Oct 2017

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The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

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VOLUME: 2 - ISSUE: 7 - OCTOBER - 2017

Notes from New Delhi : Dibyajyoti Sarma 02 Columns:

Sotto Voce -Indira Parthasarathy 06

Letter from London-John Looker 08

The Wanderer - Andrew Fleck 12 P&P - Yonason Goldson 35 Talespin - Era.Murukan 41 Ripples & Reflections: Sivakami Velliangiri 16 Poetry:

Allan Harold Rex 17 Anonymous 20

Martina Reisz Newberry 25 Poornima Laxmeshwar 49 Terry Savoie 56 Matthew W Jones 61

Fiction:

Craig Loomis 30

George McLoone 66 Novella: Zdravka Evtimova

Wrapper art: Tatyana France Odinokova

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THE WAGON MAGAZINE

KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024 Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

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NOTES FROM NEW DELHI

Dibyajyoti Sarma

On Kazuo Ishiguro, after the Nobel Prize

Soon after the Swedish Academy announced the winner of this year’s

Nobel Prize in Literature, a friend gave me a call to express his ardent displease about the winner, Japan-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.

“Yeah,” I said, “The Nobel Committee has a twisted sense of humour. See, everyone and their mothers were clamouring for Haruki Murakami to win. So the Nobel Committee said, fine, you want a Japanese author, we will give you a Japanese author, but not the one you want. Go ahead and criticise us.”

The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

4 This is the thing about literary awards; there can never be a unanimous choice.

My friend guffawed on his phone speaker. “Murakami be damned,” he said, “There are still others who are more deserving.”

I know. My friend has a shortlist of deserving winners, starting with Syrian poet Adonis.

Now the word deserving got me thinking. Literary greatness is, by and large, subjective, influenced by tests. You may hate reading an author I love. It’s a plausible scenario and you cannot be blamed for it.

But the criterion of the Nobel Committee in awarding the Prize, however, is more idealistic, universal. Accordingly, the award is given to an author from any country or language who has produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” These are the exact words of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, whose enormous wealth supports the Prize.

Again, the concept of ‘ideal direction’ can be subjective. Take the example of last year’s winner, Bob Dylan. His work is outstanding in an ideal direction, no denying that. But did he deserve to win the prize? Reams have been written about it. I admire Dylan. I can sing ‘like a rolling stone’ from memory. But I still cannot make up my mind about him a Nobel laureate. Blame it on my old-school education. I still cannot categorise song lyrics as ‘serious literature’, despite the fact I love them dearly. (I have stated this elsewhere. One of my early influences in writing poetry was the music of Jim Morrison, especially his album, ‘An American Prayer’. The song ‘Angels and Sailors’ haunted me for months and forced me to write my first serious poem-a bad one.) But I must concede that it was music first more than literature.

The same way, Dylan’s songs are perfectly rhymed, yet, they are not really poetry. Without Dylan’s unique voice, the lyrics lose half their punch.

See, I told my friend, the Nobel Committee wanted to play safe this year after last year’s controversy. “Then why not your Murakami,” he asked, “he was the safest bet.”

That’s a good question. I think, as a so-called purveyor of culture, the Nobel Committee wants to stay away from popular names.

The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

5 I think this is what went against Murakami. He is the thinking man’s Paulo Coelho. I know many readers who dumped Marquez swear by Murakami’s magic realism. Personally, I have nothing against him. It is indeed heartening to see a non-reader pickup a fat copy of ‘Kafka on the Shore’ and devour it.

But Nobel Committee likes its authors more nuanced, more highbrow, more officious. For example, in 2014, the Prize was given to French author Patrick Modiano, a write whom nobody had heard of outside of France (especially in the English speaking world). His first major translations appeared a year after the Prize.

Back to Ishiguro then, who became the second young author to win the Award, after Albert Camus. When I read this piece of trivia, I was tempted to compare Ishiguro’s influence with that of Camus’. It’s a fool’s errand. Camus’ existentialism was pronounced, all-pervasive.

Ishiguro’s existentialism is more internal, more subtle, more local.

Ishiguro is a great writer; especially in his masterpiece, ‘Remains of the Day’ (1989) (Read the last few pages of the book, when Mr Stevens meets Miss Kenton in a cafe after a hiatus to find out the author’s literary greatness.) The book won the Booker and was made into a well-regarded film by Merchant-Ivory. I think the credit for the book’s enduring appeal also should go to Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thomson for their portrayal of Mr Stevens and Miss Kenton respectively. I love this book. But I don’t want to give Mr Ishiguro a Novel Prize for it.

Then there’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ (2005), a modern science fiction about love, also made into a moderately successful film. It’s a brilliant novel, which had its seed in a Michael Bay directed Hollywood action film ‘The Island’, and Ishiguro turned it into a meditation on love and death.

Ishiguro also wrote the screenplays for both the movies. He has written two other screenplays, ‘The Saddest Music in the World’ (2003) and ‘The White Countess’ (2005), and five more novels — ‘A Pale View of Hills’ (1982), ‘An Artist of the Floating World’ (1986), ‘The Unconsoled’ (1995), ‘When We Were Orphans’ (2000) and ‘The Buried Giant’ (2015) and a collection of short fiction ‘Nocturnes’ (2009). I The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

6 have read none of those; for none of those created enough buzz for me to go and seek them out. (On an unrelated note, if you get a chance, I would urge you to sit through ‘The Saddest Music in the World’, directed by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. It will feel weird. But I will urge you to sit through it; it may be worthwhile.)

I greatly admire Kazuo Ishiguro, but him as a Novel Laureate?

Taking a cue from Mr Stevens, I must not make my opinion heard.

Wrapper art by Tatyana France Odinokova

Tatyana France Odinokova was born in Siberia in the city of

Novosibirsk. Passionate about painting from an early age, she studied in a fine arts high school from the age of 14. Afterward she enrolled in the Academy of Architecture and Fine Arts of Novosibirsk, where she received her diploma in architecture and painting. In 2012 she undertook a voyage to France and enrolled in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Strasbourg where she earned a masters in architecture.

Tormented, however, by her first passion, Tatyana decided to return to painting. She experiments with numerous techniques and seeks innovative ideas ceaselessly. Her art remains influenced by the countryside of Siberia, bringing together vast spaces, mountains, water and the infinite starry skies. Today, Tatyana invites you to follow her through her semi-abstract and reversible paintings. Thanks to her unique training in both architecture and fine arts, the artist has developed unusual talents, which allow her to produce reversible paintings, which will make you turn your head.

Visit her at www.odinokovart.com The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

DIALOGUE Great literary and cerebral works with their very nature of being relevant for all times, holding a conversation with the serious readers of any specific era in the context of the values obtained during those given periods to which the readers belong, transcend the languages in which they are written and speak a common idiom of universal appeal.

Ramayana, for instance, starting from the Adhi Kavi’s epic in Sanskrit, allowed itself to be interpreted in hundreds of ways in so many languages within India and also in dialects of many of the South East Asian countries, much in relation to the periThe Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

8 od and that particular region’s culture. More than grasping the meaning of the original work, it is still more engaging to study what it could have meant to the diverse readers, that helps to comprehend the versatility of the early classic. In the recent past, Peter Brook’s visual understanding of Mahabharata was a delight to watch.

So I suggest a list of world classics of the past and present may be prepared and speakers from different languages can discuss them in the context of their own culture and literary experience.

My short list of world classics(in Indian languages) would be as under: (1) Ramayana (in Sanskrit and other Indian languages) (2) Mahabharata(including Bhagavad Gita) (3) Thirukural by Thiruvalluvar (Tamil) (4) Cilappadikaram by Ilango (Tamil) (5) Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali) (6) Abhijnasakuntalam by Kalidasa (Sanskrit) (7) Swapanavasavadattam by Bhasa (Sanskrit) (8) Katha Upanisad (Sanskrit) (9) Panchali Sabhatam by Subhramanya Bharati (Tamil) (10) The mystic poems of the Vaisnavite Alwars(Tamil) These texts may be studied in the context of their contemporary relevance.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of

R.Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright.

The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

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Letter from London - 12 from John Looker

Every summer our newspapers show an insistent curiosity about the

holiday reading of political leaders. I suppose the hope is that they will study some serious self-improving works, whereas the politicians’ own wish might be for simple escapism.

Years ago, as a young civil servant, I worked as private secretary to a government Minister. When the parliamentary recess arrived, he and his wife took three weeks by the sea in a quiet cove in England’s west country. He was a hard-working politician and insisted that his office should send him the red despatch boxes, carried by rail in padlocked canvass sacks. Each day he continued to work, conscientiously writing in his neat hand in the margin of memoranda. Sometimes the boxes were returned with sand in them. Indeed once he returned a The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

10 note that he had dropped in the sea: from a senior adviser, written by hand; the ink had run and the Minister asked for the note to be rewritten.

I took my Kindle on holiday this year. Do you also read e-books?

The great advantage is their practicality: you can take an entire library away without lugging an extra suitcase. I was reading Joseph Conrad’s novel of civil war and a silver mine in South America, Nostromo. Full of big characters and colourful moral dilemmas.

Stirring heroism.

In every way a big book and one to leave you wondering whether you yourself might live up to the standards of integrity shown by the principal characters.

The hero is the eponymous figure Nostromo, dashing and courageous, relied upon by the business and political elites to undertake all manner of difficult and dangerous assignments. What motivates him? There is almost no reward. But as one of the characters says:

“It is curious to have met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in personal prestige.”

As a boy, many of the stories I brought home from the library fired me with daydreams of heroism. Perhaps that is one of the traditional functions of stories. Recently, however, I have seen more than one discussion on Facebook about male and female roles in modern society that question the image of the hero in fiction. Boys, we are told, should not be ashamed to cry; they should acknowledge their fears and weaknesses. It is good that gender stereotypes are being challenged and that girls are encouraged to seek fulfillment for their talents. But some of the protagonists of Facebook have wanted to take away male role models of heroism. Joseph Conrad would not have approved.

Although I took my Kindle, in the cottage where my wife The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

11 and I stayed was a short shelf of books. This is where the printed book triumphs: a row of paperbacks tempts you to browse, and in browsing, you can find yourself drawn into a book you would not have gone looking for.

One I found was a contemporary novel called Larry’s Party by the Canadian writer Carol Shields. This was expressly about men and women, and more particularly - written by a woman - it was about the place of men in modern western society. It’s the story of a man who occupied a modest position in society.

He had two marriages but both wives left him.

His one success in life was almost accidental.

Having begun work as a florist he found his path as a designer of garden mazes for the wealthy. The symbolism of the maze in this book must have been deliberate. The story ends with a set-piece scene, a dinner party at which both former wives are present and the conversation revolves around the place of men in the modern world.

From this, I moved on to P D James: A Certain Justice, a murder mystery to be solved by Inspector Dalgleish. This is not my favourite genre, although late in my career, travelling with a different Minister, I learnt that he liked best to unwind with a crime novel. In A Certain Justice the central figure – until she is murdered a quarter of the way in – is a professional woman, a highly successful criminal barrister at London’s Old Bailey. P D James therefore offered a modern female role model. She had also created a capable woman detective, the assistant to Inspector Dalgleish, and the author takes us into a world of rivalries with male colleagues and incidences of male prejudice - some real, some imagined.

Then Slade House, by David Mitchell, well-known for his The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

12 Cloud Atlas. Like the latter book, Slade House is a modern book which experiments with the structure of the novel. Although it is a kind of ghost story, it plays with time and sequence. A strong tale. Like the PD James, it is carefully constructed to present the reader with a puzzle to solve.

It’s escapism, not a book to hold up moral challenges, although it does present characters who take up arms against evil. And the most successful, because she is both courageous and sharp-witted, is female.

Finally, I turned back to my Kindle and to W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. You probably know it. It is a ‘bildungsroman’, a story of growing up. It gives us an anti-hero: the boy struggling to become a man through the slow discovery of his own strengths and weaknesses, making mistakes and moving on. Orphaned at a young age, he was also born with a deformed foot, which greatly affects his confidence, not least in relations with women. Published in 1915, it is told in a traditional manner - quite unlike the transforming work of James Joyce whose Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published the following year.

Nonetheless, like Joyce, Somerset Maugham shows us a person from the inside: we hear his character’s thoughts as he puzzles out his ordinary life. Not a hero. But an inspiration.

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 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 two anthologies: When Time and Space Conspire, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival, and Indra’s Net, an international collection published by Bennison Books in aid of the Book Bus charity. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

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The Wanderer Andrew Fleck

Sweet barley-rice heaped in bamboo baskets,

Mallow soup dripping off the spoon, Young folk and old bustling round the table, Exclaiming “How tasty it all is!”

So wrote Kang Heemaeng, a Korean poet of the fifteenth century. It is not advisable to read a great deal of old Korean poetry on an empty stomach: you will quickly notice, alongside an impressively developed pastoral aesthetic, a continual preoccupation with food. The tables of the Chosun Dynasty - as Korea was known between 1392 and 1897 – come alive on the pages of its poetry. The food of this era is not quite what you would find in most Korean restaurants today – dishes rich with meat, seafood and the distinctive pickled spicy tang of kimchi. Barley has recently gained popularity as a health food in Korea, but a generation or two ago people thought barley a cheaper The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

14 alternative to rice. Mallow meanwhile – much like the round pumpkin-like courgettes and oversize radishes that are still popular in Korean soups – is a vegetable used to make a soup more substantial and filling, especially when meat might still be a luxury. This is the older, blander fare of a poor, but resourceful country cut off from the rest of the world, not as yet using the spices, brought by traders in later centuries, that figure so much in its contemporary cooking, instead drawing healthy, wholesome food from an unforgiving landscape.

Not that you hear Kang Heemaeng complaining, nor the figures in his poetry. “Ah masshidda”–ah, how tasty, is a phrase that resounds down the centuries, even though the cuisine has changed with the times. Another thing that has carried down from the past is a very Korean way of dealing with hot weather.

During this summer’s scorching and rain-soaked heat wave, my family and I drove more than once to Namhansanseong, a fortress perched on a series of hills to the south of Seoul, and sheltered in the forest at the foot of the hills, where monsoon rain had swelled the rocky brooks that filter down from the heights – and where it seems a good five or ten degrees cooler than the city. We would find a nice spot to play in the gushing stream, which, as the day wore on began to fill with young children and their families. Many of the very shadiest spots upstream, however, had been long claimed by older visitors, who sat on their mats by the stream – or sometimes on the rocks in the stream, eating, drinking, listening to the radio and resting. I saw one old chap reading a book of poetry. I recognized the scene from this poem, by the 16th century poet Lee Sanhae: An old man of the country lays his place by the stream, Barley rice and sour rice wine eases the traveller’s sorrows.

To get drunk a little, as the sun sets behind the mountains.

Rain falling on the lotus pond heralds the start of autumn.

The influence of classical Chinese poetry is very strong in this poem, not least in that last image of the rain falling on lotus ponds, but there is a lot in these lines that is specific to Korea and its culture.

Not least of these is the rice wine that he drinks as he reposes – the The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

15 very same makgeolli that I saw old geezers quaffing in the mountain stream this summer. This is not to be confused, by the way, with the clear, vodka-like and (for me at least) headache-inducing soju that is nowadays Korea’s most popular alcoholic drink. Rather it is an opaque, very slightly fizzy drink, about the same strength as beer, with a powdery residue at the bottom of the bottle, which some people leave, and others like to shake in. It is best drunk out of bowls rather than glasses – I am sure the country man in the poem wouldn’t have owned any glasses anyway. My wife explained to me that the sour makgeolli of the first half of the second line resonates emotionally with the sorrows of the end of the line; similarly, the slight drunken ness of the beginning of the next line matches the feeling of the sunset. The overall feeling of the poem is the sense of a mellow, if not untroubled, old age sharpened by the tang of approaching death. Enjoy that barley rice while you can – and makgeolli, obviously.

Somehow, no other nation’s poetry that I can think of talks quite so much about food.

Even when not writing about food itself, it can find its way into the poem’s imagery. This final poem brings us to the very end of the Chosun era, and indeed to the cusp of the modern age.

There is a definite streak of modernity on these lines of the late Chosun poet Hwang Hyun, in its understated bleakness and the unexpectedly strange metaphor at the end: A white egret passes in a black density of rain.

In the shadow of the willow I wake sharply from a doze: By our shack in the valley my grandson says, lunch is served – A thousand strands of fresh guksu over cracked stones in the stream.

There are few words in the English language less poetic than “noodles”, so I have used the Korean here – guksu are thin white noodles served in soup, or sometimes cold. To appreciate the last image, you need to picture guksu the way it is usually served, in a ball scooped from the pot and onto the plate, somewhat resembling a ball of wool. Here, the fast water bubbling up over the rocks in a river The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

16 resembles guksu. The atmosphere of this poem is more unsettled and uncertain compared to the earlier poems. At the time it was written, Korea was embarking upon one of the darkest phases in its history, and perhaps the poem reflects this. Still, I find it a heartening poem overall – even in the most difficult of times, we can still hope to find solace in the old comforts of hearth and home, family, nature and – yes – food. *These Korean poems are my own translations, based on Lee Jong Mok’s Hangul versions of the original Chinese character poems.

Hangul is the phonetic script used to render Korean since about the 17th century, but most poets up until the twentieth century still wrote in Chinese characters. All the poems can be found in Lee Jong Mok’s (Korean language) book, Hanshi Majung, TaeHakSa Press, Seoul 2012

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 - October- 2017

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RIPPLES & REFLECTIONS

The Pondicherry Poets

By Sivakami Velliangiri It had been our one year’s dream’, Gayatri Majumdar said, of Anju Makhija and poetry, ‘to form a group of Pondicherry Poets.’

To receive an invite shook me out of my inertia. Now it was my turn to dream of a place of love-hate.

Rathi Rekha, soft spoken and serene, received us with Ashram lunch even offered us a room for siesta to rest our humid eyebrows.

‘Aura’ stood facing the Bay of Bengal, it was remodeled by a French couple who thoughtfully provided for a basement studio.

At five in the evening we met Gayatri whom I saw for the first time I had been with Anju Makhija for the Prakriti Poetry in 2011.

A fat candle was lit in a glass tumbler to set the scene, a single Bougainville branch stood for spiritual solidarity. Flowers pink as paper.

Painters and artists, photographers and philosophers, press publication people heritage site renovators, students-in-exchange, dreamy boys and sprightly girls walked in one by one.

They became our audience, poetry lovers and poets.

For a change I asked the audience to introduce themselves, so that when we read, it made sense to them, we could see eye to eye. The interaction after every reading was meaningful.

Rathi Rekha started the reading with a sonnet by Sri Aurobindo. ‘Because Thou Art.’ Then I read, quite confident that my poems would reach every one.

Anju read from her two collections; she introduced her translation the girls were already familiar with Shah Abdul Latif, the 16th century Sufi, Sindhi mystic/poet. We realized how relevant his words are. Two or three girls were already familiar with her ‘Latif ’ poems and they made requests.

Gayatri read her poems, last of all, like a true host but I wish she had read third in the row, as we were getting tense towards the close.

The absent poets Anu Majumdar got read by Rathi and Gayatri read Murali’s We left at 8 pm for Chennai, drinking tea in the lawn facing the sea pleasantly pleased with a well-organized Poetry Reading.

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POETRY

Allan Harold Rex

On strange Gods Existential and quintessential On strange Gods and uncanny men It is strange is not it To exist and to know that we are all men of exile Men who have pledged devotion to strange Gods and that there are other men who are trying to take us to different Gods That the world is revolving and that there are people who carry strange lives like us and that we can’t stop running from them who hunt The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

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Do you see the maroon in me Do you see the maroon in me In all the people who are lost in me People in me they see the last train home and run towards it The poet sits in the last coach like a lost stooge leaning against the window His wisdom breaks on the rails There are hunters and fierce men who butcher and butter the meat The feral child and the wild mongrel sleep near the lamp piece of the dead The poet learns his art in pretention in leading a pretentious life

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a wasp licks the wicker I name them all I name all the cigarettes that I burn in I name them alpha beta or count them with numbers Call them the empty sachets of laments a pen carried by a poet in dim lit hours as he walks through the paddy’s form from where he starts to talk and writes of things as such through the greying hair length of a night Toothing the mouth of a clay hut near the draining end of the paddy and draped within the wandering light of a flickering lamp a wasp Licks the wicker of the lamps flame A fire

Allan Harold Rex is a, doodler and poet, from Kollam, Kerala, India. He has been published in various international anthologies and websites. He has a chapbook of poems and illustrations, The Many Men: An Illustrated Guy-de To Shorter Poems (Undergroundbooks Press, 2016).

The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

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POETRY

Anonymous

Alaska Is...

Chroma-color rising against forget-me-nots seagulls on a field of purple fireweed buds scattered across the canopied sky, toward the face of The Sleeping Lady.

While A grizzly hand-fishes for trout, square yellow paws slapping the Kenai, sounds scattering reindeer far and wide.

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Circling Back The crows explode off the roof of the bank in tight formation I put our Toyota in park and wait on the corner of Grove for you.

My knuckles start again, so I rub.

Every evening, same time, they walk high boots clomping, eager to get home I still wait.

For your message.

For your hi love.

For your story of your day.

The crows expand and swoop, circling back so pretty, so dark finally landing on that precarious wire.

One crow with a strange patch of red flies off to who knows where her outline fading against the darkening sky and I see it a mate turning his head wondering where and when she’ll come back.

We both know the answer.

I unpark and drive myself home.

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Waiting for the White They say you can’t fall off the edge of the world, but when you see blue north, blue south, blue west, blue east, how would you know?

I give up at the sight of the North Star, so bright above me lie down in my kajáhkka and wait for the crack that never comes.

But the slapping of waves against my boat escalates, until it’s so loud and violent my bowels loose, and my stomach.

Splashing water in and out of the boat, I see it, and head for my plotof ground at the top of the world.

My potter’s field in white, where I wait for the beast.

For L. That fine hand, propping up your crane neck, delicately off-side,

grazing a copper curl.

Those boundless closed lids, envoys of your soul, show a bottomless

well of civility and grace above a strong nose and gentle lips that both

beckon and retreat.

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4:19 PM, August 11, 2009

I. Gary unloads wheat from the second bottom dump trailer of his truck-manually opened at the side.

He hears his 13-year-old son yelling immediately closes the bottom.

He runs to the top of the trailer.

Gary Jr. engulfed in funnelshaped grains only his ha nd v i s i b l e The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

25 . . .

His body finally freed from the grains through the bottom.

II. Gary Jr. had to go inside, slipped and the auger sucked him down

into the grains he was chest high.

Emergency crews responded to the Thurstin farm around noon His mother: “it took about two and a half hours to free Gary Jr.” *Mercy Medical Center – North Iowa* “There were concerns about possible pressure injuries. Tests came back fine.

Mr. Thurstin was sent home.” A minor knee injury.

Anonymous : From the ancient Sumerian Debate between Bird and Fish to the modern-day hacktivist group, anonymous authorship has had a long history in societies throughout the world After revealing his identity with full details and a photograph, this poet requested me to publish his poems anonymously since he is on to a research by publishing his poems anonymously in various magazines throughout the year. I obliged. - EDITOR The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

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POETRY

Martina Reisz Newberry

TOO MANY FIRES There are too many fires and I can smell the smoke from all of them. There are no more fire trucks left to send out from the stations.

The hydrants are tired, have no water from which to pump. We are depending on the oceans to save us. Each morning, we line up on the beaches throughout the world and concentrate on making the waves taller, on forcing the tides to roll in higher.

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Billions of us dig our feet into white, yellow, brown, grey, black, red sands and pray at altar of salty water: “Come now and save us!

Everything is burning!�

This has been the way it is for longer than I can remember and I can still remember so far back and far away.

Too many fires and my eyes burn, my lungs whine and complain. Soot has drifted around my feet and ankles. Ashes line my lips.

Daddy, you must have left behind more than your retirement plaque from the mill. Momma, both of us know you left behind more than the frangible peignoir you sewed for my wedding night. Why then is that all there is?

The children run on the sidewalks, chanting Stranger danger, stranger danger in glasslike voices. They are looking for pirates to rescue them. What they will find is their fathers standing at the foot of their beds, unbuckling their wide, leather belts.

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BENEATH MY BLUE TEE SHIRT My friend said, You have an awkward stance.

Are you too shy to stand tall?”

Under my scalp, needles danced.

She was right.

My breasts are too heavy—they’ve never been pert.

As soon as they appeared, I began to roll my shoulders a little forward, an effort to minimize.

The grown-ups tried, bless their proper, well-meaning hearts.

Let’s see a straight back, said Mother Let’s see that smile. Head up, eyes forward, said Daddy Aunt said, Look at your Cousin Cora. She walks like a model.

Isn’t that attractive?

And it was attractive on my tall, thin, beautiful cousin with the pert little breasts and small hips which I had lost about two minutes after I was born. No, I never quite managed good posture except for a brief moment when I tried anorexia on for size, lost 53 pounds and watched my boobs nearly disappear. I stood tall then, looked at the world straight in the eye, smiled, aligned my spine and walked like a model.

Later, my basic nature snared me. I began once more to eat.

I looked around me and saw that, while I was gone, real estate had become limited and my hunched shoulders and low gaze were a necessity. It has been so ever since.

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ODE TO ESCRAVA ANASTACIA* You had to know you were a figment of my imaginings.

I dreamed you up from stones and comic strips, glacier lilies.

You thought your sweet eyes and magical tongue were real, yes? You thought that your hair, dark, over one shoulder as you slept (smelling of chamomile and sweet grass). was as real as bread, as physical as candle wax. Surprise!

I created you during those times of doubt and self-flagellation that filled my life. I embraced you as a substitute for pain, fucked you in lieu of fear, drank you instead of regret’s ale. Dear phantom, I have nothing save love for you. Your entrance and exit have steadied me, taken me From speaking in tongues—a mad farmwife— to a woman driving the same sad miles other women drive.

Spirit, we sit calmly under separate skies. No one would ever guess the depth of ashes our volcano created.

Only fire, never ice. *Escrava Anastacia is a popular saint venerated in Brazil. A slave woman of African descent, Anastacia is depicted as possessing incredible beauty, having piercing blue eyes and wearing an oppressive facemask. She is venerated for her healing powers and her patience under hardship.

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30

SADIE COMES TO VISIT Sadie has come to visit. We walk to downtown Hollywood and she tells me about her new hat—red felt with blue and yellow jewels and a bright blue feather. It sounds expensive to me.

She says she is creating this hat from the shreds and remnants of her lost loves, her children’s scorn, her failed diets, her poverty, and her ongoing self-hatred. I shrug, say this to her: No one can hate herself wearing a red hat with jewels and a blue feather.

Sadie says, I’m not wearing it yet.

I nod. She isn’t. This much is true.

EVENING WALK Tonight my fear was so illegitimate that heavy drops of rain—a storm beginning— sounded to me like the footfalls of some unscrupulous ne’er do well &, believing that, I ran & fell, then looked behind me. It was only the rain.

It’s sound was soft & nearly kind.

Newberry’s books are NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE (Deerbrook Editions), TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME (due out in Fall 2017 from Unsolicited Press), WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions), LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions), RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE (Red Hen Press).

Her work has been anthologized and widely published in the U.S. and abroad. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

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31

FICTION

Craig Loomis

I

am the driver for the Al-Hatem family who live in the Mishref district, along the seaside. If I walk out to the garden on a clear, clean night and aim east I can see the necklace of lights on the other side of the bay. I am an Indian, the sort of Indian that has nothing to do with America. The other Indian. I drive the two children to school, and my task is both easy and hard: get them to school on time, pick them up from school on time. ‘On time’ are key words here. ‘Whatever it takes to be on time, you understand? Safe… but on time, sah.’ And I said yes, and they said sign here, ‘and by the way I will take your passport for safekeeping,’ plucking it neatly from my shirt pocket.

Then they gave me a phone so they can call me anytime they want, to take them here or there, anywhere, anytime, day or night. I am their driver, you understand? And if I don’t answer their calls quickly enough, or if they are late for school, never mind that there was a traffic accident, a police stop, road construction, the mother will yell at me. Her yelling is terrible. Her eyes bulge frog-like, her mouth a loud black square; all the while the husband, Mr. Hatem, will be over The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

32 there, lounging on the couch, telephone in hand, talking, examining his fingertips, and talking.

Sometimes I take the mother and children to the mall. I drive the family car, with tinted-windows so nobody can see them sitting in the backseat. The mother is happiest when she is shopping. The children do what they are told. The father has no interest in malls, and they all agree this is a good idea. When I am not driving I am keeping their four cars clean and ready. That is part of my driving job too, you know. The other three cars sit safely under tarps out of the sun and dust in the garage. These three cars are for other things that have nothing to do with taking children to school.

One day last Ramadan, I was driving the children home from school, an easy drive: straight for three kilometers, then a right and another right, and there it is. But this day, coming back with the two of them arguing over the air conditioning being too high, too low, the car suddenly began to thump, a flat tire. The good thing was it stopped their argument, the bad thing was I had to pull over, fix the tire and be late bringing them home. I called to tell her I would be late. “A flat tire has happened.” And of course she began her yelling but because I couldn’t see her it was easy and all I did was say yes, yes, so sorry yes, before she clicked off. When I got out to change the tire, they pressed their faces against the tinted glass to watch, maybe even smile. In the end, when I got home all was forgiven, forgotten, because she was busy on the telephone screaming at somebody else.

The children ran to their rooms while the father waved at them, but he hesitated, seeing something on his fingernail and brought it closer for a look-see.

For three years, going on four, I have been their driver, and when I asked her the other day if I could see my passport--because I had just finished watching a television program about Kerala, and all the places I used to visit--just to hold it for a little while, she said, “Don’t be silly.”

I said, “I just would like to hold it for a short while, nothing long. Put it in my pocket, walk around the house, step into the garden and then bring it right back to you.”

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33 silly.”

This time she turned to look at me and repeated, “Don’t be

Sally is the maid who, as a rule, wants nothing to do with me. I drive, she maids, and that is that; but then one day, with a sand storm moving in, the wind blowing a hot-brown, I was wiping the dust from the family car when she came up behind me and whispered in a ghostly voice, “I know where they keep them, you know.” I jumped, missing a wipe, and when I turned to say ‘What,’ even though I had heard perfectly well, she said it again, with arms folded, just like the mother, in a matter-of-fact way. “I said I know where they keep the passports.” I stared at her. Meanwhile, the wind had thrown her hair across her face, into her mouth, covering her eyes; and just as she unfolded her arms and raked back her hair, turning to walk away, I said, “Sally, get me my passport. Just for a little while. I want to see it, hold it, that’s all. Just hold it. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

She shrugged and walked away, the wind tugging at her hair.

The next day, when I came in from the garden, my passport was on my bed. I quickly shut the door, locked it, looked around, picked it up and turned to the page with my photograph; it was me at a different time, a younger smile, long curly hair. I don’t remember passports feeling so heavy.

The next morning I told the mother at the breakfast table with the two children that my sister in Jabriya was sick, and that if she didn’t mind I would like to visit her, to see how she was, to get her medicine. Maybe even take her to the doctor, if that’s alright. She looked at me, then the children, and then back to me, until finally, “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Yes, in Jabriya, she is ill, sad to say. Her name is Helen.”

The two children have turned in their chairs to watch and wait until finally she sighed and said, “Fine.”

After giving the family car one final wipe, I took my passport, some money, an extra white shirt and went out the back garden gate to the bus stop across the street. When bus 66 came, I took a seat in the back, even though I didn’t have to. It had been a while since I had been on a bus and not driving, and I watched the many buildings, The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

34 shops and cars slip by. I stared like a tourist. When bus 66 finally arrived at the airport, I got off and decided to walk around the departure area. When I got tired of walking I sat in one of their hard plastic chairs and watched the flight times and destinations: arrivals, departures, cancellation, delays…. Families wheeling their suitcases behind them, while cousins, uncles, aunts and grandmas hug, cry, something goes pop in celebration. With my passport in my shirt pocket, I waited until the sign said the 2:30 flight to Mumbai had departed and then caught bus 66 to Jabriya. Of course I have no sister there, or anywhere, but never mind. I found a café with shishah and I sat and smoked for fifty-two minutes. I took out my passport once, twice and looked at it, thumbing through the blank pages. I didn’t want to look at my photograph anymore. Almost nobody was in the restaurant at that time of day. A man wearing a white apron came from the back room twice to ask me if I needed anything else, tea, coffee? ‘How about peanuts, we have some very nice peanuts, you know.’ I said no both times. A gray cat strolled in through the open door and decided to flop itself at my feet. Only later, as I was getting ready to leave, did it turn to look up at me, as if surprised that I was still there.

After sitting and smoking and not thinking of anything about driving or answering telephones or listening to her angry voice, I walked to a nearby park. It was quiet and empty and I sat on a whatused-to-be a green wooden bench and watched the pigeons. Finally, with the sun in the treetops, two men walked by laughing, later, two maids, and more laughter. I found myself smiling at their laughter.

Two cats, one fatter than the other, came to sprawl under the trees, yawning. I walked back to the bus stop and after letting two bus 66s roar by, stuck my hand out for the third one.

The garden lights were on when I returned. I was sure to take my passport to my room first, place in under the pillow before stepping into the house. And of course immediately she was there, asking, “And how is she?”

“Who?” “This sister of yours, Helen, is it?”

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35 ter.�

‘Yes, yes, fine, thank you so much. She is better, Helen is bet-

Sally, her mouth tight and wrinkled, was watching me from the doorway, as if she was thinking about whistling.

I walked to the garage and started the family car. Its exhaust was a cloudy gray, and I let it run. One more wipe before putting the cloth back on the shelf where it belonged, next to the bottles of car wax and two empty pickle jars. By now, the exhaust was no longer cloudy or gray and I turned off the engine and returned to my room.

And, of course, when I looked for my passport, it was gone.

My name is Craig Loomis, and for the last thirteen years, I have been an Associate Professor of English at the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City. During the last twenty-eight years, I have had my short fiction published in such literary journals as The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, The Prague Revue, The Maryland Review, The Louisville Review, Bazaar, The Rambler, The Los Angeles Review, The Prairie Schooner, Yalobusha Review, The Critical Pass Review, The Owen Wister Review, Five on the Fifth and others.

In 1995 my short story collection, A Softer Violence: Tales of Orient. London: Minerva Press was published; and, spring 2013 Syracuse University Press published another collection of my short stories entitled The Salmiya Collection: Stories of the Life and Times of Modern Day Kuwait.

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36

PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I split the difference; don’t ask me why.

The truth of it is, I don’t remember why I strayed from the path.

No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was the second day of a five-day walking trip I had mapped out across the Lake District in northern England, hoping to channel the spirit of William Wordsworth and find inspiration in the exquisite British landscape.

But after the deflating experience of my first day’s outing, I should have been far more circumspect before turning down the road of impetuosity.

My little adventure began as I sallied forth from the youth hosThe Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

37 tel in Kendal for a twelve-mile hike to Windermere. I had plenty of backpacking experience, having twice hiked the Grand Canyon and once crested the Sierra Nevada. So I felt no cause for concern as I set off on this leisurely ramble along well-trodden trails.

The first lesson I might have remembered from my backpacking days was that any hike requires preparation. The middle-aged couples and little children out for a pastoral stroll were enjoying their pleasant outings, to be sure. Then again, they weren’t carrying 40 pounds on their backs.

Once upon a time, I easily carried a third of my body weight long distances over rough terrain. But now, as I struggled under my load and sweated under the sun, the memory of past fitness made me curse myself for thinking I could summon up bygone physical prowess without serious reconditioning.

That was only the first reason why I had no excuse to be cocky.

Had I taxed my memory further, I would have recalled that the Sierra Nevada excursion had not come off anything as planned either.

It wasn’t my fault. Dr. Lusk, my friend Wally’s father, was the architect of that grand experiment. Needless to say, cross-country back-packing contains some element of uncertainty. The trail markers are ill-defined; even with a keen eye they can be easily missed. And miss one we did. Before we knew it, we were scrambling up an endless slope of loose shale, sliding back two feet for every three we clawed our way up.

Nursing scrapes and bruises, we conquered that evil incline, only to discover that we had scaled the wrong mountain. Then we had to find our way back down to where we had started. *** To be fair, this was not that. The lush hillsides, cobalt lakes, sapphire skies, and variegated clouds provided such a pleasant ambience that even getting lost would be a welcome diversion. Six and a half miles would be a dance surrounded by such pastoral beauty. Amidst such short distances, how wrong could things go?

The question itself should have sent off warning bells.

So if my first day out had failed to live up to expectations, what The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

38 of it? After all, I arrived at the pristine shore of Lake Windermere in the end. And now, having gotten my legs back under me, Day Two would certainly prove more rewarding.

I vaguely recall the discontent I felt the next morning as I stared down the gentle trail as far as I could. The hike was barely long enough to fill the morning. It seemed a shame not to take more advantage of the exceptional countryside and panoramic vistas.

I suppose that was my problem. Too short a hike, too smooth a path, too unseasoned the company of strangers who would be sharing my road. Where was the challenge in that?

And so, when I caught sight of a narrow foot trail turning off into the wood, I followed it with little hesitation.

It wasn’t long before the path turned steeply up into the hills.

That didn’t bother me. However, after I had hiked just far enough that turning back would seem an embarrassing waste of time; the foot trail vanished within the thicket. It seemed reasonable that I would pick it up somewhere further along or, at worst, find another in its place. And so I persisted, climbing higher and higher through the dense foliage. Brush snagged my pack, and my glasses fogged up as I sweated under the unreasonably fierce north Atlantic sun.

Stopping for breath, I turned around to see how far I’d come and beheld the magnificent view of Lake Windermere far below.

Two-thirds of the way up the mountainside with no path to follow, I was hardly in a frame of mind to enjoy it.

I can’t say how many hours later I stumbled into the Ambleside youth hostel, determined to take no more shortcuts. My resolve lasted for almost an entire day. *** The next morning I left Ambleside and kept to the path on my way to Grasmere. The blue sky had turned gunmetal gray, and classic English drizzle filled the air. I covered the four miles to Grasmere before 11:00 and kept right on walking, assuming that I would have a full day’s hike before arriving at the Borrowdale youth hostel.

I never did find the Borrowdale youth hostel. I still can’t explain how I missed it. Just as I can’t explain what happened next.

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39 I followed the trail straight on, assuming that I was dead on course… although perhaps a different metaphor would have served me better. Presently, I was standing before a four-lane highway. It wasn’t on my map then, and I can’t find it on a map today. Maybe the trail split unnoticed and I took the wrong fork. Maybe I crossed over into an alternate universe.

With no point of reference and no option other than turning around to retrace my steps, I waited for a break in the traffic and pushed on straight ahead.

That decision gave me plenty of opportunity to reflect on Robert A. Heinlein’s observation that the longest distance between two points is a shortcut.

A large hillock rose up before me. But it was nothing compared to the incline I had conquered climbing away from Lake Windermere. Nor was it overgrown with shrubs and brambles.

It did, however, conceal what lay ahead. And what lay beyond that. And what lay beyond that.

I traversed the countryside without incident until I came to a dirt road. It ran perpendicular to my course, but the barbed-wire fence running alongside it obliged me to follow it anyway. Eventually I found an opening to the other side and tried to recover my bearings, hoping that I might pick up a path over the next hilltop or around the next bend.

Here’s to hoping.

To make matters worse, I had set out that morning without either food or water. This was not quite as irresponsible as it sounds, considering I had planned on a short jaunt of less than four miles - barely an hour’s hike. Much later, it occurred to me that I might have remembered the motto of the U.S. Coast Guard: semper paratus - always ready. I had applied to the Coast Guard academy out of high school; but I went to the University of California to study English instead.

At least the clouds overhead blocked out the sun, so I didn’t get too dehydrated. But I could feel my system straining against the depletion of liquid and calories as I trudged along. If that weren’t enough, I felt the earth under my feet turning to bog. With each step The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

40 I sank into the marshy ground, once or twice leaving my shoe behind in the peat and moss.

Time stretched out immeasurably. After a while, I no longer had to carry on in total isolation; sheep began to appear, scattered across the countryside. They stared at me without fear or even curiosity, but rather with contempt, as if I had no right to molest their grazing.

Indeed, they looked neither cute nor docile as I skirted around them.

Flirting with delirium, I occasionally attempted to engage them in conversation.

They declined to answer. *** By the map, I estimate that I trudged about 15 miles that day before I stumbled into the Derwentwater youth hostel.

But that blessed moment had yet to arrive. At long last, I rounded a hill and caught sight of Lake Derwentwater in the distance, far off but most definitely more than a mirage. Steeled by the advent of my destination, I carried on with renewed vigor. I rejoiced when I felt my way turn downward toward the water’s edge.

But I would have to run a most unexpected gauntlet, an obstacle course unimagined and even now unimaginable. I delighted to discover a dirt road to guide my paces; but my delight vaporized into dismay as I found myself switching back and forth through an unholy trailer park, a blight upon the natural beauty of Cumbria, a scar upon the eternal landscape.

I came out the end – or, in this case, the entrance – crossed the street, and passed over the threshold of diminutive tea shop, where I sat down to order a cup of tea and a plate of strawberry tarts as if I were just another American tourist who had pulled his rental car off onto the side of the road.

It wasn’t far from there to the youth hostel, where a hot shower and a change of clothes restored me to some semblance of composure. Out in the common room, I found a couple of acquaintances from the Ambleside youth hostel. They asked me about my day. *** Dawn broke the next morning clear and bright, a postcard-perfect The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

41 English summer’s day. I left my pack in the youth hostel and set out for an easy constitutional around Lake Derwentwater, with no destination in mind except returning full circle to my point of origin.

Wispy clouds, kaleidoscopic reflections on the water, warm air in the sun, and comfortable breezes in shade combined to create a storybook promenade, minus ogres, dragons, and wicked witches from any point on the compass.

Freed from the weight of my pack and sure of my path, I finally found the Wordsworthian tranquility I had come in search of. For some strange reason, no one else seemed to have had my idea, and I wallowed in peaceful introspection as I slowly negotiated the tenmile circuit in Arcadian beauty and splendid isolation.

That one day made my whole trip to the Lake District worthwhile. I wonder if it would have been as blissful if the days leading up to it hadn’t gone so awry.

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 - October - 2017

42

TALESPIN Era.Murukan

I fly, therefore I am Flying is a singular boon bestowed by the Prime Mover on birds and only birds – to hell with the nasty bats. If we the homosapiens attempt to do a bird act, there we land pathetically, on a quagmire of miseries; and there is no doubt about that. Yet, we do fly, and pay for it.

My flying related worries would commence while I am on land, at office coordinates to be precise. A typical cryptic instruction like ‘Proceed forthwith to the Travel Desk’, would be conveyed to me asynchronously on email, land line, mobile phone and to be sure, on the office address system which is heard loud and clear, of all places, in the rest room. Having been sufficiently corporate-domes ticated, I would dash to the travel desk to be handed over the air ticket for the next flight proceeding through Bangalore, Colombo, Maldives, Dubai, Frankfurt, London Heathrow and Belfast, reaching the destination a full twenty-four hours after journey commencement, being the cheapest flight available. In the true tradition of the Magellan circumnavigators of the Earth of the sixteenth century and their ilk, I would snatch the ticket in all enthusiasm and proceed to the Accounts to be fortified with the necessary foreign currency to see me through a week at the maximum in alien land. There would always be a lurking fear of going broke thereafter, with an imminent next world war breaking out or hurricane of category 5 severity hitting the nearby coast or Fujiyama erupting, throwing fresh piping hot The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

43 lava, effectively disrupting communication and financial channels throughout. That would dry up my inward funds flow rendering me work famished all along or force me into wearing a broad rimed hat and removing it immediately thirty times a minute at the passersby at market place, after office hours, collecting alms for sustenance.

‘Now run to catch the flight’, someone would then give me an emphatic push towards the cab waiting to take me to the airport, cutting down the train of my disturbing thought. It would be time then to reach the right air terminal to take the flight.

Air service providers are a quirky lot. If you are to fly out of a country, you would always assume the aircraft would await you at an international flights terminal. Not so. Some international flights take off from the domestic terminals as well. To compensate for the absurdity, a few domestic flights expect their passengers to board at the international terminal. This would often occur in the case of late night international flights hopping through more than one domestic touch point while flying abroad or flying in.

I once had to fly within India taking an international flight and was instructed at the airport to fill up the embarkation card before boarding the flight, like the international passengers. The form had an array of questions as meaningful as, ‘Are you carrying more than Rs.213 in cash?’, ‘Are you above 3 feet tall?’, ‘Did you have an acne vulgar is attack in the last 7 years?’ requiring a yes or no for answer. When I politely pointed out to the airlines staff they were plain stupid to ask me fill that form up, they handed me over the de-embarkation form too, with the same questionnaire arranged in the reverse order.

On my duly completing the assignment and handing over to those in dire necessity of them, a huge rubber stamp was affixed on the forms with immense force enough to make the airport departure hall vibrate violently as caught in a mini earthquake. Walking to board the flight, I looked out of the corner of the eye to observe all the stamped forms being carried in a dirty blue plastic bucket, into the men’s toilet.

The next ritual to be undergone before being airborne is frisking The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

44 for security clearance. Generally, you may have to remove your blazer, wrist watch and your wallet before you are searched thoroughly for any concealed weapon. At times, when security threat is perceived to be on the increase, you may have to remove your waist belt, necktie, socks and shoes as well and walk barefoot to the clearance gate with trousers sliding down dangerously without the support of the belt.

As you stand with outstretched arms and with a vacant look of a grown up orphan for your turn to be frisked, you often would momentarily worry whether you had slipped a gun inadvertently into your trouser pocket while starting from home, only to be relieved the next second, you don’t have a gun or a home to write to, or both. The security personnel at their own will may ask you to do anything like turn a quick somersault or still worse, recite the multiplication table of thirteen, merely to satisfy themselves you are sober enough and are not going to act funny while in flight. At one of my glorious departures from the picturesque Mangalore, I was asked by the security officer to switch on my mobile phone and try calling my own number, like God men communicating with inner self. A few days after, passing through the same port of call, I kept my mobile phone switched on, awaiting the order for mystic self discourse when I was curtly told to keep the mobile switched off like all literates would do. If my ability to remember faces is something worth writing home about, I would vouchsafe, the security guard on both occasions was one and the same.

A colleague of mine travelling with her infant son was informed by the airport security staff that any food she carried for the infant had to be tested by them and the container closely examined, for security clearance, whereupon she told them she always breastfed her child. They hastily waved her off.

As you enter the airplane after patiently submitting yourselves to all such mini ordeals in quick succession, you would faintly but unmistakably detect a streak of resentment behind the veneer of a broad smile worn hastily by the stewardess, being the one reserved for a cattle class passenger, as all economy class travellers are known as. As the hostess would wish you ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’, you would suppress the desire to answer it with a bovine version of The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

45 the greeting. As you quickly would walk through the Executive Class to your manger, a curtain would come down behind your back, being a metaphorical social class divider between the cattle and the winged angels of the Executive class.

As the plane glides past the runway and gently becomes air borne, the airhostesses would serve hot towels to the passengers for getting refreshed. There lies the problem. There seems to be an unwritten code for airlines to abide by which is to ensure that flying should never be an experience of unmitigated joy. Those flights taking off from a tropical country like India where everyone sweats out for eleven months in an year and enjoys warm days and a tad cold nights in the last month of the calendar, regularly provide their passengers with scented napkins dipped in boiling water. The moment the flyer applies it to the face, he gets a sautĂŠed eggplant appearance which remains through the flight. If the flights originate in the Tundra region, they apparently are provided with glacier-chilled wet towels that could lock the jaws and the eyelids, in a version of frostbite.

The wet towel service is usually conducted with a calculated indifference towards the cattle class. The tray with the towels looking and fuming like a mass of surgical cotton would be thrust up your nose and if you do not pick the towel out before you can say knife, it would be withdrawn for use by another passenger, quite agile and familiar with the knives. In stark contrast, the service down the aisle at the Executive Class would be at God’s own pace that would make the blessed ones seated there to feel as those with royal blue blood in the veins, holding wrong wet towels though.

I hail from a country where the Government competes with private carriers in the air traffic sector. While others have made a major shift towards apparently inexpensive, less-smiles, no-food flight services, the national carrier, while you fly them still provides you with something to eat, reasonably hot and packed in silver foil with a label in Hindi most of us do not understand. The problem is not with the label but in detecting what is being provided as food.

It turns out to be nearly the same lump for breakfast or lunch or for dinner. And mind you, this is a country where every region has their The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

46 own culinary culture. A southern idly-sambhar is distinctly different from a northern parota-chenna. Try out what you get to eat as you fly the national carrier and guess fairly correct, under which regional culinary menu it can be categorized. You would often draw a blank.

In parts it would be up north and digging deep into, it may taste down south. Perhaps the Government had constituted a committee to architect the food item with a national fervour and flavour with an objective to bring about national integration or indigestion.

All right, one more irritant did get past and the empty food trays have been snatched away. Now, it is time to look at all others taking the flight along with you.

The co-passengers would often provide you with a myriad of flying experience. Some of them would incessantly demand of the hostess something or other, be it a glass of water or champagne or an angular tooth pick or a wet towel or a pack of cards or a rattle or just anything you could conjure of, till the flight touches down at the destination. I was once astounded by what my aisle mate enquired of the stewardess – “Do you have cockroaches here?” She turned the question around on her lips before replying no. ‘No problem’, said this man, leafing through a magazine in the seat pocket in front, appearing very disappointed.

A subset of these passengers, from the moment they step into the plane would demand for and receive an additional serving of anything offered, be it boiled sugar sweets or cotton buds or wilted flowers. It may even be a pack containing a tiny tooth brush and a small tube of tooth paste offered sometimes during long distance flights or an occasional souvenir like a key chain. They always can detect what is being given free of cost, demand if it is not provided to them and carefully pack snug what is obtained into their cabin luggage even it would mean pulling out the baggage from the overhead storage and pushing it back for every such hoard, with considerable inconvenience to all seated nearby and those moving up and down the aisle.

Not very long ago, a few airlines in the private sector would provide the passengers with stainless steel cutlery at meal times, The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

47 appearing brand new and kept in a translucent pouch, with an expectation to return these after food. Not applicable for all, it would appear. A friend of mine was so enamoured of this dazzling cutlery that he would quietly slip it silently into his handbag to co-exist along with hard and soft copies of contracts for millions of sterling pounds. Having accomplished that enviable feat, he would eat out with his fingers as well stir cream, sugar and coffee with the index finger. This buddy would often encourage me when we flew together on office work to hoard on his behalf the cutlery offered to me as well and use my hands instead. He would look daggers at me when I diligently returned the spoons, knives, and forks like an obedient schoolchild. Whenever I visited him on terra firma, the air cutlery would be found everywhere in his place and any invite to have coffee or snacks would accompany the details of the source of the cutlery and information on precise date of acquisition. He had a massive obsession with stainless steel forks and besides using himself would offer his guests too these interesting pieces of cutlery to taste thick lentil soup or eat sticky rice pudding with.

Co-passengers never cease to excite me. I was once on a hopping flight originating from Delhi early evening. It touched down at Singapore before taking off again towards the destination, Sydney. A few passengers boarded the flight at Singapore and one of them, an old woman occupied the seat to my right. She was holding on her lap with both her hands an urn like utensil around which was tied a piece of artistically woven flowery silk cloth that also covered the mouth of the urn. I thought she would be an antique dealer or a devotee carrying safe and secure, a relic, on a task being accomplished with all passion and verve, in spite of her advanced age. As she found it somewhat difficult to fasten her seat belt with the huge urn on her lap, I offered to hold it while she tied the safety mechanism in place.

To my surprise, she sternly refused to go by the suggestion, with a series of ‘no’s rattled with all benign smiles while being evidently stubborn.

As the airplane rolled down the runway and became airborne, she slowly removed the silk cloth covering the urn she was holding.

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48 With eyes closed, she lifted the utensil to her trembling lips perhaps muttering a religious chant in a whisper, I thought. As I watched this ritual with keen interest, she spat into the urn and closed it again with the silk cloth. In the next ninety minutes during flight, the elegantly artistic spittoon was raised to her mouth and lowered at least a hundred times with the exercise gaining pace when the plane was navigating through turbulent air packets. I was looking helpless at the apparently fast filling up spittoon which posed an imminent risk of getting spilled over straight on me. We fortunately reached Sydney soon and were thus saved in time of the salivary deluge.

Once when I was about to get the boarding card for a flight at London Heathrow airport, the airlines employee at the counter coaxed me to fly the next day. I would be lodged for the night in a five star hotel in London and would be given a small reward of around 300 pounds, all in cash for postponing my departure. I immediately understood they had overbooked the flight and had just resorted to weaning away the passengers to fly later to ease the congestion. Thanking them for the offer I pointed out without thumping my chest that my flying delayed by a day would result in my company losing half a million dollars accrued revenue, trying hard to believe it myself though.

As I rolled ‘accrued’ on my tongue trying to sound grave, I was issued a boarding pass forthwith, albeit for a seat near the rest room in the jumbo aircraft.

It was an extended ordeal to be. I was wedged between a six footer, fifteen stone enormous north Indian to my right and a diminutive, incessantly talking East Indian to my left both coming with a common denominator of owning small business, one a corner shop selling all things Indian from Indian sweets to grocery and the other running a fish and chips shop, in London.

Within the next ten minutes, both of them became my bosom pals for decades and vied with one another in sharing their woes and happy moments in their respective business. As my left ear was bombarded with the trials and tribulations of the fish and chip business, the right one served as a dedicated receiver for a lengthy monologue on corner store blues that included possibilities of getting mugged The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

49 while working late at night. After some time, they ignored me totally and as I sat there as an inert conduit trying without success to catch a few winks, they went on with information sharing till the flight touched down in Chennai.

During another flight, the row of seats immediately in front had a few economically dressed young passengers who enjoyed every minute of flying with their belly laughs and group singing.

When I shared my disapproval of what I saw with a swami sitting next to me, the God man immediately came up with the solution, “Ignore them and join me in a chantathon’. As there was Dr.No, the interesting first ever James Bond movie scheduled to be screened in flight that I was keen to watch and was more inclined to do the chanting on reaching home at a time convenient to me, the swami proceeded on his own. With a faulty ear phone adding up to my woes, that was the first time I was watching Ursula Andress walking out of the ocean in a white bikini to the chants of Hare Rama and high octane laughs and off key singing by a bunch of unputdownable lasses dressed to disturb like Ursula of days bygone.

May be in my next flight I will be enjoying Dr.No without any interruption and have Sir Sean Connery and Ursula Andress as my co-passengers, with Ms.Andress in a business suit and Sir Sean, white bikini clad. They sure will have their own flight related tales to share.

Murugan Ramasami • Techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

50

POETRY

Poornima Laxmeshwar

To my Miss Button Nose: Few words of caution Dear little Miss S It is time to discuss some ‘life’ now I know you are only five That your days are filled with paints, mud and blocks And your nights are peaceful as the starry sky But then What the heck?

I was first molested when I was five And my friends say I am lucky The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

51 So I want to prepare you for the world Strip it, so that in its nakedness you see Only us – men and women who outlive irrelevance Dear little Miss S I want you to barter all that ashamedness Bundle it, light it with your cigarette And watch it turn into dust Just exchange it with those unwelcome stares, remarks Approaches that you receive Every time you turn right to come home Take all that lechery and trade it for some guts To love someone Dear little Miss S Love is an overrated cavity, beware!

If there are slashed moments between your teeth Where your tongue is split in halves of a choice And your nose can’t sense What’s on right Then dare to dump yourself in a carton And walk over Take all the burden of blame that will be hurled Create a storm out of it in your belly And use it on people who offer Free advices Dear little Miss S Allow your life to be zeroed, explore the null Stray away from finding meanings, uncomplicate; Let your world be an architecture of experiences Where geometry and boundaries make perfect sense

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52 If it blocks your imagination Then let them collapse to the ground With one single push from your little finger Deconstruct without hesitation Like a blink of your eye Easy come, easy go Dear little Miss S Please don’t perceive that the everyday melodrama Is the result of your karma That cracked soles, calcium deficiencies Labour pain, breast feeding is what you are bound to do It’s a choice you live by Like a decision you take every time you buy a Jimmy Choo Or a Versace Dear little Miss S Never ever let life rule you with its rulebook Tame it to suit your dreams Don’t worry much about consequences Nobody is going to remember your mother in the next 100 years And so it will be the same with you There is nothing that I can pass That will be always yours For this world is ever so fucked And still revolving So I just ask you to make it to the finish line No matter what Just like every other woman

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53

When I court infidelity I collect the milk packets lying at the doorstep As carelessly thrown as my life’s objective Place the newspapers on the table who scream Of a yesterday so violent, so raped and Murdered in cold blood.

I don’t even stop to read.

The world is left with no more surprises.

I step into the kitchen and prepare the breakfast I planned the previous afternoon Box after box I pack all that I know through Years of conditioning and Amma’s tips Of how to make the idlis softer or how to make the vadas crisper As the house empties itself And the silence resonates our last night’s fight or silent sobs I stop caring I gather the seasons and the roles that make me Lock the house and leave I know how to measure distance from Point A to Point B But you seem like a distant dream Beyond the miles and meters While you open the door smelling of rum more than morning Your embrace reminds me of my little one I sense the same belonging Our conversations are as varied as the shades of sky From politics to Namdeo to the cynical world to selfie reduced people And oddly enough I talk Like I have an opinion Is there really a voice in me?

You allow me to lead Love or war, you ask me to be Somewhere in this encounter with myself I conclude That we both are living instances Of what the world has chalked as boundaries And its inability to accept the naked truth of love alone The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

54

Jogamma She came every alternate day around noon Took measured steps with an effort With cracked feet, broken toe nails Wore a wrinkled skin and carried the weight of stories of a past she

never owned Her only possession A tiny bag made out of rags to safe keep the coins And a bowl to carry the rice or the leftovers At every doorstep she softly said “yakkaiya jog” And we knew that jogamma arrived if nothing But with a smile that could melt our childhood fights for mangoes

and guavas She usually hummed the song “Yelyelyel yellavva, yeshtottu naa bhajine madide” (Wake up, wake up Yellamma, I have sung many a hymns) We surrounded her with questions about where she lived, What she ate, how she survived the cold desolate nights alone, If she had bed or if she had a shelter at all She never disclosed too many details Maybe scared and scarred of her roots, we thought Some woman of the house would give her something that Let her survive the day and also gave her the looks Jogamma would take a pinch of bhandara And would bless us all from a distance Collect her belongings and walk to the next door

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55

In her drift, I realized that maybe her life also had walls The bricks broken, the concrete cracking and the plaster peeling In that distance I also realised the life of a jogavva A recluse of time and space The living contradiction of a society For a woman’s life sometime can be just waiting to turn to ashes one day.

PS: A Jogamma or a Jogavva is a Devdasi. Rest can be googled.

When Beef becomes a Beep That evening when after several meetings over filter coffees By when I had decided that you were my shining knight in armour We thought it was time to take our relationship a bit more serious We decided to share a sandwich And you ordered chicken You being a bong You being you And in that moment when your choice showed me the abyss And Mom’s advice that a man’s way to his heart is through his tummy Created a whirlpool in a corner of my buzzing head I was already imagining our first meal Until it struck like a toothpick in the cavity The dreaded moment arrived at your doorstep with a bundle of my

nervous smile and an expensive scotch Your introduction to Bengali cuisine was an exaggerated space I was unwilling to enter And my Brahmin upbringing hadn’t let me explore much of the

world of even mushrooms and soya crunches The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

56 While you spoke at length about the different types of fishes I could neither point you the tail nor a bone The head was a definite reminder of world’s cruelty right on my plate You tried making me realise how crabs could be tender and prawns good for memory We wrapped up the evening more on argument over beef Than consuming any of it Beef transformed into BEEPS I nodded I nodded a little more Refused Reused a little more So I thought in the backyard of my mind That when you would visit my home I would serve you ghaaspoos That would measure your love Your commitment to stay forever And if really when you are hungry Love could keep you alive

Poornima Laxmeshwar resides in the garden city, Bangalore and works as a content writer for a living.

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57

POETRY

Terry Savoie Reading the Future of the American Empire Four – no, five or six & more – crows clambering from the rooftop to the top of a pine then back again to our roof where there’s nothing more to do other than what wintering crows do, those grating & crackling caws. No majesty there, no message, nothing, so unlike what Homer’s heroes found, their lives’ futures writ both large & small while reading & deciphering the wild, roadside antics of farm fowl running about, frantic for any escape whatsoever: the scrambling of headless hens in a multitude of telltale directions. Such calamitous portents there were for godlike Hector, famed from time immemorial with an ignominious defeat, ignoring an eagle flying low over Troy’s battlements, the raptor snake-bitten so that she dropped the wily, writhing one at the foot of the city gate. More: for the socalled Great Alexander brimming over with godlike hubris, what bird’s audacious message did he ignore to his epic peril? Today everything’s about the future of the American Empire. Sadly, only the forlorn urban crows abound with no The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

58 discernible presaging found anywhere. All we have are those cold cries of winter’s raucous scavengers as a sixth circles & drops in disrupting this state of affairs & shatters a fragile equilibrium.

Then off they go, & we’re left imagining some vital message somewhere in their mad flight.

Yes, it’s there somewhere if only we could read the message accurately. If only...

Natural History, 1954 Soot-blanketed snow banks all along Wells St., & there’s nothing more to render either to God or Caesar on such a Sunday afternoon in February so our family resigns itself to its once yearly pilgrimage to the Natural History Museum where freeloading pigeons bob heads & saw their blue, iridescent necks back & forth monotonously while staying never far away from the steam off grates, rising along the sidewalks. Inside the museum, a fogged-over, finger-smudged glass tableau of Aboriginal People – those we were taught back then to call Indians – waits in the corner of a first floor gallery, what the curator thought might be the likeness of a virgin forest, a place where he positioned a man in mid-stride & wearing a loin-cloth, fisting an unstrung bow & a make-believe quiver filled with arrows in one hand & holding a marble-eyed snow rabbit by the hind legs in the other. The rabbit’s fur’s daubed with a spot of red on its immaculate The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

59 white while a squaw (remember, I’m an eightyear-old in the early ‘50s) bends over an eternal, electric-bulb flame beneath sticks, & a child plays in the clearing beyond, all three in the glow of a redtin-foil halo. Staring into the warrior’s marble eyes, I knew even then I wouldn’t ever have an animal name in my life, an animal who’d would run ahead to clear a path for my soul on its transition into the next world.

With pity, the three stared back at me, having no wish whatsoever to live my life, to leave their glassed-in forest home, their make believe hearts buried in papier-mâché chest cavities, a world unnatural, but perfect in its stasis, more perfect than my world could ever hope for or pretend to actually be.

– Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Fish-Head Soup, NYC (1968) The blue flounder stared up at me but, thank God, it wasn’t some muddy Mississippi bottom feeder’s eye, otherworldly creatures that they pretend to be.

Maria netted up this one from the openair fish market in the early morning, fresh, she swore, & more than likely her flounder probably saw the pressured depths of the Atlantic as recently as yesterday or the day before at worst.

She’d know, living as she did in a sixth floor walkup just off the big housing

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60 projects between Avenues C & D during the ungodly summer of Nixon’s rebirth. She believed with all her generous & vulnerable heart, that a down-&-out Iowa boy certainly could be trusted so she offered to share her noon meal after Mass & the boy accepted, believing he might discover the depths of her loneliness while sharing the fishhead soup she prepared, hunched over her cook pot & apologizing all the while at its meagerness, her flounder’s dull, dead eye looking up, unembarrassed, as she pondered the proper presentation: watered-down soup, black bread, black beans & rice. But what could he possibly have said to assuage such abject loneliness?

With her eyes lifted to heaven & the church bells of Our Lady of Guadalupe on 14th ringing the noon-day Angelus two streets over, our meal began. One spoonful & she turned to face me with her olive-black eyes floating in her wrinkled, sawdust-colored skin, praying to read in me some approval of her small life.

Inside her world, she wished me to be a sun, the source of consolation to justify years of disappointment for the life she knew she’d never be able to fully fathom.

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61

Aperture: Three Snapshots salt of the earth: those myriad ways, lenslike, the sideshow nude shimmers, comes alive, lives on, lives on &... . fragile dewdrops at dawn, shy & so intimate, hanging there on the groggy oak leaves: a lover’s feathered whisper in my ear . ruminant, the boy-child slips into that celestial land he so often enjoys between his sleeping parents, both still drowsy-eyed, wet & spent from their hastened, predawn lovemaking

Terry Savoie, a retired teaching living just

outside Iowa City, has had more than three hundred and fifty poems published in the past thirty years in such journals as American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The North American Review, Poetry, and Birmingham Poetry Review among two hundred others both in the United States and abroad.

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62

POETRY

Matthew W Jones Hummingbird A Ruby Throated hummingbird settles on the Persian rug, out for an airing, draped over a stone wall.

Sunflowers border the lawn, a framework of Van Goghian incandescent yellow.

Reclining on a patchwork blanket soporifically half reading Rilke’sSonnets to Orpheus.

Inhaling the dancing perfumes floating upfrom an ocean of vibrantly fecund roses.

In this Eden I drink some chilled Muscatel from a tall thin coral coloured glass.

Suddenly a darting flash of claret.

My diminutive companion lands on a branch of a graceful weeping willow, overhanging an ornate pond covered in large water lilies.

Images from Millais’s painting of the drowned Ophelia leaps into my consciousness.

And the bearded Monet painting his huge canvases of water lilies in his garden at Giverny.

Becoming aware of some beautiful music dancingthrough this garden of paradise.

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63 Trying to place the polished sounds, possibly a Chopin piano concerto?

Closing my book‌ stretching out upon the warm velvet grass.

Soon transcending the pantheistic nirvana ofmy immediate environs.

Drifting into the freeing hands of Morpheus.

Mind travelling into the cosmically unpredictable world of fairy tales.

What was that I glimpsed from the corner ofmy reverie? Looked awfully like aWhite Rabbit holdinga pocket watch.

Magic Hour Dedicated to the memory of the artist Richard Dadd [1817-1886] Tenderly placing some gossamer light cake and strawberry marshmallows.

On a springy bed of snoozing sunflowers.

Victuals for the fairies, who will arrive at the magic hour.

Gently landing on lilting lily pads by the tinkling stream.

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64

They will sip, honeysuckle dew and rosewater from tiny silver thimbles.

Wearing their delicate clothes.

Gently woven from fine golden threads of barley and wheat, intricately laced with the fresh petals of bluebells.

They will dance with the pixies, cherubs, elves, sprites, nymphs and leprechauns.

Sharing some miniscule moonbeam-kissed berries.

Sprinkling their magical fairy-dust wherever they settle.

Tides Dream drifting along the coastline of your haunted imagination, where galaxies run wild.

I try to hallucinate you all the way back to shore.

As rain storms gather you appear an eternity away, swimming ever further out.

Now just touching the very edge of my nerve-stretched vision.

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65

Is this where eternity is answered?

Where borders lose their comfort?

Strange equations of time appear to be fracturing upon the breaking surf.

Sea-blasted bursts of enlightenment suddenly explode from some deep and mysterious place. Flooding my confused mind with wave upon wave of serenity.

Instantly reinvigorating body, soul and spirit, even as you continue your outward journey, no longer visible upon the brooding horizon.

Maybe you are feeling insanely brave today?

Or you have read the tides to perfection.

Sands of Secrecy With summer’ssong sung and the cathedralcloisters closed: strolling seaward seduced by the sea nymphs’siren call tracing your name onto the sea-swept sands of secrecy.

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66

Snow Walk After crossing the wild Atlantic, finally pitching-up on the west-coast of Ireland Exhausted, she takes a draught of forgetfulness‌

Finding herself walking somnambulant across a snow-covered field bordered by black roses‌

in the middle of the field therewas a red grand piano

she sat down and started to play a Bach piano sonata

while a goshawk hovered overhead.

Matthew W Jones grew up living on narrow boats on the rivers of Herefordshire on the English/Welsh border. He has a BA Honours degree in English and European Literature and a Masters degree in Film And Literature. He has been involved with community theatre and independent film and documentary making. He now works for Amnesty International as well as doing some English Language and Literature tutoring and of course working on the poetry. He has been fortunate enough to have been published in many journals and magazines over the years and won the odd competition along the way. He enjoys philosophy and reading about space; also hiking up on the beautiful Sussex Downs.

He lives in the Bohemian city of Brighton and Hove with his girlfriend and a cat called Beckett, named after one of his literary heroes Samuel Beckett. At present, he is reading some of the poetry of Hart Crane, Lola Ridge, David Gasgoyne and Irina Ratushinskia.

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67

FICTION

George McLoone

I lived a good portion of my married life in Gray Fox Estates, a lovely

development not far from Leesburg, Virginia, with large, customized houses on two-acre lots. The houses did appreciate over time, but needless to say they were expensive houses to live in, and after my husband Max died I was on my own in a big house living off a modest annuity and a monthly social security check. This was after using most of the life insurance and my cash inheritance to pay off the mortgage while trying to save enough to pay the annual real estate taxes. And the house was aging, which meant a proliferation of bills for plumbing repair, for furnace repair, for gutter, chimney and driveway repair, and landscape work, tree work—trimming limbs off trees or cutting down whole trees that had died at costs in the thousands, and of course ordinary mowing work all through the spring, summer and fall in Virginia, and paying The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

68 help to clean the house interior every week. Yet I still gave Robyn, my only child, her age twenty-two, a monthly allowance for living expenses, since she had decided not to live at home. More often than I liked I had to dip into the savings account, the rainy day account.

Robyn had postponed college indefinitely- a mixed blessing for this parent of modest means--and was working as a waitress for “scarcely a living wage.” She had moved in with Barn Kettle, a man of thirty burdened with “scarcely manageable credit card debt” while “between jobs.” That was how she put it when she visited to chat about her finances and to pick up more clothes and shoes from her bedroom closet. Her pleas for another raise in allowance did not go unheeded, though my generosity was shaded with words of wisdom about sticking to a budget as well as thinking twice about the dubious morality of moving in with a man who had yet to give her an engagement ring.

“At least that,” I insisted finally, “at least a ring to save me as well as yourself from embarrassment whenever we run into people we know, people who knew your father, for instance.”

“But Mother, nobody cares anymore. It’s common.”

“Isn’t it.

“I’ll see what I can do about a ring.”

“Well then, I’ll see what I can do about your allowance, but I need to mind my own budget as well.”

“Of course you do. I understand that.”

“I’ll have to sell the house before long, you know.”

“Yes, you’ve made that clear.”

“And the better shape it’s in the more your share will be one day.”

“Yes, Mother, you’ve made that clear too. Don’t worry about it. Just cut expenses where you can, and I’ll try to do the same. Barn will get a job. He’s already taking courses at the community college.

He’s in the Fire Science program, and he’s given up skiing. But there is his tuition. Not that it’s like high tuition, but high if you’re between jobs. That’s what the increase will go for.”

I was pleased at how agreeable she now seemed, and I began to reconsider Barn’s influence on her, to imagine that Robyn’s moving The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

69 in with him may have already taught her the benefits of thrift, if not yet the virtues of a higher level of companionship and conversation, a level more suitable for a young lady who had attended private schools, and a daughter who, I had convinced myself years earlier, was a difficult child if not merely a spoiled one.

For my part, I first cut back on interior cleaning help, help from an agency that had been sending maids weekly. I replaced them with two women who had been working for the Walkers, a retired couple I knew from church and who were centering their golden years around Caribbean cruises. The new maids, Dejah and Marta, her younger sister, were recent Salvadoran refugees-legal and with green cards, as they had fled the drug gang wars and been legally admitted, May Walker had told me. Of course they, the new maids, also charged significantly less than the weekly cleaning agency, even taking into account that I now had only biweekly cleaning. But on the whole, both maids were hard workers. The sheets and pillowcases in the master bedroom were now changed every other week but just as neatly tucked as before. The floors and counters shone, and the stubborn stains the bathrooms the agency maids couldn’t quite eradicate were gone for good. This one change, at least, seemed to make perfect sense and, I hoped, would serve Robyn as a good example of tolerable thrift.

So I was becoming more optimistic about my future as well as Robyn’s, although the new maids did remind me that no labor situation is perfect. In this case, the language barrier was sometimes taxing, and the scope of their dusting a little disappointing. It seemed an easy cleaning chore, dusting, but though the floors and furniture looked fine, the ceiling corners kept their cobwebs. Not to be guilty of stereotyping, but I ascribed this shortcoming to a reluctance to look up, something I tried more than once to explain to them but apparently could not without more Spanish, not without the right words to say how I felt, and adding that I could do the ceiling corners myself and say this in a way that would not offend them, two women who otherwise took so much pride in their work. I thought hand gestures might say enough, and on two occasions, I pointed to a cobThe Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

70 web then waved a broom in a wide arc over my head. Dejah at least nodded as if in agreement. But weeks later both of them continued to leave some of the ceiling cobwebs alone.

I began to wonder if their not looking up implied more than a distaste for the task, that stooping rather than stretching implied a cultural attitude that was odd or foreign to most Americans, perhaps an attitude derived from an outmoded posture, a servile deportment of peonage left over from the colonial era or from ancestral recollections of the oppressed poor gleaning stubble in the wheat fields of Spanish landowners to keep from starving to death. But I was not about to fire good cleaners and scrubbers for this one problem, a minor irritant I could take care of on my own with a dust mop and yes, a height advantage, a task taking no more than fifteen minutes a week provided I skipped the full basement--a vast, unfinished cavern that I kept locked.

And there was something else, an even stranger practice that began in the third month of the maids’ hire, something more perplexing than neglecting a few cobwebs. They had left for the day, and I walked back from the patio into the house to make sure they had picked up their check on the foyer table. The living room looked fine, and I then climbed the stairs to check the bedrooms and two baths. But when I walked into the master bedroom I immediately sensed something was not right. The bed was neatly made, the carpet vacuumed. The master bath was cleaned and polished. The whole suite felt brighter, but I soon realized what was wrong. The maids-it had to have been the new maids- had taken down the long, heavy chintz bedroom curtains and replaced them with a set of white sheer curtains, curtains I had never seen before, not in my house. My old curtains with a red, yellow and green floral pattern were nowhere to be found-not folded and put aside on the dresser or bed, not in the bathroom hamper, not under the bed, not in the bedroom hamper, not, I soon discovered, in the laundry room or in the mud room off the kitchen, and not in the trash dumpsters in the garage. They had obviously reached high over the window lintels, taken the curtains down and hauled them away. And they had put up the sheers out of The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

71 their own stock- a rude presumption on top of theft, I told myself, and a firing offense, a bad reference offense, a criminal offense, a deporting offense, green card or no.

Had Dejah at least not thought of the consequences? I was more than a little frightened, and now I would have to confront them, demand they return the chintz curtains, fire them, refuse any further work for them, however sheepishly they might stand before me in the foyer and plead some lame defense. Or, more conveniently, I told myself, I could simply call them on the phone, let them know their services were no longer needed and let it go at that. But then I reminded myself how a phone call would quickly collapse under the language barriers, and I would be faced yet again with the two of them on my front doorstep.

At that sad prospect I started to compose myself, took a deep breath, and reminded myself of whom I was not, that I was not merely some harridan in a rage, not in an uncontrollable, throwing things kind of rage, and reassured myself of the essential worth of the maids and their work. I went back upstairs, lay on the bed and closed my eyes to the sheer curtains. An hour later, my anger had melted into mere disappointment, and I got up.

Yes, I would have a talk with Dejah, a calm talk. Dejah’s English was better than Marta’s. But if need be, she and I would wait until Mr. Santos of Santos and Son Lawn Care was outside and available to translate. I got up and drew back one of the new sheers, looked out the window at the spacious lawn below and could tell that Edgar, Mr. Santos the son, he with excellent English, would need to be mowing soon, perhaps within the week. I would have to make sure Edgar and the maids were here at the same time, and he might also help with the necessary phone calls to have his mowing day coincide with their floor scrubbing day. Then he could help me through my brief, calm talk with the maids about the importance of communicating with one’s employer regarding changes in decoration. I was willing to let it go at that-this time-and cheered up at the prospect of Edgar, a nice looking young man, coming into the foyer, if possible, with clean shoes. Eventually, the more I thought about it, the more the sheers seemed an improvement over The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

72 the chintz. Perhaps Edgar would want to see them for himself and end up feeling the same way-how they brought more light into the bedroom during the day and a sense of airiness into the room at night, and how my privacy was not affected because the bedroom windows were adequately shaded by tall pines just outside in the front yard, something I hadn’t noticed before. I went downstairs to water the plants in the sun room. At day’s end with a glass of sherry on the patio and dinner warming in the oven, I began to feel resigned and more accepting- an emotional arc, it also occurred to me, I had often experienced in my marriage to Max and lately with Robyn.

On the following week’s cleaning day, our calm translation day, I stood confidently facing my three hard workers in the foyer, but no longer felt the need for chastisement and could not bring myself to say much of anything to the maids beyond, and “What a surprise about the curtains!” and, “Have you and Edgar met?” I handed Dejah her paycheck, pointed upstairs, and the four of us walked upstairs to admire the sheers and the view.

But when they had left for the day, and I was alone, my practical side reasserted itself. I caught myself reflecting on next year’s higher real estate taxes and the house on the market. I began to imagine where I might end up once I finally did sell the place, where beyond joining the Walkers on the Paradise Marina for a two week cruise, and after that a condo in Leesburg, where I knew at least two or three people. This was in the late spring, and just a few days later Robyn and I sit on my patio looking at the house, our backs to the woods. I try to tell her what will happen, including a taste of apartment living before the house sells, but she has a somewhat different plan for me the maids and for me.

“The agent selling the place, Mr. Wurts, wants me to move out while it’s on the market,” I tell Robyn. “The house can’t look too lived in, he says. It’s all about staging, good photographs for ads and tiptop shape for open house Sundays. All the personal things, clothes, photographs, knickknacks, and so on should be stored. As for cleaning, the present cleaning help would not be needed. The realty firm’s own cleaning crews, painters, decorators and photographers and stagers would see to everything-to be paid by me as they The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

73 worked, needless to say. And the house may be on the market a good while. I must always remember the market for houses in this price range is very demanding as well as a small one. First impressions matter. New, upgraded furniture could be rented. And I’ll have to do something about the basement. Massive cleaning, probably painting, even clearing out all the storage, Mr. Wurts will have his way. I have to agree. The maids couldn’t handle that job, not alone.”

“You should fire them anyway,” Robyn said. “You already told me about the curtains incident, and who knows what they might do next? What if they show up some open house day and make a scene? First impressions, as you say. Now, if you were to move in with us for a time we would share expenses. You might contribute toward the rent and more groceries of course, plus help with the electric bill, and maybe do some light apartment cleaning if you’re up to it. If it all works out, maybe Barn and I could save up and start looking for a two-bedroom place. But I don’t see any need for us to move into a bigger place right away. As it is, I’m going to be working weekdays and Saturdays, and Barn is usually in class or studying at the library.

You could have the whole apartment all to yourself just about all day, and I’ll get one of those Chinese screens to put around the convertible couch at night.”

This was in late spring, and that Sunday evening I kept the bedroom windows open. I was tired so early now-the stress of the house, the open house days coming up, more bills, plus the move to I knew not where- and I prepared for bed early. When the house would be on the market, the master bedroom would look airy and spacious in the real estate photographs and on open house days.

But the prospect of keeping the whole house- including the locked basement- ready for sale was daunting, tiring just to think about. I changed into my blue nightgown, crawled into bed, turned off my bedside lamp, tried to get my mind off real estate but soon wondered who would wander through the bedroom on Sunday afternoons and who would actually buy it.

Once the house was sold, the bedroom would no longer be our room, of course, not Max and mine but some other couple’sThe Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

74 probably middle aged, ideally a well off couple able to keep the place up with just one or two kids who stayed out of trouble and would take advantage of the spacious lot and sufficient bathrooms, loving kids but not spoiled, family like my own before I married, respectful of their parents’ need for privacy, knocking first on the master bedroom door before barging in. And I imagined Mr. Wurts himself in his deep gray suit and red tie insinuating himself like docent leading his tour through the stage set. Questions for Mr. Wurts: Should the new family, the buyers, know I am a widow, part of the house’s recent, sad history, and that the master bedroom could be gloomy some nights, a room where the shadow of death might linger-Max dying next to me in his sleep in this same bed, a year ago now. A stroke or a heart attack? The doctor wasn’t sure which.

Suddenly I was sure I couldn’t leave the house and move into Robyn and Barn’s place, not so soon, not before they were married, certainly not before they were engaged. Robyn would have to have that ring and settle on a date- settle on a season at least- for me to cope with any embarrassment- as if any of my friends would want to visit me at Robyn’s apartment in any case. For that matter, Robyn could also be rude and grumpy and was not a good housekeeper.

Maybe a cruise would be the answer for me getting out of the house, a cruise already paid for by the Walkers, and maybe I could extend the cruise on my own, possibly live on the cruise ship without the Walkers after the first two weeks, though that prospect, too, proved worrisome when the angel of practicality reminded me to consider the bills of cruises and the reality of no quick sales and a smallish market.

I sat up and would work on my crossword puzzle for an hour or so to quiet my mind. But before I could turn on the lamp I felt a gentle breeze from the open windows, and through the dark I could make out the sheer curtains stirring. I kept the lamp off, closed my eyes and tried to think only of Max. Tonight, I prayed, Max would come to me in a dream and make love to me--not arrive with yet another cautionary message about the house or about Robyn and Barn, harsh, edgy Robyn, unprepossessing Barn, or about money. Would The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

75 they even last as a couple? As the breadwinner, Robyn could tell Barn how to behave, but perhaps he would resent Robyn as yet another woman trying to tell him what to do with his life. As it was, there had always been something dubious about the prospective son in law that made me mistrust him, although to be fair he was always polite with me. But Max too had not been impressed with Barn, something I might share with Max again. Perhaps another dream would also put a stop to ideas about moving in with Robyn and Barn. I would make that clear to Max as well as state my own needs to be loved. He would listen to me for a change, I promised myself, and he did.

The next morning I hummed a cheerful Mozart tune as I showered and dressed, and made myself a decent breakfast for a change, a hearty, back to normal kind of breakfast that would set me up for a summer morning working in the garden. I would have breakfast in the dining room while reading the paper and following the news of the day if only remind myself how I was much better off than most. But as I walked through the dining room on my way to the kitchen I was surprised to see a tablecloth had been spread over the table, a lovely white lace tablecloth I had never seen before. I had not been in the dining room in several days and usually got to the kitchen by turning down the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. I preferred a bare dining room table when not in use- my shiny mahogany Chippendale with a golden bowl placed in the center. The bowl was still there, and the lace tablecloth did look nice while letting the polished mahogany shine through. I would remove the tablecloth later after thanking the maids. I would even leave it on for several weeks so as not to let them think I had rejected it.

Before turning toward the kitchen, I noticed something else, something resting on the buffet- a print of early Renaissance decorative motifs that usually hung on the wall behind the buffet. The glass in the frame had cracked, and would have to be replaced. One of the maids must have knocked it off while dusting or cracked it with the vacuum cleaner pipe. I smiled at the simple justice of the tablecloth making up for the cracked glass, then wondered if some other and as yet unknown damage in the bedroom had led to the maids hanging the sheer curtains.

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76 Perhaps they had damaged the old chintz curtains while vacuuming, or perhaps they had removed chintz in turn to propitiate some other household for some other carelessness.

My anger and disappointment were returning. Yes, I thought, the maids were simply, if also naively, incompetent and would have to go. Max for sure would not have tolerated such carelessness. He would have fired them-or he would have asked me to fire them. But at least I would do it in my own way, a nicer way. But now, as long as I was still living there, the house would not likely sell right away, and there would be enough time to be kind when I let them go. I would first tell the two of them some story about having to travel overseas and having to rent out the house before it sold, saying my supposed tenants would have to decide on their own about having a cleaning service. I would promise the maids to recommend them to my supposed tenants, and try to convey the supposed tenant’s supposed decision to them as soon as I knew it. I smiled as the white lies took shape. Here, Edgar Santos would have to translate the lies, but everything would be settled. There would be no fuss, no harsh words, and I wouldn’t have to worry about offending Dejah and Marta any more than I would have to worry about moving in with Robyn and Barn too soon.

With so much more to think about, I did not sleep well the next night, got up at dawn, and could not recall having a dream. I set out fresh sheets for the maids to work with, wrote their bi-weekly check- their last check- and placed it on the foyer table for them to find in case I wanted to avoid lying to them face to face. I took the newspaper, coffee and toast out to the patio table and settled in to wait for them. They usually came at ten, and I had three hours to go over what I would say, more than enough time to prepare. I finished my breakfast and moved from the patio table to the chaise longue. It would be a long wait after my restless night, and I closed my eyes.

The noonday sun woke me, but the house seemed so still I thought the maids might have come and gone as I slept. I squinted at the glass patio doors but could see no one moving inside. I had left the front door unlocked for them as usual, and part of me hoped they The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

77 had just left without saying goodbye. But no, not yet. There could be no goodbye without the tale about tenants and Edgar to translate. I went inside and relocked the front door. I walked from the patio into the family room and from there into the kitchen. The kitchen and downstairs rooms had not been cleaned, and the upstairs rooms were silent. No new messages had been left on the phone. I walked into the living room, looked out the front windows and did not see the maid’s car. This day of all days the maids had not shown up. I turned around in the foyer and saw their last check remained on the hall table. But next to the check was something else, something shocking- a gun, a 45 automatic in a holster. When I caught my breath I recognized it as Max’s old army sidearm, kept on the top shelf of the master bedroom closet and rarely moved.

I started up the stairs but stopped in fear, though I could not tell myself what I was afraid of other than the gun itself. Had the maids- the maids who rarely looked up- somehow found the gun and panicked? Then I heard something upstairs, a footfall, a bump, something. Had the house been burgled? Was the thief still in the house and upstairs? Should I head for the kitchen phone and call the police? Should I run out of the house and across the patio and hide in the woods, or run straight out the front door, down the drive and into the street, screaming for help all the way? But the gun was right here, not upstairs. I braced myself, pulled the gun from its holster and started back up the stairs.

When I got to the master bedroom I glanced into the walk-in closet and saw a tall man in jeans and a sweatshirt with his back to me.

He was looking for something, but I had the gun. I had fired the gun once in my life, years ago before Robyn was born. Max had rented a mountain cabin in West Virginia for all of August and kept the gun with his fishing gear.

“Bears like fish too,” he told me when I complained about his bringing the gun. The same day he showed me where the gun’s safety catch was and how to fire and reload. He put an empty peach can on a tree stump thirty feet away, got far out of my way and told me to take it in both hands, squeeze the trigger and fire at the can. Incredibly, I The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

78 hit it on the first try, but I didn’t like the 45’s hard kick and the loud, angry bang it made in the forest. Now I wasn’t sure I could fire it again or hit anything with it.

“I have a gun,” I said to the man in the closet. “Don’t turn around.”

“Hey,” he said without turning around, “don’t shoot. It’s just me, Barn. Can I turn around? It’s just me.”

“My God, yes. I’m so sorry. I thought you were a burglar.”

He turned around and smiled at me, and I pointed the gun at the floor.

“Robyn sent me over to fetch her dad’s 45, and I saw the front door was open a crack, so I stuck my head in and called out your name, but there wasn’t any answer. I thought you must be out for a walk or something, then I thought maybe you were on the patio, so I went out there and saw you were asleep.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I didn’t see any need to do that, so I went upstairs. Robyn told me where to look for it, and I found it right away. When I went back downstairs I realized I had forgotten to take the box of shells, so I put the 45 on the table and went back up into the closet where they were. But watch where you aim it, cause it’s loaded as is.”

“What does Robyn want with it?”

“Actually she wants me and her to both have it cause of a break-ins in our building. The police are looking into it. But you never know, these burglars or whatever might try our apartment next, so she wants some protection. She’s alone there some evenings during the week when I’m in class. It’s for her peace of mind. I can show her how to use it. I was brought up with guns, not 45’s exactly, but shotguns and a rifle for hunting.”

He held out his hand for the pistol.

“Oh, Barn, I don’t know. I probably should keep it. It was Max’s, as you say. Where are your own guns now, the shotgun and the rifle?”

“My brother Jessie has them.”

“The brother up in Canada?”

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79 “Yeah, that one, Jessie and his wife, Marina.”

“And three kids?”

“Yeah, three of them now.”

“I always used to worry about having the gun when Robyn was growing up, worried she might find it. You might worry about it, too, when you have kids, or maybe Robyn would worry eventually.

Kids snoop and always find them, especially the pistols. She knows that. When she was six or seven, I’m sure she knew right where this one was, but of course she never said anything to her father or to me about finding it. It was a secret something to do with life and death she wasn’t supposed to find or touch, but did find and did touch, probably more than once- a common enough occurrence in young families, I should think, with guns not too big for kids hidden awaysupposedly- in their parents’ closets and bedrooms. Anyway, I’m alone here too, every night and all night. I might need it more than Robyn does.”

“What do you want me tell her?”

“Don’t worry about it, Barn. I’ll talk to her myself. Would you like some coffee or maybe a glass of wine? I’m afraid I don’t have any beer.”

“No, thank you. I’m going to be late for class as it is.”

The following weekend, Robyn brought a bouquet of yellow roses with her when she came. I beamed when I saw them.

“How thoughtful you are today,” I said. Give me a few minutes to get them into a vase with fresh water, and then well have some tea on the patio. I guess Barn told you about your father’s pistol, and we can talk about that if you want, but I want to keep it here. I thought I should write you a check- if you really must have a gun in your house- and you can get one of your own.”

“No need,” Robyn said. “I’ve decided against it. They make me nervous- or will if we ever have kids. You did the right thing.”

“Hope the patio is all right for now. The maids just arrived.

They do clean the upstairs first, but I like to stay far out of their way.”

“You mean they need their own space to exercise their little problem with other people’s curtains.”

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80 “My maids? They do a good job on the floors and the bathrooms if now and then missing high corners.”

“High corners?”

“You know, where the cobwebs are. But I can take care of those on my own. You may have a glass of wine if you like.”

“Oh no, tea is fine. Could we have iced tea?”

“Yes, but give me a few minutes to make it.”

“Wonderful. I’ll meet you on the patio. Can I borrow one of your sun hats?”

“Of course. You know where they are.”

Robyn and the maids, I could tell, nearly collided on the stairs, they dragging their equipment up and she hurrying down with the hat.

“Be sure to clean top shelf,” I heard Robyn say slowly and pedantically, and before I went into the kitchen I saw her take a dust mop out of Marta’s hands and point it up, pumping the mop as if dusting air before handing it back.

Robyn came out to the patio just as I arrived with a tray of iced tea and two slices of angel food cake. She was taking her first sip just as the gun went off- a shockingly loud bang that carried into the back yard and echoed in the woods far beyond the patio.

I stood up trembling. “Oh no,” I think I said. “The gun.

The maids have found the gun. Something has happened. I know it.

Something has happened.”

“You stay right here, Mother,” she said. I’ll run upstairs to make sure they are all right. Stay right here.”

But I didn’t and ran into the house just as the maids were coming downstairs with all their gear.

“Where is the gun?” I asked Marta, but Marta did not seem to understand and shrugged.

Dejah, however, did understand.

“Gun fall off closet,” she said. But is OK. No hurt. Is gone now, went out window” and she made a shoving motion with her hand as she walked into the foyer.

Robyn came downstairs and frowned at them.

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81 “Give me the gun,” she said to Dejah. “I know you have it. I saw you holding it.”

“No, Miss Robyn, you want me looking? I not have pistola.

Went out window, maybe it fall into the big bush and hiedra, all the hiedra. Buen espiritu, I thinking, maybe Senor Max, he took it away.

Is bad luck, esa pistola, mala suerte.

Dejah turned to me and asked a memorable question: “You want me looking or leave to Senor Max the looking?”

“No, just go on home for today,” I told her.

“But we not finished.”

“Just go home or to your next house to clean. Edgar the gardener will find it, the pistola, tomorrow. Edgar,” and I made a pushing gesture with my arms. “I will call you for the next cleaning job. Please do not come here until I call you,” I said looking at both Dejah and Marta and trying to sound firm before hurrying them out the front door.

“Don’t ask them back, mother,” Robyn said and tried to sound firm in her turn before cutting her visit short.

I hadn’t slept well, but the following morning, I explained the lost gun to Edgar and emphasized its hazard. He spent a half hour raking the long patch of ivy, then another half hour rooting around the side of the house without finding the pistol. He asked if I wanted him to keep looking or get started with the mowing. I nodded yes to the mowing as the maids’ car pulled into the driveway. I hadn’t called them, but here they were, and I couldn’t muster the energy to send them home again. There was some discussion among the three of them, Edgar, Dejah and Marta as he helped them unload their equipment from the trunk, which of course I couldn’t follow. But I assumed their quick return was in order to finish what they had started and clean the downstairs of the house. I also noticed that after Dejah handed the vacuum cleaner to Edgar, she returned to the driver’s side of the car to fetch something wrapped in a small towel, placed the object in an empty bucket and covered the bucket with another towel.

The bucket must contain the replacement gift, I thought, and what could it be this time? A small bouquet? A figurine? A music The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

82 box? And why keep up the secrecy? Was it just a way to avoid the awkwardness of talking about the incident any further? Was it allied with some superstition about spirits and gifts, good and bad? Edgar was already on his tractor mower cutting the front lawn. I couldn’t think with the noise and went back into the house for tea, forgetting the maids would be working downstairs only this day. I went back upstairs, closed the bedroom windows, sat down in Max’s easy chair and closed my eyes to wait out the whole crew.

I didn’t know the maids were already replacing the lost pistola with another gun on the foyer table, an ivory handled 38, dusty but with elaborate engraving- a much older and more valuable piece I thought at the time, maybe a collector’s piece of the gun maker’s art and, I was to soon find out, loaded as well. I didn’t know Robyn had also returned to the house, and I didn’t hear her walk upstairs. I didn’t realize there would be only Dejah, Marta and Edgar to blame, should the investigation of what happened next be suspicious and lead to something other than “an unfortunate accident” or “careless gun handling” as a cause of death.

I opened my eyes and stood up when I heard someone coming upstairs- one of the maids, I thought. But I fell back in the chair when I saw it was Robyn pointing the pistol at my head. She was holding it with two hands and taking careful aim, and I saw her about to pull the trigger. I closed my eyes, but nothing happened, nothing more than a click- a cruel joke, I thought. I opened my eyes and was about to scold her as she pulled the trigger again, when nothing happened but another click. But she tried a third time, and this time the old gun exploded in her face.

“A terrible accident,” so I told the police sergeant and the lieutenant that afternoon after an emergency crew left with Robyn.

“Yes,” I went on, “I handed the pistol to my daughter without realizing the gun was so old and so loaded, then went downstairs to pay the maids.

“Then I heard it go off, the explosion, and I ran back upstairs.

Somehow it just went off on its own. I can’t imagine her trying to shoot the thing in the house. Maybe the hammer slipped and an old bullet The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

83 had got stuck in the barrel. I don’t really know guns, not like her father did or her fiancé. It’s a terrible tragedy, this accident. I’ll never get over it. Something I’ll have to live with. Her father’s old gun. My late husband, you know, would be heartbroken and angry, perhaps is already. She just wanted a closer look, and I handed it to her, and in that I killed her. My own fault. Something I shall have to live with.

Do I have to go with you to the police station?”

“No, Ma’am, you do not,” said the lieutenant, a woman about my age. “There may be an inquest some weeks from now, but I think what happened is already clear enough.”

“Would you like some coffee or tea, or maybe a glass of wine?

“No, thank you, Ma’am. And we are sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you for saying that. Something I have to live with.”

George McLoone grew up in Arizona but has lived and worked mainly in Northern Virginia outside Washington.

He is a graduate of Georgetown University and he has published literary criticism as well as fiction. His recent publications include fiction in Pulse Literary Journal, Northwind, Alfie Dog, The Northern Virginia Review, and The Galway Review.

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84

Novella -Part -1

Zdravka Evtimova

Perhaps I behave so foolishly on account of my confused childhood

and the endless July evenings when I was alone with my enormous mass.

The trucks loaded with scrap iron would roar at night, reeking of diesel, shaking the windows with the reverberating sound of their engines, and I could not sleep. I had the feeling that a line of two hundred trucks crept along my aorta and would burst into my heart-- I had always imagined it was a defective organ that would put its owner in jeopardy. The trucks were my father’s; he was ruining himself to make a bright future for me, exporting pig iron from the metallurgy plant in the town, importing scrap iron - meaning heaps of rusty iron wires stolen every now and then from different places.

In general, he was killing himself quite successfully. A few thugs had The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

85 shot at him a couple of times. He was no lesser a thug than they were, but he had a convincing excuse: he loved his fat daughter very much.

But why should he love me? I was a greasy bulldozer for whom the seamstresses had to sew special jeans into which a hippopotamus could comfortably crawl.

Bombs exploded twice in front of our house. On one of the occasions, my mother’s upper arm was wounded: a scratch. She then spent twenty-five days in the hospital. After that incident, she left us and went to live with the doctor who had healed her wound. My mother was a very beautiful woman with green eyes that contained falling oak leaves in autumn and sprouting oak trees in spring. Actually, there was a whole calendar in her eyes, but it wasn’t so much her eyes as her endless legs that compelled the doctor to fall head over heels for her. I have inherited her green eyes, but in my case, they are almost always invisible under the hills of fat that surround them. I have inherited something from my father as well - he was enormous, with a broad back and a popping belly.

My mother left us before the trucks started rumbling at night.

After she ran off with all her belongings and boxes and bottles of make up, Daddy made up his mind to become the biggest, richest player in town so mother would drown in a lake of misery asking herself why she had cut the throat of the hen that would have laid golden eggs for her.

My father could read a little and was quite familiar with the multiplication table, which was just enough for his business. Perhaps it was the hardness of his skull that made him the proud proprietor of two hundred completely different trucks with which he sold iron, cucumbers, potatoes, condoms, medicines, and the rest. Mother used to tell the story of how, before she married my father, other guys used to beat him up at least twice a week. Later, she seemed to take a certain twisted pleasure in this memory, seeing nothing in the man she married, that enormous semi-literate oaf, but a swamp of love and sympathy for me, with nothing left over for her. That must have made her furious. I was his only child and had heavy breasts under which the greasy pillow of my belly began; bellow it my gigantic The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

86 thighs jutted out, jiggling like bowls of soup. Let me not speak of my behind whose volume probably put to shame that of the sand in the Sahara.

For quite a while my swollen body didn’t get me into trouble; even when we were poor my father left rolls of one hundred dollar bills in the drawer of the kitchen table. He never counted them, saying the money was mine. Mother, whose name was Kalina (I guess her name hasn’t changed yet), used to nod her head enviously remarking that the wad of bills in her drawer was smaller than the one in mine.

She had everything. The best massage expert in town, Maria by name, came to take care of her beautiful figure. The most distinguished beautician was responsible for her face--the most famous artist in Pernik, a bearded phoney with a baldhead and the manners of a well-trained pug had already drawn seven pictures of my mother in different poses. Her flesh twinkled on the canvas, and my father would rush towards her, with his eyes first, then with his body, flowing hurriedly to her. She was a shrewd woman, my mother was.

She got a degree in law from the local university even before she left us and started integrating herself into the cultural elite of the town. Perhaps she is integrating herself perfectly in the house of her new husband; Doctor Xanov was one of the richest surgeons in the region, younger than she was and very tall. He worked in Pirogov hospital , had a staggeringly large number of private patients on his list, and, unlike my father, he never swore.

Doctor Xanov made great efforts to diminish the fat under my skin; he was unaware of the fact that my lard thawed whenever I looked at him. My father often fought with other guys when brandy turned his brains into soup. Even when his chauffeurs, time and again, brought him home bashed, thrashed, and very bloody, he looked at me as if I weren’t a fat, female colossus but the most beautiful girl in the world. Sometimes, in the evenings, he used to put his enormous hand on my head. His palm was the size of a small pillow and had an indefinite number of notches, scars, and wounds from his fights, but on my head it felt smoother than honey. My father didn’t say anyThe Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

87 thing, just looked at me, peacefully. I suppose he might have felt sorry for me, for he knew women well, and felt that a fat one like me had no chance whatsoever. He simply loved me as a dog loves his puppy even when it is ugly.

In happier days when the guys brought Dad home drunk and squashed after his regular sprees, Doc Xanov would come to our house to patch him up. Of course, he got juicy fees for his services.

My mother helped and did her best handing him bandages, little squares of gauze, or disinfectant. It was perhaps at that time that they fell in love; however, that was not the subject of my curiosity. It is curious for me that, after my father was shot, Doctor Xanov and my mother stood by my side at his funeral, looking so sad, as if they both suffered from a splitting toothache.

It was at that time that Doctor Xanov let his hand drop on my shoulder; compared to my father’s paw it felt like a slimy hen’s beak pecking at my hair. Doctor Xanov’s eyes were brown, the color of frozen leaves fallen long ago from their autumn branches that had just begun to decompose in the first warm days of spring.

As doctor Xanov examined me, he stuck his forefinger into the lard of my belly showing my mother that the finger sunk in to the knuckle. His forefinger certainly did not sink into my mother’s belly because her belly is flat and hard as brass. Her green eyes were of the same quality and that was why I avoided looking into them.

The police didn’t find out who shot my father, and that was only natural. They almost never did unless you were some big shot whose widow would be willing to speak to the press about it. Mother was not at all willing to do that. Perhaps Father had thrashed and flogged many of his enemies, for before he died somebody set fire to the cafe he had built, and twice bombs exploded under his Mercedes. She might have been upset, but she didn’t show it. Finally, they killed him without dramatics; two bullets in the forehead and that was that.

Doctor Xanov thought I went off my hinges, but he didn’t use those exact words when he diagnosed me. “A permanent shock” was how he put it. The truth was I was not scared of blood. At least once a week Father was brought home dripping and stained with blood.

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88 I suddenly was aware I would never again see his brown eyes that looked at me as if I were a perfectly normal seventeen- year- old girl.

I would have done anything to make him come back to life.

He loved me as the sparrow loves its little sparrows, not with his brains (for is it possible for a human brain to love the equivalent of twenty-five frying pans of bacon?); he loved me with his blood, which had spilled and splashed onto the pavement.

My mother and father used to sleep in a spacious bedroom situated very far from my own but on the same floor of the house. In the middle of the night, I often heard screeching sounds and moans, so it was evident they made love. I would feel my blood howling in my ears. I would take a shower to cool the flaming lard of my body, but instead of getting cooler, I had the impression that the water evaporated at the touch of my skin. The bathroom had mirrors on all its walls--mother had wanted it to be that way so that every square inch could reflect the perfection of her pearl-like body.

Sometimes I stayed with her while the masseuse labored diligently over her thighs, feeling transfixed, enchanted by her beauty. She looked at me with green jungle eyes with liana vines that strangled my throat.

I could not imagine how she looked in the spacious bedroom with the marble floor and pictures drawn by dubious painters who pawned their splotchy works of art off on my father at incredible prices. How would he know what a good painting looked like?

My grandfather owns seven nanny goats and one cow; my father’s mother, big and strong like the motor of a BMW car, herded the cow non-stop, silent, severe and grim. One day she remarked to my father gloomily, “She will be the death of you,” meaning, of course, my mother.

I could not imagine mother under the silver canopy of their matrimonial bed; but she might have been very good for she conquered the most prestigious catch, Xanov the surgeon, seven years her junior.

Doctors, artists, and teachers in the provincial high school I attended fawned before my father. The brilliant female teachers in the private college I chose to study at did exactly the same because he paid them well to teach me the latest dances--rock-and-roll and tangos The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

89 -- me, under whose steps the parquet floor in the dance hall became unglued. My father couldn’t spell the word “address” correctly, but he had all those rolls of one hundred dollar bills which were stronger than any doctor, policemen, or teacher, more powerful than the whole group labeled ‘the elite’. He had money to burn. So did I. I had never bought porno DVDs or porno magazines. I once found some Italian ones, which my mother kept at the bottom of her chest of drawers; I looked at them for no more than ten minutes. The next night I ran a temperature, felt giddy, and threw up. And that was not an insignificant event considering my imposing mass. It was that night that I made my decision: what I could not achieve by myself, my father’s money would secure for me. How could I invite a man to my room considering the fact that in all the four suburbs of the town everybody worked for my father? The drivers of the 200 trucks, the petty scrap iron traders, the owners of car services, my father watched everything closely, businesses throve under his shadow, the city cops and the best lawyers worked for him. How would I find someone who didn’t know my father—and how much would I have to pay him to keep it quiet?

My father had appointed a brawny man named Dancho for my personal chauffeur and he drove me in my jeep wherever I wanted to go. He was always with me, my shadow. Once my jeep was shot at because the attackers thought my father was inside. Bullets splintered Dancho’s left shoulder destroying some nerves making his hand droop like a rag. He couldn’t raise it to the steering wheel. He couldn’t even make a fist. But he drove on, blood pouring from the wound, more concerned about what my father would do if he did not get me to safety than his own skin. Dancho was my bodyguard; he guarded it better than his own. It would not be easy escaping his shadow.

I would have to get out of our neighborhood of tall houses with courtyards and swimming pools. I could only find the man I needed where the eight-story flat buildings were; there lived the sacked workers from the steel combine that went bankrupt three years before.

Most of the men were unemployed now. My father hired a few of the The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

90 lucky ones and the rest stayed in the rooms of their small apartments in the daytime and got drunk in the evenings at “The Last Penny”, a cheep pub run by my father where lousy alcohol was sold.

In those old blocks of flats, I hoped to find my man. Although rumors about my father, and about me and my fat haunches, sprang up almost every day, and songs about Mother circulated—with the occasional pornographic lyric and inaccurate descriptions of her body parts—and flooded the town, the people from that area had never seen me in person.

I told Dancho that I was going to the town library, but I snuck my way to one of the dozens of little shops selling second-hand clothes. Most of the town’s population bought their shirts and trousers from there, but who would ever think that the only daughter of Bloody Rayo would go shopping in the sleazy districts that smelled of sweat and urine? I dropped in at exactly eight neighborhoods like this and intentionally hung around in the sleaziest one; the cellar of one building was flooded. The water in it had turned into slime and pond scum, half of the first floor was abandoned, and in one of the remaining empty rooms, there was a second-hand clothes shop. I guess it would be more accurate to say fifteenth-hand or twentieth -hand shop. It was evident that the shop assistant did not recognize me.

She was very dark and there was dirt under her nails, her face was wrinkled and hidden below a layer of makeup some miles thick.

“What do you want?” she asked me, adding acidly, “You are very fat and I don’t know if there are any clothes that will fit you.”

“I’d like a skirt,” I explained to her.

“Um, uh… you’d be lucky if I found any dress for you at all. I haven’t got a skirt that big. Try this dress on, but it is expensive, mind you. It’s the only one I have that large.” She wanted one lev for the dress. For the first time in my life, I was told that something that cost one lev was expensive. I paid her without any hesitation; the woman gave me a dragon’s grin, causing the make-up to melt, and it flowed, mixed with sweat, down her cheeks towards her wrinkled neck. In a flash, she offered me two more dresses, as enormous as the previous The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

91 one, but this time she said they cost ten levs apiece. She showed me a pair of shoes as well, so warped and torn that you could only use their heels to hit a stray dog on the head with or simply throw them in the trash.

“Wonderful merchandise,” she boasted. “You can walk with these shoes for six years. They’re already patched up so you won’t need to bring them to a cobbler.”

I did not buy the shoes. I chose a pair of slippers instead, which hardly clung to my heels, and gave her five levs for them. The woman grabbed at the money, stuck it right away in her bra and scratched her hand as if the bill had burned her skin. Then she jumped up, squeezed my arm, and dragged me to the upper floor; where she had “posh merchandise for big babes like you, love”. She showed me a bathrobe mended in seven or eight places, worn and frayed as if a combat tank had driven over it several times. Then she unlocked a chest of drawers that was full of blouses--yellow, green, pink, and faded as if all that posh merchandise had been soaked in sulfuric acid. “Five levs apiece,” the woman announced generously without letting go my hand.

Her palm was very warm; then she took hold of my shoulder with both her hands and offered me a pair of underpants the size of a tent. I bought them for ten levs which made the woman gape at me. For maybe a whole minute she stood dumbfounded, then she hugged me and kissed my cheek.

“God bless you”, she whispered, her mouth dripping with saliva.

“God be with you every minute of your life!” At that very moment it dawned on me that, I could ask if she knew of a guy for me.

“What’s your name?” I asked. Suspicion shone immediately in her eyes, black and slippery like a skating rink.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to come back to shop from you.”

“My name’s Natasha”, she answered. “But my true Gypsy name is Fatma.” I thought about the fact that I could buy all of her posh merchandise, the whole block of flats, the cellars of slime and mold with the smallest of the rolls of money my father had given me. The The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

92 woman had sunk her black eyes into mine and refused to let go of my arm. “You want something else. I can tell that by looking at you.”

“Listen, Fatma. Can you find a man for me?”

She went on plunging her eyes deeper into my head.

“You want a man?” she repeated slowly.

“Yes” I answered. Her eyes left mine and crept along the hills of my breasts, balanced on the greasy pillow of my belly, and then descended to my thighs. After that her hands let go of my shoulder, patted my stomach and back and, without any decorum whatsoever, groped my ass as if it were a vast unexplored part of the globe.

“You are fat”, she clicked her tongue several times. “Very fat, I tell you. Tell me when you want to marry him and I’ll tell you how much it will cost.”

It was clear she had not understood. Her words made me shake as a result of which my belly and the cushions of lard above my waist wobbled like sacks stuffed with cabbage.

“You’re really fat,” she went on. “Are you sick, is it some illness that makes you so fat?”

“I’m healthy.”

“Then you eat too much. That’s good. It means you have a lot of food at home. Don’t you, eh? You bought so many things. I wish I were fat myself,” she sighed and groped me once again, this time on my belly. “Can you breed?” she asked. I did not answer. The whips of suspicion lashed me.

“Does your monthly blood flow regularly?” she added.

“Yes, it does.”

“What sort of a guy do you want, scrawny or a fat one like you?”

“I’d like a skinny one. But…” “What?”

“I don’t want to marry him.”

“What!” She hiccupped heavily then surveyed me carefully, her face underneath the make-up so deep in thought that the wrinkles stretched and shone like parallels and meridians on the globe of her cheeks. “Oh, yeah,” she patted my arm once again and winked at me.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll bring a married man to you, and you’ll give him someThe Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

93 thing for his kids. He’ll be pleased and you’ll be pleased. Kiro has five children. You’ll have to fetch two doughnuts for each kid. I know a bakery where they sell them cheap.”

“No. I don’t want a married man,” I thought about my father, about me, my mother, and suddenly I was out of sorts imagining the children and the doughnuts from the cheap bakery. “I want to get to know a guy well,” I lied to her.

“Oh, come on,” Fatma winked at me. “Do you want him now?”

I was not ready to make such a quick decision but I thought that I might not be able to free myself from Dancho the next day. Mother had invited a brilliant family of lawyers to dinner. She was in her second year of studying law and a number of bright constellations from the law universe were always visiting our home. Any barrister or notary was flattered to be her guest, of course.

She had not graduated yet but tributes were sung in her honor noting her particular legal talents. I still cannot explain why she forced me to attend these dinners; my father usually stayed with us for no more than eight minutes--that was the length of time he could endure without cursing--then somebody would call him on his mobile to sign an important business deal.

It was mother who always arranged this, carefully selecting the person who would telephone my father. She chose my attire for the dinners as well. “We’ll hide your thighs with this”, she would murmur, slipping a black skirt on me; her theory was that the black color concealed the extra fat. Alas, under the black skirt my legs were like mountains of the Himalayas. “And we’ll hide your belly with this.

Can’t you suck your stomach in a little?” she would ask, very concerned; in those moments I hated her. “We must find a dancing partner for you.”

Now Fatma, who perhaps was my mother’s age but looked three times older with the plaster of make-up on her face and the parallels and meridians under it, repeated her question: “Do you want him now?”

I had to make up my mind.

“I want him now,” I answered, meditating no further. “But where The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

94 will we get to know each other? I can’t bring him to my home.”

“Your parents will object, eh?” Fatma winked and patted me on the cheek. “Your folks have fed you well, that’s why they protect you so much. And they’re right. If you don’t mind using one of the dresses you bought to spread on the floor, you can get to know him within a minute.” Then she scrutinized me from head to toe. “Honey, step out of my shop,” her chin pointed at the old cardboard boxes full of rags. “You might steal my merchandise while I’m gone. Wait for me outside. I’ll bring the guy in a minute.”

“How much will it cost?” I asked her. My father always started any negotiation with the question “How much? US dollars, British pounds or Euros?”

“I want five levs. You can give him … well that’s something between him and you. Work it out for yourself.”

Fatma took me out into the corridor. People must have been living there for there was a picture of a family on one of the boxes, a father, a mother and three kids, boys whose hair was cropped to the very bone of the skull. I figured they’d had lice. There was purple wallpaper on all the walls with some variation of a horrible flower pattern that had surely brought both parents and children to the edge of insanity. The strips of wallpaper were ripped off and stuck desperately to the floor; the cracked brick masonry covered by thick patches of mold was visible under them.

I thought about the wallpaper in my room, about the marble floor and my bed, which my father had bought for me from Austria.

There was a button I could push that would lift it to a certain angle whenever I wanted to sit up; there was another button that made the bed sway like an ocean liner. I had a waterbed as well that mother had bought for me during one of her excursions to North America. I took out one of the dresses that I had acquired; it was dark red, faded and frayed at the hem. Mother wouldn’t even have allowed me to throw it into our waste-bin for fear it was full of nits, tapeworm, ticks and other vermin. I could spread that dress on the floor, but where?

Suddenly I was scared.

What was I doing?

The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

95 It was summer. My father had made plans to go to Austria and import a new batch of used automobiles; he intended to import two tractors at a very advantageous price. He was a successful international businessman. What was I doing in this narrow walkway; the scorching heat outside had made the ground split the way men severed the bones of a slaughtered pig. Even the flagstones of the sidewalk had become unglued from the sweltering sun, but the slime in the cellar had not yet dried up. A suspicious stink reached my nose.

“Men are wicked and envious, love,” Fatma had remarked when we entered the room I was to wait in. “They want to ruin my business, so they throw dead puppies in the flooded cellar. It’s not dangerous.

No one from this block of flats has died yet. Some guys coughed a little on account of the smell, but then they forgot about it.”

After a short time of waiting, I heard footsteps along the flight of stairs that reverberated like slaps in my face. After several seconds Fatma appeared, her make-up smiling greasily for it was evident she had plastered another layer of it and had erased the sweaty streams leading to her withered breasts.

“Here he comes”, she announced, leading by the arm a mere strip of a man whom she pushed towards me. “He’s very scrawny, it’s true”, she admitted. “But the guy is tough and strong, mind you. Every night he unloads marble slabs at the station in Pernik,” she looked at me closely, slapped my cheek and suddenly snapped, “Spread your dress here and don’t make the bloke wait. I won’t let you in the shop, you might pilfer anything, just anything,” then she turned around, the slaps of her steps echoed down the stairs of the flooded cellar.

The string--the thin streak of a man that unloaded marble slabs at the station-- and I were alone. He was much taller than me, lanky and narrow-shouldered like a shoe box, and his hips were as broad as my upper arm. He was wearing a dirty lilac T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were cut off above the knees, and from there a net of tousled threads hung loosely to the concrete floor. The maypole immediately took off his cut jeans.

His eyes were muddily green, almost yellow; then he took off his dirty T-shirt and flaunted his lusterless puny chest before me. I The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017

96 remembered the men in the pictures of my mother’s porno magazines which I had peeked at; their muscles had been taut, bulging like fighter aircraft, while the muscles of the maypole were practically invisible. It was impossible to miss the detail that the man wore nothing under his jeans, and it felt awkward staring at the part of his body that interested me most.

He came toward me and didn’t make any efforts to undress me. My blouse had pasted itself with sweat to my paunch. It turned out I was incapable of taking off my skirt, so I let him help me. His efforts were great and futile, which made me doubt that he could actually unload marble if he couldn’t manage somebody’s backside—even if it was my backside.

I took hold of his shoulders, which felt brittle beneath my fingers.

“Say ’I love you,’” I ordered.

“I love you,” the guy repeated obediently.

“Say `You are the only girl I love in the world’,” I commanded.

“You are the only… It’s too long,” the maypole complained and added, “I want ten levs.”

“Ok.” “I want them now.”

“No. After.”

My father’s favorite saying was “Don’t pay beforehand if you want good service.”

I touched him, the place on a man’s body I had always dreamt of touching. My hand burned. He groaned. My father’s groans were the same: like when a bone gets stuck in a cat’s throat and the cat tries to spit it out. It was strange I didn’t feel the pain I had read about. It didn’t hurt at all; it didn’t feel so great either. I simply had to live through it and explore the sensation again. The man’s eyes had become purely yellow and shone like crystals of cracked mica on his dark face. He clung to me, a drowning rat clutching at the skin of a whale. It felt as if he were driving nails into a bag of down, rocking slowly, his eyes of mica hidden under shut eyelids. His narrow shoulders could sink effortlessly into every part of my big body; I myself sank pleasantly downwards into the concrete floor, nurturing a vague idea that I’d bore a hole in it any minute.

The Wagon Magazine - October- 2017

97 Suddenly the man relaxed with his eyes still closed. Saliva ran from his mouth resembling the glitter of the mica I had noticed in his eyes. The guillotine of my buttocks pressed a little pool of blood to the concrete floor, which did not make any impression on me.

Theoretically, I had been prepared for it. I could already report that in practical terms no matter how fat I was I had become a woman.

The sliver forgot to get down from me, yawned, and fell asleep in the comfortable nest of my blubber. Even though he was scrawny, I could feel his weight heavily on me, so I budged and his head hit the floor.

The guy was startled, but only for a moment, then yawned again, revealing a lake of saliva shining in his mouth, his dark hands clinging to me, like pencils writing the enormous sentence of my body.

Suddenly the beanpole broke into a sweat and started slithering on to me, and then unexpectedly his lips grounded inaccurately upon mine. I don’t know if I could count this as my first kiss with a man; but since I hadn’t experienced an event like it before I decided I might as well accept it as such.

This happened when my father was still alive. to be continued...

Zdravka Evtimova was born in Bulgaria where she

works as a literary translator from English, German and French. Her latest short story collections are: “Carts and Other Stories”, Fomite Publishing, Vermont, USA, 2012, and “Impossibly Blue”, SKREV Press, UK, 2013. Her short story collection “Endless July and Other Stories” was published by Paraxenes Meres, Greece, 2013. Her novel “Sinfonia Bulgarica” was published in USA, Fomite Books in 2014; in Italy, Salento Books in 2015, and in Macedonia, Antolog Books in 2015. The novel was published in Serbia in 2016.

Her short stories have been published in 32 countries in the world including USA (Massachusetts Review, New Sudden Fiction, Antioch review etc),Canada, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, China etc. Her short story “Seldom” was included in the anthology -Best European Fiction 2015, Dalkey Archive Press, USA. The Wagon Magazine - October - 2017