Dick Bentley Up North

Up North

He’d come to Northern Michigan, and the lake gulls were shrieking at him. He’d been on vacation only two days, but he sat around the cabin, springing up now and then to go to the window and back. It was too chilly to go out onto the beach. The sky looked like rumpled tinfoil, and the wind was strong and cold. Lake Superior came rolling up to the beach with thundering splashes.

He would go to the door, then return and slump by the fire. I also heard him last night, walking around upstairs, mumbling swear words in the darkness.

This morning he fidgeted around the cabin for an hour, not eating anything. “Demon,” he said. “No, that’s not it.” Lucy, my sister, had wrapped a blanket around her. She shivered and looked out the window. “Demeanor,” our father said. He laughed quickly and without humor, “No, that’s not the word.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” I said. “The word isn’t important.” Lucy said, “Dad, I can tell you the word.” “No, no,” our father said. He held up his hand. “I’ve almost got it.” “Demeanor,” he said. He shook his head. We first noticed it last year when we drove up here. We stopped at a gas station. He put his wallet on the roof of the car while he filled the tank. Later, he said, “It was the credit card.” The words on the gas pump flustered him—remove card rapidly.

We drove off with the wallet still on the roof. We didn’t discover the loss until we arrived here three hours later.

“Debilitate,” he says. “Dyslexia.” “Dad, cut it out,” Lucy says, “you’re making us crazy.” “Crazy,” he says. The waves sweep along the shore.

“Dementia!” he says suddenly. “That’s it! Dementia. That’s the word the doctor used. Comes just before Alzheimer’s. Remember? Do you remember?”

“Dad,” I say, “don’t worry. The doctor said it could be a long way off. It doesn’t happen right away.”

Our father straightens himself before the window, watching the waves. “A long way off,” he says. He says, “Please keep helping me to remember. . . help me to keep remembering. . . the word.”

Dick Bentley

Richard Bentley graduated from Yale and earned an MFA from Vermont College. He is an awardwinning author of fiction, poetry, and memoir.

The Old Woman on the Bus

She is a character study of how old I could get if I just stopped smoking and drinking and got a good night’s sleep every once in a while, the old lady smiles at me from across the near-empty bus tells me she’s having another good day, I

say I’m happy for her, her skin is so soft and pale it could have been manufactured at a factory that made tissue paper and stuffed it into perfectly square boxes covered with watercolors of purple spring flowers or wild roses.

Holly Day

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collection is In This Place, She Is Her Own.