Mirlitons

CeCe’s nude heels clacked against the concrete sidewalk as she tugged on her black silk dress. It was the only funeral attire she owned, and it was too unforgiving for late June’s inescapable humidity. CeCe had gained ten pounds since the last time she had worn it, which meant it required constant readjustment. She had pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail, but tendrils still curled and stuck in the sweat against her neck. She reached out to pull the ponytail over her shoulder, exposing the tattoo of a chef’s knife on her wrist to her mother Bitsy’s glaring eyes.

The porch on the double shotgun house looked exactly as CeCe remembered -- bright and old and mismatched, just like the left side’s former inhabitant. Lester LeBones, the voodoo skeleton that Lorraine claimed brought the New Orleans Saints good luck, still held his place of honor right in the center of the porch’s sag. Having never made his postseason retreat to the attic, Lester sported a few strands of what had once been purple and green Mardi Gras beads, worn silvery by sun and rain alike.

The front door to the house was slightly ajar, and stanzas of gospel and the smell of boiling crawfish crept out from the living room into the street. CeCe and her parents paused at the front door.

“Remember about the knife and the books,” her father Louis said to her, loosening his tie and rolling up his sleeves. He was all business, but the droop at the corners of his mouth gave away his sadness.

One of Lorraine’s cousins had found a handwritten will dated five years back stuffed in a shoebox full of cash. She had bequeathed her chef’s knife and cookbooks to CeCe. CeCe had spent her formative years poring over those books, devouring the recipes as if they were sustenance. She knew she would take those, but taking Lorraine’s knife seemed too personal, like taking somebody’s arm.

CeCe stepped tentatively over the threshold, followed by her mother and father, and had barely rebalanced on her heels before a giant tree of a man hugged her so fiercely he almost knocked the breath out of her.

“CeCe! It has been a minute!” The boom of the voice coming from the chest it belonged to made CeCe’s ears ring.

She unearthed herself and pulled back to find a pair of green eyes set in ebony skin crinkled back at her.

“Kenneth!” she shrieked, and nestled back into his rib cage for another squeeze. He was Lorraine’s nephew, who had run off to Nashville with his brass band years ago. The last time CeCe had seen him was when she was fifteen and they were drinking illicit beers on the very front porch ten feet behind them.

“Bay...bee...GURL!” he cried, giving her a squeeze with each punctuated syllable. “You a Yankee now? Working at a big old restaurant in New York? Rooting for them Jets?”

“Screw the Jets.”

Kenneth gave Bitsy a gentle kiss on the cheek and Louis a formal handshake. He put his arm around CeCe’s neck and paraded the three of them through the house. Some of the people had frequented Lorraine’s kitchen table over the years and fussed over CeCe like their own long lost daughter. Other folks CeCe knew only from Lorraine’s stories. “Pleasure to meet you in the flesh,” she’d say, and they’d hug like they’d been acquainted for years.

CeCe made her way to the kitchen. She half expected to find it shrouded in black gauze. Instead, she found its formica table and chipped green tiled countertops overloaded with food, enough to nourish the mourners through their grief.

At the sink stood Lorraine’s best friend Doreen. “She loved you as if you were her own child, dear,” the normally gregarious woman said gently, patting CeCe’s cheek. CeCe nodded, tears finding their way to the corners of her eyes. CeCe wasn’t sure why people always assumed she needed mothering, but in this instance, she was happy to accept.

The evening was a funeral, a party, a family reunion, and a group therapy session. It was a blur of faces and names and stories about Lorraine walking through waist-high floodwaters to rescue her Mardi Gras costume box from her momma’s house and what everyone’s favorite meal of Lorraine’s was and how Lorraine had mended shattered hearts one by one, plate by plate. The summer air rolled into the room, coaxing sweat beads from eyebrows and sticking thighs to chairs and keeping stories lingering in the room, in hopes of drawing a complete picture of their subject. Louis laughed and clapped the backs of the storytellers. His sister-in-law had always brought out his most jovial side. Bitsy did what all Southern women do in foreign kitchens and pitched in with dishwashing duties.

Eventually, CeCe snuck away from the kitchen into the dining room, which was festooned with Zulu coconuts and Lorraine’s gaudy souvenir spoon collection. The dining room also held Lorraine’s cookbooks, nearly fifty of them slung and stuffed haphazardly onto an insufficient bookshelf. CeCe pulled one off without looking, and out of habit the book fell open to recipe for shrimp stuffed mirlitons. She and Lorraine had made this recipe together once, a test run before a Thanksgiving feast. They had stuffed themselves with the results while talking about CeCe’s high school boyfriend. She had trusted her aunt with every little detail of her life, from who she kissed to what her dreams were. She ran her fingers over the mirliton recipe, turned the corner of the page down, and hugged the book close to her heart.

                                                                                                        ***

Back in New York City, not a day passed where CeCe didn’t wish she could call up Lorraine -- to make her laugh, to ask her what would go best with the beautiful carrots she found at the farmer’s market. But when the head chef asked her to help conceive a new dish at the restaurant that fall, she had an answer.

“Mirlitons.”

“What?”

“Shrimp stuffed mirlitons.”

Chef looked at CeCe for a minute. He cocked his head to one side and cracked his meaty, tattooed knuckles.

“Alright, Landry. I’m listening.”



Written by: Clancy Fink
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Blood & Water

I have lost a great many things, including the manse that sits behind me, nestled along the riverbank. The cold water tickles my toes as I peer into the expanse of gray sky, mourning the loss of it too. This land, this sky, this river will be stripped away and sold for pennies, leaving me naked and alone.

As children, we were never allowed to play here. It was too close to the water whose current lurked beneath. Now there are no parents to warn me or siblings to play with. They are gone too.

I unlace my boots and edge further into the water, letting the sounds of executors and vultures slip away as the babbling flood fills my gaping heart. They pick through my home, my things, my family history as if it can be itemized and sold at auction for anything close to what we owe. These things are priceless. But does that mean they have too little or too much value to count? I suppose it depends to whom you pose the question.

My skirt is pulled into the river, and the sneaking current picks it up and tries to drag me away by my petticoat, but my feet stand firm on rock. I peruse the tree line looking for answers among the evergreens, but they are as quiet as the sky.

“Miss!” A squawking vulture calls from the back staircase.

I know precisely where he stands based solely on how his voice echoes against the stone. I know every breath of this land and it knows me, but that is not enough to keep it. The lawyers insisted on an estate sale, saying it was the only way to help correct the debt my family accrued and subsequently left me.

I turn to face Mr. Forrester, careful not to lose my footing on the rocks. To him, I am the very picture of grief: long, black dress, high collar, and birdcage veil. I am in mourning, but it seems a shame everyone should dress the same when the act of mourning is so different to each soul. In the Bible, men mourned in sackcloth and ash, erasing their individuality in the name of despair. I, however, want everyone to see the aching chasm in my chest where my heart once rested. I want them to know and suffer. Instead I am just another young woman in black. No one sees any difference from one plight to the next. Grief is grief and the more elegant, the more palatable it will be.

“Yes, Mr. Forrester. How may I assist you?”

“Miss Davenport, it is not safe for you that close to the water. The river has risen since last night’s storm. Please come back to the house.”

The house, not my house. We both notice the difference in the strained silence that follows, a silence in which we wonder if his words should be corrected, but we decide not since they are true.

I am inclined to listen to him, but I want to stay a few moments longer, just to feel the crisp water against my stockinged ankles one last time. I do not know where I will be after today, and I do not know if I will ever see a winter river again, surrounded by the protection of rock and evergreen. I feel its protection too and it calls me to stay.

“Your concern is most kind, Mr. Forrester, but I am quite well, thank you.”

When awful things happen to people, they either live or they die. It does not matter which. The awful thing does not stop to ask ‘What would you have me do?’ It simply happens, and the unfortunate soul either stays or leaves. It did not ask if I cared when my mother was taken by fever, or if I minded when Father drank himself into the grave. It was bothered none by my shame when my brother absconded with the remnants of our fortune to settle his gambling debt. It did not consult my disposition when my lover left on the eve of our wedding, or when the infant inside me threatened to abandon me too.

I place a warm palm over my abdomen. It has not yet betrayed me, but it will in time. The breeze turns angry as it whips and roars in my ears. My veil blows back off my eyes and I see clearly.

Tragedy begets tragedy until the white capped wave crests and crashes, leeching the breath and happiness from my body in one rescinding pull of the tide. It will not stop, and I will either live or die.

My cheeks flush with anger as I think of what little control I’ve had over my entire life. No tragedy that befell me was brought on by my own misdeeds. I deserved no part in the mistakes of others or the gluttonous lives they lived. My fiancé wanted more: more women, more freedom, more time. The Davenport men had a love of money, and they too wanted more, squandering what they had. Why, then, can I not have the same control over my future and fortune?

I step further into the river so the raging current pulls at my knees. I can choose to stay or go. I am more powerful than tragedy itself, a mockery to the tribulation and anguish with which God has plagued us.

“See?” I shout into the roaring wind as it sweeps down the river. “I, too, can take away.”

I step into the current and let the water, my only true companion, sweep me away to heaven.

Written by: HG Reed

Photograph by: Michael Ken

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

Until Next Time

The ceiling fan whirred above him, cascading a wave of hot air upon his sweat-drenched forehead.The single bed he lay on filled nearly the entire square of the tiny room. Dirty clothes and torn blankets littered the remaining floorspace. In the corner, a small plastic plate held the remnants of a piece of bread, its stale surface coated in a layer of green foam. Three books lay by his bedside, their pages the only lifelines he knew. His ears probed the dust-coated air, listening for the footsteps that would signal the arrival of his daily routine.

He had dreamt, he thought, of the ocean. It was blue, just like he had seen in the pictures, with a green tint that exuded a sense of comfort to even the smallest of creatures. He had been swimming, feeling the vibration of the great body of waves that pulled him deeper into its intricate embrace. As soon as he started to surface, succumbing to the desire to see the crests of the ocean waves, a thick, tattooed arm inserted itself into water and grasped him in a chokehold, holding him in place as the water filled his lungs.

That was when he woke up. He didn’t get up – he knew what that would bring about; instead, he lay there, staring at his most constant companion whirring away as each of the five long blades maintained their insistent monotony. He was almost asleep again when the footsteps awoke him. His eyelids lifted reluctantly. He didn’t get scared; not anymore. After all, it seemed easier, almost pleasant, to maintain the appearance of supreme disinterest, even as his body shook with hatred.

As the footsteps neared, the lock clicked, the door grinding open to reveal the figure that had tormented him since he could remember. Only recently had the entrapment begun. He didn’t know why. He didn’t think to ask why. He just survived.

“Get up,” his ragged voice called. The boy was surprised, at first, hesitantly aware of walking into any traps. “You deaf, boy? Get the hell up! And put this on.” He tossed a shirt onto his bed.

                                                                                                  ***

It shouldn’t be much farther, he thought, checking his addresses as he sped through the puzzle that was the inner city. He drove fast, the impossibility of his to-do list an irritating itch that forced his foot to the pedal of the government-loaned vehicle. He had had ten visits scheduled already for that day; protocol advised that each visit take at least an hour, from entry to inspection to exit, and at least an hour and a half if any family was found in violation of health or safety codes. But, at ten visits in five hours, he hardly had the time or energy to pay attention to “protocol.”

    

As the always-one-step-behind voice of the rickety GPS system called out, he slowed to a stop, acknowledging the metal-barred staircase that led to the sixth home visit in what was turning out to be a longer day than usual. He approached the stairs, refreshing himself on the apartment number and the family name: Briggs, Briggs – 203B.

He checked his records: only one visit in the last two years had required a follow-up; this was going to be quick. His phone rang; he glanced at the number, ready to send it to voicemail before the name stopped him. It was his boss. The boss who, like everyone else, apparently, was swamped and yet still had time to assign him 47 cases in the span of a single quarter. He answered, feeling no urge to disguise the impatience in his voice. “Hello??”

“Kasey, I just got a call. I’m not sure how credible it is but I need you to check it out. A neighbor reports that she saw the Smith girl, you know, the one from the upper east side?”

“Uh yeah bu--”

“Anyways, she was apparently looking pretty beat up. If it’s abuse this would be their final violation. I want you to schedule an immediate visit. Tell them we’re doing surprise rounds or something, and let me know.”

“Okay, but I really don’t--”

“Thanks, Kasey. Keep me posted.” The click of the phone on the other end just about summed up the entire last quarter for him. Resisting the urge to break his clipboard and drive away, he continued making his way up the stairs. He knocked, waiting, as always, with pen in hand to give the same greeting he always did before making his way through the home.

A man answered. His gruff, unshaven face clashed with a suspiciously white shirt that tucked into a pair of torn jeans.

“Hi,” he grumbled, “we’ve been expecting you. I’ll grab Jackson. Come on in.”

Kasey stepped inside. No intro, I guess. He looked around. The dingy apartment reeked of stale food and what seemed to be smoke, though the eerie odor was masked by the overwhelming smell of cinnamon emanating from a candle in the foyer.

“This way, right in here. We know the drill.” He grumbled again. Kasey followed the gruff man’s voice, entering from the cramped foyer into the main living room. In the middle of the room stood the man, hand on the left shoulder of Jackson Briggs. He was 13, according to the records, though he looked about 11. He was short – maybe 5’2,” and, like his father, he wore a new-looking collared blue shirt tucked into blue jeans.

                                                                                                  ***

He kept his eyes straightforward, like he was told. The nails digging into his shoulder made certain that he gave nothing away. He was wearing his “new” shirt, after all, and for the first time since the last visit he had real denim jeans covering his bruised legs. The man with the clipboard stared at him, checking boxes as he turned his eyes towards the surprisingly clean kitchen. The hand on Jackson’s shoulder clenched harder, as if to squeeze every emotion right out of him. He flinched, withholding the scream that would tell the man with the clipboard to turn around; to look closely; to see the dark purple lines that his blue collar hid: the ferocious marks of the rugged attention he’d received since his mother left. He wanted to scream; to scream, and to leave. But he knew he couldn’t; he wouldn’t. He had nowhere and no one else.

“Okay, everything looks fine. I’ll send your report and be back next month.” The door slammed.

“Back to your room, boy.” The vice grip loosened. A single tear caressed Jackson’s cheek.

Until next time.


Written by: Tyler Wilborn
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

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   

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

Someone Once Loved

Jim,

Can I call you Jim? It’s been so long since I’ve called you anything at all that I’m not sure how to address you now. You have had so many other names, so many other faces. I guess it doesn’t matter what you look like, or what I call you since I don’t even have an address to send this letter.

I am writing because I just can’t help but think of you, and it surprises me to find you here in my head. You are supposed to play a big role in this day. I’m supposed to want you here.

Your absence will be jarring to some of those in attendance. They will note that I am without a chaperon to escort me on this well-worn path. They will say it’s a shame - she grew up without. It’s a shame - she doesn’t have someone now. They expect a man who loved me to lead me into the arms of a man who promises to love me forevermore.

The details of the day are committed. The tables and chairs have been arranged on the rooftop terrace. They sit waiting for us to feast and celebrate, above the city and under the stars. I will be on his arm. I will wear a white dress and a smile. I will be watched by all who love me and some who will learn to.

I will take a new name again.

The first name I wore was the one you gave me. That name belonged to a different girl, one I find hard to recognize now. She was small and quiet – a splintered girl, who never spoke above a whisper. She had started out whole before being broken by your indiscreet hands. She used to laugh and chatter incessantly – sweet toddler giggles, hushed by poison secrets.

If my mother had walked away after making love to you that night near Stanley Park, would I have had a different name? Would I have been a different girl?

I took a new name in high school - just walked in and introduced myself as someone else. I left you behind. I was not going to be defined by your actions anymore. You were a past better forgotten, and I was ready to start fighting for myself. I needed a new name to match my new strength. A new name and a new voice - I was done with choking on my tongue, done with whispers and secrets.

I would let them say what they needed to say, but their words wouldn’t touch me anymore. They toss around sterile adjectives used to categorize, to give them some ownership over my life. They sit in their voyeurs’ castles and know that they have done well. They have labelled me appropriately. Let them stroke their own genius ego; I wasn’t going to define myself by the slippery touch of their saliva slick fingertips. They can keep their fickle praise and condemnations and apply their literary interests to a new sad story.

I was finished with being their survivor.

Now I am ready for a new name. I stand in my white dress, on the cusp of reinventing myself. A third name, a third girl. This new name I will borrow from my best friend. I want it to change more than my signature. I want the goodness of him to seep into me - to become mine, like his name.

I wait to enter the room and walk through their collective gaze - alone. I try not to think of you. Instead I want to imagine her – the woman I will become once I reach the end of the aisle. She is a wife and mother. She is careful and kind. She will build a good life - the sort of life your influence had denied her so long ago. She will be ready to face you and then to let you go. She doesn’t deny that you were, and she knows your hands helped to shape her. The blunt force of you left its marks and they are now her marks.

I try not to think of your absence – after all this time I shouldn’t mind. I try not to think of the kind of girl I would be had I grown up with you. A ghost of a girl, a blindly swollen shape like the white asparagus we will serve to our guests tonight, pale and bloated, grown in the dark. Instead, I try to remember that the best thing you ever gave me was that absence. You left, and green came back into my life, thick and sweet and full of hope. You let me go, you let me grow and blossom away from your greedy hands.

If I saw you now would I know any part of you? Would you know me?

I have the same freckle on the corner of my mouth that I had back then. I have decided it is pretty. I know my bad back comes from you, and my fidgety nature. I know you also left me the nightmares that return every August, cutting my summer short. My eyes are the same green as the toddler you knew – almost yellow. Would you see yourself in them?

The tables are set, the cake has been iced. The guest are all assembling in their colourful dresses and silk suits - tropical birds, perched above the grey city. I will smile and converse. I will hold his hand and kiss his mouth, prompted by the clinking of crystal glasses.

I will walk alone down the aisle.

I will stand tall while I do. I know that I am better able to give myself away than you ever were. I never belonged to you at all.


Sincerely,

Someone once loved.


Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Beginnings

The colors of city lights bleed out into the blank sky, smoke rising to the atmosphere, and ashes falling back to the asphalt. In the back of his mind, he hears music—Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. For the boy, it has always been the song of the after.

Outside the thin windows of the apartment, Kai can hear the sound of falling rain and the low breeze, screeching cars and drivers spouting profanities. The streets are never quiet. He hears the beating of a moth's wings as it flutters around the street lamp, but not the urgent words that leave his mother's lips as tears streak her face. Her mouth keeps forming the same shapes, and it occurs to him that she's saying one thing over and over again.

"Everything is going to be alright, sweetie." The sound of her voice feels like the earth has dropped onto his chest when his mind returns to his body. He becomes aware that the side of his face is pressed into the cold, wooden floor of their living room. Sweat makes his dark hair stick to his forehead, and he can taste iron when he breathes. He feels like shit, personified.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" she asks, knowing that after seventeen years, it has become a useless question.

"I'm fine," He manages to croak out a half-convincing response.

Kai struggles to pull himself up into a sitting position; there's a sharp pain flowing in the blue of his veins. The heavy soreness in his side makes him think he's broken a rib. The room is empty except for the two of them, and Kai is relieved to know they are alone, at least for now.

"Are you okay?" Kai asks. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

His mother shakes her head, looking years older than she did the hour before.

"I'm alright," she says, leaning down to wrap her arms around his torso. The action is supposed to be comforting but she quakes in fear. His mother helps him off the floor and to the bathroom, which proves to be quite the task. Since starting high school he has grown a foot taller than her, and now his limbs still aren’t fully functioning.

He leans against the sink, and his eyes wander to his once-white shirt, advocating Sigur Ros, some indie rock group whose music he has never heard. It’s covered in blotches of dark red, the color of wine. The red seeps through the fabric. The stain will never come out.

"Just wash up, okay?" his mother coaxes. Kai pulls the shirt over his head, and she snatches it from his hands. Her eyes jump from the shirt to back up at her son.

"I'll take care of everything," she says, clutching the bloodied t-shirt to her chest and shutting the door behind her.

He takes off the rest of his clothes before stepping into the shower. He turns the faucets, and a stream of cold water hits his back. The red washes away, pooling on the white tiles at his feet, and the pain under his bruised, olive skin dulls. There’s a long, thin gash running diagonally across his chest. The cut is not deep enough to kill, but it will leave a scar.

He can try to forget, again. Try to remember all the good things, but the memories of those are fading. Besides, there is only so much you can wash away, and only so much that you can forget in the after.

Kai walks into his bedroom, looking for something constant in all the change. Instead, he finds that most of his stuff is dumped out into suitcases strewn across his bed. The shelves that once held pictures in frames are now bare. His mother stands in the center of the chaos, packing their lives away into trash bags. When she sees him she tries to smile, like this entire scenario is normal. It’s a slap to the face, a reminder of just how fucked-up their lives are.

“I have to go to the bank, Kai, sweetie. Finish packing up—I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” he says, because there is nothing more to say.

She reaches up and ruffles his hair, like she did when he was younger. Even though he is seventeen, he still finds comfort in it.

There’s still food in the fridge—mostly just takeout. Kai grabs a few relatively fresh-looking apples, but there’s not much to salvage among the rest. A bottle of wine catches his eye, cigarette butts floating in the dregs. He winces. The room smells like his father, like despair and fear. The burn on his arm feels vicious, singeing. He grabs the bottle, hurls it out the open kitchen window, and watches the glass shatter on the street. He laughs like it’s his last day on earth. It might as well be.

By the time his mother returns, Kai has packed everything. They pile the pieces of their lives into the back of the Impala, leaving the place they once called home barren and empty.

“Where are we going?” he asks as he shuts the trunk. His mother smiles warily before answering.

“Somewhere far away,” she tells him as he slides into the passenger side. The tiny green pine tree air freshener looks almost like an arrow pointing them away. The car’s engine sputters to life, and the sound is already so much better than any empty promise she could make.

The city is grey and flat, like a paper cutout, drawn with the tip of a needle. This city was the backdrop to his life, yet this is the first time Kai has ever thought of it as something other than his personal hell. Cars pass like water through an iron grate as they drive away. Everything looks perfect from afar, windows in buildings perfectly identical, symmetrical.

It was never so beautiful up close.


Written by: Jamie H
Photograph by: Skyler Smith

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

Prayer Mile

When my mother died, she became my God. Whenever I prayed before, it was always to something or someone I couldn’t quite grasp. Sure, there were titles I’d been taught to use: Lord, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit. Those names didn’t make the deity easier to picture or approach; they just kept him distant and vague, important and quick to shame. But my mom always talked about God the Father as the epitome of love, and she wanted everyone to know that he’s got so much love for everybody. What I didn’t realize until after she was gone was that if God was the epitome of love, then she was his embodiment. Nobody loved as much as that woman did. I don’t know who God the Father is, but I know my mom. So, when I pray, she’s the one I’m praying to.

There’s this tower at the plant as tall as Babel with a ladder all the way up. I have to sit up there about every week to monitor pressure gauges, make sure we’re not putting out too much yuck. The sun’s usually following me when I climb up and always beats me to the top. There’s a breeze, and the clouds look like cotton candy as day breaks. You probably didn’t know that a new morning has a smell, crisp and clean with hints of earth. I see why those people a long time ago tried to build their way to heaven, because seeing the world stretched out and the horizon wrap around will make you feel brave, like you can do anything. It’ll make you feel like you can get over your mom dying while you held her hand even though you know you never will.

My wife was going through some really terrible stuff a couple years back. Her boss asked her if she needed to take some time off. She said no. She said work was the place to be because if she stayed home, all she’d do is think about all the terrible things and she’d lose her mind. Now, I get what she meant. Having a job that makes you use your hands and your head all day is like a salve, soothing the wound that still exists underneath. The guys at the plant are well-meaning; they want to ask if I’m doing all right and give their condolences. I hate it when they do that because it makes me remember, ripping at me like a bandaid. But I smile and thank them, then get back to filling out an incident report with my head downturned so they can’t see me sniffling.

I signed up for overtime and told my wife it was mandatory. I knew she knew. There’s these huge pots full of molten metal that we’ve got to keep clean. It’s monotonous work, but it was just what I needed. I kept raking the debris out of what looks like the belly of hell, watching the heat purge the impurities. It makes me wonder if hell is just a stop before you get to heaven. Maybe you go there to get clean so God can welcome you. If such a place exists, I doubt my mom had to go, or if she did then it was for like two minutes because maybe she lied once.

There was a spill one day that messed up a flock of geese. They were washing themselves in the puddles like they always do, but it wasn’t water this time. The oil coated their feathers and stung their eyes. We got the right people to take care of them, but I couldn’t think straight. There was one goose lying on her side, breathing slow with her beak open a little. The black liquid coated her feathers, reminding me of the stuff they had to pump out of my mom’s lungs just to keep her going. The tube ran from her mouth into a canister on the wall above her hospital bed, and it would get full so quick. One of the animal rescue workers picked up the goose and told me she’d be all right once they cleaned her up. A doctor said the same thing once about my mom, so the doubt is thick in my chest.

The cancer looked like an oak tree stretching its branches across her lungs. They said it was progressing rapidly, and things weren’t looking good. There’s nothing more emasculating than waiting for someone you love to die. There were people from the church praying for a miracle in the waiting room, but I knew my mom was going to die days ago. I surrendered myself to the brute force of death’s grip on her, and let it embrace both of us as we sat on the sofa. I said everything I needed to say. I told her I loved her when she could still respond. I told her thank you. I told her that she’s the best, and my kids will know her. Seeing the MRI scans made me feel better that I got a chance to do what others don’t, what others probably resist.

It’s a hike from the plant back to the locker rooms. I call it the Prayer Mile. I start and end my days on it, telling my mom about her granddaughters and asking her how I can be a good husband. Sometimes I try to listen, and I don’t hear anything, but she was never one for words. Mom was a hugger. So, when twilight and dusk wrap around me each day, I think about the mornings when we’d snuggle on the couch before getting ready for school. I think about the way she held me on my wedding day, and threw herself on me when I told her we were going to have a baby. I think about that last squeeze of my hand before her spirit left her body, and her light left my life.

Mother in heaven, hallowed be your name.


Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Samuel Zeller

When the Streetlights Came On

I used to be a bird.

Marvin, my stepdad, nicknamed me Bird. Taller than all the boys in my kindergarten class, I had comically long limbs matched with a metabolism that made me look as nourished as Mick Jagger or Jack Skellington.

“Birdie, it’s like this: You keep your skirt down and tell ‘em to keep their zippers zipped.”

I sat on a stool in McDonald’s when my dad bestowed this single nugget of knowledge. I swiveled my stool and shoved fries into my overstuffed mouth and nodded like I knew exactly what he was talking about.
At six, I didn’t know much of what happened when skirts went up and zippers zipped down. I knew it had something to do with no-no parts and that now my birthday Happy Meal tasted different.

That was the same day he told me I had an old soul. “Old soul,” I parroted, stretching out the “o’s”. I wondered if it was older than his.

“You’re over the hill today.” He said and patted me on the back. “You’re over the mountain.” I told him and stuck out my tongue.

Marvin’s lessons spanned a spectrum from common sense to street smarts. In front of a sunny summer backdrop while the Temptations or George Clinton played, there were lessons in bike riding, rollerblading, self-defense, dancing, and basketball. How to aim for the backboard, how to flick my wrist to give the ball rotation, and how to guard my opposition:

Follow their gut. Not their eyes.

Our neighborhood got darker than most when dusk moved in. That’s when the heavy lessons helped. Sneakers hung by their shoelaces from the telephone cables on our street. Marvin pointed at them and told me they marked bad houses and sometimes they marked death. He taught me to look both ways before crossing. He taught me to go home when the streetlights came on.

Over the years, even after my mom and Marvin split up and after he moved away from Buffalo, he remained my stepdad, a real stepdad, stepping into shoes that were never filled for very long. I’d visit and he’d call. Before I started college he gave me an updated version of the talk he’d started when I was six. “You just never know what anyone has.”

In early November 2006, I skipped my college classes and went to visit him. My stepfather sobbed into my shoulder. “I always thought of you as my daughter, Birdie.” I knew this to be true. I thought of the time he took me to work with him. A co-worker told me I looked like my dad. He put his arm around my shoulder and said nothing. His grip was strong then like every bear hug he’d given me back when I was fledgling. But now, my arm was around his shoulder and his hug was more like a slouch, his body hung off of mine.

He’d aged 40 years since I last saw him. His scent had changed from his mix of cologne and man musk to the withering body odor of a stranger. I avoided looking at him. His eyes were no place to stay. I looked down, as if this had been my fault. I stared at his ballooned feet swollen with water because of the liver failure. He clung hard to my body, and I pathetically tried to console him, “I’m not ready to go.” He sobbed and I rubbed his head, but couldn’t lie to him.

I’d never seen him cry or break in any sort of way. My gut shrank each time his fingers gripped my shirt, but I never wanted him to stop because it meant he was still alive.

On Thanksgiving morning, Marvin’s body lay still where he slept for the last time. There is a lot to say about that day and all that followed.

Marvin buried in his gators. My godmother, Sue, slipped in the backyard. The mashed potatoes burned. My godsister Jen and I drank sweet, cheap, piss-colored wine. Thanksgiving dinner was quiet; not because of the food. Sue’s son carried her to the couch. The pastor called my sister Krystina “Katrina.” Krys and I danced to Carl Carlson. I heard “Hallelujah” for the first time. I got pulled over.

I got pulled over on the way from the grocery store back to the house.

I ignored a stop sign. I’d gotten lost on my way back to the house. I was sure the road led to a dead end. Pleased to find the corner had a turn instead of a turn around, I took it. I didn’t know until the blue and red reflected in my rearview.

When the cop asked me why I was crying, I cried more.

“You won’t lose anything. No points. Nothing.”

I thought about telling him about Marvin since he taught me how to drive and how he was dead now. But the cop was walking back to his car, and the ticket was in my hand, and here there was no braking. Tears and snot ran into my mouth, I crumpled the ticket in my hand and the cop’s lights swirled once more as he left me where I was parked.

I left the keys out of the ignition. I got out and walked nowhere. The streetlights were on.

Written by: Tia Brown

Photograph by: Matthew Wiebe

Anderson Ridge

The ferry ride was long and hard and left the boy feeling serious. The trip up the coast took three days and three nights, dropping them in the bush at the end of June. Pop had already been at the camp for months; he always headed to the forest the second the snow was off the ground. Before leaving, Pop took the boy aside to have the talk, reminding him that while he was gone, the boy would need to be the man of the house. It was his job to look out for Mother and little Shirley, to protect them from trouble and danger of any kind. The boy took his duties to heart, diligent in his watch all through their journey, eager to be reunited with his father and to relinquish the role of ‘Man.’

Now that they have made it to the camp and found his father still absent, off in the bush with a group of laborers and lumberjacks, the boy sits quietly in the corner listening to the rain and waves, attentive for any sounds that could mean trouble. He watches as his mother attends to the most immediately pressing problems. Behind a silk screen she removes her travelling clothes and pulls on a white lace gown. Her next necessity is a drink; she pours the whiskey, a neat two fingers, and drinks down half of it in the first gulp. She sighs and makes her way to the other side of the room, smiling at the serious boy and his restless little sister before she winds up the gramophone and music fills the cabin.

Little Shirley is unhappy, crying and fussing on the floor, she stretches her chubby arms out towards the soft white vision that is their mother. Mother gulps down the last of her drink and dances a few steps around the room before twirling towards the toddler and swinging her up into her arms. Little Shirley squeals with delight and leans her curly head against her mother’s shoulder. They waltz around the room, their voices raised sweetly in song.

Like Jack Horner, in the corner. Don't go nowhere, what do I care? Your kisses are worth waitin' for

Clad in silk ribbons and ivory buttons, they are elegance, they are sophisticated femininity, they are a contradiction in this old wooden shack with its leaky roof. Mother keeps singing, her voice made sultry by the whiskey sipped from a crystal tumbler. The sound of her song weaves around the music of the gramophone and the laughter of Shirley in her arms. The joyful noise slips between the cracks in the walls and out into the logging camp that surrounds them. The sweetness of them mingles with the rough sounds of men living in the bush. It melts into the sounds of the waves of the northern ocean and the dull patter of raindrops on wood.

The boy, still serious, thinks of the waves and the unknown men. He imagines them and all the other dangers crashing against the cabin walls. He squares his shoulders, sitting taller, watching the women he’s been assigned to protect, picturing the gun that is already loaded and tucked under the bed. He thinks about how much time it would take him to pull the weapon from its hiding place if the doors burst open. If wolves and bears and bad men were to set upon them, he knew he could have that weapon out in an instant. Pop would be proud.

His mother has always been an enigma among women, refusing to be left behind in the city. Every summer she insists that she be brought to the bush, where she can dance barefoot across dirt floors and swim naked in moonlight when none are watching. She has never known fear, not in the cities or in the woods. She is oblivious and bold.

His sister, a joyful toddler laughing in her mother’s arms, has never been to the lumber camps before. As an infant, she was left behind last year, kept safe with the house servants in the city. It is her first time in the forest, and she doesn’t know to be fearful. They are his to guard, here, deep in the north pacific rainforest, miles away from the parlours and parties of North Vancouver. He will be brave and mindful for all of them.

The boy senses the change before he hears it, a shift, something different in the sounds of the men. The waves keep on crashing in their regular rhythm and the raindrops tap with the same regularity, but the murmurs of the men have changed. The boy is on his feet in a flash, the gun is raised to his shoulder, levelled confidently at the door.

“Clay?” His mother asks.

The boy does not answer. He aims the rifle, cold steel held steady, waiting for movement. He is ready for whatever will come next. He stands on knees that tremble, a shield between the women and the outside, ready to do his duty as a man. The shadow of something makes its way around the cabin, though there are no windows set in the walls, he can see the passage of the creature in the chinks between boards; he can hear it in the men’s voices. Something is coming for them.

His finger tightens on the trigger, ready for action as the door pushes open. Before the boy can react to the dark figure on the threshold, Mother reaches down from behind him and plucks the rifle from his small shaking hands.

“Hush now, Clay. It’s just Pop.” She meets Pop at the door with the rifle in her hand and a sultry smile on her mouth.

Clay feels the fear fizzle out of him. He has been relieved of duty; for the moment he can be just a boy again.

Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Rob Gregory

Boy & Chain

“Is that Trent?” Allison asks, pointing at the only picture remaining on the kitchen wall.

“Allison,” Steven hisses through gritted teeth as everyone takes a seat around the table.

“Hush, Steven,” Ms. Haas responds. “Allison, you’re welcome to ask whatever you’d like. And yes, that’s my Trent. My little angel. God’s little angel.”

An impromptu moment of silence rushes through the kitchen like the chill from an open freezer.

“Sometimes I still see him, you know,” Ms. Haas says, disrupting the silence, but maintaining the tension. “Not in a horror movie sort of way. More like one of those dreams where your body’s asleep but your senses are firing on all cylinders. I’ll be sitting here, reading the newspaper, and before I can get to the Sudoku I hear, More oatmeal, Mommy!”

“That was me, Mom,” Steven interjects. “Trent hated oatmeal. He was terrified of that creepy Quaker on the container.”

“Are you sure?”

“One-hundred percent.”

“Oh, well maybe it wasn’t oatmeal. Maybe he says, More Cheerios, Mommy! Regardless, I look up and he’s sitting there, smiling at me, joy radiating from that adorable little dimple in his left cheek.”

“Do you see a dimple in that cheek?” Steven asks, pointing to the picture. “Jason is your dimply son.”

“I know Jason has a dimple, Steven,” she says, turning around in her chair for confirmation, “but I could’ve sworn Trent did too.”

Ms. Haas studies the picture like a Magic Eye, squinting in hopes of making a crease appear on Trent’s frozen face.

“Nope,” Steven says. “The only creases on his body were the ones circling his chubby little arms. That’s why we called him the Michelin Man.”

Ms. Haas draws a deep, shuddering breath and turns back around.

“Oh right, right, right,” she says. “I remember that, you big meanies. Brothers. Am I right, Allison?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, Ms. Haas,” Allison answers. “I’m an only child.”

“We won’t hold that against you,” Ms. Haas says, attempting to lighten the mood. “One thing’s for sure, his hair is still as blonde and bright as the summer sun bouncing off a hubcap. And he has those piercing baby blues too, like the ones that follow you when you walk past an issue of Parenting Magazine.”

“We all did, Mom,” Steven says. “Our family portrait looked like a fucking Nazi propaganda poster.”

“Steven, don’t curse in front of your girlfriend like that,” she says. “And stop being so flippant! Allison asked about Trent–which she had every right to do–and I was just getting her up to speed.”

“She already knows everything,” Steven says, “I showed her the article.”

“You let her read that slander?” Ms. Haas scolds.

“What slander?” Steven asks, spreading his fingers like he’s being tasered.

“That reporter made me out to be the worst mother on the face of the Earth.”

“No she did not,” Steven moans, bored by the redundancy.

“Then why’d she have to mention me locking Trent’s tricycle to the pole for putting Play-Doh all over the car?”

Steven slaps his forehead with his palm and drags his fingers down his face like egg yolk.

“Because you did,” he says, firing sass between his middle and ring finger like a slingshot. “But she put all the blame on the girl who was texting and driving, not you.”

Ms. Haas closes her eyes and shakes off his logic until flashbacks of skid marks and blood splatters jolt her back to reality.

“Well, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to hop in a time machine and prevent that day from ever happening, but it does bring me a tiny bit of peace to know Trent’s name and memory have been immortalized in the court of law.”

“You want to know something ironic,” Steven asks rhetorically. “I was actually pulled over for Trent’s Law once.”

“You were WHAT?” Ms. Haas says, putting every tooth in her mouth on display.

“Hey, blame Apple Maps. That shitty app was trying to tell me to turn into a creek.”

“How did I not know about this?” Ms. Haas asks, pursing her lips to put Allison at ease.

“Because I told the cop Trent was my little brother, and he let me go with a warning.”

“He should’ve thrown the book at you,” Ms. Haas spits without a drop or pretense. “If anyone should know better, it’s his own brother.”

“At least I know what he looked like.”

Allison’s posture stiffens as Ms. Haas melts into her chair. Her excess body mass oozes through the wooden slats like the clay Trent squished through the grill of their family car.

“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean that,” Steven says, tears welling in his eyes in pace with his mother’s.

Ms. Haas thrusts her hands towards the table and catches her face before her head crashes into the bare wooden surface. Her fingertips bend like barbs, fastening her palms against her eyes to dam her tear ducts.

“I’m going to take out another box,” Allison mouths to Steven, standing up with her chair pressed against her backside to avoid making any noises.

Steven nods and shuffles his chair back with no regard for the acoustics of the empty kitchen. He walks to his mother’s side of the table and wraps his arms around her shoulders, squeezing her tighter to bring his mouth closer to her ear.

“I know it still hurts, Mom,” Steven whispers. “It always will. But you will never hurt alone.”

Ms. Haas removes one hand from her face and places the dampened skin against her son’s forearm.

“Thank you, Trent,” she says.

Ms. Haas and Steven open their eyes. Steven remains still until his mother’s shoulders begin to quake. He leans in to hear muffled laughter sputtering from her nostrils. He does the same and kisses her on her cheek, the hairs of his beard tickling her into full-blown laughter.

“Okay,” Ms. Haas says, tapping Steven’s arm to signal she’s ready to stand up. “I think I’ve been moping here long enough.”

Written by: Mark Killian

Photograph by: Florian Klauer

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

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