TOUGH LIT. V

Horrible Situation

by Riki Vogel

“Five hundred enough?” asked Billy when I emerged, refreshed from the shower wearing a towel turban and a housedress. My husband and son sat at the kitchen table.

“That’s your call.” I rubbed my hair dry.

“We can get Mom more,” Billy said. “Let’s see if we succeed smuggling this amount to her.”

“Should we send a note?” I asked.

Chad leaned over his dad. “Write: ‘Sorry your piggy bank got lost in the move.’”

“Perfect,” I seconded.

“I’ll phone her now,” said Chad.

“Ask her if she’s got keys to her cell,” Billy said, deadpan.

“I might need a power drill to spring her!”

“Your sister means well,” I told Billy.

“Hell is paved with good intentions.”

“You sound like your old man,” I said to Billy.

“Mom’s a prisoner. No visitors. No checkbook. Her furniture’s mostly gone.”

“She’s down,” added Chad. “Last time I saw her, her fridge was empty of what she likes. Only cranberry juice and frozen dinners in there.” He scrunched up his face in disgust. “It’s like she’s not the same grandma I used to know.”

“I spotted a jar of Sunshine pickled peaches, when we visited,” said Billy. “Maybe her warden got them for her.”

“Dad, I bought them for her months ago, the last time I visited.”

“Before we left, I got her half a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts,” I added. “Otherwise, all she eats is Lean Cuisine. Everyone likes a little fat or salt once in a while. Yet, you got to admit, Billy, your mom looks healthier and spryer than she has in years.” I put my hand on his shoulder. He squirmed.

“Thinner,” Billy said. “Sis has her on a regimen. Soon she’ll be pumping iron!” Billy looked wistful. “Remember how Sis jutted out her chin when she told us that Mom refuses to bathe and her maid was going to make her?”

“That was so typical of your mom… what Mama told the maid,” I said.

“That she doesn’t need to squeal to my sister about whether she showers or not?”

“I bet your mom wants to bribe Sis’s maid not to tell on her,” I said. “To keep secrets.”

Billy laughed. “Oh, yeah. Of course. That’s her M.O. But Mom has no money. Her checkbook has been confiscated. She’s mad. She wouldn’t even refer to Sis by name—just used pronouns like her, them, and those. And when you left for the donuts, she showed me where Sis forged her name on checks.”

“Really? What can we do, though? What could we have done?

Your mama made it clear she didn’t want to live with us or go to a nursing home or hire a caregiver in her home.” I shrugged. “She chose to move to her daughter’s town. It was her choice. It seemed the perfect solution. Remember that, Billy.” I touched my husband’s arm as I squinted at him. He scratched his arm where I had lightly rubbed it.

“Seemed,” he grunted.

“Mama gave in to Aunt Gwynne,” said Chad. “Aunt Gwynne wore her down.”

“Mom’s in a funk,” said Billy.

“Your sister wanted to help. That was her intention.” I looked hard at my husband.

“Controlling is how I’d describe that kind of helping,” said Billy 2

with folded arms.

“Like mother, like daughter,” I thought to myself.

“Mimaw won’t last long unhappy like this,” said Chad. Compassion for his grandma crossed over his eyes like a cloud passing over a lustrous full moon. I remember my son’s face that way, the expression he had when he decided to visit his grandma that very day two months ago. * * * All that happened after Chad left to see his grandma I pieced together from various sources. Apparently, Chad had the presence of mind to record what he remembered, along with his conversation with his “granny.” He left his smart phone on the sink at a pit stop near the border. Cops recovered it.

The day he left us Chad drove by himself the three-and-a-half hours to visit his relocated grandma. Like before, she was alone and locked in the dark house with the security alarm activated. He pounded on the door. The toothless woman signaled through the side window to the welcome mat. Underneath Chad found a key.

When Chad unlocked the door, he bumped into his stooped granny standing inside her walker with a plastic bag full of sundries, a jar of pickled peaches, and a brown grocery sack. He hugged her.

“Mimaw, I’ve missed you!”

“No time for that, Chad!” She pushed him out the door. “Carry me to your car,” she garbled.

“What? But, But, But… Mimaw! Won’t Aunt Gwynne get upset if I take you for a ride? Remember last time?”

Glum-faced, she hobbled past him out to the carport and waited, looking like a human question mark. She waited for her grandson to open the passenger side of his souped-up car. “Lock the place up, Chad.” She handed him her bag, a grocery sack containing a colorful housedress and a large jar of prescription cream. “Throw the walker in the trunk. Don’t dawdle!”

They backed out the drive. He steered the car turning it to the right. “No!” she screamed. “Not that way! Turn left!” She mumbled, “Don’t go past her house.”

“Where to, Navigator? Chick-Fill-A? McDonalds? You remember their fried apple pies? Maybe a frosty from Wendy’s?”

“Straight!” she hollered. His grandma could barely see above the dashboard. She shook a wobbly finger in the direction she wanted him headed. She twisted her neck around looking for squad cars.

Her neck seemed unusually flexible to Chad. “Can’t this sports car go faster?” she asked in a strange, guttural tone. Chad handed her the Wachovia envelope. “What’s this?” she slurred as he gave her the note.

She began to read it aloud, “Mom, you told us you needed money for tips and miscellaneous expenses since you temporarily don’t have your checkbook. We’ll send more in a month.” She flipped through fives, tens, and twenties. Chad glanced over and grinned as he watched the bent woman in the passenger seat thumbing her stash.

A smile spread across her face. It seemed to splinter her face like a vase cracking. She cackled.

“This should do it!” she stated. “For the time being!”

“Do what, Mimaw?”

“Get us to Mexico, Chad!”

“What?”

“Andale!”

“Huh?” “Step on it, Sonny!” Suddenly, her green cataract eyes glowed.

“You and I are going to Mexico?”

“Your dad said you didn’t want to live with your nagging mom!”

Chad’s cell phone rang.

“Don’t answer it, Chad.” His grandma’s voice sounded unnaturally deep and stern.

“I got caller ID, Mimaw. It’s not Aunt Gwynne,” he said and gave his grandma a reassuring smile. “It’s Mom.”

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

and told the police several of the victims were last seen riding in Corona’s blue and white pickup truck. John Henry Jackson was one of those victims. The last time he was seen, he was riding in the back of Corona’s truck.

Quite a few of the victims were in possession of homosexual literature as well, though it is unsure if the pamphlets were placed there as a red herring in order to derail the police investigation.

After a thorough search of his residence, two ledger books were seized from Corona’s home containing a list of 34 names, dates and places. Four of the names contained in the ledgers were of confirmed victims. The ledger was referred to as a “death list” by the prosecution, alleging it recorded the dates of the murders.

Additional evidence seized during the search of Corona’s home were a posthole digger, hatchet, two bloodstained knives, a meat cleaver, machete, pistol and blood stained clothing. There were also additional meat receipts and a stained wooden club.

A van parked at the residence contained bloodstains, a shovel, a bag of bullets, bundles of clothing and an 18” machete. Corona’s Chevy Impala also had bloodstains inside.

Making no attempt to dispose of the weapons and bloody clothing leads one to suspect they may have been souvenirs or trophies.

The first entry in the ledger, dated Feb. 24, 1970, is Jose Romero Raya. Raya, 20, of Linda, had been beaten outside a restroom in February of 1970, at the Guadalajara Café, (now the Silver Dollar Saloon), located on First Street in Marysville. The business was owned by Natividad Corona, Juan Corona’s half-brother. Raya had been beaten repeatedly and severely about the head with a heavy knife or machete. The beating fractured his skull in three places, leaving him permanently disfigured.

Though married with four children, Corona was a predatory homosexual and a brutal sadist. Unable to deal with his own homosexuality, he had anger issues with gay men. His job and twisted inclinations gave him ample opportunities to prey on the vulnerabilities of the men he hired, whose lack of social standing would insure the police would never be informed. He started to single out individual workers for sex and death.

Corona was seen leaving the bar the night of the attack, and had been known to use the seedy bar to recruit transients to work as farm laborers. He sought men with no connections and no families.

Corona’s brother, a known homosexual, fled to Mexico soon after the assault.

Had there been an escalation, as Corona slowly graduated to rape and murder after being able to enjoy a prolonged period of rape and battery? Were the current murders just a homicidal explosion of long suppressed urges, or the tail-end of a lengthy career in homicide?

Only Corona knows the answer to these questions.

Sheriff’s deputies became suspicious of Corona early on. He was noticeably present around the area of the crime scene and was conspicuously in attendance whenever a grave was found.

He was the common thread running through the investigation. His company had dispatched work crews consisting of both migrant and transient workers to both locations. Several migrant workers stated they were not surprised when he was taken into custody for questioning because Corona had a reputation for violence among the migrant workers.

He was born in 1934 in Autlan, Jalisco. In 1950, at the age of 16, Corona entered the U.S. illegally and worked as a migrant worker picking carrots and melons throughout the Imperial Valley. He moved to Marysville/Yuba City at the suggestion of his half-brother, Natividad, in 1953.

In December of 1955, one of the most widespread and destructive floods ever recorded occurred on the Yuba and Feather Rivers, flooding over one hundred and fifty square miles and killing 38 people. Corona was deeply affected by the death and destruction and suffered a mental breakdown.

VOL 7, ISSUE 2

There was also his history of mental illness on record. For three months in 1956, Corona had been committed to the DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn by his half-brother, Natividad Corona, after suffering from frightening hallucinations and delusions, which led to a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

During his three months at the Dewitt State Hospital he was given a series of twenty-three shock treatments before being pronounced recovered and subsequently released. After his release, he was deported back to Mexico. Later he returned to the U.S. legally with a green card.

It was in 1962 that he became a licensed labor contractor and began hiring workers to staff the local orchards. Most of the men he sought out were transient men, down on their luck, with no family ties, and many were alcoholics.

Corona was readmitted to the Dewitt State Hospital in 1970. A year later in March of 1971, just months before the murders, he applied for welfare and was denied. Had he been heading for a complete mental collapse? No one knows for sure.

When the bodies were discovered, the daily temperatures were in the 80s, and it was well into the growing season. The trees needed to be watered deeply and regularly to insure the maturation of the fruit. The ranchers were forbidden to do the deep irrigation the orchards needed because of the hindrance to the search and investigation. To prevent the loss of crops and subsequent revenue, time was of the essence. With the help from Beale Air Force Base, infrared photography was used to aid in the location of more graves.

Between May 27 and 29, nine more bodies were exhumed, bringing the total to 21. Sheriff Roy Whiteaker released the report linking Corona to the assault on Jose Romero Raya at the Guadalajara Cafe in February 1970. Smelling blood, the news reporters begin to circle in a frenzy seeking more information. th On the 30 of May, two more bodies are found, bringing the total number to 23. So many bodies had been found, they began to transfer them from the Chapel of the Twin Cities, located in Yuba City, to the Sacramento County Coroner's Office to allow for more extensive autopsies and identification.

Corona’s involvement with the beating of Raya in 1970, along with the recent grisly discoveries, prompted the Tehama County Sheriff's Department to begin looking for a link between the Corona case and a 17-month-old unsolved murder from their cold case files.

Authorities began wondering if this was an isolated incident or if Corona had a history of multiple murders in several areas and in spurts of short time frames.

All twenty-five of the victims found had been molested, murdered and buried within a six week period, averaging one murder every forty hours.

In an effort to help the public heal, St. Isidore Catholic Church in Yuba City held a public mass for the victims and the families of the identified few. So many people were in attendance, they spilled onto the sidewalk outside of the church and onto the surrounding streets.

Sheriff Whiteaker was quoted as saying, "I believe there are vast numbers of bodies we will never find, because numerous areas of the fields have been plowed, disked and irrigated."

On June 4, 1971, after waiting for water to recede from a section th of the orchard flooded near the Feather River, the 25 and final victim was found. Unwittingly, water had been released from the Oroville dam and it began to flood areas of the excavation site.

After no other bodies were located by the infrared photography, the search was called off to allow the ranchers to irrigate their groves.

It was over a year before the case went to trial. By that time, the California Supreme court had voided the state death penalty, ruling it unconstitutional. On February 18, 1972, Corona’s lawyers petitioned for a change of venue and succeeded, moving the proceedings from Sutter to Solano County.

WWW.IDEAGEMS.COM

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the hospital without herself returning to the jungle. Would she come back just for Kimbu’s sake? Her lack of warmth when they parted was worrisome. Considering all that she and Kimbu had been through together and the help he had given her, why didn’t she kiss him or at least give him a hug?

The Boys sat dully through the Laurel and Hardy short and Roy Rogers feature without finding any joy in them. Afterwards neither felt like joining the swarm of kids engaged in marble-shooting, handball, and roller hockey out in the sunshine. Instead they fetched Thomas’ basketball and, for half an hour, played twenty-one by themselves in a gloomy alley, using the space between the lower two rungs of a fire escape ladder as a basket. They spoke little and neither mentioned the serial.

But the Boys, like other young children, were able to shake-off bruised feelings as quickly as they could ignore scraped knees. So it was not surprising that they returned to the Cameo a week later in high spirits and eagerly looking forward to the first episode of “The Green Hornet.” The prior week’s hurt was forgotten, and Nyoka was tucked away deep in their subconscious minds—from where, years later, she would serve as the gold standard by which they measured the unsuspecting women they met at singles dances and parties.

How I Finally Managed to Sell Two Short Stories

by Bill Finnegan

When Laurie Notch (Managing Editor at IdeaGems Magazine) learned I had finally sold a story, actually two, she asked me to write a short piece about how I achieved my modest success. This is that piece, and I am writing it not because I think I know more, or do things better than you do (I realize I don’t), but out of gratitude for Laurie’s kindness and encouragement.

The two stories were “Reciprocity,” a horror story, and “The Apprentice” a fantasy about the exorcism of an unconventional demon.

I don’t know about you, but I start writing my stories with a very general idea rather than a plot. For example, I had bought an imitation Mayan statue while on vacation and when I got it home found that it was too grotesque to display prominently. This gave me the idea for a story, which became “Reciprocity,” about someone who brings such a statue home unaware of its diabolical properties.

Half the time my idea does not generate a decent plot. But if it does, I plug away until I think the story is as good as it will get, or am just plain sick of it, or both.

Next I let it marinate on paper and in my subconscious for at least a week and then give it another careful reading. From experience, I know I’ll regret it if I skip the marination. The first time I look at the story, after submitting it to a batch of ‘zines, I’ll spot typos and think of ways to improve it substantially.

I have been finding my ‘zines mainly through Novel & Short Story Writers Market and The Best of the Magazine Markets for Writers.

But I have also used duotrope.com and fantasy.fictionfactor.com I try to find at least half a dozen whose type-of-story interests and word count limitations match my story. I want that many because, as you know, an editor’s taste plays a big part in whether you get accepted, and any story, no matter how good, will be rejected by some. One of my stories was rejected five times before it was published three times, once on a first rights basis and twice as a reprint.

In making the selection, I exclude ‘zines that don’t accept simultaneous submissions and don’t have hard copy editions. I tend 8

to avoid college journals because I suspect that they favor their alumni, faculty, and students. I don’t consider whether a ‘zine pays in cash, as opposed to with free copies, because I mainly want my story to be read.

The last step is to go to each prospect’s website to make sure it’s still in business and accepting submissions (very often the answer is “no” to one or the other) and check its guidelines on type size, spacing, etc.

“Reciprocity” went out first and quickly generated several rejections. But one of them, from a ‘zine that had published me before, was encouraging and caused me take a hard look at the story and make some changes—expanding a scene, fleshing out one of the characters, and reworking the ending. I submitted the new version, as a replacement to ‘zines that still had original pending (with an apology for the inconvenience) and as a new submission to a couple of others, including Aoife’s Kiss, which accepted it right away for their sister publication, the annual Cover of Darkness horror anthology, and paid me $15. This was a pittance I know, but it was a first and I was ecstatic and seriously considered framing their check.

I knew “The Apprentice” was going to be hard to place because it contained religious elements that could turn off editors who happened to be atheists and offend religiously devout ones, and so I sent it to more publications than usual—all secular fantasy ‘zines except for one religious journal. After several rejections, including a somewhat shocked but kindly one from the religious journal, I made substantial revisions. They included dropping language that was, to my surprise, interpreted as criticism of the doctrine of original sin as formulated by St. Augustine. I sent the revised version (with apologies for the inconvenience) as a replacement to ‘zines that still had the first version pending and to two new ones, including The Chrysalis Reader which liked it and offered $75. (Now we’re talking big money, ha!)

Luck played a big part in this. Chrysalis publishes a themed edition once a year and my story, which involved a negotiated deal between a demon and her exorcist, just happened to match their theme-dynamic transactions. Also, I happened to submit the story just before their submissions deadline expired two weeks later.

So, as I suggested at the outset, the lessons taught by my experiences are ones you have already learned, including take pains with the editing, don’t give up, and keep your day job.

I wish you success with your writing and look forward to enjoying it in IdeaGems Magazine, and the other ‘zines that I regularly read for the pleasure of it and in order to learn techniques from other writers and to support the hard copy ‘zines which seem to be an endangered species.

The 2011 edition of Novel and Short Story Writers Market had 55 publications listed in their small hard copy magazine section. The recently released 2012 edition has 37. (Their listing of online-only 'zines is, however, holding steady.) This year I received going-out-ofbusiness emails from two little publications that published my first two stories. Nocturnal Lyric had been in business for 25 years and First Class for 15. Both said they were throwing in the towel because of editor fatigue and decreasing circulation. Unfortunately the people interested in writing for them greatly outnumbered those who read them. Susan Moon of Nocturnal Lyric said she was still receiving hundreds of submissions for each issue.

So I figure, as a writer for the small magazine market, it’s in my interest to buy and read my favorite ‘zines including, of course, the IdeaGems Magazine, whether or not I have something in them.

Bill Finnegan is a regular contributor to IdeaGems Magazine. A retired lawyer, Bill has written a novel titled Saving Frank Casey, ten short stories, including two that were purchased for the current editions of The Chrysalis Reader and The Cover of Darkness horror anthology, and a screenplay that he has of yet been unable to sell.

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

A Tall Tale

by K.C. Maguire

Peering into the deep hole on the far side of our woods, I gazed in awe at my mother, covered in dirt. It had taken her less than an hour to hollow out the dank pit, and she had done it with no help from me. I cowered in the shadows aiming the old incandescent flashlight at her work, and tapping it when its glow faltered.

“Ready?” she snapped at me, pointing at the dark bundle behind her with her gnarled old fingers.

Those fingers had always scared me. She scared me. When I was a child, she often gave me ‘detention’ in the anteroom at the end of my daily toils, punishment for my countless misdemeanors.

Detention was not the worst of it. Once she locked me in a dark closet for being too rambunctious when she was trying to read. On another occasion, she pushed me backwards down the cellar stairs, angry that I had stained my pink tutu while painting. She might have simply removed the stain… the quick way or the normal way. But she wanted to teach me a lesson. Reprimanding me as she shoved me downwards, she sent me off balance. I lost my footing and hit the stone floor with an unladylike bounce. If my tutu hadn’t been ruined before, it certainly was by then.

She assured me that she had my best interests at heart. I never believed her. How could I? We were so isolated, alone. She never let me have friends, never let me go out. She home-schooled me ‘for my own good’. When I was not studying, dancing, or painting, I spent countless hours staring aimlessly at our black and white striped drapes, covering over our full length windows, blocking out the sunshine. Sometimes I thought I would go mad. What was I waiting for? A handsome prince to come and rescue me?

Ironically, he did come. And we fell in love. Behind her back.

When she was out tending to business, he came to me. He first noticed me when he was out riding. I had noticed him too. I had seen his horse gallop through our woods several times, and had wondered about its rider. One day, the horse broke through the trees near enough for me to see him from my prison’s window. A tall blonde statue of a man with solid muscles and an angel’s face. My prince had arrived! Pushing aside the drapes, I called to him. He was taken with me at once. Not stopping to tether his mount, he leapt from the saddle and strode towards me. Leaving me no time to reach the door, he threw himself against the stone wall and climbed upwards.

We met face to face at my window. He hoisted himself over the ledge and finally stood fully before me. I beheld the depths of his beautiful blue eyes. I could drown in those eyes. Pulling me tightly into his embrace, his strength surged through me. His beautiful soft lips met mine with a feathery first kiss. And I was his.

And thus we continued for many moons. Monitoring my mother’s movements, he timed his visits with great care. We spent beautiful hours together, laughing and loving. My mother suspected nothing at first. She became concerned when my complexion began to pale.

She concocted restorative tonics, and allowed me longer, warmer baths, and fewer chores. My condition worsened. I became dizzy and ill from morning until nightfall, and could not eat.

My lover was undeterred by my failing health. He said I was more beautiful than ever. But then she found him. A business trip cut short, she returned home unexpectedly and interrupted us. Her face contorted into a mask of anger, her cheeks flaming purple, her eyes blazing gold. The very air appeared to shimmer and tremble about her.

“How dare you defile my daughter!” Her outburst pushed him to his feet. He grasped for his trousers and fumbled with the buttons. I lay still, unsure of myself. But my prince was struck dumb and I had to say something.

10

“Mother, don’t hurt him! We’re in love!” It was naïve, but it was all I could think to say.

“IN LOVE?” she roared, “IN LOVE??”

“Please, madam, I meant no harm…,” he started. With a flick of her hand she stilled his tongue.

“No harm?” she repeated, eyes gleaming, hands shaking, “You claimed her virginity and left her… with child!”

With child? Everything came into sudden focus. I was carrying our child! The perfect symbol of our shared love. We would be married. I would have a family.

“Well?” she continued to glare at him. Opening her palm, she forced the words from him in a frenzied rush.

“When I beheld her at your window… Madam, if you please, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Her eyes, that hair, her ruby lips. I had to have her. I have not hurt her.”

“He could never hurt me,” I interjected, feeling a desperate need to be part of this, “We love each other.”

“You stupid, stupid girl!” She turned to me, her eyes dark with pity. My lover said nothing.

“But mother…,” I started.

“Look at his hand, girl. Open your eyes!”

I turned my gaze towards my hero’s left hand, which my mother indicated with a sweep of her wizened arm. I saw nothing. Only his beautiful white skin, lightly freckled and flecked with the softest golden hairs, and the shining gold ring on his finger.

“He’s married,” she snarled at me, still glaring at him, “That’s a wedding band.”

My heart sank, but only for a moment. This was a mistake. He loved me. I had no concept of a wedding band, but if it signified anything, it could only mean a past love, long dead and buried. I shouldn’t have presumed I was his first, but I knew with all my heart I would be his last.

My love remained silent. Time slowed as our dual gazes slowly locked with his.

He stammered, “Well, I never actually promised…”

He was silenced by my mother’s manic laughter. He stood still as stone, facing her with terror in his eyes. Without dropping her gaze, she directed her words to me, “I suppose this is a good time to teach you about men. Why did you think I never let you go out? I am the only one who can protect you from the dangers outside our walls, from those who would harm you.”

Their gazes locked intently, neither of them noticed me. Before either of them had registered my movement, I took up the blazing iron from the fireplace. I lunged at him and pierced him through the heart with its white hot point.

My mother looked upon me with pride, tears welling in her eyes.

“You have mastered today’s lesson, my dear. We must now dispatch him in a manner befitting his worth.” So we wrapped his body tightly in the soiled sheets. And we coiled rope around the bundle. I was obliged to help her drag him to the woods, but she spared me the digging of the grave.

Placing the flashlight gingerly at the lip of the grave, I joined her beside the body. Each of us lifting one end, we mouthed a final shared curse and flung him into the earth. I returned to my position with the light for her to refill the grave. As she took up her shovel once more, she smiled up at me, and I felt the baby kick for the first time.

Kaleigh Maguire is an author of short stories and flash fiction. She has recently won the August and October 2011 flash fiction awards at WritersType.Com and a November 2011 short memoir (vignette) award at MidlifeCollage.Com. She also has work forthcoming in Black Petals magazine and in The Daily Flash: 366 Days of Flash Fiction (Pill Hill Press). She lives in Ohio and is a distance student in the UCLA Graduate Certificate in Fiction Writing Program.

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

Beale Street

by Susan Reichert and James Graham

Beale Street. Everybody who visits Memphis comes to this street.

There are over 25 bars, clubs, restaurants and shops flanking the street. This is the Home of the Blues. You can walk up and down the street and hear the music as it winds its way out the doors and into the street. At night, it takes on a carnival atmosphere—similar to the way it did in the 1930s. There’s magic in the air. You can feel it. It takes you by the hand and lures you in.

Today Beale Street is big business. We keep it cleaned up, us cops.

It’s an important draw to our city. You name it. Beale Street has it to offer. You will find some of the best soul food right here. There are galleries, tourist traps, and shops where you can find any item you might want. Above all, people come to Beale Street to hear the blues. It’s the major draw.

Beale Street’s bright lights still promise stardom to musicians who find their way here. Once here, they’re not going to leave. They hope to see their names up in lights, right along with Rufus Thomas, Junior Parker, and B.B. King.

The world discovered the blues largely due to W.C. Handy, a Beale Street bandleader. He started using blues in his compositions. He heard it in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1900s. It didn’t take long for musicians to relocate here to play their music. They mixed rural and urban beats with songs from medicine shows and minstrels to create the new blues. They were coming from everywhere to record their tunes—just like Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie, and Jim Jackson, to name a few.

The street runs from the Mississippi River over to East Street, a little less than two miles. There is a lot of history on this old street.

Sometimes in the wee morning hours, you can sense the same atmosphere as when W. C. Handy and his band were around.

Not all my memories of this area are good. Case in point: I was shot last August at about five in the morning as I was coming out of Leroy’s club, “My Shady Lady.” We had been in a jam session with Handy-Men. I got a call to meet my partner down at the river. A body had floated up to the bank and gotten caught in washed-up brush and downed tree limbs.

Most nights, my partner knows he can find me at Leroy’s. A bunch of old guys from the other clubs come round after their clubs close, and we jam ‘til after daybreak. I play a mean clarinet. I’ve known Leroy most of my life. (We started in grammar school together.) I’ve been sitting in, jamming with them for over thirty-six years. Leroy’s club is the place to be at night after hours. The music is sweet as syrup, and the memories conjured up take us back to being young again.

After I got the call from my partner, I left the club and crossed over Beale Street to go to my car. I always parked it behind Lively’s Club, in her alley, which is on the corner of Third and Beale. I remember walking into the alley going to my car. I heard what sounded like fire crackers then felt a stinging in my gut. I tried to grab my gun, but then the lights went out.

My partner said I was unconscious when he found me. The doctor said I lost a lot of blood. He had to reconstruct part of my stomach.

Two bullets to the gut will do that.

We’ve got some great doctors and medical facilities in this city, and they saved my life. Some people may think I am retired now, but I’m not, though might as well be. It’s been three months since that night, and they still have me riding a desk. Doc hasn’t released me to go back to work in the field yet. My stomach, still tender, prevents quick sudden movements. In time, the Doc says it will heal and that sensation will go away. He uses the word “patient.” If he really knew VOL 7, ISSUE 2

me, he would know that word is not in my vocabulary. I do know I couldn’t chase someone if I had to.

My boss lets me come in when I feel up to it, sit behind a desk, and go through case files. But he reminds me often I’m still on leave.

I’m better than I was but not good enough. If this is what retirement is, I don’t want any part of it. There is nothing for me to do. It’s good to see the guys and shoot the breeze when I go in. They assure me they are still looking for the guy who did this to me although I know they have no leads. I can’t tell them anything or describe how many or what the perp looked like. Maybe one of these days I will be reinstated. At least I keep telling myself that.

The one thing I know for sure about the person or persons who did this to me is someone paid them to do it. I started coming back downtown a couple of months after surgery. I’ve been eating breakfast downtown at “Lil’ Larry’s” for twenty years and not about to change that. Every now and then, I walk around to that spot, in the day time, where I was almost killed. I don’t park there anymore.

Not sure what I think I will find, but I keep looking. I can still see some dried blood stains—my blood. Every time I see that, I remember the first part of what happened and search the recesses of my brain to try to remember if the shooter said anything. If so, would the voice be familiar to me? Still, I don’t remember anything yet. I haven’t been able to budge what’s in my memory. The head doctor says when a person goes through this kind of trauma, sometimes they bury that part of what happened. It’s as if the brain doesn’t want to deal with it.

My partner has been teamed up with someone else, but we keep in touch. He is helping me go through cases where we’ve been looking for someone who could have done this type of crime.

Sometimes it feels like a wasted effort, but I keep trying.

“Hey, Bunny! Where you been, man? Haven’t seen you for three days.” It was always good to see Leroy and even better to sit down at “Lil’ Larry’s” to eat breakfast with him and the guys, the ones who always jammed with me ‘til the wee morning hours.

“Hi, guys. Been under the weather and decided it was because of Lil’ Larry’s cooking.” With that, everyone laughed, and the conversation moved away from me. We talked about things and places on Beale Street. After several hours, Leroy and I left the restaurant and started walking toward his place.

“Bunny,” Leroy said. “I overheard two guys in the club last night talking about a cop shooting.” I turned my head toward Leroy. Before I could answer, an MPD cruiser sailed up Third Street. Seeing us, the officer gunned the car towards us and skidded to a stop with the left front tire running over the curb on the sidewalk. If he had come any closer, he would have run right over us. He stuck his head out the window as we jumped back.

“Hey, Bunny,” the officer said, “we just found your partner dead at his home. Shot once in the gut and once in the face, but guess what?

A 45 automatic, like the one matching the bullets in you, was lying next to him. Jump in. Chief wants you there ASAP.” I jumped in the car, irritating my wound, and before I could tell Leroy I would call him later, the cop took off as if someone was chasing us. I questioned the uniformed officer on the way there, trying to get more information, but he didn’t know any more than what he had told me. The captain had radioed him to pick me up since he would be the closest car to Leroy‘s club.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. It never is at the scene of a dead person, especially one you know. I couldn’t believe it. My partner was dead. I just talked to him Sunday, four days ago. He didn’t indicate anything was wrong or that he was concerned about someone being after him.

“Bunny, come over here.” My captain didn’t look too happy. “Take a look at this scene. What do you see?” I looked at him and then began scanning the room. What did he see that he wanted me to see without mentioning it? Moreover, why would he want to keep it

WWW.IDEAGEMS.COM

11

The Thinker

by J. E. Harris

Leafy Asmini’s son, Kenny, sat beside him, reclined in an identical way to his father and in an identical La-Z-Boy. Both men clasped a bottle of Labatz in their right hand while their eyes followed the Red Sox-Yankees teams as they faced off against each other in the first game of the World Series. Both wore Red Sox hats, enjoying a small act of rebellion in the Yalesville village that favored the Yanks and both enjoying, as always, rooting for the underdog.

When the ads interrupted, they muted the TV and talked.

“It’s been years since we did this,” Leafy commented, being nostalgic.

“I know, Dad. Too long. We let time get away from us.”

Leafy, who always told the tale that his nickname came from his large, luminous green eyes, which he would then bat for laughs, had been on the road a lot lately, making transnational trips in the tandem tractor trailer truck he drove for a living. As a boy, Kenny had grown up in the passenger seat of his dad’s cab, traveling around the country and writing up notes on everything he saw before he went to sleep at night – a hobby that confounded his dad’s notions of fun.

Leafy’s idea of fun was putting a little money on the races at the dog track where he worked during his off hours for health benefits. But he was proud of his son, who had grown up to be a reporter for the local paper. Even when the articles his son wrote covered topics Leafy considered to be mundane—school board meetings and high school football games and the like—Leafy was still proud to see in print the words “By Ken Gilbert.” Kenny had taken his mother’s— Leafy’s ex-wife’s--last name. “She had your name changed out of spite,” Leafy always told Kenny, who had lived with his mother since he was an infant except for the times when he was on the road with his dad. But even with his ex-wife’s surname instead of his own, Leafy never got tired of reading the byline, “By Ken Gilbert.” It was one of the most beautiful things in his life, and every time he read it, his mind traveled back to those cross-country trips, his son in his Curious George pajamas, lying in the back of the cab, scrawling his notes.

“Working on a big story right now,” Kenny said when the game was over and they had tipped their chairs back to an upright position.

“What is it?”

“You won’t like it. Bobby Nadir’s links to the Mafia. My job is to verify the rumors.” Bobby Nadir was the CEO, the kingpin, of the company that ran the racetrack where Leafy worked nights for benefits.

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Someone’s got to uncover the truth. If it’s true, then the dog track links the town to one of the most powerful and most ruthless murderers in the Northeast.”

His father nodded.

“You’ve always been a good honest kid. But be careful. If it’s true, you’ll be a target.”

“The truth is more important than any individual,” his son answered him.

“You believe that?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“I’m proud of you.”

They finished their beers and their small talk. Leafy watched his 30-year-old son climb into his 20- year-old Honda Civic. He didn’t have to look to know that there were notepads on the passenger seat where a wife might have sat (if Kenny had a wife), that there were boxes of notes in the back seat where there might have VOL 7, ISSUE 2

been car seats for grandchildren (if Kenny had any children), that even the trunk was filled with cardboard boxes filled with manila folders containing clippings, jottings, and other bits of research for the articles Kenny was writing or thinking about writing.

Before Kenny was even out the driveway, Leafy’s phone rang.

The Wallingford Press was such a small newspaper that it was located in a small storefront on Cherry Street in between The New York Bakery, where Leafy used to buy Kenny treats of crullers and honey-dew doughnuts, and a cheap toy store where he used to buy his boy balsam airplanes with thin, inter-locking pieces. The planes spiraled quickly downward after Kenny tossed them upward, hoping, but the second or two they stayed airborne still kept him entertained. He was always certain that the next throw would get a better result.

Cherry Street was on the low-rent side of the train tracks, and the editor of the paper lived in a small apartment on the second floor above the office, and he rented the third floor to an eighteen year old girl disowned by her family.

Kenny often worked through the night alone, and after he left his dad’s he drove straight to the office despite the fact that it was 10 o’clock on a Saturday night. Kenny’s life was his work. He’d didn’t have before and after work hours. He was either asleep or he was working.

He parked his car in the lot behind the building and walked around to the front door. Inside, the answering machine’s red light blinked, and Kenny threaded his way through the maze of metal work-desks and plastic chairs until he was close enough to push the play button on the machine. Most calls went directly to his cell phone, so even before he listened, he was pretty certain he knew what he would hear.

“Midnight.”

Kenny’s mouth went dry. It was true, then. He had two hours to wait for his source to show up. In the meantime, he’d do more background research on Bobby Nadir and, more importantly, on Penderton, the well-known Mafia boss Kenny’s source tied to Nadir.

Until now, links between the race track and the Mafia had been rumored but never proven. If Kenny’s source had the kind of evidence he claimed, the proof would be irrefutable.

He took out a file folder. Scrawled on a post-it note attached to the file was a quote from Wilbur Cross, the Yale literature professor who served four two-year terms as governor of Connecticut between 1931 and 1939. After defeating the 1935 Gambling Bill, he called the attempt to pass the bill legalizing gambling “A scheme to exploit all classes of people for the benefit of a few.”

Nadir and Penderton were the few.

Sifting through newspaper clippings and interview notes he’d been gathering for a year, Kenny couldn’t help but think about Leafy’s night work at the track. Leafy mopped the beer spills from the floor in the concessions area just outside the track, mopped the bathroom floors, cleaned the toilets after the crowd went home, and replenished the toilet paper. Working hard at jobs most people scorned if they could afford to, he earned little cash in return, but the health benefits made it possible to afford doctor’s visits and paid for his blood pressure medicine and the pills that alleviated the pain from his arthritis. Briefly, Kenny wondered where this would lead.

Would Nadir fire his dad, making the link even though father and son didn’t share a last name? Would the track close down? He brushed the thoughts aside. Dad’s a good worker, he thought, he’ll find something better.

Meanwhile, Leafy was again in the LazyBoy, but he was trembling.

“Gilbert. The Press. 106 Cherry Street. Midnight,” the voice on the other end of the phone had said.

Leafy was too low level in the organization for anyone to put the energy into finding out that Gilbert and Asmini were father and son.

WWW.IDEAGEMS.COM

13

He was a gun for hire, a job concealed by his janitorial work for the organization. He didn’t know much. Just who, where, when. The same questions his son pivoted his life around, only now the answers to the questions pivoted around his son’s death.

Leafy put on his pajamas and tried to sleep. How long had it been since he’d shared a bed with someone? To his surprise, he couldn’t remember. It had been so long that he no longer knew how long.

He laid his rifle across his body and ran his fingers along the barrel.

This was the rifle that allowed a truck driver to put his boy through Columbia School of Journalism—the same rifle that allowed him to give his boy a down payment on a small house of his own. Now, it was the rifle meant to kill his only child.

Somehow, his targets had never seemed real to him. He’d never thought of them as other people’s children or parents or siblings. He pulled the trigger; the cash appeared in an envelope. Trigger=cash.

His life was that equation plus the only talent God had given him to take pride in, the one his father introduced him to as a boy at the Blue Trail Range—his marksmanship. “You’re a natural,” his father had said to his boy, the same boy who had to repeat second grade, the same boy who had to repeat eighth grade. In his humiliation, sitting in class with kids two years younger than he was, Leafy clung to his father’s words like a raft. He was a natural—a marksman, a boy, and then a man, who never, ever missed his mark.

While Kenny waited for his source in the dimly lit office, he searched his computer for an article he’d found detailing the roles of known members of the Mafia in the Northeast and naming many of the members.

“Underworld occupations in New England are the old standbys: gambling, loan–sharking and hi-jacking—all controlled by the bullet in the head or the broken leg for troublemakers,” the article read.

“The FBI knows, for example, that the ‘contract’ to kill New Haven Mafia underboss Buster Sartisi was given to Rocco DeNegris, who shot down Sartisi in a shoe-shine chair at the New Haven train station (DeNegris himself was later killed by gunfire in broad daylight as he left a New York card game).”

Kenny took some notes, adding Sartisi and DeNegris to the chart he kept on the wall. Like a genealogy tree, it mapped the relationships between groups of Mafia members, charting their inter-relationships and their standing in the hierarchy, as well as the gray area where they overlapped with presumably legal businesses.

Having filled two more names into his chart, he flipped to the next page of the article. He was standing in front of his desk, bent intently over the pages.

Leafy made himself a cup of chamomile tea. He’d never been much of a thinker, and he wished he could ask Kenny for his help.

How should he go about exposing his boss? Without question, he could not do the hit, and without question, that meant he needed to get out altogether. That much was clear. But he couldn’t go to Kenny, or he’d make him a bigger target than he already was, and even Leafy knew that if he just said no, the way the government used to tell the kids, he’d end up in cement shoes. He was prepared to die for his kid, but if he could just think things through, there might be a way to protect Kenny and himself. The thought that would make that possible tantalized him. Every time he reached for it, it seemed to move away from him. When he gave up, it seemed to come toward him until he could almost grasp it, and then when he tried to grasp the idea, it receded again. For the first time in his life, Leafy wished he’d gone to college.

The phone rang again. Odd. He picked up.

“Leafy,” the voice said jovially. Not the usual voice. Nadir’s voice.

Leafy couldn’t speak.

“Kenny Gilbert,” Nadir said, as though he were announcing the name for a trophy. “Kenny Gilbert. Quite a journalist you’ve got there for a son, eh? You must be very proud.”

14

Silence.

“I’ll make it easy for you, Leafy. I’ll give you a choice. If you’re, uh, not feeling too well to work tonight, no problem. I’ll pass the job on to Sammy. Sammy’s not a marksman like you, quick and easy—no pain, no fuss, no muss. Sammy, he’s all muss. Broken bones, missing digits, very messy. But in the end, it gets the job done. So, just say the word and I’ll give you the night off. Sammy will be your substitute. Like a substitute teacher, right? Happens to everybody now and then. Just say the word, take the night off, get some sleep.

No problem.”

More silence.

“Nothing to say? Because Sammy’s all ready to go. Has a vacation to pay for. If you don’t say anything, and then you, uh, call out sick, then Sammy, he might be a little tired by the time he gets his substitute teacher work. And when Sammy’s tired, he’s just not himself. He slows down when he’s tired, you know? Usually, he gets his work done in an hour, say, but when he’s tired, well, it can go on for hours. He has a hell of a time when he’s tired.

“No? Well, okay. But if you change your mind, don’t forget to let me know. You don’t want Sammy doing this job tired. He’s not like you. You, you’re quick. You’re easy. No pain. No muss, no fuss.”

Kenny sat in a corner of his office, his head in his hands.

Leafy looked at his son through the telescopic sight. Nadir’s voice in his mind was his only comfort: “Quick and easy. No pain. No fuss, no muss.”

“Quick and easy,” Leafy said to himself. “No pain…”

Trigger.

Kenny’s head gave a little start as the bullet entered its mark, then fell back into his hands. But the life had gone out of the hands. They couldn’t hold up the head. His whole body slumped to the floor under the weight of that head.

Even the floor was covered with notes. Just like Kenny. The last thing Leafy saw was his son’s body, in the fetal position on top of his notes, blood spreading over the papers like pools of spilled ink. It might have been the little boy from the past, in the Curious George pajamas, asleep on top of the papers that described everything he’d seen that day from the cab of his dad’s truck. It might have been a glass of Kool Aid Leafy had made for Kenny himself, soaking through the papers by accident. It might have been….

Leafy got into the cab of his truck alone.

The next morning, the early commuters saw the gaping hole in the Arrigoni Bridge, and by afternoon, the tractor trailer had been pulled out of the Connecticut River. The young, gorgeous TV newscaster stood at the scene and said the police suspected that the driver had been using drugs, but it was too early to confirm.

The night before Leafy’s truck was found, Kenny Gilbert had heard the front door to his office open just before midnight. He looked up from his notes.

“You’re early,” he said.

“Get me some coffee, all right? This whole thing has me a little spooked.”

“Sure, sure. Sugar? Cream?”

“Sugar, please. I’m like The Thinker, right? The Rodin? Remember that class? I’m just gonna sit here for a minute, like The Thinker, while you get the coffee.”

But when Kenny returned, coffee cups in hand, his friend wasn’t sitting there, like The Thinker.

His friend wasn’t thinking at all.

J. E. Harris is a freelance writer and editor who has written for a variety of publications including The Boston Globe, Homeopathy Today, and The Middletown Press. She has been featured in The New York Times Connecticut Section and is a lifetime Connecticut resident, where she lives with her husband and three daughters.

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

In a Gray Area

by Lillian R. Melendez

“Is the fifth of June the End of the World?” Hundreds of people around the world entered the chat room to participate in a discussion group called. Almost all of them engaged in the discussion, believing only two possibilities: the world will either come to an end or will remain standing as we know it.

Music64: The world is going to end.

Professor1: I don’t think so. That’s just a hoax.

3Imagery: The person who said that was just dreaming.

Screen2: You know, this reminds me of the Hollywood movie called Apocalypse.

17Renegade: Why am I even on this silly chat room? I don’t believe and I don’t disbelief. Final Answer.

25Chatterbox: Nothing will happen. It will be just another day. And so will the day after that.

Exultant75: Enjoy life! That is all I have to say about this topic. Just enjoy the life you have no matter what.

Paperboy07: It’s the end of the world.

IHeartShopping: It’s not.

Faithbeliever02: I never thought I would question my faith.

10AdorePets: On the fifth of June, I will be here on this chat room.

The_Opposer: This topic is giving me ideas.

Workaholic101: What I am going to do on that day is to keep things orderly, do everything on my busy schedule. It’s hilarious, but seriously, on that day, I have to do everything on my schedule just like the day before. Time does not stop for me.

There were no gray areas between the hundreds in the chat room.

Yet, only five, each from different parts of the world, found themselves in a gray area. All five agreed to create a private discussion group on the same topic and met regularly. They did not know each other personally. They did not know each other’s names, only the web names they had created for themselves: Exultant75, 17Renegade, Faithbeliever 02, The_Opposer, and Workaholic 101.

The first chat member spoke.

Exultant75: I think we are all alike. I’m not religious. Yet, I have been asking myself questions. There is no final answer on June fifth.

The_Opposer: You must be outgoing, Exultant75, according to your screen name. No real worries. I am the opposite right now, because I am just too tensed.

Exultant75: I am tensed too at this time due to circumstances.

FaithBeliever02: The_Opposer, yes, I remember you. You updated your profile. It says you’re patriotic.

17Renegade: Workaholic101, what are you, some control freak?

Why are you in this discussion group? Don’t bore us, alright.

Workaholic101: You sound aggressive. You say you’re a stunt devil.

Your surprise I am in this chat room? I think I’m surprise I found time for this interesting discussion. I have a question for all of you to think about. What if it’s not the end of the world, but something devastating will occur?

They found themselves not making too much fuss about the end of the world date and the last question posted on the screen. Yet, they were in deep reflection.

On New Year’s Day, the four chat members decided to find answers to the question workaholic 101 asked, by reading other articles and blogs on the end of the world. It was indeed talked about around the world, but in their daily lives outside of the web, the news did not reach a point where other people’s behaviors drastically change.

Three months later, they chatted about people being a little more aware. Fast track to a month before the world was about to end— individuals chatted frequently while going about their business. The news programs on television were discussing it continuously and the 18

internet was the same story. Many headlines focused on the 75-yearold Christian minister who announced the impending end on the fifth of June. The five members found themselves chatting every Saturday.

In the month of May, all five shared their personal views as people around the world dealt with the impending doom.

FaithBeliever02: People are looking nervous. I see it in their facial expressions.

Exultant75: People in grocery stores are buying and storing up supplies.

The five members in the chat room revealed hearing people discussing what they needed to do. Some connected with loved ones while others reflected on a higher being. One of the chat members sent a message to the other four.

Workaholic101: We are the only ones in a gray area on this. There is no yes or no answer on the world actually ending on that date.

The_Opposer: I have a feeling.

Workaholic101: Do you have a feeling that the world is not about to end, just because someone said so? Yet, there is a feeling that something huge is about to happen?

By the middle of May, many in the public chat room were going berserk. Yet, the five members told each other in instant messages that the feeling they all had, was the same and even intensified as the weeks got closer to the date. Then as the days got closer, they began to guess what was going to happen.

The_Opposer: We really don’t need to guess. Just look at the news on television and internet articles a little closer.

17Renegade: Surpass the doomsday articles and focus on real events.

Intensely, they took their time and watched the television to see what people were saying on several social media sites. The five chat members in various parts of the world viewed the ongoing wars, the natural disasters, and the sufferings, which led them to think even more. They all wondered which catastrophic event in the news, was going to be revealed.

17Renegade: Look closer into our lives.

FaithBeliever02: My grandmother is very ill and has been in a hospital for a month.

17Renegade: There is an earthquake warning in my area.

Exultant75: I cannot stand being at my lousy job with an overbearing boss. Twenty-four million people are unemployed. I would try to get another job, if it weren’t for this economy.

The_Opposer: I live in a country where there is a dictator. There have been lots of protests, as our dictator continues to suppress our people’s rights.

Workaholic101: I received a speeding ticket.

There was a pause and then one of them wrote.

17Renegade: We all said what our issues are that we’re seeing in this world and with our own personal lives. A speeding ticket does not come close to what the other members said in this chat room.

Don’t poke fun!

Exultant75: You’re hiding something, Workhaholic101.

Seconds later, Workaholic101 left the chat room. After logging off the computer as Workaholic101, in deep thought, sat down, reflecting about what occurred weeks ago.

“Lower your window please,” said a cop.

“I don’t know what happened. What just happened?”

“You were speeding.”

“I wasn’t drinking.”

“You were asleep at the wheel. Please step out of the car.”

After stepping out of the vehicle two other vehicles lights were flashing brightly from a distance.

“Officer, How fast was I going?”

By the end of May, many in the chat room were in a frenzy. Yet, the

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

Marbled Rose

by Janna Vought

My feet fly over the rocked terrain, pounding in rhythmic chant with my heartbeat and the music from my ear buds. I pass scrub oak villages thick with towhees scratching among the leaf litter and chattering black squirrels spreading rumors about others indiscretions. Up the hill. My feet throb inside my aging sneakers, the only pair I wear since my college graduation. My father gave them to me for my twenty-first birthday. The black soles ridged like a porcupine's spine, rubber fingers sticky and firm, set to grip the most rugged terrain. The fuchsia nylon encases my feet in gel pillows that absorb the impact of my relentless pace. Stiff black laces that I tied in crisp bows crown the tops. I wanted them but could nary afford them on my student budget. My father presented them to me at my birthday brunch. "Happy birthday, sweetheart," he said, smiling at me over Eggs Benedict and iced tea. "I hope they carry you toward your dreams."

Ten years later, the soles worn down to black nubs, the bright pink faded to a hue suspiciously resembling chewed bubble gum, the rigid laces now frayed and worn, drooping in their fatigue, my shoes still carry me. As I rocket across sandstone tiers rising up to meet God, I inhale the sweet smell of pine trees warming themselves in the midday sun infused with a hint of blue-blooded lilacs blooming in distant neighborhoods. I peer to my right and see a bumble bee weaving in and out of shadows, drag racing with me, winged body and feet soaring in unison. I love running; nothing is more liberating.

It is the closest humans come to flight. The sun hangs overhead in the endless sky, sending beads of sweat marching down my forehead, blinding my sight with the tart brine. I wipe the streams from my face with my forearm, rubbing all evidence of my exertion onto my faded Red Sox T-shirt. My father took me to countless games when we lived in Boston, the two of us cheering for Nomar Garciaparra and Curt Schilling while consuming copious amounts of hotdogs, root beer, and nachos covered in synthetic gold.

I push forward in my effort to reach the apex of the bluff, the black bag strapped around my waist shifts, banging the contents against my hip. I reach back to make sure my package is secure against my form, careful not to unhinge the buckle's grasp. Nestled inside its dark cocoon lies my passion, my drive: a Nikon digital camera, not the top of the line, but close, with twelve megapixels and a telephoto lens for close encounters. My camera, another gift from my father.

He assumed my fixation with photography stemmed from our nature hikes through the Sierra Madres and the Appalachians when I was young, cataloging every bird spotted and wildflower inhaled.

"Witness God's domain," he used to tell me as I sat perched atop his shoulders overlooking the valleys coated with ancient oaks that whispered secrets of the Chumash who walked among their rows.

My obsession with snapping pictures has nothing to do with nature or God's country, but everything to do with death. I hunt for gravestones. I document other's demise. I am the Reaper's publicist, providing him with press coverage, chronicling his precision and style with my lens. I relish death, but I do not engage in necrophilia or bleed chickens over a desecrated grave. I simply observe and record, a member of the Cemetery Club.

According to the National Geological Survey, there are over 109,000 known cemeteries in the United States. To date, my shoes have carried me through countless aisles of bodies entombed under stone monuments in thirty states. Some sites are meticulous, grass trimmed with precision, emerald soldiers standing at attention.

Others suffer decades of neglect, weeds intertwined with faded plastic bouquets atop marbled stones cracked and broken, bending VOL 7, ISSUE 2

their sorrowful heads down into the earth.

With each foot I place upon a grave, I snap a picture. I make soul's immortal, capturing their life in my lens. I cannot forget Mary A. Snyder of Norman, Oklahoma, beloved wife and mother who died in 1983. Her family mounted a colossal cherub statue next to her stone, its stone eyes trapped in a perpetual stare, alabaster hands grasped a delicate brass vase filled with fresh bunches of periwinkle Swan River daisies. Her family must miss her. What became of grave marker 209 in Ybor City, Florida, who parted ways with life in September 1949? What to make of the countless sites in Arlington where seas of miniature American flags wave, weathered by the relentless sun, their names lost, identities unknown. Who were these men: general, father, captain, friend, private, son? Who dares leave heroes to dwell in unknown isolation? So many transparent voices speak to me through the stone towers erected in their praise.

I travel the country from graveyard to graveyard, taking hundreds of pictures through my filtered lens. I post my fatal visions on websites, Interrment.net, FindaGrave.com, for people to visit. Others like me exist, those dedicated to preserving the human condition forged in death: who loved, who lost, who garnered great wealth, who suffered an untimely demise? Scroll through thousands of names and find a catalog of the country's triumphs and miseries, building blocks of the nation, forever etched on the tablets; yet, of all the dead I encounter on my journeys, one name still evades me, one I hold so dear. I search and search, looking for Catherine O'SheaTribiani, my Blarney stone, my pot of gold, my Irish rose—my mother.

I never met my mother. She died giving birth to me. My father raised me on his own, a single man toting around his tiny daughter as he trekked from state to state in search of his golden idol. My father, a thick and stout Sicilian man with grey fingers woven into his coal black hair, was a trucker hauling loads cross-country before my birth, a job abandoned after my mother's passing. He always maintained our quality of living by doing odd jobs for people in whatever neighborhood we resided and any other whim or fancy suited for paying our bills: mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, standing in front of a lumber store's grand opening dressed in a beaver suit, whatever served to pay our bills, buy us food, supply me with ample stock to indulge my Barbie doll and Judy Blume fetishes when I was young. Whatever I needed, he always provided. He supplemented his meager income with money he said his father left to him, whom I never met. "His money is about the only thing worth salvaging from his miserable life," my father often told me, anger rimming his eyes heavy-lidded mahogany eyes. I never asked about his childhood, or anything of his past; he preferred to dwell in the moments of the present. He forbade topics of the past. "Jenny, drudging up times forgotten does nothing more than reopen wounds long ago healed.

Why rub salt into a festering wound?"

He never spoke of my mother. Whenever I broached the subject, eager for any trinket of information about her, the way her smile curved her lips, how she smelled after a bath, the way her hair fell across her face as she slept, how her laughter sang melodies, her voice as smooth and clear as the early spring runoff dipping into the Arkansas—anything, he refused divulging any information, tears welling in his eyes at the mention of her name. His pain chiseled away his smile, a grim look affixed to his leathered face. Behind his eyes, a tempest raged, his soul tossed about in tumultuous tides, slammed against the ragged cliffs of his memory. When younger, I paid no mind to the way his face writhed each time I spoke of her, slipping my hand into his clenched grip, asking him to make me macaroni and cheese or play Go Fish with me. Now, I understand how loss takes hold of your heart, a garrote pulled taut with each wretched gasp. I love my father. I never want to hurt him. I forgive him for retreating from his past. He sacrificed so much so that I may thrive. I let him forget, but I remember.

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Like a private investigator searching for a missing person, I spent the last fifteen years of my life trying to find my mother, gathering any scrap of evidence or information that pointed to a clear and defined pathway into her existence. To date, I have nothing to even support her existence, not even a photograph. "She never liked to have her picture taken. We didn't even own a camera," was always my father's response when innocent eyes eager to gaze upon her mother's face tugged at his grey wool pants as dark and unforgiving as a late autumn storm. I knew nothing of her appearance except what small offering of information he provided, a far off look stealing across his face, softening the hard lines as he spoke of her. "She was beautiful, Jen, with long auburn hair like pennies cascading down her back. Her eyes held the secrets of the centuries buried in the emerald Irish fields. She was petite, but man, was she feisty, a dynamo of strength and resiliency. Although her time with you fleeted, she always loved you, even if only for a few days." When I asked how she died, a small girl filled with sorrow trying to grasp the notion of her mother's death, I always received the same answer: "What does it matter, Jennifer, your mother left us, gone to Heaven in God's arms." I had little but images fashioned out of his recollections to reinvent my mother in my mind. If I was to discover my mother's truth, I must do it on my own: my father was otherwise engaged with his misery.

I started visiting cemeteries when I was fifteen. By this point, I moved beyond coveting my friends’ lives with a mother who baked them chocolate chip cookies after school, took them to dance class, fixed their carefully coifed ringlets into bows, bought them beautiful gowns for their treasured dolls. The years of growing under the tutelage of a former big rig trucker took their toll on my femininity. I received none of my mother's petite and delicate features my father described. Instead, I was dark and burly, long black hair coiled into braids so tight they stretched my face into an unnatural smile. My eyes did not glow with the shamrock dreams of my mother, but instead shone dark, deep and endless chocolate pools set in a square and strong face. I never cared that other girls found me boyish and distasteful, my interest laid beyond what nail color matched my shirt or who dated the quarterback; my love existed in the pages of history. I absorbed every historic fact I unearthed, obsessed with the past and the evolution of humanity. Instead of going to pep rallies and homecoming dances, I went to the library, pouring over volumes of records and documents that housed the pertinent information of a soul's time on earth: birth, marriage, number of children, siblings, date and cause of death, any vital statistic that documented a life worthy of attention. Census records became my Bible.

My hunger for genealogy grew beyond the limitations of paper records, microfilm, and the Internet. I spent afternoons wandering past old plantations lining the streets of Atlanta, wondering what fascinating people once walked their halls, whose rich and fine hands tended the Tea roses in the garden, what souls inhaled their last breath while laying upon great mahogany beds, white linen curtains billowing across their withered form. Soon, my afternoon excursions led me wandering to the gates of Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta's oldest resting place for spirits passed. Walking among the graves, the scent of magnolias weighted in the thick and sultry Georgia air, I felt at home, surrounded by friends: Confederate soldiers’ tombs standing at attention, alert to their final bugle call, unknown voices silenced in the ground, forever dwelling in anonymity in Potter's Field, my companions, my guides through history. Each day after school, when my father thought I was at softball practice, I sat under giant oaks that eavesdropped on the thousands whispering their sordid and sad histories. I read the biographies of so many before me etched into infamy on marble gravestones, as smooth and black as the midnight worms feasting upon their corpses. I never wanted to leave.

One day, two years later in Santa Fe, as I walked through the Rosario Cemetery, I came across a tombstone bearing a name so 22

familiar to my heart—my mother's. A simple inscription on the slate flint read: Catherine O'Shea, Born1965—Died1989. God walks with you. My heart jumped into my throat. I fell down on my knees, tears flowing while sending small pieces of my soul plummeting into the hallowed loam below. Could this be? Impossible, my rational voice said, the dates are wrong, you were born in 1981, eight years before this woman passed. Still, as I sat there in the fading light, the sun painting the desert in its amber delight, I wondered if this was a sign, illuminating my purpose for haunting so many forgotten souls. I abandoned my thoughts of any other, focused now on one purpose, finding the grave of my mother.

As I crisscrossed the country with my vagabond father, drifting in and out from one location to the next like leaves scattered along a late October wind, I sought the company of those long deceased, sitting with them a spell, asking if a certain fair-skinned beauty ever passed their way. Up and down the rows I walked in my eternal quest for her face, her voice, her memory carved into stone, a permanent reminder of her existence. Each shadow I encountered, while delighted at my interest with their demise, sadly stated that no such woman ever joined in their festivities where they danced and sang in the gilded moonlight, spirits alive once more in the hushed pitch.

I wanted to remember every name, every person I encountered on my journey. One day, while my father was in the garage tinkering with the neighbor's lawnmower, our grocery money for the week, I snuck out with his old digital camera. The frame was behemoth, impossible to conceal under my sweater. I shoved it into my backpack as I dashed by, a passing wave as I glided by the doorway in my running shoes. "Going running, Dad. Be back in a while." I sprinted down the street, my spoils thumping against my back, making its presence known. That day began my exodus from a living world into one veiled in death, an artist, journalist, biographer of the dead—still frames of our extinction.

I arrive back at my studio apartment, and toss my shoes crusted with dirt into the washer along with the T-shirt and shorts stained with the remnants of my run. I need a quick shower and change before I go to the hospital. I walk over to the computer resting atop a small oak secretariat crouched in the corner of my living room and check my messages as I strip off the rest of my clothes and start the shower. I have six messages from new clients, people desiring my assistance in filling the gaps of their own existence. Since graduation, I have worked as an independent genealogist, aiding individuals in researching and documenting their history. Some of my clients seek financial gain, hoping to unearth some connection to wealthy kin, while others, like myself, want answers to questions that rage deep within: Who am I? From where do I come? I cannot quell my own pain, so I help others extinguish theirs. I also have an urgent message from a fellow member from the Cemetery Club who thinks they found an interesting grave site in Myakka City, Florida and wants my opinion before posting their photos on the Web: Jen, I found the most amazing site today. Perhaps a small plot containing Seminole lineage. Must speak to you!! My friends. We all share a commitment to documenting the significance of life, sending photographic evidence of humanity's worth buzzing through modem lines into the homes of millions who log on to search, wonder, laugh, cry… and remember.

I vow to answer everyone when I return tonight, plugging my camera into its dock so I can download the photographs I took at Evergreen Cemetery today. I step into the shower spewing billows of steam, the volcano ready to erupt, planning the remainder of my dwindling day. Red licorice, he loves red licorice. I will bring him some today with his magazines. My father now lives in a hospice, his mind fleeing from the throes of Alzheimer's. Some days, he remembers my name; some days he forgets his. Some days he sits and stares at the floor; others, he mumbles about the cliff swallows

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nesting on our front porch in San Bernardino, or the time he took me ice fishing in Fargo. So many memories trapped inside his suffocating mind. He still never mentions my mother.

When his illness first presented, the lapses were minute, insignificant things attributed to a glitch in the short term memory cogs: missing keys, forgetting to switch off the lights, the name of the next door neighbor. It never concerned me until one day he went missing. He left my apartment on Christmas Eve, planning to stop by an acquaintance's party before returning to his home. I remember he looked so tired, his eyes sunk deep within their sockets, violet rings against his ashen skin. "I'm fine, Jen, just a bit worn down," he told me on his way out the door, his leftovers from the turkey dinner I prepared tucked under his arm. "After Tom's party, I'm going home to bed. I promise." Twelve hours later, the police found his car abandoned in a bank parking lot, driver's door ajar, keys in the ignition, and leftovers on the front seat. Two hours after that, they found him wandering downtown in his coat and underwear. Two months later, I put him into hospice.

I hop out of the shower and throw on a pair of jeans and my favorite Celtics T-shirt, homage to my Irish heritage, just like my mother. I fish my running shoes back out of the washing machine where I deposited them earlier, planning to chip away the grit entombing them later. I tie up the tattered laces then grab my camera, in case I have time to do some work later, along with a stack of magazines and his red licorice. As I descend the steps outside my apartment, my cell phone jingles in my bag. I grab it as I unlock the door to my 1972 Beetle, its paint the color of daffodils sprinkled with rust blossoms across the side, the exhausted grey interior marred with tears and the stained memories of all those who sat in its seats before me, a piece of history.

"This is Jennifer," I answer, assuming the call is from a business contact.

"Ms. Tribiani? This is Diane from St. Francis Hospice. We need you to come right away. I am so sorry to inform you, but your father passed a half an hour ago. He's gone."

Whatever other condolences the nurse babbles into the phone fall silent in my ears. I drop the phone in my lap, clutching the steering wheel for support. Gone. How? I saw him yesterday. We played a game of Gin Rummy before he ate his Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes. I brought him a container of chocolate ice cream for dessert. He smiled when I told him I loved him. It was a good day. I scramble to find my breath. Tears boil in the corners of my eyes, but I refuse them access to my sorrow. I wipe my face and turn the key.

The engine sputters, the tail pipe coughing out a dark cloud of exhaust. I pull onto the road, a rote path I traveled so many times before, to him, my father, my friend, the only family I know.

I lay a final kiss atop my father's head, his eyes shut, dark lashes fluttering down into their end, resting against his pallid cheeks. I walk outside his room where Nurse Diane stands, wringing her hands, eyes darting.

"Ms. Tribiani, we need to discuss the removal of your father's personal belongings as well as where you want his body sent."

My father is dead less than two hours and already they want to fill his bed.

"Don't worry, I will be back later this afternoon to make arrangements and clean out the room," I say, trying to contain my grief surging in tsunami waves that destroy my heart. I walk down the hall to escape into the outside air, fresh, clean, liberated from death's rancor still clinging to my clothes.

I have no one to call, no one to comfort me or hold me tight. My father has no family of which to speak, no brothers or sisters, uncles, or aunts. Both of his parents died over thirty years ago. We have no friends. Moving from state to state over the past thirty years takes its toll upon the ability to form any relationships other than the casual "good morning" as you pass a neighbor on your way out. I never had VOL 7, ISSUE 2

friends in school and he never held a job, which left little opportunity for conversation with any other soul aside from each other. Despite his years well beyond other fathers of children my age, my father always engaged in play with me. A single parent, he wore many hats in our family: hair stylist, chef, teacher, nurse, purple dragon that spewed pink fire, dashing prince sent to chase the villain away, sleeping bag compadre who indulged in ghost stories and fingers sticky with marshmallow cream, cheerleader at my softball games and track meets. He was everything to me.

Three days later, I take a journey in my decaying running shoes still caked in dirt, traveling to the top of the West Spanish Peak, my father's favorite destination in Colorado. The summit offers a spectacular view of the plains below, but more importantly, it offers me a place to say goodbye. I remove the small birch box from my backpack, resting alongside my camera and a bottle of water. Inside the wood frame, my father rests, awaiting his exodus into salvation. I want something more, a plot in a cemetery, a stone immortalizing his life, a place for me to come when sad or alone, but he refused such.

"Don't stick me in the ground, Jen, where things consume me. Set me free among the clouds, where I want to be, close to God." I am desperate to keep hold of some piece of him. I have only one picture of him. He always spurned the lens, forbidding any snapshots of his existence. Two years ago on a trip to New Orleans, I managed to snap a shot of him in Jackson Square during the French Quarter Festival. He had no idea I took his picture while he enjoyed the harmonies of an impromptu jazz quartet playing in the street, pleasure tugging at the corners of his smile. I took him there for his sixtieth birthday. I clutch the box close to me, my last embrace. I lift the lid and sweep the box across the sapphire sky, remnants of my father caught up in summer's exhalation, carried the way of the eagle and the Ute, down into the endless valleys below.

"Goodbye Daddy!" I scream, my voice rising to meet his spirit riding the wind, "Goodbye!"

I return to my apartment that evening, exhausted from the grueling hike and debilitating emotions of the day. I wash the day away in a scalding shower. The water tattoos my skin with red splotches. I settle down in front of my computer with a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich, my body craving the carbohydrates and protein spent during my father's escape into the sky. Messages invade my email, anxious customers wanting status reports on their case, colleagues wondering my whereabouts, missing my photographs and posts. Tomorrow, I promise, tomorrow I start again. I shut down my screen and walk over to a pile of boxes from my father's hospice room. I gathered his meager belongings into the boxes three days ago, not paying much mind to what I placed inside.

I hired an aid to pack his things the first time when he made his final trek from his small townhouse to the hospice. His mind too feeble to help her decipher treasure from trash, she placed everything stashed in drawers and closets into boxes. Now, I hold the unsavory duty of sorting through what remained of my father's life.

I take a pair of scissors from the kitchen and slice open the tape placed in haste, hoping the adhesive would hold the cardboard together, if not my faltering heart—weeping. The first box has an assortment of paperbacks and magazines collected by my father during his stint in the death chamber, with its rose patterned wallpaper, soft quilts, ice chips, and apparitions of those poor souls lost before his conviction. I constantly brought him new reading material in hopes that some stimulation would ignite his memory and draw him out of the shadows. The magazines lay smooth and the paperbacks' spines revealed no cracks, no page unfurled, the words untouched by his gaze. The next box contained various toiletries from his bathroom: a bottle of Old Spice, deodorant, a toothbrush stained an unpleasant shade of red. Many days he forgot to brush his teeth (when he did, his inflamed gums bled from the pressure), a brush with strands of his steel hair woven into the bristles. I open the

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bottle of Old Spice and inhale memories of him. A tear slips down my face, dripping into the bottle beneath my nose. I replace the lid and return the bottle to the box along with a half empty box of tissues, vitamins, a tube of toothpaste, a half satin package of red licorice, items set for destruction tomorrow at the hands of the dumpster. I sit back on the couch and survey the remaining boxes, puzzled by a large one in the corner. I didn't pack that one, I think to myself, wondering about the contents within.

I creep over to the box, apprehensive to what I may find inside, what unknown memory lurked inside seeking to send me spiraling into another emotional frenzy: a letter penned in his hand during a rational moment, the get well card with the surfing dog I brought him with a bunch of daffodil balloons, his eyeglasses. I peer beneath the lid and see stacks of clothing nested in the cardboard space.

Recollections of a conversation between myself and Nurse Diane drift before me, a conversation involving aides packing his closet before I returned that day. I remove the layers of clothes stacked with precision in the box: jeans, sweatshirts, flannel pajama pants. I think I am going to vomit. I sprint into the bathroom and purge my earlier peanut butter indulgence, the pain too much to digest.

Returning to the living room after my porcelain encounter, I continue my excavation. All items of clothing removed, I notice a small leather satchel at the bottom of the box. I pull the brown case from beneath a pile of old shoes and set it on the table. Interesting. I never encountered this before. A small brass lock holds the secrets contained within hostage, refusing me access. I run over to my purse hanging by the door and pull out my father's key ring, bringing it back to the table. I try each key in the lock, a bone forced into a socket, until I find a small gold key that fits. Perfection. I twist the tiny key and the lock shifts, springing open and parting the case like the Red Sea, exposing the truth. I drop the satchel and fall for miles.

Hundred dollar bills rain out of the satchel, too many to count, covering the floor. Where did he get all of this money? I know his father left him some, but not this much. I fall down into the nest of thousands of dollars, counting bills as I stack them next to me.

Unbelievable. I stand up and scour the rest of the trove, my eyes catching a glimpse of a book in the bottom of the case, smothered by the layers of cash. I pull out the black bound book, several thousand more spilling out onto my feet in a deluge of wealth. Stepping out from the moneyed embrace, I peel back the cover and reveal my horror. I cannot stop myself from turning the sallowed pages that harbor the most unspeakable things. My body heaves, an earthquake raging throughout my soul. My eyes singe with the images emblazoned on the pages, a scrapbook of his depravity. I close my eyes and scream. A thousand wails sent flying to his ears, interred in the depths of Hell.

I place a phone call to the airport, searching for flights to Oklahoma City. I book myself on a United flight leaving in two hours.

I grab my backpack and stuff my camera, the black book, and a change of clothes inside. I rip my bathrobe off and shimmy into a pair of jeans and a sweater, more presentable than my usual T-shirt attire. I pull my dark hair back into a low ponytail and apply a smattering of makeup to conceal the worry and fatigue that ravage my smile. No amount of cosmetics, however, can obscure the betrayal lurking in my swollen eyes, tiny ruby roads traveling across the windows to my soul. I look at my reflection in the bathroom, a woman forever changed. Behind me, I see my beloved running shoes resting by the door, anxiously awaiting our departure. I stride over and pick up the shoes, disposing of them in the kitchen trashcan, swallowed up by their violent end in the bottom of the bin—death by plastic asphyxiation. I grab another pair of shoes, my backpack and walk out the door.

The flight from Denver to Oklahoma City provides me ample time to sit and reflect. I loved him so; why did he betray me? I was blind to his lies. What worth is a researcher who cannot even expose their 24

own truth? I chased paper tigers while the beast sat across the table from me every morning. I always believed his distance stemmed from a life saddled with raising a child on his own. I believed the vacant look in his eyes came from years of struggle and sacrifice for my happiness, longing for an existence easier than his reality. I thought his refusal to acknowledge his past was nothing more than an escape from the unbearable pain. The plane thrusting to a halt in the Sooner sky reminds me of where I am, retreating from my thoughts of days spent in the company of the devil. I gather my backpack, prepared for my unwanted fate.

I step out from the cab at the entrance to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations. The humidity stifles, weighting my already laboring breath with the steamed August air. I ascend the steps that lead to the front of the building, and step inside, a rush of artificial cold sculpting my face into a frozen mask. Striding over the main entrance desk, I try to maintain my composure despite the kamikaze butterflies flying suicide missions in my stomach. The security guard manning the front looks bored and impatient, chomping at the bit until his shift mercifully ends.

"Excuse me, sir, I was wondering if an Agent Murdock still works here," I say, running my papyrus tongue over my broken lips. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara aching for the monsoon.

"Wait one moment," he states, looking displeased that I interrupted his afternoon.

He walks to a back room and retrieves a manifesto that lists all active field agents in the area. He returns to the desk and flips through the documents, then turns to the monitor winking at him from the desk. He types an unknown code into the computer. His fingers clacking across the keys reminds me of rattling bones. The printer stationed next to his monitor surges to life, regurgitating a printout of the image captured on his screen. Agent Andy Murdock peers out from the sheet with pensive eyes.

"Agent Murdock retired last year,'" he states curtly, hoping to rid himself of my annoyance.

"Do you have any information I could use to find him? I must speak with him. I have information on one of his old cases."

He stares at me across his desk, assessing my truth factor. I look unassuming, certainly not the criminal type. He retrieves a piece of paper from his desk and scribbles out a phone number.

"Have a pleasant day," he states, his gaze affixed to the door behind me, ushering me out of his space with his eyes.

I walk with haste back into the sweltering heat. I pull my cell phone from my backpack and dial the local number written on the page. I pace as I await a voice on the other end, a lame lioness set to burst forth from her cage. A deep baritone echoes across the line, sending chills reverberating through me: "Hello?" I inhale all my will and strength, pouring my tale into the receiver. When my breath ceases, all my sins confessed, the line is silent save for a distant hum rumbling like a swarm of African bees set to strike. After an eternity drifting in the stagnant air, a voice, "When can we meet?"

I spot him sitting on a park bench shrouded in the shadows of the Oklahoma City Memorial—a large man with silvered hair, dressed in khaki pants and a bold colored Hawaiian print shirt, the typical retirement uniform. He was awaiting my arrival. I walk over to the bench, the convict approaching their execution. I sit down next to him, extracting the black book from my bag. I open to the front and remove a piece of paper affixed with antiquated Elmer's glue, tearing the edges in my haste. Murdock takes the paper from me and stares at it for a moment before looking at me, "This is my poster. This was my case." I pull out my father's driver’s license and hand it to him.

He runs his meaty fingers over the lamination and sighs, "This is Frank Russo." I hand him my lone photograph of my father in New Orleans, smiling as he taps his feet to the infectious blues warbling through the crowded streets. He pulls out a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his garish shirt, orange orchids laughing at me

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The Monroe Doctrine

by Thomas Greene

Notice posted on www.canadainternational.gc.ca under General Notices, dated May 31, 2011: “So that our employees may take advantage of the rare four-day holiday in July (Victoria Day, U.S. Independence Day) this year, Consular Offices will be closed to non-essential business from close of business June 30 to July 5. Internal Consular Operations will continue as scheduled, and emergency staff will retain their communications equipment. Those without assigned duties may enjoy the four day holiday.”

Normally an announcement like this would not even be featured as a footnote in such a story as this, but as it is a factor in what is about to take place. Although, it won’t seem that way at first…

Notice minus 9 days, 4:17 a.m., Eastern Time, Vista Hotel, Pittsburgh, State of Pennsylvania…

“William, are you asleep?”

“If I responded to that rhetorical question in the affirmative, would you believe me?”

The first thing that William hears in response to his comment is a soft laugh, followed by the sound of the person next to him shifting slightly in his direction. “You’re not going to try and tell me that I wore you out again, are you?”

“Rhetorical,” William says, drawing out the word.

In response to this, he feels a woman’s fingertip brush against the tip of his nose. He opens his eyes just enough to break the seal in time to see the finger stop just above his chin. Exhaling slowly through his nose, he shifts his eyes to his right, keeping them slit as he smiles slightly in response to the gesture.

“How many?”

“Four?”

“Two.” “Three it is.” The elbow behind the finger rests itself gently on the side of his chest as the person speaks. “Three. How much longer will you be in town?”

“Six weeks.”

“Two. How will you leave?”

William sighs. “Alternate airport serving Pittsburgh metro.”

“One.” William notices the extended pause before the final question, but remains as he is. “Who will go with you?”

“Still working on the guest list for that departure. Had been keeping it in the low ones and zeroes, but I’ve been thinking lately about expanding it to include twos now.”

The next several moments are silent ones. William doesn’t open his eyes any further until he suddenly feels an index finger jabbed into his right side, just below his ribcage. The intensity and unexpected nature of this response forces his eyes wide open.

Before he can regain his focus, a blur of movement from his right finishes with a pair of brown eyes looking back at his from less than three inches away.

“Do you expect me to say something trite like ‘Anyone I know’?”

“Well, since you’ve said it, I can answer with-NNNNGGGHHH.” The rest of his sentence ends with a rush of air as William’s body goes stiff in response to two hands chopping into his abdomen from either side. As he slowly recovers his breath, he asks, “What was that?”

The face around the eyes adopts a modest look. As William looks on, he sees the look slowly replaced by a smile. As the smile moves from her lips to her eyes, William begins to realize something is up, but is unable to finish the thought, as another, much sharper pain suddenly grips his body from a point near the center of his waist.

When the intensity only lessens slightly, William manages to find a voice with which to utter a single repeated word VOL 7, ISSUE 2

“Uncle-uncle-uncle-uncle-uuuuuun-cle.”

“No, no, and…no.” his partner says without lessening the intensity of her grip on him. William does his best to look questioningly at her with one eye, receiving a knowing look in response to his glance. He then lets his head fall back as he then says softly, “Jacqueline…Jacqueline…Jacqueline.”

As the last syllable of his modified reply fades, Jacqueline lessens the intensity of her grip on him and then cocks an ear in his direction as she asks, “What was that? I didn’t quite hear you, Mr. Monroe.”

When he doesn’t reply after a moment, Jacqueline turns her head to look at him. As she does this, William nods his head pointedly three times. As his head comes down on the third movement, Jacqueline sees his arms come up and around her back. As she opens her mouth to comment, she feels him crook his left knee up slightly, and then in one fluid motion, roll the both of them over so that she is now on the bottom, and William is now on top. His hands take hold of her wrists, gently pinning them to the bed. With the help of this motion as well as gravity, William has now secured her to the bed, giving him the best position to block any attempt for her to escape.

With a sigh, Jacqueline looks past William towards the ceiling.

“Where did you find time to practice that move?”

William adopts a look of false modesty as he says, “I’ve been using that move in twenty-five years of business. Today was the first time that I used it in a personal sense.”

As they share a laugh as the aside, Jacqueline speaks again in between trying to regain her composure. “What do you call that maneuver?”

“Well, in business scenarios, I called it ‘bottom rail on top’. But I think that in honor of how successful it was with you, I will call it…un…deux…troi— ” At the word ‘successful’, Jacqueline had started to think about what he could mean by that word. Therefore, she is unprepared for the sudden flexing of his hip muscles with each pause, and what her reaction is after the third flexion. The sudden and unexpected mass of emotions that flood her mind at this point cause her to briefly lose her hearing as the sensations seem to assault her mind from every direction.

“NNNNNNNGAAAAAHHH.” Is the only sound that she manages to make as a thousand red and white sparklers fill the back of her eyes, before they are replaced by a velvet blanket that settles over her from above.

Sometime later, approximately five hours by the bedside clock, Jacqueline awakens to find that she is alone under the covers of the bed, but is not alone on the bed. William is sitting on one corner of the bed facing the television, which is on, but with the sound muted and the closed captioning activated. He is wearing a navy blue LL Bean dress shirt and a pair of medium brown chino pants without a belt. The suit jacket he wore when they met three nights ago at the hotel restaurant is draped over the arm of a nearby chair by the bedroom door.

Feeling her sit up in bed as she takes a look at the nowstraightened appearance of the bedroom, William turns as he rises from the bed to look at her. Entwining her fingers left hand over right as she finishes her appraisal, Jacqueline asks a pointed question as she gives her head a small shake to clear the few strands of hair in front of her eyes.

“Did I sleep through housekeeping?”

William forces a wan smile in response to her obvious quip. “The staff has been very good to the both of us. I would prefer to not waste too much of our goodwill on making their job any harder.”

Jacqueline looks up at him for a long moment before nodding her assent. Seeing him smile at her nod, she asks, “What is that for?”

“You just nodded three times. It made me think of…” William lets the rest of his comment remain unspoken.

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Jacqueline rejects the impulse to raise a finger to make her point, choosing to nod once in response instead before saying, “So, this has to last us until, when did you say, Flag Day midweek?”

William nods once with his eyes, letting his eyes fall to the floor again as he answers her. “Well, if we kept to the major holidays, someone might catch on faster than we would like.”

Jacqueline tilts her head to one side as she considers this. “When you suggested this schedule mid-December, I never thought it would work this long. How did you know it would?”

William exaggerates a shrug as he says, “Well, being a corporate wizard, I could use a lot of charts and graphs, but I prefer to chalk it up to the movie we watched that first December night. There’s a reason there are the original classics, and the new classics.”

Jacqueline turns her head slightly as she recalls the movie in question. “To think, I have Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire to thank for our good fortune.”

“Well, at least we didn’t have to gild the lily by making use of the movie’s namesake.” William says, still looking down at the floor.

Noticing this, Jacqueline lowers her head as she leans forward to look up at him. “What’s wrong? And don’t say you-know-who.”

“Okay, it’s not you-know-who.” William says.

When he doesn’t change where he is looking after another long moment, Jacqueline shakes her head once. “William, he is no longer in the picture. The courts have said so. The judge even told me that if he does enter the picture more than professionally, he’ll trade him to Devil’s Island for a case of snails.”

“I know that. You’ve told me, but next week is the Correspondents Awards Dinner in Washington. You’ll be there. He’s a correspondent, so he could be there.”

“What, you think he’ll approach me at the dinner and convince me to forget the last six months have happened and go off with him to some quiet corner of Washington for the week? That four days in Washington will convince me to throw you over for him?”

William raises his hands in mock surrender as he says, “I’m only saying that it is a possibility.”

“It’s also possible that the Pirates, Steelers, AND Penguins will win their respective championship trophies for the next ten—no— fifteen years straight, but short of the bookmakers in Las Vegas all contracting long-term memory loss, I don’t see there being short odds on that happening within this city’s limits.”

As she finishes her speech, Jacqueline rolls slightly forward and takes William’s hands in hers, pulling him half-a-step towards her.

“I’ll go to the Correspondents Week, he may go to the Correspondents Week, but I will be back in this city no more than four hours after it is over, and I will be here for Flag Day to have… dinner with you. Capice?”

William, who had started to smile at the word “dinner” returns her gaze with his own at the accented word. She gives his hands a gentle squeeze before pulling another half step so that she can guide them to a spot above her right breast.

“Do you feel that? The beating sensation under there?” William nods. “That’s my heart. It’s a part of me all the time, but it only does that when I’m around you.”

William looks at her for a half- moment as she finishes her comment. Without fully breaking the contact between them, she shifts her hands up past his elbow until her hands are cupping the outside of his biceps. She then slowly starts to pull him closer, which is successful for a few moments before William starts to slip out of her grasp.

As she looks up at him questioningly, William lowers his head to rest his head against the top of hers. “I have work this afternoon, as do you.”

At the mention of the last three words, Jacqueline lets her hands fall to her side. As she falls back onto the pillow, she muses, “I had to fall in love with a business major.”

28

William crosses his arms over his chest as he considers her comment. “Well, there is one good thing about being in love with us business majors. Marketing our love to those we love, is a sales pitch worth incorporating into any five year plan or longer.”

Jacqueline mimes a wince at his pointed joke. She then grabs the other pillow and covers her face with it, pretending to wave him off before forming a T with both hands. William smiles at her reaction and turns his attention back to the television.

An hour later, after Jacqueline has prepared for her own return to the world, the two manage to take one of the express elevators to the lobby, Jacqueline making the most of the time down by standing in front of William and holding her hands behind her back so that she can hold his. After checking out and paying the bill on their personal credit cards, the two exit the hotel, shaking hands before turning to go their separate ways: William to the crosswalk at the corner, Jacqueline to the taxi stand in front of the hotel.

William’s journey is the shorter of the two. With the events of the morning still fresh in his mind, he crosses the street on autopilot, walking towards the entrance of the building on this corner.

Therefore, he does not notice the man standing to the right of the entrance carrying a sign in front of his chest. The sign reads “The Triangle Restaurant: USX Building.” After William enters the building, the man turns the sign around to show a new sign that reverses the order of the notice: USX Building, Triangle Restaurant. Pressing the button on his Bluetooth earpiece twice in quick succession, he receives a one-second burst of static in response, acknowledging the signal. The man then begins to pace in front of the entrance as he announces the offerings of the restaurant to passersby. The man walks down to the marker halfway down the next block and to an ivory marble marker that bears the name of the building he is advertising in front of: Monroe Square.

22,500 miles above Quito, Ecuador…

Two thousand fifty miles to the south and nearly twenty-three thousand miles over the heads of the people of Pittsburgh orbit some of North (and South) America’s communications, weather, and data-gathering satellites. Most are known to people if not by name, then by the pictures they present of the Americas.

Among those in orbit above the northern half of South America is one relatively innocuous satellite placed in orbit seven years earlier from atop a rocket launched from French Guiana. Launched during the suspension of launches from Cape Canaveral, and now one year past its lifecycle, the COMTELSAT IV-class satellite continues to orbit in geosynchronous orbit above its earth station in Ecuador.

As the sunlight begins to illuminate the country of Mexico, the satellite receives a set of instructions from the ground station. After processing the full set of instructions, the satellite repositions its main camera to focus on the northeastern United States. Tightening the focus to its extreme capability, COMTELSAT IV manages to focus on the area in front of Monroe Square. Taking a series of photographs, the satellite then transmits the photographs to the ground station, with a forward address attached. Then, after verifying the successful transmission of the photographs, the last stage of the instructions are acted on, as the satellite fires its maneuvering rockets to begin a slow descent into the atmosphere, meeting its end the following Saturday with a fiery streak over the Southern Pacific.

Western Pittsburgh, PA, north of the Allegheny-Ohio ‘joint’…

For Jacqueline, her share of the experience begins at her place of employment as well, but not at the front door. The destination of those photographs is in the same building where she works, to the second computer in her supervisor’s office. Upon receiving the arriving signal, the computer processes the transmission as it has been programmed to, to forward it via a Wi-FI Connection to the printer in the office.

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

Hearing the printer warm up, the supervisor stops what he is working on with the other computer and listens to it as it finishes its prep cycle. As the first photograph begins printing, sliding forward on the tray a line at a time, she turns to look in its direction, their faces darkening slightly as the center of the photograph takes shape.

Reclining back in her chair, the Senior Director thinks about the conversations she has had about this photograph leading up to this moment.

Taking the first photograph out of the tray, Marianne Canby studies the level of detail in the photograph, one corner of her mind imagining what is taking place with the satellite that took these photos. As the photos continue to print, Marianne thinks of something else, how simple this message is and was to create, considering what is expected to take place within the next month.

After the last photo is printed, she pauses only for another moment before pushing back with her chair and standing to her feet.

Just before heading for her door, Marianne presses the call switch on her phone, connecting her to her assistant’s Bluetooth. “Maxine, I want a meeting with the VP-P when I return. Then I’ll be out after lunch for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, Ms. Canby.” Maxine replies, as Marianne finishes her statement.

On her way to the door, Marianne takes the stack of photos, gives each one a last glance, and then slides them into the feeding tray of her shredder. As each photo slides through the track of the shredder, Marianne smiles as she notices that the shredder does its other job before cutting the paper into shreds, turning the entire photo into one large black rectangle.

From her inner office door to her destination, the floor one level down, the majority of the trip is without sound or comment, the loudest noises being the sounds of fingers on keys or the occasional ring of a desk telephone. The last part of her trek to the lower floor is totally silent, thanks to the environmental soundproofing of the stairwell walls and doors.

Once the door to the lower floor is opened, however, the sense of quiet is lost, replaced by an increased pattern of conversations, telephones going and being used, and computer and central printer equipment being used all at the same time. As she navigates her way through the center of the floor’s main room, she acknowledges greetings from some of the employees, waves at other senior persons moving about the floor, keeping the main focus of her attention on two people on the far end of the room who are talking to each other.

Her reason for maintaining her one-sided eye contact on these people is not for their not taking part in the cacophony of sound going on around them, but the reason for her visiting this floor. Upon seeing Marianne approaching their location, the woman and man standing there each regard her questioningly, receiving the barest of nods in response from Director Canby. As Marianne passes by the two of them, they fall in step behind her, flanking her on either side the best they can as Marianne turns to walk towards one of the doors on the outside wall of the main room, one which is next to the a small square nameplate that reads “Jacqueline Phillips: Director, Evening News / Co-Anchor.”

As they file into her office, after Marianne handles the perfunctory knocking on the door, Jacqueline turns on her computer and reaches for the phone. Seeing who and how many are entering her office, she pauses at first, her hand still in mid-air above the phone unit, and then straightens up in her chair as she looks each of them in the eye before speaking.

“All right, so I was three minutes late off of the elevator, so what story did I miss?” she asks sarcastically.

Marianne, echoed by her wingmen, shakes her head a few times.

“This is not story-related. This is work-related. “ VOL 7, ISSUE 2

“I thought that you used to say that the story is the reason for our work?” Jacqueline offers.

“No, what I used to say is the people are the story, which is the reason for our work. But this is actually work-related.” Marianne pauses for effect before adding, “I’m sending someone else to Washington to attend the Correspondents’ Association meeting for our station.”

Jacqueline picks up on the descriptive tense of Marianne’s statement. “Someone else—as in two someones—is going instead of me? Who is going in my place besides Walter?”

“Walter’s not going. He has other arrangements in place for him.

The next in line would be Sean and Christine here. They have the required time in with the Association, and also have the time free.”

“Well, if they are going in my place, may I ask where I am going?”

“You’re needed here. Mr. Moreno sent another of his not-really-asuggestion emails to our Programming VP, who passed it on to me, to pass it on to you. “ Jacqueline’s expression reflects the passive sounds that come from Christine and Sean. “Mr. Moreno” which Marianne referred to is Mr. W. Moreno, the owner of the station, and on occasion, provider of ideas for future stories to be covered by the station, or one of its eight sister ones around the country. Given the fact that aside from the stories, the stations are left to decide for themselves their day-to-day operations as long as they remain successful, no one ever turns down an idea from Moreno, especially since they usually end up providing positive ratings results.

“What does Mr. Moreno wish us to cover this month that involves me?”

“The new regional air service carrier operating from Allegheny County Airport. He wants you to prepare for the story during this week, and then layout a two-part story idea to be covered when you visit them next Friday.

“Which cameraman did I draw for this assignment?” Jacqueline asks.

“None.” At her questioning look, Marianne continues. “Aside from establishing shots, you’re doing this without a crew at the site with you. They will be going there over the next week getting the clips for your story, and then you put it together with your words.”

“Why not send Christine or Sean to cover the new air piece?”

“Because Mr. Moreno chose you to cover it. Now do whatever preparations you need to from here to prepare for it while preparing for today’s news reporting. While you’re doing that, we will get back to work. “ With that, Marianne turns on her heel, steps through the space between Christine and Sean, and exits the office. Christine follows suit, Sean pausing to make a comment. Just as he begins to speak, Marianne says his name, causing him to jump slightly before exiting the office in short order.

Jacqueline sits there in her chair, thinking about what just transpired. She swings her foot back to kick at her desk, when she recalls that morning’s conversation about the meeting. She then relaxes, only to then realize that she can’t tell the person she had the conversation with about the change until after the meeting is held.

Upon realizing this fact, she kicks the desk again, this time out of frustration over her inability to tell, rather than her plans to go.

Monroe Square, Friday…

From William’s perspective, his plans for the next two weeks are also about to change without his knowledge. But instead of satellites and superiors redirecting his plans for him, his path will be changed by the presentation of a message by his Chief Staff Officer, and the note is not presented to him until the Friday following his hotel weekend.

When he established the firm, he gave his Administrative aide the ability to represent all staff personnel in his corporation not only to

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29

Of Babysitters and Bodicerippers

by Stephanie Aspland

Second-hand toys, clean diapers, and the occasional stuffed animal littered Sarah and Doug's bedroom floor. Doug snored like a bear. As he rolled over, he dumped the ugly yellow comforter from the Good Will store onto the floor. Mucky yellow light of the same shade glowed through the thin curtain from the streetlight right outside their bedroom window. Sarah often heard sirens when she was up at odd hours feeding the baby. The clunky computer monitor in the corner, the brightest light in the room, illuminated Sarah's face. Dark-circles underscored eyes that sparkled with passion. As she typed like a fiend, her ratty bathrobe fell open. Her need to write overruled her half-hearted desire to close it again. Her fingers punched at the keyboard like it had done her wrong as characters in a frivolous copperplate font appeared on the screen.

“Sarah,” Doug croaked. Sarah jumped, fingers frozen over the keyboard. She prayed he would roll over and start snoring again. He did. She waited a few beats to make sure he'd been talking in his sleep. As she began to breathe again, her gaze wandered to a small hospital blanket on the floor. She smiled at the memory of how fragile and beautiful little Elise looked swaddled in it on the way home from the hospital. The thought faded as she waited to make sure Doug has settled down. When she was sure, she continued spinning Count Rosseau’s seduction of the lovely Adele. She knew she shouldn't have risked writing tonight, but she had to. It had been two weeks since she'd been able to lay down the plots she'd constructed over laundry and dirty dishes. Ordinarily, she managed to get a few pages in when Elise was napping, but lately her baby girl would have none of that. Her alternative was to ask Doug to take care of Elise so she could go to the library. She'd already gone once this month and she worried that Doug would suspect she was cheating if she asked too often. Of course, the truth was much more innocent than that.

She started writing in high school, but her passion really took off during her first year in community college. She met Doug soon thereafter, but they didn't date until her junior year. She was a semester away from graduating when she dropped out and married him. Sarah gave birth to Elise six months later. Though she'd given up becoming a journalist long ago, the novels wouldn't stop spinning in her head. Once all of the loose ends tied themselves together in ways even she couldn't have predicted she had no choice, but to write them. She sent “The Merchant's Mistress” to a publishing company on a whim under a gaudy pen name. She had only done it so she could shred a rejection letter and be able to tell herself that her work wasn't good enough to be published. She figured if she'd tried and failed than the possibility wouldn't rob her of the precious few hours of sleep she got most nights. To her surprise, the publishing house decided to print her novel in paper back with a modest run of copies. They wanted more and she was working on her next novel. The checks that came in the mail landed in a private account on the side that served as college fund for Elise. Doug's construction work paid the bills, but it was hardly enough to put a kid through school.

She sighed as she finished the chapter. She shut down the computer and dropped the hot pink flash-drive into the vase containing a single fake rose that set beside the monitor. As she slipped beneath the sheet and hauled the comforter onto herself, a familiar line of thoughts began to unravel as they always did after she wrote. She couldn't tell him because he'd assume that if she was VOL 7, ISSUE 2

writing harlequin romances then she was unsatisfied with their marriage. He got irritated when she'd watch romantic comedies because they made him self-conscious about his shortcomings as a provider. She was sure he'd assume that she was some sort of nymphomaniac or had a much wilder past that she'd let on. Of course, he'd have it all wrong. They were all him. Every brigand, every mysterious count, every last rugged wild-man had a trace of Doug in his character somewhere. She smiled to herself, cuddled up next to her man and fell asleep. * * *.

The next morning, Doug awoke to the smell of coffee and the muffled sounds of his wife cooing over their daughter in the next room. He stumbled off the far end of the bed and made for the bathroom. Squeaky, the stuffed kangaroo, had other plans. Doug tripped over the marsupial and crashed into the desk beside the door, sending a vase previously settled on the desk flying. The vase shattered on the tile floor. He was about to get the broom and dust pan when he saw a burst of pink among the broken shards of grey ceramic. He frowned as he picked up the flash-drive. Doug sat down, pushed the power button, and waited for the monitor to come to life. The screen lit up and soon filled with vivacious characters swirling in the wonder of lust and love. Doug was eight pages in when Sarah came into the bedroom with Elise on her hip to ask if he wanted coffee. She put her free hand over her mouth in quiet shock when her eyes registered the fuchsia thumb drive in the computer.

Elise let out a giggle in response to the funny look on her mommy's face. Doug reacted, turning the swiveling office chair to face his wife.

“Is this your work?” he asked simply, his tone inscrutable.

“Yes. It is.” she replied flatly, bracing for impact. She refused to meet his penetrating gaze.

“This is great stuff, love.” he revealed. “Why did you hide this from me?” he rose from the chair. The document was still open on the desktop, exposed to the light of the late morning streaming through the window.

“I just... I thought you would assume I wrote the stuff, but I wasn't happy with where we ended up.” Sarah stuttered.

“There was nothing to be afraid of. I remember how you'd talk about the stories you wrote when we'd first met and I was surprised you stopped writing when Elise was born. Though it seems you never stopped writing, you just kept it from me,” Doug explained, hurt coloring his voice as he fetched the broom from the closet, swept up the broken vase pieces, and discarded them. Sarah crossed the distance between them and put a hand on her husband's face. She apologized simply and earnestly. The smallest smile eased up the corners of his mouth and she kissed him lightly in response.

“Besides,” Doug said playfully, “Count Rosseau reminds me an awful lot of someone I know rather well. Adele seems rather familiar too.” he winked at his wife before collected Elise in her arms to her great delight. He sat back down at the desk to continue reading, bouncing his little girl on his knee all the while.

Sarah disappeared back into the kitchen to grab Doug a cup of coffee. She grabbed the cup and mixed the drink with a grace and unstressed fluidity that she'd forgotten she had in the months of worry and mild paranoia. A healthy pink blush colored her cheeks as she returned to the bedroom with the coffee, a sense of peace grounding her every step. She knew she had married a great man, but her spell of floating adrift in a sea of insecurity had made her forgetful. Sarah relished the feeling of being anchored in her safe haven once again.

Stephanie Aspland studies English at Westmont College and plans to study abroad in England and Ireland next fall. She completed a 50,000 word novel in thirty days for National Novel Writing Month in 2010. She has a talent for the creation and analysis of literature, one she intends to develop indefinitely.

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31

A Tale of Two Kidneys

by Dawn Cord Ray

There’s a reason we’re born with an extra kidney. So our spouse can drive us crazy when he needs one.

It’s Dickensian.

My husband told me on our second date that I might not want him. He was defective. He had an auto-immune disease. It was affecting his kidneys.

I told him not to worry. He could have one of mine.

I mean, after all, we were built with two for a reason.

We were hoping that day would be twenty years down the line. It certainly seemed so. He had been stable for years. Oh, but not in the last two months. Very quickly we came to the frightening realization that the time for a kidney transplant would be fast approaching.

That time is now.

It’s amazing how fast you act when there’s a super sale at Macy’s.

And you can act even faster if you need an organ.

Want to know some interesting things I’ve learned? Sure you do.

They may surprise you.

The doctors don’t take out a kidney when they put in a kidney.

(What?!!) Why make more work for themselves? They just slap a new one in there. Then the lucky recipient gets to walk around with three kidneys. I mean, it’s always good to have an extra.

You mean there’s room in there? Aaaahhh… kind of.

Where do they put that thing? Well, they put it on the right side down by your groin. (It seems to like it there, and it’s a shorter distance to the exit zone.)

The new kidney gets bigger once it starts working in its new neighborhood. Like a muscle, as it works out it gets larger. Similarly, the old kidneys get lazier (they must be Southern) and smaller when they learn the new employee can do the heavy lifting.

Surgeons cut through the patient’s side muscles to place the kidney. (Those rascally doctors, they slip it in when you’re not looking.) But they don’t sew the patient’s muscles back up.

WHAAAT??!! Staple? No. Suture? Nope. Medical glue? No. What do the doctors do? They just sort of place the muscles back near each other. WHAT? They sew back together the fascia layer (the top, thin, fibrous skin-like layer) which sort of holds everything in place. They leave the obliques open. “This gives it some room,” The transplant surgeon said. “You know, so the kidney can breathe.” Like a fine wine… or a cheap wine.

The potential donor goes through extensive health screening before they get a chance to be the hero. One reason donors are ruled out? They only have one kidney! What? Apparently many people only have one kidney but don’t know it. Don’t you think that would have come up sometime before now? Nope. Apparently not.

You, dear reader, unless you have been specifically tested for it, could be living a lopsided life with only one bean in there.

If a patient receives a kidney from a deceased person the kidney lasts, on average, 10 years. Average function for a kidney from a live donor is 25 – 35 years. Wow. I guess the body doesn’t really like the idea of defunct-dead-junk parts.

If you have the bad luck to get a dead kidney, they will put the kidney (and connected artery, vein, and ureter) in a cooler (Igloo brand?) filled with ice and fly it to anywhere in the United States.

One kidney, on the rocks, please.

How do they fly? Delta? Air Tran? Federal Express?

If, after a number of years the cadaver kidney isn’t working well they don’t take that one out either. The docs just put a fourth one in 32

there. Hey, three’s a crowd but four’s a party.

Heart, liver, pancreas, and spleen need to be transplanted within two hours; kidneys, within 48 hours. (Sturdy little buggers. They’re full of toxins. You might as well wait until Tuesday for trash collection day.)

Time between evaluation and when most people need a kidney transplant: Five months.

Wait for cadaver kidneys: 2 ½ to 5 years depending on your blood type.

People in the US on the kidney transplant list at any given time: 85,000 to 90,000 Cost for dialysis: $35 to $40,000 per MONTH. Excuse me?

Dialysis in a dialysis center (hemo-dialysis) costs approximately 35 to 40 grand.

G-oi-oi-oi-oi-oi-oing. What?

Better have insurance.

Thirty-five thousand? That can’t be right.

Complete lab workups every other week. At least one nephrologist on staff. Specialty nurses. Lab techs. Phlebotomists. Patient visits 3 times per week for 3 - 3½ hours of blood cleaning plus timely checkins. Millions of dollars of machinery. Plus disposable equipment and supplies. Apparently it adds up.

The majority of dialysis patients are on Medicare. To understand the socio-economic impact of this you’d need a PhD in Economics.

Comedian George Lopez got a kidney from his wife. In an interview, Oprah said to him, “I guess you have to be nice to her”.

He said, “Not as nice as before I got the kidney.”

Many people are afraid to donate a kidney. They think their health won’t be the same afterwards or that the surgery is dangerous.

Where we are going, the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, the number of donors that have died during surgery in the history of the hospital: Zero.

Although a very nice doctor with a slight Indian accent did inform us that one donor gave a kidney and then two months later was run over by a truck. “But I don’t think that counts, and anyway that was before I got here.”

Giving a kidney to a relative, a stranger, or to the hospital is an honor.

Preparing to give a kidney to a spouse has special perks because now I have the frequent opportunity to tell my husband, “Now play nice… or I’ll take all my organs and go home.”

Dawn Cord Ray has written four romance novels, for the last 20 years she has alternated between working in part-time in advertising firms, teaching creative writing groups, and being a health & fitness teacher and expert. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in writing.

TOUGH LIT. V

IDEAGEMS MAGAZINE

Just a Taste

by Laurie Notch

“Lick, it. I dare you!” shrieked Big Sully. The tank of a thirteen-yearold girl in fraying pigtails and a ratty ball cap wiped snot from her nose on the back of her hand before offering the succulent, boogery feast to her prey du jour. ”Allowishus-Pernicious! Do as you’re told, or I’ll kick you in your pathetic little ballsac!”

Undersized for the age of twelve, Allowishus (spelled phonetically as trailer-park educated mother had best figured) was not match for the burly tomboy towering over him. His almond eyes flitted left then right in search of a gap, a hole, a tunnel… any opening as a means of escape. But Big Sully and her crew of female goons had him completely penned in with his back against the wall of an abandoned building. Broken glass crunched beneath his torn and tattered sneakers as he pushed himself flat against the crumbling, cold brick edifice. How he wished he could melt in with the wall or dematerialize and rematerialize on the other side. Wouldn’t that freak out these bad bitches?

Big Sully was losing patience. “C’mon, lick it, I said.” She shoved the snot-covered hand up to his face.

Allowishus bobbed his head back and forth and side to side to avoid the disgusting slime-covered hand.

“You’re just making it worse on yourself,” Big Sully admonished before coughing up a huge lugie which she spit onto of the boogers.

“There… I added a special topping for you. Now, lick it.”

“Come on, Al,” coaxed Fay, Big Sully’s skinny sidekick with the dingy, string hair that always covered her face. She took a last drag on the half-smoked cigarette she’d scrounged from the street gutter and tossed it at Allowishus. She got up close to him, blew rancid smoke in face, and hissed in his ear. “Just a Taste.”

“Just a taste… just a taste… just a taste,” all four of the bully girls chanted as Char and Fay held down his arms and bracketed his head.

“Lola,” bellowed Big Sully. “Pinch open his jaws.”

Also big for her young years, Lola, was the most unsure, but fearing what Big Sully might do to her, she complied.

Allowishus braced himself for the horrible ordeal. His tongue lashed violently to avoid the encounter with Big Sully’s hand but to no avail. Allowishus licked once, sputtered, choked, then hurled. A sour mixture of breakfast and lunch came up his gullet, out his mouth, down his only clean T-shirt, and—worst of all—onto Big Sully.

“Now you gone and done it. You in for it now, boy!” squealed Char. Only eleven but built like a brick shit house, her braless breasts bounced about from her heaving laugher.

Allowishus knew he was as good as dead. The first blow landed into his underfed stomach. The second and third in a barrage of flying fists and feet felled him like an axe would a sapling. He hit the ground and curled into a ball, hedgehog style, as the girls’ furiously worked him over. He tried covering his head and face against the hard toed shit-kickers the girls sported. Blood spilled from his nose and scalp. Glass shards shredded his arms and hands. Then came a momentary lull. The eye of the storm passed over him. His eyes fluttered open to see the sunny blue sky above through a veil of flowing blood. Allowishus was raptured in absolute peace… before blackness shut out the light with the dull thud of a cement block on his head.

Yup. Allowishus was indeed dead. * * * It wasn’t long before the boy’s broken body was discovered and reported to police. The round-up of the girl gang proved a swift surgical strike. Big Sully and her crew and their miscreant deeds were known from one end of the trailer park to the other. All four girls put VOL 7, ISSUE 2

on their tough act at police headquarters and flippantly denied any involvement. To the frustration of investigators, the girls—all minors— would only get a taste of interrogation before scurrying under wing of pro bono lawyers and child protective services. Their heinous attack and homicide of a young boy and playmate had every newspaper rattling open just as soon as it struck the front stoop. The rumor mill pounded out sackfuls of speculations: Big Sully was a born psychopath; she had raped young Allowishus; she and her cohorts ran a satanic coven; they were all the offspring of meth-heads who should have been sterilized. By the time the case got to trial, it was hard to find anyone without an opinion on the matter. A change of venue was in order. The girls would be tried separately in different counties across the state.

The girls continued to profess their innocence. Oddly enough, not one cracked to cut a deal with the prosecution. They were tight and tightlipped. Although each jury in each country found each girl complicit and guilty of Murder in the Second degree (largely determined by a vast sea of DNA and forensic evidence which proved it beyond even the least sliver of a shadow of a doubt), they also determined to sentence them to the bare minimum. Just a taste of justice. * * * Fifteen years had passed—60 winters, springs, summers, and falls all visiting upon Allowishus’s tiny headstone overgrown with crab grass and weeds. These would be the only visitors he would ever receive. His mother died of an overdose within a week of his murder.

Her drug-peddling boyfriend (and pimp), who had injected her with heroin, told police he was doing his best to get her off the junk, but she had just wanted a taste to take the edge off. He went to prison on drug charges and got his own taste of 15 to 25.

Fay wound up getting parole after serving only five years. She was 18 when she walked out of juvie and a full-fledged adult with a taste for everything addictive. At 28, she found herself getting a taste of strangers’ genitalia as she gave B-J’s at truck stops in order to buy dimebags of weed, crank, and whatever substance she could duly use and abuse.

Char had it rough in prison. She got a taste of other inmates gangbanging her with nasty implements. One attack had ruptured her uterus prompting an immediate hysterectomy at the age of 16. She developed rage issues and wound up getting a taste of the state mental health ward until she had served out her sentence before being dumped onto the streets to rant and panhandle.

Lola received early release due to good behavior and being a model prisoner. While inside, she got a taste of the Word of God, confessed her sin of aiding in the cruel slaying of Allowishus (and she was the only one of the four that did), and vowed to follow the straight and narrow for the rest of her days. Add to this fact the one where she saved her cellmate’s life when she cut her down from the rope made from bedding and strapped to an overhead pipe in a corner of the laundry room. Lola was indeed redeemed. She went to theological school, became ordained, and started up a ministry for kids in prison.

As for Big Sully who deserved more than just a taste of her own medicine, it seemed the fates were fearful of her retaliation to dish it out. Big Sully served her entire sentence of 15 years. She exited the prison a bigger, brawnier bully, replete with bulging muscles built up in the prison gym and bedecked in tattoos bearing tough messages.

Big Sully set out for the nearby highway where she stuck out her thumb to hitch a ride that would take her far and wide, a trail of unsolved murders in her wake.

Laurie Notch is a” Jackie of All Trade”—writer, screenwriter, producer, editor, and college lecturer, teaching Short Fiction Writing and the Art of Writing Horror. To learn more, go to: http://about.me/laurienotch.

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