SHORT STORIES
"Sparrow on the White Space," Gravel Literary Review
Timothy leaned over to his little sister, cupped his hand around his mouth so his mother couldn’t hear and said: “There’s a sparrow living in our cupboard.” Molly’s face lit up as it always did when she heard something extraordinary (that was her new favorite word, extraordinary; she never heard any other nine-year-olds use it, and her grandmother Nan always said a good vocabulary was the most basic form of intelligence—to which Molly replied, ‘I concur!’), but then her eyes dimmed and narrowed. “I don’t believe you,” she said. She didn’t believe him at all, because he was always making things up. He had an ‘overactive imagination,’ their grandma used to say. Across the table, Mother set down her fork with a rigid clink and said, “Are you telling lies again?” She talked like it was hard to form words. It’s how she always talked. Molly sometimes wondered if the gears that made her Mother work were tired or needed to be polished, because everything about her seemed an enormous effort, like her body operated under invisible weights. “You remember what the counselor said, right?” And then, even though everyone knew what the counselor said, she spelled it out for them once again: “It’s your defense mechanism ever since Nan died. It’s not healthy. It’s like you’re trying to escape reality.” She picked up her wide glass of wine and took a sip. Molly tried not to scrunch her nose. She’d secretly tasted her mother’s wine once and it was repulsive. “Nan said there’s no harm in having an overactive imagination,” Timothy said. He shoved a spoonful of food in his mouth. “Nan dropped dead at fifty-three,” Mother said. “She didn’t always know what she was talking about.” The air around them swelled and thickened. Molly and Timothy sat still and silent, the way they always did when their Mother said too much. The gears inside Molly’s chest pushed on—heavy, taut and weighted. These were the times she missed Nan most. Nan would have served pork roast, corn, peas and mashed potatoes. Nan would have told them a story about how she fell off a fishing pier when she was twenty-three, or how she once met Tippi Hedren at the airport. Molly didn’t even know who Tippi Hedren was, but she liked the name. It sounded like the name of a bird that could fly away whenever it wanted. “No one likes a liar. Even one that’s twelve years old,” Mother continued, not looking up from her plate. “That’s why you don’t have any friends.” Timothy stared at his fork; his mother pushed back her chair. The grind of its legs against the wood floor was the loudest sound in the universe. After she left, they sat there, side-by-side, smothered by the openness of the room. Finally, Molly said, “What does the sparrow look like? Will you draw it for me?” She loved to watch Timothy draw because she knew he was good at it. He liked to listen to her sing for the same reason. They were the only ones who knew each other’s talents, but one day—someday, they vowed—everyone would know. “Yes,” Timothy said. Then he took a discarded pamphlet from the corner of the table, pulled a charcoal pencil from his pocket, and drew a sparrow on the white space.
"The Iron Horse," Keyhole Literary Magazine
Nine-year-old Matthew Forrester knew his father mostly by sounds — the closing of the front door at ten o’clock was his father coming home from the railroad, long after dark, when Matthew had already been in bed for an hour. This was followed by the sound of his father’s work boots being shoved in the corner near the hat rack and the recliner squeaking under his hefty frame as he sat down to watch late-night television, only he never really watched it, because he always dozed off before the second set of commercials. Sometimes his daddy would take a shower, first thing. The sound of size-eleven feet walking against the hardwood floor would wake Matthew for a few minutes as the smell of dust and sweat brushed into his bedroom. Matthew would drift back to sleep with the smell still in the air—“the smell of hard work,” his father always said. When his father wasn’t working, he was sleeping. Deep, weary snores were another sound by which Matthew knew him. When his father slept clear through his ninth birthday party, Matthew walked up to his mother, who was flipping burgers on the grill in the backyard, and asked why his daddy slept so much. “Because he works so hard,” she said. “But he’ll be awake soon. He has presents for you.” She was right. His father woke up at seven o’clock that night and pulled a present from the closet—a set of camouflage pajamas, one size too small. Matthew wore them almost every night, even though the hem of the pants rode above his ankles and his best friend Robbie Baker said he looked silly. “I hope your dad buys you the right size for your next birthday ‘cause you look like a dork,” Robbie said. Matthew’s mother let Robbie spend the night once in a while, but they had to promise to be extra-quiet when Mr. Forrester was home. Usually they sat on the floor of Matthew’s room, playing Nintendo, Clue or Battleship. Right now, though, they were trading Pokemon cards. “When is it, anyway?” “When is what?” Matthew asked. He was staring at the cards on the floor, debating his next move. “Your birthday.” “February fifth.” “It’s already January.” “I know.” “Are you gonna have your birthday in the backyard again?Is your dad gonna rent those inflatable jumping things?” “Shh,” Matthew said. “I’m trying to think.” After the game, they went into the kitchen, where Mrs. Forrester was stirring a steaming pot of homemade macaroni and cheese. “Mrs. Forrester, is Matt’s dad gonna rent those inflatable jumping things for his birthday again?” Robbie asked. Mrs. Forrester shrugged and said, “We’ll see.” She said it quietly, because she and Matthew had both learned to speak in ways that wouldn’t bother Mr. Forrester when he was sleeping. * The Bakers’ house was anything but quiet. Robbie had two older brothers, a Labrador named Whip, and an orange cat named Oscar. Most of the noise in the Bakers’ house was because of Whip, who was brown, enormous, and playful. Whip jumped up on everyone, but he especially loved Mrs. Baker. “Down, Whip!” she would holler. Every time Whip jumped on her, she threw her hands in the air and bent her knees, trying to knock him to all fours. But Whip weighed more than she did, and he never got down until he was ready. “Down, Whip! Down!” When Whip finally got down, he would meander away until something else caught his attention – sometimes it’d be Oscar, but usually it’d be someone’s shoe, sock, or plate of food. When Matthew spent the night at the Bakers, he heard “Down, Whip!” “Get out, Whip!” and “No, Whip!” at least once every hour, in addition to two blaring televisions in two separate rooms. Mr. Baker himself was also loud, and he liked to horse around a lot; he called Robbie “shrimp” because he was small for his age, and he liked to pick him up by the waist and turn him upside down. If anyone at school ever made fun of Robbie for being small, he threatened to beat them up after school, but when his dad called him shrimp, he just laughed and said, “Whatever, Big-Bellied-Daddy.” Mr. Baker indeed had a big belly, but it wasn’t as big as Mr. Forrester’s. When Robbie chanted “Big-Bellied-Daddy,” Mr. Baker would stick his belly out even further and pretend like he was a zombie coming after Robbie, then Robbie would tear through the house screaming and laughing, “Save me from Big Belly! Save me from Big Belly!” The first time Matthew spent the night at Robbie’s, his mother asked if he had a good time. “Yes, but it sure is loud,” he said. Now, every time he came home from Robbie’s, Mrs. Forrester asked if it was still loud, and the answer was always yes, but in actuality, the Bakers’ house wasn’t loud all the time. At night, it was quiet. Matthew was quiet, too, every time he came back from the Bakers. “Why’re you so quiet?” his mother would ask, and Matthew would shrug. The truth was, when he’d get back from Robbie’s, he would spend half of the afternoon wondering what would happen if he called his father “Big-Bellied-Daddy.” Or if they had a big dog that jumped on the coffee table. There’s no way dad would get any sleep at the Bakers’, Matthew thought. * Union Pacific Railroad was one of the biggest employers in Okalousa, Louisiana, and Mr. Forrester had worked there since he was seventeen years old. Matthew’s grandfather and great-grandfather had also worked for the railroad — they all wore overalls, and came home late at night, and slept all the time after what his Paw Paw called “an honest day’s work.” When his Paw Paw retired, he always talked about his retirement fund and how he could “live the high life on UP’s dime,” but Matthew never saw him go anywhere or do anything. He died in his house, in the same bed where Matthew’s Granny had died, with all his money still in the bank. At the funeral, Matthew asked his father what the “high life” was, but his father only cried, and Matthew felt terrible that he’d asked. Because of so many honest days’ work at the railroad, the most important rule in the house was “do not disturb your father,” and Matthew had learned this the hard way. But there was one thing Mr. Forrester loved to talk about, and that was the railroad. Matthew discovered this by accident, when they were watching a television show together and one of the characters kept saying “locomotive” instead of “train.” “What’s a locomotive?” Matthew asked, and he braced himself for another of his father’s sounds—the loud sigh that indicated he was annoyed. But there was no sigh. “People sometimes say ‘locomotive’ instead of ‘train,’ but they ain’t the same thing,” Mr. Forrester said. “The locomotive is the motive power unit—that big thing up front.” “The thing that shoots up all the smoke?” “That’s a steam locomotive. But there’s other kinds. There’s diesel and electric, too. Some high-speed trains even have a locomotive in the back. They got locomotives for all different kinds of trains. You got a freight locomotive, a shunting locomotive, an express locomotive …” Matthew tried to think of another question about trains. “How much do trains weigh?” he asked. “A lot.” “What does Union Pacific mean?” “That’s the name of the company I work for.” “Do the Union Pacific trains go all the way to Texas?” “All the way to Texas? Hell! They go all the way up to Seattle!” “Where’s Seattle?” The chair squeaked and the floor shifted as his father got up, walked over to the bookcase, and pulled a dictionary from the third shelf. He sat next to Matthew and opened the dictionary to a color centerfold map of the United States. He pointed to Seattle. “See?” Mr. Forrester said. “The train goes all the way up there, where there’s mountains and snow.” “Wow,” Matthew said, and for one of the few times in his life so far, he heard his father chuckle. * Matthew’s tenth birthday party was indeed in the backyard again, and the Forresters rented an Inflatable Jumping Castle once again, and had grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and a chocolate cake with vanilla icing. And although Mr. Forrester made a brief appearance at the beginning of the party, he eventually disappeared to his bedroom and fell asleep for the rest. Matthew didn’t see his daddy again until early that evening, when he poked his head in the door, wearing his overalls and a John Deere cap. The John Deere cap meant that he was going somewhere. “Did you have a good birthday?” “Yes, sir,” Matthew said. He was wearing his camo pajamas and sitting cross-legged in the center of his room, surrounded by unwrapped gifts—board games, remote-control cars, action figures, Nintendo games. He didn’t know where to start. “You ready for your gift?” “Sure.” He hoped his father bought him something a little more exciting than too-small pajamas, but he wasn’t too worried because his father was wearing his cap, which meant they were leaving the house, which meant something interesting. “Get your shoes on, then,” he said, nodding to Matthew’s sneakers. Matthew immediately pulled on his tennis shoes and followed his dad out the door and into his truck. Mr. Forrester drove a pick-up that Matthew assumed was a million years old. Hills of cotton pushed out of different rips and snags on the bucket seats. There were old cigarette burns from the days when his father used to smoke, which Mrs. Forrester said was before Matthew was born. There was a cassette player and radio, neither of which worked. The truck smelled like an honest day’s work. As the truck rumbled to life, Matthew buckled up and looked anxiously at his father. “Where we going?” he asked. “The toy store.” “That’s where my gift is?” “I’m gonna let you pick whatever you want when we get there. As long as it’s not more than a’hundred dollars.” Matthew beamed. A hundred dollars sounded like enough to buy the entire store. What would he choose? He was silent the whole way to the store, thinking about what he could get. He made a mental list of all the DVDs and CDs he wanted, all the Nintendo games, all the Pokemon cards, all the electronic gadgets. Once the truck was parked, he darted out the door and ran into the store, slowing only when his father bellowed at him to pay attention to where he was going. Inside, the opportunities were endless. Aisles and aisles. Mr. Forrester followed him around the store, occasionally picking up something interesting to suggest. “How about this?” he said, to a toy shotgun, remote-control ATV, and set of Legos. Matthew dismissed them with a shake of his head and continued down the aisle. On aisle seven, his father found an Iron Horse Union Pacific Train Set and said, “How about this?” The set included a steam locomotive, tender car, tank car, two-bay hopper, steel door box car, eight-wheel caboose, 10-piece snap-in bridge and pier, oval train track, nineteen railroad signs, twenty-four road signs, twelve utility poles with transformers, call boxes and street lamps, a pair of extra couplers, and illustrated instructions. It cost eighty-four dollars. “When I was your age, I always wanted an electric train set,” Mr. Forrester said. “I would ask your Paw Paw if we could set one up in the extra bedroom, but we never did. If you get this, we can set it up in the sewing room and build on it every year, until we have a whole city.” “Really?” Matthew imagined what that would be like—setting up the train set with his father and watching it grow and grow. He thought of the train snaking through all the different terrains and making all the stops. “I could get a new section every year for my birthday?” “Sure. As long as you take care of this one.” They got to work immediately on setting up the train in the sewing room. They moved Mrs. Forrester’s sewing machine to the corner of the room and got a card table out of the garage. The table was wobbly, but they put the train set together on top of it anyway, because it was all they had for now. The train set wasn’t very big – just a single oval track – so it didn’t take long to set up. Once all the pieces were snapped together and Matthew had arranged all the signs where he wanted them, they turned it on and it went around and around, with the steam locomotive leading the way. Matthew played around with the controls, sending the train forward and in reverse, and making it stop at all the signs. Mr. Forrester pointed to different parts of the train, telling him what they were. When he was finished, he stood back with his arms folded. “Don’t look like much now, since it’s just one track, but pretty soon we could have this whole room full,” he said. When Matthew stopped the train at one of the signs, he grabbed the edge of the card table and shook it gently. “This table ain’t very steady, but it’ll do for now. I’ll get something better. Just be careful for the time being.” They stood there for a long time, watching the train go in circles—Mr. Forrester, in his railroad overalls, and his son, wearing pajamas one size too small. * That night, Mr. Forrester did something he had never done before. He put Matthew to bed. “We had a good run tonight, conductor,” Mr. Forrester said. The next day, while his father was at work, Matthew played with the train set. It didn’t do much but go around and around, but he tried to imagine how the room would look when they had their Union Pacific city. That night, Matthew heard the door close at ten o’clock. He heard his father’s work boots being shoved into the corner. He heard heavy footsteps in the hall. Then he heard something odd: The door to the sewing room creaked open and the light switch clicked on and off. A minute later, his bedroom door opened. His father stuck his head inside. “Did we have a good run tonight, conductor?” he asked. “Yes, sir.” Every night that week, Matthew learned the new sounds of his father—the footsteps, the creak of the sewing room, the light switch, the bedroom door. “Did we have a good run tonight, conductor?” his dad asked every night, and every night, Matthew answered, “Yes, sir.” * When Robbie came over, Matthew showed him the train set. “Awesome!” Robbie said, and he immediately took the controls and did the same thing Matthew had done seven days before—he made the train go forward, backward and stop. They stood there, watching the Iron Horse turn in circles. “You know how your dad calls you ‘shrimp’?” Matthew said. “Yeah.” “My dad calls me ‘conductor.’” “Cool.” The Iron Horse eventually got boring, so Robbie announced, “Quittin’ time, boys!” and they left to play Pokemon and eat sandwiches. After a while, they decided to check on the Iron Horse again. Robbie hogged the controls, but Matthew didn’t mind. He named Robbie “second conductor on-call,” then said that as first conductor, he was going to take a break, which meant he was going to the kitchen to drink a glass of lemonade. His mother was sitting at the dining room table, reading the newspaper, as he poured the drinks. “What are ya’ll doing?” she asked. “Playing with the train set.” He gulped down his lemonade. “Robbie’s mom called to say she was on her way, so tell him to get his shoes on.” Matthew said okay and went back to the sewing room, but when he opened the door and saw the card table, he forgot all about Robbie’s shoes. A chunk of the track was missing and part of the Iron Horse was hanging off the side of the table. At first Robbie was nowhere to be found, but then Matthew saw him on the floor, hunched over the locomotive and second car, which were both cracked. The chimney of the locomotive had broken off and lay nearby. Robbie looked up. “There’s an emergency, conductor.” But Matthew didn’t say anything. Instead he stared at the broken chimney, the cracked cars, and the snapped track. “I’m sorry, Matt,” Robbie said. “I was rearranging the stop signs. The table is too wobbly.” Somewhere in the background, Matthew heard his mother calling Robbie’s name. Robbie apologized one more time, said he would help him fix it tomorrow, then grabbed his sneakers and left. Matthew pushed the tears away with the heels of his hands, then picked up the damaged Iron Horse. He did his best to put the pieces back together. His mother came in and told him not to worry. “Tomorrow I’ll get some glue and we’ll fix it,” she said, and she kissed his forehead. “It’ll be okay.” That night, Matthew lay in bed and waited for the sound of the front door closing. He heard it at the same time as he always did, along with the sound of work boots being shoved in the corner and heavy footsteps in the hallway. He heard the creak of the sewing room and the click of the light switch. A long time passed before Matthew heard the light turn off. Matthew turned on his side and pulled the covers over his shoulders. His father’s heavy footsteps passed by his bedroom door. When Matthew heard the squeak of the recliner, he wept.
"Initiation on Farm Road 187," Unpublished
TW: homophobic slur
When eleven-year-old Wyatt Mullins heard that there was a dog tied to a back porch on Farm Road 187, he’d pictured a Pitt Bull. A Rottweiler, maybe. Jagged teeth dripping with saliva with a deep, hungry growl and the gait of a prize fighter. He didn’t expect Elon. Wyatt walked several paces behind Brett Lansing and Lee Addison and wouldn’t have seen the dog if Brett hadn’t clapped his hands to wake it up. That’s when Wyatt saw the ears perk up above the uncut grass. The dog didn’t bark, but tried to reach Brett’s clapping hands by running forward, only to be stopped by a leash tied to a shaky wooden column. When he got closer, Wyatt saw that the leash was frayed and worn from being rubbed back and forth so much. The three boys surrounded the dog like kings at council with the dog in the center. The beagle watched them – friendly, yet suspicious. He stopped every few seconds to scratch behind his ear in a spot that had long since lost its skin. Each time it scratched, its rib cage flexed through a thin layer of white skin and Wyatt held his breath. The house that had him tethered looked like it hadn’t been lived in for ages. The foundation leaned to the side, ready to topple, and faint peelings of paint fluttered off the wood. The back porch missed every other board. “Ready to start initiation?” Brett asked. He lifted his chin toward the dog. “What do you mean?” Wyatt asked. “You have to go through initiation first. That’s the rules.” Brett raised his eyebrows. “Why, you scared?” “No,” Wyatt said. He laughed. Nothing was funny – nothing at all – but Brett and Lee were the bad-asses of Dirtbound Junior High; so much so that they were known around school simply as ‘the boys.’ When they walked up to Wyatt at lunch two days earlier, he thought he was in for a beating, but Brett explained that their buddy Nick Pescadora was moving to Florida and they needed a ‘third.’ “We can’t have just two guys. We ain’t faggots,” Brett had explained. “Since you’re always hanging out alone, you might as well hook up with us. Don’t you think?” Wyatt wanted to point out that he didn’t always hang out alone; sometimes he ate lunch with Trudy Weaver, only Trudy missed a lot of school, so it sometimes left him in a lurch. Then he remembered that Trudy Weaver sometimes smelled like potatoes and didn’t brush her hair, so he shut up and agreed with Brett. “You have to be initiated first,” Brett continued. He explained that the initiation would be performed on a deserted stretch of Farm Road 187. He said that the three of them would meet in front of the school on Saturday afternoon. “We’ll leave your bike here and you can ride over with Lee.” Wyatt had three questions: Why did he have to leave his bike? Why was there an initiation? Why were they going to F.R. 187? But he only asked one. “What’s on highway 187?” “Haunted house,” Brett said. “But first we gotta take care of the dog tied to the back porch.” “Okay,” Wyatt said. * After riding Lee’s handlebars to the abandoned house at F.R. 187 and leaving the bikes in an empty lot nearby, Wyatt now stood looking at the dog. Patches of skin were missing from its ears. It was so skinny that Wyatt could see every breath that it took, and there were a lot of them. “How long has this dog been out here?” Wyatt asked. “Don’t know. Long time, though. Look at him, he’s starved,” Brett replied. “We call him Elon.” Brett and Lee laughed and exchanged a few friendly punches over the humor. Elon Gould was a seventh-grader in the special needs class who had trouble walking. Wyatt once helped him carry his booksack to class when his strap broke. Once the laughing died down, Brett crossed his arms and toed the beagle’s nose lightly. The dog sniffed his shoe. “Elon don’t have much longer to go,” Brett said. He nodded toward Lee, who pulled a small Ziploc bag of dried dog food from his pocket. Seeing the bag of food, Elon stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. He stood on his hind legs, which gave them a full shot of the pocked scabs on his belly. Lee gave the Ziploc bag to Wyatt. “What you want me to do with this?” Wyatt stared at the food as if he’d been handed a live stick of dynamite. “Feed it to him, doofus,” Lee said. “It’s dog food. What else would you do?” “My initiation is to feed a dog?” Wyatt asked. “Technically, yes,” Brett said. “Feed him and put him out of his misery.” Elon had shifted his attention to Wyatt now that he was holding the bag of food. He put two paws on Wyatt’s calves and wagged his tail. “What kind of dog food is this?” Wyatt asked. “Regular dog food with a dash of something extra,” Brett replied. He and Lee laughed again. “Don’t sprinkle it on the grass either, Mullins. You gotta put it in your hand and let him eat from it. If you put in the grass he may not get it all.” Brett craned his head to the side and spit into the grass. “No dog is gonna eat poison,” Wyatt said. “They have excellent sense of smell.” “What are you, a fucking veterinarian?” Brett said. “That dog is starving. He’ll eat anything.” Wyatt swallowed again. His throat was dry. His cheeks warmed. His body was hot but it was cool outside; his arms exploded with goose bumps. “Come on, Mullins,” Lee said. “We ain’t got all day. We gotta explore the house.” “Let’s explore the house first,” Wyatt suggested. Elon pawed at him, lost his balance, then pawed again and sniffed at the food. “No way,” Lee said. “First you have to be initiated. That’s the whole point.” He spit in the grass, too. “So hurry up already,” Brett added. He nudged Elon’s rear with his shoe. The dog fell in the grass, but quickly scurried up and wagged its tail with more energy. “Untie him first, at least,” Wyatt said. “What for?” Lee said. “He could run off.” “He’s not gonna run off if there’s food,” Wyatt said. “Why we gotta untie him at all?” Brett asked. “Dogs like to run off somewhere when they die,” Wyatt said. “We don’t want to listen to him whining when we’re in the house. Besides, afterward we can search for him.” Brett raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean, search for him?” Prickly heat bumps crawled down Wyatt’s neck. “Search for the body.” Brett’s face relaxed. He walked a few feet to the wooden column, then pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket and cut the leash. It didn’t take much to snap it loose. Elon was so distracted by the food and accustomed to the tie-up that he didn’t even notice he was free. He sniffed at the Ziploc bag and yelped. The yelp was quiet and desperate. It reminded Wyatt of a dying squeaky toy. Wyatt reached into the bag and knelt down. Brett and Lee inched closer. “Time to eat, Elon,” Lee said. He was smiling. He nudged Brett with his elbow. The dog sniffed the outside of the bag, ran his claws over the plastic, then sat down, looked at Wyatt and yelped again. His tail brushed side-to-side in the grass. Wyatt looked toward the bikes then remembered he didn’t have one. “Hurry up,” Brett said. Fleas rushed over Elon’s white coat. There were dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Little black pin-pricks, feasting. He’d be better off, Wyatt thought. He reached into the bag. Elon jumped to his feet. He’d be better off. There was a moment –so quick that Wyatt would barely remember it later – that Wyatt had a handful of kernels in the palm of his hand, but the moment passed so suddenly that none of the three boys ever realized that Elon’s tongue had almost brushed the food, and had that happened, it would have made Wyatt’s next move, which was to throw the handful of kernels into the grass and scoop the dog into the crook of his arm, meaningless. When Wyatt jumped up and took off running, the boys were so shocked and confused that they stood there for a few moments, staring at each other and wondering if Wyatt was taking the dog somewhere else to commit the deed. They would have tackled him had they known, but it was only until Brett yelled, “Traitor!” that they admitted their initiation was a failure. Wyatt was on the edge of the woods when he heard Brett’s call, but he didn’t stop running. Elon was so quiet and light in his arms that he had to look down several times to make sure he hadn’t dropped him. Once in the heart of the woods, Wyatt sat on a tree stump and narrowed his eyes in every direction, looking for the boys. But he saw and heard no one. He wondered if they were waiting for him silently, like snipers. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, to the dog. He wanted to put him down because he didn’t want to catch fleas too, but he didn’t want Elon to take off, so he held him until his forearm ached, then switched arms. “Sorry you didn’t get to eat.” Wyatt searched the area around the tree stump for food, but all he found were a few small, red berries and he wasn’t sure if those were edible or not. His mother always told him not to eat from trees or bushes unless she checked the fruit first. It could be poisonous, she said. He sat still on the tree stump until the sun lowered. Elon fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until Wyatt stood up and made his way out of the woods. There was no sign of the boys. Wyatt brushed the top of Elon’s head with his thumb. “It’s a long way home without a bike,” he said. “But we’ll make it.”
"Midways," Milo Literary Review
You remember Margaret. She was the girl in the back of the class, the one who never smiled unless you caught her eye and she had no other choice. She spent most of her time sketching in her notebook—sketching what? you never knew—and talking about the day she would get out of this town, the day she would walk away from this place forever, off for bigger and better things. “The day after graduation, I’m getting on a bus or a train or something—anything to get me out of this place,” she said one afternoon, when you asked what her plans were after graduation. You were only being polite, but you liked her answer because why not? Everyone was young and stupid then. Everyone planned to leave. Even you. - Here’s a secret for you: Margaret never left. She stayed, just like you. Just like most of us. She never bought a bus ticket, never boarded a train. She certainly never flew cross-country to one of the places everybody wanted to go, like Los Angeles or New York. She just—stayed. She planned, and stayed, and planned, and stayed, and eventually got rid of the planning and just kept staying. At some point after graduation she nestled into her life and couldn’t get out of it. Everything about her daily routine—her bookkeeping job at the tax place, her low rent for an efficiency apartment at Ninth and Elm, her occasional two-drink nightcap at the Groundhog Lounge—had wrapped itself around her like a soft blanket. And she got to thinking: This isn’t so bad. What more does a person need? This is just fine. It’s good to stay. It’s good to stay. And she did. Just like you. If we were to say a bit more about Margaret, who has just turned forty-six, we would say this— She prefers the smell of paper over cotton candy. She would rather a peppermint than a candy apple. She is unnerved by strange men. Another thing we all know, generally speaking: There are strange men at carnivals. - Margaret’s grandfather died when she was fifteen years old. It was not a pretty death. Toward the end, every second sentence was marked by a disturbing series of hacked coughs that made Margaret’s chest hurt. The coughing fits ended as soon as he lit a cigarette, and he used this as evidence that smoking was good for him. But in the end, it wasn’t. He died weighing ninety-nine pounds, attached to an oxygen tank, with Price is Right on the television set. He’d yelled out “Five-hundred!” when the armoire was first presented to the contestants. By the time the actual price was revealed to be $488.38, he was dead. At his funeral, his son—Margaret’s father—opened his mouth only once, to say this: “Wherever you are in life, you’re there as a result of your best decisions.” Two days later, he left his wife and daughter under the guise of getting a pack of cigarettes. It was so cliché that Margaret always changed the story when she told it later. Sometimes he left for another woman. Sometimes he got a job transfer. Sometimes he simply vanished and the whole thing was a mystery. Sometimes he was dead. - And now, think of Derek Bodack. You saw him in the grocery store once, but you didn’t know his name. You remembered him, though. People remember Derek Bodack. Usually they recall him as tall and imposing, with broad shoulders, then they’re surprised to see him again and realize he’s much more average than they thought. This is because Derek Bodack has a large personality that swells outside of his body and fills an entire room. It’s not arrogance. Well, not just arrogance. Derek Bodack simply loves people. You didn’t know there were folks like that, did you? People who genuinely enjoy other people, no matter who they are? But that’s how Derek Bodack is. He thinks you’re wonderful, and she’s wonderful, and he’s wonderful, and life is wonderful. This isn’t because Derek Bodack hasn’t had hardships—he’s had many—but simply because he believes that life is short, so you have to live it. He’s not the type of guy who would ever die in a recliner attached to an oxygen tank watching his four-thousandth episode of the Price is Right. Derek Bodack wants to soak up every ounce of everything he possibly can, so he’s traveled everywhere. He owns a small restaurant chain, so he can do that. He’s been to Ireland, Scotland, Russia, China, Vietnam, England, Morocco. He’s even been to Greenland, and who goes to Greenland? Derek Bodack, that’s who. You’re probably wondering what a guy like this was doing in your grocery store. Margaret wondered the same thing when she met him. “What’re you doing here?” she asked. She meant the town, not the office. They were making conversation while her boss went off to fetch something. Margaret rarely talked to the clients because she was a bookkeeper, not a CPA, more of a behind-the-scenes number person, but she liked talking to Derek. “I found this old Victorian house for sale downtown for a steal, so I thought: Why not?” He shrugged and smiled. Margaret smiled too, but she didn’t shrug. She wondered what that was like, to think why not? Usually she thought: Why? - Because Derek Bodack was an all-around nice guy, people gave him things, and he gave many of these things away to keep the all-around nice guyness going. Such was the case for the all-access pass to the Traveling Midways carnival, which he gave to Margaret. “What’s this for?” she asked. “It’s an all-access pass to that carnival that’s in town. You should go! Bring your family! Ride the rides! Win some stuffed animals!.” Derek often talked in exclamation points. Derek had a suspicion that Margaret wasn’t that interesting and didn’t have much fun. He’d never heard her laugh once. He figured she was one of those women who went to work and went home and didn’t do much else, except maybe sit around with a bunch of cats, doing puzzles. Margaret didn’t have any cats and she hated puzzles, but he didn’t know that. He figured she did. He also figured she didn’t have very many interesting stories to tell, and maybe him giving her tickets to the carnival could give her some interesting stories. He didn’t know about the sketches in her notebook or how she planned to board a bus or train or something to get out of here, or how she hovered over her grandfather’s coffin and then always regretted not saying goodbye, or how she over-tipped at the Groundhog because she knew the bartender’s mother was sick and she knew what it was like to watch your mother die before either of you are ready. - She hadn’t planned on going, but she went. She wasn’t sure why. It was one of those decisions that didn’t make any sense. Maybe she was bored. Maybe she was intrigued. Maybe she was thinking of her mother. Because, let’s face it: She wasn’t the carnival type. She wasn’t much for all the clinking sounds and blinking lights, nor was she much for the amusement rides that stretched and yawned with giant mechanical arms into the sky, carrying vulnerable passengers along for the ride. And she didn’t like the carnies, either. She especially didn’t like the carnies. They had a look, the carnies. Not just the greasy dirt of their gloves and pants, but the look in their eyes. Like they’d committed a crime—loosened a vital bolt, maybe—and they would kill you if you knew. She covered herself up when she passed, just in case they were eyeing her neckline. Why had she come here? Was it just because she was bored? No, it wasn’t just that. It was everything. It was being forty-six and hating your life. It was being forty-six and remembering loss, even for things you never had, and being afraid to gain things because you know you might lose them. It was being forty-six and wandering alone through a carnival. It was a slow night. A Wednesday night, that’s why. You weren’t there; you had other plans. You didn’t see the Margaret there, walking through a hazy mist of marijuana smoke that trailed from behind the Haunted House of Horrors. You didn’t see her walk and wonder at her own presence. You didn’t see the three tickets in her pocket, enough for one ride. There were no crowds to disappear into, so the carnies had only Margaret to watch. One of them eyed her now, as she hugged her cardigan against her body and tried not to make eye contact. “Wanna ride?” he said. He nodded toward the quiet Ferris wheel behind him. “You can get a solo trip.” He smiled. One of his front teeth was missing. A cigarette stuck out of the side of his mouth. His appearance was disarming and unsettling, and Margaret was afraid of him, but there was nothing to be afraid of. His worst crime was stealing a car when he was nineteen, and he only did it because he didn’t want to look like a pussy in front of his friends, and mission accomplished—he didn’t look like one. He went to jail instead. No one knew how hard his heart pounded when he stepped on the gas, or how he cried without making a sound that first night on his cot, and no one would ever know. He was taking that to the grave. Still, cigarettes, beer and jail have a way of changing your face, so he looked very much like a stereotype when he called out to Margaret at the carnival. To be honest, he didn’t give a shit if Margaret rode the Ferris wheel or not. He was bored and lonely and wanted to talk to someone. “C’mon. It’ll be good for you,” he said. “You need it. I can tell. I got a beacon that goes off when I see a pretty woman in trouble.” He tapped his forehead, winked, and put his gloved hand on the gate that led to the wheel. Margaret’s cheeks reddened and warmed, but it’s difficult to ignore someone when they’re speaking directly to you, so she lifted her head and mumbled, “no, thanks,” and maybe she smiled but she wasn’t sure. She tried to, anyway. She didn’t want him to think that she was afraid of him, even though she was. He lived in a world of dirty gloves. “C’mon, only three tickets,” he said. Ah, yes. The tickets. She’d forgotten about the tickets. “I better not,” she said. “It’ll lift your spirits—literally and figuratively.” She slowed and stopped, although she hadn’t planned to. She didn’t know carnies used phrases like “literally and figuratively.” She didn’t know such idioms existed in the land of grease and cigarettes. “You look sad, and pretty girls should never be sad,” he said, still with his hand on the gate. She found it odd that he called her a “pretty girl” when she was forty-six and he couldn’t have been much older. Then again, it was hard to tell a carnie’s age. They lived a life of hard lines and wrinkles. “I shouldn’t,” she said. But she stopped anyway and craned her head back to look. “How high is that thing?” “About three-hundred feet, give or take,” he said. “And it’s assembled and disassembled at every stop?” “Mm-hm.” She knew nothing about traveling carnivals, but she knew that nuts and bolts weren’t always the most reliable objects in the world, and neither were men who flirted with strange women. Then again, she’d never ridden a Ferris wheel before, and she had the three tickets, and nothing to lose. “Okay,” she said. The carnie nodded once, triumphantly, then chucked his cigarette into the grass and opened the gate. He stepped aside and waved her into the wheel car like a footman placing a lady into a carriage. “Feel secure?” he asked, after she situated herself in the seat, which swayed when he shut the front bar across her lap. The truth was, she didn’t feel secure at all. Unreliable bolts everywhere, and the cushion of her seat was cracked and torn. She wondered how many times this thing had been disassembled, reassembled, disassembled, reassembled, but she wasn’t going to ask. How could she, now that the carnie had gone back through the entry gate and put his hand on the lever that would take her up, up, up? “Don’t worry, now,” he called. “It’s perfectly safe, alright?” She nodded once, hesitantly. When the car jerked in motion, she clutched the lap bar with both hands and took a deep breath. That’s what she was supposed to do when she felt anxious: Take deep breaths. She closed her eyes, too. When she opened them, she was halfway up the three-hundred feet, give or take, and a swell of wind lifted itself up the back of her neck and threw her hair around her face. When the car reached the apex of the wheel, her hair blew away and her face was free and open to the wind. She peered across the landscape. How strange the world looked. - Remember when you were a kid and you’d ride along with your parents on the interstate and you wondered what would happen if you just kept driving to the end? You wondered where the road would finally lead. Maybe it would just end right at the ocean, in Florida or Maine or wherever. Margaret wondered those things, too. But she knew the same thing as you: To get to the end of wherever, you have to cross the bridge out of town first and then keep going. You know the bridge. Someone jumped off it once. And one thing’s for sure—that bridge gets lots of traffic, coming and going. The bridge doesn’t offer much by way of existentialism, unless you’re about to throw yourself off of it. Or unless you’re Margaret, riding a Ferris wheel on the other side of town. - Imagine an endless row of blinking headlights. Arrivals and departures. White and red, respectively. The white ones are arriving, but Margaret doesn’t care about those. That’s not where her eyes focus when she reaches the apex of the wheel. It’s the red lights, the red lights, that reflect in her eyes and her head and maybe even her soul, if you want to get New Age about it. The red ones are going somewhere else. Maybe they’re driving to the end of wherever, who knows. Margaret doesn’t. All she knows is that they’re leaving town. Maybe they’ll be back. Maybe not. Maybe they’ll turn to each other and say, “Where are we?” And the other person will say, “I have no idea.” And they will look on the map to figure it out, but still won’t know, because the name of the town isn’t even worth noting. - The wheel circled back and Margaret’s belly rocketed out of her body. She was coming back around again and the carnie was there, smoking his cigarette and waving to her as if she were a nine-year-old girl, and maybe she was. She waved back with the other free hand. And now it was back up again, and she released the lap bar and lifted her arms quickly, just for a second to see what it felt like, and then she was immediately embarrassed at her childishness and wondered, when she came back down again to the waving carnie, if he somehow saw her and thought her foolish. Up again, and there were the traveling headlights, and a cloud shifted in front of the stars. - There’s a blanket on Margaret’s bed that reminds her of before. She’s under it now, thinking about the Ferris wheel. Well, not the Ferris wheel exactly—the blinking red lights. She stares and blinks at the ceiling as midnight comes and goes. There’s a soft hum of crickets outside her window—the same crickets that you hear, if you happen to be awake at one a.m. Margaret usually isn’t, but tonight, she is. Those red lights are keeping her awake. She sees them twinkling into a great unknown and feels the swell of air against her neck as she goes up, up, up. She thinks about arrivals and departures. Arrivals and departures. Arrivals and departures. She pushes the blanket to the side, off her body. And only then she falls asleep.
"Josephine March Sighs With You," The Adroit Journal
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Here are things you have to think about when your hair is fifteen-feet long: Shampoo, knots, extra weight, nesting bugs, and explanations. Many explanations. * ‘Why don’t you cut your hair?’ asks Boyfriend of Four Years Ago. He admits that men like long hair, but insists that yours is too long. When you ask how long is too long, he says he doesn’t know—but your hair is most definitely too long. ‘It’s unnatural,’ he says, scrunching his nose. You hate how he scrunches his nose at you. It makes you want to take his nose between your knuckles and twist it off his face. ‘It’s like having the weight of a child on your head.’ ‘Children weigh more than my hair.’ ‘Not babies.’ You shrug. You twirl one of your favorite locks around your index finger. I will never cut you, you tell it. You don’t even cut the split ends. You stopped doing that years ago. The hair is part of you—that’s what people don’t understand. They never understand anything. ‘Depends on the baby.’ ‘It might as well be a kid. You carry it around all the time and swaddle it up like Jesus.’ He doesn’t know that you don’t just swaddle and carry it; you also talk to it. You tell your hair all your secrets. It’s an extension of you. Literally and figuratively. Just like a child. ‘Maybe I’ll name it,’ you say. You smile to show you’re only kidding, but you’re not kidding. Far from it. Your mind is like the departure board at Penn Station: It flickers through names like a shutter. What will you name it? This is what you wonder as your boyfriend blinks at you. He’s judging you. Hating your hair. Hating how it gets it the way when you have sex. Hating how it takes you an extra twenty minutes to get ready because you have to tend to it. His mind is a shutter, too. He’s deciding to leave you, but you don’t care. Let him leave you. You will stay with baby. A mother never leaves her child. Never. * Your hair has a mind of its own. It’s unruly sometimes. Straight-edge here, twist there, it doesn’t always follow convention. You stroke it when you read, so it loves literature. Like any good baby, it longs to be coddled. Your hair doesn’t always do what you want it to do. It’s opinionated and tactless. But it’s beautiful, too. You wonder what a good name would be for such a child. You think about the stories you read together. You run through the shutter, waiting for something to stick. Waiting for your hair to tell you. And it does. Your baby will be called Josephine March. * Josephine March never stops growing. Josephine March will grow until she reaches the end, which will be never. Josephine March is your separate, shared entity. In the four years since Boyfriend left you, Josephine March has pushed ever onward. Josephine March now weighs twenty pounds when wet. It takes five bottles of shampoo a week to clean Josephine March. Your neck aches all day. It’s a piercing pain that shoots up the back of your head and sometimes into your shoulders. It takes a lot to carry Josephine March, but that’s what mothering is. Sacrifice. The doctor says, ‘You need to cut your hair or you could develop a serious problem. You already have a pinched nerve.’ He indicates the glowing X-ray on the computer screen. You don’t like to look at your insides. Your bones look like bones. It doesn’t look like anything’s pinching to you. You sigh. Josephine March sighs with you. * It’s hard to find a job when you have fifteen feet of hair. They don’t want to talk about your administrative skills. They want to talk about your hair. ‘How long have you been growing it?’ the interviewer asks. Her hair is blunt. So is she. ‘It’s crazy long.’ ‘Twenty years,’ you reply. You stroke Josephine’s belly. You decide to forget an office job. You think: fast-food, maybe. But Josephine won’t fit in a hair net. Josephine won’t like the grease from the fryer. Sacrifices. * You wonder what will happen to Josephine when you die. You wonder if you could write a will that insists that Josephine be given a separate burial. Do people do that? Yes. People do everything. * ‘Is that your hair?’ a little girl asks. You’re sitting on a shaded bench near the playground. You were out for a walk, but it’s hot and the heat makes you and Josephine tremendously uncomfortable. You needed a rest. Now a little girl is pointing at Josephine. The little girl’s hair is in a ponytail. You would never be able to get Josephine into a ponytail. ‘Yes,’ you say. ‘It’s long.’ She shoves a finger in her mouth. Her fingertip is red, like it’s been dipped in red Kool-Aid. Maybe it has. The shrieks and sounds of the playground flutter in the background. ‘Yes,’ you agree. ‘Will you ever cut it?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I don’t want to.’ A woman hurries over. She’s smiling, but it’s not a real smile. It’s a smile between strangers. She has her arms out to the little girl. She rests her hands on the girl’s shoulders. She tries not to look at Josephine. She tells the little girl to hurry back to the playground and stop bothering the nice lady. The girl’s name is Annie. Annie races back to the jungle gym. The mother turns to you. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Sometimes she has a mind of her own.’ You gaze down at Josephine. You say, ‘I understand.’
"Waiting Room," Johnny America
When Chester Barnaby reached Vine Street, he realized he was standing on an axis. Not a real axis, but a virtual one… a mental one… one that told him everything about his life was not quite wrong, but not quite right either — his relationship hinged on a proposal he didn’t want to offer; there was a promotion that could be his, but maybe wasn’t; he was fifteen pounds away from his goal weight; he needed to quit smoking, but couldn’t; he needed to start drinking, but didn’t have the time. Unread books collected dust on his nightstand. Unwatched shows lingered on his DVR. A distinct feeling of incompleteness nestled in his belly and now it was time to wait for the bus. He normally didn’t take the bus, but he wanted to do something different today, just because it was something. He lit a cigarette to pass the time. The woman to his right grimaced and stepped away. The man to his left asked if he could bum a smoke. Chester rarely gave out cigarettes, but he was standing on an axis and this man was something, just as the bus was something. So he handed one over. The man was wearing two jackets, gray sweatpants, a pair of Adidas, and a cap that said M.G. Pound on it. Chester had no idea who or what M.G. Pound was, so he asked the man. He didn’t know either. “HellifIknow,” he said. “I got another question for you,” Chester said, because they were now bonded over cigarettes and M.G. Pound. He took a drag. “Do you ever feel like you’re standing on an axis?” M.G. Pound looked at the ground. “Why? We standing on one?” “No, no. Figuratively.” Chester took a longer drag this time and thought of another way to put it: “Do you ever feel like your life is just about ready to begin, but you’ve been stuck in a waiting room? And all you need is for that nurse to call your name, and all of it can start?” M.G. Pound considered this. “I get what you mean. You mean, like a waiting room for life.” “Yeah. Exactly. A waiting room for life.” M.G. Pound nodded enthusiastically as he blew smoke into air already heavy with traffic exhaust. He shook his head. “I hate waiting rooms. Probably more than anything else. Hate them.” He paused. “One time I was in a waiting room and I’d been sitting there for two hours. Two hours. Can you believe? Like my time doesn’t matter? Like I have two hours to just sit around and wait for other people to get their shit together? It was this dark little room, full of sick people. Felt like a goddamn cell. Just like a cell. I couldn’t stand being in that dark little room, just waiting. So you know what I did? I stood up, after two hours and thirty minutes, and I said, ‘It’s been two godamn hours and I refuse to wait anymore! If you don’t let me in, I’m gonna lose it, I swear to God!’” His reenactment alarmed some of the people at the bus stop. They took distance. Chester’s eyes widened. “So what happened? Did they let you in?” “Hell no. They kicked me out,” he said. He took a long drag. “But then I was outside again, and I saw the sun.”
"The Birthing of Alice," Danse Macabre
Camille had always noticed the way some things went with other things. As a little girl, when she was locked in the laundry room for being bad, she noticed the way the shirts clung to the hangers and how each of her mother’s socks had a partner and how the linoleum came together to create the space on which she sat. She saw how the light bulb had a string that turned it on and how each shirt sleeve had its own button and every dress had a zipper that clicked together in straight-lined pairs. As a teenager she roamed the school like a ghost and through the haze of her mist she saw how this girl linked arms with that boy and how every teacher had an assigned classroom and how all the desks matched each other. Even lunch had its own pairings – the mashed potatoes in this bowl, the sweetened roll on this square. The fork and spoon, a consummate pair. Years later she would drift through another type of stark-colored hallway and she would notice these food pairs once again. She would commend her plate on how smartly it was arranged and instead of mingling with the snickers and shrieks of teenagers, her voice drifted easily with other ghosts who had mumblings of their own. One January morning, long after she had left stale hallways behind, Camille leaned her cheek against her hand and gazed at the frost clinging to the grass outside her window. The clock ticked in the background. Each empty room sat still, but at the window, Camille moved. She felt a stir deep inside her belly. She turned away from the frost and closed her eyes. She pushed her hand where she felt the fluttering. It’s there, she thought. Five minutes later she called the doctor. II. The doctor narrowed his eyes at her the same way doctors had narrowed their eyes at her for years. He took a deep breath through his nose and said “Camille.” That’s how they always said her name when they were just beginning: like it was a silly and childish sentence that only made sense to them. “You’re not pregnant,” he said, and he went on about urine and blood tests and how they showed that she was not-pregnant. Doctors loved the word ‘not.’ Camille stared back at him. Her eyes were not narrowed; they were open, aware and accusatory. She did not like doctors. She would not have come to a doctor, but when you birth a child, doctors are necessary. Had it just been her, she would have overlooked it, but this was different. This was very, very different. “Tests aren’t always right,” Camille said. “Yes, but.” The doctor looked at his chart. She wondered what was written there. She always wondered. When he looked back at her, he pressed his lips into a tight line and said, “You’re a virgin.” Camille tilted her head. She said, “I’ll find someone else to deliver my baby.” But instead she went home, stared at the patterns on her walls, pushed her hand against her belly and decided that she didn’t need a doctor. She would have her baby right here, at home, like they did in the old days. III. A birthing area should include several clean towels, sheets or blankets. To clean them properly they must be washed in hot water. This gets rid of all the germs. Camille’s mother taught her this when she was nine years old. “Hot water rinses away dirty things,” her mother said, and she blinked and blinked and blinked, turned the washing machine to its hottest setting and stuffed it with clothes, rags, towels, oven mitts, magazines, newspapers and all four of Camille’s best dress shoes. When she snatched Camille’s wrists, the girl wrenched away and ran and ran and ran until the whoosh-whoosh of the turning washer fell into the distance. To prepare the birthing area, Camille ran hot water, too. She ran it until the bathroom mirror was covered with steam then she filled the tub and shoved one pair of bedsheets and five towels inside. She shrieked when her hands touched the water. The one-bedroom apartment wasn’t used to sounds; every room trembled. When she pulled out her hands they were red and raw, just like that day. Her eyes ringed with tears. She wondered if her baby could feel pain. IV. Camille brought her stipend to a local store full of things for babies. She had never seen such a bright expanse of space. There were blues and pinks and yellows everywhere. Pinks in that corner. Blues in this. She didn’t know if her baby was a boy or a girl. “Yellow is the best choice if you don’t know,” the woman behind the counter said. She smiled and drummed her fingernails against the side of the register. Camille tugged at her hair and walked to the yellow section. She remembered holding a fat yellow crayon and coloring a fake sun in a coloring book. She couldn’t remember how long ago that was or how old she’d been, but she remembered it now – sitting at the kitchen table and coloring outside all the lines. She would get a coloring book for her baby, but not until later. Camille brought a yellow blanket to the register. The blanket was soft with silky trim. It reminded Camille of cotton balls. The woman at the register punched the keys. “When are you due?” the woman asked. “Today, today, today,” Camille mumbled. She had the towels lined in a perfect square in her living room. She had the bed sheet neatly folded nearby. To have a baby, you have to be naked on the bottom and that should always be covered up. The woman stopped smiling, but Camille didn’t see. When Camille got home, she splayed on the floor, covered herself with the bedsheet and parted her legs. She swayed, cried and birthed and laid the baby on her shoulder. It was a girl. She named her Alice and covered her with the yellow blanket. “There, there, Alice. There, there,” said Camille, because that is what mothers say: there, there. She danced with Alice and sang. When they both felt well enough, Camille stopped singing and dancing and opened the door. The sun was bright – maybe too bright for a baby, Camille thought, so she covered Alice’s head with the yellow blanket and together they journeyed outside to explore the world.