Gone Fishing

I remember the night that myself and Blue Louis took some time out with a bottle in the abandoned petrol station before the bad times, after being freaked out of a bar by beefy rednecks, flannel shirts so stiff with sweat they were like insect shells, thin but hard and keeping all their whisky-squished innards in.

Didn’t help that Louis - Gods bless him - was all decked out like he was fresh from the jazz joint in a beat-up snazz suit and green fedora with cigarettes stuck in the band. He always had those damn cigarettes shoved in there like the press photographer in a Bogart noir. Didn’t help that I had ripped jeans and mussed blond hair and was street-skinny, like a cheap angel of the lanes bestowing miracles by the hour.

‘What brings you here, boys?’ That’s what one of the big guys says to him, and let's not forget that Louis is dark dark dark and you can see Mayan pyramids in his cheekbones, and these guys were moonshine brewers like you get out here with their terrible fucking fear of the dark.

‘Uh…I work for a paper.’ Tryin' to keep that cigar-smoke voicebox of his nice and smooth and easy.

‘Oh? There a story in these parts?’ A couple whiskeys slid over the sticky toffee bar to us. Some hulker in a shady corner mutters something as Louis pays up and the others around him chuckle like their mouths are full of gravel, and I start to hear banjo music in my head.

'He gone fishin.' One grizzled guy with a grey beard like a big smokey tongue flopping down from his lips nods at me. 'Caught a pretty one.'

And I hear the word ‘faggot’ and that's when I start praying, Oh sweet and holy Jesus let us get the fuck out of here before we get torn in two down by the river somewhere. I'll give you kind deeds and clothes for the needy and Oh holy mother of God, I'll find you some real gigantic fresh red roses, you know, the ones you like and Oh Saint Jude who watches over lost causes I'll take out that ad in the paper for you, just get us outta here or make us fireproof.

'This?' Louis looks at me like he's never seen me before. 'Stupid kid was tryin' to jump the trains. Like the old hobos.'

'Lose your life that way, son.' One of the werebears says, and the others start nodding and talking, remember when so-and-so stopped off at the railroad shack and when the train pulled up they saw something between the carriages and God above there was a leg caught up in there.

Louis shakes his head like I'm a dumb dog. 'Right? Coulda found himself landing both sides of the state,' and because these lumberdicks are rough and tumble types he looks like he's gonna cuff me round the head for a second but I see him think the better of it because let's not forget in this unbreathable place that Louis is dark dark dark.

'Huh, that's a bunch of starry-eyed crap, hopping the trains these days. You runnin' away from something?' Same guy looks me over intently, like he's trying to figure out if they need to turn me in. This place looks like it still has Wanted posters up on the walls and I'm busy winging sweet nothings up to the vaulted ceiling above this one and its golden inhabitants.

'Nossir, trying to find a job in the city, where's he's goin'.' They look up-and-down at my torn jeans and laugh.

'And you, paperboy?'

Lou shrugs like he isn't sweating blood right now. ‘Just passing through. Gotta be back in the office Monday.'

We downed our gulping whiskeys that could fireball the germs off your lips and backed out of the joint slowly, like it was full of wolves who’d leap if you moved too quick. Soon as we were out the door we whirled our bootheels away down the dust track back to the car, shrieking the banjo duel music at each other. Louis jammed it into first and pulled away from that Ol’ Boy freak circus fast as the wheels would turn. Picked up an amber bottle at some no-hope trailer and blazed out into the desolate desert road.

Hit an old gas station, looming out of the darkness all squat and skeletal. Parked up and rolled a special smoke and sat watching the stars. There’s really no light out there, see, it’s like the nicotine yellow stained sky you know in the city just peels away, and there’s all this universe underneath it. It was like when you see reflections in a lake or a puddle and wonder if you could fall through it into the reflection world. I turned my head to watch Louis all strung out along the sand like a big cat.

I believe I said something nonsensical and beautiful about the universe and the microscope of God out here and the stars being our atom-selves. He shook his head and said:

‘You know, if it had come down to pig-squealing time, I just want you to know that I woulda gone first.’

‘What the fuck, Lou?’

He turned, and in that totally unselfconscious way he had of touching other beings he stroked my hair and my star-stoned face.

‘Because I love you, man, you’re my best friend.’

I thought about this a moment and said:

'But I woulda seen what was coming, I mean, thank you for your consideration and all but...No, no...That wouldn't have helped me at all.'

At some point in that long galaxy gaze we passed out. Comes to something beautiful when you wake up in an old petrol station in the arms of your best friend still wearing his green fedora. The rest of the way we played I Spy and the sand and the scrub and the sky all began with the same S.

Written by: Natty Mancini

Photograph by: Daniel Charles Ross

White Flight Ghost

They say her baby never cries. The handsome, black woman wanders the streets each afternoon in a beet red cardigan and a white poodle skirt. There are large, yellow dots on that skirt, and shapely hips beneath. The businessmen paid her to swagger: a buck fifty an hour, and a dollar bonus for scaring the white husbands. She learned to stride in two-inch heels: a rhythmic click that turns our heads. Her stroller rattles upon worn, plastic tires. Ripe daisies cover the movable bassinette - a print that climbs over an accordion hood. The child beneath is lifeless.

She began her tour before I was born, when the block’s windows were adorned with flower boxes - when a westerly breeze might carry lilac into the city. These were also the years when the tension was obvious. The sprawling urban streets were plastered white, and the fear of new, black residents – climbing north for jobs – sent the neighborhood into a frenzy. Some crumpled, old men point to “era” as an excuse for their racism: “Our houses would be worth less if black families moved next door.” This is denoted with the same cavalier smirk as when they explain atom bomb survival techniques -- “We’d hide under our desks and cover our heads.”

The woman’s lips are painted cherry-red. She occasionally touches them with her ivory, lace gloves, then looks to her blemished fingers. Fifty years later, she’s not used to the facade. Her candy-apple veneer stands out against a burnt background. She passes by Merv’s Grocery, or the faded building that was, and speeds her gait. She is running from someone.

The average house had two prices: three thousand for whites, four thousand for blacks. This was the result of deficient realty laws and racial zoning. It became advantageous, to the shoe-shined narcissist, to force white families out of the city – to the burbs – and replace them with the more profitable blacks. Movement is created by fear.

Some men who measured moral foresight in nickels tried to scare the white residents away. They created black ghosts. These spirits were released as rumor: “A negro family is moving into the Smith’s house.” As slander, “The nigger child is ripe with disease.” And as a beautiful, black woman in a red cardigan, “Just have her push a carriage through the streets. Don’t let her talk, just walk. They’ll assume. Hell, they’ll assume.”

My middle school clan used to hang out behind the boarded windows of an abandoned storefront. The building sold televisions - records prior to that - and before that, women’s shoes. The interior light bulbs were smashed, and the circuits mutilated, so we’d have to assemble during the day – when channels of light would sneak through cracked walls. Dust particles were heavy in the beams. Four others, and myself, all thirteen or nearly thirteen, would argue about the White Sox, punch one-another’s arms numb, and consider sex from afar. We were boisterous until three o’clock. The woman arrived at three. Her clicking heels would stop in front of the boarded windows. Her head turned toward the dilapidated storefront. With halted breath, we watched her through the porous timber. Johnny, who was slight yet brash, would whisper, “Damn she’s fine.” James, whose father was shot while holding a gram, concurred, “The things I’d do to that ghost.” Richard, tall and straight-jawed, promptly reminded us, “I heard she worked for them, and did a fucking good job. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. She’s not real, you can’t touch her.” The woman would proceed to take off her right shoe. She then examined her calloused toes – fifty years on two-inch heels. She peered into the vacant glass, to the shoe store past. The woman will never afford comfortable shoes, but she will come again tomorrow.

She was, one might surmise, like thousands of others – ambitious, black, and berated by the south. She could legally vote, but large men who wore white hoods at night stood in the doors of the polling centers. She could legally buy a house, but it might be set aflame. She was taught with shoddy books, in a shoddy building, where she urinated in shoddy toilets -- “Don’t flush, the city hasn’t fixed the plumbing.” Her relentless spirit longed for freedom – to own a car - a home - herself. She scaled north on a bus, and was dropped into Chicago, where her cousin said the jobs were. The bigotry was not obvious. She could walk on white sidewalks, but discrimination bubbled discretely beneath. She pressed for a meaningful career, but was repeatedly turned down.

Not wanting to give up, she answered a newspaper ad, “Seeking a pretty, 20-25 year old black girl—physically fit.” Looking past the kinship to slavery, she answered the call. Two clean-shaven, white men in tailored blue suits, gave her a baby doll, a carriage, and paid her in cash. “Make them think you’re moving in. Walk slowly. Give the husbands a wink…the wives can’t hurt you. You’re a ghost now.”

She sauntered.

White men considered her ass, and then considered their net-worth. White women envied her rouge, and then solidified racist dogma. White children wanted to see the black baby, but they were packed into the Studebaker and shipped forty minutes west. Nobody sees the baby.

Her stiletto blades have worn grooves into the cement. She watched the neighborhood change hands, and kept walking. She watched her loved ones default on dirty loans, and kept walking. She watched houses crumble under racially burdened debts, and kept walking. She watched nature crawl through the cement cracks, then trampled the weeds in her path, and kept walking. She is the lasting moniker of our demise. But I’m used to her poodle skirt – this ghost in the daylight.


Written by: Dan Rousseau
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Rescue

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

The Benadryl was kicking in. Brooklyn’s head lolled to the side as she watched Doc McStuffins on Drew’s iPad. The fire ant bites on her legs were so close together, the swelling around the individual bites overlapped into an angry, unending rash.

“Do you think we should call the doctor?” Drew asked.

“He’s just going to tell us to do what we’ve already done,” Jennifer said, shaking her head. Just in case, she dislodged her cell phone from the tight back pocket of her jeans and Googled “ant bite emergency?”

Then she noticed it: a text. From Dena.

I need you.

Jennifer’s stomach couldn’t decide how to react. It dipped as she remembered a brief flash of the smoky field, Dena’s hands inside her clothes. Then her stomach lurched in anger, confusion.

“Needs me? She left me,” Jennifer said under her breath.

By Jennifer’s calculations, it was her turn to ask for a favor. She had been the one to save the day, repair the RV, give Dena whatever it was she was looking for the night of the bonfire. Jennifer was the one left behind to act like an adult when she didn’t get what she wanted. What more did Dena need to take?

And yet--Jennifer was drawn to her. Her thumbs skimmed across her phone screen, replying before the rest of her body gave the go-ahead.

where r u?

The text bubble containing the always-taunting ellipses appeared on the screen. Then:

Santa Fe. I’ve made a huge mistake.

what happened??

I should have stayed in Austin. Chris disappeared. Took the keys and $.

wtf!?

Yeah. This crazy old Indian lady’s gonna lose it if I don’t get off her land in 24 hours.

lol thats racist

Native American. You know what I mean. For real though.

what r u gonna do? wheres chris?

His phone’s cut off.

hes GONE gone?

I think so.

Jennifer watched her brother turn off the iPad screen and scoop sleeping Brooklyn into his arms. She wasn’t sure what good mothering was, anymore. She worked hard, and she was still a disappointment. She tried to keep Brooklyn safe and loved, and the fire ants found her anyway.

“Drew?” she said.

“Yeah?” he whispered over Brooklyn’s sleeping body.

“You still want to go to California?”

                                                                                                          ***

Benny answered the door when Dena knocked. He raised one eyebrow at the greasy-haired white girl on his steps and said nothing.

“Is...Mae home?”

“She’s at Bingo.”

“Oh,” Dena said. “Well, will you tell her that my friend is coming from Texas and I will be gone as soon as humanly possible, but it might be tomorrow instead of tonight? Oh. And give her this? Kind of a thank-you-and-I’m-sorry gift?”

She thrust a Wendy’s hamburger bag into his hands, spun on her heels, and headed back to the lot. Benny watched her until she disappeared inside her hunk-of-junk RV. He opened the fast food sack. Inside was a package of peanut M&Ms and two plump, hand-rolled joints.

                                                                                                          ***

“Jennifer Michelle, you are being nothing but reckless right now.”

“Mom. It’s fine. You need to chill. Drew’s the one moving to California. I’ll be back as soon as I can hot-wire a Chinook.”

“I would like to repeat that this is a fact-finding mission only?” Drew chimed in. “If I don’t find any good job leads in two weeks, I’m coming back, too.”

“I don’t think you should take Brooklyn with you. Especially with those god-awful ant bites!” her mother squawked. “Jesus, how did she even get that many?”

“I’m a terrible mom, that’s how. But I’m still her mom. She’s coming with me.”

                                                                                                          ***

Highway 84 stretched in front of Drew’s Toyota, shimmering with summer mirages. Brooklyn snored in the back seat.

“We can turn the radio on. She’s zonked.”

“Zonked? Who says that?” Drew said.

“It’s in the Mom Handbook.”

“Har, har.”

Jennifer turned the radio to a Car Talk re-run.

“You sure you don’t want to get the RV going and then come with me?” Drew asked. “Carl won’t care. I think his girlfriend has a kid, actually.”

“Thanks. But I kind of need to see where this one goes.”

                                                                                                          ***

The RV still smelled of cats and mildew. Dena dumped a can of Chicken & Stars soup into a pot and lit the stove burner. She leaned on the flimsy table and turned her phone over in her hands. Chris had been off the social media grid for twenty-four whole hours. No selfies, no tweets. No Instagrams of his feet or his lunch.

He hated her enough to resist the pull of his biggest addiction.

She poked at the soup with a wooden spoon, watching the doughy stars swirl in the broth. Dena wasn’t sure how she’d gotten to this point. She and Chris just wanted different things, wasn’t that it? Jennifer understood her--Jennifer had her own complications. With her, Dena could be free and loved at the same time. Couldn’t she?

Not that she deserved something like that.

                                                                                                          ***

Dena squinted as a car approached--Jennifer in the passenger seat--a guy behind the wheel.

Shit. Who is that? Her baby’s father? Dena thought. She checked her phone, attempting to mask her anxiety. Jennifer got out of the passenger’s side, stretched, and bent into the back seat.

“You guys are so dumb,” the guy said.

“Shut up, Drew,” Jennifer said, still untangling the child from car seat buckles.

“You could have just had the camper towed somewhere.”

“This is my brother, the smartass,” Jennifer said. “And this is Brooklyn.”

“I panicked,” Dena admitted, relieved to learn the guy’s identity. “Chris just left me here. And he took our cash. I have, like, forty dollars in my account.”

Dena wanted to take Jennifer in her arms, to hold her in a combined death grip of attraction and gratitude. But her feet wouldn’t move. Brooklyn’s face was red from crying--and her legs--was that a rash? Dena realized, in that moment, the scope of asking them to come all this way.

A screech of tires cut the silence as Mae’s Pontiac swerved to park beside her house.

“I sure hope this is your rescue party,” Mae said as she crossed the road. Mae spotted Brooklyn and took off her sunglasses. Her small eyes wrinkled in delight. “And who is this?”

“Brooklyn?” Jennifer said, shooting Dena a questioning look.

“Let’s see if we’ve got something for those legs,” Mae said. “Benny?” she said into her phone. “Bring the bug bite potion.”

Dena half-expected a secret Native American herbal remedy, but Benny appeared, red-eyed, carrying a tube of cortisone cream. Mae knelt down in the dust, and Brooklyn walked right to her. The old woman cradled the child and spread the medicine on her inflamed legs.

Dena watched them, then looked at Jennifer, Drew, the RV. Benny. Was he high? All here, in this moment, because of her.

Maybe I’m not a stranger, Dena thought. Maybe reinvention, despite what she’d always believed, could be real. Could be possible. Even for her.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Mo Takes a Wife

 

Cold months are the hardest for Muhammad. The winter always reminds him how far away he is from home. In the summer when it’s warm, he could almost forget how foreign this place is, but not really, not once he steps outside and meets with the empty streets with all the wrong sounds and smells.

Here they call him Mo.

That the origins of his name mattered to him was of little consequence. Here, people’s names were without meaning, chosen to set a certain image; to sound friendly or powerful. They were named after movie stars and television characters. Some were named for books, but not many; fewer were named for God and it wasn’t the same God that Muhammad was named for.

Muhammad misses the busy streets from home. He misses the noise, the people. Here there is too much empty space. He misses the food, the spice and the heat. Here everything tastes of salt and sugar. Most of all he misses the women. The women here smell all wrong, too sterile and floral -- something about those perfumes tickles his nose. He misses the cinnamon and butter smells of the girls back home. He dreams of them with chrysanthemums in their hair -- gentle, warm and enticing. Nothing like these twiggy creatures that giggle at his accent and make him blush, flaunting their long legs and pushed-up breasts. They take his discomfort as a compliment; it isn’t meant that way.

Muhammad trudges into the office and is met by Alice and her giggles.

“What are you wearing, Mo?”

“It’s cold out.”

“Yeah, so buy a real coat. You’ve got like seventeen sweaters on. You look like a hobo.”

Muhammad gave Alice a polite smile and tried to push past the reception desk.

“Mo, since you’re still bundled up will you do me a favour?” Alice draped herself over Muhammad’s arm, fluttering painted lashes over big blue eyes. She does this to him, she gets close and acts seductive when she has a favour to ask. Muhammad purses his lips. It bothers him that she thinks this is the way to get what she wants. He will do whatever she requests, regardless of her hands on him or her clingy clothing.

“I was supposed to pick up a pie. There’s a client coming in, and the boss asked for pie.”

“Yes, fine, just tell me where.”

Alice tucks the scribbled address into his hand and Muhammad wraps his scarf back around his face before venturing out into the cold.

“Ask for Susan.” Alice calls after him.

The bakery windows are covered in steam, blocking the view to the street. The occasional drip forms in the condensation and spills down the glass. The shelves are lined with sweet, puffy things, warm confections, golden brown from the oven. There is no one in sight, so Muhammad removes his gloves and rings the bell on the curved, marble counter. Its melodic tinkle is answered by a cheerful voice from the back room.

“Be right there.”

As she emerges, Muhammad forgets everything that had been wrong this cold winter morning. Her hair is like spun sugar, coiled tight on her head, her eyes are the warm soft brown of sticky dates and her skin is like toasted marzipan. The sweetness of this woman catches him off guard, and he stands stupidly, gazing at her while she waits for him to speak.

“Are you Mo?”

“Muhammad. My name is Muhammad.”

“Alice told me you were coming, Muhammad. I have your order all set.”

Her voice is a caress. His full name, his real name, falls so perfectly from her lips. For the first time in a long time he doesn’t feel alone.

“Thank you Susan.” He tries out the exotic sound of her name.

She passes him the neatly boxed pie and smiles. Her lips part to reveal slightly crooked teeth. She is sweetness and subtlety, she is everything he misses of the women from home.

“So is that everything?”

He knows he has to leave, but he lacks the strength to tear his eyes away, to move out the door and leave her in the warm cinnamon and butter scented air of the bakery.

“Actually I need some other things.”

Muhammad selects an assortment of buns and pastries, muffins and squares and watches as Susan’s soft, plump hands carefully wrap each one. She bags the packages for him, chatting the whole time about how best to enjoy the treats. When she is done and he can delay no longer, Muhammad moves towards the door and away from the woman he has so quickly and completely fallen for.

“Wait, you forgot your pie.” Susan leans close to tuck the pie safely on top of a bag of dinner rolls. He can smell her hair, like coconut and almonds, and despite his shaky nerves Muhammad finds himself asking her to join him for dinner.

“Sure,” she laughs, a perfect musical sound. “Meet me back here at six.”

When Muhammad returns at a quarter to six, he finds Susan ready. She has tried to tame her wild red mane, but it has resisted. Her lashes have been smeared with a coating of mascara that adds to the warmth of her eyes. Her comfortable baker’s clothes have been replaced with a simple yellow dress. She blushes when she sees him and grabs her coat from the hook by the wall.

All through dinner, Susan talks while Muhammad watches. She talks of her father from Scotland and her mother from Trinidad. She tells of childhood joys and woes and of all her hopes and fears. She speaks with her hands, and the movement is hypnotic. Muhammad thinks of the women back home. The coy dances of those familiar girls with their intricate hand gestures have nothing over the perfect opera that is Susan telling a story. Through dinner, she uses her musical voice and her dancing hands to weave her way deeper into his heart, and by dessert he is sure.

Outside in the cold, Muhammad overcomes his insecurities and wraps Susan’s hand in his own. She smiles at him and leans forward meeting his thin, hungry mouth with her sweet, warm lips. Muhammad looked down on the woman in his arms and pulling away he lets her name fall again from his lips.

“Susan.”

Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal