Ash Heap Ayesha F. Hamid

and explained my travels, with the trunk map as guide. After a pleasant few minutes, they went on their way, and I sat down again on the bumper to see about my sandwich. Title

I’d hardly gotten started when I heard the tap-tap-tap of heels on the sidewalk, and one of the three appeared before me. “Put all that away,” she commanded. “We’re taking you to dinner.”

I needed no coaxing. I washed up in the restaurant men’s room and joined them for a glass of wine and the best dinner I’d had since leaving California. They were indeed “office girls” who’d hardly been out of St. Augustine; they were fascinated by, and envious of, my travels. I probably did most of the talking.

It was well more than an hour before we parted company and I went back to the outdoor pay phone to call the folks. Dad was home, and we had a long conversation.

Had I completed that call earlier, I’d have had difficulty disguising the fact that I was more than a little lonely and depressed. But after that dinner, I was back on top of the world, optimism restored, confident I could make all 48 states and not bust.

Dad went out that night and did whatever one did back then to send my newspaper earnings—$80, I think—to the Western Union office in St. Augustine. I slung a hammock in an out-of-the-way corner of some park for a good night’s sleep. In late morning I found the telegraph office, collected my money, and started north to visit a classmate in Birmingham and then wander north along the Eastern Seaboard and the Appalachian states.

I found another job somewhere along the way, made Maine number 48, and doubled back to Ithaca in time to start classes. It was one of my best summers in a long life—and dinner with three “office girls” was surely the best night of the whole expedition.

Author

Story

Diving In

Mark Steudel

I want to go to Chile and eat grapes. My dreams are haunted by them. Those large, otherworldly ones you want to photograph Seven times and at least twice in black & white. I have enough for a one-way fare To Santiago. I’ll worry about the rest when I get there. I want to insist on speaking sputtering Spanish To frustrated shopkeepers Who know perfect English. I want to wander the streets through Doors mostly forgotten by street lights, Drink myself cheaply into something I’m not, To finally approach la damaat the bar –The one the whole place Has been gazing at from the corners of their eyes –To get points, at least, for my courage. I want to accidentally board The wrong bus Heading God-knows-where into the countryside. Drink dark rich wine and eat meat carved off a stick. (They do that there, don’t they?) I want to dive into a cool but muddy country lake Knowing nothing of what lies beneath, The dangers or pleasures, The beauty of freshwater anemones. I want to lose my passport, lose my wits, Rack my brain for the word “doctor” in Spanish. Lose myself on village roads Where gringosare rare but not the stares That gravitate to gawky white men with backpacks. The world isn’t flat. How the hell’d they figure that Out? I want to cut this cord and float Far, far away, To where unsavory sorts peek from alleyways. I want to awake some morning and find myself Battered and bruised, perhaps, but awake And alive in this world I’ve been dreaming of.