turned the ignition and the starter clicked. I tried again. No go. Our 1967 Rover 2000 would not start. But it had been doing this all summer. It would start if we waited for it to cool down. Jess had run out of patience with the car. She was afraid of it. She let out her frustration on me and squeezed her hands between her knees. I tried The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

42 to ease her worries by explaining the problem as we pushed the car away from the pumps. The starter wires were overheating while we drove because they were too close to the manifold. This became significant when you stopped and then tried to start again soon after.

Hot wires conduct less electricity than cool wires. The starter wasn’t getting enough juice to turn over. She was not comforted. Her father had owned British cars. And maybe it was because we were driving to California.

Beaton Galafa On the freeway with warm wind rushing at us.

On the move.

“I think we’re going in the wrong direction,” Jess said.

“We’re going north?” I said. “No we’re not.”

“Yes we are. We’re headed back home.”

“It looks the same.”

Smokestacks and grass yellowed from a diet of smog and headaches. A green and white highway sign finally showed up to clear the matter: I-95 North. Jess was right. I had to turn around. We had to get off the highway.

In no time I was lost. I’d like to say we were lost, and we were, but I was driving and Jess was the innocent captive who knew better, getting dragged through the ghetto in search of a way back to I-95 South. I was caught in a crossword puzzle of one-way streets lined with cinder-block homes with barred windows. People walked the streets and gathered on the corners. They were talking. They did not seem to be up to much, but they looked happier than their houses and cars. We finally found the one-way street which led back to I-95 South, hit the highway and rolled down the windows. I turned up the music: Don’t worry, ‘bout a thing, ‘cause every little thing, is gonna be alright . . .

Many songs later, the prospect of people eating all the corn in Pennsylvania and then excreting it gave me something to think about. Jess found beauty in the monotony of the green stalks. We were driving through a Warhol. The road was wide and dry and stretched forever with no one in front of us and no one in the rearview. We owned all of that corn without having to live in a vinyl house on a hill.

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43 “I like it here,” Jess said.

In the hills, below the trees, shadows accumulated and became darkness before the sun was down. In the open, the day hung with us, fading out while I drove. Jess opened the glove box and found The AAA Guide to Camping, Northeast Edition.

“There are a bunch of campgrounds near Gettysburg,” she said.

“We’re near Gettysburg?” I said.

“I think so. Let me see. Yes, we’re getting close. It’s about an inch away on the map.”

“How far is an inch?” I asked.

“Oh. About sixty miles. That’s more than I thought. What do you think?”

“Why not?”

“I’ve always wanted to see Gettysburg,” she said.

“Let’s go see what it’s all about.”

Jess read me the roads and we got off the highway onto a narrow road that wound past the ends of people’s driveways for two hours. The lights in windows showed life.

“Can you roll up your window a little?” Jess said. “I’m cold.”

The wind blowing across my arm was cold. September dusk. I rolled my window up – a little.

“It’s close to nine o’clock,” Jess said. “They close at ten. Are we gonna make it?”

“I don’t know.”

The road had some sharp turns, but I stepped on it. The Rover had a race-car suspension. Over hills. Leaves in the road. Through chimney smoke. Jess complaining she was carsick.

The town parted the trees. A wave came up the windshield and blinded me. Holy!

I slowed and turned on the wipers and we saw we were on the main drag of some small town. Small-town America like so many small towns back in New England. The rain poured on the desolate streets. Then I saw a sign on the outside of a store: GETTYSBURG HARDWARE. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

44 This was the famous town. “We’re in Gettysburg,” I said.

“This is Gettysburg?” Jess said.

“We’re out of Gettysburg.”

“Go back!”

“Hang on!”

It was dark. I drove on. The rain hammered the roof and I bent my head down to see out the windshield. The wipers tried to go back and forth. The steering went loose with every river I drove into.

Jess was studying the AAA booklet under the focused beam of the Rover Deluxe Reading Lamp while I wondered where we were. We were alone, I could see. Pennsylvania was a quiet state this day. It was dark and out in the rain were fields or farmland with some trees here and there. I squinted at the road in front of me. I could see it, but I was not in control.

Something went by on the roadside.

I slowed and hit the high beams.

“Turn off the light!”

Jess did.

“What?” she said.

“I saw something. Up on the right.”

The shadows came again.

Silhouettes.

I slowed.

Cannons.

There were three of them standing in an uneven line, facing the road.

I drove on. There were more. We were close to the battle. We were on the battlefield.

Jess gave me directions.

We saw a light. Going by, we read the sign: THE BATTLEFIELD CAMPGROUND. I’d passed it. I pulled a u-turn and headed back toward the only light on those dark fields. I turned in at the sign onto gravel. A short way in was a shack with a sign in the window: VACANCY. The shack also looked vacant. Jess waited in the car while I checked the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

45 door of the shack. The rain beat on me. The air smelled of rotting leaves. I was cold. The door to the place was locked and there was no sign of a human. There were a bunch of brochures on the counter. I ran back to the car, climbed in, soaked to the skin.

“Anything?” Jess said.

“Just a bunch of books.”

“What time is it?” she said, looking at her watch. “It’s quarter after ten. Now what are we going to do?”

“Don’t worry.”

I turned off the headlights and backed away from the shack.

“What are you doing?” Jess said.

“Shhhhh.”

I turned the car onto the gravel road and violated the campground. The parking lights cast an amber glow on the road and outlined the trees. We crept along the gravel in the dark until we came to a fork. I took the road on the right because it looked lonesome and went away from the campground’s center of activity. We would be less likely to get caught down there. The road turned to mud. Under the trees, whose trunks glowed amber, were fire pits marking the campsites. A potential spot appeared under the leaves of a wide trunk. The tree would protect us. I flashed the headlights and saw good ground.

I secured the tarpaulin while Jess rushed the pillows and blankets from the car to the tent. We found our toothbrushes and went off to find the bathrooms. We had seen the white cinderblock building on the way in, so it didn’t take long. There was a WOMEN sign on one end and a MEN on the other. The doorways were brightly lit by floodlights which illuminated thick gatherings of mosquitoes waiting for communion. Jess walked through the women’s mosquitoes, I through the men’s.

The men’s room was quiet. There was no one in there. There were showers we could use in the morning. I picked one sink from the long row of sinks and brushed my teeth. I washed my face in that strange and quiet place. I looked in the mirror and was disappointed by the professional who looked back. The road had done nothing for The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

46 him yet. It was the face of inexperience, with four wheels and dreams of a continent yet to be realized.

I went outside and waited for Jess under the overhang. Me and the dancing mosquitoes staying out of the rain. A long while later, she appeared. We ran through the rain for our tent, across the wet grass under the big old trees to the shelter, where I unzipped the door and she jumped in. I followed, sealing us inside. We settled into our pile of blankets. The floor was wet. We didn’t care. The rain poured and we were safe in our shaking tent. I don’t know who started it, but we were greedily taking off our clothes. I said “whoever comes first has to drive tomorrow.” We made love outside the rain and wind. We didn’t know where we were going. She was there. I was there. Tomorrow we would be somewhere else and she would be driving.

Patrick Fealey’s publishing credits include many literary magazines in the states and Canada, including the Wormwood Review, California’s flagship, as well as newspapers including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and Reuters. He quit journalism at the age of 29 to pursue his own writing. He has worked many odd jobs since and is now 49, with many published short stories and one published novel, but he has not broken through with mainstream agents or publishers. He hasnine unpublished novels. As a reporter ha had published 1,600 articles.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

47

FICTION

In late autumn, Jem couldn’t resist inching onto a lake’s first freeze to see how far he could get before the ice would begin to crack beneath him. His adrenaline pumped with the first crack as he watched the white lines cutting through the dark ice, just a couple of inches thick - all that kept him from falling into 40-degree water.

He thought the challenge of getting back to shore was worth the risk of falling through the ice. To Jem, the McAvoys were unpredictable, just like thin ice in Autumn.

The McAvoys’ ancestors had lived in the Ramapo Mountains in northern New Jersey for hundreds of years. A junk dealer, Mr. McAvoy displayed his goods in front of his home, a shack where local newspapers had reported UFO sightings, but by unreliable witnesses who’d kept a moonshine still.

Mr. McAvoy scared Jem with his glaring eyes and stern commands. There were a dozen McAvoy kids, eight boys and four girls.

Jem admired his classmate, Toby McAvoy, because he could hold his breath underwater for four minutes, a Ramapo River record. He’d The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

48 seen Toby knock a squirrel out of a tree with his slingshot, then skin it clean with his pen knife and roast it on a stick over an open fire he’d made from rubbing two sticks together. Toby told Jem the McAvoy’s had pioneer blood from before the American Revolution.

Regardless of their heritage, the McAvoys showed no interest in book learnin’. But they knew everything about buildin’, fixin’, swappin’, growin’, trappin’, gettin’ along, and doin’ without. They ate deer, squirrels, rabbits, eels, and game birds in thick stews with “nips n taters.”

The McAvoys piqued Jem’s interest, mostly because they were deemed social outcasts.His mom had told him not to associate with them, just as she’d told him to stay away from the lake until it was frozen a foot thick January. The temptation to get to know more about the McAvoys, like thin ice, was irresistible to Jem. After school one fall day, Toby invited Jem to his home. Walking towards the McAvoy spread, they turned down a dirt road that wound into the mountains until it narrowed to a rocky path. People had been dumping junk in those woods for years, but that was a plus to the McAvoys, because they’d spit-and-shine old stuff to trade.

“Say, Jem, ya hungry?” Toby asked him one afternoon.

Always hungry after school, and trying to sound like a McAvoy, he said, “Yup.” “Maw will feed ya good and ya can meet the family.” Toby suddenly froze, cocked his head, and sauntered to the Susquehanna Railroad tracks that cut along the valley. “Freight’s comin’. Must be over a hun’erd cars. We’ll hop on it so we’ll be sure to get home in time for grub. If yer late for dinner at my house, ya don’t eat.”

Jumping onto a moving freight train was forbidden in Jem’s family, but Toby’s raw enthusiasm was too much to resist. Jem’s dry throat tightened and his palms were slicked with sweat when he heard the rumble of squealing metal on the tracks. As the train passed, they ran beside it to hop on. Jem was surprised how much faster a train seemed to move as he got closer to it. He puffed and wheezed with awkward footing next to the chest-high wheels, which threatened to draw him under the rumbling train.

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49 Toby caught hold first, grabbed Jem’s hand and dragged him ten yards before Jem could take hold of the train, lift his legs, and feel the thrill of the train’s force.

“That was the easy part.” Toby winked. “Jumping off could be a pisser with only one place to jump safely cause there’s too many rocks and boulders anywhere else-the open field of tall grass.”

Jem shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

“Good on ya bee-hind, but this time of day that field’s full of copperheads catchin’ the last sunlight.”

“Jeez.” Jem said. “We ought to stay on till the freight makes a stop.”

“Only stop is the station. Get off there and the cops’ll grab us.

Ya ain’t scared a no snake are ya? We eat’em.”

When Jem jumped from the moving train into the tall, yellow grass, and rolled over and over, he heard scrambling-more like slithering-in several directions from where he rolled to a stop. Heart racing, he jumped up and kept running to the forest’s edge.

The McAvoys’ home was set under two huge oak trees, growing there since the colonial days. Their home was a one story structure made of gray cinder blocks with a corrugated, tin roof. A wornout clearing surrounded the house near a patch of skunk cabbage swamps. Old cars, trucks, tractors, and farm implements littered the clearing.

Two German shepherds and a mongrel that looked like a coyote scrambled toward them, and jumped around, biting at Jem’s heels. Laughing, Toby bear hugged the big male shepherd and wrestled him to the ground. The other two settled down and flanked Jem as if they were standing guard in case he interfered with Toby’s play.

“They won’t hurt ya,” Toby advised from under the dog he wrestled, “unless I command ’em to.” He untangled himself from the dog and gave a demonstration.

Walking over to a pile of litter in the clearing, he picked up an old knapsack, bent down next to the male shepherd, and whispered in his ear before he threw the knapsack into the air.

“Attack, Strider!” he shouted. Strider leaped into the air, bit into the knapsack before it hit the ground, and shook it violently in The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

50 his jaws.

“Heel, Strider!” Toby commanded. Strider dropped the sack and returned to Toby’s side. “Trained to hunt,” Toby said proudly, leading Jem through the front door, which opened directly into the kitchen where nine McAvoy kids ages two to thirteen ran out to play in the yard.

Filled with a long wooden table that could seat twenty people, the main room smelled musty. Mr. McAvoy sat at the head of the table and faced the door. He wore a flat brimmed, gray Stetson hat, even while seated at the table, something Jem’s mom would have forbidden. Mrs. McAvoy stood at the stove. She was short and thin, wearing a floor length, print dress with a stained and tattered blue apron. Her big, ochre eyes stared with a dilated lack of discernment.

Her short, matted hair with a single gray streak reminded Jem of The Bride of Frankenstein, because she rarely spoke, except for short, high-pitched chirps: “Yup-Nope-Git!” She yawned and sputtered as she watched the pots on the stove and occasionally turned around to whack one of the younger boys at the table with a big wooden spoon for messing with one of his sisters.

Toby’s two older brothers, Lem and Cole, came in the backdoor and sat at the table. They bent forward over plates of mysterious stew, giving a foreboding meaning to-potluck.

They ate with gusto as Mr. McAvoy drank from a metal tankard. Lem and Cole kept eating without looking up.

“This is Jem,” Toby said to his father. “Come to share some food with us.”

Mr. McAvoy stared at Jem. “Welcome.” He gestured toward the end of the table nearest the door. Toby and Jem quickly sat. Without saying a word, Mrs. McAvoy set before them two plates of steaming stew garnished with two thick slabs of homemade bread. Following Toby’s lead, Jem grabbed a fork from a basket of mixed utensils in the middle of the table and began eating.

After a few minutes of silence, Mr. McAvoy jerked his head sideways at Lem and Cole.

The two older brothers stood up, squeezed past Toby and went The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

51 outside without a word. Jem felt uncomfortable with the silence from the stern father and mute mother. He wondered what was in the stew.

He’d never tasted anything like it. Something about Mr. McAvoy gave him the willies with his ruddy face, glaring black eyes, and the hat that made him seem even taller than he already was. He appeared physically strong with weathered, hardworking hands. With a nod, Mr. McAvoy stood up and left the room.

Toby jerked his head and said, “Let’s go.”

When Toby and Jem went into the yard, it looked like an army camp preparing for maneuvers. Three rifles and four shotguns stood on end against the front of the house beside the door. Sleeping bags, tents, lanterns, boxes of ammunition, and camouflage clothing littered the ground near the back of a red pickup with fenders half eaten away by rust, a 1940’s model with running boards.

“What’s going on?” Jem asked, as Mr. McAvoy with his Stetson set squarely on his head, came around the back of the house with Strider prancing beside him.

“Huntin’ season opens Saturday,” Toby said. “We’re gettin’ ready.”

“Where do you hunt?”

“Adirondacks, where my pappy was born,” Mr. McAvoy answered.

Jem tried to imagine this hoard crossing the state line without rousing suspicion from state troopers on both sides of the border.

“North of here a piece in the Hudson Valley,” Toby said. “Best white tail hunting in the state.”

“White tail?” Jem shrugged, not up on their lingo.

“White tailed deer.” Toby glared, curious why Jem didn’t know what a white tail was.

“Been huntin’, boy?” Mr. McAvoy asked.

“No, sir.”

“Does yer pa hunt?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. McAvoy looked at Jem sternly. “How old are ya?”

“Almost sixteen.”

“And never been huntin’?” He shook his head and went to the back of the panel truck.

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52 He tossed the bundle he was carrying into the open backdoor of the house. “Not good for a man not to know how to care for himself,” he muttered. “Ever fire a gun?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s time ya did. Toby, take him out back. Let ’m try the twelvegauge over yonder.”

Toby motioned Jem to follow, grabbed the shotgun and a box of shells, and led him to the back of the house. The clearing behind the main shack extended fifty yards to the edge of the thick pine forest. Toby grabbed a log from a stack of firewood and set it on end in the dirt at the edge of the clearing. He came back to Jem, plugged two shells into the double-barreled shotgun, and handed Jem the firearm.

“Just aim it at that log and squeeze the trigger,” Toby instructed. “Nothin’ to it.”

The weight of the shotgun surprised Jem. He strained to lift it to eye-level. Unsteady, he closed one eye and aimed down the barrel.

“No, Jem! Not like that,” Toby warned. “It’ll rear back and knock your eye out. Hold it on your hip, stare at the log and squeeze.”

Jem held the shotgun hip-level, aimed at the log, closed his eyes then squeezed. Boom!

The recoil knocked him back onto the ground.

“Good shot.” Toby laughed, pointing to the log peppered with pellet holes and knocked three yards back into the woods.

“Fire it again!” Mr. McAvoy shouted from the doorway where he stood with his arms folded in front of his chest.

Jem nodded, looked down at the gun held limply at his side and hefted it to his right hip.

Toby stood beside him and looked at the log with an expectant grin. Jem felt Mr. McAvoy’s eyes burning a hole in his back, so he spread his feet wider to brace for the recoil. Boom! The shotgun jerked up in his hand, but he stayed on his feet.

Jem’s head ached and his arm and ribs throbbed from the recoil. Mr. McAvoy called Toby over to him and said something Jem couldn’t hear. Mr. McAvoy disappeared behind the house.

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53 Jem felt relieved to set the heavy gun down and made his excuses to get home before dark, but Toby said, “Paw says it’s time ya went huntin’. There’s important lessons to learn in the woods. Time ya learned some.” em shrugged. “I don’t know anything about hunting.”

“Paw never took anybody but McAvoys huntin’ with him before. He must like ya. He don’t like much of anybody ‘cept Maw and us chil’ren. We’ll teach ya what ya need to know.”

“What should I bring?”

“Just warm clothes. We’ve got the rest. We’ll leave Saturday at 4 a.m.”

Jem felt glad to be away from that clan and back on his way to civilization across the tracks. The autumn sun set maple trees ablaze with bright reds and yellows on the mountain ridge. He felt that same rush that came after he’d shuffle onto thin ice during an autumn freeze and barely make it back to shore without falling through. *** Saturday morning, Mr. McAvoy drove the old pickup truck with Strider between him and Cole, who sat on a milk crate where the passenger seat used to be. They added removable panels and a canvas tarp to the back of the pickup to protect the McAvoy boys and Jem from the frigid air. Even with the tarp cover, it still felt cold.

Toby and Jem sat in back on top of the hunting gear with the two other dogs.

The McAvoys were silent the whole trip. Lem cradled his rifle in his lap and oiled it during the entire drive. He caressed it gently with a dirty rag that filled the back of the truck with the smell of gun oil. The female shepherd slept in Toby’s lap while the mongrel held his drooling, panting snout a few inches from Jem’s face. Toby said the hunt excited the mutt, and he wouldn’t settle down till they’d release him in the forest. The dogs knew where they were going.

The boys wore woolen, plaid jackets and peaked caps with ear flaps, but Mr. McAvoy wore his inseparable, crumpled Stetson. Slung across their chests, Lem and Cole had leather bandoliers filled with enough ammunition to wage war. Jem wore a ski cap, fuzzy earmuffs, and heavy mittens.

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54 “Them fuzzy paws will never do when it comes time to shoot, boy, “Mr. McAvoy said as he drove.

“I’ll lend ya a pair of my leather gloves with the trigger finger cut out,” Toby offered. “If ya grab the shotgun with those woolies, it’ll slip out of your grip and shoot your leg off. McAvoys don’t hunt for sport-just for meat.”

All three dogs tugged with great anticipation against their restraints, jumping, snapping, and raring to go. With Mr. McAvoy leading, they hiked up the mountain and deeper into the woods.

On frozen ground, the fallen leaves and branches crunched under every step. The trail meandered up the mountain along a stream that rushed with great force. Even with the leaves off the trees in the colder environment, the underbrush was so dense that the hunters could see only a few yards ahead. Stark and gray, the bare trees yielded to an occasional evergreen, which gave a hint of life to the otherwise cold, stark landscape.

Jem zipped his ski jacket tighter around his neck. Toby replaced Jem’s earmuffs with a flapped cap. Jem yanked it down tight over his head and tied the strings under his chin, but he still felt chilled after fifteen minutes.

After steady uphill climbing, they reached the railroad tracks that cut across the mountain.

They saw clearly a hundred yards in both directions until the tracks curved around the mountain.

“This is where they’ll jump,” Mr. McAvoy said. “You’ll be on the low side, Jem, in that clump of bushes. When ya hear ’em hit the gravel, stand and fire.”

He motioned for Lem and Cole to follow him. They restrained the female shepherd and the mongrel with leashes as they crossed the tracks and disappeared into the woods beyond the gravel bed.

Toby and Jem remain halfway down the mountain, hidden in the bushes along the rail-road tracks. Mr. McAvoy, Lem, and Cole would take the dogs to the crest and drive the deer down the mountain and the three dogs would herd them, like sheep, into Jem and Toby’s gun sights. When the deer jumped the railroad tracks, Jem The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

55 and Toby would blast them with shotguns.

Toby’s and Jem’s job was to keep still-not to spook the deer into turning back into the forest when they came to the railroad tracks.

Toby said, “Deer are cagey and quick. Ya got to get ’em when they jump the tracks. Other- wise, you’ll lose ’em in the woods and we’ll never catch ’em. Paw and the dogs will get’em nervous, so they’ll jump over those tracks even though they’d smelled us a mile back.

When they jump, we got ’em.”

The McAvoys were depending on Jem at his post. Mr. McAvoy, Lem, and Cole carried pots, big spoons, and a cowbell to spook the deer. They carried scoped rifles, ammo, and knapsacks with food and drink. Toby and Jem carried twelve-gauge shotguns loaded with double o-buck. They each had a thermos of hot coffee and freshbaked bread to keep them warm during their vigil in the bushes.

Toby nodded, gave Jem a thumbs up, and headed down the tracks to his assigned post. Jem took the opposite direction, slid down the gravel bed into the woods and took vigil in the bushes.

He heard only his own breathing, so loud he feared he’d scare off the deer. He held his breath, but that just made his pulse sound even louder, which he feared would keep him from hearing the deer coming. The ground chill enveloped him. For several hours he remained still. *** In the dimming light of late afternoon, Jem jerked his head back, realizing he’d dozed off. He pulled the shotgun snug against his chest. With a shiver, he stretched both arms, but froze with the shotgun still in his lap when he heard a snort above him.

On his side of the tracks, a twelve-point buck stood twenty feet away. Except for the vapor coming from its wet nostrils, it could have been a statue. Then Jem heard faintly, what the buck must have heard, but still from a distance-the McAvoys were coming with their three barking dogs and a clamor of pots and pans driving the rest of the deer down the mountain toward him.

The majestic buck jerked its head toward the clanking sounds and its muscles tensed. With ears flared out, the buck faced Jem, still The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

56 with the shotgun across his lap. The buck bolted toward him. Jem felt the buck’s wind as it sprang over him, its hooves nearly grazing his outstretched fists. Jem stood, turned, and aimed. The buck was gone.

The distant sound of clanking pots and barking dogs came closer. Anticipating the sound of deer hooves on the gravel, Jem gripped the shotgun tighter. The sound was not what he’d expected. It was just a flutter. When Toby’s shotgun boomed, Jem couldn’t hear anything else as twenty deer sailed by him before he could think straight. He heard Toby reload twice and fire repeatedly.

“Come on, Jem!” Toby shouted. “I hear a few more comin’!

They’re all yours!”

Jem heard them even before they hit the gravel. He stood to fire before he could see them, but his unintended targets were two burly bear cubs scampering onto the gravel and crossing the tracks between him and Toby. Jem lowered the gun to his side and watched the cubs disappear into the woods behind him. When he turned back to face the tracks, the mother bear stopped on the tracks, then turned toward the oncoming clamor. She stood seven feet tall facing two snarling German shepherds.

The shotgun shook in Jem’s hands as he watched the bear swat the female shepherd, then the big male, Strider. Both dogs crumpled like rag dolls, their skulls cracked from the impact of the bear’s huge paws.

Through the turmoil, Jem heard Mr. McAvoy shouting from up the mountain, “Toby! Jem! Get out of the way! That bear will kill ya to protect her cubs!”

Jem saw the McAvoys’ mongrel come out of the brush, not headstrong like the shepherds, but cagey. That unknown gene in its blood kicked in as it crouched low to the ground between the two dead shepherds and slinked toward the towering bear. The scent of fear emitted from both the bear and the dog. Jem sniffed at his own scent of fear.

“Don’t move, Jem!” Toby called. “He’s defending us just like the bear is defending her cubs. Stay clear till Paw can shoot the bear!”

Jem wasn’t cold anymore and felt sweat trickling down his face from under his woolen cap. He realized the mongrel was not going to The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

57 jump up at the bear and meet the same fate as the shepherds. It was ready to avoid the bear’s swatting claws by coaxing her down to its own level and waiting for her to tire from an erect stance.

Looking for her cubs to see if she could safely escape from her unpredictable opponent, the bear made a half-turn toward Jem and sensed his presence. When the bear dropped to all fours to charge Jem, the mongrel ripped its fangs deeply into the bear’s buttocks and shook its head back and forth with a growl. The bear roared, but the mongrel bit the bear’s paw, holding it to the ground. She couldn’t stand up again with enough leverage to swat the mongrel. The dog slipped under the bear and sunk its teeth deeply above the bear’s short tail. The bear seemed stunned, slumping off balance. The dog took advantage by coming under the bear’s chest and locking onto its throat.

The bear roared hoarsely and spun vigorously, sending the dog flying into the far brush.

Then turning toward Jem, the bear fled. Jem’s nostrils filled with the stench of blood, wild animals, and gunfire. When the bear passed, he took a deep breath of relief, but turned to be sure she was gone. He raised the shotgun as he turned, but saw nothing and turned back toward the tracks.

Without warning, the wounded mongrel came out of the brush and jumped at him, its sharp teeth gashing across Jem’s forehead. They rolled in the gravel until Jem shook the weakened dog loose with jerk of the gunstock. The dazed look in the dog’s eyes terrified Jem as he eased to his feet. The dog leaped at him, but all Jem remembered was the boom of theshotgun and the impact of the dog slamming its full weight into his chest before all went black.

As Jem regained consciousness, he felt as if he were waking from a bad dream. His eyes gradually focused and he turned to see the silhouette of Mr. McAvoy wearing his Stetson, which made him look like a giant standing in the doorway. He came to Jem’s bedside and removed his hat for the first time since Jem had met him. He was bald with long strands of hair around his jug ears.

Jem said,“I’m sorry I shot your dog.”

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58 In his silence, Mr. McAvoy weighed Jem’s apology, then he walked to the window.

Pensive, he spun his Stetson in his hands.

“Nope,” he said. “I should be apologizing to you, son. We were greedy, thinking only about the deer and forgetting about the other dangers of the wild. It cost us our dogs. I raised those two shepherds from pups; they were like family. I’d endangered them just like I’d endangered you. I had the know-how, but didn’t use it. If I’d scouted first-looking for signs of bears-I would’ve left the shepherds in the truck, maybe you, too. The shepherds didn’t stand a chance. Their instincts made them attack to protect you and Toby-even knowing they couldn’t win. Folks know better-wait to fight another day when the odds are in their favor. Dogs are just loyal.”

“I didn’t mean to shoot your dog?” Jem apologized with a weak, croaky voice.

“Son, if you learned anything yesterday from the McAvoys, remember this: If you train a dog to kill, one day you might have to shoot ’m - I shot ’m, son, not you.” He plopped his hat onto his head.

“I hope them scars won’t let you forget what ya learnt.” He headed for the door without turning back, but said, “You’re always welcome at the McAvoys.”

Toby had invited him, but Jem never returned to the McAvoy homestead. Though often tempted, Jem never wandered onto thin ice again.

Gerald Arthur Winter has a BA in Journalism from Rutgers University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa. His short stories have been published by The Connotation Press, Hardboiled, and The Creativity Webzine.

NY Literary Magazine published his story, “A Free Sampling,” with a 5 Star Award for Meaningful Fiction in September 2016.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

59

POETRY

Marianne Szlyk

Poem in Red Ink The math teacher grades exams with red ink, drinks black coffee from a china cup, kicks off new stilettos.

Cardinals flit past the lace curtains.

The males are as red as her ink.

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60

Her First Job Her ninety-year-old grandmother wondered why she chose to spend so much time with old people.

Her father said she was escaping her life. But the residents were happy to see her, a young girl in a pink suit with mail— cards from home, letters, church bulletins.

Every day in baby louis heels she clicked down the second-floor hallway where the residents waited winter and summer. Time flowed smoothly without term papers or vacations.

Making bad coffee at work for her boss Duke Lemar, she imagined staying there but knew she could not.

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61

The Last Summer in Oregon “This is the last place. There is no place left to go.”

* Lew Welch, “The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings”

I walk the numbered street, empty on a Sunday. My husband is at the coast with his friends.

Without shade, sun widens the sidewalk, turns asphalt to a slow, noxious river, myself to a fat fly on a window pane.

Beyond here be several small towns with lettered streets.

I imagine moving to one, standing on A Street, waiting for the traffic that never will come, watching for the light that doesn’t exist.

The west I know from black and white TV on Sunday afternoons is at least a day’s drive east of here.

I take a named street, back into the shade, away from the flats.

I look for an open store. There is none.

There will be other last places.

This is only the beginning, I tell myself as I return home to the place I will soon leave.

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62

Summer With My Family “Peter, there’s a people who believe you go on until the very last person who’s heard about you is gone.”

-- Stephanie Marlis, “Golden Hat” Mom’s grandmother still says the Rosary as thunder shakes the summer shack on the cloud-dark pond up north.

The cousins sprint in from swimming.

My great-aunt still tells about Gram, her younger sister, as a toddler wandering away from a relative’s house.

The dog, Sammy, still races around the yard of dirt and stones.

Even now he whirs to life.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is...

Her chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, was published by Flutter Press. Her poems have appeared at Carcinogenic Poetry, Cacti Fur, bird’s thumb, of/with, Solidago, and Red Bird Chapbook’s Weekly Read. She encourages you to submit to her magazine. For more information, see http://thesongis.blogspot.com/ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

63

FICTION

“Have you heard of Pricilla?” said Mrs. Callahan as I unpacked my bags. The bare room needed posters and pictures, a pink lamp and a lacy curtain to dress the naked window. Above all, it howled for a serious airing after Mrs. Callahan left. Her perfume stung like juniper.

“Who is that?” I said without looking up.

Mrs. Callahan took my arm and led me to the window. She pointed to a white house with a covered porch. The grass was as green and lush as the bushes flanking the porch steps; yellow door blared in the deep shade. “She lives there. She’s a little girl like you, about your age. Thirteen. How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Only two years. It doesn’t matter.”

“Replace the C-A of your name with K-I.” Mrs. Callahan didn’t get it. I don’t think she ever did. She was one of those pushy white ladies that never listened, no matter how many times a girl repeated herself. Only actions would get through— but even that could get skewed on the way to her command center.

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64 I think the only thing she ever understood was money, and since I didn’t have any, that made her smart and me dumb.

“She’s got thousands of dresses, you know.”

“How?” Mrs. Callahan ignored the question. “Why don’t you go over there and say hello?” She was pushing it now. I moved all over the place because of my dad’s work, but that didn’t make me a social butterfly. I shook my head, but she didn’t listen. “Oh, come on. She won’t bite. I want all my boarders to feel welcome. I’ll call up Chelsey— that’s her sister, you know, and we’ll have a play date.”

“Do I look five or something?”

“It’ll be fun!” She smiled as if it would be fun because she said so. She must have been the world’s worst grandma, if she was one at all. I told my dad about the old lady, but it didn’t matter. Three o’clock the next day, I was standing on that porch with the yellow door, Mrs. Callahan crushing my hand as if I were three.

Hopefully Pricilla didn’t have some ankle biting mutt that she claimed wouldn’t bite, while she smiled through her teeth at a defenseless girl trapped in a corner. If so, I would need to invest in some antifreeze. Mrs. Callahan knocked.

The yellow door swung open and a short girl with small puckered lips, tiny bones and hardly enough skin to cover them stepped out. Blonde curls had been gelled into sticky wires. How in the world could she stand all that gunk in her hair? My own skull rebelled when it even thought about hairspray. The gel-headed shrimp wore a thin, cream-colored silk dress with spaghetti straps and an effusion of lace on the breast. I had never seen such a dress before. What store had she gone to?

She stared at me with small hazel eyes as if I were some sort of rare specimen. Maybe, because the place was like those places in South America where there are tribes that have never seen a white man. Here there were tribes of white people who had never seen a Native.

I had light brown skin and flat black hair, and was pretty tall for my age. Already I had seen girls my age and they all reached my The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

65 shoulder. This one was at least my height, and yet she still struck me as shrimpy. It must have been those chicken bones under her translucent skin.

“Hello, Pricilla,” Mrs. Callahan said, giving the bony thing a best friend hug. The girl patted Mrs. Callahan’s narrow back.

“Hi, how are you?” The girl ended every sentence with an ‘A.’ So ‘you’ sounded like ‘youwa.’ Totally bizarre. I turned around and headed down the stairs, but Mrs. Callahan dragged me back.

“This is Margo,” said Callahan. “She just moved in. I brought her here to have a play date. She’s a little shy.” She put her arm around my shoulders as if she were my only friend in the whole world and had charge of me. “But she’s going to have fun here with you.” She shook me a little. “Isn’t she?”

“No.” Callahan beamed. “Isn’t she a sweetheart?” She looked at the shrimp in the cream dress. Her voice grew low as if disclosing a great secret. “She’s from the reservation.”

Pricilla smiled, clasped her hands. “Really? Wow! So, are you finding your house all right? Your bathroom is okay?”

“Don’t worry, I’m showing her everything.”

I stared at them. “What are you talking about?” These people were whacked.

Pricilla put her arm protectively around my shoulders. “I was just going shopping, Mrs. Callahan. I’ll take Margo and we’ll buy something wonderful.”

“I knew you two would get along. Now take care of Margo. It’s her first time around here.”

“Thanks a lot,” I growled.

Mrs. Callahan skipped away.

Pricilla turned to me. “I need a new dress.”

“How could you possibly need another?”

Pricilla smiled. It looked neither kind nor cruel. It was just there, like a mask plastered over the real thing. I didn’t need this. Crap, my dad was out and had locked the door. I was stuck here with this bony creature.

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66 “Isn’t Mrs. Callahan sweet?” Pricilla said in a voice so sugary that it almost gave me diabetes. Just then, feet pounded on the old wooden floor and an older girl appeared. She was in her twenties, I guess. Strawberry blonde hair had been yanked back in a dull ponytail, watery blue eyes gazed at me as if I were a thief. She had a pointy chicken-bone face, too.

“Oh! Who is this?”

Pricilla smiled. “Hey, Chelse, this is Margo. She just moved in.

She comes from the reservation.”

I guess chicken face was Chelsey. She leaned over until her nose almost touched mine. “Is Margo a Native American name?” Ugh, the woman had brushed her teeth but hadn’t eaten anything.

“Are you?”

Chelsey wasn’t even fazed. “Ah…you’re so cute. I always did love dark eyes.”

I stepped back. “Sure you do.” I fanned the air with my hand.

“Chelse,” said Pricilla as she minced about in her ballerina flats, “I was wondering if I could take Margo with me to the mall while I go shopping for a new dress. I want to show her around, get her a present.”

Chelsey’s mouth twitched, she glanced at me and reluctantly handed Pricilla a hundred dollar bill. “You have such good taste. Be sure to wear it at Henry’s dinner tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Chelse, you’re so sweet.” Pricilla turned to me. “Come on, Margo. It’ll be fun at the mall. Oh, do you have a bike? Do you know what that is?”

“Of course I know what that is.” I glanced at my watch and swallowed a curse. It had only been ten minutes. At least I was getting something out of this.

“Good,” said Pricilla. “Let’s go get it.”

Well, we got to the mall. That’s all I can say. We tied up our bikes and joined the masses flowing like ants in a nest. As we wandered from store to store, I made a note of all the things I wanted. I had to be careful. I had to get the most satisfying gift that I could get.

“Pricilla,” I said after who knows how long, “I’m dying of hunger The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

67 here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie.” Pricilla patted my head like I was a puppy. “Let’s go eat.” She bought me a hamburger. I had barely swallowed the last of it when she espied a watered silk, sky blue dress.

“I must have it,” said Pricilla, although she hadn’t noticed it the last fifty times we passed it. And so she bought it.

“What about me?” I said as the lady handed her the change.

“I bought you a hamburger, remember?” said Pricilla as if I were being greedy.

I set my hands on my hips. “Oh, so get a present or starve, is that it?”

Pricilla laughed. “You know that eating is a gift. You’re so silly.”

“You’re so stingy.”

Pricilla tittered again and swept out of the mall. I glared at her back all the way home. She waved at passing cars, hollered to prissy little people like herself and finally stopped in the Malt Shop with them several blocks away. I rolled my eyes and snuck off. # That odious Callahan batted at the door in panic. My dad opened up and all I heard was my name over and over again.

“Margo,” my dad called.

I should’ve got in the shower when he told me to. Crap. I slunk out of the hall and found Callahan in tears. The woman fell over my shoulder, shaking all over.

“I couldn’t believe what happened. Pricilla was in tears that you had disappeared. She thought that something had happened. Oh where did you go?”

“Get a grip, lady.” I shoved her off. “Pricilla sucks. And I don’t like her.”

“But she really likes you. You have to go over there tomorrow.

She was in such tears.” She looked at my dad. “Margo might have wandered off or gotten lost. I am so sorry.”

“Margo can handle herself,” said my dad.

I beamed. The man was a five time divorcee to one woman, but there were times when he really made my day. Mrs. Callahan still The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

68 insisted. I think my dad was tired, or he was high, but he said I had to go back to Pricilla the next day.

“But I don’t like her.”

“Do as I say, Margo. Have you bathed yet?”

Callahan grasped his hand. “Thank you. Oh, I was so worried.”

She kissed my hating cheek and swept out the door. I cleared the air with my hand. Her perfume was as whacked as she was.

Well, Callahan took me back to that stupid house with its stupid girl, stupid dresses and stupid promises. She actually marched me upstairs this time. Pricilla ran to me with outstretched hands.

“Oh, you’re back! I was so worried. Now, we’re going to have some fun today.”

“I doubt it.”

Mrs. Callahan sighed. “I’m glad you two made up. Now don’t scare me like that again.” She left, her perfume stayed. I didn’t know which one I wanted gone more. Pricilla went to the full length mirror, picked up the sky blue dress and twirled it in her hands. The wretch could have bought ME a dress. No hunger was a gift indeed. The jerk got to eat AND have a dress in one day. What was she talking about?

“Well?” I said. “Are you gonna put it on?”

“I can’t decide if I want to wear this dress or just keep the one I have on.”

“You said you would wear the new one.”

“But I like the one I have on too much.”

I smiled in mock sweetness. “Why don’t you put them both on?”

Pricilla’s face lit up. “I think I will! Margo, you’re so smart!”

“I know.”

She slipped the blue one on over the cream. She checked herself over. “Chelse won’t notice. And I’ll wear a lot of perfume.”

“One of your favorite dresses is grime, too?” Good thing I had bathed the night before or I’d be like Pricilla.

“Pricilla,” Chelsey crooned down the hall, “are you ready?”

“Almost,” Pricilla called and dumped half her body spray on.

She sprayed me in the face without warning. “There, now you’re all nice too. Come on, maybe Chelse will let you come with us. I need a The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

69 friend at Henry’s place. Him and Chelse are going to get married and they’re all mushy together.”

I followed her flitting form downstairs and reached the door, where Chelsey tapped her foot impatiently on the dark wood.

“Oh, Priss,” she cried, her nose wrinkling, “did you bathe in perfume?”

“Except her butt,” I said.

“Margo wanted to try some on,” said Priss, as if I were the one who had dumped the bottle all over myself. “I need another body spray.”

“That’s a lie,” I said.

Chelsey tittered. “Well, I suppose. She hasn’t had much on the reservation. It’s natural.”

“My body spray smells nothing like this crap,” I said.

Pricilla hopped up and down. “Can Margo come too? She wanted to so bad and that’s why she put on all the body spray.”

“I don’t wanna see your stupid boyfriend,” I said.

Chelsey nodded. “Well…okay. Get in the car.”

These people! Didn’t they hear a word I was saying? What was the matter with them? I was going to just leave, but then, I decided, why not? They probably had rich people food. I’d use them and stuff it all in a bag and take it home.

We rode to Henry’s house. Chelsey had to keep the window down so that her sister’s abominable perfume wouldn’t knock her out. She kept glancing at me like it was my fault, and I smiled at her.

When Henry opened the door, he kissed Chelsey, but when he bent to peck Pricilla, he jerked back.

“I ordered take out,” he said. “I burned the burgers.” He chuckled. “Sorry.”

“I got dressed for burgers?” Pricilla growled.

“You got dressed for something,” said I. Henry looked her up and down. “Why are you wearing two dresses?” He yanked down a delicate sleeve, revealing the cream underneath.

“Chelse, he’s molesting me!”

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

70 “And turning green while he’s at it,” I said.

Chelsey’s watery eyes bulged. “I thought I told you to change your dress!”

“It was Margo’s idea!”

“Well, she wouldn’t give it to me,” I said.

Pricilla fluttered her skirts. “She convinced me it was a good idea.”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“And I don’t want what Henry ordered.” Pricilla flipped her golden wires as best she could. “I want a DECENT day out with my friend Margo. So give me my money.” She stuck one fist on her hip and held out her other hand.

My brows went up. “Who said we were friends?”

Chelsey’s lips pinched into a thin line, glared at me as if I were a fiend. But she slapped money into Pricilla’s hand.

Pricilla recoiled. “Just thirty?”

“That’s all I’ve got left.” Chelsey snapped her purse shut. “I only work at McDonald’s, you know.”

With a grunt, Pricilla started marching. I smiled at Chelsey and followed her dumb sister back to the mall. She went straight to the dresses. The store was having a sale. There on a rack a bright yellow sundress waited for her. Pricilla snatched it up, slipped it over the watered silk and cream dresses. # Chelsey’s voice barked, “Priss, you smell so bad! More perfume isn’t helping!”

“Whatever,” Priss snapped. She approached me on my own porch. Now what brought on this spur of condescension? “Hello, Margo. Ready to go?”

I tilted the rocker back with my foot. “Where?”

“The mall.”

“With you smelling like that? I might drop off my bike and get my head smooshed by one of your prissy friends. I think I’ll pass.”

Pricilla hopped up and down. “Come on, Margo. Come with me.”

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

71 “So you can blame the smell on me?” I waved her away. “Good bye, Pricilla.”

“Margo!” She stomped her foot.

I folded my arms. “Present first.”

Pricilla pinched her lips. “All right, I promise. I’ll get you a present.”

“And lunch and a two liter pop.” I leaned, started rocking.

Pricilla’s mouth fell open. I don’t think she had brushed it. “You conniving fiend!”

“Aren’t I though?” I smirked.

She paced to and fro until the grass couldn’t stand the smell.

“OKAY! I promise all of it.”

“I’ll get my bike.” I jumped off the porch and retrieved my hunk of metal.

I kept to the side of her crappy butt on the way. I was upwind but it didn’t help. Something must have died in her underpants. By the time we got to the mall, Pricilla asked, “Are you hungry?”

“I lost my appetite back there. I’ll tell you when it comes back.”

Pricilla frowned. “I love my dresses. Don’t you know what it is to love?”

“Totally ignorant.”

Pricilla’s jaw tightened and we headed to the dress store. She snatched up a red dress with long sleeves and a turtle neck.

“Gonna melt off the grime?” I said.

She forced it over the three she was already wearing. Then she found a purple, green and white dress. She shoved that one on too.

When we got back, Chelsey was packing up. She was off on a romantic before wedding mash with Henry for a nasty month. How in the world she was looking forward to jumping literal bones was beyond me. She pecked Pricilla goodbye, washed her mouth, glared at me and ran off with her horny scarecrow.

And now Pricilla was left completely to her own devices. Every day she got a new dress. A golden one to her feet, an orange one to her knees, a sheer white one, a little black dress. All these she forced over the others. Sweat collected in the collars and pits. A stench that The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

72 reminded me of the color brown trailed after her, and it changed colors as the days went by. Dirty green, dull red, gray and brown and then dark yellow. Grease caked her hair, left films on hands and smudges on windows like some nasty kid had licked them.

I stole Callahan’s perfume and poured it on that putrid, gorged frame, but it didn’t help. She bought bigger dress sizes to accommodate her growing girth. At 64 gowns she was a colorful pincushion with tiny arms holding perfume bottles and a yellow rat’s nest of hair.

She started leaving brown slime wherever she went.

“Well,” I said from her porch, because I refused to go inside, “you look hideous and you smell orange. All your dresses are probably ruined.”

Pricilla sniffed. “I love them all. You will understand one day, when you grow up.”

“I’ll grow UP. You’re growing sideways. I gotta get home before I don’t eat dinner.” And I left the pincushion there, waving a tiny, stick arm at me. # “AAAAAAHHHHH!” I sat straight up. The scream came again. I looked outside.

Chelsey was home, running back and forth on the porch in front of the pincushion. “What happened to you? You can’t go on like this!”

She thrust a shining finger at my house. “Ever since that Margo girl’s been here, you’ve gotten weirder and weirder. This is all her fault. Using all the perfume and her high ideas. Those kind aren’t good people to go around with. And she’s using up all of my money for presents.”

I smiled and leaned on the windowsill.

“I have to buy her presents or she won’t go to the mall with me,” said Pricilla.

“You shouldn’t be going to the mall in your condition! You need help.”

The pincushion leaped to its feet, brown slime splashing out from under the dozens and dozens of skirts. “No one wants to hang out with me anymore. You’re so cruel! I love these dresses, I love the mall. I want more! You’re not in charge of me. You have nothing to The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

73 say. You’ve been a slut for a month!” And she marched towards my house as if I was going to let that thing in.

Bap-bap-bap!

I hid.

Bap-bap-bap!

What would I need to use to clean off the porch before my dad got home? How long would it take? Would the smell linger? Finally Pricilla left, a slime trail led up the street. Luckily the rain came and washed it into the gutters under the sidewalks. I had to use Clorox on the porch, though. That slime was just stubborn. # Pricilla didn’t come bothering anymore. Maybe Chelsey had cut the dresses off her, boiled her in Pine Sol and forbade her to come near me. Now I could make human friends if my reputation didn’t still smell like Pricilla’s slime.

But then Callahan showed up at the door right when the rain clouds were rolling in. She was in tears again. She called for me, of course. What, did she think I had been lost for two weeks? The woman didn’t have a screw loose. She was missing nuts and bolts.

“Margo,” she said, “we can’t find Pricilla. No one can find her. Do you know where she is?”

Okay, maybe not all the bolts were missing. “Just follow the brown slime.”

Callahan wiped her wrinkled eyes. “Well, do you? Please, I know you might be covering for her because she’s your best friend.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“Is she here?”

I folded my arms in exasperation. “No.” Callahan called into the house. “Pricilla! Please come home!

Your sister is so worried!”

“Woman,” I shouted, “the girl isn’t here! She slugged her way up the street—look, I’ll find her. It isn’t hard. Look for the slime or follow your nose.”

“Natives have such wonderful senses.”

I rolled my eyes. “Even you can smell something dead. Oh wait, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

74 you still got that abominable perfume. When’s the last time you changed it? 1865?” Putting on my rain coat, I headed out. That rainy dirt smell was on the air. How I wished I could just sit there and inhale it! But no, I was sniffing out slime and dead things.

First I smelled the rot. It went behind Pricilla’s house to the shed where she kept her bike. Right under the door I espied slime that the rain hadn’t been able to wash away. Some of the grass was dead. I opened the door. A wave of stench hit me so hard my eyes watered. I stepped back hacking and coughing. Small, cold droplets pattered on my head. I pulled my hood up.

Callahan clapped her hands to her mouth. “What is that?”

In the middle of the shed was the colorful pincushion I’d been looking for. But something wasn’t right. I touched the shoulder and blanched. A brown, gooey hole was where the head had been.

“What in the world?” I kicked at the pincushion. At first it wouldn’t budge, so I put more juice into the next few kicks until the sphere of gowns rolled over. Humid stench stung my nose and eyes.

Beneath the numerous dresses was a mound of brown ooze. I jumped back before the stuff got on my shoes and I’d have to trash them.

Mrs. Callahan screamed. “Oh, what is it?”

I folded my arms and smiled sweetly at her. “Have you heard of Pricilla?”

Born to the Bear Clan of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Julia Benally enjoys writing horror stories and ridiculous fiction about her people and her area, including other places she had lived in.

She has been featured in ‘A Shadow of Autumn Anthology’, ‘Mantid Magazine’ and more. This fall, her story “Devil’s Hour” will be featured in The Wicked Library Podcast.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

75

FLASH FICTION

Stones

Sunil Sharma

After finishing their private tuition class, the two tiny teens are

returning home: chirpy, fleet-footed, eager to be back before dark-as always advised and insisted upon by the worried parents.

Indian streets are not safe for the girls! There are predators unseen, lurking everywhere!Little girls must reach home early.

They know instinctively the heavy burden of gender they are condemned to carry in life. They know wolves in men’s clothes roam around, ready to pounce on the weak.

The two are on the chatting mode. An uneven vast ground littered with garbage from nearby high-rises has to be traversed to arrive home, on the other lower side. It is stinking hell; they say and cover their delicate noses with dainty kerchiefs. Typical feminine gesture!

The bespectacled, braided females, carrying backpacks, are being followed by two boys of their batch, few meters away. One of the fat boys picks up a small stone and uses it as a missile.

Bang, bang! It hits the backpack of one of the two girls. Producing a metallic sound. Another stone is hurled with great force.

The dominant girl stops mid-way, dodges the second stone and says loudly, “If you hit us with stone…”,----another stone comes flying at her, while second boy aims and throws at the second girl walking behind the first---“…I will beat you to death.” It is not original. She has heard it often from dad and elder brother. It becomes a caricature in her pursed mouth.

The second girl echoes the first, obediently” Yes. I will also beat you…”

The boys deliberately slow down, stalk, pick up more stones and send them at the retreating figures, now many steps ahead. The aimed stones fail to connect with the hapless targets and fall nearby.

A short rain of pebbles and crooked stones descends on the girls who, suddenly scared and vulnerable, break into a trot.

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76 The ammunition provided by a roadwork going on in the suburb of Mumbai is plenty. The boys are determined.

The girls start running fast on anaemic legs. The pursuers pick up more stony missiles, take aim and shoot gleefully at the girls. The game has really begun in earnest.

Wolves, on urban streets, come in various age groups. Stalking and assault come in different forms; be on your watch always---that is classic Ma in her daily dispensation of wisdom. Her words are ringing true!

Boys will always be boys! Her father famously repeats. For boys, it is fun teasing sisters.

A little fun! Nothing else.

The girls realize it is no longer fun and break into a run under a hail of stones that might hurt badly. Boys, laughing boorishly, give them a slow chase, flinging stones, delighting in violence reserved for the curs, the nuts…and the hapless girls within their own circles, in the urban centers.

They know it is innocent act, fun, going to be un-challenged.

A friendly game. The weak has to be teased and tormented by the strong. The Jungle has taught them this lesson so well on their videos.

They increase their pace, laughing, throwing missiles; the timid girls try to avoid by running fast; many adults passing by hardly notice their plight. The hunt at an early age has begun.

Wolves vs. lambs.…

Sunil Sharma is a senior academic and a widely-published

writer from Mumbai, India. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012.

His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015. Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA: http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html

For more details, please visit the blog: http://www.drsunilsharma.blogspot.in/ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

77

Sneaky clouds had established a dictatorship in the sky. Gloom was

slowly dropping onto the city. The city was moving towards the night by stepping on the heavy words...

Cemal had directed his glances outside the office window but he only saw the question marks in his head. His cigarette smoke directed his head towards a summit of a foggy mountain. Cemal never had a suspicion anymore; the beheaded murders were made by a serial killer.

But the murderer’s identity was so obscure as a sentence not yet constructed. The only common thing in both murders was both victims had benefitted from pardon. Cemal had never been scolded by his superiors since his graduation from the academy and he was never been under such a pressure in his whole carreer.. With the discovery of the second corpse, the interest of media and public had got bigger. Cemal was like a helpless cavy trying to find it’s way in the labrynth. Every road ended at a dumb wall. ‘’Then what is he trying to say with the carved inscriptions on the corpses?’’ he thought. ‘’Which silkroad multiplies the letter series...With the horse drawn carriages...’’

Additionally there are K and E letters. Is he playing a game with us The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

78 or what?’’ He will go on with killing unless he got caught. But why?...’’

He sank at his table like an army that have been defeated. He got even with the pain his helpleesness by crushing his cigarette butt like a bud. ’Sooner or later you will make a mistake. Then you will be introduced to my handcuffs.’’ Ümit’s heart was fluttering like a sparrow that was trapped. He was longing to reach the house by driving the car as if he was in dream. His mother had never called the Station before. For tthe first time she asked him to come as early as possible, but never told the reason.Saying ‘’Not on the telephone. We’’ll talk tonight.’’ left ümit in curiousity. Ümit suddenly thought that it was about his father. Was it that his father got sick and his mother didn’t want to tell him on the phone, not wanting to worry him...Ümit had turned into an anxiety ball... He stood by the door after parking the car infront of the house casually. He rang the bell insistently. ‘’Welcome, son.’’ ‘’What’s up mother? Is there anything wrong with my father?’’

His mother caressed the cheek of his son, smiling. ‘’No dear no.

Come inside... then we talk.’’

They passed to the livingroom together. Mister İbrahim was on the seat of honour as usual. ‘’Good evening dad.’’ ‘’Good evening. Come and sit by my side.’’ Ümit had really got suspicious. His father had never talked to him in person unless there was a very important subject. ‘’There’s something important İ want to talk to you about..Ee, you have really grown up.The time has come for a marriage.’’

Instantly Ümit’s blood pressure dramatically increased. The colour in his face flew away like a bird escaping from his cage.

He was always afraid of this and now it was inescapably in front of him. ‘’We want you to get married while we’re around. We are longing to see our grand children...’’ Ümit was like in a press. He was listening to his father in agony. ‘’You know your mother’s adopted maid Aunt Hamiyet. She has a niece. A girl called Emine, who is very honest and religious. She just graduated from the İmam Hatip...’’

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79 Ümit didn’t want to hear the rest but he was helpless like a fly got caught in the spider’s web. ‘’What I’m saying is that your mother went to girl’s house to see her. She liked her a lot. She is beautiful and well- mannered. We shall go as soon as possible to make an agreement.’’ There was a brief silence.

Mister İbrahim got his stares on the pupil of Ümit’s eyes with the order of his approval. ‘’Whatever you think is fit.’’ mumbled Ümit...

Saying ‘’With your permission’’, he repaired to his room, dragging his despair like a chain at his feet.

His mother followed him to his room. ‘’Look son, this is the picture of the girl...How do you find her? Beautiful isn’t she?’’ Ümit looked at the picture reluctantly. ‘’Yes, beautiful.’’ ‘’Don’t you like her? ‘’ No, no. She is nice.’’

His mother went back to the room a little worried. Ümit stayed back with his troubles that was accumulated like lava inside him. He wanted to scram like crazy on the street ‘’I’m a faggot goddamn, I’m a faggot!’’

Cemal was searching the radio channel that suited his mood. In many frequencies when he heard the crazy show host speaking Turkish with New York accent and he couldn’t help saying ‘’American slimmies!

Smart asses!’’

Then he met ‘’Apprentice of the Repairman’’ in a channel. His nerves that were strained like a bow got relaxed. It was like seing an old friend.

All of a sudden 70’s got down from the dusty shelves of his mind.

He dived into his adolescent memories: When he was in the first grade, he and his friend Mehmet had skipped school on a warm spring day. It was the most naughty day of Cemal’s small biography. For the first time he had eaten a great bowl of ice cream that looked like the peak of a mountain. It was offered by Mehmet of course. Because he had a father and accordingly pocket money too.

In the afternoon, they had sat in the tea garden. How nice was it to drink tea, looking at the sea... In a while, two young men at the next table got Cemal’s attention. He never understood what they were talking about. They were giggling sweetly at times. One asked the other ‘’Where are you from?’’. And the other answered ‘’I’m a union man.’’ They had The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

80 burst out laughing. Cemal was startled with the question in his mind about where does union belong to... He realized years after..

He went to the kitchen pulling away from old memories. He returned to the livingroom after opening a beer bottle from the refrigerator. All of a sudden he realized his loneliness in the middle of the night.

He was a purple button attached to loneliness. Turning off the radio he put on a ballad album on the stereo. And then sank into his armchair, and became like a bucket that was put down in the well.

Cemal woke up startled, opening his eyes in his own home. And the sorrow of waking up alone in his bed started giving big pain somewhere inside. Gamze passed by his heart as usual.

That brunette girl in the picture...The clogged longing in his heart spread out naughty confettis on the vision of Gamze in her wedding dress. He got up reluctantly. He went to the kitchen and boiled water for tea. Then, washing his face, started shaving. He was again bleeding in A Rh positive today, with his suicidal imitation of shaving When he went out the bathroom, he lit his first cigarette without waiting for the tea. . Because his lungs that challenged cancer with laughters, were shouting out ‘Carpe Diem’ impatiently. In the barrel of his package, three cigarettes were left. As he inhaled a deep breath, the doorbell rang. For a long time the doorbell was not to be heard in his home. Cemal found Jale at the treshold when he opened the door. Jale obviously came early with her nice sporty outfits, nicely done make up and with a plate in her hands full of fresh pies. Said ‘’Good morning Cemal’’ hiding her longing that was e flowing out of the pupils of her eyes.

She wasn’t able to hide the sweet shyness that was left from the time that they spent last night. ‘’Good morning. Welcome’’ said Cemal with a flirty smile. What burden this was for you Jale. ‘’What burden? I made some pies. You must have smelled it. I thought you would want some.’’

Cemal said ‘’Thanks a lot dear. See you’’. Underling the last word with a flirty hint. ‘’See you’’ said Jale, with a pretty smile and her eyes looking down. And putting her shyness under her arm started climbing up the stairs reluctantly.

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81 Cemal put the hot pies next to newly brewed tea. He just had a glimpse at his pelargonium: ‘’Girl why did you put your head down. Are you jelaous or what?...’’ He said farewell to his house again as he was leaving. As he went down an ominous air met him that turned out his inner peace into a broken toy. The hope that he attached on his collar like an Algerian violet suddenly withered. Sky was a Grand Vizir that wore a ‘Black Kaftan’. Gloom was shaking on the city like a greasy rope, as if waiting for an operation on Sultan’s orders.

The office was getting narrower every minute. Cemal was confronting the unresolveness of beheaded murders in other folders.

He could never take not overcoming on any matter. He had tried to hold on to life with a lot of battles until now. He closed the folder into solitude. He got married with the new cigarette before the corps of the old cigarette got cold. The ofice door was opened suddenly to a new tension. ‘’Captain Cemal’’ ‘’Yes?’’ ‘’A new beheaded corpse is found. Ümit started from where he is to the murder site.’’ Cemal had a tension like a boxer going to his title fight.

Getting the adress of the scene, he went downstairs with strong steps.’’

He was murmuring himself ‘’Oh only if you had a short.’’ He opened the door of his car as if he wanted to break it off. He sat on the seat as if he was going into a panzer. ‘’Let’s see what happens.’’ he said to himself.

The door of solitude slowly opened for Cemal. His car was a dirty whisper mixed into silence. Darkness was drawn onto the city like a black curtain. Spotlights were a feeble guide that were trying to enlighten the obscureness of the roadway. Forest was throwing it’s black eyes onto the car like a heavy threat.

A shivering light bundle came into sight from a distance,. He had come closer to the site of incident. Parking the car in the nearest place, he dived into the forest reposing on the feeble help of his flashlight. He was getting closer at every step to a vacant uneasiness. He was simply walking towards death step by step. The insignificant visions in the light bundle became clear. The inspection team and Ümit tried to conceive the identity the newcomer.

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82 ‘’Captain Cemal?’’ ‘’Yes it’s me...’’

The team circled the death.

With Cemal’s arrival the circle was broken instantly and the violence that was at the footstep of an old tree came into sight: A corpse of a fat middle aged woman, beheaded and hurt severely was lying down all nude. The log book of the murders became totally complicated. Cemal was not expecting to confront woman’s corpse after two male victims.

Coziness of the forest became deeper. Uneasiness was rustling on the leaves of branches. A showy silence had fallen down on the forest like fog. The woman’s skin had turned into an egg-plant field with the strokes of a hammer accompanied with some cigarette burns. On her back there was a carved inscription vertically ‘’There’s blood under every word.’’ ‘’There was a big letter C running like a crazy brook, in the deep valley between her two boobs.’

Julide was knitting a sweater, expecting to hear the voice of Cemal’s car that would park in front of the house, like Jale who was eating pumpkinseeds.

Whenever Cemal was late, time crept slowly for the sisters. The iron mountains of anxiety settled on their breasts. Their hearts were squeezed in the clamp of fear. Despite the fact that Julide was full of anger for Jale and Cemal’s spending the night together, she was still anxious. Once in a while she threw a glance to Jale and she was carefully listening to every voice coming from outside like herself. Both of them were watching the television carelessly.

Sound of a brake came into the middle of the room like a heart attack. Two sisters settled on the window like flies that swarmed on jelly.

Thank god Cemal had come all in one piece again. Loneliness fell upon Cemal like an avalanche as he opened the door to trust. Who did Cemal have except his loneliness. Opening a beer he sat down on the armchair.

He was trying to disperse the black clouds of anxiety that settled on his head. He was stuck in between of a knot that was going blind. There was no evidence found around the new body that gave any clue about the identity of the murderer. And it was really confusing that the last body belonged to a woman. He was really depressed. One one side chronical The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

83 loneliness, on the other Ümit’s whom he loved even more than a brother, revealing his sexual identity as being homosexual, on top of everything, this horrible serial murders.

He missed Gamze at such times like this that troubles accumulated on top of each other. Wish she were here by his side. First she’d end his loneliness, later they’d communicate. ‘’Buddy give me one more gin-tonic.’’ Ümit said to the bartender, putting his head up from the deep darkness that he had fallen into.

Gin-tonic set infront of him saluting Ümit with respect. “’Ok, thank you.’’ ‘’Bon appetit.’’

His father had always been an exclamation mark standing in front of his life. He had constantly tried to block Ümit’s being the master of his own life. Ever since his childhood, it was his father who had chosen which schools he was going to follow, with whom he would have friendship, which career he would choose, and now who he should marry...And the worst part was that that he would get married to ‘a girl’. How would he say that : ‘’I’m gay, I have nothing to do with girls.’’ to his parents ?.

Saying ‘’Buddy, one more please’’, he put his glass up, within bartender’s field of sight. If he could sit at the table here, it was because he could tell his parents that he was on duty. Of course he would have to sober up and get rid of the smell of alcohol before he returned home. How would he resist their demands...What kind of an excuse would he present for not getting married. Even if he told them that he didn’t like this girl, and even if he convinced them, another one would have been offered to him soon. ‘’God damn it!’’ he cried out the anger that he accumulated from helplessness. ‘’What is there to do? What!what!what!’ Ümit was the mandatory passenger of the black phaeton of fate. The weight of his courage was not enough to erect his flag in the center of his life. It was a possibility that he would be like a small island in the midst of the ocean of loneliness. ‘’Buddy, one more please.’’Barmen arranged the gin-tonic to relief. ‘Give me one cigarette, god damn it.’’ He directed a 100 mm. Cigarette barrel to the freshness of his lungs. His bronchus answered with broken coughs of inexperience.

His glass was suddenly emptied together with the cigarette that totally turned into ash. ‘’Buddy would you bring me a cup of coffee.’’

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84 Passing through the jungle of entertainement in the bar and hitting the trees, he went to the toilet. He washed face with cold water. His face emerged suddenly behind the fog of alcohol. Then he returned to his seat. He drank the bitter coffee without waiting for it to get cooler. Then he overflew the sea of the bar like an old boat. He got on the road for home by jumping in a taxi as he had done when he was coming. Putting the mouth spray on, he put his face out of the window to the strong wind.

Passing through the heavily made up city, Ümit reached his neighbourhood. The neighbourhood had already entered the soft breast of sleep.

Cats were globalizing whatever they found, sneaking into the houses from the open kitchen windows of one flat homes.

Thank God streetdogs of hope was wondering in the heart of life like Diogenes. Ümit got out of the cab in front of his house. A sad light was infiltrating outside the window. So his mother was still awake Ümit put his embarassed finger on the doorbell. His mother’s anxious footsetps was heard from inside. ‘’Who is it?’’ ‘’It’s me mom.’’ ‘’Come inside my son.’’

Torpidness was sitting at the corner in striped pijamas.

“Good evening dad.’’ ‘’Good evening.’’

As Ümit was sailing his room, his mother asked: ‘’Are you hungry, shall I prepare some food son?’’ ‘’No mom, I’m not, I’d rather go to bed.’’ Ümit shot down his bleeding sorrow to his room.’’

The sound of horseshoes of the blackhorses of despair were being heard from the sky. The sky was being enlightened like exploding flashbulbs with the sparkles of the shields and swords that were in battle. Their blood was spurting onto the city ruthlessly. The city was repeating an inured tiredness: The retired people were falling down like grapes from the branch of life.

The shutters that were closed without any sales added one more ring to the chain of despair...

But the football chatters were going on in the coffeeshops steadily.

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85 There were spider webs in the libraries..In his office in the Security Department, Cemal was listening to Ümit’s report. ‘’Captain, the identity of the victim became clear. Her name is Gülsüm Şencanlı. She is a known prostitute. She is known as Fettan Gülsüm. She is famous for trapping very young girls, and selling them.’’ ‘’God damn bitch’’ exclaimed Cemal, unable to control himself. ‘’Her folder is thick because of her many crimes. She got benefit of the pardon and was discharged. She took over her business as soon she got out...’’ ‘’So this one also got the benefit of pardon, huh’’ At that point, Cemal’s heart had untightened the warp attached to the port of anxiety. His conscious was as light as a feather... Whoever this murderer was, he was specifically killing the traders that enjoyed the fruits of the last law of pardon. ‘’Ok, tell me Şehrazat.Well...Ümit.’’

With startled eyes, Ümit looked over Cemal.

“The report of legal medicine is the same as the others... Which means we don’t have anything new in our hands...With your permission I am deepening the investigation about the victim.’’ ‘’Ok, go ahead.’’ said Cemal. The peaceful birds of relaxation settled on the edge of Cemal’s eyebrows. The night had penetrated to the marrow of the city. Houses were all black silent.

The transparent wreckages of the city, meaning the streetkids and the homeless, those trying to find consolation from thinner and alcohol, street dogs of loneliness and Cemal had been left in the deepless darkness of the city. Cemal’s loneliness was a heavy tonnage one. He still couldn’t have forgotten Gamze. In fact he never wanted to. Though She had never erased anyone’s name from his heart. All the Love that penetrated his life was like an old letter in deep corners of his heart. Some nights these pavements would be the residence of his sorrow.

Cemal was walking towards the heart of the night, as if he had never stopped. He also didn’t know the target of his sorrow. All of a sudden, a shadow approached from a desolate corner. An old man with his glimpsing eyes, and shabby dress crossed his way.

He said ‘’Hey boy! Leave the pain. Shake off and kiss the pink cheeks of hope. Never forget that every love is an excuse for you to get The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

86 burned. You are propeller turning around yourself ’’ and dissapeared in the darkness again. This time Cemal was not surprised. He got used to it. Taking a deep breath, he directed the barrel of his loneliness towards the house. He went into the house like a storm and lit all the lights one by one. He angrily stepped towards Gamze’s picture that was standing on the table. He got the frame and angrily threw it to the wall. ‘’Now I’m content...’’

Mountains on his heart became vapour and flew away. Everything looked brighter than before. ‘’Enough is enough. What was that, he cried.’’

He immediately went to the bathroom and washed his sweaty face.

His eyes were reflecting a clean page now. Finally he had destroyed the fixture icon of his heart.

In the morning, he woke up with a flock of sparrows fluttering in his soul cage.

He ran out of bed like a pebblestone out of a child’s sling. The doorbell rang as he was leaving the bathroom and heading towards the kitchen. It didn’t sound like a doorbell to Cemal, but like a dancing melody.

Whistling he headed towards the door. As soon as he opened the door he kissed the amazement on Jale’s face on the lips. Girl’s face turned into embarassed red. Her eyes became the motherland of excitement.

Cemal entered the station with a cigarette in his hand with it’s pleasurable smoke and the wanderer birds of reverie in his inner pocket.

Those who have seen the fall of nervous fortress on his face couldn’t leave their eyes. And the careless mimics that were organized on his face were so alien to the people of the office. Cemal even saluted one or two.

People around him thought that this was a symptom opf the doomsday.

As he was passing by the table of theft his eyes met with a young and beautiful woman officer’s eyes. ‘’Not a bad girl at all Cemal murmured, turning and looking back. The girl was smiling to herself trying to cover up her shyness. What a girl she was!.. Her hair was like a bundle of freesia of Van Gogh yellow. Who knows to which blue sea belonged her eyes...Would Cemal’s eyes be able to swim in this wild blueness.

While Cemal was writing his every step with all the comfort and renewing on the white paper of his life, his friends who were not used to The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

87 his late coming was wondering where he was coming from. Cemal glided into his office like a swan.

All the startled eyes were directed towards him. The molotov cocktail that was ready to explode every minute had gone, and a calm ocean wave had come instead. ‘’Good morning chief.’’ ‘’Good morning.’’ ‘’Are you fine.’’ ‘’Of course I am. Why?’’ “Well...We wondered about you because you were late.’’

He said I had some business to do and walked towards his table.

Necati’s hands were shaking with confusion as he brought the brewed tea to be drunk with his newly lit cigarette.

The raindrops were passing by licking the windows of the office with their mysterious whispers. A timid silence was walking outside. Cemal lifted his head up by a uniformed sentence that stood upon his ear: ‘’Chief you have a call.’’ ‘’Who is it?’’ ‘’Doesn’t say who it is. This person insists on talking to you’’ ‘’Ok, I’ll take it.’’

Cemal’s telephone rang to a piercing tension: ‘’Hello, who is it?’’ ‘’There’s blood under every word.’’

Cemal got startled as if he had a slap on his face. The inscriptions that were carved on the corpses were not published in the press. And this sounded like the others. He pulled himself up immediately and gave a signal for the colleagues to identify the location of the caller. ‘’Yes I am listening to you, what do you want?’’ ‘’Justice!’’ ‘’Will you be more specific?’’ ‘’Tell me Captain Cemal, if the state itself puts a dynamite to the foundation of justice, what would a victim do?’’ ‘’What do you mean?’’ ‘’If you want to find me, search the beginnings carefully...’’ ‘’Hello! Hello! Hello!’’ ‘’...’’

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88 “Could you identify the location?’’

“No Chief. He hung up too early.’’ Cemal put the receiver back slowly.

If the state itself puts a dynamite to the foundation of justice...Yes it’s definitely connected to the law of pardon. But how!?. Well, what did he mean when he said search the beginnings...Beginnings of murders, or beginnings of law of pardon ?

Or something else?..

This discomforting telephone call put an end to all the hapiness that had played on his heart like a ladybug, with the stroke of a sword. A worried voice spoke five minutes later: “Chief, it’s him again.’’

“Put him on right away!’’ Telephone was put on immediately: “Hello!’’

“Blood voices on my handkerchief ’ ..’’

“Hello! Hello! Hello!!..He killed someone again...’’

The moon was whispering to the city from the gap of black clouds.

The vibrant black hair of the sky was leaning on to the face of the city drop by drop. Desolation was standing in front of the night like a drawn switchblade.

The wipers of the car weren’t able to cacth on, to postpone the curtain of the rain...Cemal parked the car to the pupilary of desolation. He breathed the horror closely. After all, death had passed from here scaping. In the air, the fear of death that was mixed with earth smells of rain...

The night was was the widest shelter of murder anyway in every meridian circle. Cemal’s every step was a window that was opened to concern. He had no wish to meet a new corpse tonight. But the duty was inescapable.

Night had attached the moon to it’s collar like a diamond brooch.

Black clouds were dispersed, promising to meet again in a new activity.

The moon was trying to infiltrate the house crashing with the light of the kitchen lamp. The rain was withdrawn from the window leaving the fingerprints on the glass. Jülide was standing in front of the kitchen stand like an exclamation mark. She carried on rinsing the plate in her palms. An unseen peace spread on her face. And Jale’s dead body lying on the table, deep purple...

Julide never hesitated to get into action. Because the magma layer The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

89 of hatred which had accumulated inside her had overflown long time ago. Because since her childhood whatever she wanted was taken away from her hands by Jale. Cemal was the last one...Nobody could guess the volume of Julide’s dissapointment. Jülide was extremely tired of this competition that was going for forty years.

And she wanted to win the last round, by taking the sweet life of Jale that she loved so much.

It was a dinner as always, putting carnation on the collar of sorrow.

In the begining it was a farewell of another day of two missed lives.

Tonight there were no whispers of children in the house, there was no husband to ring the doorbell again. Food was being eaten in the kitchen that was filled with silence. Jülide was as calm as a lake as if it was not she who was going to strangle her sister in a short while. In fact, she was not that far to the thought of murder. In her head she had killed Jale several times in different ways.

She slowly got up from the table with an excuse. The time for revenge had come for Jülide. She went to the bedroom and took the belt that she had prepared before like a rope. She felt neither excitement, nor fear. She didn’t even care that she was going to be a sister killer and going to rot in jail. She headed towards the kitchen with sneaky and dark steps as a leopard approaching it’s prey. She was going to fade lillies of the time in Jale’s hand immediately. With the belt hidden behind her she went into the kitchen . Jale was sitting at the table with her back to the door. She put the belt on her neck speedily and started to squeeze with all her strength.

Her victim was shaken strongly and tried to protect her throat. A strangled moan was coming out of her mouth. Julide, tightened the belt stronger. The blindsided Jale with her unconciously shaken hands, scattered everything on the table. The chronic hatred inside Julide had erupted like a volcano at last. A deep violence was flowing from her fingers towards Jale’s throat. Then the flounderings stopped. Jale had breathed her last breath finally. He rface was deep purple, and her eyes were wide open.

She kept on pressing the belt to be sure that she was dead. When she finalized pressing it, Jale’s head fell on to the table like an overthrown tree. All of a sudden Jale felt herself as light as a feather. Her soul was The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

90 filled with an indiscrabible peace. Finally she had succeeded.

She immediately went into the bathroom and tidied her hair. She shouldn’t meet the police with an untidy appereance. She carefully put on her make-up and combed her hair. Then returned to the kitchen and tidied up the table.

Calling the police she told them in cold blood that she had commited a murder. And she carried on washing the dishes while she was waiting for the police.

Cemal was moving on with his car splitting the mourning of the city with the question marks in his mind. The killer was working fastidiously. The research team at the incident point couldn’t find any clue once more. The victim had been murdered with the same methods like before.

On the back the inscription was carved saying ‘Blood voices in my handkerchief.’ and a big letter E in the midst of the chest... ‘Ok, understood that the killer only kills those who were discharged of pardon benefits.

This was the only common thing of the victims. He punished them in his own way. It’s ok until now. Possibly a pardon victim. But then what do those inscriptions mean trying to express something but in a very complicated way. And what do those letters mean that were carved on their chests?..Oh it’s not easy not to get insane. There is neither any clue nor an eye witness. Only these goddamn inscriptions. He was tired of struggling with the questions that bled his mind. The pressure of his superiors was increasing every minute. Not being able to make any progress on this case was standing out like a black stain. All the questions that forced his mind immediately dissapeared when he saw the police car in front of the house. What was the police emergency team doing here?.. As he parked the car quickly and went downstairs, Jülide came out of the door attended by two policemen. His astonishment was increased when he saw Jülide with handcuffs. He approached them and asked in a panicky way : “What’s wrong Jülide?’’

Jülide looked at Cemal with a vacant look. She had a calm expression her face like a paper-ship swimming in a bowl.

“Chief, this lady has murdered her sister’’ said the officer standing next to her. Cemal felt as if he had received a big punch in his stomach.

She stood there looking at Julide with questioning eyes. Jülide on the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

91 other hand was looking around indifferently.

As the officers were taking Jülide away, Cemal was nailed on the pavement. Barbed wire had embraced his heart. With staggaring steps he hardly headed for the house. ‘’My God, what have I done, oh my god.’’

A dreadful regret was pressing his heart like a crampon. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare...Rain had stopped. Night was stuck on the city like a wet dress. At this moment Cemal wanted to be a bug and dissapear in the most hidden corner of the city. His heart had crashed to sorrow wherever he turned. Sorrow had collapsed on him like earthquake rubble.

All of a sudden the sound of the morning prayer filled the room.

Cemal directed his unconscious eyes towards the window. The sky was being knitted with iron knots. The rhymed clouds were shoulder to shoulder in the sky. An experienced wind was spoiling the face of the city.

A torned wuthering was approaching the capillary vessel of the city.

Cemal got up from his armchair in a terrible manner.

All night long he wandered in the house with a heavy struggle with his consciousness. When he came to the police station he was like a ship abandoned as junk. He slowly committed suicide with every cigarette he lit. The chief had called him and offered a couple of days vacation which Cemal gracefully refused. He knew very well that the only consolation for him was his job. Ümit couldn’t approach Cemal for a long while. He didn’t know what to say. Then first he presented his condolences and then gave his report about the beheaded murder that was found yesterday. No clue had been found again except the inscription saying ‘’bloodvoices on the handkerchief ’’ and a big ‘E’ that was carved on body’s back.

No matter how much Cemal forced himself, he had difficulty in concentrating on his job. The possible states of Jale’S body was forcing the limits of his mind.

As the days passed, Cemal had begun to open out the fog curtain that conquered his brain. Two finalised folders had given him some hope. He worked day and night and tried not to remember what happened. Jülide was under arrest and in jail. She didn’t utter a word about The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

92 her reason for killing Jlae. The policemen responsible for this case were specially careful about not mentioning the details of this murder when Cemal was around. However there was no progress made on the beheaded murder cases. The last body found belonged to contracter Emin Yıldırım who was known as Torn Emin. This man who was responsible for the lives of people who died under the collapsed constructions and rubbles on seventeeth of October Earthquake, was discharged with pardon benefit like the other victims.

One night when Cemal was trying to be ‘a fish in raki bottle’, the telephone rang. A new beheaded body was found. Cemal who hardly put his head up from the calm lake of sorrow, quickly got on the road.

Night had steered his nails through the city. Black clouds blockaded the moon. Cemal was driving his car towards a dirty obscurity. When he reached the point of incident the usual scene had welcomed him. This time the inscription saying ‘We touched with our hands to the people’s grieves. A big ‘D’ showed in the midst of it’s chest.

In the following days the identity of the victim was clarified.

The victim was Ali Sonay known as Cin Ali. His criminal record was huge, he was a master swindler who hurt many people. He sswindled a lot of people, promising that he would make a lot of people retire from Bağkur despite their lack of insurance premiums. Cin Ali, like all other victims, had been discharged from pardon benefit.

Cemal was totally confused with this case. On the one hand he had to find the murderer, on the other he couldn’t help justifying the murderer. Anyway the murderer left no clue behind and made no mistakes.

Even though this situation was on his favour, occupational responsibility was biting Cemal like a torn.

He had thought a lot about the carved inscriptions on the bodies, but could not give a meaning to them yet. The murderer was sending his message in an obscure way. And comitting murders more frequently. In a morning where gloom had invaded the sky, another beheaded body was found. Again with broken bones with hammer strokes and cigarette burns, he was lying on the side of a street. This was the sixth body that was found. The following day Ümit came to Cemal with his report: ‘’Chief are you available?’’

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

93 “Yes what is it?’’

“I brought the report about the body found yesterday.’’

“No clue again, isn’ that so?’’

Saying “Unfortunately, Ümit bowed his head slightly, as if it was his fault.’’

Cemal asked ‘’What is the criminal record this time?’’ as he was crushing his cigarette in the ashtray like a bug.

“This time it is the worst of all, his name is Necati Tandoğan. He had raped a little girl and killed her. Then he threw the body to the cesspool...’’

“Honourless motherfucker!’’ said Cemal, clenching his fist and pressing his teeth hard.

“And the most dishonourable of all, Chief ’’ said Ümit and continued: ‘’Due to the law of pardon, in cases of rape which ended with murders like this, the psycho’s punishments were set to zero...’’ ‘’God damn it’s true’’ responded Cemal, in an extremely tense manner. ‘’This wicked psycho called Necati also have served his sentence, then discharged after the benefit of pardon.’’ ‘’What kind of justice is this! The guy rapes a small girl, kills her and throws her to the shithole, and then the state pardons his murders.

What kind of shit is this! What the hell?” ‘’It is written on the back of the body ‘As our singularity was drowning in the moonlight’. ‘And he has the letter T on his chest.’’ ‘’Uhm...’’ ‘’Let’s see where this will lead.’’ ‘’Ok go on’’ said Cemal carelessly...

Again Cemal had imprisoned his loneliness in his house. The sun had left long ago after touching the roofs. Darkness had spread all over the city like virus. He finished his third glass. He took another piece of cheese. Although he didn’t want to catch the murderer of the beheaded corpses the pressure of his Chief officers were increasing considerably.

He was getting serious scoldings. Even though he was unwilling, he had to solve this case in order to go on with his career. He started writing the inscirptions carved on the backs of bodies one under the other: Which silkroad multiplies the sequence of letters....K He suddenly realised when he put all these inscriptions on the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

94 other, there appeared a name from the initials. “There’s written... ‘Hikmet‘ here!.. Isn’t it that?... Tell me?.. Ok I found. This is an acrostic.’’

He immediately called Ümit: “Yes, what can I do for you?’’ “Ümit it’s me.’’ “Yes, Chief.’’

“Your cousin was a literature teacher... wasn’t he?’’

“Yes!?’’

“I’ve found a clue with this beheaded murders. I need your cousin.

Call him and ask if he is available for tomnorrow... so, we can drop by.’’

“Ok, chief.’’

When he put down the telephone, he was excited but also sad.

“Sorry, buddy. I have to catch you’’ he murmured.

The following day, Cemal got the adress of Ümit’s cousin and went to the school in which he worked around noon time. During lunch break, he met the teacher and went to a tea garden.

He handed over the paper in his hand saying ‘’Here, Mister Hüseyin, the acrostic.’’ Taking a sip from his tea, Hüseyin stared at the paper.

“Let’s see...These are all verses.’’

“Verses?’’

“Yes, these are verses from famous poets.’’ The first verse ‘Which silkroad multiplies the serries of letters’ belongs to Kermal Özer. The K letter nearby is Kemal Özer’s K. The verse underneath belongs to Ece Ayhan. E letter nearby symbolizes this. The other verses respectively; Cemal Süreyya, Edip Cansever, İsmet Özel and Turgut Uyar... I understand your murderer love the ‘Second New’ a lot.’’

“Is there any poet by the name Hikmet?’’ asked Cemal curiously.

“Well, I wouldn’t know...You may find some information from literature magazines. The beginners send lots of poems to the magazines. His address can be found from there.’’ ‘’Thank you very much,” said Cemal, with a warm smile. He returned To the police station immediately and sent the assistants to wellknown literary journals to make investigation. In a couple of hours, the whole team came back: ‘’Chief we ascertained the suspect’s identification and adress.’’ said Ümit pridely. ‘’Very well’’ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

95 ‘’But there’s more...’’ ‘’Let’s hear it.’’ ‘’Well captain, our cousin thought very well. The suspect sent his poems to the literary journals. We ascertained his full name and open address from a journal. His name is Hikmet Çeliköz. He is an interior architect and...’’ ‘’So?’’ ‘’You know the last body we found, that one who raped the small girl and killed her...’’ ‘’Yes!?’’ ‘’Well, that little girl was Hikmet Çeliköz’s sister.” Cemal swallowed his pain. He put himself in Hikmet’s poisition in an instant. ‘’Chief, this Hikmet Çeliköz was peaceful and harmless guy. Although this incident hurt him very much, he has continued his life in a normal way. But when this psycho was discharged from jail by this law of pardon, he became isolated. Left his job and stopped seeing anyone.” ‘’Ok, understood’’, sighed Cemal. ‘’Prepare the teams. We’re going to make a raid.” As soon as the teams were ready, they went to raid Hikmet’s house. Doors were broken, they went inside, but Hikmet was not at home.

The superintendent said he saw Hikmet going towards the pier half an hour ago. All teams headed quickly towards the pier.

And Hikmet, his feet fixed to the edge of the pier, screamed as if the veins of his throat were exploding: ‘’This has to come to an end...’’

Then, an impertinent silence tinkled in their ears. The moon extended it’s head between the brunette clouds and grinned.

Even though the sea was waiting with mother’s care her arms opened, Hiikmet couldn’t throw himself into the deep peace.

He wanted to get purified, but couldn’t succeed. Couldn’t resign from life...Comitting suicide couldn’t be brought into action easily as he had dreamed... He understood. His mind was decisive to go back while his feet pretended not to understand. It was neither easy to go back nor to jump into the sea. At the instant he returned and made a step, his headhung in the manner of a student who got zero from the oral test, he heard the sirens. Putting up his head, his eyes met the spotlights of the police cars. This was a big chance for Hikmet. If you can’t fall down from life’s balcony, somebody could push you into obscurity. It was easier to do so.

The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

96 The whole team, getting out of the cars at the pier, pulled out their guns. Cemal was standing in front his team with his revolver ready to shoot.

“Hikmet! Surrender!’’

“Welcome Cemal. Welcome my angel of death. Don’t think that you won this game. I gave it to you as a gift.’’ Cemal’s hand was shaking for the first time when he was directing his gun at somebody. And his heart was stammering. He didn’t want to harm Hikmet, but he had to do his duty.

If he had the chance he would have given a medal to Hikmet, but he was a policeman and he had to act in accordance to laws. Even though, laws didn’t bring Justice. He was approaching Hikmet with small and anxious steps. He was frightened to death that he Hikmet would do something wrong and he would have to shoot him.

“Come on Hikmet, don’t do anything stupid. Surrender! This is the end!’’

“The end! Well..What will happen now? I will surrender, go to jail.

Well...Will they also pardon me in two years!?”

“Look, I understand you very well. I mean I become mad from anger when I put myself in your position. I was depressed because of what happened to your sister and this psycho benefiting from the pardon... But now you must surrender...It has come to an end...”

“Come to an end, is that so!? What about me becoming inhuman somebody who hasn’t even slaughtered a chicken in his life!? I, a harmless gentleman, had to establish my own justice...Huh!..Ok, who pushed me into being both the judge and the executioner!? Tell me, friend! what has come to an end!?

The shield of Cemal’s heart was torn into pieces. He felt as if he was directing his gun to his own brother.

“Don’t do this Hikmet, surrender. Don’t leave me alone with the pain of consciously shooting you. Surrender. There’s no place to escape.’’

“Escape!? No one can escape from himself Cemal...’’

“Ok Hikmet. Slowly raise your hands up and surrender.’’

Hikmet didn’t give any answer. He looked at Cemal with empty eyes.

And he quickly directed his hand to his belly as if he was pulling out his gun. In fact he had no gun on him.

Cemal with his proffesional reflex, had two rapid shots. Two forced The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

97 bullets, passed through Hikmet’s chest. One in the middle of his heart, which was the metropol of pain. Hikmet’s dead body rose into the air with the force of the bullets. A peaceful smile spread on his face.

He fell into the sea as if he was falling into his mother’s womb. The sea embraced and cherished Hikmet on it’s bosom. A fistful of blood was left on the water that belonged to Hikmet...

On the pier, Cemal kneeled down and started crying not caring others... And again the rain...which then was the teardrops of the sky that pierced the night.

Socialist Laz-Turk poet and author Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey. His poems and articles on poetry theory have appeared in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey.

In 2004, he published a poem manifesto, entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. He has been trying to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to this end has published numerous articles about literary theory

Published by K G E TEAM, Chennai, India - 600024 The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017