Chicory

Puffs of breath, like wisps of dreams unspoken, float off Quinn’s bottom lip. He’s singing silent. Singing to himself like he always does—like he always has. Bits of TV jingles and theme songs, jumbled choruses and verses like crumpled sheet music. It irritates the hell outta Stella. But Stella ain’t here. We could hear her snoring while we got ready, pulling on jeans and flannels and coats, warming our hands on mugs of coffee thick as the mud squelching under our boots. The sun hadn’t reached through the dirty window above the kitchen sink yet, but when we tumbled out onto the front porch, cold nipping at our cheeks and ears, Buck was there.

“C’mon now,” he said. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

Buck walks ahead of us, shotgun broken in half over his shoulder, the double barrel staring at me like dead eyes. His Labrador Retriever, Ranger, trots just to his left. Quinn weaves through the underbrush just behind them without seeming to see it, following Buck like flies to roadkill. He’s a better hunter than I am. I don’t like to sit still, can’t focus on the prey. But I can gut the deer and carry the birds. Quinn doesn’t mind the shooting, it’s the dead things he can’t seem to cope with. Buck never asks why and neither do I.

Daddy used to say Quinn was broken in the head, that I had to be a smart little girl to make up for it. I always pictured little puzzle pieces tumbling around inside his skull, trying to fit themselves back together.

I touch Quinn’s shoulder and nod to the horizon, which is starting to fade from black to pinkish gray, like the belly of a fish. He leans close to my ear and hums “Good Morning” from Singin’ in the Rain, and I wonder if he remembers watching the movie with Ma singing along, slopping gin down the front of her nightgown even though it was barely noon. I hope not.

“Heard from your Daddy?” Buck asks.

I shrug, and then remember he can’t see it. “Ain’t heard shit.”

Buck’s the only one I don’t mind answering even though everybody in town asks. Buck knew Daddy before Quinn and I were born, so I know he’s asking for himself. Everybody else asks so they can give us that crinkle-brow, frowning look. That pity-look that I hate. When Daddy first dumped us on his Momma’s porch and told her to look after us for a few days, Buck came around not an hour after. I don’t know if Daddy stopped by his place, too, or if he could hear Stella screaming at us. We’ve never called her Grandma. Three months later and it’s the three of us in a cabin barely big enough for one, Quinn and I trading spots on the sleeper sofa and the floor, sometimes curling together like hounds that don’t know they’re too big to act like pups.

“Stella said he’s gone to California,” Quinn adds, unexpectedly, before lapsing into melodic muttering that might be “Surfin’” by the Beach Boys.

Buck spits to the side, a globe of saliva stained brown from the chaw tucked into his cheek. We stop at the edge of a wide field, the perfect place to scare up some birds, and I sneak up next to Ranger, burying my cold fingers in the coarse fur at the nape of his neck. I can feel the tension and excitement running through him. I have little of that myself. I don’t care if we don’t bag any birds today. It’s enough to be standing with the cold on my cheeks, smelling the dampness in the air. Quinn reaches over and tugs a strand of my hair, come loose from the stocking cap I stole from Buck. It’s as affectionate as he gets, and I smile, smoothing the duct tape patch that’s always peeling away from the shoulder of his coat. His coat leaks goose down, little white tufts that flurry away like snow. Buck casts around for a minute, sharp eyes scouting the lay of the land from beneath his black eyebrows. He spits another stream of murky juice and jerks his head to the left. I see the silver glint of water along the far edge of the clearing—a perfect spot. Quinn holds his gun easy, like it’s another part of his hand and hums. I try to guess the melody by watching his breath frost the air, hypnotized almost. Buck flicks my shoulder and I look away from my brother.

“You doin’ a’right, girl?

I know better than to shrug. Buck doesn’t ask questions that don’t need answering.

“She forgot to buy groceries again last week, but I saved a few oatmeal packets and there was some meat in the freezer.” I chew on a hangnail. Quinn and I had missed meals before and no doubt would again.

“You let me know next time, y’hear?” Buck waits for my nod before moving towards a tall stand of grass.

We hunker down at the edge of the field and watch as the sun begins to send fingers of light through the wispy fog. In the near-silence, I hear the clap of wings. Quinn raises his gun, lips moving silently, but doesn’t shoot. The grass crunches as Ranger shifts, eager for the hunt.

My lips are dry and taste like the chicory in our morning coffee. As if the sun summoned them, the doves appear, looking themselves like bits of morning mist. I glance at Quinn, his face still as he sights along the barrel of his gun and pulls the trigger. A piece of fluff from Quinn’s jacket floats towards my face as I lock my sights on a bird. I imagine their little bodies, light bones filled with air. Breathe in, out. Feel the trigger warm beneath my finger. The shot echoes through my ears and another bird falls.


Written by: Hannah Sears
Photograph by: Kayla King

Comfort

Dallas imagines that she can still smell the couch’s aroma of cigarette smoke and burnt bacon as she stands at the edge of the porch, just out of the rain. The old quilt shrouding the couch hides the faded forest green fabric that withstood spilled beers and barbeque sauce. The couch that had cradled Jasper during Sunday afternoon naps, hangovers, and sickness. The rain hammering on the old roof sounds like thunder. A puddle has gathered on the concrete in front of the couch, creeping towards the dragging edge of the quilt. It’s been two years since she visited, but the twist of pain in her chest hasn’t dulled. She can’t count the summers spent on the porch, stuffing herself with crawfish and slapping away mosquitos. The screen door swings open and for a moment, she expects to see Jasper there, grinning and banging the door back against the house before running across the porch. But instead his father Joel—Big Joel, everyone calls him—steps out.

“Dallas, honey, come on in.” He holds out his arms for a hug.

His smile makes her throat constrict and she tries not to look at the couch again as she walks into the house.

                                                                                                          ***

Eight years earlier, the couch was still in the living room. Dallas sat on its sagging cushions, staring straight ahead at the TV. Jasper was inches away, but the narrow space between them felt like miles; any accidental brush of his fingers against hers brought the blood into her cheeks. She went to retrieve two cold beers from the fridge, holding one against her flushing cheek before she walked back into the room. She handed Jasper his beer and sat beside him. His fingers traced over her shoulder blade, creating a trail of goosebumps; the contact anything but accidental. His lips were warm as they pressed against the skin on her back, just at the top of her white cotton tank.

After, she could taste the salt on Jasper’s skin as she pressed her lips to his collarbone, feeling the gentle hum of his snoring. She breathed in his familiar smells: spearmint toothpaste, sweat, and sun-bleached hay. She watched his eyelashes catch the last rays of the afternoon sun as it slipped behind the back of the couch.

“Hi,” he said, opening one eye, his face inches from hers. “What time is it?”

“Almost six.”

Jasper nearly rolled off the couch, and she laughed. He reached for his jeans and pulled them on, buckling his belt and yanking his shirt on over his head. She watched the muscles move beneath his sunburned skin, feeling them ripple under her fingers again. Dallas reached for one of the beers on the table. Empty. She hugged the blanket to herself and sat up looking around for her bra, suddenly awkward.

“Hey.” Jasper turned back to her.

She didn’t look at him, poking her hands down into the seat cushions. “We should probably get everything ready for the party,” she said, finally finding her bra and struggling to put it on under the scratchy blanket.

“Hey,” he repeated, tugging on a strand of her hair. When she met his eyes, he kissed her lightly on the nose.

She pulled on her top and her shorts and slipped down the hall to the bathroom. It seemed too quiet without Jasper’s father listening to NPR or banging around in the garage, swearing. She splashed water on her face and felt it drip down her chin, erasing the ghost-touch of Jasper’s fingers. Sweat darkened the hair that clung to her neck and shoulders. Gripping the edges of the sink, she took a deep breath, feeling the thin fabric of her shirt strain against her chest, remembering how the top floated to the ground like a discarded feather. She heard him singing off-key in the kitchen, punctuated by the cascading sound of ice being poured into a cooler, and smiled.

                                                                                                          ***

The screen door bangs shut behind them and Big Joel leads Dallas through the hallway she knows almost as well as her own face. She asks how he’s been. He’s doing well, he tells her. Her brother Carson came by last week with his new baby, and they’re lucky she took after his wife. Joel’s trademark booming belly laugh fills the hollow silence of the house, if only for a moment.

He clears his throat. “Can I get you anything, hon? Sweet tea, water, beer?”

“Tea would be great, Mr. Lee, thank you.”

“Mr. Lee,” he shakes his big head. “You call me that and I feel about a hundred years old. I’ve known you since before you could walk. And these last few years—” He breaks off, rubbing a hand over his mustache, gone almost completely white. “I’ll get you that tea. You still take it sweet?”

Dallas nods, looking around the living room as Joel lumbers off to the kitchen. His favorite armchair still sits to the right of the TV, at the perfect angle to catch every Saints game. There’s a new couch: a massive sectional that still reeks of fresh cowhide. Dallas doesn’t blame him, probably would have done the same. She remembers her hands shaking as she shaved off clumps of Jasper’s thick, sandy hair, remembers sitting on the old green couch, every nerve ablaze with the strain of listening to him retching down the hall, forbidden to help. She remembers kissing the top of his sweating, stubbled head, remembers the metallic smell the chemo brought out in his skin. She remembers how he didn’t smell like himself anymore. At the end, he said he didn’t want to die in the hospital, that he wanted to be at home, so he came back to the couch. Dallas looks at the replacement, the shining leather monstrosity, and feels a pang. She wants to bury her face in the cushions, to see if she can find a trace of the hay-and-sunshine smell.


Written by: Hannah Sears
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Fishing Lessons

I went to live with Uncle Gil the summer before I turned seventeen. Ma and Dad had parted ways and then split for points somewhere east and west. Like God shoving apart sin, they had to get as far away from each other as possible. Nana ended up with me in the immediate fall-out, but she was moving into the local home for the elderly come September. So I was inducted into the world of fishing on a rickety boat in the Gulf covered in fish scales and fish guts and reeking to high heaven.

Gil was short for Virgil, and he wasn’t actually my uncle. I had lost track of how we were related—or even if we were. Nana’s version of our family tree snarled together like the yarn she sorted, running knotted strands through fingers spotted by time. I had half a mind to tell her that I was almost seventeen and didn’t need any looking after, but we were already at the bus station. Then she sent me off with a peck on the cheek and a squeeze that surrounded me with the lingering scent of dead roses and baby powder before the bus pulled away.

Gil was somewhere between my parents and Nana in age, with hair that might have been white or just bleached by the sun. It hung well past his shoulders, but when he pulled it back with an elastic band, the gesture was always masculine—unlike the smooth sweep-and-gather the girls in my high school had mastered. Even with a ponytail that would cause most women a pang of envy, no one could call Gil feminine. Maybe it was an aggressive act of self-defense against his name—which Nana said he thought was “a sissy name.” I later learned that while Nana paraphrased a lot of the things Uncle Gil said, she could never quite master the flair of his swears. They were downright Shakespearean sometimes. I’d never heard “fuck” used as every part of speech with such ease.

He was standing with his arms crossed and his feet spread wide when the bus pulled up, like he was on his boat instead of the parking lot and the asphalt was rolling beneath him. He didn’t shake my hand or try to take my beat-up duffel bag as we walked to the truck. I was tempted to hold my arm up next to his. His skin was the deep red-brown of dried blood after decades spent outside. Tattoos crawled up the back of his neck and covered his arms from shoulders to wrists. His worn yellow tank bore what looked like a naked woman wrestling a many-tentacled creature, but sun and salt had faded it to almost nothing.

“Know anything about boats, Cale?” he asked after half an hour of silence as we rode in his truck. We drove with the windows down. The air tasted like the inside of a grill—salt and hot metal.

“No.”

“Fish?” The skin around his eyes and mouth were webbed with white in the places where the sunlight didn’t reach when he squinted against the sun and spray.

I shook my head, unsure if he was asking if I fished or if I knew anything about them. Either way, the answer was no. The rest of the ride passed in silence. I’d come to consider myself something of an expert on silences. That’s how Dad and Ma fell apart—their silences started out as a few minutes at the dinner table and stretched into weeks of dead air. Silence could sometimes say more than shouting. Our whole house rang with it.

When we reached Gil’s ramshackle beach house, he showed me the spare room that would be mine. I was surprised to see a frame and a box spring rather than just a mattress huddled on the floor. There were even a few hangers in the closet. I dumped my duffle on the bed but didn’t have time to look around much. Gil told me to put on my swim trunks if I’d brought them. We were going out as soon as we’d had a bite to eat. I didn’t question filling my stomach with the cheeseburger I ordered from the roadside stand before setting sail, licking the rivulets of grease and pickle juice off the backs of my hands.

Gil’s boat was small and more than a little worn. I could barely make out the painted name peeling off the back – Jezebel – and wondered if I’d ever get the courage to ask about it. Gil jerked his head at me and gave terse instructions as we unmoored the boat from the dock and then backed it out of the marina. The water was steely gray, tinged by the muddy backwash from the Mississippi. As we motored farther out it turned a darker blue-gray and the sun turned the wave tops chrome. Gil told me what we’d be catching and how to use the gill nets, one brown hand on the steering wheel and the other tracing arcs in the air to match his descriptions. I thought about the sunscreen I’d forgotten to apply and wondered how many sunburns it took to turn my skin into the same rusty cowhide that encased Gil’s ropy muscles.

When we dumped the first catch of silver-sided fish into the boat, they cascaded around our ankles, fins twitching and big liquid eyes flat and staring. I wondered if they knew in their tiny brains that it was all over. If they felt fear or pain. If they felt torn from the ocean, their essence. When the day was done and we headed back towards shore, my hands were burning from hauling nets and my cheeks were sore from squinting against the sun. Gil hadn’t said more than a few hundred words all day but as the salt spray lashed our faces and the sun bronzed the waves behind us, it felt like the beginning of a hundred conversations.

Written by: Hannah Sears
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

Wheels

Robbie leaned in the passenger door, wrinkling his long nose. Trace had one tanned arm slung over the faded top of the car.

“It looks like someone died in here, Trace,” Robbie said.

Trace took in the wretched interior with a critical eye. The stuffing spewed out of the cloth seats and there was the faint reek of decay in the air. “I’ve been looking for this car for years, Rob.”

“You’ve been looking for a car somebody’s grandpa doesn’t even want?” Robbie shut the car door with a creak and folded his arms on the weathered, rusted top. “You’re going to spend the money you saved—that you worked your ass off for—on this?”

“Maybe I am.” Trace struggled to close the driver’s side door.

Robbie laughed.

                                                                                       ***

Poking around an engine with his older brother, Jack, in the driveway was one thing; overhauling an entire car was another. If it wasn’t rusted or corroded, it was rotten. The headlights seemed to be the only thing that worked. All summer, the most anyone saw of Trace were sneakered feet sticking out from under the Chrysler New Yorker. His friends laughed at his single-minded mission to resurrect the old car. Robbie kept him company for the first week, making suggestions and asking him if he’d been back to the future yet. Trace threw a wrench in his general direction, swearing as grease dripped into his eye for the thousandth time.

Trace sat on the driveway, feeling the heat of the concrete beneath his legs and the warmth of the metal door against his shoulders as he leaned against the old Chrysler. Shuffling steps caught his attention and he scrambled to his feet, wiping sweat and grease on his jeans.

“Ma, go back inside, it’s too hot out.” He gestured back to the house.

His mother cocked her head to one side and held something out to him, her hand shaking. Trace took the beer from her and swallowed past the lump in his throat. He and Jack always had a beer after a long day working on Jack’s car.

“Thanks, Ma.” He twisted the cap off, taking a long pull.

The cold liquid trickled down his throat and he felt the weight of it settle in the pit of his stomach. His mother’s mouth twitched in a parody of her old smile, her pre-breakdown smile. Jack’s smile. She fluttered a skeletal hand at him before scooting back up the driveway in her worn slippers. Trace rubbed his hand across the peeling paint on the rusted hood of the car; the condensation on his hand left a smear that quickly evaporated in the late afternoon heat. It was impossible to tell which shade of paint came first. He squinted up at the sun and drained the rest of his beer. There were still hours of light left. He crawled back under the car.

                                                                                       ***

“You have got to relax,” Robbie said, handing Trace a beer. “It’s supposed to be a goddamn party.”

Trace tried to conjure a smile, switching the beer from hand to hand without cracking the tab. He resisted the urge to check his watch.

“Well if it isn’t the grease monkey,” Carl said. “Sure is a lot better view than the undersides of a heap of junk.”

Trace followed Carl’s gaze to the girls lounging near the pool. A few of them looked up and smiled. Trace waved—he vaguely recognized one or two. He opened his beer and took a gulp to keep from answering.

“What’s with him?” Carl asked Robbie.

“What’s been up with him all summer? First time he’s been away from that damned corpse of a car.”

Trace looked down at his watch. He’d been there fifteen minutes. He took another swallow of beer; the taste of aluminum overpowered the cheap brew.

Carl turned back to Trace. “What brought you out, anyway? Get tired of looking up the same skirt?” He grinned.

“She’s getting body work done and a paint job—stuff that needs a professional,” Trace said, feeling the thin beer can flex beneath his fingers as he tightened his grip.

“Not the only one that needs a professional,” Robbie said.

“What’s that?” Trace set his beer can carefully down on the table.

“What’s with you, man?” Robbie asked. “You search junk yards like you’re on a mission from God and then you buy a rusty Chrysler for chrissakes. If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’d gone crazy like…” Robbie stopped, his freckled cheeks flushing.

“Crazy like who, Rob?” Trace felt the muscles in his jaw contract. “Crazy like my mom?”

“Robbie didn’t mean anything.” Carl sidled between them. “We just missed seeing you around is all.”

“Sure,” Trace said.

He let himself out of the back gate and walked the five miles home.

                                                                                       ***

Two weeks later, he could hardly believe his eyes. There she sat, shiny coat of red paint looking like melted candy poured over her, the upholstery inside as smooth and flawless as a Playboy centerfold. Trace slid into the seat and flipped down the visor. He looked at the picture of him and Jack, arms flung around each other’s shoulders. Growing up, Jack had pictures of cars taped all over his walls—but one predominated. The Chrysler. Trace never understood it; there’s the Mustang, the Impala, the goddamn Ferrari, he’d always say. Jack simply shrugged, and said, “She’s my favorite.”

The engine thrummed as Trace turned the key. His gaze returned to the faded photo taped to the visor. Its corners were curled from the time spent in his wallet. Ten years time. He smiled and, for a moment, he was the boy in the photo again. He felt a desire to glance over at the passenger seat so strongly that his hands froze on the steering wheel. With the windows down and Jack’s favorite cassette in the refurbished player, Trace inhaled deeply before shifting the car into drive.

“She’s all yours,” Trace said.


Written by: Hannah Sears
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe