Still Life: Moving the Jobs to Mexico

As Tom and Millie packed their home into boxes to move into her grandparent’s rental unit, they struggled with the furniture. Not much would fit into the smallest U-haul trailer which Tom had rightly said was not big enough, but he also eventually admitted the smallest was the only one they could afford. They promised each other they would come back for the rest of their things.

Millie had heard the gossip around town for weeks. “They’re moving the plant to Mexico. All the jobs. Everyone will be let go.” For a couple weeks, she pretended she hadn’t heard a word. When the whispers reached the Sunday school class, she decided to ask Tom. On the way to his mother’s for Sunday dinner, she squared her thoughts to ask about it after the meal. “You’re quiet, darlin’,” he said.

She smiled, “Oh, well I’m just thinking about the week ahead. The kids have so many things going on I’m hoping I can keep up with it all.” She hoped her face did not betray her white lie, and she willed herself to smile at him.

Millie and Tom had been an on-again, off-again couple since they started dating her sophomore year of high school. Tom had already graduated and was working at the factory in town. They had met at a football game when her brother Rob punched Tom’s friend Dan over the discovery Rob and Dan were dating the same girl.

Tom’s job at the factory was pretty good. At least it was steady money. He made enough for the two of them, but by the time she dropped out of school, it was no longer enough since the family had grown to five. She had a son during the summer between her sophomore and junior years. When she started her senior year, she learned she was pregnant with twins, and that was most of the reason she dropped out.

They lived in a rental house in an older part of town; they did the best they could to make a home for the kids. They had five children now, and Tom worked odd jobs with his brother on the weekends when he could. There was a time when Millie had watched a few children besides her own, but that was before she had the fourth.

During dinner at his mother’s house, Tom’s dad pulled out the topic Millie was holding back. “So, Tom. What will you do when the plant closes?”

“Well, we don’t need to worry ourselves with talk about things that aren’t going to happen,” Tom insisted. Tom’s mother signaled her opinion by clearing plates and asking for Millie’s help in the kitchen. Millie walked away carrying a bowl containing the leftover green beans and heard his father insisting, “Tom, that plant is closing. You will not have a job come…”

“Now, Millie, honey. I know you are taking good care of those kids. But you need to prepare yourself for this,” his mother pushed. Millie stood amidst the partially filled dishes feeling as if she had better eat something more. Then again, she felt fiercely defiant. If Tom felt concern, he would have said something. As if this issue were not enough, Millie felt the rising tide of doubt; she recognized it as the same nagging uncertainty that had visited her since they started dating all those years ago.

Millie tried to keep a brave face but wasn’t sure what brave faces really looked like. Smiling felt wrong. She also tried to keep listening to her mother-in-law whose tone was no longer one of conspiratorial planning or maternal concern, but instead one of insistence for acting resolute, and Millie did not have resolve in her wheelhouse.

“Now, Millie. You and Tom must think about how you will care for these children when he is out of work. Unemployment will be coming in, but it won’t start immediately, and it certainly won’t be enough for all of you. How will you keep up with the rent and the grocery bills, and heaven forbid what if one of you gets sick?” Tom came into the kitchen as his mother made this final point. He took Millie’s arm as he glared at his mother, “Come on. Get the kids and get to the car. We are not staying. Let’s go.”

Fortunately, the children chattered the entire way home across town. Millie believed she could keep her tears at bay until she could be alone. Tom’s jaw fluttered from the gnashing of his teeth, and she knew by now to leave well enough alone.

When the children were hungry, Millie made them bologna sandwiches on leftover hamburger and hot dog buns. The children ate while Millie folded laundry and Tom watched television. Bath time happened despite Millie’s detachment, and the children found their beds without incident.

Instead of going to bed to lie in the darkness beside Tom’s frustration, Millie sat on the tattered sofa to wallow. In the event the plant closed, she imagined it would be some time from the announcement of the closing until Tom would be pacing the floor. Six months came to her, and she grabbed at the certainty it promised. Six months would give her time to save up some extra. Maybe she could start keeping kids again. They’d have to move. Her grandparents had a house they could rent. She knew they would be cramped, but she also knew her grandparents would be reasonable. She could work with her grandmother and earn a little extra money. She could start now, and in six months, they’d be ready. Just as she felt she had a sense of how this could work, the sun rose and the day began.

She heard Tom’s alarm clock, so she headed to the kitchen to make the coffee and his lunch. She heard the shower, so she changed her clothes in the bedroom. She found her courage in the children’s tousled awakenings and met Tom in the kitchen to wish him a good day. He left without speaking, but he did manage to kiss her forehead.

After the four oldest children caught the bus to school, she turned on the television expecting to hear a recipe on the local morning news. It was then she heard, “Plant officials wrapping up production and closure details. All jobs moving to Mexico. Employees receiving details. Plant to close in eight weeks.”

Written by: Elizabeth Savage

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Nights in the Hollow

Remember the night the fire nearly escaped us? Of course you do. Britt Myerson almost turned the whole park into an ashtray, bottles of lighter fluid crumpled in both hands. “Xiuhtechuhtli! I praise you!” Pyro bastard. Did you hear he’s in real estate now? Makes a killing. Maybe the rest of us backed the wrong horse. God-wise, I mean.

I take my kids down there every now and then, to the hollow, to see how many trout or bass we can catch before someone succumbs to screen withdrawal. You will be happy, I think, to know that our summer left permanent marks on the place. Remember when that volleyball player – someone’s cousin – casually mentioned that she wanted to hear OutKast and Jason Zapp lept up, announced he had the CD in his car, and proceeded to drive his Grand Am down the tiny dirt trail until he got it wedged between two trees?

They have a “NO AUTOMOBILES” sign at the trailhead now. The Zapp Rule. One day I heard a woman say “Like anyone would ever try to take a car through here!” I let the remark pass, uncorrected.

Nowadays, ten guys would whip out their phones and, I’m sorry Ms. Jackson, the party would receive an eternal jukebox; effort-free music for as long as anyone desired. Where’s the chivalry in that? I understand that it’s dumb to get your car stuck in a tree, but when’s the last time you were so passionate about something that you’d drive through the fucking woods for it?

Impulses need time to linger, to shapeshift into longing.

After he struck out with the volleyballer, DJ Zapp took refuge in that goofy old song he loved, the one that was in the car rental commercials recently - ommaway, ommaway - and he stomped around the fire pretending to play a flute, masking the sting of public rejection. You perched on a stump, performing spasmodic karate moves that I later realized were precise replications of the real music video. Why and when had you possibly seen that video?! Everyone was dying laughing, like they always did. You had all the reference points, had always seen the movie, heard of the band, knew all the words. How I ached for your approval.

People were fighting and fucking, pissing and puking in the brush, smoking bowls in the shadows. The whole year went like that, one bonfire to another, alliances forged and forgotten, all of us together, always, like a reality show without the cameras. “Where’s the party at tonight?” Everyone asked that, and everyone got the same answer. Sports heroes and sensitive hippies from the Montessori, come on down. A party for every stoplight in a one stoplight town.

Right before the cops came, I was on my back in the tall grass past the far side of the lake, throat syrupy thick from one too many Big Gulps filled 50/50 with Mountain Dew and the cheapest vodka on the market. Wolfsbane? Wolf’s Breath? I drank so much of it that its name disappeared down the memory hole, though the snarling silver wolf on the label stayed with me.

I don’t remember how I got there--maybe Xiuhtechuhtli was looking out for me after all--but Gabi Giroux and I were side-by-side, staring up at infinite sky, probably thinking we were the first teenagers to discover the joys of alcohol and astronomy.

“Isn’t it majestic?” she said, sarcasm and sincerity blending like peanut butter and chocolate, like Wolf’s Breath and the Dew.

When the police Maglites started cutting across the trees, she said “Cops are here” as matter-of-factly as if they were just another carload of invited guests.

She inched closer and put her head on my shoulder and continued talking, now in a whisper, about PJ Harvey’s Brooklyn rooftops and Joan Didion’s Hollywood parties, about her secret sketchpad teeming with savage caricatures, about the conventional sterility of our parents’ lives, about how much we hated our hometown (which all of our friends, family, teachers and casual acquaintances knew) and how scared we were to leave (which we’d admitted to no one, including ourselves). A thistle pierced the small of my back and my Big Gulp-battered bladder cried for relief, but there was no chance I’d betray our location, or give Gabi any cause whatsoever to think I was restless. I wanted the sun to die and the cops to live forever, humdrum Highlanders searching the hollow for underage drinkers as Gabi and I grew old together in the prairie grass.

Instead, satisfied with their taming of the teenagers, and no doubt restless to return to their speed traps, the cops abandoned us. I’m not sure whether they even handed out any tickets. Someone said they snatched a loaded cooler as “evidence.” I wouldn’t be surprised. Gabi and I kept talking for a while, but I was already on alert, already feeling the ache of absence. Soon enough, the four dreaded words: we should get back.

Some survivors had already straggled back to the campsite, defiantly feeding fresh logs to the flames. Others, like Gabi, decided to quit while they were ahead, and took their trashed but ticket-free selves back to town. You don’t want to make small town cops drive out of their way twice in one night.

That’s when you had the bright idea: let’s walk home. Let’s cut through the fields, trek to town, buy sausage biscuits at the Quik-N-EZ, and salute the sunrise. Everyone else balked, but I was ready. This was my night. I could have done anything.

Things got heavy during our walk. No more karate-dancing. You talked about the “horrible banality of family trauma.” You even cried a little. You got angry. Were people just needing to unburden themselves that night, I wondered, or was there something particular about me?

I steered myself toward the latter interpretation. I never knew where I fit in, and now here was the answer. I’d be the co-conspirator hiding in weeds and tromping through pastures, the omnipresent shoulder, the last guy standing.

I was giddy and greasy-chinned as we settled onto a bench in the park, two wolves with four biscuits, snickering as a morning jogger side-eyed us. Remember that?

I don’t remember any of this. You sure it was me?

Of course it was you! Who else could it have been?

I don’t know.

I mean, I could have sworn. It’s always been you in my head.


Written by: Adam McKibbin

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Over the Top

“See you later,” Martha whispered over her shoulder as she skipped off to the park. Her mother was busy cleaning the cabin. Her aunt was doing dishes. Her brothers and cousins were playing cards. Her dad and uncle were at the fire pit talking about the annual horseshoe tournament next week. Martha wasn’t supposed to wander off on her own, but she figured no one would miss her for a while and they would know where to find her.

Today was Martha’s ninth birthday, so she didn’t have to do any chores, other than making her bed. She wished she could disappear and come back tomorrow. Every summer her family was on vacation during her birthday. They tried to make it special, but it was always the same. There would be a cake from the bakery in town, everyone would sing Happy Birthday around the campfire and she would have to make a wish with everyone teasing her about being the baby in the group. Martha dreamed of someday having a birthday party with her friends. No boys or adults allowed.

At least this year the family was staying in a cabin on a lake. There was a large park with swings, slides and a merry-go-round next to the beach. Swinging was just about Martha’s favorite thing to do in summer. She would pick a seat high enough so her toes just touched the ground. The swing closest to the lake was the best one. You could see the whole resort when sitting still and nothing but sky when flying through the air. Please be empty today, she thought, fingers crossed.

A few early risers were on the beach but no one was on the swings. Martha ran the last few yards and sat in her preferred spot. She always liked to start by winding the swing in one direction and letting it unwind, feet in the air, leaning back as far as she could. When the swing stopped spinning, Martha closed her eyes and imagined herself swinging high enough to go over the top and make a complete circle. That would be the best birthday present of all.

Martha’s brother Dale told her it wasn’t possible. She was too small to get enough momentum to go all the way around. “Have you ever done it?” she asked.

“Almost, but dad saw me get as high as the top and made me stop before I made it around,” Dale answered.

“What did it feel like?” Martha asked, eyes wide.

Dale leaned in close to Martha to say, “It was wonderful and scary at the same time.”

“Have you tried it again?” Martha asked.

“I’m too old to be playing on the swings,” Dale said before he turned and walked away.

Martha opened her eyes and began to pump her legs back and forth. The cool morning mist brushed across her face as she propelled forward, disturbing the still air. Gravity pulled her back down. Martha pumped her legs faster and faster, gaining speed, slicing the air, higher and higher until she was almost upside down. Blue sky and green earth become a blur as Martha’s legs pushed and pulled, taking her to new heights.

I’m almost over the top, Martha thought. Her heart was racing with exhilaration, her hands grasping tight to the chains holding the swing. Suddenly the swingset posts began to move up and down with a thump, thump, thump. She wasn’t scared at all. Freedom, she thought. This must be what it feels like to fly.

Martha caught a glimpse of her mother walking toward her. Martha stopped pumping and let the swing slow down. She was in enough trouble for wandering off; she didn’t want to hear what her mother had to say about how high she was going.

“Can I join you?” her mother asked.

“I guess so,” Martha said, expecting to get an earful about taking off and not telling anyone.

Martha’s mother sat in the swing next to her, twirling from side to side. "I always liked to swing," she said.

"When you were little?"

"Even now."

"When? I've never seen you swing."

“Sometimes I like to sneak out at night and swing. I don't know which I like better, swinging under blue skies or under the moon and stars. Maybe we can come back after dark and you can tell me which you like better. But right now we need to go to town--you're old enough to pick out your own cake this year. What do you say?"

“Wind me up and let me twirl once more,” Martha pleaded.

“Alright, but then we have to scoot. Your brothers and cousins have planned a special day for you.” Martha’s mother wound the swing as tight as she could before letting go. As she walked back to the cabin, she turned and said, “No dawdling, Martha.”

Martha let the swing unwind and come to stillness. She heard her daughter-in-law calling her, “Martha, Martha, where were you? You looked like you were a million miles away.”

“Not so very far away. Just...remembering swinging under the stars with my mother.”

“Come inside Martha. After all, it is your party.”

The house was filled with her children and grandchildren plus all of her brothers, their wives, cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends who could make it. Martha was over the top with love, soaring with gratitude as she looked out at family and friends gathered around.

When it was time to make a wish and blow out the nine candles, one for each decade, Martha noticed the cake top. It looked like a starry night sky, her favorite time of day to fly.

Written by: Mary Sue Barry

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll   

The Guest

He’s an unofficial sort of guest; a guest because the only guest on the list is him. He’s alone, separated from the bounding noise vibrating on the highway; separated from the people who apparently wouldn’t understand. We call him Uncle J. Well, he calls himself that. He’s been here awhile. Five months, actually, though he says he used to live here; in childhood. “I was glad to see my old place; the room’s the same, but the clothes have changed thank God!” We laugh as if we’re in on the joke. He changes the subject, his gloved hands motioning calmly as his mint leaf breath wafts towards our chilled nostrils. His breath was always minty. Toothpaste? Gum? “My father was pretty famous…” his eyes search a thick fog for the word he needs. “He taught me how to do it. Everything.” Do what? Who knows. He continues, and a slight smile cracks his fragile lips. “The money, well, the money is good. Whoa good.” He sizes the air with his hands and smiles again, and this time we can see the sense of humor buried in his mixed-up thoughts, like a shining piece of silver in a pile of ashes.

We try to hand him money; he refuses, like always, making mention of the “whoa good” money once again. We smile, letting the whispers of the passersby on the well-traveled trail seep through the halfway woods, sliding across the door of his tent. Uncle J doesn’t care.

“My father was pretty famous,” he says again, “and because of that the famous people knew me.” That part’s true, we find out later. Uncle J isn’t totally unaware. What does he really know? “So, when I talked to the famous people I could tell them how to do it, because he taught me how to do it.” What is it? We laugh again, working to decipher his twisted truth. “I was the only doctor in Hawaii, er, California, and that’s a lot of people.” The doctor part is true, too, apparently. Though that was before he forgot who he was. Or before they forgot who he was. His face softens, his bright eyes conveying either sadness or nostalgia, though over what is not clear. Nothing is with him, but that’s why we talk. He knows something. Maybe not everything, but something.

“I knew when I met you yesterday - that you were right on.” The same smile creeps across his wrinkled face. “I knew, because you just know.” I get the eerie feeling he does, and even if we don’t, we smile too. He breathes a sigh of relief or congestion, and moves on; quickly, like always, though with the impression of having stayed with the exact same thought as before.

That’s when the cops come.

They show their shiny badges as per the usual and ask Uncle J if he’s aware the property is “restricted.”

He nods, asking them if they know how long his father lived there and whether or not they know who he is, all the while keeping his hands to himself and his breath minty fresh. He offers them a piece of gum. Gum. How? Uncle J keeps talking. “It really is great to be back here.” He carries on; he thinks they’re visitors. Just like we are. Like everyone is. They show their shiny badges again and repeat the “restricted area” comment. Uncle J laughs. Not out of scorn. Over something he’s said. He chuckles, sizing the air with his hands “I knew. I knew when I met you guys the other day that you were right on. I knew you’d show.” His eyes are hopeful, staring at something invisible behind the cops as his cracked lips bleed all for the sake of his widening smile. The cops make another pretend effort at their misunderstood jargon, using words like “sir” and mumbling something about property rights. Uncle J dismisses them again.

“I thought I had seen the worst of this place – that was when my father was pretty famous. He was. And I knew the people he knew. They’d say ‘J!’ if they saw me. But that was before. He passed, bless his soul, but I kept in touch with the people. A lot of pe-“

They take out their handcuffs. The game is up. Uncle J’s smile fades, a confused fog seeps over his face. The uniformed homewreckers repeat their words with newfound authority and reach to take his arms. We try to intervene, claiming Uncle J is our relative, our friend; anything to keep this from happening again. They decline less than politely, pulling Uncle J’s arms away from his lower back. He apologizes as tears form in his eyes, coating them in a crystal layer of clarity.

He knows. He knows he’s not home. He knows he’s not supposed to be here. He knows we only pretended to understand. A tear slides down his wrinkled cheek as his serene brown eyes clamor for the truth of his circumstance.

And then he smiles.

He chuckles, revitalized by his fall back into his hazy reality. “Take a picture. Please. Take a picture. I need to show them that I found where my father was. He was pretty famous. He was.” I nod, noting Uncle J’s still minty breath and the sudden change in his eyes. He’s staring past his nylon home into the thin woods as if looking for something. Something he’d lost, or found. Who knows.

The cops shuffle him away. We stand, incredulous. I reach for my phone, snapping a picture just before he yells:

“I knew you were right on. I knew you were.”


Written by: Tyler Wilborn
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

The 2015 Treaty of Niagara

The child may be small, but she is mighty. Mighty from the day she was born, entering the world not with a wail, but with a roar. You want to admire the force of her -- to call it strength of character - but the truth is that her ferocity has always overwhelmed you.

Saturdays have become dangerous ground in your home. Too many hours unscripted, not enough activities in the world, and playdates are so fleeting. Your husband hides in the garage while you preside over the day’s activities. You are in attendance at a royal court; one made of glitter glue and pipe cleaners.

You feel her watching you from across the craft table and you know it is best – safest – to avoid eye contact. You concentrate on the badge you are stitching onto her Girl Guide uniform. This one – the Modeling badge -- will be affixed above the Social Media Literacy badge and below the Make-up Application badge. You flinch as the pin suddenly stabs through the dark blue material piercing your finger. The purple marker across the table is still clutched in the soft pink fist but it is no longer moving. The stillness sends shivers down your spine.

“Mommy?” Sweet as syrup. Don’t look up.

“Yes Muffin?” You are squinting at the needle and thread -- all your attention on that task.

“I was thinking we really need to step it up with my YouTube channel.”

“Ya think?” Needle goes in, needle goes out. You avoid the big blue eyes framed in doll-like lashes. You know those lashes are fluttering violently in your direction.

“My subscribers need something…more.”

Another stitch, and only a few more before you are finished with this badge. “Like what?” You know it’s a trap, but there’s no way to avoid it. The question had to be asked or you risk the accusation of being a non-attentive parent. There is no worse thing than appearing to be a self-absorbed mother. You would be shunned from the home and school committee meetings, invites to Jungle Jam Indoor Gymboree would be withdrawn. The shame would be unlivable.

“I thought Great Wolf Lodge could be a super way to get some new content for my fans.” Butterfly flutters, chicklet smile.

“Great Wolf Lodge?” You say it with your voice tight, your eyes squinted as though you have never heard of such a thing. What is this place of which you speak -- this abode of wolves and greatness? The ruse isn’t working, she knows you are false.

“I thought a week at the lodge would be the perfect thing to bump up my views.”

“A week?” There is panic in your voice that should have been hidden. You glance up and see that she heard it too. She shines a beaming smile straight at you, curls cascading over her La Senza girl T-Shirt. She knows she has you. You stare hard at the fabric in your lap. The One Hundred Subscribers badge is coming loose and so you dive on it with your needle and thread. “Maybe just for one night,” you suggest non-committedly but she has you on the run and she knows it.

“I couldn’t do any less than four nights.” Sticky, sticky, honey bees buzzing round her voice like nectar.

“Maybe two nights.” God, can you stand it? Two whole nights with deep-fried foods and mixed drinks in plastic cups. Hysterical moms, always either overweight or weirdly thin and dads with tattoos hidden under blankets of back hair that they have given up waxing.

“Three, and we need a themed suite.”

“Three nights. No suite. One MagicQuest game.”

“Done.” She smiles. Pearly whites peek through petal lips, and she launches at you. “You are the best Mommy in the whole wide world.” Arms around your neck, rosy pillow cheek squashed against your face. She smells as sweet as she sounds; strawberries, peaches, licorice kisses.

“I will let Daddy know and we can set something up,” I say.

“Don’t wait too long,” she says. “We want to get on it before we get too close to Christmas. I can’t have my Great Wolf Lodge vlog interfere with my seasonal toy review

She pulls away and swishes the waterfall of curls over her shoulder. “I will be in the kitchen if you need me. The lighting is better there and I have to record a quick thing on side pony tails before dinner. They’re the ‘it’ hairstyle for grade three girls this fall.”

She caps her marker and snatching her smartphone from the table, she disappears. You return your focus to the badges on your lap. The Cleanliness badge is beginning to fray at the edges; you had that one at her age too. It sat on your Girl Guide sash above your Telephone Courtesy badge and Leg Warmer Appreciation badge. You lost all of the badges of course, and the Girl Guide uniform, too. They disappeared with the rollerblades you used to love, sometime after you traded in your New Kids on the Block posters for Nirvana pictures torn from magazines.”

She is in the hallway now, her hair pulled to the side of her dangerously symmetrical head, golden strands, strawberry tinged, wrapped in a purple kink-free elastic band. Her arms hug the oversized teddy bear to her chest. The fluttery lashes return for the finale as you hear her voice, molasses, gumdrop, candy floss.

“Don’t forget to like this video. Thanks for subscribing and leave your comments down below.”


Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

New Year's Reservations

Scott mashes the red button on his screen and tosses his phone on the couch, careful not to hit his best friend.

“What are your resolutions?” he asks, and Dollar replies with a look that says, “I’m a dog. I have no goals beyond eating, sleeping, shitting, and–until you had my testicles removed–fucking.”

“We’re not so different, you and me,” Scott says, and occupies the open spot on the sofa.

Scott’s phone begins to buzz but he reaches for the remote instead. He knows it’s his sister, Debra, calling him back, and as far as he’s concerned, she can take her unsolicited advice, roll it up nice and tight inside one of those ivy-league diplomas she prominently displays in her study, and shove it up her even tighter twat. Bitch.

He tries to watch John Mulaney’s latest stand-up, but he can’t. Debra has made his brain uninhabitable to humor at the moment, which is really inopportune, because he managed to land a five-minute set at The Laugh Factory tonight and he needs some inspiration. He also needs her kids to stop watching Veggie Tales–or whatever the fuck they’re into these days–so he can login to her Netflix account. Little shits.

Scott’s thumb and pointer finger shoot up to his beard and a eureka moment chugs to life like the engine of his 93’ Toyota Camry. He grabs his phone, brushes off his missed call notification like a fly on a sandwich, and opens up his Jokes document.

“My sister can fuck herself,” he types, grinning at the sight of his words and the thought of how they will sound reverberating around the comedy club. “You laugh, but I’m serious. She has two kids, both born from a turkey baster and a bottle of pinot noir. And she wonders why I refuse to go to her house for Thanksgiving.”

Scott laughs until he realizes that joke will only eat up approximately thirty seconds of his set, laugh break included. He looks at Dollar and Dollar looks back at him like, “I’m a fucking dog. When’s lunch, btw?”

“Honestly,” he types, “those kids are such pieces of shit, you would think she had an anal birth. (Pause for laughter.) And they’re just like her. The first time I saw them I said, ‘Debra, they have your eyes,’ and she said, ‘You don’t know what my eyes look like,” and I said, ‘Yes huh,” and she said, ‘What do they look like?’ and I said ‘Judgmental.’”

Scott laughs again. His confidence builds with each cutdown of his younger sister. He becomes drunk on defamation of character and continues typing, uninhibited by Jiminy Cricket.

“Today, she asked me, ‘Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘What are they?’ and I said, ‘To be a better uncle,’ and she said, “And how do you intend to do that?’ and I said, ‘Stop visiting.’”

Scott laughs so loud Dollar looks at him like, “DUDE, shut the fuck up. And feed me.” Scott returns the glare like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator–the first one, when he’s the bad guy–and his thumbs continue crawling across the screen like the fleas on Dollar’s belly.

“I think the only living creature more entitled than my sister’s children is my dog, Dollar.”

At the sound of his name, Dollar springs into what he would consider action. He props himself up on his front paws and lifts his ears, listening for a one-syllable, four-letter word that starts with an “F” and ends with the first letter of his most worthless appendage.

“Why did I name him Dollar, you ask?”

THERE IT WAS AGAIN, his name. Dollar sits up even straighter and bends his hind legs like he’s preparing to either take a dump, rub his a-hole on the cushions, or jump over the armrest.

“Because that’s how much I’m selling him for. Any takers?”

Scott laughs and Dollar howls, collapsing back into his sleeping position. “That’s right, buddy, Scott says, ”there are no friends in comedy.” Dollar snarls back like, “No shit, that’s why you’re so lonely,” and Scott says, “Zing.”

He goes to his phone’s home screen, finds his stopwatch app, and recites the insults that poured out of his fingers.

“ONE MINUTE, FIFTEEN SECONDS,” Scott yells and Dollar gets up all like, “THAT’S IT, we’re done here.” Scott hears his paws scrape against the faux-wooden floors until they reach the bedroom. If Dollar had opposable thumbs he would slam the door, but he doesn’t, so he just jumps into his doggy bed and plugs his ears with the pads of his feet.

Scott looks around the living room for more family pictures–aka targets–but his lack of interior decorating skills and sentimentality comes back to bite him. Rapid-fire round; Scott goes to Debra’s Facebook page and begins picking apart her photo albums like a buzzard on a zebra carcass.

“My niece is so ugly, Jared Fogle wouldn’t touch her.”

“My nephew is so fat, I get HIS hand me downs.”

“My sister is so pretentious, even her farts have accent marks.”

“Their Christmas postcard was so bad, my mailman walked into oncoming traffic.”

“Their smiles are so fake, they look like Tom Cruise’s new family.”

“She posts so many pictures, even the NSA blocked her.”

“She is so desperate for attention, she changed her last name to Kardashian.”

“She is so pleased with herself, she has a permanent handprint on her upper back.”

A red notification bubble pops up in the top-right corner of his screen, clogging his stream of quips like a knot in a garden hose. He clicks it, and it reads, “Debra is attending your event, Laugh At Me With The Laugh Factory.” “FUCK,” Scott screams and squeezes the backspace button of his Jokes document so hard he nearly breaks his phone. “Dollar,” he yells towards the bedroom. Dollar sprints down the hallway, too dumb and hungry to realize this is probably another red herring. “It looks like you’re my muse tonight.”

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Into the Dark

My father and I exited the back of the house and headed out across the field to kill the only thing that I had ever loved.

That morning had been chilly and now with the sun covered up by clouds, the cold had turned bitter and biting. The sky was gray, shot through with streaks of pale green the way it got just before a big storm was about to hit. It hadn't started yet, but when it came it would drop the temperature even further, the wind howling and whipping the window shutters and lightning scorching the tops of the trees leaving them with shattered branches, the remnants scattered at their roots looking like amputees gaping down at their lost limbs.

I knew Milo was sick and needed an operation that we couldn't afford. I understood this, but couldn't bring myself to accept it. When I looked into his eyes all I saw there was love. That love should have made me want to end his suffering, but instead I held on tighter, because after he was gone it would just be me and my father alone in the house, the two of us silently skirting around each other like ghosts.

It wasn’t that my father didn’t care for me. He had never raised his hand in anger, and I had never gone to bed cold or hungry, but he kept a large part of himself locked away from me and from everyone else. I don’t know if he had always been this way or only became so after my mother died. Sometimes it felt as though he didn’t know quite what to make of me—instances where he seemed utterly at a loss, like the time as a small child when I had bawled for hours over the loss of a plastic, toy horse. He stared at me like I was some strange creature he couldn’t comprehend. Eventually he left me there to cry myself to sleep. Some might consider his actions cruel, but I think he was simply confused and unable to cope with situations that would have fallen to my mother had she not vanished from my life before I even knew I was in the world.

Milo had been my father’s solution to the problem. The day he brought the black and brown puppy home was the happiest of my life. I suppose most would argue that a dog, no matter how affectionate, was no substitute for a mother’s love, but to me Milo was the world. He would walk with me in the morning along the dirt path that lead out from the front of our property and met up with the paved road where I waited for the bus. In the afternoon he would be sitting on the front porch when I got home from school and would come bounding across the lawn to meet me. We grew up together, and in a lot of ways I thought of him more as my brother than my pet.

He was still bigger than me, even with all the weight he’d lost from the cancer, and I heard my father grunt several times while carrying Milo in his arms as we made our way to the tree-line that marked the beginning of the forest that bordered our property.

This had been our favorite spot to play. The field behind the house was for planting and therefore off limits, so Milo and I spent all our time wandering around the woods with me skulking through the trees pretending to be a ranger while he chased squirrels and rabbits and gophers and once a very agitated skunk that made him stink for weeks afterward.

We had seen so many things there.

A family of deer drinking from a pool, the parents flanking either side of their fawn that was barely half the size of Milo and still shaky on its new legs. A black bear trudging through the stream snatching fish out of the water like they were standing still. Wolves howling in the distance and Milo howling back like he wanted to join them.

There were also those simple, everyday occurrences. The sweet perfume of flowers in the springtime and the earthy aroma of dead leaves in the fall. The satisfying crunch of snow and ice underneath our feet in winter. The summer sun streaming in through the branches casting angular patterns of shadow on the ground.

These were moments that wouldn’t have been the same if Milo hadn’t been there at my side to witness them with me.

When we reached a small clearing circled by a ring of birch trees, my father stopped and set Milo on the ground.

“This is a good spot,” my father said. “You’ll have no trouble finding him here to visit after we put in a marker.”

I nodded, not sure of what to say. I knelt down and nestled my hand in Milo’s fur; he lifted his head a little and looked at me.

“He’s your dog. You ought to be the one to do it,” my father said as he unslung the .22 rifle from his shoulder and held it out to me.

This was the way of things for my father. Something he understood better than crying toddlers. It had been his daddy’s way, and his daddy’s daddy before that.

I shook my head at him. “I can’t.”

My father put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry it has to be this way. I wish there was something more we could have done, but it isn’t right to let him suffer.”

“I know....” I said, choking back a sob that caused my whole chest to hitch forward.

“Say your goodbyes and give him some peace, son.”

I nodded again and took the rifle from him.

My father stood there for a moment like he was about to say something else, but instead turned and headed towards the house without looking back.

I laid the gun down next to me in the grass and stroked the top of Milo’s head. He was staring up at me again, gazing straight into my eyes with that love that made me want to hold onto him as tightly as I could and melt into the ground so that we would always be together.

The first drops of rain began to fall.

I put my arms around Milo and pointed my face towards the sky waiting for the storm to come...waiting for the rain to turn the earth to mud, and swallow us both up forever.

Written by: Peter Naughton

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

The Grey Forest

It’s late fall, maybe even winter by now. I don’t know, I can’t even tell you the date. I only know the seasons by my surroundings. Most of the leaves have fallen off the trees, making it feel even more cold and barren than it already is.

Fortunately, the area is dry, which makes gathering firewood easier. In a few weeks, the cold will set in, and I’ll need all the warmth I can get. This is probably my last chance to hunt for food, too. Maybe I can get lucky and find a deer, or at least something larger than a squirrel. I could use the meat.

Let me give you the grand tour of my little forest camp. Behind me is the makeshift shelter I built out of an oak tree that fell not too far from here. I used the thinner, flexible branches to tie everything together. The roof is made from mud and leaves. Not the prettiest, but it keeps me pretty dry, except in the harshest of storms.

On the other side of camp is my fire ring. Fire is both the life giver and the protector of my area. Larger predators, mostly wolves, shy away from my camp because I always keep a roaring fire at night. I don’t know whether it’s the heat or the light that keeps them at bay, and frankly, I don’t care.

And finally, we have my food locker. Again, made of wood, I store my smoked meat in it. I know the smell of food will bring in more animals than I care to deal with, so I do my best to cover the smell with ground up plants and such. Lichens do a fine job, as do pine branches. In the weeks, months, however long I’ve been out here, it seems to work – sort of.

This is a good spot, as we’re close to the river. Nothing says survival quite like fresh water and a good supply of fish. If you don’t like fish, you’ll get used to it. Just avoid eating the pike, they taste awful. As for the rest, just make sure you give them a thorough cooking over the fire; it gets the fish taste out.

You look like you have some questions again. Hold off on them for the time being and let me tell you a little about me. Years ago, an earthquake devastated my home town, shaking everything to the ground. I’d just gotten out of college--I’m an engineer--and had found my dream job when everything was taken away.

No shame in leaving a place devastated by disaster, right? Well, I thought so too, that is until I received word that my brother died. The fool didn’t know what he was doing and ended up dying when a steel beam fell on him. He was helping in the rebuild, you see. You might call it survivor’s guilt, or whatever fancy term they teach in Psych 101, but I know it should’ve been me. He didn’t have the experience, the training that I had.

Shortly after, I left America and went overseas for a bit, living from hostel to hostel, like a drifter. My favorite place was Ireland. The people there were full of life and understanding. Some saw the pain, deep down again, yet never try to coax more out of me than I was willing.

Another good stop was New Zealand. I stowed away on a cargo ship to get there. The ride was terrible, but the island itself was amazing. The punchline of that story was I intended to go to Australia and mixed up the ships. Either way, it was well worth it. Just don’t call the locals Kiwis. It turns out they really hate it.

My last stop was to return home, to face up to everything I was running from. When I got there, I saw the community had been rebuilt. I had an overwhelming sense of pride, but a great deal more shame. I should’ve stayed and helped, not run away. If I had, my brother might still be alive.

All of that, it’s in the past. I’m doing my best out here, trying to make peace with what I’ve done and how I lived my life. Can’t say it was the best way to live, but at the time I always made the choices I felt were right. I’m sure, since you’re here with me, you’ve been faced with a lot of those times too.

That brings us back to where we are today. Everyone who ends up here did so because they couldn’t accept that guilt they had. Think of this forest as a crossing, the roaring river below my camp the final hurdle if you will. No one knows for sure when the time will come to take the plunge and swim across, but I have it on good authority you’ll know. As me for, I’m not ready yet, far from it.

Tell you what, it’s getting late and there’s not enough food for both of us here. If you’d be so kind as to grab that rifle over there, I’ll teach you how to survive in this place, I call it The Grey Forest.

You want to know my name? My name’s not important, not anymore, but I’ll be your guide. Stick close to me and you’ll be okay. And one day, in the future, maybe you’ll be ready to take a swim to the other side.

What’s on the other side? I couldn’t rightfully tell you, but I’m sure it’s a place better than here. Now, enough questions. Night’s coming, and we have a lot to do. Let’s go.

Written by: Jeremy Croston

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

The Dénouement

The rising sun, a red ball set in a hard grey sky, painted the tips of the ocean waves all the way to the water’s edge. Everything it touched looked bright and hot. Even the crystalline sand shimmered and glowed like a bed of smoldering coals.

A wind from the east blew up from the beach and carried the grit and sea-smell inland. It ruffled and filled the voile curtains at the edges of my French doors and bent inward the saw grass that grew thick at the foot of my terrace. A breeze on a beach was always welcome, but one from the east, with the red light of dawn burning on the horizon, carried a portent. 

 
I leaned against the terrace railing and watched thunderheads form at the edge of the sea just above the horizon, billowing high into the sky, majestic and foreboding. I was sipping my coffee and studying the gathering storm when I heard my front door close. I turned my head only halfway to listen. It might be the wind, I thought, but then I heard soft footsteps approaching. I’d been expecting the visit. He’d phoned and said he had news, the dénouement, he called it. He came up beside me and stood there in the full force of the wind staring out across the ocean vista and expansive sky. I didn’t turn toward him. It wasn’t necessary. The familiarity of his presence did not require it. Don and I’d been close friends for almost twenty-five years.

He was a man of rhythm and tempo like the waves on the shoreline. He’d been a music major in college, and though he’d left that life behind long ago, his intuitive sense of timing remained. He waited for his cue, counting the pulse of the waves like the measures in a symphonic prelude. I waited for his news, and when he found the rhythm for his words, it wasn’t a wind from the east that spoke, it was the storm.

“Rick loved his pickup truck.” Don began in a matter-of-fact cadence. “You know he didn’t need a pickup truck. He wasn’t in construction. He wasn’t what you’d call a very handyman or a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Those things were not his forté, and in his case, better off left to the professionals.” He chuckled. I smiled. “He was a teacher. He’d always wanted to be a teacher and in the end, that’s what he was. I learned he was a good teacher, imaginative, amusing, held in high regard by his colleagues, well liked by both parents and students. He was a good teacher, a good teacher who loved his pickup truck.”

He paused and gazed down at the swaying saw grass at the base of the terrace. I sipped my coffee and watched the light change with the shifting clouds. I stood pressed against the terrace boundary. I knew some of the story but not all. With the news to come, I wanted to be in the full force of the wind that streaked up from the ocean. Don lifted his head and continued.

“In fact, he loved his pickup truck so much that he decided there was no better place to die than on the front seat. I don’t know how he reached that conclusion. I don’t know what went through his mind. I don’t know how he put the logic together to arrive at that place, but he did. I don’t know the why either, but it took some planning. He removed the exhaust manifold and used a vacuum cleaner hose. It pumped the fumes right into the cab. I guess you could say I underestimated his handyman skills.” Don paused and shook his head, puzzled. “He must have read some books, don’t you think?” I turned and saw him smile at the thought; then Don pulled out a chair and sat down at my terrace table.

I would have preferred to take the news standing full in the wind, but after a last glance at the ocean and the endless white caps, I turned away, pulled out a chair and joined him. I wanted to get away from it, yet I needed to face the end head on.

“When they found him, he was stretched out on the seat under a blanket. Julia told me that they’d been trying for a baby. He’d brought home the blanket one day. It was a baby blanket covered in purple ballerinas. He insisted they sleep under it every night. It was their good luck charm, he told her. Looking back on it, though, it doesn’t seem so lucky, does it?” He straightened and turned to face the wind, hoping it would shutter his emotions. “In that state of mind it must be possible to live two lives in parallel, one where you continue with the life you know, your family, your profession, the familiar and frequent steps, and at the same time, unearth the thoughts and designs that write your own epitaph.” His voice rose to a shout. He spit his words at the rising wind. “How can you believe in good luck charms like a baby’s blanket and then make such detailed plans to end your life?” He was short of breath after the outburst. He slumped in his chair, and tears dropped onto the front of his shirt. His questions remained unanswered. They would always remain unanswered. The dead speak too softly or not at all.

There were no answers I could give Don. The answers he sought had died with Rick. I could only offer him solace and share the grief. It was my grief too. Together, we’d lost a friend, or perhaps he’d lost us. It wasn’t an accident or disease that took him. He’d left by choice like a friend who waves goodbye from a parting car, with no thought of tomorrow, only the journey and the road just ahead.

Written by: James Shaffer
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Things That Went Missing

I remember redwood picnic tables, still wet from the rain on a Sunday morning before the dogs and nude sunbathers came out. You weren't there to see, gone missing. Microscopic creatures swarmed like jellyfish in puddles although the shore was 100 feet away.

And I never wanted to lay a hand on you. The things that went missing were the things we never had a hand on in the first place. The things nibbling at the edges of our imaginations that were not to become tangible, or completely visible with the naked eye. Neither knowable, nor close enough to tear apart or off.

Maybe we didn't see the things that stood right before our eyes. The things that were visible were the ones that disappeared first, without being missed, in the light evening of an undiscovered promise, the summer night of a California beach with water too cold to skinny-dip with strangers. We obsessed over what wasn't there, and took for granted what was there all along.

I saw you in your red underthings doubling as a bathing suit. A cool breeze swirled the aluminum torches along the patio edges, with laughter and unheard insults floating across the beach in choppy whispers. The bonfires lit in dancing crescents, the bronze bodies with nylon stitching, and a backbone of fiberglass surfboards hatcheted into the sand like a prehistoric animal with no ancestors. With no future past August.

The things that went missing were never offered. The air teased the elastic of our flirtations as you picked sand from between my toes with our legs crossed in artificial modesty, up on the bamboo railing. I saw you looking. And the apocalypse of the tide made my memory obsolete.

You blamed your brother for the ride you missed. Ochre smoke hung innocently on the inseams of your bathing suit. The nylon of the jacket held just so but was safety-pinned in a secret place to preserve the illusion. The beach was suddenly empty. The pepper lights hung on a wire that squeaked in the salt wind.

The things that went missing were the ones we weren't paying attention to. The price of gas that made Chet stop driving the Cadillac. The storage shed filled with mother’s photo albums, grown dank and green. Your desperate hold on the neck of a Guinness, stolen from the bottle shop. Fresh-caught fish on a line, smiling and circling in the pails.

We saved them from the shark surf. Later you would fry them over phonebook flames with a steel claw made of hangers, like evidence you were determined to destroy.

The promise of summer, paved in gilt-edged bible pages, seduced me into unwinding the regrets you never replayed for me. You only agreed to see me when everyone else was gone. The sunset burned the smog into unnatural colors. And the windshield filtered the light in that starving morning, bringing a touch to your skin and the hidden elastic below the fold, discarded on the backseat floor. The crease left wet, your silent tear glistening along the cheeks that still burned with the force of that accidental reversal.

The things that went missing were a foreshadowing of our death and of the birth. The religious poise of a creature, found floating towards deeper water, the wave of a new world simple in its proposal and fertile grace. Missing were the things never seen. My stories were jokes you didn't hear, the punchlines an insult they took the wrong way, your secret an opportunity you'd backed into by accident. You let him watch you change in the shower stalls down by the lifeguard station after the festival.

I'd have worn a mask to enter your light, splintered with styrofoam vertebrae and warmed by the driftwood furnace. But I was up on the hill overlooking the summer houses built deep in the shale, and the plan fell in the vast sea of night. My plan drowned by Poseidon, lost beyond Apollo, in the parking lot of the Scop Cafe in the backseat of the Cadillac, whispered at lunchtime the following Monday.

Did I tell you? The sharks went hungry.

Your indignation was a pose against this Sodom and Gomorrah business, that Guernica night that began as it ended, a grand embrace of our last night alone, the desperate attempt to find what had already gone missing, your smiling teeth dark in the shadow, a trick of the flame while tequila smoke coiled from the cement rings on the dirty sand like a broken necklace, spilled in an amorous struggle.

Butts and pop tops and clear plastic wrappers. The slow curves pitched with duckweed that damselflies swarm around like high school. I lit the flame and you let him have it. I wore another suit of clothes. Last call before we take inventory of the supplies.

The things that went missing had to be reconstructed later in a hand-held reading where I passed my own poem over to let someone else read, with broken rhythms I had no way to put my hand on, to twist back in shape.

Waist ties poked in my thighs at the joint. I imagined the burn of your hand for hours. The color was an illusion of the printer, and should not reflect your final result. Once you live by the coast, you never get it out of your blood. Grains of sand circled at the bottom of the empty shower stall, beads of glass a blind memory of something never consummated.

The man with the orange blazer would hose it down come winter, during the rains. At the naked clearing dotted with redwood picnic tables, I held you down to make you confess, holding the lapels of someone else's windbreaker, which you tore off then never reclaimed.

It fell apart that August. The things that went missing were not there to begin with.


Written by: Roger Leatherwood
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Dear Lydia

I had you too young. I wasn't meant to be a mother so soon, but I chose it for myself. Don't ask your father about this, he wouldn't understand. He says he does now, but he didn't then. It's the "then" that I want to talk to you about.

Yes, I'm a coward because I can't do this face-to-face. It means driving out to see you, and to see California again, and I just can't do that. They're right when they say some wounds haven't healed. This is one of them. Don't get me wrong -- it's a great state, and I'm glad you went out there. I'm glad you and Carlos are happy and possibly settling down. (Possibly. I promised I wouldn't rush you and I won't.)
California's where I went after your dad left. It's where I went after I found out I was going to have you because Aunt Jo wouldn't let me stay in the house, and I didn't know where else I could turn. Uncle Sid took me in, even though he didn't have to. He was mad at your father for a lot of things back then, but mostly for leaving when he knew you were coming.

Granted, Sid was mad at me, too. I was pushing your father at a time when he wasn't pushing himself, and when you push someone who doesn't want to change, whether they know if it's good for them or not, they strike back. So he walked away. I didn't follow, and I didn't beg him to stay. Maybe I should've. I know you're angry at him, too, right now.
Instead, I left with you and found a new home...in California, as you know. Marin City. We made new friends -- you remember Kendall and Leo, from the pictures -- but they couldn't do much for us. They weren't even able to help themselves, with almost six jobs between them and barely making more than I was. I guess that's what happens when you run into people in situations as sticky as ours was. They had a baby right before I had you. Did you know that? I’m sure I told you. A baby girl: Merry. Probably named her that to help change their luck around, or lift their attitudes, or something.

I'm not even sure how I took care of us during those years. You're going to roll your eyes at me because this sounds like an excuse, but it's not. I blanked out most of that time. No, it wasn't long ago, but a year feels like seven when you're in dire straits.
We had a very hard time getting by. We were -- are -- lucky to have Sid and Ty in our lives, though. They never asked many questions, but you know that. How much stuff have you hidden from me in their pockets? You're the writer, you'll get that metaphor, or whatever you call it. They take things on without knowing what they're getting into. It used to get them into trouble, but I think you coming into our lives stopped them doing that for everything, and started limiting it to some things.
I remember the day your father came back to us like it was yesterday. He was finally admitting to being wrong. He'd been crying, and his cheeks were pink. He saw you first, and then me, outside Sid's house -- that dinky place you always see in the early photos in your baby books. He went to you first, and you weren't that old at all, only six months, maybe. He didn't stop saying sorry the rest of the day.

No, it didn't fix anything. Aunt Jo was still mad and his family was still mad. Everyone was mad at me, just like you are now. They all loved you, though. There wasn't a time that they didn't love you.

I'm sorry I wasn't old enough to have you when you came into my life. I'm sorry I used that as an excuse not to do better when it would've counted most. I'm sorry you needed to rely on Sid and Cousin Ty and all those people who weren't me and your dad. I'm sorry I took us so far away from home and then couldn't do much for you once I did. I'm sorry this made things harder.
I know it doesn't change anything. You're still hurting, and anyone would be, finding out like you did. No kid wants to find out that there might’ve been a time when their parents didn’t want them, and they really don’t want to find out by total accident. Those abortion forms got lost among the rest of my paperwork very early on and by the time I decided to keep you, I forgot about them. I promise I wasn't trying to hide them, or the letters to your father, or anything. They were stored away because I couldn't keep looking at them after the first two years I'd had them. I put them away to put it all behind me.
For a long time, you didn't seem to need any closure about where your father was in all those pregnancy pictures, or why he came back. You didn’t seem interested in why your first year of life went undocumented when it wasn’t a holiday. You didn't ask questions, didn't root around, nothing. You were a good kid, quiet, thoughtful, maybe too attentive around me. You did your work and had your friends and grew up really, really well.

You seemed to understand why your dad and I weren't around all that much, even after we got back together. I never expected you'd be so hurt when you finally found out. I was barely a month into the pregnancy when I went to the clinic...but I guess that’s not the point. Maybe I should’ve known you’d shut me out, but I didn't want to make that hundredth call and have you not pick up again. And hell if I was going to put all this in voice messages.

I know it's not enough. This doesn't tell the whole story by a long shot. I hope it answers some questions, though, and enough of them that you can finally pick up the phone when I call.

I'm going to call. You're my daughter and I love you, and I'm going to call to check in on you, just like I always have -- even when I wasn't a good mother. You can ask Sid about that, if you want. He'll tell you.

Love always,

Mom


Written by: Caitlin Mannarino
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Calculations

I wait for you to say something perfect. Niri finishes stringing the lanterns around the patio. All those colored paper shells look like sugared sweets; a candy necklace for the night. I wish they would melt into syrup and trap you and Kinsey; the two of you ambered together forever. Maybe then you would find something to say.

From my spot in the yard, I’ve watched you fight and kiss and maybe do a bit more. Niri’s parents presented me when she moved into this new place, back when you were with her, and not anyone else. She’s been here for five years, eleven months, and twelve days, but everyone still calls it the “new” place, and everyone seems to forget about the two of you.

But I’m still here. Albeit I’m a little less pink and my ankles have rusted from last summer’s rain. Grandy still tells me I’m beautiful, but I’m not sure I believe him. He’s so much younger than I’ll ever be. Tonight I’m not talking to him because I’m too busy trying to listen to you. And Kinsey. These past few months it’s been Wade and Kinsey at every party.

“Niri!” You yell her name, pulling her in for a hug. She makes a face at me and Kinsey over your shoulder. Her eyebrows rise and say no way, her eyes go wide and wonder what happened. Even I know that you and Kinsey have something.

“Somebody get this girl a drink,” you say, passing Niri off to the others at the party.

Kinsey hands her a glass of your homemade sangria, and Niri dumps it by my feet as soon as you’re not looking. I suck it up through my legs and it makes me feel good, almost great.

“Kinsey, girl,” Niri says.

I smile even as my stomach sloshes with too much sangria and sappy daydreams of what tonight should have been for you.

“And nothing,” Kinsey says. She chews on a soggy orange wedge. I imagine the fruit bursts with booze and saturates her tongue in slime and seeds. When she spits into the bottom of her glass, I know I am right.

“Like, really nothing? Not even hey or hi or you know, let’s fuck?” Niri asks. No one looks because it’s Niri. But if it were me or Grandy, they’d all be like acid trip? And then maybe they’d drink and dance and forget that the lawn ornament said something so profane.

“It’s not like that. We just, I don’t know, and it…he’s just different here,” Kinsey says. I want to say he is different, he gets you, he just gets confused, and I think he might love—

“The dance floor is calling us,” Niri says.

There is no dance floor.

You drink that gin with yesterday’s lips, the ones that talked about Kinsey. You said she was brilliant and beautiful and you finally got that there was something real about her. So where is that guy? Why isn’t he here tonight? Why aren’t you kissing Kinsey and keeping her in your arms? Why are you so determined to fuck everything up?

“Later,” you say to a girl named Kat when she asks you to dance. I follow your gaze to Kinsey swaying, seeped in those lanterns’ colored light. She looks like some sort of mystical creature, and she smiles when she sees you staring.

You still haven’t said anything to her. You hugged everyone but her. You laughed with everyone and just nodded your head when she said the stars, even though we all know that is your special code for let’s talk. Because everyone remembers the last three parties and how you brought champagne because Kinsey loves it and it makes her crazy and it reminds you both of the galaxy.

Tonight it’s like you are trying to put as much distance between you and her as possible. I hope you know that your Kinsey is a philophobiac, and the idea of loving someone, like really loving someone, scares her. But sometimes you are sweet and you sang that one line from your favorite song to her that night she got sick. I think she still remembers that version of you.

Everyone dances and sings another shot before we kiss, but you stand still beside me. You sigh and I miss the end of that line and the one after. But when it gets to the chorus, you whisper the words, and smile. I know you want to join the party, but you don’t. I’m not sure if it is because of the song or because of whatever has happened with Kinsey. You pull your phone from your pocket, start typing into your Notes. How will she get back up?

I know it is about Kinsey because you only write things about real people. They are never characters created from blood and ink. And knowing that, your silence makes sense, but it doesn’t satiate my need to hear it straight from your lips. I want to ask: how do you know she’ll fall? How do you know she’ll care as much about whatever isn’t happening as those of us who know the two of you might add up to something better?

You say “only sunshine” to Kat as you pull her into a slow dance. I wonder if you said “only stars” to Kinsey. I wonder if you will ever just love someone to love them.

When you lead Kat to the porch, we all watch. Kinsey stops dancing and leans against Niri and they whisper back and forth. I can’t hear them from here so I try to read their lips. Kinsey’s mouth moves slow and it looks like she says fudge, but I know she must be saying fuck you because that’s what we are all thinking.

Kinsey doesn’t crumble, even as you lift Kat, and take her into the house. She is so much stronger than you. Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you care too much and that’s why you feel the need to hate fuck strange girls instead of making love to just one.

“It’ll be okay,” Grandy says, nudging me with his little grey wing.

I’m not sure that’s true. Grandy hasn’t seen enough of you to know either way. But I think about how you almost kissed Kinsey at the last party, the way you closed your eyes, and drank in her words. I remember the way you leaned in and whispered something I almost heard, but never would. And now our lives consist of the almost.

Written by: Kayla King

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll
 

The Violent Acts of Poets, Part III

Continued from The Violent Acts of Poets, Part I & Part II

A rumor of money brought bad men to my door. Payback sought for Mr. Miller and the debts of a deal, no doubt. These things sometimes happen. We are wandering souls like spokes on a ferris wheel, always ending up where we’ve been, and sometimes that love of money is too much. The greed spills out like oil from the gulf until we can’t stand it no more. Round and round until eventually we all get chewed, spit, swallowed, and fed to the worms.

The bad men were three in number, with one shotgun, and poor timing. They roped around the house in the early morning hours, drunk and amateur, whispering commands seen on television. The valley walls enclosed my father’s house, and echoed muffled spits of “Go round back,” in the dark.

The leader held the gun, and I did not like the look of him. He had a shaved head and wore an earring in the shape of a cross. He also wore a white t-shirt, under an un-seasonally heavy coat. He must have sweated through it, because the trapped summer heat lingered until October in the valley. The coat covered the gun. The gun covered the man. Some kind of evil covered the house in the valley; its windows broken past midnight, the hell-bent wood floor creaking. You could hear things below the floor at night. Critters holed away from the elements.

The one with the crucifix ear was first through the front door, reaching around and unlatching the lock through the broken window. Lily and I huddled together and watched the knob shake, before the glass shattered and the faceless arm reached around to open the door. The arm did not sufficiently make it back to its owner.

Grabbing the wrist I pulled as hard as I could toward the hinges of the door. I meant to break it in half. I did not plan for the glass. The remnants of the window looked like ocean waves frozen on some far away alien planet; abstract and artisan in the moonlight. They ribboned the meat of the bad man’s arm like there had been some sort of accident, the sound of scraping bone punctuated the screaming, and blood spurted across the door and wall unlike anything I have ever seen. My grip slipped and for a second I thought I had sawed his arm off, but it retreated from the window and disappeared around the closed door like a wounded animal. There was a howling. The man was clutching the arm, wrapping it with shreds of shirt, and when I walked to the porch and looked down at him, there was nothing but a strange, abstract, tangled movement; like watching a bag of snakes at night; like there was a black-holed well where his stomach should have been.

“There is a hole,” I said, picking up the shotgun, “In your soul.”

I don’t know why I said it. I was not the biblical hangman that he would soon face. It rhymed and simply slipped out of my mouth. I chose to let it linger.

I could hear his accomplices running across the field, up the slope to the main road and the gate of the property. It was a full moon and you could see them stumbling back and forth, too slow and drunk. They fell, and got up. Cursed. Coughed. Hollered. Repeat.

Lily swept by me, off the porch, taking the shotgun with her. I yelled after her and kept pursuit as she tracked the other two. I made progress but she was not slowing, not stopping, not aiming. She held the shotgun from the hip until she tripped and fell forward. The shot ripped the night and echoed through the valley. Some animal howled back like they were accepting the challenge.

Most of the pellets went through the man’s back. They ripped through muscle and lung, so by the time we stood over him he was coming up blood. It flooded him and his insides and bubbled from his bearded face. Lily handed me the shotgun and turned back down the slope to the house.

I used to believe that it was an accident, her tripping and killing that man. But later I was not so sure, and finally I believed she would have killed him tripping or not. Either way I took the kill as my own, when they asked me later, and sometimes if you believe something hard enough it becomes true. Such is the stability of truth.

The body on the porch had kept its arm but lost its life. He was small, but the amount of blood that haloed around his sunken frame was astounding and leaked through the wooden slats of the porch. You could hear it dripping. A coyote punctuated the night with a reedy cry.

“Where is the shovel?” I asked Lily.

                                                                                                     ***

After the gas station, we drove in our new car until the county fair beckoned us inside. What county I could not say, but it had children with cotton candy faces, and fathers wearing cowboy hats, and mothers wearing infants on their shoulders.

Teenage girls wore the rainbow in their hair, bunched in groups, and chattered at teenage boys who wore tank tops. Ringing jackpot bells sold tiny fortunes of knick-knacks. Carnies pulled clientele like Bourbon Street salesmen.

“Baby, what are you going to win me?” she cooed at me.

Fluttering eyelashes, and a turn of the head. A shadowed smile. She was all of it to me, and I hoped to be everything to her.

“I suppose I’ll win your heart,” I replied.

“Boring,” she said. “I want one of this ridiculous stuffed animals.”

Of course she did. So I won her a giant teddy bear by throwing balls through a rigged hoop until I ran out of tickets, and then by stuffing a twenty dollar bill, one of my last, into the hands of the hazy teenager with drugged eyes.

Eventually we went back to the car, back to the road for another night. Later we pulled over in the darkness and had sex, for the last time, in the back seat with her giant teddy bear as awkward company until we set it outside.

The sun came up and we fell asleep being forgetful and dumb to waste another day, not knowing then that our hourglass was dripping empty.


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Uncle Pug

When walking, Uncle Pug’s crutches went huff-plat, huff-plat, telling us he was coming. Two loud crutches made up for one dead leg. Tee cut and stapled all his pants at the right knee so his stub didn’t get cold, except in the summertime, when it stuck out the bottom of his shorts like a turtle head.

“What good?” he said, screen door sizzling shut.

“Ain’t nothing,” Tee answered from the kitchen. I didn’t say anything. I stayed out of grown-folks business.

I got off the couch so he could sit. Tee said he hollered when I didn’t get up from the couch because the crutches hurt his armpits like feet walked too long. But Pug fussed like an old lady, that’s just what he did. Whooped like one too -- stung, didn’t really hurt hurt, except when that crutch whapped your forehead.

Like I knew he would, he flipped the TV channels and stopped on the Golden Girls. He only walked up the path to our house to watch TV and eat. Otherwise he stayed in his house out back. But he’d walk that path every day to catch his woman. He loved him some Blanche.

“Ach,” he sucked his teeth. “Get it,” he said when she sashayed.

“Dorothy, sit yo ugly ass down,” he said when Dorothy came on the screen, dismissing her with a flinging of his wrist.

“Mind me of Sophia,” and then he’d say, “not that old Sophia. My Sophia.” And then he’d wait for the air to breathe the questions he teased up. By thirteen, I didn’t care any more. I’d played hide and go get it, let a white girl touch my thing, felt Keisha Frye’s titties at the movie theatre. What’d I care about some old wrinkly broads on the television and a man with no leg? He never talked about the nasty stuff anyway. Bet he never seen a coochie up close. But Raynard dumb tail goaded him every time, making me miss all the jokes.

“Who Sophia? Some white girl?” Raynard, Tee’s man, sipped wide from a Steel Reserve, eyes leaky red.

“Oh, can’t say.” Pug teased, waiting for someone to beg.

And Raynard gave Pug what he wanted. “Aw man, you don’t said something now.”

I sat on the floor leaning against the couch. Pug’s full leg stretched out no further than my thigh. He had the family look -- Tee called him “petite,” raisin-brown with cool Indian hair cut low, but long enough so you can tell it curled up. Pug was old and lived in a shack, but he never left the house without a crisp ironed shirt, one shined shoe, and his hair slicked back.

“Sophia’s legs -- creamy white like drumsticks covered in buttermilk, long and lean, my boy.” Pug smacked his thigh.

“What you say!”

“Don’t get him riled up, Raynard! I ain’t trying to take his old ass to the hospital cause he done caught wood up in here.” Tee yelled laughing.

“Aw Girl, hush up now. Let me tell this boy how a real man does it,” Pug said.

It was the episode where Blanche goes on the date with her gym instructor, a much younger man.

“Sophia was in France. French women love black men.”

Blanche sat at the dinner table, trying hard to connect to the hot young thing across from her.

“Saw me in my uni-form. Can’t no woman resist a Mitchie man in uni-form.”

Blanche laughed, desperate.

“Well, how you get with her Pug? Back then and all? She was white right?” Raynard asked, disbelieving the tall tale.

“This was France, young man. I was a soldier, young man. That’s the only excuse I need. But we hung out in secret clubs. Won’t nobody in there to bother us cause they were all doing the same thing.” Pug’s back straightened, taking a plate from Tee.

Blanche’s young man said she reminds him of his mama, and dignity flees her face. Pug dribbled green collard juice down his crisp plaid collar.

“She was a queen.” He stared at his hands, “We went together. Then I lost my leg. Then I came home,” he said.

“Well damn? Some French white woman…” Raynard looked like he wanted to say more, but Tee shook her head. Let it go.

Blanche rose from the table, purse in hand, chest high, head high, and marched back home to her girls. She wasn’t lonely, never lonely, she had her friends. Thank you for being a friend, she said.

Uncle Pug just had us. No kids, never married, no women except the ones on TV.

One time I went in Pug’s house. His piss-and-shit pot, one of them portable stands from the hospital with a white bucket underneath, had not been changed and Tee told me go down there and put it outside the house. Said when she walked by, she couldn’t breathe right from holding her breath, didn’t want the ghost of that smell getting in her. She made me put on a doctor’s mask because she didn’t want the ghost in me neither. I went in his house while he sat on our couch, watching his Blanche. I held the cold handles out, trying not to look down into the swishing brown mess, praying I didn’t trip on a pulled up sticker-board tile Raynard help put down when the plywood rotted. Made sure all four corners of that stand set solid in the grass behind the shack before footing out there fast. Ripped off my mask once up the path and breathed, breathed, breathed.

That was the stench he took in every day when he left our couch and huff-plat, huff-plat back home in the darkness. Sugar took his leg, you know, not some damn war. But, who was I to tell an old man about lies.


Written by: Tyrese L. Coleman
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

A Mother's Song

The labor of my love for you resides in weary bones, in the dark circles beneath my eyes, and in the ways my body aches. Motherhood is a life of conflict, not between love and hatred, but rather adoration and aggravation. So strange to oscillate from a desire to run away and the overwhelming need to hold you, to gaze into your eyes, to press my lips against every inch of your face. You are my everything, which is both my gift and bane.

I am often torn between what is right and what is easy. There are mornings when you and I lie together on the sofa, sunrise pressing in through the shades and illuminating the dust in the air. You watch television as I spoon you, closing my eyes to get just a little more rest. Then an hour passes, and another, and sometimes another. The refrain in my head when I finally rise is, “I’m a bad mother,” as if just one more episode would cause permanent brain damage or increase the risk of an attention deficit.

You relieve me just a little when you repeat something you’ve learned from public programming.

The grocery store is another battlefield of my morals and mind. There was a time when organic was necessary, and natural was the only exception. Lured by bright red strawberries and banana bunches, you would point and demand with delight, “Nana! Srawberry!” And I felt proud, comparing myself to other moms and assuming other shoppers gave a shit. “Oh, her daughter is so healthy!” But sometimes cost and need are not friendly, so conventional produce made its way into our cart. I watched you place nectarine slices in your mouth, and I imagined the chemical residue basting your insides with cancer. The chorus played again.

I’m a bad mother.

Our weekly schedule often crumbles beneath the weight of my introversion. Mothers have an arsenal of excuses: vomiting, diarrhea, night wakings, and doctor’s appointments. Any can be sent with the touch of a screen, and never questioned when a rain check is offered. But the guilt settles like sediment, stirring up whenever you ask to go outside or see a playmate.

You’re so selfish.

She’s not socializing enough.

She needs more stimulation.

You’ll make her depressed.

Sometimes I give in, and sometimes I don’t as I suffer the brunt of my shame.

You flirt with other mothers at times, wooing them with your black hair and blue eyes. They pick you up, marveling at your lightness, wanting to hold you and kiss your cheeks. I don’t know if jealousy is the word I would use to describe the burn in my chest and the purse of my lips. When you giggle in the arms of another mother, I question my methods. I wonder why I’m not as playful, not as silly, not as energetic as other mothers. I wonder why I don’t plan sprinkler runs, craft activities, and tea parties for you and your friends. I wonder if I do more than meet your basic needs. Do I make you happy?

Why am I not as good as other mothers?

The heat is oppressive this summer, and the plastic blue swimming pool in the yard has a puddle of murky water, surrounded by overgrown grass. We spend so much time indoors, which seems to result in too much screen time and cabin fever. These humid days are perfect for considering my shortcomings. The refrigerator is full of poisonous produce, I’ve resorted to cookies and fruit gummies as suitable snacks, and I’m just not motivated to load us up in a car that feels like a solar flare. Your voice, like a song heard from another room, tries to summon me out of my contrition.

Then there are moments when I am free, when I abandon my worries and false expectations. There will be a morning that crawls by like a sloth, and I have the energy to get us in our swimsuits and into the car. I drive us to the spot that I found with your father, a secluded beach with a view of the city beyond the bay and the bridge that brought us. All we have is a bucket, a shovel, and a bottle of water as we run across the sand and careen against the waves.

I forget how awful I think I am, and instead am consumed by the light in your eyes and the joy in your laughter. I forget about nutrition labels and meal plans. I root down in the shallows, hands on my hips with the sun spreading itself over my skin. I forget about snack times and nap times and fill in the blank times that rob me of the love I have for you. I meditate on the images of you digging holes, studying crabs, and running from the tide. You are so happy, and I don’t have to do much at all.

Nature saves me. She knows the pain of bringing life into the world and sustaining it. Like a grandmother, she spoils you with blue skies and pelicans, seashells and horseshoe crabs. She lets me rest as I lean back on my hands in the shallows and remember that I am also a child. I also require love and care. And as she loves on you, she loves on me. She massages the labor of love out of my aching body with an ocean breeze. Nature sings gently over me with a song of her own.

“You are a good mother.”

“You are so selfless.”

“You give your daughter so much.”

“You make her so happy.”

You fall asleep in your car seat as we drive back home, and you wrap your arms around me as I carry you into the house. Like a rag doll, your body hangs as I lower you down into your crib. The house is dark and quiet as the chorus plays in my head.

I’m a good mother.

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll