It All Started with a Line

D E T R STA

A H T I W

E N I L

L L A IT

e L B A T OF TENTS N O C

WI NNE R S

4

YOUT H P O E T RY “THE WELCOME MAT ON THE PORCH IS A LIE” by Kevin Hicks

7

“THE UNKNOWN” by Jackson Lemmonds

8

YOUT H S HO RT STO R I E S “DEEP VIOLET” by Jaden Lemmonds

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“IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH” by Zoe Kennedy

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“TIME AFTER TIME” by Greta Hopf

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A D ULT P O E T RY “THE GIVER’S REMORSE” by Marquis Love

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“BEING STILL” by Earl J. Wilcox

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“MUSIC RECITAL” by Martha Robinson

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A D ULT S HO RT STO R I E S “JOE SKELTON” by J Paige Straley

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“BUG” by Earl J. Wilcox

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“SORTS AND KINDS” by Martha Robinson

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YOUTH POETRY

WINNERS

1st

2nd 3rd

HM HM

“The Welcome Mat

on the

Porch Is

a

Lie”

“Disney World”

by

Charlotte Pollack

“The Unknown”

by

Jackson Lemmonds

“Without

Helping Hand”

a

“Who Am I?”

by

Kevin Hicks

Rachel Stevens

by

Kezie Beer

by

YOUTH SHORT STORIES 1st

2nd 3rd

HM HM

“The Bloody Masquerade” “Deep Violet” “Lil’ Blue

“In Sickness

Charlotte Pollack

Jaden Lemmonds

by

and

by

Me”

and In

“Time After Time”

by

Jordan Flachman

Health”

by

Zoe Kennedy

Greta Hopf

by

ADULT POETRY 1st

“The Giver’s Remorse”

2nd

“Being Still”

3rd

“Music Recital”

HM HM

“GyPSy: Guidance Poemsitioning System” “Replay”

by

by

Marquis Love

Earl J. Wilcox

by

Martha Robinson

by

Jane Janick

ADULT SHORT STORIES 1st “Virus” by Soledad Anaya-Vance

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2nd

“Catfish House”

3rd HM HM

“Joe Skeleton” “Bug”

by

“Sorts

and

by

by

Bill Kezziah

J. Paige Straley

Meagan Skinner-Keith Kinds”

by

Bob Jolly

by

Joy Coulter

YOUTH POETRY

The Welcome Mat on the Porch is a Lie

1

st

by K e v in H ic k s

The welcome mat on the porch is a lie, for this home is not welcoming.

The house they’ve built is a slave cabin, and I’ve spent sixteen long years doing as I was told in exchange for their love, though I never seem to feel it.

For my safety, I claim to love those I don’t in order to earn their approval and shelter because I’d surely be without both if I told them the truth.

I behave a certain way at the expense of my happiness just so I can be the child they’ve always wanted.

I am grateful— I truly am— for everything they have done, but freedom and the ability to be myself without judgement are all I ask for.

I did not ask to come here, but I have always been here, and I feel trapped here.

No one should feel this way at home.

This house and these masters are all I have ever known, but freedom is on the horizon.

The longer I look, the more it becomes a reality in my heart, and I know it will be here soon.

Once I’m gone, I may even return to this home someday, but only if the welcome mat on the porch is no longer a lie.

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The Unknown

by J a c k s on L e m m on ds

In the enormous, dark woods Some strange thing lurks.

No one knows exactly what it is.

Curious, I enter the woods.

What is this mysterious thing?

Suddenly, a glowing, golden figure appears.

He is not the creature, But I don’t know who he is.

He disappears.

I continue on, eventually encountering a formless shadow.

This is the strange thing I sought.

Frightened, I regret coming to look For this thing I have found.

The shadows multiply by thousands.

A bean of light appears.

I see the form of the glowing figure.

As he casts his glorious light the shadows dissolve.

Gratitude and relief grip me As I realize the strange thing is sin; God is the light And in his light there is no darkness.

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3

rd

YOUTH Short stories

Deep Violet

2

nd

by J a de n L e m m on ds

Eve spread her wings and fell forward into open space. Her wavy, raven-black hair whipped

in the wind as she caught an updraft and glided over her home world of Aurelia. The planet’s vast oceans and islands made it perfect for Eve’s people, the winged Catali, whose society was built completely off the ground. Her people flew wherever they wanted, only touching the ground when absolutely necessary. They were vegetarians and never hunted, even though there were many edible species to choose from on Aurelia, which was home to more than 157,000 varieties of animals. The largest was the bladderdorn, a gigantic beast as tall as the trees with thick trunks and small, useless ears. The tiniest creatures were the minuscule flying insects that plagued the Catali at night.

Suddenly, Eve spotted a glimmer in the distance and altered her course to check it out. She

landed softly and crouched down beside the object, which was omitting a continual beeping noise.

How odd, she thought, that something from another planet had landed on her family’s island.

She’d heard stories of it happening before, but nothing had ever landed on her father’s land.

Eve was distracted by a rustling in the leaves to her right. Panic gripped her. The Catali lived

in fear of the land-dwelling predators that lurked in the shadows. She quickly snatched up the foreign object and flew off toward her family’s dwelling.

“Mavi! Davi!” she called up to her mother and father in the higher levels. “Come down!”

“What is it, Eve?” her younger sister asked, coming into the room. “Oooh, a foreign object!

Where do you think it is from?”

“I don’t know, Enni,” Eve replied curiously inspecting the object.

“Do you think it could have come from one of the planets Buva used to tell us about?”

Enni inquired, eyes wide. Buva was their grandfather. His heart had started to fail about four years past and he’d died six months later. All of Eve’s family missed his animated stories about other planets. Buva had a creative imagination; even though he knew no actual information about other planets, as far as she knew, he had quenched their young minds’ thirst for information. After Buva had gone, Buvi, his wife and their grandmother, had only lasted about another year. They were laid to rest beside one another at their favorite spot - a hill with no trees that overlooked the water. It was where they had been married.

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Eve sighed. It did her no good to dwell on the past. Buva and Buvi were happy now, and

Eve was sixteen. She had other things to worry about. Her waist length hair and brilliant, black wings made her violet eyes stand out, and it was no secret that Austin, the snotty, rude son of their otherwise pleasant neighbors, was intending to seek Eve’s hand in marriage. The thought disgusted Eve. She would almost rather remain single than to marry Austin.

“Eve?”

Eve’s attention snapped back to her family room and she realized Enni was still awaiting her

answer.

“I think it probably did,” she replied.

Feeling impatient that her Mavi and Davi were taking so long to come down, she caught a

breeze upward and lighted on the landing of the second, enclosed level of their home. The first level was open air for convenience, but putting walls around the sleeping quarters helped keep out unwanted pests.

“Mavi?” Eve called again. “Are you here?”

“I’m in my chamber, Eve. I’ll be right out,” her mother replied.

As a sign of respect, no one entered anyone else’s sleeping chambers without being invited.

Avi emerged moments later. Eve thought her mother was beautiful. She had Eve’s strikingly violet, almondshaped eyes, and her chocolate brown curls, which were Enni’s inheritance, were cut short. Mavi greeted her daughter with a hug.

“How was flying?” she asked.

“I found a foreign object,” Eve blurted out, unable to keep her excitement bottled.

“Show me,” Mavi said, becoming animated.

Eve’s parents shared her interest in foreign things.

“We should get Davi,” Eve said.

Her mother agreed, and moments later they were back in their meeting room discussing

the object.

“What do you think it is? Where did it come from? Are you going to take it to the

Boshliq?” the questions abounded.

Eve thought to herself, “The Boshliq! How adventurous!”

The Boshliq was the chief of their territory. He or she would lead them into war if the

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need arose. It wasn’t often that that happened; the Catali were a peaceful people.

Eve’s father pondered Enni’s question about the Boshliq, then responded, “Yes, I think we

should take this to the Boshliq. He might know something about it.”

As part of his job the Boshliq had to learn all of the facts and myths about the other

planets. It was said that if Aurelia were ever attacked by another planet, the Boshliqs would band together and share knowledge about the approaching army. Rumors flew unchecked about how the Boshliqs had magical powers, like the ability to heal the sick.

Eve’s mother rustled her large, dappled-brown wings, feeling obviously uncomfortable.

“Are you going right now?” she asked her husband, worried. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

Startled, Eve looked outside. Mavi was right. Soon they would have to retreat to the upper

level to avoid being eaten alive by the night fliers. Aurelia’s suns were already beginning to set.

Davi noticed, too.

“No. I’ll go in the morning,” he calmly soothed her worried countenance. “Right now, I’m

hungry. What’s for dinner, honey?”

They ate their dinner in an awkward silence. Eve suspected that her parents had something

to tell her, but she was afraid to ask.

When they were halfway through the meal Eve’s mother cleared her throat and cast a

pointed glance at her husband.

“Honey, don’t you have something to tell Eve?” she inquired with intention.

Eve’s father jerked his head around, feigning surprise, “Wh-what?”

Mavi sighed.

“Fine. I’ll tell her myself,” she said slightly irritated.

She turned to her confused daughter.

“Eve, dear, Davi and I have talked, and it seems that Austin has taken a liking to you, has he

not?”

Eve caught on and knew where this conversation was headed. She felt as though she

wanted to fly away from the table at once, but knew better. She remained silent instead.

Her mother continued, “Today while you were out, Austin came over and asked Davi a

very important question, a question that will secure your future.” She took a deep breath. “Austin asked for permission to take your hand in marriage,” she said, in a tone that did not invite discussion.

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Eve looked back an forth from her mother to her father before she quietly asked the

question for which she already knew the answer, “And what did you say?”

Eve’s father cast her a guilty glance as her mother gasped, “He said yes of course!”

Seeing the horrified look on Eve could not keep off her face, Mavi continued, “Eve, honey, I

know it’s not the ideal match, but…”

“Not the ideal match?!” Eve shrieked, tears setting her violet eyes ablaze. She rose from her

spot at the table. “I can’t stand him! He’s vile, and rude, and won’t listen to anything I say! I can barely stand living beside him, and you want me to be his wife?!”

“Eve, it’ll make things better for us,” her father reasoned. “Austin may very well be on his

way to being Boshliq in the next couple of years. You could live a very luxurious life.”

“I don’t want a luxurious life,” Eve protested. “I want to choose my own husband!” She

turned on her heel, opened her wings to catch the dusk air and in an instant flew into the night sky.

Eve glided into the dark sky, without knowing where it was she wanted to go, for several

long minutes before deciding to head to her grandparents’ hill.

She hovered above the two burial mounds before deciding to land. She sat there watching

the suns set and thinking about her predicament. She knew her parents wanted what was best for her, but surely that couldn’t be Austin. Her mom knew that she couldn’t stand him, and yet she had still made the match.

“What am I supposed to do, Buva?” she whispered. “I want to make my parents happy, and

the match would be beneficial for them, but…I just couldn’t marry him. I…”

She was cut off by the strong winds that had just picked up. Eve gasped. She needed to get

home, quickly. She was about to be caught in one of Aurelia’s massive bolorars. These deadly hurricanelike storms could come up in an instant, and the freezing, harsh raindrops burned the flesh. Panicked, Eve turned and flew towards her home. She wasn’t fast enough. One of the wildly fast funnels picked her up and tossed her around. Eve’s final thought was that her family’s last memory of her would be of her storming out. Then she blacked out.

Time passed. In a daze, Eve heard shouting…a gruff, male voice giving commands…bright

lights…a pain in her right wing and head…being lifted off the ground…resting on something soft…then sleep….blissful sleep…

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When Eve woke, her first thought was that she was dead. Everything was blindingly

white, and shone like the brightest of Aurelia’s four moons. She had been sleeping on her stomach, but she now pushed herself up so she could look around. Once her eyes had adjusted she saw that she was in a room. There were no windows, one door, and everything was bathed in a harsh light that came from an overhead source. Eve was laying on some sort of soft table that reminded her of the mats they slept on at home, although this was lifted off the ground. She tried to get up but fell back as a searing pain tore through her right wing. Startled, Eve looked over her shoulder to see tight fabric-like straps constricting the delicate feathers. Eve tore at them, trying to free her wing. When the straps came off Eve was able to see why it had hurt. Where before there had been beautiful, thick flight feathers there was now raw, exposed skin. It looked like the feathers had been torn out of their rightful place by force. Eve knew that her feathers would grow back, but it would take time. Once, her father had lost some of the feathers in his wing. Until they had grown back her father had been unable to fly. Deciding to test her wings, she lifted them off her back. It hurt, but not so much that she couldn’t stand it.

She tried to flap and searing pain shot up through her wing into her body. She wasn’t going

flying any time soon. Instead, Eve gingerly refolded her wings and sat on the edge of the table.

Then she stood and walked over to the door and tried to open it. It was locked. She started to panic. None of the Catali liked being confined. They were used to wide, open spaces where they could spread their wings. In a room that was barely ten paces wide and the same long, Eve felt very restricted. She must have hit her head hard, to be able to sleep in a room that size.

“Calm down, Eve,” she told herself. “Try to think about how to get out of here.”

She tried the door again, just to make sure it was locked. It was. Frustrated, Eve jerked the

handle down. It broke and the door swung slowly outward. Startled, Eve looked down at her hands. She wasn’t strong by Catali standards.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she said. “I just never thought….Okay then. Let’s get out

of here.”

Eve turned out of the room and walked down the hallway. She had just made it to the end

and was trying to figure out how to get down a flight of stairs when the same male voice she’d heard before gave a shout.

“Hey, you! Get back here!” he commanded.

Alarmed, Eve turned toward the voice. She saw three men. Terror gripped her as she

realized that they had no wings. They ran for her and reached her in only a few moments and started steering her back to her room.

15

“What are you doing out?” one of them growled.

“Please,” Eve begged, “Who are you? Where am I? Where are your wings?”

The man adopted a kinder tone and replied, “We are Officer S, Officer V, and Officer

A.” He gestured to the others and then himself. “We work here. You are in a secret facility that investigates the extra-terrestrial.”

“What does that mean?” she asked in complete confusion.

“Aliens,” he answered.

“What are aliens?” she inquired.

“People from other planets,” he responded.

“But I’m not from another planet! This is my planet!” she began to raise her voice.

The men laughed and Officer S mocked, “Sorry, girl. You’re on Earth now. Whatever world

you came from, there’s absolutely no way you can go back.”

What the men were saying left her head reeling. She felt herself going limp. Minutes later

she was laying on the table, or bed, as the men had called it, again, but this time her wrists were strapped down. She had fought and screamed and struggled and even broke the first bonds they put on her but they had overpowered her and forced her down. Other officers came to repair and reinforce the door she had broken.

Eve pulled every which way trying to get the straps to loosen enough for her to slip out.

“That’s not going to work,” a voice came from above, causing Eve to jump in surprise.

“Who’s there?” she cried, frightened.

There was no answer. Instead a small creature, not unlike the scaly katswick from Aurelia,

ran out of a small grille, down the wall and onto the floor. Eve stared at it. Was it possible that this creature could have been the one who had spoken to her? Eve was about to shout and scare the thing away when it began to change. It grew, its tail shrinking up into its body as it stood on its hind legs. Eve watched in amazement as the katswick maintained a form similar to the boys on Aurelia, except it was smaller, less robust and had no wings. He had shaggy, creamy brown hair and, as he neared, Eve could see that his eyes were an intense emerald green. The boy finished his shift and hurried over to the bed. Eve instinctively leaned away and opened her mouth to scream, but he reached down without looking at her and undid the straps binding her wrists.

“Please don’t yell,” he said. “It’ll make it so much harder for me to help you if you call

all the officers in here.”

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“Wh-what are you?” Eve asked. The boy frowned. Eve watched, astounded, as his

eyes changed color from green to orange.

“What kind of question is that? I’m human, of course. My name’s Sasha.”

“How did you transform into the katswick?”

Sasha raised his eyebrows, and, with a smirk, asked Eve, “The what?”

Eve, now that she was free from the bonds, sat up.

“The katswick. That creature you just…were,” she replied.

“Oh, that. That’s…”

Understanding dawned in his eyes.

“You’re from another planet, aren’t you?” he asked.

Eve nodded.

“My home world is Aurelia. Why?”

“You have different names for animals there. Ok, then. The animal I just was is called a

lizard,” he explained.

“Is that your true form?” Eve asked, skeptical.

The only creatures on her planet that could change their appearance were the ranglar,

meaning “colors.” They were called this because their skin was transparent and their blood could change color. As a result the appearance of the animal changed.

Sasha was about to answer when they heard a sound from outside her door. The human’s friendly demeanor changed instantly.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. “I think I know a way, but it’ll take time to work it

out so we can leave.”

“Leave?” Eve inquired. “Like, go home?”

Sasha’s shoulders slumped and Eve saw his eye color change to a dark grey.

“For you, yes. It will be going home.”

“What about you? Don’t you have a world to go to?” she wondered.

Sasha shook his head in the negative.

“This is my world,” he said, his voice dropping. “But I’m different. I can shape-shift. It means

I can change my form to whatever I wish. But here people are so afraid of anything different that they’ll hand over one of their own to the etif.”

Sasha’s eyes changed again, this time to a violent red.

“Etif?” Eve questioned.

“E.T.I.F. It stands for Extra-Terrestrial Investigation Facility. This is where they

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‘investigate’ the extraordinary, meaning people like us,” he said, his face seething in anger.

There was another noise, this one closer to her door, and Sasha’s eyes changed color again,

to an icy blue as he whispered, “I have to go, but I’ll be back,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Eve.”

“Listen, Eve,” he continued, his eyes changing to magenta, “I’m gonna have to tie you up

again so that they won’t suspect anything.”

Unsure, but somehow sensing she could trust him, Eve laid back down, careful not to put

too much weight on her injured wing. Sasha redid the straps and then stepped back from her bed.

He transformed again, this time becoming a small flying insect.

“What is that called?” Eve asked, curious about Earth’s animals.

“This is a fly. They’re able to go almost anywhere they want. It’s great for gathering

information,” he said, flying away.

Eve watched in wonder as he flew up and out of the room.

“Come back soon,” she whispered, but he was already gone.

“Hey! I’ve found it! A way out!” Sasha called as he crawled down the walls two days later.

Eve felt a wave of relief come over her. Soon after Sasha had left the first time, Officers A and S came to feed her. Officer A untied her bonds while Officer S stood guard at the door. Eve had expected some berries and leaves like she would have had on Aurelia, but instead she got what the officers called cucumber and carrots along with a soft flaky substance they called bread and some kind of meat. Disgusted, Eve had set the meat aside and settled for eating the Earth veggies.

The officers watched her without a word and, when she’d finished, took the sheet of metal she had eaten off of and set it aside.

“Now we get down to business,” Officer A had said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s

start with the basics. Where are you from?”

“My home world is Aurelia,” Eve murmured.

They had continued to question her about her people and their customs. Eve hadn’t been

sure she should tell the men all about her people, but she had given them a few basic facts. They had left frustrated because of her “inability to remember” the details of her childhood.

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Sasha hadn’t visited her since their first encounter, and she had started to worry that

he’d been found out. Now he was back, and positively bursting with news. He hurried to untie her and stood bristling with impatience as she sat up and stretched.

“So, a way out?” she asked.

Sasha’s eyes were a light purple with flecks of golden yellow, and she wondered vaguely if

they reflected his moods. She made a mental note to ask him about it.

“Yes! They have a downed spaceship right here in the facility! We could steal it while they

sleep!” he beamed.

“That’s great! Is it ready to leave?” she questioned.

“It’ll need some repair work before it’ll fly, but I think can fix it,” Sasha replied, his eyes

changing to a darker purple, this time with no gold in them.

Eve asked, “How are we going to get to it so we can work on it?”

Sasha’s eyes turned blue-grey as he responded, “I don’t think you’ll be able to get in there.

The only reason I can is because I can shift.” Then, seeing her disappointment, he added, “But there is a way you can help.”

“How?”

“Keep your ears open. Any information you can gather that might help us would be phe-

nomenal. It’s going to take little more time before we can go. Listen more than you talk,” he urged.

With that, he shifted and disappeared, leaving Eve wondering if the possibility of escape

might actually be a reality. She hoped so.

A week and a half later it was ready. Sasha had sneaked out of his room at night or

whenever else he could and worked on the spaceship. He’d been bringing Eve updates whenever he fixed something major. Eve, on the other hand, had been putting her ultra-sensitive ears to use. She had been able to learn that there was a special code on her door now instead of a lock. She carefully memorized the combination by the sound the buttons made and was certain she could direct Sasha so he could get her out.

When the fortunate day finally came they were ready. Sasha successfully unlocked

Eve’s door and led her down the hallway, then they turned a corner and Eve saw the ship.

“It’s gorgeous,” she breathed.

Gorgeous was an understatement. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It had

three sides with as many corners and was gleaming silver. The wall to their left was glass, and they could see the whole ship from above.

Until Sasha tugged on her arm she didn’t notice she had stopped to stare.

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“Come on,” he whispered with a grin. “We can admire it from the inside.”

They hurried down a couple of flights of stairs to the lower level. Sasha then led her

through a door and into the vast room that housed their getaway vehicle.

“I’ve hooked it up so that we’ll be able to open the hatch from the ship,” Sasha said,

gesturing upward.

When Eve looked up she saw, to her amazement, that the ceiling was just one big dome.

They were halfway between the door and the ship when they heard voices behind them.

“Get back here! You can’t be in here!” the officers yelled.

Sasha whipped around, his eyes ice blue.

“Run!” he shouted. “Get to the ship!”

He took off running. Eve followed. As they neared the ship Sasha pulled something out of

his pocket and pressed it. Hearing a grinding from the ship, Eve watched as a platform lowered itself to the floor. They were almost there when a strong hand closed on Eve’s upper arm. She screamed and Sasha came back to help her, shape-shifting as he ran to become a huge, black and orange striped animal. He roared. Immediately the grip on Eve’s arm slacked. Taking the chance, Eve spread her wings and glided the last few feet making it to the ship.

Once Eve was safe, Sasha scared away the other officers and leapt into the ship. The door

shut. Sasha shifted as quickly as he could. Eve rushed over and asked what she could do to help.

“Flip those switches for me,” he ordered. “Then pull that, push this and hold this button

down.”

Sasha’s hands flew over the controls. His eyes were deep teal with blue-violet flecks. Eve

was glad he knew what he was doing. Finally the engines started and the ship hummed with life.

Sasha stilled, his hand hovering over a flashing green button.

“Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath.

Suddenly there was a loud beep and Sasha slammed his hand down on the button. The

engines whirred and the ship rose slowly but steadily into the air. Sasha’s eyes were golden yellow.

Eve watched in amazement as the dome above them opened and they rose into the open air.

Once they were out of sight of the E.T.I.F., Sasha found a cave where they could hide until

night fell. He then collapsed into the pilot’s chair, put his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh of relief.

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“We did it. We’re free,” he muttered.

Then he grinned and looked at Eve. His eyes were emerald green mixed with light purple.

Eve watched as he relaxed, his eyes changing again, this time becoming solid blue.

“Your eyes,” was all she could think to say.

They immediately changed to orange as Sasha became guarded and edgy.

“What about them?” he barked.

She asked the question she had tucked away earlier, “Do they reflect your emotions?”

“Yeah. So?”

Eve shrugged, “I was just wondering.”

Sasha seemed taken aback by the fact that she wasn’t going to say anything else. “O-okay,”

he stuttered.

“What did you think I was going to say?” she asked.

Sasha’s eyes turned magenta, as he looked away and said, “I thought you were going to,

you know…say something ugly about the fact that my eyes change color.”

“Why would I do that?”

Sasha shrugged, “It’s what everyone else does.”

“You forget that I’m from another planet. I’m as much a stranger here as you are,” she tried

to put him at ease.

“But I shouldn’t be a stranger here! This is my planet!” he said, his voice breaking.

Eve shook her head, feeling sorry for Sasha. She looked into his troubled - and brown -

eyes and wanted to comfort him.

“You’re different,” she said. “You’re more powerful than they are. You have abilities they

can only dream about.”

Sasha nodded but didn’t say anything. Eve left him to his thoughts and went to the back

window of the ship so she could think about what she’d seen. Earth was more developed than Aurelia, but had less water. Suddenly she had a question.

“Do humans walk everywhere they go?” she asked.

“Yes. As you can see, we don’t have wings, so we kind of have to,” he explained.

“But where are all the oceans?” she asked.

“We have oceans, but there’s a lot of land in between each one,” he replied.

She must have looked puzzled, because Sasha glanced back at her and laughed.

“What’s your planet like?” he asked.

Eve closed her eyes, remembering.

“There’s water everywhere. Each family has its own island, and…”

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“How does that work?” Sasha interrupted.

“When I get married I’ll move to my husband’s family island. When his parents die, the

island will be passed down to him. We live in houses made of wood and just eat the vegetation.

The average house has two levels: one open and one closed in. There’s no way to travel between the two other than flying.”

Eve began to tell him all about Aurelia and the Catali. By the time she’d finished Earth’s sun

had gone down and Sasha had started the engines back up.

“So,” he said, “you’re on your way home.”

“Yeah,” she replied, less enthusiastic than the thought should have made her.

Sasha said nothing as he steered the ship out of the cave. He hit the accelerator and

maneuvered them up into the starry sky.

“How do you know so much about spaceships?” Eve asked.

“I’ve always been interested in them. I read about this one once, so I knew some about it.

The rest I just kind of…knew. Like, I didn’t know it in my head, but my hands knew what to do.”

“What does this do?” she asked, pointing a a square button.

“I think that raises the deflector shields, but I couldn’t figure out how to hook those up.”

They passed the whole flight out of Earth’s atmosphere that way - her asking, Sasha answering.

There were so many buttons and switches that they were occupied the whole time. Finally Sasha asked for one of her feathers.

Eve rustled her wings and asked, “Why?”

“I need to put it in this homing device. It’ll take dust particles, along with other things, and

track them back to your planet,” he explained.

Eve found a feather that was loose, plucked it, and handed it to him. She watched eagerly

as Sasha placed it above a circular light. To Eve’s surprise the feather remained suspended in mid-air when Sasha released it. Only moments later a glowing model of Aurelia appeared above the control panel.

“How does it do that?” Eve asked in bewilderment.

“I don’t know,” Sasha answered plainly and with a small smile, “but look.”

He touched a finger to the sphere and spun it. All of the islands were shown on the model.

Eve watched until one of the islands resembled the shape of hers.

22

“Stop!” she ordered, touching a finger to the island, “Can you zoom in there?”

Sasha placed his finger and thumb on the island and slowly moved them apart. All the

details were there. The only thing missing from the perfect model was the Catali. There were no moving things represented.

“Is that your island?” Sasha asked.

Eve nodded, “That’s it.”

“Okay. Setting the coordinates,” he said. “Once we get through the first layer of the

atmosphere we should be able to signal your people to let them know we come in peace.”

“How long will that be?” she asked.

“It should be right about…now,” he answered, and sure enough, the ship started to rock

back and forth.

“Hold on to something,” Sasha recommended.

Eve grabbed one of the handles that protruded from the ceiling. Suddenly the ship jerked

to the right, then the left.

“What’s wrong?” Eve yelled.

“I don’t know!” Sasha replied. “Something’s messing with the controls!”

Eve thought frantically for anything she knew about Aurelia’s atmosphere that could help

them.

“CEASE ALL RESISTANCE,” a voice reverberated through the ship. “LOWER YOUR

DEFLECTOR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY.”

“Boshliq!” Eve shouted to thin air. “It is I, Eve of Island Kovak. I come in peace. Please allow

me to land.”

“EVE? TOMAS KOVAK’S DAUGHTER?” the Boshliq demanded.

“Yes. Can I land?” she pleaded.

“WHO ELSE IS THERE WITH YOU? WE SENSE ANOTHER, FOREIGN, LIFE FORM.”

Eve glanced at Sasha. He nodded, indicating that she was safe to tell the chiefs.

“Sasha from planet Earth!”

“AN EARTHLING? HE CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO LAND.”

“Please, great Boshliq, I am not like other Earthlings,” Sasha protested before Eve could

respond.

“I have the power of change in my blood.”

“A SHAPE-SHIFTER!” the Catali chief cried. “HOW DO WE KNOW YOU ARE NOT

SIMPLY GATHERING INFORMATION TO TAKE BACK TO YOUR HOME PLANET?”

“I have found no home on Earth,” Sasha proclaimed boldly.

23

A loud grinding noise from behind Eve stopped the Boshliq’s next comment.

Sasha’s eyes grew wide and changed to ice blue.

“No, no, no. It’s as I thought!” he shouted to the Boshliq. “The ship is breaking up! Judge

me how you will once we’re safe, but you have to let us land!”

“VERY WELL,” the voice boomed. “LAND YOUR SHIP, EARTHLING.”

Their presence withdrew from the controls, but Eve knew they were still watching to see

what Sasha would do. He began giving Eve orders immediately.

“We’re breaking up, but we have to hold her together until we can make a safe landing,”

he said optimistically.

By this time they had fallen so far that they could see the islands through the clouds. They

could also see the water. Lots of water.

“We’re going to have to touch down in the water,” Sasha informed Eve. “Brace for

impact!”

They touched down on the water about fifty yards away from the shore. As soon as they

did several Catali rushed across the water to rescue them from the ship, which had begun to sink.

Eve and Sasha climbed on top of the ship to wait for the Catali. Eve groaned when she saw who was in the lead.

Austin rushed past Sasha without slowing and threw himself onto Eve. Sasha watched Eve

try to get free with an amused expression until two Catali tried to grab his arms.

“Hey, people,” he warned, backing up with hands raised, “Let’s not get too crazy.” Eve

disentangled herself from Austin with much difficulty and went to stand beside Sasha.

“He’s not a threat,” she said.

The Catali seemed to take her word for it and backed off. Suddenly Eve’s parents appeared

along with Enni and she ran right into her family’s welcoming arms.

“Are you alright?” her mother demanded, holding Eve at arms length. “What happened?

Oh Eve, we were so worried. When we got the news that you were home we flew over as fast as we could.”

Eve’s father laughed, “Let her breathe, honey.”

Eve laughed and talked and caught up with her family until she saw Sasha watching her with

a wistful look in his grey eyes. Eve called him over.

24

“This is Sasha,” she informed her family. “He’s the reason I was able to get free in the first place.” Eve’s father shook Sasha’s hand gravely.

“I cannot express to you how grateful I am to you for returning our daughter to us. You

will always be welcome on my island,” Davi said.

“Thank you,” Sasha replied.

“Where is the earthling?” came the loud voice of the Boshliq.

Sasha sighed. “Here it goes,” he muttered.

The small crowd of Catali parted for Sasha. He strode defiantly forward and stood before

the Boshliq. Fifteen minutes dragged by. Sasha and the Boshliq spoke in hushed tones.

Occasionally one would gesture and the other would nod or reply. Once the Boshliq called Eve’s parents over and spoke to them. Just when Eve felt she couldn’t bear the tension any longer the Boshliq raised his hands.

“It seems we owe a debt to this earthling for bringing Eve back to us,” he began. “There-

fore, I have decided to allow him to stay.”

There were several shouts of protest from the crowd.

“But,” Austin cried, “he’s an earthling! He can’t live here!”

“Thank you for bringing that up, Austin. Yes, Sasha is an earthling, but he has the power of

change. Show the people, Sasha.”

Sasha obediently began to transform into the lizard. Once it was completed he began to

change back.

“As you can see,” the Boshliq continued, “He is not like other earthlings. However, he has

consented to become part of the Catali people. I as Boshliq have the power to give him the wings he required to be one of us.”

“Where’s he gonna live?” was Austin’s snobbish question. It had been aimed at Eve, but her

father answered.

“He will live with us, as a son.”

Eve hid a smile at Austin’s stunned countenance, then turned her attention back to the

Boshliq, who was now murmuring quickly. The words were of a language Eve didn’t know. Without warning Sasha doubled over like he’d been punched. Eve started towards him but her father pulled her back.

“Don’t! You can’t break the spell!” he rebuked.

Suddenly Sasha straightened. Two spike-like points tore through his shirt. They quickly grew

and hollowed out into the delicate wing bones needed for flight. The feathers that sprouted from them were a mottled, creamy brown that matched his hair.

25

Eve gave Sasha an assuring smile, letting him know everything would be alright. As he

looked up at her, he felt his fear dissuade in the comfort of her smile. She watched as his eyes slowly began to fade to a deep violet, matching her own, and she knew in that moment that it wasn’t just their color, but everything about her life, that was about to change.

26

In Sickness and In Health

HM

by Zo e K e n n e dy

I shoot up in bed, panicked and anxious. “Where am I,” I think aloud. I dart my eyes around

the room in a dazed manner. The meds they gave me aren’t working—they’re to help me sleep.

You see, I have insomnia, which means I can’t fall and stay asleep on my own (and apparently with help either). I have trouble due to stress about school, my job, and, the fact that my single mother is a journalist, so she travels the world in long time increments (anywhere between one month to three years, which is exactly why my father left her). I regroup and realize I’m in my bedroom. The echoing sound of my heart pounding and my breath short and choppy helps me remember.

I reach up to brush my bangs back off my face, only to feel that I’m hot and sweaty. With

a big sigh, I attempt to calm my headache by lying back down on my pillow, but is interrupted by the headboard. I reach for my head immediately. Putting pressure on the pain eventually soothes it, but the silhouette of a man doesn’t.

Panicked again, I retire away from the strange inanimate creature and stumble off my bed.

I reach frantically around the floor for what eventually becomes my phone. I flip on the flash, and gasp loudly only to find that it is just my textbooks piled on top of my chair in the corner of my room next to a flustered reflection of me in my head-to-toe mirror plastered to the wall. I hear dainty footsteps coming down the hallway and in a faint whisper says,” Hey Liv, try to get some sleep; the pills are in the cabinet if you need more.” I reply with a subtle, “Okay, I’ll try,” but soon realize mom’s in Taiwan for the week, and I don’t have any siblings, so the house should be barren besides me.

I ask quietly, “Who-who’s there?” They respond with, “Sweetie, you’ll have to speak up,

Liv.” Mom! I race out and squeeze her tight. She explained that her boss cancelled her plane ticket and is giving her a week at home. I’m overjoyed that it is definitely her—in flesh and bone! “We can go roller skating and watch movies at one in the morning and go to a ballpark and to the pool and-and...” . She cuts me off,” Maybe you don’t understand me completely. He gave me the week off to finish my report and get the pictures together for the article, I’m awfully

27

sorry to ruin your plans.” I shake it off and pretend like it never happened and she didn’t stab me in the back by asking if she wants me to make some pancakes and of course she agrees with a smile and a simple nod. I make them with the pancake mix, milk, and extra sugar, but end up with a third-degree-burn from the pan.

My mom rushes me to the hospital, and there they treat and wrap my hand; but the whole

time I feel no pain, which is strange, but I don’t tell anyone about the incident because this is the fifth time this month I’ve gotten hurt, but have felt no pain, and lately I haven’t felt anything besides fear, so I’ve just been glazed over emotionless.

I’ve also noticed how I’ve either repeated phrases or sayings, or have asked others to re-

peat something several times. They don’t question it. They just go on and sometimes even repeat it before I ask; it’s almost as if they’re expecting the words to come out of my mouth scripted...like my whole life is scripted...on a schedule. Breakfast, therapy, lunch, therapy, dinner, and then, surprise, more therapy!

I haven’t been at school for almost a whole month, so cross that out of the “therapeutic”

equation, and I’m just now beginning to realize my absences in school and other activities and I’ve also lost some memory lately—either that or I haven’t had any memories to make.

I almost feel like I’ve been completely in solitude and I feel like I’m going insane without any

socialization, because even in therapy they record me—at least that’s what I think I remember— and I scream to let my emotions out, but can’t hear a thing. With tears streaming down my face I blink and look around and see that I’m in a room labeled ‘Solitary Confinement’ with foam walls and realize that this has all been a dream. A terrible, awful dream filled with insanity, misfortune, horror, and I still don’t understand how or why I am here; or if I’ll ever get out of this haunted house called my mind.

28

Time After Time

HM

by G re t a H op f

It’s the last day of summer. One more day of fun.

Well, guess I’d better get a move on then!

“C’mon, Sugar. Time to go on a walk!” My small yorkie leaps off of her pillow and follows

me to her leash. We open the door, and walk outside.

“Hey, it’s cooling off. Finally. I wish it was this temperature all year.” Sugar sniffs something

squished on the road. “Leave it, girl.”

We pass my friend Lila’s house. She went to Switzerland this summer, and she comes back

on Friday.

Once we get back to my house, I go to throw out Sugar’s poop bag. While I pass the front

yard, I think I see a person out of the corner of my eye. When I look back, he’s gone. I guess it was just a tree swaying in the breeze, or something like that. * * *

It’s the middle of the night. Somebody just woke me up. I don’t know who or why.

I roll over and turn my lamp on. “Wha do ya wan’?” I ask, still half asleep. A male human

being, most likely my dad, is standing there. I blink. My eyes are playing tricks on me, I just know it.

I think I’m seeing someone else.

“Autumn? Autumn? You awake?” Bradley, a guy from my class, asks. He’s standing beside

my bed. It’s not just an illusion or fantasy, unless I’m dreaming. That was not my middle-aged dad’s voice. This had to be a 12 year old.

“No, I’m still dreaming. Obviously.”

“You’re not dreaming. I need to warn you of something.”

“Wha?”

“There’s a wizard in…”

“I’m dreaming.”

“No, I’m serious. A wizard…”

“Go away. This is a horrible dream. It’s boring.”

“Autumn, we’re in a….”

“Why are you in my house? Explain that first.”

29

“I came in when you were walking Sugar.”

“Get out. Now.”

“But I really need to warn you. There’s a…”

“My dad teaches karate. Don’t come in here uninvited again. Ever.” Unless it’s an

emergency, I guess, but some wizard dude barely counts as that.

“But, Autumn…”

“Or else.” Big scary, mean, threatening, tired girl. Not my usual dream person, but I can

fake it. I’m unusually tired, though, to be dreaming. Maybe this is just a big, long, realistically strange dream.

“Ok. Well, you just blew a big chance to set things right again. See you later. Or earlier. I’m

not really sure what’s…”

“OUT!!!”

“Ok, ok. Sheesh. Girls are so…”

“Karate master dad.”

He leaves. I put my head on the pillow. And realize something.

“That wasn’t a dream, was it?”

* * *

It’s the first day of school. I barely talk to my mom or dad all morning. I can’t stop thinking

about what Brad said last night. Plus, they’re both sleeping in. I don’t want to wake them up.

The school bus is as noisy and crowded as it was last year. Same amount of people, too. I

guess everyone stayed. Although I’m sure that Elena was moving to Texas this year. But there she is, sitting with Sky. Maybe her family decided not to move.

I sit next to Lila. “Hey, girlfriend! How was Switzerland?”

“What are you talking about? And since when have you called me girlfriend?”

“Since last year, when we became besties.”

“We were best friends last year?”

“Yah. You even wrote it in a letter last week. You mailed it from a town in Switzerland.

You said you were loving the Swiss cheese.”

“Last week I was in London. London, England.”

“But you were there last year.”

30

Lila makes a big hmpf noise. “Last year, ‘bestie,’ I was in Ecuador. Not England, not

Sweden. A whole other continent. Ecuador, South America. With the Equator and the

rainforests and the rural communities.”

“Oh.” Maybe this is connected to Brad’s late night visit. He mentioned a few things. A

wizard, warning, see you earlier, blowing a big chance to set things right, girls being something or other…. I think this might be connected.

The bus stops abruptly. A few people get on. This is exactly how it happened last year.

Brad gets on near us. “Hey, girls.”

“Hey,” Lila and I say. I remember last year, when Brad helped me and Lila meet and really

get to know each other. She moved here a few years ago, and has been going to school with us since 5th grade. I never really knew her until last year, though, when my old friend Janny switched schools for middle, and I was in all classes with Lila.

“Hey, Autumn, you remember at that summer camp in July, when we saw each other

during a capture the flag, and I stood around talking to you, and you caught me and I had to get out?” He asked that last year, too, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

“No, I have no idea what you’re talking about. The only camp I went to this summer was

an all-girls camp. Last I checked, you were a boy, and you weren’t there.” I actually went there last year. I’m beginning to wonder if this is either serious déjà vu, or if something else has happened.

Whatever it is, I have a bad feeling it’s connected to Brad’s midnight visit.

“Oh. Huh. It was a different camp. Maybe you just don’t remember. Or maybe I saw some-

one who I thought was you. But I could’ve sworn it happened. I don’t know.”

“Yah. Makes sense.” I look around. “Hey, Lila, weren’t you friends with Kayla?” This was be-

fore Kayla became a bully. Kayla as a nice person walks down the aisle. Lila wiggles out and goes to meet her in another booth. Brad slides in with me.

“What happened last night?” I ask.

“We’re in a time loop. That means we keep repeating the sixth grade year over and over

again. Only we notice it. I’ve already done it a few times, but the wizard who caused it just cast a spell on you this time. I don’t think he’s in the time loop.”

“But why cast it on innocent kids?”

“He’s a bit of a lunatic. I’ve never seen any reason any time I went through it.”

“But, why does he even cast spells or stuff?”

Brad answers, but the announcement to get off the bus drowns him out. I grab my bag

and walk out of the bus. * * *

31

The school year repeats quickly. It feels like no time passes. However, things change.

Lila and I never really interact. Last year, we were best buddies. This year, classmates. Main-

ly because I’m spending a lot of time with Brad. He’s the only other one who understands what I’m going through.

Brad and I are sitting in his room, talking.

“But why would he put a curse on us? Is he, like, gonna murder somebody?”

“You’re actually right. I stuffed this newspaper in my jacket last time.” He holds up a paper

from this May.

The paper is an article Brad printed off the web on the killings in Welmington. During May,

a mysterious killer walked into a peace society for preventing a war against Cambodia, and killed 20 people. The cause of their death was never known. Some rumors said it was magic, but at the time I thought I knew better.

“They had a security camera that got his face on camera. When I saw it, I realized that it

was the wizard who cursed us. Now, what we had to do with it, I don’t know, but-“

“One of the victims was my mom’s sister’s divorced husband’s remarried son, who was

about 20.”

“Ok. But what does that have to do with me? And why me first? If that caused you to be

under it, than I have no part in that.”

“The thing I really don’t get is the connection. Sure, there’s my distant relative I met three

times, but that happens after the curse, right? So why would that happen?”

“Maybe he’s just crazy. But maybe we have another purpose.”

“Wait a second. You told me the story, and mentioned that he said ‘Brad, you and your

friend Autumn are under a time loop curse.’ He never actually cast it in front of you. So maybe he just knew about it. Maybe then, he goes and kills the peace society. Maybe the curse is cast by something else, to get us to fix something that happened this year.”

“Like what?”

“Like the killing, obviously! We have to stop the killing, or defeat the wizard. Maybe then

we can get into seventh grade.”

“Uh, okay. Now I’m glad you’re in this with me. But how are we gonna defeat a guy who

walked in a building and killed people, when we’re two twelve year olds?”

“I’ve got a plan.”

* * * 32

Brad knew where the wizard lived from seeing it in the other time loops. This time, we

go there and hide behind a box. We slid into the wizard’s old barn an hour earlier than Brad did originally. We needed to see how everything would work out. Now that that’s covered, we just have to wait a few minutes for the wizard. Then, we initiate Plan “Stop The Shooting”, STS for short.

“Welcome, welcome, Bradley. You have perfect timing, as you have had for the past few

years, if you know what I mean. I’m sure we will meet again, as you are under that time loop.”

Brad says something, but I’m too far away to hear. I move a few feet, to another box, clos-

er to my target. I feel like one of those characters from stories, the ones who always do this sort of thing. It’s a strange sensation, like excitement, but you’re nervous and scared for your life at the same time. And yet, you know you have to do it, otherwise nothing’s ever gonna change. After this, I’m gonna stick to geography. That involves a lot less craziness.

“Door, lock.” I hear a bolt slide in. Well, there’s one thing we knew was right. This guy is a

wizard- at least, sort of. I start step two.

The grungy tennis ball shatters the window. All security systems go off. The wizard gets

in the Circle of Doom. “Ah, so we have company. Well, Mr. Bradley, I’m afraid this won’t…. won’t…. oh, I can’t think of a last word. Do you have any last words, Mr. Bradley?”

“Actually, I do. Step 3!” Brad yells loud enough I can hear. I pull a rope, breaking one of the

old rafters- the one the whole building relies on, considering it also pulls down the others, and the walls.

Brad and I race out as fast as we can. We hear the wizard shouting, cursing (not cursing us,

just swearing), and screaming as the building collapses on him. Not my best choice of action, but a good one for preventing the time loop again.

Brad looks at me. We finally both laugh.

“I can’t believe I just stopped a national crime from happening by pulling down a roof!” I

say.

“I can’t believe you did that. And you looked so serious doing it. I would’ve never guessed

that you, of all people, would do that.”

We laugh again, and then stop. Awkward silence follows, as we look at each other.

“Hey. We should probably bike back home now.” He says, breaking the silence.

“Yah. Well, see you in seventh grade. Hopefully.”

“Yep. You too.”

33

We take our bikes, and bike back home.

* * *

It’s the first day of school. I walk into the bus. My stomach’s in a knot. How did Brad survive

all of this, not knowing what year you were just thrust into.

“Autumn! Autumn! I saved you a seat!” Lila yells across the bus. Well, that’s one good sign.

“Did you get my letter? Swiss cheese from Switzerland is actually better than Ameri-

can-made Swiss? It even has a distinct flavor.”

I smile so big, it’s not even funny. It worked, it worked, it worked, it worked, it worked!!!!! I

could get up and dance, but we’re on a moving bus. I’m actually going forward in life now!!

Brad walks on the bus at the next stop. “Hey, girls, how’s it going?”

“Lila was just telling me about the Swiss cheese she had. In Switzerland! And I’m pretty

hyped about seventh grade.”

Brad smiles. “Wahoo!” The expression on his face tells me he’s having the same reaction I

just had a few minutes ago.

We get in the classroom. Mrs. DeLansky, the principal, comes in.

“Class, I would like to introduce your new teacher. This is Mr. Merlin Houdini, Harry Houd-

ini’s cousin.”

Brad and I gasp. Our homeroom teacher is the same person we left under a building- The

wizard who almost killed the peace society! The one I never wanted to see. Again.

The End… Or is it?

34

ADULT POETRY

35

The Giver’s Remorse

1

st

by M a rq u is L o v e

The courteous beggar Extends his hopeful hands Polite in his tone But stern in his expression In his callused palms, you place four silly coins You’ve serviced your community Your dollar has made the “difference” You have given humanity hope Now, if only he had given you the smile you paid for If only he’d given you the gap-toothed grin you expected Then maybe, just maybe you’d feel…

I don’t know.

Satisfied?

37

2 Being Still

by E a rl J . W il c o x

Our grandchild’s swing dangles from a frayed and rotting rope in the backyard where it’s been hanging for almost twenty years.

Yesterday, I peered at the splintered seat up close and spied two brown, crisp, decaying cicada skins grasping the cracked and fragile swing.

For some time, I pondered what this scene might mean---an enduring swing, these two bug hulls, an old man in his eighties taking in the sight. Luckily, I have many nights—even longer— to consider possibilities. I am still.

38

nd

3

Music Recital

rd

by M a rth a R ob in s on

Written after seeing a photo of Henry River Mill Village, NC, circa 1920.

Dressed in his best overalls and short-sleeved shirt, young William stands barefoot on the bridge that spans the river.

His back against mesh, a newsboy cap shades his eyes and shy smile, he hums and strums a melody Grandpa taught him.

Pa picks banjo, Ma sings.

The notes float down like laurel petals drifting to rocks and rippling water below.

Oh, come angel band Come and around me stand . . .

39

ADULT SHORT STORIES

41

Joe Skelton

3

rd

by J . P a ig e S t ra l e y

Clement

Clement Skelton shook Joe awake at 4am on his sixteenth birthday and they went down to

grits, eggs, and bacon already on the table.

“How long you been up, Dad?” asked Joe, struggling to suppress a yawn.

Clement took a drag from his Lucky. “Eat, Joe. I already finished mine. Car’s packed.

C’mon, son.”

Joe was an only child, and two or three times a year Clement took Joe fishing for the real

thing. It was always the same. Trout fishing in late spring and bass in the summer.

“Brim and panfish ain’t real fishing,” Clement had explained to eight-year old Joe as they sat

in jon-boat on a stretch of the Broad River. He jerked his rod and reeled in a fighting seven-inch red-ear sunfish. “These slabs’re fun, but they ain’t the real thing,” he joked. That’s how they’d started.

When he was ten Joe began his trout education using an old spincast outfit. “Later on we’ll

go with the fly rod, son,” offered Clement. Now Joe had an open-reel split bamboo rig and could lay a fly in a coffee can thirty feet out.

They lived in Baskin, a little South Carolina mill town tucked up against the eastern rise of

the Appalachians. The streams nearby were too polluted to fish.

“When you go past a creek called Dye Branch, son, ain’t no need to stop,” cackled

Clement. But not far away in either direction, as Clement said, were riches in the waters.

43

The trout streams were up Route 129, up into the remote western counties of North

Carolina. Most often of the spring they would wind up the narrow valley through banks of fog.

They would start off in the dark, and after a while the dull shapes in the forest became misted gray columns. Then the fog lifted and the mountain laurel shone deep waxy green. The drive was always a sparkling, alive time for Joe, his eyes wide to the adventure of the day, his Dad easily steering the car over the winding two-lane, the sharp bite of Lucky Strikes wafting through the open window.

As they got nearer, Clement turned off the paved road onto dirt and drove in second gear.

As the road angled down the temperature dropped five degrees, and nearby came he sound of rushing water.

They pulled into a wide spot off the side of the dirt road. The river splashed past not

twenty feet away. A blackened fire ring, a litter of cans and bottles thoughtlessly thrown around it, sat in contrast to the gleaming waters.

“God-damn it, son, I hope you never pull that trick, leaving junk out in the woods,” growled

Clement, eyeing the mess. “Let’s go upstream and fish. We’ll clean up the worst of it when we get back.”

They picked their way upstream on a rocky, muddy path through the underbrush. In a

couple hundred yards the stream turned a corner then changed its grade, coming down the mountain fast. Three cold clear pools, separated by rocky little rapids, lay before them.

Clement took out the tackle box and looked over an assortment of flies; took out a couple of mayfly lures. “Someday you’re gonna have to tie your own flies, Joe,” reflected Clement, rubbing his chin. “But today I’m thinkin’ these’ll catch a trout. “

The little valley faced southeast, and it was good daylight now, the water spangled with

reflections. It had been a good rain season and the stream was up, so the little rapids roared and splashed. Kingfishers flashed up and down the gorge. And the trout came to them.

44

They released most of them. Clement put the keepers in a corner of the pool, in a sack

weighted with rocks. Once the sun was well up the fish stopped biting. Clement squatted at the edge of the pool and smoked, watched Joe work the corners with his fly, trying to fool one last trout onto his line.

“C’mon, Joe. They’re done for the morning. Let’s make a little lunch.” They carried the

sack down to the fire ring. Joe gathered some dry wood and made a fire while Clement cleaned the fish. He lifted an old wicker picnic basket out of the trunk and took out an iron fry pan and a steel grate, a can of Crisco, and some beat up metal plates and utensils. Joe got the Cokes out of the stream where they had chilled.

Someone had hacked down a big pine and it made a good bench to sit on and eat hot

fried trouts.

Afterwards Clement lit a Lucky and smoked, crossing his legs and propping his elbow on his

knee to hold the cigarette to his mouth. His eyes were remote, looking about the clearing, then he cleared his throat and spat.

“Son, I got some hard news for you.” Something in the way Clement said it made Joe put

his plate down, the food suddenly losing its flavor.

Clement smoked for a few seconds, looking up at the pinetops. Then he came back to the

present, spit a piece of tobacco off the end of his tongue onto the dirt, and began.

“I don’t know how to say this any other way, Joe. This has been a great day catching these

trout. But it might be the last for us. Not for you, I hope. You got a lot of trout to catch, I think.”

Clement Skelton stopped for a beat, then pushed on. “I got a disease, Joe. It’s a cancer.

The doc called it lymphoma. Well, me and the doc talked, and then I read up on it, and it’s just plain bad news. I ain’t going to survive it.”

45

The rustle and creak of the trees stopped. The little falls upstream shushed. Joe couldn’t

say anything, his throat was constricted and he blushed, his cheeks prickling. Tears began and he couldn’t stop them.

“Daddy,” he said in a croaky whisper, and couldn’t get more words out. “Daddy…” he

said again.

“Joe, you go ahead and cry some. You got to get used to it, and I know it’s a hell of a

shock. Your Momma cried, too. “

They sat there a while, Clement smoking and studying the swirling patterns of blue smoke.

Finally Joe said, “Well, let’s clean this place up.” He had to move, he just couldn’t sit still.

They worked together the next hour, picking up beer cans and paper trash and broken glass.

They filled the sack Clement had used to hold the fish.

“Wan’t much of a creel to begin with,” he commented, grinning. He swept his gaze over

the clearing and the stream. “We did good. Looks like a city park up here, don’t it?”

Joe looked over at his Dad holding the croker sack of trash, grinning his lopsided smile. He

felt the top of his head tingle, saw the scene in front of him from a slightly removed perspective, like a photograph, all shimmery. This was it. He’d never come here again with his Dad, not for the fishing, not for anything. He couldn’t believe it, but there it was all the damn same.

“Let’s go, Dad,” he said.

“OK. You drive, son, I just want to look.”

Joe drove carefully, not wanting to disturb his Dad. Clement enjoyed the ride, re-marking

on the hawks riding the thermals and the flowering sourwood trees. When they got to the point

46

where Highway 129 spilled out of the highland and flowed swiftly down onto the piedmont he asked Joe to stop at a viewpoint. He got out and lit a Lucky. They leaned their

backsides against the car and looked out over the rolling land spread out below. It was a rare clear spring day.

“I like that color. The pastelly green you get in spring,” said Clement thoughtfully. “Only

lasts a week or so.”

“Yeah. Look over there Daddy, that’s Baskin, I think.”

“Yeah, there’s the water tower. And it’s a good ways…let’s go Joe.” Clement stole a long

look, then turned and got in the car.

When they got home to the mill village house, Joe’s Mom had a little dinner. “I made you

all some beans and cornbread. I’m sorry it’s cold,” she said, a sad little apology in her voice.

“I just didn’t know when you would get here or it’d a been hot.”

A few weeks later Clement took Joe bass fishing, down at Hartwell. He didn’t fish himself,

but watched Joe. They talked a little and Clement smoked Luckies. Joe caught some nice bass and filleted them and put them in the cooler to cook up at home. Clement was showing the signs now, and Joe knew it. He drove down to the lake, ran the boat; and he drove back, too.

Clement enjoyed himself, watching and commenting familiar details all the way.

Six weeks later Clement Skelton passed away in Greenville Memorial Hospital. He was

49 years old.

Davey Anderson

Two weeks after the funeral, at 8:30AM on a Saturday, Davey Anderson parked his old

Corvette in front of the house and came up the front walk. Martha Skelton heard the steps and was at the door when the bell rang. Davey Anderson was the head of personnel at McCrainie Mills, and often showed up at a mill widow’s door. He was a little over six foot, a thin handsome man who wore his hair just a tad long. Martha knew him instantly.

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“Come in, Mr. Anderson. So glad to see you.” She sang the words.

Anderson was very dapper in his pressed khakis, polo shirt, and sockless weejuns. “Sit

down,” said Martha. “Let me get you some coffee. It’s still fresh!” Martha followed the formula.

Let the other side open the conversation.

“Is this a good time to visit?” murmured Anderson, bypassing the coffee. “I apologize for

coming by unannounced.” He looked pensive.

Oh my, he’s practiced at this, thought Martha. “Ye-es!” she trilled. “But you’ll have to put

up with my Saturday morning housecleaning clothes.” She swept her arm toward a big easy chair.

“Why don’t you sit there? It was Clement’s favorite chair!”

Davey Anderson gingerly sank down in the old Lazyboy. He sat well forward. Martha

perched on the couch opposite, upright, with her knees together and to the side, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Mrs. Anderson, I just came by to express the sadness we all feel at the mill,” said Davey

Anderson, slow sincerity drenching each word. “Clement is missed, very much missed. He was the true expert in that dye lab. You know, he did the training down there, too, and we do struggle without him. I know you must, too. “

“Mr. Anderson, that is so kind of you. And I appreciated seeing you at the funeral, seeing

everyone from the mill, and all the flowers, too. It was very thoughtful.”

They sat like boxers after the first round. Martha said, “Mr. Anderson, are you sure you

won’t take some refreshment? If you won’t have coffee, I have some sweet tea in the refrigerator?” She smiled like the salesman that just sold a new Chevy.

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“Well, maybe I would have a glass of tea,” murmured Davey Anderson.

Martha moved into the kitchen. Joe was standing there, hidden from the living room. “You

get in there!” she told him in a fierce whisper. “We’re about to get some kind of offer, and you’re a part of it!”

“No, Mom, I’m not sure about this...”

“Git…in…there!” Martha pointed a steely finger towards the kitchen door. Joe had no

choice.

Joe walked into the room barefoot, a skinny kid with short brown hair and his Dad’s long

face, wearing old blue jeans and a t-shirt. “Uh...hi, Mr. Anderson.” He reached across and shook hands with Anderson, who jammed his hand into the web between Joe’s thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard.

“Joe, I hear you are doing well in high school,” boomed Anderson. “Taking those science

courses?”

“Well, Mr. Anderson, I like it all, I really do.”

“And he studies ever night, Mr. Anderson,” chirped Martha. “I don’t have to make him do

it. Clement was real proud of him.”

“Yep,” said Anderson. “Clem talked about Joe a lot down at the mill. He’s a fine student.

I called the principal up at Cherokee High, and he says Joe is pretty high in his class, might be valley-dictorian.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Joe awkwardly.

Now was the snapper, thought Martha. Here comes the offer. Over the last seven years

at her church there had been cancer deaths every year among members that worked at the mill.

Sometimes the family would suddenly move out of town, the house setting empty. Or a new car would appear in the drive. Martha’s friend Ruby Coker had her husband die from the liver cancer, and now Ruby was working in the mill, a secretary. Ruby had a new Chevrolet, too.

49

Davey Anderson cleared his throat. “Ah -- hmmm. Well, Mr. McCrainie himself has

looked into this, and he wants to help the family.”

“Because of the cancer scare?” asked Martha. The room was quiet. Anderson looked

slightly pained.

Martha had momentum and she barreled ahead. “Because you know there are members

of my church work at that mill we buried over the last ten years. Cancer. Mr. McCrainie knows about that don’t he? Helping our family don’t pay for losing Clement, Mr. Anderson.”

Anderson looked more pained, with added overtones of sympathy. He really is good at

this, thought Martha.

“Mrs. Skelton, we all know that nothing can replace Clement and that your loss is very hard.

I am sorry about this. But McCrainie Mills has conducted a full investigation, a Scientific Study.

The poor souls that have passed away just happened to work at McCrainie Mills. It is very much a random event, and that is the true science of it.”

Davey Anderson handed a copy of the spiral-bound Scientific Study to Martha Skelton.

“We want you to look at our Scientific Study on this.”

Martha set it aside on the coffee table without cracking the cover. She’d read Ruby

Coker’s copy. She knew what it said: nothing. She looked expectantly at Anderson.

“Mrs. Skelton, we also know that in these economic times that you may experience hard-

ship in the months to come,” said Anderson. “And McCrainie Mills would like to soften this blow.”

Martha looked him in the eye. “Mr. Anderson, I don’t think economics is the real

problem. Not to put too fine an edge on it, seven McCrainie people at my church have died of

cancer over the last ten years. You know the numbers.” She tapped her forefinger on the

50

Scientific Study laying on the coffee table. “Study or no Study, cancer seems to strike at a

lot of McCrainie people.”

Davey Anderson had been here before, and took a deep breath. “It’s sad, we hate losing

good people, for any reason. But our experts say it’s random chance. It is not the mill. It really is not. McCrainie tries to help its people, though, and that’s why I’m here. It’s our personal touch, in sympathy for your loss!”

There it was, the stone wall. Martha remembered her friend Ruby’s cynical comment.

“Martha, they’ll throw you a bone. You might’s well take it, otherwise you get nothin’.”

And now it comes, thought Martha, just like Ruby said. She waited.

“What we’d like to do is help Joe here. He’s a fine student, and we’d like to help him.”

Joe leaned forward. “What do you mean, Mr. Anderson?”

“Please, Joe, call me Davey.” He smiled genially at Joe, then at Martha. “Why don’t you

both call me Davey?”

“Mr. Anderson is fine,” said Martha, giving Joe a look.

“So?” asked Joe. When Clement died, his hopes of college took a dive. He’d wanted to

go to USC in Columbia, to study chemistry. But it was to be the pay as you go plan, with him working and Clement helping out. Could Davey Anderson be offering him some help?

“Joe,” said Davey, gazing at Joe, a wreathe of crinkles forming at the edges of his eyes, “Mr.

McCrainie is considering offering you a scholarship! He knows you are at risk of missing out, and as the ads say, ‘a fine mind is a terrible thing to waste’. “

“But they say that about black people,” said Martha, her eyes wide.

“Mom, don’t!” said Joe with some force.

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“Don’t you shush me, young Joe!” said Martha, looking steely and raising her own voice.

Davey Anderson plowed on without missing a beat. “But it’s the same idea, and maybe

more so for young men like Joe here. What do you say, Joe?”

Joe calmed down. “Well, great, but how about a few more details?”

McCrainie Mills intended to offer Joe a four-year tuition and books ride at Cherokee Hills

College in Tigerville. It was a little Baptist private school, with about 1400 students. McCrainie had given the school some money recently and they had named the library after him. Part of the deal was he got a good discount on scholarships. Cherokee was old, decrepit, and graduated most of its students in education. Joe had a phys ed coach from Cherokee. It hadn’t inspired him to attend.

“I was hoping go to the university down in Columbia,” said Joe quietly.

“Joe, Mr. McCrainie has graced CHC with substantial donations, and this just keeps things in

line with his gift practices,” said Anderson, shifting to the kindly voice he used to explain company rules to new hires. “It’s a quality school, and lots of kids from here have gone to CHC.”

Joe knew who went to CHC. Baptist kids who majored in religion or some doof who had

been turned down to USC. He’d gone to a funeral last year, Russell Hankins, a football player who’d gone wild at CHC, got drunk and ran off the road into a swamp. Drowned.

But what the hell. It was out of this town, it was a start. Yeah, a mind was a terrible thing

to waste, especially if it was his mind. He looked at his Mom and nodded slightly.

“Joe is OK with it, but I’m not,” Martha said firmly. “They’s more.”

Joe and Davey Anderson gave her a surprised look.

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“I need a job, too. We’re gonna go broke in a hurry here. So I got to look out for me.”

She stared at Davey Anderson.

Anderson widened his eyes and spread his hands. “Yes?’

Martha took a deep breath. “Ever-body knows Ruby Coker, and she got a secretary job

down there after her husband passed.” She paused and glared at Davey. “That was the liver cancer.”

Davey Anderson didn’t respond to the cancer dig. He sat leaning forward, his hands

folded, waiting. Martha finally began to talk.

Martha wanted to drive trucks. She didn’t want to be a secretary, they was no future to

it. She could drive a truck as well as anyone and it paid better and you got to see some country.

There was a truck driving school up in Charlotte. McCrainie Mills ran a little fleet, everybody saw the trucks all the time. So she wanted to drive.

And she wanted Joe to have a job, he was going to need the money when he started

college. An after-school job and a summer job, too.

“Well, we’ll see,” said Davey. “It’s a little unusual, but I don’t see why not. How about you,

Joe? How ‘bout that chemistry lab?” He flashed Joe a crinkly smile.

“No!” Joe and Martha spoke together, then looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

Joe spoke up for himself. He wanted the truck garage. If his Mom would drive, he would

fix them. As far as he was concerned it was hands-on work that might transfer somewhere else.

The truth was, he was done with chemistry. Those damn chemicals had killed Clement.

Martha wanted it written up so she could be sure of it. Davey said they could do that and

they should meet – say - Wednesday at his office.

“Oh, no,” said Martha. “We got to get our lawyer to read it. And then me and Joe

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and McCrainie have to sign.”

“No need for that is there?” asked Davey. “Does Joe need to sign?” But Martha knew

very well there was need for it. Ruby Coker had told her there sure was a need. . Anybody could see that Joe needed to sign if it was going to offer him anything. It only made sense!

McCrainie needed to sign the thing, too, in case they had to hold his feet to the fire.

They made arrangements for Martha’s lawyer to read it and supervise the signing.

“Now, Martha, there will be some other points in the agreement we haven’t talked about.”

said Davey Anderson, a new note of finality in his voice.

Martha knew. There were hold-harmless and covenants barring suit and voluntary

surrender of legal remedy and enforceable discretion and a dozen others. Ruby Coker had made a “shhh” sign and whispered “Deep secret” and let her read the Coker document.

“You didn’t see this,” said Ruby, her lips compressed into a thin line. Martha had read it in

silence, then handed the papers back to Ruby and put her forefinger across her lips, nodding.

“I guess you want this to be the end of it,” said Martha. “Ain’t that about it in a nutshell?”

Davey Anderson inclined his head sideways with a slight smile. “That’s right.”

Wednesday A Week

Ten days later they all met at Martha’s lawyers. Davey Anderson had delivered the

agreement to her attorney only three days after the Saturday morning conversation. The lawyer had read it and explained it to Martha, and now they would make it formal.

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They came in off the downtown street a little after one in the afternoon, the lawyer

motioning them all to sit at his mahogany conference table, deep curtains filtering the

strong sun outside to a muted glow. He went through the document step by step.

McCrainie Mills guaranteed Martha work for at least five years, as well as part-time jobs and a four-year scholarship for Joe.

Martha and Joe gave up every legal right they ever possessed or

were likely to obtain regarding the death of Clement Skelton.

Martha sighed. It was just like Ruby Coker’s. She questioned the attorney about the provisions for the work and the scholarship, and they were good. The attorney droned through the boilerplate about Clement. In a few minutes Martha and Joe signed, and Davey Anderson signed for McCrainie Mills. Two other attorneys from the office witnessed the signatures. Then it was all over.

They came out of the law office onto the courthouse square. The meeting room had been over-air conditioned, and now the afternoon heat felt good. The brilliant sunlight made them blink.

“Well, son, this is a new chapter for you,” said Martha. “ It’s the second half for me.”

They went home and thawed out bass filets Clement and Joe had caught. Martha opened the cabinet to get a pan but Joe stopped her. He went out to the little garage and rummaged in the tangled accumulation of Clement’s collection, bringing back a battered wicker basket. In another moment a black iron skillet, a few old metal plates, and a well-worn collection of utensils sat on the kitchen table.

“This was Dad’s kit,” said Joe, working hard to get the words out. “We must have cooked a thousand filet with this stuff.”

Martha nodded, a deep and knowing smile on her lips. “I reckon you’re gonna need some Crisco,” she said.

55

Afterword.

This story has quite a lot of basis in fact. It is set in the early 1970s. There is no Baskin,

SC but a good match might be Walhalla. There really is a Tigerville. Gardner-Webb in Boiling Springs, NC (right on the SC border) is a good match for the school. The stream Clement and Joe fished is in western NC, the Horsepen River.

As far as the cancer, when direct dyes began to make their appearance in the textile

industry, some employees received exposure to powerful solvents. Industry responded to the threat, but it took some time to get it under control. And employees themselves were often careless, exposing themselves to hazardous materials even though they had been warned.

The study McRainie commissioned was probably statistically correct in its conclusion, but it

is also likely that an accurate picture of industrial chemical exposure was obscured by the effects of tobacco. People today may not remember the prevalence of smoking in the early 1970s!

56

Bug

HM

by M e a g a n S k in n e r- Kei th

She figured that to everyone else it was an ordinary day; but there was nothing ordinary

about it to her. Something sparkled all around her. The air, pregnant with possibility, breathed heavily through the windows blowing strands of hair in and out of her face. She looked over at the bookstore, awaiting its grand opening. Paper covered the windows, wrapping it up like a present.

How fitting, she thought. It was her little brother’s birthday.

All her life she’d loved books, escaping within the pages for hours on end. She would read

every chance she got and over the years she was able to read anywhere, no matter what else was going on around her. No matter what was going on inside of her.

Her life had never quite lived up to the way she’d imagined it. Sheltered and shut off from the world growing up, she looked to books to fill in the gaping holes she felt inside of her. Her only real connection with the living had been her little brother, whom she mothered because their own mother could not manage to.

At least through her books she could feel alive. Alone in her room when she was little in

the hot, slanted peak of the only home she’d ever known, she could open a book and fall in love.

Save the world. Win a war. Rescue a princess. With books, she could always be exactly who she longed to be. She wasn’t just some general disappointment, never quite good enough for those she loved. She was always the heroine.

She thought about the bookstore, new and fresh, being secretly assembled behind its

paper packaging. Thought about how it would smell, like new books, and cheap wooden shelving; like hope. Hope had a smell. It’s the way the world smells when you first wake up on a summery June day. When the sun is just rising to free the dew from the grass, and the flowers start to open sleepy faces to greet the birds in the trees. It’s the way things used to smell before the time, a long time ago, when all hope was washed away.

To everyone else, it was an ordinary day filled with the smell of hope.

But for her, it was a day to fulfill duties long undone.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an ordinary day. Was it the day before

her ninth birthday? She was certain nothing been ordinary after that, but the days

57

leading up to it were fuzzy glimpses now.

Her ninth birthday had not begun with the smell of hope. It had begun with the smell of

crumbling drywall; the thick, dusty, chalky smell of anger. It was that smell and the sound of her father’s fist taking the fight out on the walls of her parents’ bedroom that woke her that morning.

“I guess I know what to get Mom for her birthday…” she said to her row of stuffed

animals. Every hole meant another drawing, slid into a frame to hang over the embarrassment.

Patching the holes was an exercise in futility; he’d only get the wet mud all over the furniture before the patch had time to dry. He would never put his fist through glass and a piece of artwork by his children, though. At least, he hadn’t yet; but then, wall space was at a premium these days.

She sighed and crawled reluctantly out of bed. She knew her gifts would be laid out on the

kitchen table waiting for her, the colorful bows and wrapping paper an incongruent beacon adrift in the miasma flowing through the house. There would be her favorite breakfast, too— homemade fried doughnuts dusted in cinnamon-sugar. Her mother still tried, but knowing what was really in store for her, she just couldn’t muster up the excitement her birthday should bring.

She knew it would be another morning enduring her mother’s paper smile taped to her strained face and her father’s shirt lightly dusted with the fallout of his simmering rage. She sighed again.

She knew that not even today, not even on her birthday, would it get to be about her.

She got dressed slowly, listening to the low rumbling of her parents trying to put on a mask

of calm. It wouldn’t work; it never did. A problem never fully solved never fully went away, no matter how many times they tried to “keep it together for the children”. She opened her door and stepped into the one caddy-corner from her own to wake up her little brother. He would be six in six days.

“One more ‘six’ and the Devil take him.” She smiled a little and shook the little golden-haired monster awake. As he rubbed the sleep from his hazel eyes, he kicked the blankets

off to reveal his Spiderman pajamas, two sizes too small for him, but still his favorite pair.

“Are they done fighting, yet? I’m hungry.” He flopped his legs off the bed and sat up, his

chubby cheeks flushed from being buried beneath the pillow to drown them out.

“Yeah, Bug, they’re done. Get dressed; we’ll go down together.” She left him to wriggle into

his beloved black pants covered in neon geckos, the elastic at the ankles straining over his flexed

feet. He giggled as they snapped up and he toppled back onto his bed.

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Back in her room, she picked up her latest Baby-sitters Club book to read while

her brother finished getting ready, her ear always piqued, listening for him. When his sandy head poked around the corner between their rooms, she put her book down and they headed down to survey the damage together, hand-in-hand.

Life had a funny way of turning out exactly the opposite of the way you’d hoped. At

twenty-eight, she was three years behind on the life-plan she’d envisioned so long ago. She had wanted to be a wife by twenty-five, a mother by twenty-seven. Every month she had to add tampons to her grocery list, she felt the depression settling deeper inside her. Was it too much to ask to be a mom? Apparently it was, as she couldn’t seem to manage it, crashing through one shipwreck of a relationship and into another. She wasn’t really sure why she wanted to be one anyway. Maybe she just wanted to prove it could be done; that being a good mom wasn’t as hard as her own mother had made it out to be. Maybe she wanted someone who would finally love her unconditionally. Love her just because she was there to be loved. But then, that hadn’t worked for her mother, what made her think her own motherhood would be any different?

Maybe she just wanted a second chance. A chance to make up for the past…

She often sat and took a good hard look at her life and wondered what it was she really

thought was lacking. She certainly didn’t have anything to complain about. She had a well-paying job that she managed not to hate every day, she was moving to a great apartment close to work with a loft—“It’s got stairs, Daddy… Like a real house,”—and she’d just purchased a new car, all by herself. She was out on her own and doing well for the first time in her life. But she was alone.

She knew why she measured all of her success by whether or not someone else witnessed

it. Another legacy of her mother’s unrelenting “nurturing”. She was wired to think that only what others thought of her mattered. Was she pretty? Was she smart? Was she worthy? She couldn’t say; she’d have to ask around and get back to you. It wasn’t as if she didn’t think she had her moments. If she tried really hard, she could get the mirror to reflect something she could get out the door with. But generally, if she thought about it too hard, she couldn’t shake the disappointment she felt with the image staring back at her. How great could she be if she couldn’t even—?

Well, she was going to make up for that.

The day she met the man of her dreams, the rain was coming down in buckets. Flash flood

watches were in effect all across western Colorado. She’d had a terrible day and knew the only way to get over it was to drown herself in the pages of Sylvia Plath rather than in the gutters outside like she wanted.

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She came splashing up to the door of her neighborhood bookstore dripping wet, mascara

running down her cheeks, her painstakingly straightened hair in frizzy kinks sticking out in all directions. Her umbrella had taken its last breath as soon as she’d tried to step from the car with it. She’d left it in its watery grave where it had fallen, a black smudge against the pavement.

Cursing her luck under her breath for the hundredth time that day, she didn’t fully hear the bookseller as she came pouring through the door, bringing half the storm with her.

“What’s that?” she nearly snapped at him as she attempted to peel her charcoal colored

skirt from her dark stockings and shove her hair out of her eyes. He was still speaking as she continued trying to right herself. “A what?” He pointed to a stack of folded terrycloth towels, borrowed from the hotel next door. “Oh. Thanks.” She took one from the pile, stark white against the dim, dusky interior of the bookstore. She stood on the Welcome mat and scrubbed the towel through her hair, down her skirt, around her shoulders. Handing it back to him at last, she realized looking straight out that she could only see as far up as his chest. Looking further up, she almost drowned anew in the warm, sea-green pools of his eyes. He was smiling at her and she was suddenly aware of how ridiculous she looked and just as suddenly found she didn’t care.

“Nice night for a swim,” he said, still smiling. He took the towel from her and she

managed a lopsided smile back, but he was no longer looking at her. He’d turned to put the towel in a damp pile next to the neatly folded ones, awaiting other sopping book-lovers. “Anything I can help you find tonight?” He was new. She’d been in here every day for months and she would have remembered him. He was the first spot of light in her life in almost two decades.

“You’re new.” It didn’t come out as the question she’d intended. He chuckled softly and

nodded.

“That I am. Are you?” The way he asked it, with a glint in his eye, it felt like he was asking

more than simply if she’d previously been into the store.

“No, I think I’m likely older than the ground this place was built on,” she said, wondering

why she felt so bold as to wax philosophical with a complete stranger. And yet… was he a stranger? Why did this feel so familiar and easy? He looked like… No. That was ridiculous. It wasn’t her brother. But something about his smile… his shaggy, boy-child haircut…

“I know what you mean—old souls. I knew I recognized you from somewhere.” He

winked at her and her heart flopped over in her chest. “What’d you think of that whole

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water-into-wine thing? Pretty out there, huh?” he chuckled. She swallowed hard and tried to think of something witty to say, willing herself out of her past.

“Yeah, no kidding. And that walking-on-water bit? I mean, who was He kidding… I could

totally see the stilts under that flimsy God-Blessed-Me robe…” When he burst out laughing, it shocked her into a nervous version of the hilarity herself. She tried to take in this new scene in her life. For a moment, she allowed herself to think she deserved this bookstore angel. But she banished the thought before it had a chance to take root. Nevertheless, she spent the rest of the evening with him, enjoying herself more than she had since… Well, since the day before her ninth birthday.

“Finish up your breakfast, guys. Mommy’s got to clear the table.” Her birthday was over. The curly ribbons and shredded paper lay strewn across the table now, an ocean of color. Her birthday had been forgotten almost before it had begun and she gathered up her gifts in the crooks of her arms to carry them upstairs to her room.

“Thank you, Mommy,” she said quietly, over the pile in her arms. Her mother only nodded

distractedly in her direction, smiling dimly as she began cleaning up, leaning out over her pregnant belly. Her father had gone out into the yard as soon as the last present had been disrobed. She went up the stairs slowly, careful not to drop her precious cargo. Her brother plopped down on the couch and turned on the TV. “We’ll go to the beach later if you want to, Bug.” He nodded, never taking his eyes from the screen. They would go after the sun began its decent; his fair skin burned to a crisp in full sun. In her room, she placed her bounty on the floor around her and took her time introducing herself to each new addition. When she thought everything felt adequately at home, she put it all in a row in front of the ancient cedar chest and went back out to the landing to check on her brother. He was deeply immersed in an episode of Transformers.

Satisfied, she returned to her room and her book. The Baby-sitters Club had waited for her, suspended on the cusp of a baby-sitting disaster for her to return and help them.

When the sun had dipped down below the line of tall trees and she had savored the last

word of her book, she put it carefully back on its shelf and changed into her swimsuit. Towels and brightly colored sand toys in hand, she went to fetch her brother. He’d gone outside between chapters eight and nine and was now playing in the sandbox where she had kept an eye on him through her bedroom window. He was decked out in his swim trunks with his silly red, plastic sunglasses perched precariously on the tip of his tiny nose.

“Ready to go, Bug?” she called to him from the path. He bounded out of the triangular

box, coated from head to toe in fine white play sand. He grinned like a hyena, arms flung

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wide, fingers splayed, nodding emphatically. Sand sprang from the flaxen strands like popcorn out of a hot pan. They walked together up their street, kicking at pebbles, watching the woods for the first lightning bug of the evening. It was always a race to spot the first one.

“THERE!!” he called out. She followed his pointed finger, and there it was; the first tiny,

green flashing light in the darkness of the trees, silently signaling potential mates in their own secret Morse code.

She still looked for the first lightning bug each summer evening, knowing that in Colorado,

they would never appear.

She walked now beside her latest bookstore find along the river, dark and muddied, swollen above its banks from the torrential downpour. The storm raged on unnoticed, caught up as there were in conversation within the cozy walls of the bookstore. It was almost pitch black outside when they finally emerged, only the occasional flickering streetlamp fitfully lighting their way. The bookstore, the hotel and the surrounding businesses had been forced to close their doors due to the rising flood water. The streets in all directions were washed out. They braved the frigid rain and bundled up against the chill of a Coloradan autumn, heading for higher ground on foot. They were wet and shivering by the time they reached her tiny apartment up on the hill. They shook off as best they could before sloshing through the door. Her two cats were on her at once; a fit of distressed, excited, relieved cries and furry bodies, twisting around her ankles.

“Shh, babies, shhh; Mommy’s home. Everything is alright now; Mommy’s home.” She

scooted them away from the doorway to allow him space to drip next to her on the tiled entryway. They helped to strip each other of their soaked clothes, too frozen to be embarrassed by each other’s nakedness. Still damp and shivering, she told him to stay put while she went to get them towels. When they were reasonably toweled off, she tossed their clothes into the dryer and went in search of something his tall frame would fit into. He wrapped his towel around himself and set to lighting a fire in her fireplace.

“Here,” she said when she returned. She held out extra-large pajama bottoms that were

splashed with pink polka-dots and an oversized “Hang in there!” t-shirt. “Sorry,” she said, not quite able to hide her smile as he took the clothes from her and stood up to put them on.

“Aw, how’d you know pink was my favorite color?” He winked again and dropped

his towel to the floor. This time her heart did more than flip-flop, it nearly beat itself right

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out of her chest. The sight of him standing there naked in the flicker of the fire reminded

her of flyers from Italy portraying Michelangelo’s David on them, enticing you to come to see all that the mystical lands have to offer. She was certainly enticed. She cleared her throat nervously and tried to find something to do other than stare at his perfect form.

“Uh, so, how about a movie, huh? A movie. Yup. Let’s watch a movie…..” She trailed off,

mumbling to herself as she fumbled through her collection for a movie he might like. She sat down in front of the shelves and scanned the titles, searching for something that wasn’t a “chick flick”. She couldn’t find one.

“Have you seen, Shall We Dance?” she asked him over her shoulder, already sure he

hadn’t. “With Fred and Ginger, not that awful new one with what’s-her-face. J-Lo or whatever.”

“Haven’t seen either one.” He came up behind her and bent over to stare past her

shoulder at the repetitive selection. “Big on the mushy-love stuff, I see.” The smile in his voice made her cheeks warm.

“Yeah, well, you know… Gotta get it from somewhere, right?” Her attempt at humor fell

dead on the floor between them. She couldn’t find a laugh to cover up the truth in the statement so she left it where it was, exposed at their feet like a fish that had flopped itself out of its bowl.

Before she could think of something to change the subject, he had taken her in his arms and held her tightly to him.

“Jesus; I’m sorry,” he said. And she started to cry.

With her brother running ahead, the two siblings made their way down to their bit of the

lake. He was in the water before she’d even had time to and set their things down and spread out the towels. She laughed out loud at him bent over nearly double in the shallow water, hands on hips, so close his breath disturbed the water’s surface. He was watching the fish swim around his ankles. If he stood still enough for long enough, they would try to nibble on him which was exactly what he wanted. Suddenly he squealed and turned the water into frothing waves as he thrashed about, delighted to have given the fish a terrible fright for trying to make him their dinner. She waited for his attention span to run out and find calmer ways of amusing himself before she ventured into the water herself. Even with the dusk approaching rapidly, the lake was like bath water; slipping up her limbs, soothing her as she walked out to where she could no longer touch the sandy bottom. She slowly treaded the water for a moment then went completely still and let the water close above her head. Beneath the water, it was another world. She was at peace here. Life was slower. She could hear the boats, far away in the center of the mile long

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lake cruising at top speed. She could hear her brother disturbing the surface somewhere behind her; hear the water lapping at the buoys marking the edge of the swimming area. She poked her head up briefly, making sure she could still see her brother, then ducked back down and swam like a frog as far out as she could before she had to come up for air. Looking back at the shore she saw her brother standing shin-deep against the wooden barricade holding in the beach like a thin brown belt against the pale waist of the sand. His hair was a bright flash of gold, glinting against the fading sun as he examined a rock from the lake floor held in his hand. Tossing it over his shoulder, he belly flopped back into the shallow water and went in search of another, chin out, head bobbing along the top, feeling along with his hands. When he saw her watching him, he put his thumbs into his ears, sending a raspberry out across the water at her. She sent one back with a smile and slipped once again beneath the surface. Reveling in the silky smoothness of the water against her skin, she started laps back and forth along the buoys, trying out different strokes from her swim class. Then, turning for shore, she swam like a dolphin, blowing bubbles out to trail behind her. When she resurfaced she looked around for her brother, but he was no longer in sight.

He must have wandered over to the dock side, she thought. She climbed over the short

barricade and headed for her towel. Wrapping it tight against the cool evening breeze, she headed over the slight hump of the beach to the dock where there was a spot to fish and the small boats would tie up. She still saw no sight of her mischievous sibling. It was deeper just off the dock than it got in the entire swimming area, so he usually stayed close to the dock or in the reeds at the shoreline. She hauled herself up onto the dock and started looking for her brother in the dark, murky water.

“Bug? Where’d you go?” She called for him, thinking he’d probably found some insect or

another and was engrossed in it. “Bug?” She called a little louder this time. She was beginning to panic, but told herself she was being silly. It wasn’t that big of a beach; he had to be somewhere.

That’s when she saw it. Bright, colorful, standing out like a warning against the weathered

wood of the dock and the slimy darkness of the water, her brother’s swim trunks peeked out from under the dock.

“Bug??” She was in full panic mode now. The pocket of his swim trunks was hooked

on the post beneath the dock’s edge, almost out of sight. The water was deadly calm; he’d ceased

to struggle. Laying on her stomach she reached down toward where his shorts had

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snagged, fingertips stretched to their max, but could not quite reach the cloth. She

shuffled out a little further, clinging to the edge of the dock, her arm wrapped tightly around the post, trying not to topple in herself. Finally she grabbed hold of the shorts and tugged; they came up with little resistance. She lifted the trunks up in front of her face and frowned, watching the water rain down from them. There was a tear in the pocket, where a nail had caught them.

She heard a tiny giggle from behind her and rolled up off her stomach to lean on one elbow, the shorts still in her hand. Her brother stood, naked as a jaybird, giggling in the sand, a long red scratch on his outer thigh where the nail had caught him, too. He must have wiggled out of the shorts and continued about his business, not really caring if anyone saw his naked little body in the privacy of the wood-shrouded lake.

What fun it must be to be little and not care about such things, she thought. She shook her

head at him and stepped down off of the dock, handing him back his shorts. He was still giggling slightly as he put his sandy feet through the legs of his torn shorts, wobbling a little as he tried to pull them on. His giggling faltering as he struggled with the wet fabric. She headed back across the beach to gather up their towels and the sand toys, calling back to him over her shoulder.

“Come on, funny guy, time to get home. We need to clean up that cut. Maybe there’ll be

some dinner left in the fridge.” If they haven’t forgotten that, too, she added to herself. But when she looked back, expecting to see him trudging after her, she knew he hadn’t heard a single word.

She had always felt the most relaxed in the water, even despite that day nineteen years

ago. She could swim around feeling weightless, graceful and at peace with the world for hours. If someone managed to invent a water-proof paperback, she would likely stay in the water so long she’d eventually develop gills. Growing up in Virginia, however, had ruined her for water anywhere cold. Colorado water was icy cold even in the dead of summer. People here preferred their water frozen.

So when they spent a weekend in Vail together and she dipped her toes into the heated

pool at their hotel, she was instantly a kid again. They laughed and played for hours in the dark, until they were exhausted and their fingers had long since turned to prunes. She hadn’t been in the water in years and it took those years right off her heart. She felt wonderful in the water, in his arms as he held her, swaying back and forth, but her heart was still heavy with memories of her brother. She wanted to tell him about that day right then, when the memory of it came back to her, vivid and sharp; she thought that he should know. It was her deep, dark shame and of all the people she had ever met, he was the only one she thought might understand.

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But she didn’t tell him then. She wouldn’t ever tell him.

“Omigosh,” she said, rushing back over to her brother who had collapsed onto the sand.

His tiny little soul was already trying to escape his body, leaving a shell, a husk, a face that was beginning to look like someone else. Someone she didn’t recognize. This wasn’t her little menace of a brother. Not the same little brat who left spiders in her shoes, and snakes in her bed. This poor, discarded was nothing like the Bug she knew and loved and had always tried desperately to protect, despite his antics.

She shoved up the leg of his newly donned swim trunks and gaped in horror. The wound

on his leg was starting to fester; it was red and angry, his skin unnaturally tight and swollen. It seemed to get worse with each passing second, right before her eyes. By the time she managed to get his tense, jerking little body home, his left leg was streaked with purple from the infection creeping through his bloodstream. She struggled with the heavy glass door on its automatic closer and just barely managed to get her brother’s toes through it and into the kitchen before it slammed shut.

Her mother’s voice came at her sharply from the bedroom just behind the kitchen, ad-

monishing her for slamming the door. She ignored the ritual reprimand and tried to adjust herself beneath the stiff, arching weight of her brother. Panting from the effort, she laid his body, hot with fever, down on the cool of the linoleum. She didn’t even bother to alert her mother, but went straight for the phone at the end of the counter. She dialed 9-1-1 and waited for the operator to pick up. As she began to speak to the tired voice on the other end of the line, her mother emerged from the bedroom and was about to start in on her again about the door when she noticed the phone in her hand, and her brother’s body fighting the plane of the floor.

“Ohmygod…” Her mother rushed to his side, cradling his head against her swollen belly.

“What did you do??” The accusation in her mother’s look only added to the gut-wrenching guilt she already felt as she recited their address for the operator.

The doctors said they’d never seen a case of tetanus attack a body so quickly, so violently.

They said it was probably the rusty, jagged nail in combination with the slimy lake water. They said, even if they had been able to stop the infection he still would have lost the leg. They said all

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of this as if it were some sort of consolation. As if it would somehow make them feel better. As if her heartbroken family should nod and say, “Oh. Well, in that case, I suppose

it’s better he didn’t live then…”

She didn’t tell her bookstore treasure this story in the pool that night; this story that had

haunted her the past nineteen years of her life. The reason she hadn’t really laughed since she’d watched her little brother scare the fish for the last time. The reason she hadn’t ever let anyone close in all those years. The reason she couldn’t look at this amazing man and not see in him what her little brother never got a chance to be. She didn’t tell him of the guilt she felt for not having watched him closer; at not being able to protect him like she should have. She was older now, though; she wouldn’t let anything like that happen again. It was her brother’s birthday. Nineteen years and six days was long enough for him to have to wait for her to make it right.

Looking back at the bookstore now, knowing her bookstore angel was inside that neatly

wrapped present thinking about her, she felt a new little pang of guilt knowing he would never fully understand. She turned the key in the ignition and headed to their little apartment. She put her things down in the hall and stepped out of her shoes, lining them up neatly next to his others.

He didn’t like clutter.

She pulled her dress off over her head and hung it back in the closet. She took her

favorite book, a first edition, old and crumbling, into the bathroom and set it near the edge of the big, oval tub. She turned on the water, the knob full over to “Hot”. Her citrus-scented bubble bath was almost gone and she frowned slightly at the orange liquid as she drizzled it in, then shrugged. It hardly mattered. Upending the rest of the bottle into the rushing water, she tossed the empty container into the trash and slipped into the steaming, frothy water. She sucked her breath in sharply as the water scalded her skin, waiting for her body to adjust to the shock of it, and eased herself slowly down into its depths. She opened her book to her favorite passage and reread the lines. She hoped he read them and understood. She carefully dog-eared the page, knowing he hated it and would notice. Maybe it would make him smile, just a little, and maybe it would take the edge off. Just a little. He didn’t need her; but her brother did. It was his birthday.

The nineteenth one he’d never made it to. She hadn’t been able to protect him then, but now she was ready. Now she could take care of him.

She took the bar of soap from the dish; it was the fancy kind he’d never use because he

knew it was special. From its soft, slimy underbelly she pried the razor blade out, rinsed it then held it out and inspected it, rinsed it again. It wouldn’t do to let the soap do the work…

She examined the paleness of the insides of her wrists. Blue veins snaked beneath the

translucent skin, making her job easier than it should be. Sliding the razor down the length

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of her arm, she let the blood flow freely into the soapy water. She allowed herself to sink beneath the surface, the book slipping from her hand to the floor, a worn picture tucked into the pages.

“I’ll be there, soon, Bug. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry it took me so long, but I’m coming...”

The water closed over her head and at last she was at peace. *

*

*

“Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think ‘Til love and fame to nothingness do sink.”

– JOHN KEATS, When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be, 1818

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Sorts and Kinds

HM

by B ob J o l l y

The grip to the throat tightened. Melinda gasped final, faltering words, “Oh, Dave! You

don’t have to…I love…Oh, Dave, no! Please, no….” The sharp pain in the chest assimilated the icy steel with which it was made. The trees, the shrubs, the flowers grew faint. The grass transformed from soft, cool texture to painful abrasion. On the edge of consciousness Melinda felt herself being lifted. Her head flopped to one side. Though half alive, by a last ounce of compassion, she empathized with the bloody, muscular body of her assailant, her beloved assailant, lying below her. Her eyes half open, the grounds a blur, all plush landscaping passed by hazily. Momentary blackness hid the familiar hall and the stairs, even though she was aware of being carried through and up them. An instant of vague recognition when she was laid on her bed, the stark, white bedpost to which her prom corsage was still tied.

The room grew dark. A ray of light, vertical, tall and thin, reflected off the French Provincial

post, imposed inward. With dimmed vision Melinda gazed fixedly at the light. Its effect became hypnotic, became hazy and then, with further diminishing of consciousness, the light converted into fluid, floating, nondescript masses of interpenetrating color. The colors collected into dots and began to move hauntingly in an irregular, circular direction, pastel shades of blues and greens, with a few hints of soft yellow and pink. Soon the colors fused and faded into forms of white, like clouds, changing shape slowly as do drops of oil in water. The amorphous white forms floated forward, then backward, commingling with one another, casting shadows on neighboring forms.

Thighs and breasts floated into and among the other shapes. Other colors, reds, yellows, greens, circled through the amalgam and drew Melinda in as if she were an integral part of a giant abstract painting; all in an instant.

The vertical light reappeared. It began to widen and advance slowly. As it approached,

ever widening, its outer edges became less distinct until it reached and absorbed the percipient into a circular brilliance. Melinda yielded to the light. White, vaporous buttocks evolved from the light’s center and gradually formed into a feminine back, soft and also vaporous. The back and buttocks joined and pressed out nubs, which quickly transformed into yellow ochre legs.

Last of all the back of a head emerged, with long, silken, black hair. The figure completed itself and walked deeper into the center of the all-encompassing light. As it did the head

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turned to glance over its shoulder in a beckoning way.

In the final moments Melinda was aware of herself as herself, and briefly resisted what was

so surely impending. Then came the realization that, as consciousness faded, it was herself she saw walking into the light, mutating out of that physicality, which had embodied great beauty for nineteen years and had recently goaded her murderer into impulsive action. Brought back to the dying mind, instantaneously, was the brutal manner by which her true and secret love took by force what was his for the asking. The swirling dots of color oozed out of the white background and coalesced into the handsome face, pressing in close to hers. Quickly relived was the love, so intense that in the moment of ferocity, amid the bludgeoning, it transcended the pain and issued out a comforting ethereality from carnal climax.

As her figure fused into the ever brightening light Melinda once again became a self,

absorbed into the vanishing body, not looking at it any longer but looking out from it. Looking and listening. The whites hovered, effusing soft, disconsolate sobs, which gradually grew louder.

The pleading voice of Melinda’s mother, whispering at first, then crying out, “Don’t go, don’t go….

Oh, dear child…. My child! Oh, please don’t go! Please, please! Oh, God! Please!” Soon, Melinda’s father emerged out of the mass. He was blurred around all edges, was translucent.

The patriarch had always been reasonable, sharp minded, recognizing opportunities before anyone else and taking advantage of them. Everyone agreed that these attributes were what led to his uninherited wealth. This stoic, hard man, kneeling by the bed, burst out crying, while holding Melinda’s hand, kissing it. Her mother continued to grieve, grieve as true love does; a woman who had her mind fixed on that which no one else could identify, had then for the first time in her life a clear, but futile, purpose.

For the sake of these two people, with a mind functioning in alternating spasms of haze and

lucidity, Melinda clung to life. She yielded to the consequence of the elevated love that barriers of class forced to a violent end, but she also struggled to keep the life fires burning for those opposites who had brought her into the world.

Except for a few gross moments life had been beautiful. Times of quiet reflection

after playing Chopin had filled Melinda’s short life with stirring reverie. And the tone of the new piano her father had bought her was superb. Now, within the amorphous, swirling conglomerate of colors came the moving sounds of the Nocturne in E flat. She had a masterful

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touch, so many had said; more than correct, poetically interpretive. “Oh, heavenly,” her teacher once said about one of Melinda’s Beethoven renditions. It was the wonder of her

mysterious accomplishment that satisfied Melinda more than, or as much as, the actual sounds.

Winning first place in the state recitals had crowned the satisfaction with measurable success, but essentially the pleasure came from the bond music had created between mother and daughter, music that prompted both into an otherworldly mentality. Life with art had been good and would have been enough. But beyond that she had experienced love, brief, intense, genuine, though fatal love. In that brutal last moment she came to a summing up and culmination of it all. How glorious to finish life that way!

Images continued to develop in no logical sequence. Melinda was dying as if in a dream.

But however disjointed were the visions, some few past repulsions came into focus. A brusque one formed, big, brutish, speaking in tones loud and vulgar. It walked with the kind of swagger that proclaimed itself as manhood. The cropped hair accorded with the then current model of virility, which, along with hard brows and leathery skin, emerged into the dreaded image of Hank Dowman, assistant football coach and physical education teacher at Glenville Heights High School.

His image effused from the collection of recurring masses of swirling colors, growing suddenly larger and thrusting its face right up to Melinda’s. Still, though in weakened state, maintaining something of an innate urge to live, she cringed at the recollection of Hank’s repulsive advances.

It was a past that had expressed itself many times over, in nightmares and in unexpected moments when thoughts turned back to school days.“Set it up! Set it up! Come on girls, be alive!”

The grating hoarseness of the voice rubbed against perception like the coarsest sandpaper, as if a gigantic rasp had carved into the brain and scraped against all lofty aspirations.

Melinda had never liked Physical Education class. The moments of inept athleticism

interrupted her natural bent toward reflection, which engrossed her at the moment a ball came out of nowhere, bounced off her head upwards. Alerted by the jolt, she relayed the ball clumsily to a tall girl at the net, or at least relayed it in that general direction. The ball went low, hit the girl’s ankle. Oblivious to the disdainful stares, Melinda turned back to her position, continued to fulfill in an ineffectual way the requirement to earn what was an essential credit toward graduation. Volleyball seemed an extraneous route to her ultimate goal, but the institution said it was necessary, so she did it to the best of her limited athletic ability.

But the gentle, sensitive nature was at odds with the aggressiveness Hank Dowman

intended to instill in “his girls.” Oh, when would the bell ring? Melinda always thought, ten or fifteen minutes before its time. There was a day, in her senior year, when the bell did finally ring and its ring resounded in piercing discordance with the notes of Tschaikovsky’s Piano

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Concerto, running in mute form through her mind at that time. While it rang, Melinda, then conscious of time and place, walked with a group of friends across the gymnasium floor toward the dressing room. Some of them consoled her dejection and assured her that her beauty overrode any lack of athletic ability. She smiled modestly in appreciation but did not agree.

“Well, listen child, I can promise you Coach Dowman has looked you over and would agree,” said Louise McElhaney. Melinda smirked in disbelief. “Ask anybody. We’ve all noticed him. Oh, oh, here he comes. See you, doll.”

“Melinda, could you stop by my office after you get dressed? I think we need to

discuss your progress. Mid-term is not far off.” Melinda had never heard Mr. Dowman speak in such a gentlemanly manner. But his request made sense for no one knew better than Melinda that she was not doing well in any sport. Then the horror of that afternoon flashed through her mind. Mother and Father, one sitting on the side of the bed and one kneeling beside it, noticed the grimace but assumed it was from the pain of the stab wounds. But no, it was from recollection. That day when innocence lost out to uninvited lust, when male hormones destroyed a young girl’s respect for those who claimed positions of authority.

Immediately, upon entry into Dowman’s office, a strong arm encircled her shoulders as

the other arm reached back to close the door. She was ushered into the cluttered office, which smelled of sweat ineffectually quelled by antiseptic. Prominent but carelessly arranged photos on the walls declared the current office occupant’s bygone athletic prowess. There were trophies scattered about, on a shelf, on the file cabinet, on the floor in a corner, and even a trophy lying on its side in the “out” basket. Wonder and concern mounted as his hand pulled off Melinda’s shoulder and slid to the back of her neck, caressing while, at the same time, directing her to a worn chair in front of the coach’s desk. Those crass moments reappeared, compounding the present pain.

Dowman didn’t choose to sit in his chair to discuss his concern. Instead, he settled on the

corner of the desk, so close to Melinda as to immediately establish an encounter unnatural to the implied situation. She could smell his sweaty underarms, barely tucked under the short sleeves of a frayed tee shirt. Still in his gym shorts, Dowman displayed a finely sculpted body, like an ancient Hellenistic Herakles. And there was an obvious self-satisfaction with this the earned fruits of his years of weight lifting. Vivid definition showed in the thighs as they hung over the edge of

the desk. A hardened calf muscle was deliberately placed so as to brush against one of

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Melinda’s calves. She felt her soft, smooth leg touched by the taut, hairy one of Coach

Dowman. The leathery face bent down close to hers, hardened, glistening with perspiration. She attempted to move her chair out a ways from the desk but was prevented by the pressure of his foot against the chair rung.

Dowman pretended not to notice Melinda’s consternation and said, “You know, Melinda,

I try to establish a friendly relationship with my students, just like I do with the team. I want to know each one and I want them to know me, close like.” He rubbed his leg gently against hers.

“Like…you know…. I’m not some philosophical flower standing behind a lectern, from bell to bell, you know? I like the kids and I want them to like me. And I think they do, some of ‘em anyway. Least I know they respect me…cause I demand it. I show them how to be strong.” It seemed his whole body flexed when he referred to strength. Again, he brushed his leg against Melinda’s. She tried to pull away but was prevented by the same method used before. “Strength is the thing, you see,” Dowman raised his brows as if to check the reaction to his point.

“Physical strength leads to psychological strength…you know? You gotta be strong in this world, Melinda…women and men…strong bodies, strong minds.” He slammed the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. Then he slammed it into his taut abdomen. Smiled at what he was sure would be admiration. But Melinda was aghast. He laid a hand on her shoulder and continued. “Now, I don’t mean to be critical, but I think strength and power are things you don’t understand. I mean, you don’t seem to have a competitive spirit. Yeah, you’re beautiful…. Ah, you don’t mind me saying that do you? Come on now, Melinda, relax.” She tried to pull loose, but the hand gripped her shoulder tighter. Again his eyebrows turned up but this time in a pleading manner. “You’re delicate, not frail…I mean…well, you know, you don’t demand your position, strong like. Your attitude don’t say ‘I’m sharp, I’m good looking, I’m a winner, I’m….’ You get the picture?” Again he drove his fist into his abdomen, expressed pride through facial gesture, pride in the strength of the flexed triceps, biceps, rippled forearm, and pride in the uninjured abdomen, which he showed briefly by lifting his tee shirt. Melinda winced.

The only picture Melinda got from this scene was impropriety. She wasn’t sure what was

going on but knew something wasn’t right. She tried to get up. Dowman released the shoulder and held his hand firmly to the base of her neck. She was unable to stand.

“Just a minute, Melinda. I’m trying to tell you I can…. Well, that you need somebody like me.”

He brought his face closer to hers. A mellowness developed in the voice that seemed a contradiction of intent. “Let’s be close,” he said. As he held her neck with one hand the other hand dropped to her knee. She squirmed. And on the bed, she squirmed in

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dimmed recollection and recalled the coarse hand trying to make its way under her gym shorts.

Horror resurfaced as she thought back to Dowman’s hungry face thrust up to hers, the hand on her neck holding firmly, and the chapped lips pressed like a vise into hers. It had taken a moment for the full impact of shock to register. She cringed then and cringed now, as the image reappeared in its repulsive effort at seduction. At the time, Melinda twisted out of Dowman’s grip and fell to the floor. She jumped up, fled to the door, struggled to open it before the coach restrained her again. She kicked him in the chin, thrust her knee into his crotch, opened the door, ran for all she was worth.

She ran and ran and ran, at such speed and at such distance that breathing became

difficult. Gasping, faint headed, she lost focus, the world a blur. At last she arrived home, went around the house to the patio behind, sat down on a chaise and looked out over the large expanse of tailored lawn. Dave Abernathy was trimming shrubs at the garden’s edge. Dave was a strapping young man she had known since childhood, who had taken over the duties of groundskeeper for the family estate from his aging father.

As children Melinda and Dave often played together when he came with his father from

the trailer park across town to watch as the elder Abernathy landscaped the sprawling grounds.

She called him “Davy” then. Often they played school under one of the fruit trees, with Melinda the make-believe teacher. She was so pleased that she had a willing if slow scholar to instruct.

“No, Davy,” she would say. “You must carry the one to the next number before you subtract.”

She sat close and held the pad up to his face, which even in those childhood days she thought handsome. Or, “No Davy, it isn’t proper to wipe your mouth on your shirt sleeve.” Dave would obligingly struggle to correct his mistake, eager to receive the knowledge of academic or social affairs from such a lovely professor. And he told her so, said she was as pretty as a movie star, said she was as smart as Einstein. He would look deep into her eyes on such occasions, which she liked, and returned in kind.

On one of the rare occasions when Melinda’s dad was home during the day he looked out

the dining room window and saw his daughter playing with Dave. “Sweetheart,” the father said later, “I like to see you being kind to the Abernathy’s, but remember, we’re one class and they are another. It’s God’s will. You’ll always have the poor. That’s in the Bible somewhere. But there’s

such a thing as propriety. You remember that word? Propriety? It means our sort can’t be

too cozy with their kind.”

“What does sort mean Daddy?”

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“You know that word. It’s like differences in things. Like there’re differences in

flowers, some are one sort and some are others…like roses and jonquils and violets. You know…like that.”

“Yes sir, I know about flowers but what about people? Aren’t we all alike?”

“No, dear, people in our class have values of the mind and spirit. Those like the

Abernathy’s work for food and clothing…and shelter. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. How dirty they always are, how crude they talk, how shallow they think.”

The little girl Melinda puzzled a moment. “I don’t think Davy is like that. He’s sweet and

gentle and likes to learn. I like him. I like him a lot. Can I bring him into the house sometime?

When it’s raining? So we can have school?”

“Absolutely not. Now, don’t sniff like that. Here’s a handkerchief, wipe your eyes. Try to

understand. We’re not like them and they aren’t like us. And you can’t change that. It’s just life and we have to accept it. And I don’t want you to play out in the yard when he and his father are here tending the lawn. Understand?”

“But Daddy….”

“You heard me. Stay in the house when the Abernathys are here. I mean it, sweetheart. I

don’t want to punish you.”

Melinda obeyed her father for a while, until one warm spring day, as she was practicing the

piano, she glimpsed the top of Davy’s head, just above the opened window sill, outside, listening to the music. He was crouched down among the azaleas. She finished the piece, then went to the window. “Hi, Davy,” she said. He looked up, startled, pushed through the bushes and ran into the yard. “Oh, Davy, come back! I’ll play some more. Won’t you come back? Please?” He was so quickly out of sight that Melinda felt her voice falling on leaves and blossoms…and air.

She looked around for her mother, went into the kitchen, looked around again. Neither Mother nor cook, Lucille, was in sight. Melinda slipped out the back door, ran to the orchard and found Davy alone, sulking, under an apple tree.

Davy stood. “Why ain’t chu coming to the trees no more?” he said. “Why ain’t chu

having school no more? How come you don’t come to see me no more?”

Melinda decided on this occasion not to correct the grammar. “I’ve wanted to, Davy. I’ve

really wanted to. It’s just…. Well, Daddy says….” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Davy already looked hurt. She didn’t want to antagonize him further. “But I will. We’ll start again tomorrow.” And for the next several months Melinda resumed her role as teacher,

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on the sly, only in a new location, far out past the grape arbor. The bond grew, but childhood waned, puberty came, and the traumas of teen years set in.

As boy and girl grew into their middle teens the restraints of social class reduced their

relationship to rare meetings of the eyes and to perfunctory greetings. Though as Melinda watched Dave mature into muscular and handsome young manhood her attraction to him grew to something stronger, something beyond infatuation. And Dave too. He noticed with young man interest the development of Melinda into early womanhood. Often she turned and noticed Dave looking at her with longing eyes. She smiled, waved. He acknowledged her response with upturned brows, sad expression, a slight wave of the hand.

“Hand me the clippers, Dave,” his father said. “And don’t be thinking ‘bout her.

They ain’t our kind.” Dave didn’t know about kinds, didn’t care about them. He cared about Melinda, and his interest seemed to be growing each day. Often, at nights, her beautiful image pervaded his dreams. Melinda also formed an interest in Dave that was different from childhood friendship. There was something in the attraction that sank down into her inner self, something unexplainable, something like an electrical charge. That charge was given a surge one day when she found him again among the azaleas listening to her piano practice. She stopped playing, went to the window, looked out. She didn’t speak this time. Instead she just looked down, waited for him to react to the cessation of sounds. As she looked down he looked up. Their eyes met. An amorous magnetism drew the minds, souls and bodies into cohesion.

“Oh, Dave! I’ve missed you so.”

“Can you come out?” he asked, continuing to crouch low. “I wanna show you sompthin,

down at the arbor.” Melinda looked around to see if figures of authority were in sight. None were. She slipped softly through the sunroom, through the kitchen, out the back door. She ran to the arbor. Dave was sitting on the grass under the grape vines. “Look,” he said. He took her by the hand and indicated with pressure that he wanted her to sit by him. “Look, up there, where the post and board meet. I ain’t ever seen such a big spider. Look how the sunlight hits the web. Ain’t that sompthin?” It was something, a special sight, but Melinda soon understood that Dave meant more to the meeting than appreciative wonder at a form of nature. While he held her hand he put his other hand around her shoulder. He looked into her eyes. She looked into his, a bit cautiously at first, but then in acquiescence. He kissed her. She pressed her lips to

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his. Then he jumped up as if sensing something wrong. He beat his head against the arbor post, slapped his face, turned and looked at Melinda with tears running down his cheeks,

then dashed out through a bed of day lilies and into a cornfield.

“Oh, Dave,” Melinda shouted, “Don’t go. You don’t have to. I won’t tell.” But Dave was

out of sight and out of hearing range. The next day Melinda walked down to the garden house where she found Dave standing at a work table drawing in pencil and crayon on a scrap piece of brown wrapping paper. The images she saw were strange but captivating. The sheet was covered with rounded, organic-like shapes in a wide range of colors, associated with no specific objects, and interspersed between the shapes the name Melinda was written several times, in different colors. “Oh, how beautiful!” she said, and, without thinking, threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. He turned, looked down into her eyes, encircled her with his muscular arms, and kissed her passionately. He drew back, slapped his face, butted his head against the wall, turned back to her, drooped his head and apologized profusely. Before he could get the words out Melinda embraced him and kissed him with equal passion. Dave pushed her back to arms length, longing effusing out of eyes, brow and cocked head, out of every pore it seemed.

But the word kind reverberated through his brain. He kicked the table leg, wadded up his drawing and threw it in a large barrel trash can; slapped his own face again and ran out the door.

“Oh, Dave, come back, I love you!” she called out. “I do, really! Please come back!” He stopped at some distance, turned, shook his head, “No!” Turned away, and ran. His father’s words “Not our kind…not our kind…not our kind,” pounded through his brain. He ran through the corn field, ran all the way to the river, fell on its bank, buried his face in folded arms.

Melinda’s prom night came in early May. Her father had arranged for his nephew

to take her. Dave crept around the four car garage, hid in a boxwood cluster, peeped toward the front porch, saw Melinda escorted out of the house, demure, serious looking, clad in a soft blue gown with a white orchid pinned to the gown’s strap. The conglomerate of long black hair framing rose cheeks, which blossomed under violet eyes, mounted on the pastel blue pedestal, accented with the white flower, presented to Dave’s watery eyes a composition of exquisite harmony. Divine! Dave was transfixed. He watched as Melinda’s date led her by the arm, opened the car door and helped her to the seat. Dave ached. He watched transfixed as the car turned, went down the long driveway to the street. Dave ran after it. He stood in the street until Melinda and her escort were out of sight, tears running down his cheeks. He went back to the boxwood cluster, sat there until Melinda and her date came home. He peeked around a bush and watched as the boy walked Melinda to the front door, saw the boy attempt to kiss her, and saw her turn her head away.

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The next day Melinda sneaked out of the house. Believing she was unseen, ran to the

grape arbor, saw that Dave wasn’t there, then went to the garden house. Dave wasn’t there either. She turned toward the pecan grove and saw him sitting on a tree limb, high up, cracking nuts with his hands, cracking and throwing them down, not eating. A rake, a hoe and clippers were leaned against the base of the tree. Nearby was a stack of bricks meant to be used to make a border around the orchard. She ran to the tree. “Won’t you come down Dave?” she said.

Dave looked down. Melinda gazed up, in a pleading mode. He threw a nut at her, one still

in its hull. She dodged and asked why. “Have a good time last night?” he said. “You like riding in that big car?” He threw down another nut, hit her on the shoulder. She winced and asked why again. “He looked pretty handsome, in that tuxedo. I ain’t ever wore a tuxedo. Guess you liked that. Bet he danced real good. I don’t know how.”

“Dave, darling, I don’t care about cars, or tuxedoes, or dancing. I care about you. Won’t

you please come down? Ouch! Dave! Why are you throwing nuts at me?” She stepped back.

Looked up, pleading. “Dave, I learned something last night. Want to know what?” Another nut hit her, this time on the top of the head. “Dave, please stop! Are you mad at me for going to the prom? Daddy made me. He thinks he can match me up with my cousin.”

“Did you have to look so pretty?”

“Daddy bought that gown. He bought everything. But Dave…all night I kept thinking of

you. That’s what I learned. I not happy without you. I love…. Oh, Dave, please stop hitting me with those nuts. Please come down.” Dave reached up and broke off a limb, threw it at Melinda, almost hit her. She looked up, pleading, “Oh, Dave, please stop. Please come down. Dave, we love each other. We belong together.”

“Ha! When could I ever take you out in a fancy car? We never could dance. Bet

he don’t wipe his mouth with his sleeve. Bet he knows how to talk real nice.”

“Dave Abernathy, you come down from that tree! And stop throwing things at me. It’s

you I want to be with. Can’t you see that? Don’t you know I love…. Ouch!”

“Your Pa and my Pa. They ain’t ever gonna let us….”

Dave swung from a limb to a lower one. Then swung from that to a lower level and

finally swung from the lowest limb to the ground. Melinda rushed to him and embraced him tightly. Her body pressed into his. Dave’s eyes glazed over. He returned the embrace, filled

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with a combination of devotion, passion, and lust. He held her tight, lost his balance. The

two of them fell to the ground. Dave became crazed. He covered her with kisses, began caressing over shoulders, arms and torso. He forced his hands up her dress, arriving at and ripping off her underwear. Simultaneously his brought up his knee, forcing her legs apart. “Oh, Dave, don’t,” Melinda said. “Don’t you know I love you? Please…be gentle.” But feverish passion overwhelmed. He grasped her throat, picked up a nearby brick and crashed it into her head. Dropped the brick and slammed his fist to her face, again and again. Then began to tighten both hands around her throat, continued the rape. Lost all control. “Oh, Dave, you don’t have to… I love …Oh, Dave, no! Please, no….” Dave reached for the clippers propped against the tree. A shot rang out behind the couple, then another and another. With his last bit of strength Dave brought a clipper blade down into Melinda’s chest. Blood spewed over the area as she uttered her last words and used her waning strength to embrace the dying lover.

Lying on the bed Melinda looked at the corsage. It faded, vanished. The blurred

images of her mother and father came through the swirling dots of color, disappeared. The colors took on a bright, off-white overcast, the light imposed inward, brightened, died. All turned black.

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