DownstateStory

Margaret Lisle: Dry Run

 Mary had been struggling all weekend with the dilemma responsible for yet another sleepless night and for her slow response to the insistent ringing of her bedside clock alarm. 

Slapping the clock’s off button with disgust, she fought the desire to dive back under her heavenly down quilt and go fetal. She needed to resolve the issues confronting her at the office but didn’t know what to do.

Her friend, Sarah, always said if you didn’t know what to do about a problem, “do nothing.”  But Mary wasn’t the type to sit around patiently while life sorted itself out. She needed to take action, to straighten things out, especially now, when things were on the bias, so to speak.

“What’s needed here is a dry run,” she finally concluded and immediately felt better now that she had a plan.

Behind schedule, unusual for her, she stuffed her work-out clothes and a change of underwear into a duffel bag, and grabbing the brown-bag lunch of tuna salad on wheat bread she had prepared last night, she left her one-bedroom condo on North State Street. If she didn’t dawdle, it would be a ten minute walk to her job as one of the administrative secretaries in the Mayor’s Office on the fifth floor of City Hall.

Outside, the Chicago sky was grey and overcast, and she would have to go at a fast clip to beat the rain she smelled hanging in the air.  With no time to stop by the blind man’s newspaper stand as usual, she arrived at her desk breathless but punctual.

“Good morning, Mary,” said her co-worker and the office gossip, Patsy Byrnes, in a tone of voice pregnant with surprise.

 “Morning, Patsy,” she replied.

 “I have to say, I thought we’d seen the last of you.”

 “Yeah, well,” Mary sighed, not giving her any more than that.

 “I don’t think Scully is expecting you today either,” she persisted.

 “Yeah, well,” Mary said again, as she headed toward her desk stationed immediately behind Patsy’s.  Easing her tall, thin frame into her steno chair and feigning ignorance of Patsy’s blatant stare, she began opening her desk drawers and emptying the small personal items within into her duffel bag.

There wasn’t much:  a hair brush and cosmetic bag, a bottle of Ibuprofen, a travel sized can of hair spray, two bags of Planter’s salted peanuts, some Hall’s throat lozenges and a red umbrella with broken spines, which she reluctantly tossed into a nearby wastebasket.  Possessive and compulsive by nature, she always had trouble discarding anything, stubbornly hanging on to outdated clothes and outgrown friendships.

“Well, that was easy enough,” she thought with relief and immediately proceeded to put everything back into the desk drawers, minus the hapless umbrella. 

“I can do this,” she announced under her breath. “I can walk away.  I can move on.  Yes, I can,” she repeated to herself silently, like a mantra.  “I’ll do this again when I return from lunch,” she thought confidently.

“Are you okay?” Patsy asked, who had continued to observe her the whole time.

“Yeah, sure,” Mary said, as if Patsy had asked a dumb question.               

 The telephone on her desk mercifully interrupted Patsy’s annoying interrogation mid sentence, and she gratefully grabbed the receiver, beginning what she knew was going to be a long, tense work day.

Across the room, Frank Scully came out of his office and was openly surprised to see her. Recovering himself quickly, he said, “Good morning, Mary.” 

Without looking up, she focused on her phone call, acknowledging his greeting with a nod of her head, her long blonde hair falling across her flushed face. She was relieved to see him get a cup of coffee and go back into his office, closing the door.

 
She would be okay now, unless he called her into his office later, which she felt certain he would.

She worked straight through her break until 12:15, when she retrieved her lunch bag and left the office.  Exiting City Hall on LaSalle Street, she walked the few blocks to Wacker Drive and descended the stairway leading down to the banks of the Chicago River, her favorite thinking place. She came here every day, weather permitting, and the threatened rain she had smelled in the air earlier had come and gone. She felt a kinship with the river for some reason, probably because of its history.

Through the magic of civil engineering in the 19^th century, for reasons of sanitation, the flow of the river had been reversed to head toward the Mississippi River basin, away from Lake Michigan where it previously had emptied.

Up till then, the local residents had referred to it as “the stinking river” because of the massive amounts of sewage and pollution which poured into it from Chicago’s booming industrial economy.  However, over the past several years much had been done to purge the river of pollution, and it was the come-back-kid of the city administration and the Friends of the Chicago River. 

Mayor Daley and the City Council were talking about issuing licenses for singing gondoliers and river bikes, and the fish were actually testing out to be edible again.

There were small cafes along some banks of the River with names like Cubby Bear, O’Brien’s, and Cyrano’s Bistro, where one could dine al fresco and watch the tourist boats go by.  Public benches were available at the street level also, but Mary preferred to take the stairs down to Riverwalk Park where she could eat her lunch and walk around.

She sat down at one of the concrete walls that bordered the beds of hostas and begonias, but she ignored her tuna sandwich, her jumbled thoughts overriding the desire to eat.  The sun was unseasonably warm for April, and she lifted her face to it, eyes closed, and tried again to make sense out of her situation.

"First of all, let’s get something straight,” she admonished herself. “ You are not in the wrong here.  You didn’t do anything.” 

Although everyone at the office suspected that the very married Frank Scully had the hots for her, he had never acted on his feelings.  If the gossip was true, it was all so subliminal on his part, like Jimmy Carter lusting in his heart.

And she had never done anything to encourage him, treating him respectfully and professionally as her superior.  It was just what she called the “City Hall Mentality” at work that gave them the name without the game.

 Lucy Knowlan, a friend from the Department of Transportation, recently told her that she had heard how Mary and Scully were getting it on after hours and warned her to be on the lookout for Scully’s wife, who was rumored to be bi-polar.

She warned her to be careful “because if the Mayor hears any of these rumors about you and Scully, both of you will be toast, especially Frank.”

And then, last Friday, Lucy’s prophecy was fulfilled.  Susan Scully, red-faced and wild-eyed, rode into the office on her broom and self-destructed all over the place, leaving no foul language unfurled, or any  lingering doubt about the nature of her business with  her “lying, cheating, poor excuse for a husband” and his “(Bleep), pathetic, home wrecking whore.” 

Scully could be heard cajoling his wife to calm down, to talk about it at home, but Susan’s voice continued to condemn, accuse and berate him. Then, bursting  from Scully’s office, she advanced on the dumbfounded Mary like George Patton and the Third Army on Berlin, yelling at the top of her voice, “You want  the (Bleep, Bleep)…..you can have him,” poking her right index finger into Mary’s shoulder blade for emphasis.

 Mary, who had been glued by fear to her chair, rose to defend herself against the coming onslaught.  Fortunately, the totally out-of-control Mrs. Scully was intercepted by the policeman who, normally stationed right outside the entrance to the Mayor’s Office, had taken a walk to the Men’s Room but came running when he heard the commotion. 

Not knowing the intruder was Scully’s wife, he treated her like she was a radical community activist bent on marshalling her troops for a sit-in against some new City Council proposal.

Scully, who had been right behind his wife, convinced the guard that she would cause no further disturbance, and grasping her by the arm a little more tightly than was necessary, he steered her to the stairway, rather than risking another scene in an elevator.

 Mary had been too shaken to react and said nothing.  She made no protest, which didn’t help convince Patsy Byrnes and the other staffers who had gathered on the scene of her innocence.  They were expecting some sort of injured party outburst from her, some emphatic denial of the charges against her.  Instead, she had just grabbed her duffel bag and purse and said, “I’m taking a half-day.  Have a nice week-end,” and left.

She headed straight for the river and stayed there until sundown.  She hardly remembered the walk home; she had been on automatic pilot.  Except for trips to the bathroom and to the kitchen for a couple of glasses of red wine, she spent all day Saturday and Sunday in bed, going over the event in her mind, looking for guilt, placing blame, sleeping fitfully, and eating nothing.

Scully called three times, leaving sad, apologetic messages on her machine.  She knew it was time to get out of bed when she started to feel sorry for him.  SHE was the victim here, not him!  It was so unfair!

God, how she hated the idea of looking for another job, but she knew how it would play out if she stayed. She would be transferred to the Department of Oblivion.  They wouldn’t touch her salary, but she would be exiled to some obscure agency, assigned a desk and maybe a phone, but given nothing to do and absolutely no chance of future advancement, confident she would leave of her own accord.

“So, Mary, face it, it’s time to leave.  If the city fathers could reverse the flow of a river, surely you can turn your sorry self around.  Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again,” she instructed herself and resolved to practice another dry run as soon as she returned to the office. 

Maybe, after a few more stabs at it, she thought, she would find the strength to let go of the job and leave behind what she had finally recognized as an obsessive, though unrequited, love for  Frank Scully, who was, truth be told, as broken as the red umbrella she had managed to discard only this morning.

“Yes,” she said confidently, “I believe one more dry run, maybe two, should do the trick.” DSS

 

 

Margaret Lisle, 77, of Beverly Shores, Indiana, formerly of Chicago, has had her short stories published in anthologies, and is working on a one-act play.  She's a retired admininstrative assistant.

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Rebecca L. Monroe: Cows Don't Know

“Grandpa!”

The old man grinned as she hurried toward him, the bag over her shoulder, making her look mature and worldly.

“Miss Sissy,” he caught her and hugged her, their heights equal.  Other passengers from the plane smiled in passing as she laughed.

“Well that’s better than ‘Sassy’,” 

He dropped his face back into the familiar stern lines.  “You earned that name.  You were always sassing me about something.”

She hooked her arm through his and they made their way toward the baggage claim.  “You were just too much fun when you were riled.  All that barking…”

“How long can you stay?”  He walked beside her, aware she was shortening her stride for him.  It made him proud and sad at the same time.

“Only the weekend, I’m afraid.  Can you believe it’s been five years?”

“Looking at you now, yes.  You’re all grown up.”  And she was.  There were fine lines on her wide forehead, crinkles at the corner of her blue eyes, a softening of what had once been a tightly compacted body.

“Only on the outside.  I don’t think my insides will ever grow up.”

They picked up her suitcase, had a brief struggle over who would carry it.  He won, barely.  Then they were headed out of town in his Ford pickup.  He was glad to leave the city behind.  A tension he hadn’t quite been aware of dropped from him as they hit the freeway which would take them back to Scottsville.

“So,”  Sissy half turned in the front seat to face him.  “Tell me why you never come to see us?”

He scowled.  Travel was dangerous except he couldn’t say that when she had just made the trip, could he?  He settled for a shrug.  “Busy, I guess,”

“Busy!  Too busy to visit me?  That’s not very nice. Your one and only favorite granddaughter?”

 “You haven’t lost any of your sass after all.”

They rode in silence for a while.  He could tell by Sissy’s intent study of the landscape she was re-living old memories, and he didn’t want to disturb her.

Sissy finally broke the silence.  “Mom says you’re afraid to travel.”

Afraid!  Irritation flared.  “I wouldn’t say afraid.  The few times I have gone anywhere, I wished I hadn’t.  People were rude, unfriendly.  It was one problem after another.” 

His last trip had been to the southwest to visit his parent’s place in Arizona after his father had passed away.  He’d gone with the idea he might keep it, become a snowbird.  After lost luggage, struggling with crowds who looked through him, shying from those strange people who didn’t, he decided home was the best place after all. 

“Are you still fighting with the Sarns?”

Another abrupt change.  Had her mind always danced around like this?  He glanced at his speedometer.  It didn’t pay to think about his neighbors and drive.  “They never change.  If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.  Last week their cows got loose.  One of them trampled my garden to ruin. The rest wrecked havoc on my yard.   I had to call the sheriff to get them out.”

“I’m sure they didn’t turn their cows loose on purpose,”  Sissy’s face had lost its delight.  She looked very grown-up now – serious eyes, brow slightly furrowed.

He bit back the ‘wouldn’t surprise me if they had’.  He wasn’t going to let the Sarns spoil his time with his granddaughter.  “Whatever.  I hope you’re hungry.  I put a roast on before I left.”  He pulled into the long driveway leading to the house.

“It looks exactly the same!”

He felt an inward glow of pleasure.  Yes.  It looked the way it always had.  Fences lining the driveway, tight and stout.  Sarn’s cows had had to come up his driveway to get into his garden.  The house was two stories, sharply white against the backdrop of the blue sky surrounded by huge oak trees planted by his grandfather; their trunks were so thick he couldn’t get his arms around them.  The red barn stood behind and to the left of the house.  It, too, had a good strong look, though next year it would need a new paint job.

Sissy went upstairs to get settled in her old room while he put the finishing touches on supper.  It was odd how he had adjusted to doing things like supper.  When Sissy had been five or six the only time he’d seen her had been if she came out to the barn while he was working, or at supper after the table was laid and he came in to eat.  Of course, she’d spent a lot of time in the barn with him.  Clara had tried to teach Sissy to sew and cook but it had been like trying to ride a cow.  It could be done but it would never feel right. 

“You should have waited.  I’d have helped.”

“You had a long trip.  I’ll let you do it all tomorrow.”

“And dishes tonight if I’m really good?”  Sissy lifted the lid off the pot he’d set on the table, smiling with pleasure at the smell of roast, potatoes and carrots.

He grinned.  “You don’t even have to be good.  How’s your job going?”

Sissy’s smile dulled.  If he hadn’t known her so well, he would have missed it.  “It pays the bills.”

“I thought you liked it.”  He took a slice of roast and set the plate back between them.

“I did.  Except ‘challenge’ has become ‘impossible’.  They’ve cut back on personnel so much I can’t get done what needs to be done.  What I do manage to accomplish is half as…half right.”  She shook her head.  “You’re always with me at work.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.  Your voice.  ‘Really, Miss Sissy, do you expect to get away with such slipshod work?  ‘The plow will break, the horse run wild because you did the job as a child’.”  The last was sung in a singsong voice.

He felt himself grinning.  He had said it every time she pulled part of the weeds, or milked half the cow.  At fourteen, standing before the too quickly painted barn door she’d stomped her foot and demanded to know just what plows and horses had to do with a barn door.

“It’s not just your company – it’s the trend today,”

Sissy sighed, pushing a potato around with her fork.  “I know, but knowing doesn’t make it any easier.  I watch reports go out with errors, people calling me, angry because I haven’t returned ‘their’ calls, co-workers needing information I haven’t got time to compile and give them.  I’m working six to six right now and can’t keep up.”

“It sounds like you need a vacation, if nothing else.”

“That’s the truth!  Pass more potatoes please.”

She ate well.  He’d been afraid she’d turned into one of those health nuts that lived on water and things he couldn’t pronounce.

The silence was peaceful; accented by the tick of the clock in the living room that was just off the dining room, and the scrape of forks on plates.  The refrigerator kicked in with a whine to its hum which had worried him six years ago.

“What kind of stock do you have now?”

“Not much.  Ten head of cow.  Clara’s chickens are still wandering around because the hens hide their eggs.  I always end up with a new brood or two every year.  Ginger.”

“She’s still alive!”  Sissy’s fork stopped in midair.  “I was afraid to ask.”

“Yes, she’s still alive.  I’ve never seen such a rough looking horse that wasn’t a carcass.  I thought last winter would get her.  She made it through though.  I don’t leave her out anymore that would kill her for sure.  Even in the barn I have to put a blanket on her to keep her warm.”  He raised an eyebrow at the smirk on Sissy’s face.  “What?”

“The vision of you tucking Ginger in for the night.  I used to have to resort to tears to get you to bring her in during a thunderstorm.”

“Old bones have a tendency to sympathize with each other.”  He wasn’t sure where the idea came from.  It came out of his mouth without bothering to pause in his mind first.  “If your job is so bad, you could quit it.  Help me run the farm,”  thoughts flittered through his head – how nice the company would be, they could increase the herd.  Could he and Sissy get along on a daily basis?   He was pretty set in his ways.  Hope and reservations wound together like threads in a rug.

“I appreciate it, Grandpa, I really do…I don’t think it would be a good idea,”

He speared some roast, disappointed and relieved.  “Not much money in farming any more, anyway.”

“It’s partly that.  Actually, it’s a lot that.  I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a full time farmer,”  Sissy grinned at him.  “I still don’t like getting up early.  And I’m still lazy enough to be slow.”

He didn’t doubt the first but knew lazy was impossible for Sissy.   He waved a hand.  “If you’d said yes, I’d have tried talking you out of it.”  They finished dinner and habit made him start gathering dishes.

“I’ll do it.  My pay for the meal,”

“How about if we do it together,”

It didn’t take long to get the dishes stacked and the sink full.  Sissy washed while he rinsed and dried.

“Um, I hope you don’t mind, I’d like to run over and say hi to the Sarns,”

He almost dropped the plate he was drying.  Emotions flared up – jealousy the foremost.  He managed to stifle all but the ‘why’.

Sissy scrubbed hard at a spot in the roast pan.  “I’d like to find out how Marjorie is doing,”

“They might not be thrilled to see you,”

“Grandpa, Marjorie and I have been friends no matter what.  Mr. and Mrs. Sarns always treated me well.  They never held your disagreements against me,”

Great, now he felt petty.  “You can take the truck.  The keys are in it.”

 “I’ll just hike across the pasture.  I need the exercise.”  She hesitated, and then looked at him sideways.  “You could come with me.  It would be a pleasant walk.”

 “Until we got there.  Sarns will be happy to see you but they’ll run me off so fast I’ll meet myself.”

 “Maybe you underestimate them,”

 “Maybe you over estimate them.”

Sissy sighed, hung the dishcloth over the faucet and wiped her hands dry.  He had the feeling he’d disappointed her.  “I’ll be back before dark.”

“Have a good time.”

The house felt empty after she’d left but he was used to that.  He didn’t mind living alone.  He ‘did’ mind the transition.  Since there was plenty of daylight left, he went out to the garden to start repairing the damage the cow had done.  It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.  The fence was stretched a bit in places.

The one adventurous cow had flattened his zucchini hill where it had settled to chew its cud.  He wasn’t even sure why he’d planted zucchini – he didn’t like the stuff.  Habit, he supposed.  Clara had always had zucchini.  She’d used it for baking; breads, cookies, cakes.  There were tracks through the rows, some fertilizer he hadn’t put there himself; a few broken plants and the cow had leveled his corn – what was left wouldn’t make enough for canning.  He took care of his own.  To have his garden invaded because the Sarns didn’t….

He went back in the house to get the pliers he’d left on the kitchen counter.  The phone rang, startling him so when he answered ‘hello’ it was gruff, still half angry.

“Grandpa, I’m at Sarns and I need your help.  Bud has had a stroke.  Mrs. Sarns just left with the ambulance.  Their chores need doing and I can’t do them by myself.”

His knee jerk response was embarrassing and predictable.  He knew because Sissy continued before he could even speak.

“You’d be helping me, not them.  They would never have thought to ask.”

The words stung all the more for the truth of them.  Well, cows didn’t understand feuds or strokes.  They still had to be milked and fed.

"I’ll be right there.”

As he pulled on his work boots it struck him that he’d never been in the Sarns barn.  All these years and the most he’d ever seen of their place was the doorway and porch.  He had enough humanity to wonder how bad Bud’s stroke was, enough selfishness to be uneasy they might sell.  He could end up with a housing development next door and he was past the days when he could afford to buy it back.  Marjorie probably wouldn’t help her mother run the place and he didn’t know Kathy Sarns well enough to know if she could manage alone.

When he pulled in, he ignored the regular driveway which led to the house and followed the rough, secondary driveway around the house to the barn.  He had the feeling of walking into a meeting where you’re not quite sure it’s the right one.  He even wondered for a moment if Sissy was putting him on and any moment Bud would come raging out of the house to demand to know what he was doing.  That was ridiculous enough to relax him. 

He went through the side door in the barn, noticing it stuck a bit.  The interior felt the same as his – airy, warm from the spring heat of the day.  And it smelled the same; hay, manure, old wood and the sweet smell of oats.

The cows had heard the door open and were filing into the large stall which took up one whole wall.  In a month or two when Bud got his feeders and his calves started dropping, he would probably shut the door.  There wouldn’t be room for the cows then but right now it was a skeleton herd; bigger than his had been in years, but small by farm standards.

The greedy one, a Black Angus, was leading the way.  As soon as she saw him she stopped and began backing up, feet dragging, ears cupped toward him.  He was NOT Bud.  Two Herefords stopped in the doorway and he could see the head of another Angus, chin on the butt of the Hereford trying to figure out what the hold up was.

Did Bud feed in or out?  He looked on the floor of the stall.  It was by no means clean but that didn’t mean anything.  Perhaps the way the hay was used would tell him.  He heard the rattle of feed on metal – Sissy tending something else.  Pigs?  Chickens?  He didn’t know.

He climbed the ladder to the loft.  It opened on either side so the hay could be dumped into the stall.  A low drawn-out moo drifted up from below.  He wasn’t Bud but he was in the right spot.  He looked over the edge of the loft floor and was greeted by upturned black, brown and white faces.  They didn’t care, as long as he dropped hay.  Tonight they would eat in.  There was supposed to be a storm and he would feed his own cows in.  Bud could get upset later.

He began tossing down hay, creating piles as close to the center as possible.  There was the usual shuffle – the greedy Angus moving more than the others – convinced the next pile was better than the one she was at.

When he’d given them what he felt was enough, he went back down the ladder to check the water.  He found the spigot first and then followed the hose, unsure of where the trough was.  As he followed it, he passed a small window – clean where all the other windows were milky white with years of dust and weather.  He automatically peered out; surprised he had a clear view of his own house.  Odd.  His barn windows hadn’t been cleaned in years.  He looked, fascinated at seeing his home of thirty years from this angle.

“Thanks for coming, Grandpa,”  Sissy appeared from wherever she’d been in the barn.

“Yeah.  Not a problem.  How is Bud?”

“I don’t know yet.  What are you looking at?”

He motioned toward the window.  “My place,”

Something in her face?  A shift in her body?  The desire to visit the Sarns?  Of course.  The barn was behind Sarns house, on a slight rise.  It would block his place from their house.  They’d have to look from their barn.  As soon as it registered on his face, he knew she knew.

“How long?”

“Since Grandma died.  Mom and I are so far away,”

“Why them?”

“They offered.  They liked Grandma, me,”  Sissy looked away, a single tear tracking down her cheek.  “You,”

“I’ve got to water,”  his body was moving away even as his mind registered the variety of information; the ‘feud’ had been his alone?  Not Clara’s, not Bud’s.  Sissy was grieving for Bud Sarns.  The property should have been his.  Had been!  Bud and his last minute offer had stolen it from him.  That snake of a realtor leading him on and never letting him know…

He went out the small door at the back of the barn and it wasn’t until he was to the pasture fence that he realized he’d forgotten to turn the water on.  The greedy Black Angus was peeking out of the entrance at him, hay stuck at odd ends from her mouth.  It touched a warm place in him because every herd had one; food?  More?  Better?  He was also pretty sure it was the one that had gotten in the garden.

Sighing, he went back into the barn, the mud which had built on his boots from the sloppy ground outside dragging at his feet.  He found the spigot and turned it on, something Bud probably did before he started feeding – now he would have to wait for the trough to fill and flush.

Then he went to the window.

From here, it was such a different perspective.  His farm, his house, yes, he could even see a few of his own cows.  The home of a crotchety old man; was that how Sissy saw him? 

“Grandpa?”

He turned.

Sissy was a young woman and also the little girl she used to be.  The traces were still there in the sheen of her hair, the remembered skinniness of her arms and legs.

“They’ve got an old milk cow and she needs stripping.”  Sissy motioned to a stall he hadn’t noticed to the front and left of the door he’d entered.  “I don’t know if I remember how well enough to do a good job.”

He nodded.  The trough would be a while to fill.  He went to the stall, greeted with the same, wary ‘you’re not my normal human’ look.  He automatically began talking to her, telling her how pretty she was, how warm his hands were, nonsense words that didn’t matter.  Only the tone mattered.

She was a huge, old Guernsey.  Hipbones poking out, eyes hollow with age.  She was well cared for though.  The straw in her stall was nearly knee deep; the gentleness in her eyes spoke of years of love.

“Her name is May,”  Sissy handed him the stool.  Then she dumped the hay she had ready in May’s manger.

He sat down and got busy.  “You know her,”

“She’s nearly as old as Ginger.”

Sissy leaned on the stall door.  “Are you mad at me?”

How could he be?  This was him, that’s how.  The man with a grudge.  For all she knew, he would never speak to her again.  He put his forehead against May’s flank, rewarded by a flick of a thankfully clean tail.  “No.  I’m not mad.”

He focused on May’s udder, hands working automatically where his mind wasn’t.  “Once in a while life holds up a mirror and the reflection is not what you expected.”  Another pause.  “Me.  Not you.  Why don’t you take the truck, go to the hospital.  Kathy Sarns could probably use some support.” 

“Would you come with me?”

He pictured himself showing up, the ultimate hypocrite.  Besides, it would be for him, not Kathy or Bud.  He was the last thing they needed to deal with at the moment.  “No.  No, I can’t.”  He glanced up at Sissy and saw her eyes clouded with disappointment.  “There will be a time but this isn’t it right now.  Find out when May is used to being milked in the morning.  Also tell Kathy not to worry about the chores.  I’ll take care of them as long as necessary.”

Sissy relaxed.  “You’re right.  I’ll ask,”

“Keys are in the truck,”

“I love you, Grandpa,”

“I love you too, Sassy.”  He put his head back against May so Sissy couldn’t see his face.  He heard her leave, the truck start up and pull away.  He finished stripping the udder and sat back.

May turned her head and looked at him, tongue finding her nostril. 

He’d do. DSS

 

Rebecca Monroe, 53,of Troy, Montana, works for the U.S. Forest Service.  She lives in a log cabin on a river in Montana, and has also been a dog groomer. Her short stories have been published in several literary magazines.

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Deborah O'Neille Schubbe: The Perfect Plan

The grand Victorian sign stood like a monument worthy of a shot in the Herald.  Naomi had devoted three weeks to painting it, striving to tap into every fiber of her creativity. This just had to be the perfect plan to catch Tyler Morgan‘s eye.

The huge sign boasted a park scene with a couple strolling in their 1920s Sunday best along a flower-lined path. She set the masterpiece in front of her cozy sewing and craft shop for the entire town to see, or at least the most important person. Maybe he'd need buttons replaced or pockets repaired today. 

Just in case, Naomi wore the flowing multi-colored blouse she’d finished last night, earrings to match, and a smidgeon of blush on her cheeks.

She didn’t know Tyler much. Mostly only women frequented her shop, but occasionally men-–usually gray-haired widowers needing something mended-–gave the place a look. Tyler appeared thirty-ish and he had a nice smile.

On the sidewalk a few feet from the new sign, she displayed handcrafted yard ornaments, naturally a few with replicas of Minnesota loons. Another peek at the placing of each item and she went inside. A jittery sensation fluttered through her while she switched on lights and lit a few apple-scented candles in the shop.

The phone rang. Never answering on the first ring, which might suggest she wasn’t busy, she picked up on the second. “The Creative Cottage, Naomi speaking. How may I help you?”

“Hey,” Tess Branson said. “I’m thinking about stopping by later with a jacket in desperate need of zipper help, and hoping we'd do lunch.”

“Yes on the zipper, but only a maybe on lunch, just in case my dream comes true and I'm sharing a jumbo taco salad with that dark-eyed man who has yet to ask me to marry him.”

“Mr. Anniston?” Tess asked humorously.

“You're nasty. He’s ancient. I'd rather mend Herbert Helgerson's boxers. You wait. This is the best plan I’ve ever had. This is small-town Minnesota and that sign is big. People are going to want to investigate. Any excuse to talk to him works for me. It won’t be long and I’ll be camping in the wilderness, enjoying morning coffee in a canoe on a gleaming lake with my one and only.”

Tess laughed. “You have imagination, I’ll give you that.”

After the chat, Naomi shuffled through garments hanging from a rod, chose a suit coat with a ripped seam and started to work. 

Within minutes she glanced at the door. No one. She grabbed a sweater, darned a hole, checked the door again and sighed. In hopes today would be the day, she scooted to the dressing room used for sizing up the alterations needed on prom dresses and wedding gowns. On the rod along the wall, heart-stopping bridal wear befitting Scarlett O’Hara, with layers of lace and hand-sewn pearls, waited for their brides. Naomi dreamed of someday adding hers to the mix.

She forced her eyes from the delicate gowns and looked in the mirror. “Someday.” After re-combing her short chestnut-colored hair, she smoothed cherry gloss over her lips slowly and seductively, and smiled at her reflection when wouldn’t she know it? The bell on the front door jingled.

Mrs. Helgerson waltzed in. “Your new sign is lovely, dear. You are so artsy. Anyway, I was wondering if you have Herbert's shirts ready?”

Naomi posed a smile. “I'll get to them next.”

Mrs. Helgerson frowned. “Perhaps I’ll stop back around three.”

On her way out, Mrs. Helgerson paused by a display of quilted handbags and denim purses, peered at the puppy portraits, then opened the door. Tyler was talking with someone from the new Napa Auto Parts building across the narrow street. Naomi wanted to holler, Leave the door open—but too late.

She hurried to the window. Tyler and the thick, dark-haired man wearing a Napa cap ambled toward her shop. How sophisticated Tyler appeared stepping onto the sidewalk, a pen in his shirt pocket and a fancy phone in hand. The two men studied the sign.

She should go out there, greet them. But what would she say?

Smoothing her hair with nervous fingers, she eased outside. The men marveled at the colorful sign until Napa man moved to the yard décor. Tyler checked his watch and peered down the street.

Say something to him, Naomi ordered herself, but no words came.

“How much is this one?” Napa man stooped to inspect an arrangement of short timbers roped together and adorned with a solar light, a painted plaque reading welcome, and strategically placed fishing tackle.

“Thirty dollars,” Naomi replied. Her gaze slipped to Tyler, his tanned arms, broad shoulders. “Which one do you like?”

The men exchanged grins. Mr. Napa said, “Tyler’s idea of the outdoors is an office chair by a computer in an air-conditioned porch. But this,” he added, reexamining the timber light, “would be perfect on my deck at the campground. These are inspiring.”

He stood and extended his arm. “Bill Peterson. Do you camp?” His warm green eyes fell on hers, holding steady, looking into her.

She glanced again at Tyler, who was typing into his Blackberry, which, now that she thought of it, he did quite often when dropping off his sewing. It had put the kibosh on many otherwise would-be and hoped for conversations, and now prompted only the word boring. How had she missed that?

She shook Bill’s hand and tingles shot through her. “Naomi Weston, and camping, yeah, every chance I get.” Heat rose to her face and toes simultaneously. Did she sound like she was hinting?

His smile landed right in her heart. “Ever camp at Peel’s Park?”

“No,” she replied, then quickly, daring herself, she added, “But I‘d like to.”

“I’m out there after work all this week,” Bill said, a smile like a holiday. “Maybe you could stop by, get a tour of the grounds, give me decorating pointers.”

Her heart raced and her knees weakend. “I can’t think of a better plan myself.” DSS

 

 

Deborah Schubbe, 55, of Wells, Minnesota, has written for Midwest Living, The Writer's Journal, and many other publications.  She is a full time free lance writer and has won awards for her writing.  She's also been a realtor and a craft shop owner. You can contact her at [email protected].  Her blog is at http://debioneille.blogspot.com/.

This story has it all: a lovely young girl, a couple of guys, and the promise of romance. Keep these stories coming by donating to Downstate Story.

Michael McGlade: Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire

He appeared in the center of the theatre stage in a space where mere moments before there had been nothing. Illuminated now by a blue spotlight and as the smoke cleared here for all to see was Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire.

Cheap trick, really, but the punters demand a grand entrance.

He bowed. The secret trapdoor bowed. The audience roared. Applause echoed around the thousand-seater auditorium, filled to capacity for the first show of his three-night run. Edward Opulence, after twenty years of back alley performances, had finally made the Big Time.

He jiggled, jived, danced to stage right for the setup of the next illusion. He noticed a small tear in his pants near the crotch. He’d caught himself on a pokey nail in the secret trapdoor.

That’s clumsy, Emma. You’re lucky you’re my wife – I’ve fired people for less than this.

Emma danced past him, all glitter and smoke. She and her chorus of dancers provided eye candy and misdirection. Their beauty bore a simple truth: no illusion succeeded without their particular magic. Edward’s act had soared to this dizzying height because of the three years that Emma had been his director.

Two assistants wrapped chains around Edward’s chest and limbs. He was shackled, helpless. The dancers shimmied around his position. Long legs and sparkles. Hard to resist.

A magician has needs.

A cloth sack was placed over his head and his entire body threaded into it and the opening secured with thick padlocks and chains that could anchor the Titanic.

Forty-three girls pirouetted across the sprung deck of the picture frame stage.

Edward snapped his fingers.

A puff of smoke.

Edward exploded from the center of a giant pink-frosted wedding cake all the way across the theater and amid startled spectators who convulsed and clapped. Edward noticed the small cupid balancing on a chocolate swing on top of the cake.

Ridiculous womanly flourish. Emma might have invented this trick, but it’s mine now.

After the show, back in the dressing room, Edward stepped out of his bejeweled tuxedo and dragged his stumpy fat legs into some slacks. Emma entered the room.

“We’re in the big time, now,” he said. “No more messing up, you get it?”

“The girls and I were immaculate tonight. Best we’ve ever been.”

He poked his index finger through the rip in his pants near the crotch. “You’re there to assist, so assist.”

“Don’t point that finger at me.”

Edward swiveled his index finger away from her. “It’s not even loaded. I don’t know what you’re worrying about.”

“Never ever point that finger at me again.”

“Or what?”

“Or I walk out and never come back.”

Edward laughed it off, took her hand and kissed it. “Just kidding with you, pumpkin. You were marvelous tonight.”

“I know. And I’ll be better tomorrow night. We have some critics coming to watch.”

Edward returned to the mirror, selected a spatula and scrapped off a thick layer of makeup from his perma-tanned face. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “What if we try the Disappearing Act?”

Emma dry swallowed. “We’re not ready. It’s too dangerous.”

“Pumpkin, we need to give the audience more—”

“I know that,” she said. “I’m the one got us here. These are my tricks you’re performing. And the Disappearing Act is just not ready. Ok?”

Edward conceded with a barely noticeable nod.

Emma took a book called Pepper’s Ghost from the dressing table, placed it in her handbag and walked toward the door. “The taxi’s here.”

“I thought I’d stay behind a little while.”

Emma stopped but did not turn around to face him.

“I need to get in some practice,” Edward said. “I don’t want to mess up my big break.”

When Emma left, Edward scrutinized the chorus of girls gathered in the hallway outside his dressing room. They glimmered magically in the subdued yellow light backstage.

I wonder which one of them is the most suggestible to hypnosis?

A girl with pearls for teeth smiled at him.

Hopefully all of them.

Edward checked his store-bought hair in the mirror, popped a breath mint into his mouth and glided toward the refrain of girls.

*

On the second night, some national newspaper critics were in the audience, front row seats. A chorus of girls dragged The Iron Boot onto the stage. Edward was about to perform his favorite illusion. His feet would be clamped into the metal prison, but after a puff of smoke he would re-appear among the audience sat next to the critics. This trick was his biggest crowd pleaser.

The actual trick was simple. You see he had a clubfoot – two of them to be precise, and no one except Emma knew about it. An unfortunate incident several years back had caused the deformity to his feet but with the aid of prosthetics he went about his everyday life unnoticed. And it was this misfortune that Emma had crafted into their best illusion.

Edward, now strapped into the double leg manacles of The Iron Boot, snapped his fingers and a cloud of smoke obscured him from the audience. He went to slip his right foot free of the shackle but it wouldn’t budge. The strap had somehow tightened too much. He must have forgotten to flex his calf muscles when the girl had tightened the chains and padlocks. Edward struggled to tear his legs free from the restraints but when the puff of smoke cleared he was stood there, flapping his arms around like a flightless bird, a corn-fed turkey in a thrift shop tuxedo.

My God, I’m dying on my feet.

Forty-three assistants, conducted by Emma’s long silky legs, caused a distraction when they can-canned across the stage. The curtain descended.

Later, in the dressing room, Edward stood admiring his naked physique in the full-length mirror. His bejeweled thong would trick the untrained eye into believing he was not as stodgy as a bread and butter pudding. Emma entered the room.

Did she just wince?

“I thought our sham marriage,” he said, “was the worst thing that ever happened to me … until tonight. No one upstages me. Neither you nor your dancers.”

“I saved you out there,” Emma said. “I had to pay off the critics with the last of my savings because you’re too dumb to get a simple trick right.”

“Your girl tightened the restraints too much,” he said.

“Did she? Or did you forget to do the only thing you had to do apart from snap your fingers?”

Edward’s perma-tan face reddened. “I’m the star of the show. Don’t ever forget that. There is no show without me. It’s my name in lights above the door.”

He wagged his index finger at Emma.

She dove out of the way, rolled like a cat and came behind Edward. “I told you never to point that thing at me.”

“Well, guess what, pumpkin, I don’t care. You upstaged me tonight for the last time. We’re through.”

Emma popped him in the nut sack and he crumpled into a heap on the ground. “I’m not fired,” she said, “I quit.” She gathered her belongings into a bag and sashayed toward the door.

“Tomorrow night,” Edward whimpered, “I’m doing the Disappearing Act.”

Emma stopped. Turned to face him. “Don’t dare do it,” she said. “It would be a colossal mistake.”

“You’re the one too scared to do it, not me. I’m doing it.”

“The last time, three years ago, when we tried to do the trick, five of my girls were maimed and you ended up with two clubfeet.”

“Which worked out in our favor,” Edward said.

“Don’t do the Disappearing Act,” she said. “Please.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Edward said.

Emma stormed out. Edward stood stiffly and checked his testicles had descended from his stomach. He dressed and went to his favorite bar where women danced, took you to a back room when you bought champagne and were considerate enough to leave immediately upon the completion of his magic wand routine. He searched for the right dancer to be his prize trophy. A woman with lampblack hair came up to him.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

“We haven’t had sex in a year,” he said. “I’m not that good a magician – get lost, Cinderella.”

“You’re not that good of a magician.”

He pointed his index finger at her.

She stumbled back a step.

His magic finger often had that effect. “What will I do to you?”

He unleashed the finger – Poof!

The woman’s beautiful black hair became something slightly more dried and un-moisturized than it had been momentarily before. Although it was quite possible that the natural occurrence of a breeze had done all the dirty work for him.

The woman snapped her fingers at him and swanned off.

She used to have such soft hair. Maybe I still have a lock of it left in my cigar case. Maybe I’ll sniff it later.

*

On the third night, without the yoke of Emma, Edward felt free, unfettered, able to shine. In the audience was a scout from Las Vegas – there to bring him to the really Big Time.

Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire snapped his fingers and a giant wheel appeared in a puff of smoke. It was lacerated with knife scars and hatchet fissures.

“I call it my Rouault wheel.”

The silent audience stared at him.

Obviously not French lovers, then.

“It’s my Roulette Wheel of Death.”

The audience clapped like trained seals.

“I will be strapped to the wheel and only the Gods can decide my fate as forty-three women selected at random from the audience toss hatches, knives and bayonets at me.”

Edward’s new assistant clamped him onto the wheel. Her hands trembled. She tugged too hard at the securing straps. The wheel rattled free from its double-hinge and toppled over. Edward found himself deposited unceremoniously on his ass. Something snapped. He prayed it was his underwear elastic, not his coccyx. The impact triggered his spring-loaded devices and knotted handkerchiefs vomited from his sleeves. The white doves Velcroed inside of his jacket escaped, circled above him and dumped their payload. The gooey white critique trickled down his forehead and into his face.

The audience gawked. All their eyes were on him, peering unblinkingly with unbroken stares, as they had always done before – willing him to have failed – and all he could do was wish he was elsewhere, anywhere, never wished anything as much in his life, stuck there on the stage in the cold blue spotlight with nowhere to go.

Emma stood near the back. She shook her head.

“O my! Brave am…” Edward’s mind went blank and the sentence trailed off.

“Get off the stage you clumsy buffoon,” someone yelled. The crowd booed. They jeered. They catcalled.

I’m through. Finito. Caput.

QED, douche bag.

They watched. Stared. He wished he could simply disappear into nothing.

Edward Opulence raised his index finger.

They watched. Stared.

He pointed his index finger at himself.

His hand trembled.

The air glimmered.

He sensed the slippage of reality. The nothingness around him became the thing that he would become. He was nothing and would be nothing forever. He couldn’t limp back to the side streets with the old routine of Three-card Monte, needle-through-the-arm and razorblade swallowing. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Index finger pointed at his heart.

Emma stared at him, open-mouthed. She ran toward the stage, calling out, screaming but to Edward the movement had become slow motion and the sound had been muted. Already, he was within the prestige of the Disappearing Act. No turning back now. Others screamed. Pointed at him. Ladies fainted.

Poof!

And he was gone.

The audience watched the empty space center-stage where he had been a moment before in the translucent spectral haze of disappearance.

They watched in silence.

But he was gone.

Nothing.

The audience roared for more.

But Edward Opulence Magician Extraordinaire was nothing ever more. DSS

 

Michael McGlade, 30, lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His fiction appears in the book Powers Irish Short Story Collection (2012) and in publications such as Helix, Structo, Grain, OMDB Mystery, and Ambit. He holds a master’s degree in English from Queen’s University in Ireland, and is the recipient of an Arts Council award. He is a journalist with newspaper experience, and is editor-in-chief of a music publication, GigApe.com. Find out more news and views here: McGladeWriting.com.

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Ralph Hayes: Selected Excerpts from the Detwiler Journal

SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM

THE DETWILER JOURNAL (Found in heavy rubble on the outskirts

of Chicago, October 14, 2016 by Captain Emilio Ruiz, Army of OLS.)

January 8, 2015

The city is ghost-white after heavy snowfall last night. Arrived at hospital at eight, Erica doing well, but not eating. A miscarriage after so many months has to be numbing. It's too soon for pep talks. But the doctor says this isn't final, to keep trying. My producer Michaels sent me on assignment to mayor's office today, to cover last council meeting. I am bored sick with this job, with WCN-TV, and with my life. When Erica is better will suggest we move back to Pittsburgh. A friend says they need a principal at Jefferson Middle School. Brought Erica home at six, tried to cheer her with old Seinfeld re-runs. She is so damned brave.

JANUARY 13, 2015

Erica feeling much better today. She is resolved, though, to quit trying to have a child. Argument is futile at this point. I'll give her another week then mention Pittsburgh. I think that might give her a new feeling about things. Hinted to producer Michaels this morning that I'm thinking of other possibilities. They can do with one less reporter at WCN. Not enough happens around here to make news. Oh. Just before we turned in tonight, there was a quick reporting of something happening to one of Jupiter's moons, I didn't get all of it. Imagine. We have to go to outer space for a damn news story!

JANUARY 14, 2015

I get in to work today, and the station is in an uproar. People are flying from one office to another carrying papers, shouting at each other. Turns out this Jupiter thing is bigger than I thought. Callisto, one of Jupiter's more prominent satellites, just suddenly exploded last night! Some student in India was passing his time actually looking through an old refractor telescope, studying Callisto and another moon of the Great Planet, when Callisto just exploded before his eyes. He insists there was no collision with another body, such as an asteroid, he would have seen the approach. It just disintegrated in a flashing moment, as if a giant bomb had lain within it.

Michaels sent me over to the University of Chicago to talk to Professor Rosenfeld and the professor says there must have been an asteroid hidden behind the moon that the student, Sanji Chandrakhar missed. He says this is the biggest thing that's happened in our solar system since man has been here. Frankly, I can't see the drama in something that occurred almost 400 million miles away. Maybe because of Erica and what she's been through.

JANUARY 20, 2015

Keeping in touch with Rosenfeld, who has a line to Chandrakhar. That fellow can't give much more detail, but says it must have been a tremendous force that did what he observed. Rosenfeld says there are theories pouring in incessantly and most of them have to do with a core explosion in the deep center of Callisto, because of sub-atomic reactions going on there. The incident is off the headlines now, and news anchor Dave Edwards can talk about local politics again.

Rosenfeld says Callisto was a big moon, and an asteroid couldn't have split it like that. He thinks it would take an object the size of our moon, which would have been visible to Chandrakhar. So it had to be an internal explosion. The explosion was so violent that it made waves in the nearby Valhalla Rings and Rosenfeld seemed impressed by this.

Erica said she will be glad when people quit talking about it. I agree.

FEBRUARY 7, 2015

It seems we can't get past the Callisto Enigma, as it's now called. A graduate student at M.I.T., Joshua Settle has now spent many hours studying the Chandrakhar photographs and has come up with a rather far-fetched theory. He says there is no reason to believe that Callisto's core was unstable, and that Callisto must have been struck by an object with the mass of our own moon, as Professor Rosenfeld theorized. Get this. He thinks a primordial black hole with a diameter of 1/5000 pf an inch would fill the requirement! 1/5000 of an inch! A microscopic object undetectable even in a lab  destroyed a celestial object the size of Callisto? The idea sounds ridiculous to a layman. Even some scientists are shaking their heads. Professor Rosenfeld says there is no proof at all for the existence of primordial black holes, which supposedly have been here since the Big Bang. Nevertheless Michaels let anchor Edwards run it as a feature on the six o'clock news.

FEBRUARY 15, 2015

Erica has lost interest in sex. She even hinted that she would prefer twin beds. Her psychologist friend Linda St. John took her to lunch yesterday and told her this is normal, and that things will change. I'm not sure Erica wants them to change. She surprised me with a visit today at the station, but I had to shunt her off because of an AP release that had just come in. This kid Settle at M.I.T. (he's a sixteen year old genius) has now done some math and says he's calculated the speed and trajectory of that fantasy black hole. The AP didn't give much detail obviously becaue they had little interest. No reporters actually interviewed him. Producer Michaels, who is apparently the only person in the world who gives any credence to this kid's theories, asked me to call Settle and try for details. I finally got him at 7:00 p.m. and he was in a state. He had more data than when the AP contacted him, and was wildly excited. Using information from disturbances behind Callisto just before the explosion, Settle says he estimates his black hole to be traveling at about 100,000 miles an hour. And get this, diary. His nasty little object is headed in the general direction of Earth! And Chicago's own Jason Detwiler heard it first! Bizarre!

May 30, 2015

Well, all the hoopla surrounding the report from Massachusettes has gradually died down now. I tried to dissuade Michaels from running the piece but I think he really believes Settle. After we aired the piece, it was picked up by other networks and papers all over the country. The stock market took a wild ride and our phones were ringing off the hooks, with people wanting more information. The president had to go on TV and tell the public there is nothing to worry about. A Colonel Avery Suggs from the Illinois National Guard paid me a personal visit to ask what I knew about Joshua Settle.

Anyway, things are back to normal now, and nobody is talking about Callisto or Settle's Black Hole. They have been crowded off front pages by rebellious rumblings in Iran, and by the recent exploits of Hollywood celebrities.

Surprisingly, and despite my assurances, Erica won't quit talking about it. She wants to know what would happen if we were hit by a tiny black hole. Her friend Linda is no help, reminding Erica of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But oddly, Erica suddenly wants sex every night. Something about creating something beautiful in a world gone a little crazy. I finally broached Pittsburgh to her, and she looked like I slapped her in the face.

JUNE 18, 2015

Linda suggested Erica return to her OB-GYN, and the results came back today. Unbelievable! Erica is pregnant! After two years of trying. All of her labs were normal, and she is expected to have a normal pregnancy. We celebrated last night at a downtown restaurant. Waiters with green jackets. Silver fruit cups. The works. Erica is very happy, and she makes me happy. But things are dull again at WCN, and I'm back to running down facts on proposed hikes in school millage. I might find a reason to fly to Pittsburgh and see if the need is still there in the school district. I don't feel of any value to the people of Chicago or WCN. In the meantime, my job one is with Erica.

JULY 4,2015

My God. I don't know how I have the energy to write this. This must be the worst day in the history of the world. This day of celebration was interrupted at 2:05 p.m. with catastrophe. Erica, Linda and her fiance Mike, and I were down at the river to watch fireworks and parade, and just before the fireworks were to begin, the mayor got on the mike and made the announcement, gray-faced. Pittsburgh had just been completely destroyed in a nuclear-type explosion! Data was just coming in, but an airline pilot in the area said there was a hole in the earth two MILES wide, with a violent jet of flame erupting from it, ten miles high.

It was hard to get home in that frantic traffic, but Erica is quietly in bed now. Holding her belly. I had to check in at WCN for a while, but there was little I could do there tonight. Five minutes after the destruction of Pittburgh, a town on the exact opposite side of the globe exploded in the same way. Kalgooriie, Australia. All life has been wiped out for about twenty-five miles around each city. That includes several other towns around each site. I have to quit now and go to bed.

JULY 6, 2015

I was able to go to work today, but driving through rubble wasn't easy. The Madrid Fault destroyed several downtown buildings. Water mains are broken, many are without electricity. Many homeless leaving the city. But Chicago was lucky. The planet has been shaken like a rag doll. Earthquakes are reported in Asia, Europe, everywhere and are continuing. Volcanic eruptions at old and recent sites. Multiple and recurrent tsunamis are inundating coastlines. New York is under water as well as Washington, Miami, San Francisco, London, Rio, Hong Kong, and many others. Millions are dead, other millions homeless. Refugee camps being set up everywhere. And maybe worst of all, the president's copter was hit by a recurrent gigantic wall of water just as it was taking off, and he has perished. Many Congressmen dead. Central authority has disappeared.

A few surviving scientists have gotten together and have given the Settle kid full credit for his black hole analysis. A tiny cosmic thunderbolt smaller than a microbe came from nowhere on Independence Day and caused an apocalypse no man could ever have predicted. It seared a two-mile-wide hole through the Earth from Pittsburgh to Kalgoorlie in less than five minutes. And becaue of all the commotion that caused here, we almost failed to notice that it grazed our moon as it passed on out of the solar system, knocking a chunk off the size of Mount Everest. That chunk is now believed to be spiralling inward toward an eventual hit here! Does it ever end? I'm so tired I can't write any more.

AUGUST 1, 2015

Erica was hysterical for a few days, and I had to ask Dr. Linda for a sedative. Now she has herself under control, and is demanding that we leave the city, as many others have done. I can't. Michaels needs me as he never has before. I'm running day and night, checking out hospitals, a camp set up in the park, and city hall. The  mayor has left, ostensibly to return. A few councilmen are running the city, but nothing gets done. They can't even clear the streets of rubble. Luckily our three-story condo withstood the quake, and we still have water but no electric. Erica had to drive three miles to find an open grocery store, and you can't buy anything perishable. It's just as hard to find a gas station open.                                                                                        

Poor Dave Edwards. He's been on camera day and night reporting every new bit of news from Out There. But there's nothing from New York, Washington, etc. The Internet is slowly eroding, and cell phones are useless. Relay stations are failing with recurrent tremors, and soon WCN will be reporting only to Chicago and vicinity. Late today militia arrived to control looting, but when I tried to get the governor on the phone, he wasn't available.

Erica says we must drive to Iowa and stay with her sister, we've been invited. They have a small farm there, and that rural area has been largely untouched so far. They also have a whole shed full of preserves, and wheat and com in bags. Erica says we have to go while there is still gasoline available. Tonight I made a big decision. I'm sending Erica to Iowa with a teen-age boy in our building.

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

Well, the station closed down today. Michaels had me running all over the city right up to the last minute, to report conditions to our remaining citizens. I feel as if I've served an important public service. WCN was one of the last TV networks still broadcasting. Few people had a working TV, anyway. When I came home to the condo, it was like visiting a mausoleum. But I did get a return note from Erica, via a pre-arranged courier. She is fine and her pregnancy is going well. They actually  have doctors out there, and they have told her she'll have a boy. I cried when I found out. At least my son will survive all this. Maybe be one of those who save his world.

She wants me to join her, of course, but she has no idea what has happened here. Our second car stopped running last week with nobody to repair it. And there is no gasoline, anyway. I could start walking, but that would be very dangerous. There are roving gangs, and there are no policemen now. The militia left last month, and there is essentially no civil authority here just as in about every city in the country. There is general chaos world-wide, in the places that survived that first trauma. Travelers report that New York is dry again, but it is a ghost town. Chrysler Building and U.N. empty of life. Wall Street gone. Broadway theaters a thing of the past. But it's the same everywhere. From Capetown to Shanghai to Panama City. Everybody who survived moved inland.

I just joined a block gang today. They are the only form of authority now. We compete with other gangs in foraging for food, which is already scarce. Much livestock was killed in the onslaught, and much more never got to market. A couple of meat lockers here kept their electric for a while, but now that meat is largely gone. We're told that we lost most of this year's crops but despite the present "nuclear winter" there will be growth next year. Now, we must find food in closed-down stores, empty apartments and houses, and held by other survivors. My block chief is the National Guard officer who interrogated me about Settle, and stayed on. He is a large black man and tough. That's important because we have to behave like soldiers in our competition with rival gangs.                                                                                             

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Most of us sacked out hungry tonight, and cold. Our HQ is in the basement of my condo, and we all live there. Houses and apartments abandoned unless used by a gang HQ. I took my blanket out under the stars tonight, and I write this in the light of our ragged moon and its string of fragments. Original report was wrong. The Mt. Everest chunk disintegrated and formed a ring of debris on either side of the moon, which makes an interesting night sky. Only a few smaller chunks will spiral in and crash later this year. About Pittsburgh. An arriving traveler says it's a moonscape now. The wide hole through the planet filled in with magma but there is still aboiling cauldron where Pittsburgh once stood.

Yesterday one of the gang stole this journal and was reading it out to several others. I had to fight him to get it back, that's why some pages are bent up. I'll hide it from now on. Women are in the minority in our gang, and men are beginning to use them whether they want it or not. I can't stop it. We've regressed a million years in eight months. Our newcomer said it's the same everywhere, in cities. I think my nose is broken from the fight.

APRIL 1, 2016

I suspect we all feel like April fools today. But even if we had believed Settle, what could we have done? We were out foraging together today and met the block gang from the South Lakeshore. They had caught and killed a German shepherd and were taking it back to HQ. Suggs ordered us into action, and it was fierce. Knives and clubs mostly, but one of them still had a gun with a few cartridges. Two of us were shot, a woman fatally. A second fatality from a stab wound. But four of them were down and probably dead when they finally ran, leaving the dog to us. We feasted on it tonight. A few days ago it was an alley cat and the meat wasn't nearly as good. Five of us froze in the cold weather, but it's quite warm at night now. I wish there were some way to join Erica in Iowa. She's probably dining on fried chicken and  biscuits.

JUNE 9, 2016

The dogs and cats are gone. Our ration now consists of canned and boxed foods when we can find them. We forage farther all the time. Today we really lucked out. Found a tiny store in a suburb five miles from our Oak Park HQ. The sign outside made it look like a variety store. We got canned vegetables, canned fruit, boxed cereal and crackers. Some miscellany. Our larder will be supplied again. It has to be guarded day and night from our own people. Our numbers are down, only 23 of us now. Some gangs are bigger and we have to avoid them.

JULY 14, 2016

The food is almost gone. I must weigh about what Erica used to. I saw my face in a mirror and it scared me. I hope my handwriting is still legible in this journal. A couple of gangs have broken up, members leaving the city. But that way is suicide. Chief Suggs says our only chance for survival is to stay together. I agree.

I really hate to write this. One of our gang, a young woman named Annie, fell from a third-story window today and died. Somebody suggested immediate burial, but Suggs intervened. He said we had an opportunity to put some much-needed food in our bellies. There was a vote, and the decision was made. Most of the tribe dined on her tonight. I abstained. I threw up later.                                                                                                

JULY 30, 2016

There is a rumor that South America fared better than some of the world, and that government survived down there in Brazil and Argentina. An Organization of Latin States has been formed with a joint army. They are planning expeditions to the U.S. and Europe to offer medical assistance and other help to survivors. This all comes from another traveler who says it came on a short-wave radio. I'll believe it when I see it. In the meantime I ventured out to the University campus yesterday (taking my life in my hands) and found Professor Rosenfeld there, alive but looking like a walking corpse. He has been doing calculations, and says a number of moon fragments will reach Earth soon in their death spiral, and might hit in our Midwest. He says maybe I should leave Chicago, it might be hit. When I left, I made a mental note of his location, to return later and scavenge the body! Seeing these words written, I can't believe them!

AUGUST 21, 2016

In the night sky I can see the moon-meteors now, and they are larger every night. If Rosenfeld is correct, they could be peppering us with house-size chunks of moonscape very shortly, and some could fall right here. Not enough power to cause a nuclear winter, maybe, but another lesser catastrophe.

The two travelers have boosted our tribe membership and made us stronger in an inter-tribal skirmish. (We call ourselves "tribes" now, instead of "gangs".) But with increased size our group is in desperate need for food. So warrior squads are sent out to seek battle with other tribes. When someone is killed in skirmish, victors carry home spoils. Of both sides. Recently even enemy wounded. For later slaughter. I'm so ashamed. Eating with the others now. I grab at the choice meat eagerly, like an animal. No longer trouble keeping it down. It gives life strength. All canned and boxed foods a luxury now. Guarded closely. Theft of food carries the death penalty. Then of course more meat for the tribe. God, what's happening to us? Can you come back from this? I don't see how.

So the question is answered. How far for survival? All the way. A full descent into Hell. I should have struck out for Iowa when strong enough.

Used to be talk of outside help, but not now. This is it.

I hate myself desperately.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2016

Our foraging unit found Rosenfeld dead on campus. Brought corpse back here.

I felt faint when I saw him. Earlier today they stripped him down, put him on spit for slow roasting. I lost it, yanked pole off spit, Big Jim attacked me. Deep knife wound under floating ribs. A woman wrapped it for me, but they know. They will be hungry again by then. I'm watched anxiously. In a lot of pain, weak and nauseous. But haven't blacked out. Unsettling to see them waiting.

But I know something they don't, because of Rosenfeld. Love the irony. I saw moon chunks last night, and tonight they will be here. A few dozen, house-size. Will rain fiery Hell onto Illinois and probably Chicago. I ask one thing. Let this nest of evil things be struck and obliterated. Much pain now, writing very difficult. Hope it's all legible. If they hit tonight, this will be last entry. I hope so. If it is, goodbye Erica my  love. Goodbye, my new son. Glad you never saw me like this. If you survive, make a better world for us. Make Earth a better planet.

I'm outside, watching sky. Almost passed out, but will make it. Hard to see, no moon tonight. There! Eastern horizon. Bright balls of fire in low sky. Growing larger. Down in basement, Rosenfeld still being consumed, tonight. Bastards! Don't think about it.

Holy Jesus! I have to get this down. The sky is literally on fire! It's happening!

May God have mercy on our souls.

How did he say it? Goodnight and good luck. Jason Detwiler. ****** DSS

 

Ralph Hayes, 86, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is an attorney and author of several works.  He says the science that underlies this sci-fi story is fact! 

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Melanie Doweiko: Love Me Tender

"Love me tender..."

Skip

"Love me tender... "

Skip

"Love me tender... "

Skip

The record skipped over and over.

She lay on the couch with her arm over her eyes. That was all she had left: the couch, a few bucks to her name, and a crappy, skipping record.

She'd lost everything in the divorce, while her husband... ex-husband... was living it up.

She hated him. She hated him so much. She hated that he'd taken it all. She hated all the crap he'd put her though. She hated that he'd made her love him. She hated that she loved him still. So angry, so heartbroken, still so in love. She wanted to tear her hair out, to destroy something, to do something.

But she didn't. She just lay there, with her arm over her eyes, listening to the skipping record.

"Love me tender... "

Skip.

"Love me tender... "

Skip.

"Love me tender... "

Skip.

Drowning. She was drowning in such strong emotions. All connected to one person. Her husba... ex-husband.

She needed to clear her head and breathe in sweet normalcy, but as long as she know that her hus... ex-husband was still around her mind would never rest.

At that moment, between the seventieth "Love me tender... " her mind skipped with the record. She stood up and walked towards the door, knocking the record player over as she went, her mind gyrating in time with Elvis's hips.

 

His doorbell rang. Standing on the threshold was his ex-wife.

"Jane? What are you doing here?"

"You have something of mine, is all." She smiled, detached from the situation, and walked without invitation.

"Jane, go home. You don't live here anymore. And you have all your stuff."

"Not all, Honey." She made her way to the kitchen.

"Stop calling me Honey. We're not married anymore." He followed her in.

"I know, Honey." She found the biggest knife in the set. Smiling at her refection in it, she remembered all he good times she had had with that knife. All the Christmas,  Thanksgiving, everyday dinners she had prepared. All gone now. Nothing but a faded smell of cooking food and a bit of dried meat on the blade. She turned to her hu... ex-husband.

"Now time to take what's mine." She moved forward and he backed up. Against the wall now, with a few dried flakes of her blood still on it fro the time he'd driven her there.

"Jane. Put the knife down. Right now." He was stern, warning her. But she would not be warded off. Not now. Not after he'd loved her so tender that she felt like a well-prepared slab of meat. Not after he'd left her a cold-cut in the freezer to rot away while he tenderized some new, juicy slab.

"What do you mean, honey? I'm only here for what's mine. Remember your promise?"

Quicker than he had thought her capable of, she plunged the knife into his chest just as easily as she had the Thanksgiving turkey. He was louder than the turkey, that much was certain.

"You promised me your heart."

She twisted the knife and carved over to the left side of his chest. Cutting and cutting. Deeper and deeper. He was drowning now, choking on the very liquid meant to keep him alive. All over his nice shirt, all over his nice walls, all over his nice ex-wife.

She plunged her hand in and pulled out her possession. It gave one last feeble beat before falling still forever. She held it close to her chest.

"Forever and ever." He slid to the floor, falling still as his heart, the blood pooling like the juice from the meat she'd cooked him night after night. He made a very handsome turkey, if she did say so herself.

She walked past her ex-husband and out his door.

"Love me tender,

Love me long,

Take me to your heart.

For it's there that I belong,

And we'll never part." DSS

(Song from Elvis Presley)

 

Melanie Doweiko, 19, of Evergreen Park, Ilinois, is a student at Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in creative writing. 

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Dave Seaman: Eugene

“I’ve been up for about ten minutes,” Juan said.

Two guards stood outside of the bars of Eugene and Juan’s cell. One of the guards was an older grey haired man, the other a much younger and overweight man. “I woke up and he was like that,” Juan added.

“He was released from psych too early,” the older guard said.

Eugene entered prison under a suicide watch and spent the first month of his incarceration on the eighth floor mental ward. He suffered from clinical depression, but he could be functional. It took him the entire month to persuade the psych ward staff that he was not going to hurt himself and he was ready to be put into general population.

“He shouldn’t have been allowed to have access to shoe laces,” said the fat guard.

In the back, by the window that looked out over the exercise yard, a dark figure was mostly hidden in the shadow of the corner. Beneath the darkness where a little light shown, a pair of feet with white athletic socks could be seen suspended in the air as if Eugene were levitating inside of the cell. Outside the window, lightening flashed. The sound of rain pouring onto the roof could be heard from just above. 

Eugene was convicted on vehicular manslaughter charges and sentenced to life for killing a woman and her eight year old daughter. He was high on weed and had three beers, so he drove off.

About ninety days later he was caught at a traffic stop where a warrant showed up under his name on the police database. The name Eugene flashed on the computer screen in the arresting officer’s patrol car; manslaughter, leaving the scene of a crime, possible DUI.

“Looks like he tied himself off on the air vent,” said the fat guard.

“Ten minutes you say?” asked the older guard.

“He twitches a little once in a while,” Juan stated in a matter of fact manner. “Sometimes one of his legs kicks.”

Juan was a young man facing ten years for meth transportation. It would have been a lesser sentence for a man who didn’t take half of the Phoenix police force on a wild car chase from the city streets to the high desert where his radiator overheated and the engine block cracked.

Juan was leaning his arms on the bars of his cell door. His dark eyes looked from the fat guard to the old guard. He met eyes with both of them. He was keeping quiet even though he wanted to scream out about how creeped he was being in this room with this half dead man kicking in the dark.

Some specters leave the body well before the death of their host, like a cold vapor escaping into the wind.

One pass about the scene. Two prison guards outside of the cell.

Juan waited patiently to be taken out, not caring where. They could put him out in the rain for all he cared. Just so he was out and away from Eugene.

Another cold sweep around the group; the old man with the grey hair is afraid. It shows in his eyes. Probably Juan and the fat guy saw this too. The fat guy,  just wanted to get out of there.  And the cold vapor finally escapes into the storm.

The lightning flash caused a strobe-like effect in Juan and Eugene’s cell. A violent light invaded the cell like pyrotechnics during a rock concert. The light flashed across the bloated face of the hanging man. Eugene’s closed eyes could be seen during the flashes.

“Want me to report this?” the fat guard asked, his hand on the shortwave device attached at his belt.

“Shit,” the old guard said. “Don’t call it in yet,” he answered.

“Why not?”

“Cause he is probably still alive. If we open the cell we can tell for sure. Check for a pulse. If he is alive they will want us to cut Eugene down. I’ve seen this before.”

“So…” prodded the fat guard.

“If he isn’t dead yet, his brain is fucked for sure. He will live his life a vegetable on the medical ward. People bitch about the price of keeping inmates housed now. If only they knew the cost to keep a vegetable alive.

“Anyways, it wasn’t an accident. He wanted to die. He basically strangled himself. The air has been cut off to the brain for at least ten minutes now.”

The fat guard stayed his hand as he pondered this, his fingers resting on the shortwave attached to his belt, a quizzical look on his face.

“Besides, Juan here wants to get the hell out of that cell,” the old guard explained. “Let’s get him cuffed and out of there.”

“He was a nice guy,” Juan explained as they walked down the hallway to the holding cell. “Not much of a talker though.”

The door to Juan and Eugene’s cell stood open. The wind from the storm could be heard coming from the window. It was strong enough to blow some of the rain water through the seals of the window. A thin stream was pooling up on the floor in the light just beneath Eugene’s stocking feet.

The lightning flashed and filled the room with light. Eugene’s big toe on the right foot twitched. The body, struggling to stay alive, kicked at death furiously. Eugene was losing more specters to the storm. His body wished to breathe one more breath. The body rebeled against dying and struggled to the last second. Eugene’s right foot kicked for one last time, alone in the dark. DSS

 

David Seaman, 51, of Peoria, Illinois. has been a machinist and worked with the disabled. He is now attenting college to obtain an English degree. 

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Gordon Petry: But Not For Me

"They're writing songs of love ... but not for me--"

"Mother, sit down. You're making a spectacle of yourself."

"Let her be, Jeanie. She's having fun."

"A lucky star's above ..."

"You're the star, Mom."

"but not for me."

"Peter, don't encourage her. You're as bad as she is, worse, because you know better."

"So she's singing and dancing, what do you want her do, sit quietly and be a priss like you?"

"I don't want to ruin mother's day, but I'm warning you, Peter."

I've got a little boy named Petey or I had a little boy named Petey.

"Oh, I'm scared, Jeanie."

Those two, I wish they'd quick bickering. I'm forgetting my song. They could argue somewhere else. "Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly."

"You remember all the words to those old songs, Mom. It's wonderful. I don't know how you do it."

"That's all she remembers."

"Don't be such a bitch."

"Don't be such a suck up. She won't remember two minutes from now anyhow."

"My God, it's all she's got left. Except for us, everyone she knew is dead. How'd you like that? Don't begrudge her her songs."

"They're writing songs of love ... but not for me. Will you dance with me?"

"Sure, Mom."

"A lucky star's above ... but not for me. With love to guide the way, I'll find more skies of gray. Lah da di da di da... lah da di dum. You're a very good dancer."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Do you come here often? You look familiar."

"I try to come as often as I can."

"I knew you'd be a good dancer the minute I laid eyes on you."

"I had a good teacher ... you."

"I taught you to dance?"

"Remember, it was the Lincoln Junior High Social. I had a date with Judy Julkowski."

"You already have a girlfriend? You shouldn't be dancing with me."

"That was years ago, Mom."

"Maybe I'll steal you away from her. I shouldn't tell you this, but you're very good looking. I'm surprised some girl hasn't snatched you up."

"Mom, I've been married and divorced twice."

"Yeah, little Peter can't keep a girl to save his life."

"Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her. Put her her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well. I had a little boy named Peter."

"That was me, Mom. I'm all grown up now. Remember? And there's Jeanie. We came to see you."

"She looks familiar. Very pretty. Is she your wife?"

"No, no, she's my sister ... your daughter."

"Hello, mother, how are you?

"Oh, I'm fine, dear..."

"You look great, Mom, with that big smile."

"I've got a smile on my face, for the whole human race. Just singing and dancing in the rain."

"Gene Kelly's got nothing on you. Isn't she great, Jeanie?"

"Certainly the center of attention."

"Jeanie? I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair ..."

"Jeanie's had her hair about any color you can imagine."

"She's very pretty. Stand over next to her. You know, you two make a very cute couple. You ought to get married."

"No, Mother--"

"If you're not interested, you're a fool. I might steal him away for myself."

"Jeanie's your daughter, and I'm your son."

"We came to visit you, Mother."

"You did! How nice."

It was a very nice visit, but now we have to go, don't we, Peter."

"Oh, but you just got here."

"No, Mom, don't you remember? We had supper with you and had a little birthday party for you."

"Is it my birthday?"

"Well, not till next Wednesday."

"Happy birthday to me--"

"Neither of us could make it then, so we celebrated early. Jeanie baked some cupcakes and put candles on them and you blew them out."

"I did? How many candles?"

"There were six, Mother, and you blew them out on your first try."

"Six? I'm older than six." 

"Well, we couldn't risk a fire, Mom."

"A fire! Oh, you scamp."

"And Jeanie knitted that beautiful sweater for you. It looks like it will keep you nice and warm."

"Oh, I love it. It'll be my favorite."

"And Peter bought you some CD's, Big Band Favorites and Mitch Miller."

"How nice. Thank you both so much."

"No, Mother. Thank you, but now we've got to leave."

"But you just got here."

"I think it's time for Lawrence Welk, Mom."

"Oh, why didn't you say so?"

"Peter and I will watch a little while with you."

"That would be nice." That Lawrence Welk never seems to grow a day older and that wonderful music. They don't write songs like they used to. I can't sit still. That young couple is leaving. Those young folks just don't appreciate good music. It's just as well. I was afraid they'd talk during the show. Ooo, it's Myron Floren, what a dreamboat with that wavy hair. "Da da did dah did dah ... but not for me." DSS

Gordon Petry, 71, of Pekin, Ilinois, teaches English at Bradley University, and is also a singer and song writer, an actor and director.  He has climbed the Great Wall of China, and has had five plays produced. 

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Greg Jenkins: No Picnic

You have no inkling of how something as bizarre as this could’ve happened, but obviously it did. 

Somehow—without warning, without explanation—you’ve been catapulted back into the 1950s.  What’s more, you’re in Kansas.  What’s even more, it’s not the Kansas of the real world, but rather the Kansas of the movie Picnic.  

Gradually you’ve come to accept that the laws of physics and metaphysics have been shredded, and that to your astonishment you’re now a supporting character in Joshua Logan’s film adaptation of William Inge’s award-winning play.

Well, you must’ve gone bonkers, is what it comes down to.  In your actual, sublunary life, you were in the process of being crushed under an avalanche of stress.

Your boss, who hated your guts, was threatening to ax you.  Your wife, who was running around with your boss, was likewise threatening to come after you with an ax.  World events seemed crafted specifically for the purpose of unmanning you; turn on the news and you’d burst into a heavy, automatic sweat.  And just yesterday your next-door neighbors, the Tussles, called the cops on you for blasting their eardrums with your country music.  Problem was, you weren’t playing music, country or otherwise; no music was being played.  The Tussles have issues of their own.

So maybe the pressure, both outside and in, had risen to such a level—this is just a theory—it had escalated to such a terrifying intensity that, in combination with your naïve vision of Kansas as a peaceful and faraway place where one could live unburdened by worries or angst—

But you don’t have time for theories now since at this moment, in Picnic, difficulties are adding up on you in a way that makes you feel more harried and brittle than ever.

And it’s all because of young Hal Carter, who, with his absurd tall tales and his boyish grin and his tanned, wide-shouldered masculinity, blew into this drowsy little town like a sweaty tornado, stirring things up, twisting, turning, uprooting. . . .  It’s liberating, you guess, but it’s also scary as hell, and it makes you want to reach for your bottle of whiskey, which of course you do, not that it seems to be bringing you much relief.  Have you ever labored through a Labor Day half as unsettling as this one?

Your name is Howard, and you run some rinky-dink store across the river in Cherryvale, and you like to rub up against your steady date Rosemary, and you’re a pretty decent guy, but now people are looking at you in an odd way—some of them are genuinely pissed at you—and you find yourself questioning your own values and behavior.

You’ve been making eyes at the Owens girl, Madge, who looks a lot like Kim Novak—but she’s only nineteen, for Godsake.  And her kid sister Millie—just sixteen!—has gotten herself soused on your booze.  It wasn’t your fault; people understand that, or at least you hope they do, but even so.  Still more disturbing is Rosemary, who now insists that you marry her, and not just any old time but first thing in the morning, if you can believe that. 

And she doesn’t look like Kim Novak, no, not even close.  Frankly, you don’t want to marry anybody, certainly not Rosemary, yet you’ve got this fluttery, tremulous feeling that it’s going to happen anyway, and it’s all Hal Carter’s fault.

So you’re sitting there in your pinched little bachelor’s apartment, and you’re eying up the whiskey bottle with the same thirsty stare you’ve directed at sultry Madge, and you’re mumbling unhappily to yourself when suddenly the quiet is obliterated by a violent buzzing noise—like the unwelcome sound of bees at a picnic. 

It’s late at night, but someone’s leaning on your door buzzer, and you can guess who the hell it is long before you lay your weary, bloodshot eyes on his handsome but desperate kisser.

Your visitor is Hal Carter, played by Big Bill Holden—who’s a handful in his own right.  Like Holden, Hal is a lot brawnier and sexier and tougher and ornerier than you are or could ever hope to be.

It’s against your better judgment (like most things these days), but you let him come in, and he’s soaking wet from plunging into the river, and bloody—oh God, he’s on the lam from the cops, something about a stolen car!—and all torn up emotionally from his intimate but much-too-brief encounter with Madge, who until today had been going steady with Alan Benson, the rich kid.

In this regard, Hal has easily accomplished what you’ve only dreamed of, he’s plundered the princess, but he isn’t pleased with himself or even content, far from it.  If anything, he’s more miserable than you are.

Naturally, you’re tempted to give him a piece of whatever’s left of your mind, but instead, being a softhearted putz, you take pity on him.  He is what he is, you suppose.  He meant no harm, any more than you did.

“What we need is a drink,” you tell him, and you pour out a couple of stiff ones, neat.  “You got your troubles, and I got mine.”

And as you sit there gripping your glass, communing with Hal—or trying to; he’s not listening—it comes to you that it doesn’t matter who you are, or where you are, or even when you are; life is a test.

It’s got a series of questions for you; it means to find out some things about you, by God, and not always in the warmest, gentlest manner.

So you lift your glass, tilt it to your mustached mouth and tell yourself with real conviction: It’s a test, is what it is. 

It sure ain't no picnic. DSS

 

 Greg Jenkins, 61, of Luke, Maryland, is an English professor who has had three books published, and fiction in journals such as Weird Tales and Prairie Schooner. He is the author of Stanley Kubrick and the Art of Adaptation.

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Adam Middleton-Watts: For Reasons Unknown (A Sudden Madness)

I couldn’t believe I had done it. We had been apart for nearly a year at that time, what was the point? Why had I made the call?

Thinking back on it now, seeing you out there on the deck, sitting in that rocking chair, I still have no idea.

All the wine we drank that weekend. I remember the night air being cool and hearing the waves lapping at the shore. I always loved the sound of the water drifting back down between the large, round stones; each small wave folding ashore and being reclaimed again.

The summer home belonged to your family and we had been there several times before, back when we were a couple, back when there was talk of marriage. When I called and suggested we spend a weekend there again (for what? old time’s sake?) you paused for the briefest moment before saying yes.

I asked that you not tell your family it was my idea, or that I’d even be there. You said it was fine, it was none of their business anyway. You had the house two weeks of the year, every year, you said. You could do what you wanted with it. It’s only for the weekend anyway, you said. Isn’t that right? They won’t know a thing about it, you said.

In the time we had been apart I had tried many things. I had moved into a small one bedroom apartment. I was seeing a woman from work, a divorced mother of two; a collector of Russian nesting dolls, an avid reader of historical fiction.

Things were going well between us, her young children liked me. She liked me. In bed her limbs were smooth and supple. She would rub herself against me to get warm. She would come quickly and often, her eyelids fluttering like tiny wings each time. She always slept on her stomach with her face turned to the wall, her dark hair curved down the length of her back like a snake. She soon began using the word love.

I remember handing you the glass of white wine, the screen door clapping closed behind me. You smiled when you took it.

On our first night that weekend we slept apart. It was warm and I went out on the deck with a sleeping bag and a book of poems by Philip Larkin. You stayed inside in the guest room.

During the night I awoke and went to your room. You were sleeping on your side, the covers having slipped down, your broad swimmer’s back exposed. I felt invasive after a while and went back down to the deck where I finally slept.

The following morning we ate a light breakfast then walked along the stony beach. We talked about many things, but not about why we were here. We skirted around the subject of other partners. We said nothing about our families.

In the afternoon we swam. At some point something large and pale brushed against my leg and I thought of sharks and of drifting jellyfish. I moved to catch up with you, you were always the stronger swimmer. You laughed at my fears and kissed me on the nose.

Later we made love on the sandy part of the beach, under the cover of large, rough towels. We slept together that second night and the following day hiked for miles along the empty coast.

We picnicked at the opening of a small cave. After a meal of cheese sandwiches and wine, we crawled a hundred yards or so down into the maw of the cave, before it became too shallow for us to stand and we had to turn around.

The wine was sweet, I remember. And there was so much of it. Stars wavered in the clear night air. We had done little with our last day there. You spent much of it on the beach, reading and resting. I borrowed the old kayak that was stashed beneath the house and paddled out into flat, gray water. At one point I looked to shore and you were nothing but a tiny dot of color. You could have been a stone or some bather’s forgotten item.

That last night on the deck you rubbed your foot along my leg. Jellyfish, you said, and laughed. You were already drunk and I recall feeling terribly confused. I was thinking of my woman with her dolls and children. I was thinking of the heart’s impulsivity and of its cruelty. I was thinking of what you may be thinking.

I drank the wine quickly. This is good, you said. This is nice. I’m glad we did this, you said. I’m glad you called. I remember something shifting inside me then, something turning. I became so unsure.

We drank three more bottles that night. And at some point you went inside to make a phone call. When you returned your mood had changed. It had darkened. I thought about the someone in your life, the someone I didn’t know. The someone I had no interest in knowing. I’m glad we did this, you said again. I’m glad we came.

Later we reached for each other again, though words were stifled and the ones released, quickly lost meaning. We thrashed our bodies into a state of near nothingness. But there was no great challenge to it, no victorious chant. The pleasure I felt was merely a normal, constant thing, like the motion of the sea, like the strange life living in its dark depths.

God, you said that night, as you hooked your heels around mine, good god, yes. Your wet hair gathered in my hands. The bright sheen on our aging flesh. I see it again now. Clearly. Kisses on your cheeks and at the corners of your soft mouth. The moon squatting fat in the window’s narrow frame, clear as an honest confession.   

I awoke to whale song our last day there. No, that’s not right. That is only as I remember it now, as I wished it could have been. I know I awoke instead to a soft, quiet brightness, and to the compartmentalizing of our time there together.

How would we be from this point on? Where would the significance lie? What good could we possibly take from it? I remember leaving you asleep on your side, an arm folded beneath your head, and going quietly downstairs.

I wanted to know if you were happy. I wanted to know with certainty if you were content. But I remember doubting I would ever know such things.

I made coffee and drank a beer while it brewed. The ocean thrived beneath the morning sun and a strong wind. I remember there were three text messages on my phone. I checked yours, there were four. I knew I gave a little thought to that back then, but only a little. I sat in the kitchen with the pleasant smell of coffee, beer bottle in hand, I thought of you and of our many mistakes.

I’m made to remember this now, though it happened nearly six months ago and we have not seen each other since, because you have just this minute called.

And your voice, though still known to me, of course, came to my ear as a series of brand new sounds. It came as the sound of waves breaking, of wind moving through the mouth of a small cave. It was the soft sound of the bright moon’s lament, if only such a sound could be heard.

And in that amalgamation of inhuman sound, buried deep within some lightless, undisturbed depth, there were clear words to conjure dark associations, to make me question again the fallibility of remembrance: we could make this work, the words said. DSS

 

 Adam Middleton-Watts, 49, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, whose pen name is F.X. James, has been a tour guide, tobacco picker, bus driver, actor and fruit picker. He was born and raised in England, has back packed around the world, and loves blues music.     

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