Tag Archives: A Midsummer Tale

August in the Time of COVID

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A Midsummer Tale ~ Third Place
Laura Sweeney

Image of a tree-lined lake at dusk. The shoreline is mostly in shadow. Leafy trees are in silhouette, backlit by the setting sun, and reflected onto the lake's smooth surface. The cloudless sky is a very pale blue tinged with pale yellow-pink at the horizon. The pink of the sky is mirrored on the water.

Photo Credit: Jamie Cantrell/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

It’s August. Or is it? In this COVID time, hard to tell. Feels more like September though I’m not from here, don’t know the weather and whether it should be more humid or less. Leaves fall, still green.

August. Five months into this pandemic. Where has the time gone? March—stockpiling like a mad woman, April—teaching Zoom class, May—thesis defense, June—post MFA collapse, July—devouring virtual conferences. This may be a forced sabbatical, but it’s not a vacation.

When my dog Freya and I first moved here, to the boot of Southern Illinois, we lived in a crappy apartment in a writer’s ghetto too close to campus and, before that, at University Village. I discovered Carbondale is a border town, an in-between place, not quite southern, not quite northern. A place in transition. Like me.

It was the Bryant family who I knew first, maybe the only family I knew in town. Cheryl, my landlady, has a good reputation and came highly recommended. She told me this neighborhood on the corner of Billy Bryan and Gher nestled between two dead-end streets, is mostly quiet, safe. I mispronounced it as grrrr, but she corrected me, said: say Gher as in Gary. This August, going on three years as her neighbor. Once she invited me to a pancake breakfast. Often, she’s invited me for cocktails, even offered furniture, which I declined. My bohemian ways must seem odd to her; she must sense there is a backstory.

Don’t know the backstory of this house, other than it was built circa 1945. I try to imagine who might have owned it then, some soldier returning from war? A Japanese mental health specialist lived here a few years back and then a couple with Dobermans who scared the neighbors across the street. But that couple moved out suddenly in the middle of the night.

And Labor Day weekend we moved in.

My landlady was right. Despite the angst of no job no prospects, there’s peace here. I often fall asleep watching a rom-com. Last night it was Nights in Rodanthe. Freya sleeps next to me, nestled in my bedding in the middle of the living room on the hardwood floor underneath the ceiling fan, and I don’t care that some would oppose such a companion.

From here you can hear the train, or is it Amtrak, rumbling downtown just like I had as a kid, awake August nights in that house with no air conditioning lying so still next to the screened window trying to catch a breeze. And here, just like home, crickets and locusts chorus all night.

Freya and I love this yard, its unfenced expanse, getting to know the neighbors who walk by with their binoculars because they say they have spotted a rare bird though I didn’t catch the name. And yesterday the badger next door poked his head out from his cubby hole underneath my landlady’s garage and watched as Freya and I did yard laps. How cute he and his badger wife are as they look both ways before they cross the street, then scamper between garages, fences, and sheds.

Bark is beautiful, one of the newscasters said. And the Bradford pear tree that fans my front lawn. The tent caterpillar nests intrigue. Even the rake resting against our maple tree and the mushrooms that sprout nearby, tiny penises that grow into Chinese hats or cocktail umbrellas. This region is rich in mushrooms and research for their medicinal properties. In Oakwood Park, just blocks from here, thrive the red kind with white dots that remind me of elves or gnomes. And earlier this month, mustard-yellow ones that grow in Frisbee-sized patches proliferated my yard till they turned brown and shriveled like funnel cake. Are they safe or poisonous? In the case of war or famine, Americans don’t know the resources we have around us. Fortunately, Freya leaves them alone.

There’s a giant cobweb strewn across my front porch, so I avoid that door. And there’s no telling what other spiders I may find. Once, while admiring one dangling from her thread, the breeze blowing her back and forth, another jumped down my shirt. Fireflies and butterflies and dragonflies flit about. And a batch of boxelder bugs camped at the edge of my garage until I doused them in apple cider vinegar. Mud wasps decorated my garage doorway, too, with organ pipe nests until I doused them with apple cider vinegar. But we’ve come to a compromise. They build their nests above the garage door. I hear them buzzing.

The garage intrigues: plenty of shelves and outlets, a couple of paint cans, a medicine cabinet, two torn mattresses above the rafters, a yellow ruler tucked in the ceiling. Also a security box that yielded no treasure. The garage door leads into the foyer and a white board with the question “How will I be resilient today?” scrawled across it.

Still, yesterday it all welled up inside me. The dominoes are falling, as my landlady says. I wanted to escape hours away but opted to drive to Murphysboro State Park just miles west of here. Passed the Smoky the Bear sign, chance of fire low. Sat at a picnic table at Waterlily Point and played fetch with Freya who found an orange tennis ball near a fire ring. Took solace in the white egret at the edge of the marsh. And the pine cones lining the parking lot.

At home, I often sit on a stack of cement blocks beside my garage while Freya sunbathes at the edge of the driveway or that nook under the mailbox. My landlady offered a chair but somehow this stoop feels better. Once I found a five-lined skink, its yellow stripes and electric blue tail pulsing. Maybe it means my luck is shifting.

Once the loony neighbor from 704, the one who claims he has seven PhDs and is a veteran of the Air Force and Navy and Marines, knocked on my back door asking me to take him to the gas station. When I turned him away, he offered a blessing. Now he walks by spewing obscenities about Hitler or holy water. I make every attempt to not make eye contact. Maybe that’s not nice or neighborly. Maybe I should ask about his time in the service or his POW flag. Certainly, I don’t want Freya wandering over into his yard.

As we do our yard laps, I pray for a vaccine, for the elections, for the essential workers on the frontlines. And to keep this a peaceful neighborhood. With the exception of the creepy dude, or the occasional domestic squabble, or the shirtless guy with his beer gut hanging out, I feel safe here. It was divine intervention the previous renters moved out in the middle of the night with no explanation. This one-story soldier cottage no basement with foyer and sun porch is perfect for a writer and her dog.

Oh, how I want to believe it’s safe here. But shopping, even though Walgreens is within walking distance, is limited. I shop off-hours, annoyed by customers ignoring the intercom reminders to wear a mask. Annoyed by the escalating incidence rate. All summer I deliberated whether to move back home. Explained to my landlady that my elderly parents live in the northwest corner of Iowa. There’s a meatpacking plant, an outbreak. But folks at the checkout counter with no social distancing or face masks are creepier.

I’m one of the immunocompromised, a lung obstruction. Limited options. No one stares or mocks or asks questions or finds it unusual at all as I insert my EBT card, then afterwards check the hand sanitizer to be sure it’s ethanol not methanol, squirt a bit and rub my palms together as I leave.

Back on my block, I check my mailbox. Two years and still don’t know when the mail arrives. I don’t wear gloves anymore the way I did back in March when I’d wipe down every grocery item. Even my landlady is casual as she stands too close without a mask and asks about fall plans. I’m looking online for freelance gigs, wonder how much to reveal to her. But heard a preacher say when you know the nature of a thing it’s easier to deal with, and the nature of a landlady is to squeeze as much rent as possible. Fortunately, she understands my predicament, was willing to reduce my rent. I looked up the property tax online. She’s still making money.

Yes, the weather seems odd these days, as the school year is upon us. This morning, signs of life at the baseball diamonds. Nice to hear the country music play as Freya and I walked the gravel path. Good to hear the whack of baseball bats and to see the camaraderie of the men hitting balls in practice.

Still, our first August here seems so long ago, as the days weeks months run together. On my good days Psalm 23 comes to mind: He makes me lie down in green pastures. This house, on this corner, in this in-between place where Freya and I walk laps. I’ve decided to leave the branches the storm leveled as yard art. But on my not-so-good days, I’m weary. Weary. And just shuffle along, wondering when this winter that never ends finally ends, what will we do? Will we look back on this time in American history as if August never happened?

Before this pandemic, all the pieces were coming together: the winding path of my education, the veered career trajectory. But now this woman on sabbatical, this woman with no makeup, this woman who hasn’t given herself a pedicure all summer though she gets a kick out of how often her dog Freya grooms her paws, longs for days to dress up. What is the look in my eyes the clerk sees peering out from my disheveled hair and multicolored kerchief?

I check my stoop for the five-lined skink, sit and open a package. The book is Life Interrupted, about Nineveh and Jonah’s shelter in the whale. The heat makes me stand and go back inside to pour myself a glass of low-sodium V8 juice and despite video fatigue watch a few more rom-coms until six p.m., then turn on ABC news. I scan the coronavirusillinois.gov site for the latest incident rate. An hour later, go back into the kitchen and make hot chocolate even though it’s August. Freya potties outside, one more yard lap, before her last treat of the day. Maybe a splash of milk. Maybe a half teenie Greenie. We settle on our bedding on the hardwood floor to watch a movie and fall asleep.

pencil

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in Iowa and Illinois. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist’s Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her poems and prose appear in sixty plus journals and ten anthologies in the States, Canada, Britain, Indonesia, and China. Her recent awards include a scholarship to the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. In 2021, she received an Editor’s Prize in Flash Discourse from Open: Journal of Arts & Letters; Poetry Society of Michigan’s Barbara Sykes Memorial Humor Award; and two of her poems appear in the anthology Impact: Personal Portraits of Activism, which received an American Book Fest Best Book Award in Current Events category and finalist in the Social Change category. She is a PhD candidate, English/Creative Writing, at Illinois State University. Email: lauraswny[at]hotmail.com

Grow

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A Midsummer Tale ~ Second Place
Tierney Acott

Image of Sydney red gum trees looking up through the gnarled branches and leaves to the sky. The branches are reddish, the leaves yellowish-green, and the sky pale blue. Low sunlight on the left is casting shadows on the branches and leaves.

Photo Credit: Bea Pierce/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

The surf rolls in on a beach in a suburban stretch of coastline. Pinks and yellows streak the sky as the sun dawns over the ocean. A few surfers on the beach stretch and wade into the water. At the end of the strand is a small cove, surrounded by sandstone rock face. At the foot of it, three brown-skinned, brown-eyed children are pulling on snorkels and fins. The small girl, Zara, about six, is fastest and plops her way to the surf. Her brothers, Ollie and Leo, follow her.

She twists through the surf, torpedoing through each crashing wave, bubbles tickling her face and chest. A school of small, glittering silver fish pass beneath her and she waves to them, making a note to look them up in her brothers’ book. She swims all the way out until she’s level with the breakwall with the red and green lights at the end, then she pops up, searching for her brothers.

Her eyes are then drawn to another pair: atop the sandstone cliff face, amongst the bush vegetation, are two majestic, twisting Sydney red gum trees. Little white flowers cluster among their branches. She sees them every morning from her bedroom window, but in the golden glow of early morning, they look ethereal, bursting with magic.

A swish of saltwater into her open mouth brings Zara back to the present.

She swims back to shore, riding each tumbling wave.

“Hey, where are you off to?” asks Leo.

“I forgot something at home,” she calls as she passes them.

On the beach, she tugs her feet out of her fins, collects her flip flops, and scrambles up the overgrown path to the coastal road, barefoot and hobbling to avoid pebbles. She dips and dodges branches on this practiced route. She walks on the curb, balancing, until she stops in front of the Sydney red gum trees.

She gingerly runs her fingers along the trunk of the taller red gum tree. The bark of the tree is peeling away. She breaks off a piece. The tree shudders, sighs, and a few flowers fall to the ground. Then, a face emerges from the patterns in the bark on the trunk. The eyes from dark spots in the bark, and the long sloping lines gave the face a gentleness. Zara’s eyes widen.

“Oh thanks, mate,” the tall tree says with a sigh. “You’ve no idea how long that was itching. Almost makes you jealous of the trees with termites.”

“Careful what you wish for,” the shorter, more gnarled gum tree answers. It has a craggy face, like Zara’s father and his friends: skin cooked and shriveled from the sun and the fires they fight.

Zara laughs nervously.

“Look at the giggling little ankle-biter,” says the tall tree. “Oh! Manners. I’m Poppy and this is Summer.” Poppy gestures toward Summer with one of their branches.

“I’m Zara.”

“It’s great to finally meet you, Zara,” says Summer. “We’ve seen the way you treat creatures.”

Zara nods importantly. “I try not to hurt anything.”

“We’ve noticed,” says Summer, gently. “Which is why we want to give you a gift.”

“For me?” asks Zara.

“For you,” says Poppy.

The three of them stand looking at each other, Zara with her goggles pushed up on her forehead and snorkel dangling from her ear. A breeze makes its way from the scrub vegetation to the south and toward them. An aliveness sweeps across the cliffside as bushes and trees dance in the wind. When the breeze hits Summer and Poppy, they both shimmy and a flower falls from each of their trees.

“Whoa.” Zara bends down to pick them up. Attached to the flowers are seeds. “Can I plant this?”

“It’d be our pleasure.”

“We like dry sandy soil, you know, a good loam,” says Poppy. “You can take a few scoops from the sand here.”

Zara, clutching the flowers in one hand, darts across the coastal road to a red brick house with a white gate and a tall bottlebrush tree in the corner of the garden. She drops her flip flops and fins on the path and snakes round to the garage, which is filled with toys: surfboards, diving gear, a dinghy on a trailer. She finds where her mum stores the gardening stuff behind the dinghy. It is dark and shadowed—redback territory. She moves slowly, carefully. She finds a small ceramic pot and a trowel. She extracts them carefully, so as not to disturb any nesting spiders.

Then she quickly carries the pot, trowel, and flower back to Summer and Poppy.

“I found a pot!”

Zara carefully takes the seeds out of the flowers and sets them on the ground. Then she fills the pot two-thirds with sandy soil. She gingerly plants the seeds. She fills the rest with sandy soil and pats it gently.

“Ar, great work there, Zara,” says Poppy.

She sets the flowers down on top of the soil as an ornament. Then she stands suddenly. “I’m going to go water it now,” she says and turns to leave.

One of Summer’s branches swoops down and stops her running off. “Hold on there, little lady.”

Zara turns, and Summer’s branch retreats.

“You can water it, but don’t water it too often.”

Zara nods.

“Don’t like too much water,” says Summer.

“Makes us feel bloated,” Poppy says and chuckles.

 

Winter passes without its usual storms. Shelf clouds still approached from the south, dark grey and blue, and lightning still cracked and forked down to the ocean, but only a light drizzle ever fell to the earth. All the fanfare of years past, but none of the satisfying restoration. Zara, too young to remember the heavy rains of an east coast low, asked if it was going to rain anytime dark clouds blotted the sun.

Now, along the coast, the trees were brightening into a dull green and the sun a strong, golden hue. Zara, in shorts and a singlet, reads The Lorax on her bed. A sapling sits in the ceramic pot on the window ledge, watching Summer and Poppy out the window. This is Charlie.

“I want to be big and strong like those trees outside,” says Charlie, pointing at Summer and Poppy.

Zara looks up from her book. “You can’t rush it.”

Charlie winces, trying to grow faster. “Maybe if I eat more…” says Charlie.

She squints up to the strong summer sun basking through the window. Though it is late morning, the sky is not blue, but a hazy white.

Zara giggles. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Why not?”

“Well, those trees are big and strong because they grew slowly and well.”

Charlie harrumphs, sulking for a few seconds before asking, “Can we go out and see them?”

Zara closes her book and slides her legs off her bed. “Sure.”

Zara picks up Charlie and together they go downstairs and out the front door. The air is still, hot, and dry. Even with the hazy sky, the footpath is roasting and Zara hops onto the grass, crunchy from the heat.

Charlie is bouncing in excitement. Zara pats her soil, so she doesn’t fall out.

“Look!” exclaims Charlie. “There’s a bird.”

The bird caws. It’s a magpie.

“It sounds like one of Ollie and Leo’s droids,” says Charlie.

Zara laughs. “It totally does.”

As Zara crosses the street. Charlie points to the bottlebrush tree, which is in full bloom. Every branch is covered with thick clusters of vibrant, red needles. Charlie, in awe, shouts, “It looks like it’s on fire!”

Zara clamps her hand over the sapling.

“Shh!” says Poppy.

Summer hears and whispers conspiratorially, “We don’t say that word.”

“What word?” asks Charlie before— “Whoa! Look at the ocean in real life!”

Poppy and Summer exchange relieved glances.

“I want to live here when I grow up and be just as big and strong as you.”

Zara holds Charlie up to Poppy. Charlie’s little sapling leaves reach over and touch the trunk.

“Oh, wow,” says Charlie. Then she touches her own trunk and gets all misty-eyed.

All of a sudden, apropos of nothing, Summer perks up.

“Oh, oh! It’s coming,” she exclaims, then turns to Charlie. “Get ready, little Charlie.”

Poppy joins in on Summer’s excitement, the surface sand at their roots hopping with anticipation. Out in the ocean, the texture of the surface of the water sharpens and grows dark. It approaches them.

“What? What’s happening?” asks Charlie with a thinly-veiled nervousness.

“It’s the Southerly!” says Summer.

“The what?”

“It’s the Southerly wind that comes from Antarctica,” says Zara matter-of-factly.

“Oh, I’d love to go to Antarctica one day,” says Poppy.

“It seems pretty cool,” says Summer and winks at everyone.

“It’s definitely the perfect temperature. Cools us off on a beautiful hot day.”

Zara looks at the trees as if they’re out of their minds. “You know Antarctica is a land entirely of ice and—”

“Here it comes!” shouts Summer.

The Southerly wind floats across the scrubland along the coast, rippling branches as it makes its way toward them. When it hits Summer and Poppy, they dance and rollick, whooping and cheering. Charlie giggles and joins in. Zara holds Charlie’s pot high above her head, so she can get as much breeze as possible.

“This feels amazing!” says Charlie.

“Doesn’t it?” says Summer.

“It’s the best part of every day,” says Poppy. “Especially the scorchers.”

 

In the biggest window of the house, a Christmas tree is visible. Handmade ornaments hang on the branches. Zara and her brothers open the gifts scattered at the base of the tree. Outside, Poppy and Summer watch the festivities. Halos surround the morning sun and the sky is orange and hazy.

That afternoon, as the sun slides west, it takes on a red glow. The front door squeals open and Zara steps out. Her brothers run out in their swimmers and head down to the ocean. Zara pulls the door closed and hurries over to Summer and Poppy, holding something behind her back.

“Summer, Poppy. What are you up to sarvo?” says Zara.

“Happy Christmas, sweetheart!”

“Thanks, you too!”

Summer leans down to murmur to Zara. “Tell me, Zara. Why do you have a decapitated tree in your living room?”

Zara’s eyes widen, then her face crumples in confusion.

“Means the Christmas fir tree,” says Poppy.

“Oh. It’s fake.”

Summer sighs in relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“I have gifts for you.” Zara reveals what was behind her back: a pair of red ribbons. “They’re ribbons,” says Zara.

Poppy and Summer swoon, flattered.

“Oh wow,” breathes Summer. “Gorgeous.”

“They’re beautiful,” croons Poppy.

“I gave Charlie a little one too. See?” she says and points to her window. Charlie sits on the windowsill of Zara’s bedroom looking outside. She has a small red ribbon around one of her little branches. “That way, no matter what, even if she’s still in a pot inside, you guys know that you’re family.”

Zara ties the ribbon around a branch of Poppy’s. Then she ties a ribbon around a branch of Summer’s. Summer gets emotional. Red sap oozing from her bark. It looks alarmingly like blood.

“Don’t go weeping, Summer,” says Poppy. “We need all the water we can get.”

Zara frowns. “I thought you hated water.”

“We don’t like a lot of it,” says Poppy. “But we haven’t had a rain in months. We’re parched all the time.”

“I can help!” says Zara and runs back across the street to her house. She goes around the side of the garden, where the hose lies coiled on the ground like a red-bellied black snake. She turns on the tap and runs across the street, dragging it behind. She stands in front of Summer and waters her roots. Summer gasps and sputters as her roots drink the water up. Zara begins to do the same for Poppy. Poppy also feverishly drinks the water.

The front door bangs open. Zara’s mum, a woman with dark hair and brown eyes, looks aghast.

“Zara!”

Zara innocently turns toward her mum. The stream drifts away from Poppy.

“Wait, no, bring it—” gasps Poppy.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” says Mum through gritted teeth as she marches across the garden. She pushes open the fence gate with enough force it swings round and slaps the other side. When she reaches Zara, she takes the hose from her and folds it in half, stopping the flow.

“We’re in Level 3 water restrictions!”

Zara’s eyes fill with tears.

“You can’t be using the hose for anything! Only Tuesday and Saturday mornings. That’s it,” says Mum. “Do you understand me?”

Zara nods.

“We can get in serious trouble. Lucky none of the neighbors saw you.”

Mum takes the hose back across the street. Zara turns to Summer and Poppy.

“I’ll come back Saturday morning.”

“Ah, don’t stress yourself over it, love,” says Poppy.

“Just make sure the little one gets enough water,” says Summer.

Zara sighs and slumps down next to Poppy. She leans against her trunk.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” says Poppy.

Zara looks down at the waves crashing below.

Mum turns around when she reaches the fence. “Zara, this is not okay. No bickies, sweets, or TV for a week.”

Zara’s lip trembles, but she nods.

“You know better,” says Mum.

Zara draws in the dirt with a stick while Debra, a blonde-haired, tan woman and neighbor, passes by in front of the house and stops to talk to Mum across the fence.

“Happy Christmas!” says Debra.

“Oh, happy Christmas to your family too! Lovely day isn’t it?”

Debra registers the hose in Mum’s hand. “Hey, you’re not watering, are you?”

Zara looks over at Mum. A few drops of water fall from the end of the hose. Mum hides them from view with her leg.

“Oh, no. No, I wouldn’t do that. Just tidying the lawn,” says Mum.

“How’re your plants doing? All of mine are dying.”

“Yeah, the hydrangeas are looking quite pitiful. Can’t seem to hold a bloom.”

“Your parents are down near Victoria, right?” asks Debra.

“Mm. Yeah.”

“How’re they doing?”

“They’re safe at the moment.”

“That’s good.”

“It’s just hard because if it were to sweep through, you know, how fast can they evacuate?” says Mum.

Debra clucks her tongue. “I know. It’s awful. Henry’s dealing with the same thing. His parents are up near Byron. They’re in a care home. I don’t think they’ll try to evacuate at all.”

“Oh, that’s awful.”

Behind Zara, a magpie flies and lands on one of Summer’s branches. It calls out, drowning out the end of Mum and Debra’s conversation. Zara looks at the bird. It has brought food back for its chicks. She watches the parent feed the three little birds.

Poppy whispers. “Do you like our new tenants?”

“As long as they don’t swoop me,” says Zara, eyeing them warily.

“Nar. We’re teaching these magpies not to swoop. They’ll be nice magpies.”

“That’s good,” Zara says, watching Debra wave goodbye to Mum.

The magpies keep calling out to their parent, who flies away for more food. The three chicks jump around in their nest and practice flying. One falls out of the tree. It shakes its head clear, then trots over to Zara. She holds out her hand and it hops onto her palm. Zara winces slightly at first, but then relaxes.

A few minutes later, the parent magpie returns home. The chick tries to fly back into the nest, but misses it and careens into the brush.

Zara, Summer, and Poppy gasp. A moment later, the bird flies up and lands in the nest.

“He’s a wild one there,” says Poppy.

“Ah, but isn’t it gorgeous watching him take his first flight?” says Summer.

 

Zara wakes up. She waters Charlie with the cup on the windowsill. Charlie writhes around in the pot. She looks out the window at Summer and Poppy and the coast beyond. The sky is orange; the sun, still low in the sky, is shrouded in an aura. A few tankers troll past on the horizon. Zara checks the calendar on the wall: Saturday, December 28.

She runs out of her room, out of the front door, and around the corner of the house. She turns on the hose tap and hurries across the street, dragging the hose behind her. When she gets to the red gum trees, she unleashes a sparkling spray of water.

She waters Poppy first, then Summer. They both feverishly drink up the water. They are massively dehydrated.

After a few moments, Summer says: “Right. That’s plenty.”

“You sure?” asks Zara.

“Yeah,” says Poppy. “We don’t want to take more than our share. We’ll soak up the rest of this water over the next day or so.”

“Okay,” says Zara.

“Thank you,” says Poppy.

“You’re a real lifesaver,” says Summer.

“It’s alright,” says Zara with a shrug.

She takes the hose back to the house and puts it away. Inside, she flicks off her flip flops and walks around the corner to the kitchen. Mum sits at the breakfast bar reading the newspaper and drinking a coffee. Ollie and Leo eat four Weet-Bix with a dazed, sleepy look on their faces. Zara sits down at the table, plunks two Weet-Bix in her bowl, and uses both hands to pour milk from the carton. She looks out the kitchen window at the trees in the backyard and the clothes drying on the line. She chews methodically, wondering if those trees are alive too. Are they also thirsty?

The sky begins to darken. Zara doesn’t notice it at first, but eventually, she asks: “Is it going to rain?”

Mum continues reading the newspaper. “No, I don’t think so.” She turns the page. “Wish it would.”

Her phone sits on the countertop. It buzzes silently, hidden underneath the newspaper. On the screen is a NSW government alert: Evacuate immediately. If you don’t, you will die.

“Luckily the Southerly will keep the fires west of us,” says Mum and turns the page of her newspaper.

Moments pass.

Ollie wrinkles his nose, frowns. “The smoke smell is really bad today.”

Mum abruptly looks up from the paper and out the open window. She registers the darkness in horror. Her coffee spills as she leaps from her stool and staggers to the patio door.

Outside, a fiery blaze dances on the hills on the horizon. Charcoal black smoke rises above it, blowing toward them. The scrubland and trees on the hill are heard crackling in the heat. There are high pitched noises followed by explosive booms.

“Mother of—”

“Are they bombing the fire?” asks Ollie, stepping out onto the patio.

Mum turns around. “Get in the car. Now!”

Ollie pivots and legs it out of the kitchen while Leo and Zara scramble out of their chairs. At the front door, Zara hurries up the stairs to her room. She hears the front door open and realizes how thirsty she is. Parched like Summer and Poppy. Zara lifts Charlie’s pot from the windowsill.

“Zara! Now!” Mum calls from downstairs.

Zara’s throat is sticky and she can’t call back. She rounds the corner of her bedroom door as Mum shouts again, more frantic. “You can’t bring anything! There’s no time!”

At the bottom of the stairs, Mum takes her free arm. “Hurry!” says Mum.

Zara turns toward her flip flops.

“Forget the shoes,” says Mum, pulling her out the front door.

They run out of the house to the drive. Leo and Ollie sit in the red station wagon. Zara climbs in the back. Mum reverses out of the driveway.

“Mum,” says Ollie. “You left the front door open.”

“I know,” Mum says, doing her two-footed dance switching to drive.

Zara twists around in her seat to see Summer and Poppy. They are blowing, keeling over in the strong west winds, which are sweeping black smoke out over the ocean.

“Where are you going?” shouts Summer over the roar of the wind and bushfire on the hillside.

“Take us with you!” shouts Poppy.

Zara’s eyes well with tears. She clutches Charlie tight. Finally, she manages to choke out a few words and says in a whisper, “I’m so sorry.”

The red station wagon speeds along the coastal road. It drives up a hill just outside town. As they crest the hill, they see a long snake of cars with burning red rear lights. The car slows to a stop. Mum looks to the west where the fires are quickly moving down the hillside to the shore. Embers blow well-ahead of the fires. Houses and trees distant from the fire line ignite into a battalion of smaller ones. A rogue ember blows as far as the coastal road and slides across the windscreen.

“Mum?” whispers Leo, his eyes glued to the ember where it floats out over the cliff faces. Mum chews her lip, but says nothing.

The sky grows even darker. Cars file in behind them. People honk. Zara holds Charlie close to her and watches in horror as the small fires join to make bigger fires, like water droplets on the walls of the shower. Mum squints ahead. Amidst the ever-darkening sky, she begins to make out fresh smoke plumes ahead, on the other side of the traffic jam.

She curses. Her feet tap in panic as she reverses the car and accelerates down the coastal road.

“Are we going back home?” asks Leo, his voice cracking from fear.

“We’re going to Plan B,” says Mum.

“When there’s not enough time?” asks Ollie.

“When there’s not enough time,” says Mum.

Leo and Ollie are terrified into a wide-eyed silence. Mum brings the car to an abrupt stop in front of their house, in between Summer and Poppy.

“Are you back for us?” asks Summer.

“Get out of the car,” says Mum in a frighteningly calm tone of voice. “Hurry.”

Zara exits the car and follows her brothers.

“How bad is it?” asks Poppy.

Zara stops to answer, but Mum takes her hand and pulls her ahead. She nearly drops Charlie. Zara and Mum follow Leo and Ollie down the overgrown path to the beach.

“Zara, we need to hurry,” says Mum as Zara trots two paces behind her.

Up ahead, Leo stops his running, clutching his side. “Mum, I have a cramp.”

“Keep running.”

Zara struggles to keep up, falling further and further behind. She is barefoot and she keeps stepping on rocks. Mum backtracks, picks her up, then Mum runs down the path to the beach with Zara looking over her shoulder, watching the fireline approach the house. Leo staggers next to Mum, massaging his side.

When they reach the sand of Cove Beach, Ollie stands there, sweaty and timid, as if he had shrunk. There are a few other families down on the sand. The fear is nearly as thick as the smoke. Mum, still holding Zara, and Leo jog to the end of the path and meet Ollie.

Mum, panting, says, “To the breakwall.”

They trot and lurch down the length of the beach toward the breakwall. The boys cough, and Zara can hear a wheeze inside Mum’s chest.

The sky is now so dark it could be night if it weren’t for the glow of the inferno approaching. Loud bangs echo across the water as trees on the hillside explode. Zara watches as the magpie family flies toward them. Two fall from the dark, smoky sky, and into the surf. Two more pass overhead. They do their droid call. One of their wings is singed.

When Mum, Zara, Leo, and Ollie reach the breakwall, they travel the length of it, hopping from large boulder to large boulder. They stop at the end next to the maritime red and green light. They pant, cough, sputter. Soot and sweat cake their clothes. Mum sets Zara down and wraps her family in a hug. Ollie begins to cry—first a whimper and then as involuntarily as breathing.

They watch the fires. The fire line engulfs their house. And like a monster with an insatiable appetite, it continues. It approaches Summer and Poppy. Embers shower them. They try to lean away from it. Their red ribbons are sucked toward the fires. Their branches bow in the wind and vacuum created by the bushfire.

Eventually, the fire captures them. Zara cries and shields Charlie’s eyes as Poppy and Summer are burned.

Still the fire doesn’t stop. It sweeps down the scrubland and the overgrown path to the beach, where it stalls. The families on the beach run out onto the breakwall.

The temperatures are hellish. Everyone is sweating and covered in soot. Leo steps down onto a submerged rock to cool down. Zara watches as both Summer and Poppy’s trunks explode. She cries even harder, her tears ploughing streaks on her dirty face. She blocks Charlie’s view, so she doesn’t see.

Ash from Summer and Poppy soars into the atmosphere. It floats over the breakwall. It floats higher, across blue seas, infecting blue skies. Across New Zealand. Across the breadth of the Pacific. The ash begins to fall near the tip of Cape Horn and the Drake Passage. It lands on the Antarctic Peninsula.

 

Zara, a few years older, digs a hole. She is in another coastal region of New South Wales. It has a similar overlook of the ocean, but lower to the sea, without the bluffs. Next to her is a large pot with a small tree in it. Tied around its trunk is a red ribbon: Charlie.

“Is it hard to dig a hole?” asks Charlie, bending over to look in the hole.

“There are harder things.” Zara pants. After a few moments, she stops and asks, “Ready?”

Charlie nods. Zara uproots her from her pot and plants her in the ground. She pats the soil down around the trunk.

“What do you think?” asks Charlie, standing straight.

Zara smiles at her. She reaches up and, like a fussy mother on the first day of school, tightens the ribbon on Charlie’s trunk.

“I think they would approve.”

pencil

Tierney Acott is a writer primarily out of compulsion. She has written many feature and short length scripts, several of which have been shortlisted in various Los Angeles and London-based writing competitions. These include “Coupla Kooks”, a feature finalist for several festivals and selected as a table read for the Richard Harris International Film Festival 2020, and an independent comedy pilot, “The C Word,” which was inspired by Tierney’s experience with thyroid cancer. Her first novel, I, Frances, was written for her M.Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin and was longlisted for Britain’s Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition in 2016. Her latest novel, Nigel, was longlisted for Britain’s Comedy Women in Print 2020 Prize. Email: tierney.acott[at]gmail.com

The Hardest Part

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A Midsummer Tale ~ First Place
Jessica Upper

Image of a basket of tomatoes. The basket is rectangular, wooden, with a handle. The tomatoes are large and irregularly shaped, in varying red hues. The background of the image is a pinkish wall and large window that are out of focus.

Photo credit: Susy Morris/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Ellie’s* sister drove her back from the driving test centre in Marston for the second time in two months. Before they left the parking lot, they rolled down the windows in the back of Lisa’s car so that as much cool air could get in as possible on the way home. Once they reached the highway, the hot August wind whipped Ellie’s hair into her face, a few strands catching in the frames of her glasses. She pulled them out painfully and tried to hold her hair back with one hand, wishing she had an elastic.

With the windows down it was too noisy for the sisters to talk, which suited Ellie fine. What was there to say? She gazed out the window at brittle brown fields of soybeans alternating with lush swaths of leafy green corn. She had failed again, that’s all there was to it. Last time Lisa had been sympathetic and patronizing on the way home from the testing centre. Ellie had probably just had a bad tester, Lisa asserted. Next time she’d have better luck. But today’s examiner was a different person and the results were the same. He was a very kind man, Ellie had to admit, who seemed genuinely regretful when he gave her the bad news.

“Too slow,” was his verdict. “If you can’t keep up with the pace of traffic, it’s just as dangerous as going too fast. You need to drive with more confidence and that just comes with practice.” Ellie couldn’t imagine getting behind the wheel again, let alone attempting her driver’s test one more time. It was too humiliating. And yet, what choice did she have? Until she got her licence, she and the kids were stranded at home, dependent on anyone willing to give them a lift.

Maybe it was time to move into town, like John had done. How ironic, Ellie thought, that he had been the one to get an apartment in Fernville when she was the one without a car or licence. Part of her hoped his apartment was a real shithole, but when she remembered that the kids had to stay there on weekends, she took back this wish. Everything always came down to the kids.

Before long the house came into view on the horizon. Ellie usually liked travelling the highway back from Marston because of the vantage it gave of her home. Driving east from Fernville all you could see was a clump of trees, mostly white pines, just off the road, the farmhouse hidden among them like a face badly in need of a shave. But coming in from the southwest the house and most of the surrounding property was visible. It looked good these days, she conceded, especially since John had finally covered up the tar paper last fall with board and batten.

Had he already met the girl when he started all those jobs around the house? Ellie wondered. She’d imagined, in those absurdly warm early days of November, that Zoë’s impending birth had instilled a nesting instinct in him, the way that it supposedly did with mothers. But perhaps it was actually guilt that fueled John’s flurry of domestic activity, making it up to her before she even knew of his betrayal. Ellie had been relieved to see him up on the ladder every weekend as it meant she could take a break from nagging him about the siding. Now it made her ill to think that the completion of this work may have been a consequence of John’s affair.

As they got closer, Ellie turned her attention to the vegetable garden. Even from half a kilometre away, she could make out the abundant potato crop and sprawling asparagus plants, long gone to seed, the tangled mess of the herb garden, and raised beds full of ripening tomatoes. The children’s sunflowers created a radiant border along the driveway. The sight of those tall, hardy stalks, diligently and exuberantly measured by her daughter and sons throughout the summer, made Ellie’s eyes start with sudden tears. Their pleasure in something so simple as a growing plant coupled with their impulse to quantify this wonder touched her deeply.

But now was not the time for crying. Ellie had an urge to tell Lisa to slow down and let her jump, visualizing herself somersaulting from the car like a stuntman. She needed to get out as soon as possible, on to the next thing, away from her thoughts. By the time they pulled into the driveway, Ellie’s seat belt was off; she opened her door while the vehicle coasted to a stop, heat rushing in.

“Thanks Lisa,” she said, disentangling her purse strap from below the seat.

Her skin made a brief sucking sound as she pulled herself off the car’s vinyl interior. Standing, Ellie tried unsuccessfully to smooth the back of her damp shorts, then reminded herself that it didn’t matter. She was just going to change into work clothes anyway. The shorts could join the ever-expanding pile of laundry waiting for her in various hampers around the house.

Sizing up the garden as she walked down the drive, Ellie began a mental list of jobs to do: thin the new beet crop, weed the carrots, re-stake the tomatoes pulled over by the weight of their fruit. She was tempted to start right away, while the sitter was here, but the heat seemed to be at its most oppressive just now. Better to wait until the sun dropped a little, she decided. Besides, she needed to pay Dot first.

Lisa caught up to Ellie as she opened the front door. “Your zucchinis are gigantic,” she commented.

Ellie nodded in brief acknowledgment, hoping her sister was not going to stay long. Probably she should offer Lisa some zucchini, something to thank her for the ride. She had a ridiculous amount still to harvest, and should have picked them before they were the size of baseball bats. Yet, Ellie felt excessively possessive of this summer’s crops. Growing food seemed like the only thing she could do right lately. More than ever, she felt the need to hold onto everything the garden provided, like those families who farmed the land long ago, taking and preserving all they could get from the soil before the weather turned. There was no way of knowing when this overproduction of leaves, fruits, and tubers would suddenly stop.

“Mom!” yelled Rose as Ellie came through the door. She bounded over from the kitchen table where a game of Sorry! appeared to be in full swing. Pulling at the back of her own sweaty shorts, halting in front of her mother, she asked, “Did you pass?”

Ellie shrugged. “Not this time.”

“Oh.” Rose’s mouth turned down at the corners, conveying her dismay.

Ellie patted her eleven-year-old daughter’s shoulder as if she were the one in need of comforting, and hung her purse by the door. “How are things going here?”

“Great!” Rose’s cheeriness returned. She gestured to Dot, sitting at the table with Finn and Michael. “We’re playing round three. I won the first two times, but Dot’s in the lead now. She’s really good.”

Dot looked up from the gameboard smiling wanly. Ellie had the impression that the girl would rather be somewhere else. Watching her twirl a lock of blonde hair around her index finger, Ellie felt empathy for Dot, relegated to sitting around the sticky kitchen table, playing a game in which she had no interest, with some little kids.

A sudden screech emanated from upstairs.

“Zoë’s waking up from her nap,” Rose explained unnecessarily.

“I’ll go get her.” Dot jumped up from the table. Moments later she appeared back in the kitchen, Zoë in her arms. “I have a warm baby here for you!”

Ellie managed a smile. She had barely had time to take off her sandals, hadn’t even visited the bathroom yet, and here was Dot unloading Zoë into her embrace. The baby smelled faintly of zinc ointment and vinegar. Ellie could never figure out why her children’s sweat had such an acidic odour, but there was something strangely comforting about the smell. She couldn’t help putting her nose into the crease of skin below Zoë’s chin, inhaling deeply, while also making her daughter giggle. But then Zoë’s arm arced up defensively, her fist catching Ellie in the nose, the sweet maternal moment ending abruptly.

“Ouch, that looked like it hurt,” Dot said, wincing.

“I’ll be okay,” said Ellie, shifting Zoë to her hip. “Have the kids had lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.” Ellie inwardly wished she and Lisa had arrived home about half an hour later. She plopped Zoë into the high chair at the end of the table, sweeping up a sippy cup of lukewarm water from the floor and depositing it on her tray. “Thanks again, Dot. What do I owe you?”

“Twenty will be fine.”

Ellie returned to the hall for her purse. She opened her wallet, withdrawing the last bill inside, and wondered when she would next be able to get a ride to the bank in Fernville. “You’re okay to walk home?” she called towards the kitchen, where Dot was lingering. “I would offer you a lift, but…”

“I can give her a ride after we eat,” Lisa interjected.

Ellie sighed and rubbed at her temples, trying to remember what she had on hand for lunch. It was too hot to turn on the stove and the bread had run out yesterday. Her guests, she decided, would have to be satisfied with peanut butter on saltines.

*

The heat wave continued into the following week, even as the daylight began its slow ebb towards the autumnal equinox. Ellie tried to get into the garden as early as possible each morning, to water and weed before the sun’s intense rays undid all of her irrigation efforts.

Morning had never been her favourite time of day and now that John was gone, she resented it more than ever. Since Rose was a baby, John had always been the first one awake with the kids. He made them breakfast, sent them upstairs to brush their teeth before Ellie was out of bed. By the time she rose, coffee was waiting and the school bus only minutes away.

Of course, their morning routine had changed even before John left. Zoë, rarely wakeful during the night, was fully alert with the sunrise, crying to be nursed. Maybe she sensed that her three older siblings were early risers and wanted to be in their presence.

As usual the children were sitting in front of the television when Ellie and Zoë stumbled downstairs, eyes glued to the screen, mechanically raising spoons to their mouths from the bowls in front of their crossed legs. In the kitchen they left the cereal box out, surrounded by spilled milk and scattered golden flakes. More discouraging to Ellie, though, was the sight of the cold coffeemaker, holding yesterday’s grounds, not a drop of coffee to be coaxed from the carafe. How did anyone survive single parenting?

Last night Ellie had pulled out the canning pot and as many Mason jars as she could find, washed them all thoroughly and left them to dry on the counter. This morning the glasses sat gleaming expectantly and Ellie decided to forgo a cup of coffee until after she had spent time in the garden. She buckled Zoë into the bouncy chair beside Rose on the living room rug, turned away from the television; she would be more interested in watching her sister and brothers anyway.

“Keep an eye on her, Rose,” she instructed. “One of these days she might try to get out.”

Rose nodded, flitting her eyes briefly between her mother and the TV.

Ellie slipped on her sandals and opened the side door. The air was slightly cooler outside, vibrating with the shrillness of crickets’ song, mercifully drowning out the animated voices on the screen inside. Swallows swooped through the greenish-pink sky, scooping up mosquitoes from shady patches beneath the pines. Ellie felt a brief pang of nostalgia. She remembered moments like this growing up, when her father needed her and Lisa to go out to the lettuce patch to pick heads for the Saturday market. Just as now, she grumbled at getting out of bed early, but as soon as she was outdoors, the colour and stillness, the undeniable newness of dawn evoked an unlooked-for joy.

Ellie grabbed a basket hiding in the weeds and set to work among the tomatoes. Every plant seemed to have reached the zenith of its growth and was now evolving towards decay. Squatting, reaching among the yellowing leaves, Ellie felt some smaller branches snap off, yet most of the thick ropy network of vegetation held securely onto ripe bunches of red fruit. Ellie filled the basket easily and began loading a nearby plastic pail.

By the time she had filled a third, her craving for coffee, a slight caffeine headache behind the eyes, won out over her ambition to harvest the entire crop in one morning. There was nowhere to put more tomatoes, anyway; she had to process what she’d picked to make room in the kitchen. John was supposed to come get Rose, Finn, and Michael after lunch; so long as Zoë had an afternoon nap, Ellie could can several quarts later. She stood, swatting at an errant mosquito, feeling a sense of accomplishment, as if the jars were already filled.

She hauled the pails up to the deck, then brought the full basket into the house. The kids still sat zombified in front of the TV, their bowls now empty. Zoë was the only one moving, grabbing unsuccessfully at her toes with one hand, and chewing her fingers on the other like a dog with a bone.

While the coffee maker unhurriedly dripped oily liquid into its pot, Ellie sat at the table, allowing herself a moment of idleness. She closed her eyes to the messy kitchen, tuning out the shrill voices and symphonic soundtrack of the kids’ cartoons, bringing her fingers to her nose, inhaling the bitter, pungent tomato smell that would cling to her for the rest of the day, the rest of the season.

The phone rang. Probably Lisa, checking in. Hopefully not John cancelling. Ellie picked up the shiny black receiver and gave a tentative, “Hello?”

“Hi, Ellie.” It was Lisa. “Are you listening to the radio?”

Ellie blinked and glanced at the clock on the stove. 7:37. Usually she didn’t put the radio on until after breakfast, during her morning chores. “No,” she said. “Why?”

“They’re saying to watch out for tornadoes,” said Lisa. “In our area.”

“Who is?”

“CBC. It’s on TV too.”

“Huh.” Ellie glanced out the kitchen window where the sky was now decidedly more green than pink. “Do you really think so?”

“I don’t know,” said Lisa. “I mean, it looks fine outside here. Still hot.”

“Is it supposed to cool down finally?” Ellie asked, realizing she hadn’t listened to a weather report in the last two days.

Finn burst into the kitchen, a faint milk moustache above his lips. “Mom!” he yelled. “Are we going to have a tornado?”

Rose and Michael appeared behind him, the same question on their faces.

Ellie covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “Probably not,” she reassured the children. “Is that what you heard on TV?”

Finn nodded, his eyes wide. “I hope we do!”

“I better let you go,” Ellie said to Lisa. “Thanks for phoning.”

“Wait. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call you later,” she promised.

“Okay, guys. There’s nothing to worry about,” Ellie said to the children, who were still looking at her expectantly. “No more TV for now. You’ve rotted your brains enough for one morning.” She poured herself a coffee. “Time to get dressed.”

Rose rolled her eyes and Michael and Finn protested, but the three obligingly trudged upstairs. As soon as they had gone, Ellie turned the TV dial to the news station, keeping the volume low. Mug in hand, she rocked Zoë’s bouncy seat with her foot, watching the station’s meteorologist point to different areas on a map of southern Ontario coloured in pixilated bands that moved briskly, guided as it were by the sweep of his hand. With growing dread, she listened as he described the cold front expected later in the day, a wave of blue colliding with the yellow and red blobs around Fernville. The perfect conditions for a tornado to form, he said, droning on about weather systems and mixed air.

Ellie turned off the TV as the phone rang again.

“Hi,” said John. “You watching the news?”

“Yup.”

“Not a great forecast,” he said. “Especially for the garden.”

She was both bothered and touched that John correctly identified her first concern.

“Do you think we’ll get one?” she asked.

John clucked his tongue, considering. “Hard to say. We’ve never had one the whole time we’ve lived here. Maybe we’re due.”

Ellie wanted to say that was the stupidest reasoning she had ever heard, but bit her tongue. “Are you taking it seriously?” she asked.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. I feel like we probably should take it seriously, for the kids at least,” he hesitated. “And this apartment doesn’t have a basement.”

Ellie’s heart sank. Her plans for the next twenty-four hours trickled away like drops of water running into the cracks on the garden path. She kept her voice flat. “Right.”

“Uh, also…” John cleared his throat. “I wondered if you could spare me some shelter.”

Ellie closed her eyes. What a request. Unbidden, her mind played out a scene of John caught up in a black funnel cloud, shrugging his shoulders helplessly as the children looked on, as if to say: “Blame your mother.” John always did have a way with words.

*

The pickup truck rumbled into the driveway a couple hours later, heat still nauseatingly present despite the appearance of clouds. Michael and Finn were thrilled at John’s arrival, bombarding him with questions about what was in his grocery bags as soon as he stepped out of the truck. They had whooped for joy when they learned they were not going to his apartment this weekend and moreover that he was going to stay a few hours. Rose seemed happy to remain at home, too, but was less enthusiastic when John showed up. She did not follow her brothers down the driveway, and offered John only a small smile when he ruffled her hair in passing.

“How did your driving test go?” John asked Ellie as he approached the deck.

Ellie gritted her teeth and looked away. “Didn’t get it.”

“Hmm.”

An awkward pause. Would he have advice for her? Condolences?

“Maybe I should bring stuff right into the house,” John suggested.

“Yeah,” said Ellie, relieved to drop the subject. “Definitely the water.”

“Okay, guys, let’s go set up camp in the basement.”

“I think I’ll help Mom instead,” Rose piped up.

Was this gesture of support significant? Ellie had tried to stay attuned to her children’s feelings since John moved out in June, but it wasn’t easy to discern allegiances. There had been tears initially, of course, and some confusion, especially from Michael, who was after all only four. John and Ellie struggled to explain that they needed to live apart for a while to figure some things out, although they could not say what those things were. Finn, who at seven exhibited some of his father’s easy-going manner, seemed to adapt quickly to the new situation; if he could watch Ninja Turtles and baseball at either residence, he didn’t mind whether it was the house he grew up in or his father’s two-bedroom apartment above the laundromat.

Rose cried too at first, but asked no questions, except: would she have to share a room with her brothers in the Fernville apartment? Ellie suspected Rose had heard the late night fights between her and John that started last winter, and had sussed out the situation with her father’s new “friend.” She was mature enough to know that her dad was guilty of some transgression, even if no one said the word “affair” out loud. Ellie and John both attempted to talk to Rose about the separation, encouraging her to share her feelings, but so far Rose had kept quietly opaque. Perhaps this was her way of expressing her dissatisfaction.

While the boys wrestled sleeping bags down the narrow cellar steps, Ellie and Rose gathered supplies upstairs, Ellie pondering how to ask Rose what she was feeling towards her father these days. In Zoë’s room, Rose filled a bag with sleepers, burp cloths, and toys, while her mother prepared to change her sister’s diaper.

“Do you want to learn how?” Ellie asked.

“Okay.”

Ellie showed Rose how to arrange two large squares of cotton on top of one another, lift the baby’s feet in order to tuck the cloth underneath her backside, then wrap the remainder up and over.

“The hardest part is putting in the pins,” said Ellie, “but there’s a trick. Watch.” She opened the clasp of a diaper pin, and gently ran the metal spear through her hair, close to the scalp. A moment later, the pin glided easily through the several layers of diaper cloth.

“Cool,” said Rose. “Who knew it was good to have greasy hair!”

Ellie glanced at her daughter sharply, but saw from Rose’s expression that her words were spoken without malice.

“Can I do the other side?”

Ellie watched as Rose carefully ran the second pin through her long, tangled locks then awkwardly pushed it through the white cloth without poking her sister or herself. The diaper was loose, but Ellie smiled her approval and demonstrated how to pull the plastic diaper cover up over Zoë’s legs, making sure the fabric was tucked inside.

“If you ever want to do it by yourself, let me know,” Ellie said, giving Rose’s hand a squeeze. She paused. “You’ve been such a good helper this summer.”

Rose squeezed her mother’s hand in return and then her eyes darted to the window. It was as if a curtain had suddenly been pulled across plunging the room into shadow. Rose and her mother got up to peer out at an early afternoon that now resembled dusk. Moments later raindrops pelted the window with such force that Ellie jumped back; the hairs on her arms rose with electricity. At almost the same moment, John bellowed their names from downstairs.

“Take Zoë,” Ellie commanded, while she stuffed more diapers in the baby’s bag, then tore down the hall grabbing blankets and sweaters from everyone’s rooms. By the time she got to the first floor and glanced out the front windows, water was streaming down, like a school play in which a rainstorm is created by people behind the scenes dumping buckets from the back of the set. As she hurried into the kitchen, a flash of lightning illuminated the room, thunder crashing a split second later, making the floorboards tremble. Somewhere in her brain, Ellie registered the dark stove clock; the power was out. In the same instant she remembered she hadn’t called Lisa back.

And then there was John standing in the entrance to the basement, waiting for her, and Ellie’s forward momentum suddenly ceased. At first she thought he was a stranger. How could this man look so out of place in his own home? Somehow the past eight months, distanced from one another in so many ways, seemed longer than the fifteen years they had been married. Ellie felt more shaken by this thought than by the storm as she moved brusquely past him.

“Ellie.” His voice stopped her as she reached the bottom step. She turned in his direction.

“Thanks for letting me in,” John said.

Before she could respond another thunderclap reverberated above them like a giant’s boot stomping down on the house; this time the lightning flash was simultaneous. Zoë began sobbing, a fearful crying Ellie had never heard before. She joined the circle of lawn chairs the kids had arranged around a camping lantern, took the baby from Rose and attempted to soothe her in a voice she hoped sounded calmer than she felt. In her arms, Zoë trembled and her cry changed to a whimper. For the next five minutes lightning and thunder continued in successive waves, crashing and insistent, until the gap between them slowly increased, replaced by a new noise.

“What is it, Daddy?” Michael whispered.

“It’s the wind.”

“Really?” asked Finn, doubtfully, and Ellie too questioned John’s answer. The growing roar outside had to be made by humans, a massive obnoxious motor intent on destruction. How could nature—the same force that had painted a serene pastel morning just for her—produce something so loud and malevolent? Underneath the roar, Ellie heard a snapping of tree branches and beyond that an icy pinging: the promised hail.

“What do you think of all this?” asked John, looking in turn at each of the children’s faces, his eyebrows raised in an exaggerated expression of fascination.

“It’s cool,” said Finn, and Michael immediately agreed.

Rose replied, “It’s pretty exciting.”

Ellie inspected the children’s faces as well, checking their sincerity. They seemed strangely unperturbed by the intense booms of thunder and alien noise of the wind. Even Zoë was nearly asleep. Perhaps they drew comfort from the six of them sitting here together after this summer apart. Or maybe it was just the novelty. Glancing around, Ellie saw that John and the boys had tried to make it cozy in the dank, cobwebby basement, placing candles on the metal shelving, laying out sleeping bags and pillows on some old skids.

“What do you think of the storm, Mom?” asked Rose.

“It is exciting,” Ellie agreed, catching her daughter’s eye, aware that she was being equally scrutinized. “And a bit scary,” she admitted.

“What about you, Dad?”

As he opened his mouth to answer, the naked lightbulb over John’s head snapped on, startling them all. John gaped in comic surprise at the bulb and the children giggled. The invisible curtain was once again yanked by an unseen hand across the only window in the room; sunlight spilled in.

“Is it over already?” asked Finn, disappointment furrowing his brow. “We didn’t even get to sleep yet.”

Ellie and John both shrugged, then sat listening. The world had gone quiet again.

“I’ll go check,” said John.

Twenty minutes later, standing shivering in the middle of what was left of her tomato patch, Ellie had the surreal feeling that she had never set foot in this place before. This was someone else’s garden, if it could even be called that. The ground around her was littered with uprooted plants still tied to their stakes, smashed tomatoes, an incongruous medley of stems, petals, and roots from other vegetables. Gone were the dusty pathways of the morning, replaced by puddles and chaos. The heat, too, was noticeably missing.

The debris in the garden and yard was significant: several saplings and large tree limbs had fallen in the wind, two garage windows were broken, the old chicken coop upended. Smaller branches, leaves, and sunflower remnants lay scattered everywhere. The garden clean up alone would take many hours, maybe days, and there was likely little to be salvaged. The three pails and one basket of tomatoes in the kitchen were all that Ellie would harvest of this crop.

At least the house was fine, she thought. The car, sitting unused by the garage, had pine boughs plastered all over it, but was undamaged. Most importantly, she and the kids and John were all safe. If a tornado had actually touched down, it would all surely be much worse. But the garden… The thing she had been holding to so tightly. All of those plants that would never be picked and preserved, the saved jars that would remain empty. Ellie looked around in bewilderment, swallowed hard. Was this the time to cry?

“Mom! Look!” Finn and Rose squelched through the mud, plastic bags outstretched between their hands. Ellie peered into Finn’s: dozens of golf-ball-sized lumps of hail clinked together at the bottom.

“Aren’t they awesome?” Finn asked.

Ellie could only nod, her throat tight with tears now. She looked up, saw John and Michael coming towards them, Zoë drowsing in her father’s arms.

John cast his gaze over the mess of vegetation. “Sorry about the garden, Ellie.”

Ellie met his eyes for the first time in months. She heard the sincerity in his voice and knew that he truly was sorry for the garden and maybe for everything else as well. But the apology could not change what had happened. The disaster could not undo itself. Little by little, Ellie knew she would let go of what was lost in the storm and the tranquility of the morning would return. In the meantime, she couldn’t stand to be in the garden nor John’s presence a minute longer. She turned on her heel and went back to the house alone.

*Names have been changed.

pencil

Jessica Upper is an elementary school teacher-librarian in southwestern Ontario. Spending her days surrounded by books is a dream, and so is the thought of writing one. Perhaps she will some day, but for now a few thousand words will have to do. Like the main character in her story “The Hardest Part,” Jessica believes that summers are for growing gardens. Email: jessicaupper[at]gmail.com

The Night on the Rock

Posted on by

A Midsummer Tale ~ Third Place
Christina Hoag

Photo Credit: WhatsAllThisThen/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

Richie coasted down the hill in his Plymouth Duster and turned into the shopping center. Three cars were parked in the middle of the empty lot. Their drivers lolled against the fenders with ankles crossed, smoking and drinking from bottles in paper bags like they owned the asphalt. Richie knew them from school, who didn’t? Mark Ambriano, Lenny Wosniewski and Butch O’Brien. They’d just graduated.

Richie cranked up Lynyrd Skynyrd on the eight-track, checked the windows were rolled down and pressed on the gas. The engine rumbled. As he sped past the three guys, he glanced in the rearview mirror. They didn’t even turn their heads. Douchebags.

He spotted a parking slot under a light. He braked and spun the chrome steering wheel with the heel of his hand, so the Duster stopped within the white lines. He got out and stood for a second to admire the wax job he had spent the afternoon on. The car gleamed. He had bought it three months ago with his dad pitching in a thousand bucks for his seventeenth birthday. So it wasn’t Mark’s 357 Mach II Mustang, Butch’s black-and-gold Trans Am or Lenny’s metallic blue Challenger with a white double-stripe, but that was why he had signed up to take auto shop as his senior year elective instead of art. He’d make his ’72 Duster into something those assholes would have to look at. Deck it out with a spoiler, jack up the rear suspension, give it a cool paint job with the money from his job at the car wash.

Twirling his keys on his forefinger, he sauntered over to the blacked-out storefront of Palace Games. It was just after nine and summer’s darkness was settling into a Friday night thick with invitation. The manager was ushering the last customers out of the supermarket and locking up. The arcade and a dusty fabric store were the only other tenants in the strip mall. The rest of the windows bore “for lease” signs and whitewash curls.

Richie swung open the door to Palace Games and was greeted by a blast of cigarette smoke and the driving bass line of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever.” He fished a couple quarters out of his pocket and jingled them in his palm as he roved. Clicks from the air hockey tables and the tinny bells of pinball filled the air. Kids crowded around the new Space Invader game machines. Keith wasn’t around. He was probably at the Dairy Queen waiting for Charlene to get off work. He’d been asking her out for two weeks and she kept turning him down. Richie had told him to give up already, but as Keith pointed out, what did Richie know? He’d never had a girlfriend.

Richie knew all the kids from school, by sight if not by name, except for two girls wearing tight Sasson jeans playing Star Trek pinball. He was good at pinball. That and welding sculptures out of scrap metal with his dad’s oxyacetylene torch. Everybody thought his stuff was weird, except for Mr. Sampson, the art teacher, who was always encouraging him to enter contests. He had won a couple. But the prizes didn’t mean much to his father, a welder at the Ford plant. His dad would stand with his hands jug-handled on his hips, head cocked, as he considered his son’s contorted shapes. “Good seams,” he’d say finally.

“But what do you think of the form, Dad, the expression?” Richie would ask. That was how Mr. Sampson talked. He’d say things like the “expression of the piece,” “the evocation of emotion,” “the resonance.”

“Well, it’s a piece of fine cutting, just like I taught you,” his dad would answer. Then he’d take Richie to the salvage yard and they’d pick out bits of metal for Richie’s next welding “practice.” At least, Richie got to keep making his sculptures, but he wished that just once his dad would see the creation, not the welding.

Neither girl looked up when Richie sidled up to the machine and shook out a Marlboro from the soft pack, plucking it out with his lips. He shot a look at them over the lighter’s flame. The one playing had wings of brown hair hanging in front of her face as she leaned over the machine in concentration. She was as tall as Richie. The other was baby-faced, shorter, with a dirty blonde Dorothy Hamill haircut.

The ball rolled into the chute. “Game over” flashed on the board.

“Agh!” the one playing threw up her hands.

“You did good. You scored a lot more than last time,” the short girl said.

“I did shitty.”

“That’s not bad,” Richie said. They noticed him for the first time. “Mind if I take a shot?” They moved aside and he slid a quarter into the slot. As he hoped, they stayed to watch. The silver ball popped into the launching chute. With the cigarette dangling from his lips, he pulled back the spring-loaded lever as far as it would go and released it with a twanging thud.

The ball zinged from pillar to pillar as bells pinged. Aware he was on show, Richie put extra effort into swiveling his slim hips to the rhythm of the flipper button he pressed and thrust his pelvis forward when he hit both at once. Points mounted to an impressive total at game’s end.

“You’re really good at this!” the short girl said.

“I’ve been playing a long time.”

“Oh, that’s why,” the slim one said.

“I haven’t seen you ’round here before. What school do you go to?”

“OLPH,” the short one said.

The local parochial school.

“How ’bout you?” the slim one asked.

“Indian Hills.” Richie jerked his thumb in the general direction of the high school.

“What grade are you in?” the slim one said.

“Senior. Going to be.”

“We’re sophomores,” the short one said.

“So, ah, what are you girls doing tonight?” Richie looked at Spock’s ears on the machine’s backboard and felt his own ears get hot. “Want to go for a ride?”

The girls looked at each other. The slim one leaned into the short one’s ear, then straightened.

“We have to be back by eleven-thirty,” the short one said.

“Sure, no problem. I’m Richie, by the way.”

“Lisa,” the slim one said.

“Vicky,” the short one said.

They walked out into the parking lot. Richie looked for the muscle-car trio, but they’d gone. Figured. Just when he had girls to show off.

“Our parents think we’re at a birthday party tonight,” Vicky said. “They’d never let us come down here by ourselves.”

“So, you’re playing hooky.” Richie got in and leaned over to pull up the passenger side lock. He was glad when Vicky slid in first on the bench seat, then Lisa.

“Can you cop us some beers?” Lisa was combing back her feathered hair.

His hand accidentally-on-purpose brushed Vicky’s knee as he put the car into drive. “Er, sure.”

Richie drove down Oakland Avenue, past the car wash where he worked, to the DQ next to the bowling alley. He hoped Keith was there. He’d know what to do. He pulled into the DQ lot. Keith’s Chevy Nova was parked three slots down from the entrance, as usual. He exhaled.

“Shit!” Lisa slid down in the seat. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going by the bowling alley? My dad bowls every Friday night. Get down, Vicky. He knows I’m with you.”

She grabbed Vicky’s arm and tugged her down. “Don’t worry, Lis. He’s probably inside.”

“I’ll be right back,” Richie said.

Keith was sitting with a soda and playing drums with straws on the table. Charlene was wiping down the counter.

“Hey, man,” Keith said.

“Hey. Any luck?” Richie gestured his head toward Charlene.

“She’s coming round.”

That’s what he said every time.

Richie slid into the booth and leaned over the table. “I got two chicks in my car ready to party.”

Keith stopped drumming and looked out the window. “I don’t see anyone.”

“They’re on the floor in the front. They’re scared their old man might come out of the bowling alley and see them.”

Keith grunted and resumed drumming. Richie slapped his hand down on the straws. “They want to get some beers. What the hell do I do?”

Keith removed Richie’s hand and resumed drumming. “Go hang out at the back door of Oakland Liquors and ask someone to buy you a six-pack.”

“I never did that before.”

Keith gave him an oh-come-on look. “Man, you are such a dork.”

“Come with. Charlene’s not going with you and you know it.”

Keith looked at her bobbing ponytail as she wiped down the ice cream machine. “What do they look like?”

“Real foxes.”

“I have first dibs.”

“Done.”

Keith slipped out of the booth. “Later, Charlene.”

She looked up surprised. “Hey wait, Keith…” The door closed on her voice.

They laughed. “‘Bout time you showed her, dork,” Richie said.

*

Richie struck out twice with asking people to buy him a six-pack. It wasn’t as easy as Keith had made it out to be. One man gave him a dirty look. Another told him he should know better than to drink at his age. Richie lit a cigarette and inhaled. Smoking scratched his throat, but he liked hanging out with the cool crowd in the smoking courtyard at school, so he kept doing it.

Laughter rippled from the car. He glanced over.

“Hey, what’s taking you?” Keith yelled.

Richie shot him the middle finger.

A Harley pulled in. A guy and a girl dismounted, pulling off their helmets. Bingo.

Seven minutes later, Richie trotted back to the car with a paper bag containing two six-packs of Lowenbrau. Much to his annoyance, Keith was sitting in the backseat with Vicky. Lisa was riding shotgun.

“Party time!” Richie sang.

Keith grabbed the bag and handed the girls beers as Richie put the car in gear. “Let’s go to the rock,” Keith said.

“At night?” Richie said.

“It’s summer, man,” Keith said. “Live a little.”

“We’ve never been to the rock, have we, Lisa?”

“No, let’s go,” Vicky said.

“Don’t worry, man,” Keith said. “The trail’s easy. Here, have a Lowie. Loosen up.”

“I have a flashlight in the trunk, I think,” Richie said.

Lisa shuffled through his eight-tracks in the glove compartment and held one up. “I love this album.” She slid the tape in. The Allman Brothers’ guitar riffs twanged as they passed the “Welcome to Oakland, New Jersey” sign and wound up the mountain.

When “Ramblin’ Man” kicked in, Richie belted out the lyrics while Keith air-drummed. The girls laughed and joined in the chorus. Richie chucked his empty out the window as they rounded a bend. Keith did the same and then plucked the bottles out of the girls’ hands and tossed them.

“I didn’t finish that one yet,” Vicky protested.

“Spit and foam at the bottom. Have another one.” Keith stuck his head out the window and wolf-howled. Richie howled even louder. Keith was right. There was something about a summer night that stretched the possibility of everything, made life large.

Richie pulled into the entrance to the Ramapo Mountain Reserve, parked and got out. He was pretty sure his father had a flashlight in his emergency kit. He opened the trunk and found it. He switched it on and shone the light around the lot. The beam caught three parked cars, cars he knew.

“Let’s gooo,” Keith called.

They followed the cone of light along the path. The rock lay a mile up on the mountain ridge. It was a huge slab of stone that sloped down to a lake surrounded by pine trees. The trail narrowed as it grew steeper and stonier. The girls panted and stumbled. The boys grabbed their hands and pulled them along.

“This is really far,” Lisa said.

“It’s kind of creepy,” Vicky said.

“Almost there,” Keith puffed.

The climb finally gave way to a “Swimming Prohibited” sign. They stood at the water’s pebbled edge catching their breath. The moonlight glistened on the lake’s black surface surrounded by the dark silhouettes of trees. The air was still and summer-sticky. Richie’s spine prickled. A whoop of laughter from down the shoreline invaded the silence. Richie remembered the cars.

“Party up ahead. Let’s go.” Keith started down the narrow track along the shore. Richie and the girls fell in behind him.

A few minutes later, they climbed onto the rock. Richie looked around. No one. Then a grating rumble sounded. He shone the flashlight up the slope. Three beer bottles rolled down, then a voice called out of the darkness.

“Hey, move. You’re in the way!”

The group shifted to the side. Mark Ambriano, Lenny Wosniewski and Butch O’Brien came into sight as they raced after the speeding bottles, which hit a stone at the bottom with clinks.

“Mine won!” Mark said.

“Who’re you fooling, man, it was mine,” Lenny said.

Butch leapt down to the stone where the bottles had rolled to a rest and smashed them against the rock. Only Keith laughed.

“Butch, quit that shit!” Mark said.

Lenny walked over to them. “You guys wanna party?”

“You got the brewskis, we got the weed,” Mark said.

“It’s decent stuff,” Lenny added. “Sinse.”

Richie, Keith and the girls followed the three guys up the slope. Lenny, Butch and Mark sat next to the girls, leaving Richie and Keith sitting next to each other across from them in the circle. Keith looked at Richie, twisting his mouth as if to say, “This is bullshit.” Richie shrugged.

Lenny expertly rolled a joint from a baggie of pot. A bottle of Jack Daniels came from somewhere and was passed around. Richie felt like he was floating above the scene. These guys would never give him a second look at school. Now he was partying and bullshitting with them like they were buddies.

After a couple joints, shots and a beer, Richie’s head was fuzzing. Voices blurred. His closed his eyes and saw the star-speckled sky on his eyelids. He opened them and wondered vaguely how he was going to get back to the car. He looked around. Keith was lying on his back. Butch was rolling another joint. Mark’s arm had disappeared around Vicky’s back and she was leaning into his shoulder. Lenny and Lisa were making out. The night that had seemed in the palm of Richie’s hand had slipped from his grasp. He elbowed Keith.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah.”

They stood. Richie’s head swam. He grabbed the flashlight and lurched down to the lake. He splashed water on his face. The cold wetness broke his stupor. Keith stumbled behind him. He threw some water on his face and shook his head.

“That reefer was wicked.” Keith’s voice sounded like it was in slow motion.

They started down the trail. The moon had brightened, silvering the lake. Richie switched on the flashlight, took a few steps then heard a retching noise. He turned and shone the flashlight. Keith leaned on a tree trunk and and wiped his mouth with his T-shirt.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, now that I barfed,” Keith croaked. He walked to the lakeside and splashed more water on his face.

The flashlight was faint. “Not much battery left,” Richie said. “If we hurry, we might make it before it goes dead.”

A high-pitched scream pierced the air. Richie and Keith froze.

“Hold her!” Butch.

“Leave her alone!” Lisa.

Another scream.

“Shut the fuck up!” Lenny.

A girl’s sobs. “Leave us alone!” Lisa.

“Shut your fucking mouth! It’s your turn next.” Butch. A slap. A cry. “I told you, shut it.”

Keith and Richie looked at each other. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Keith said in a loud whisper.

“What do we do?” Richie whispered.

“Fuck!”

“We got to go back.”

“Are you shitting me?” Keith snatched the flashlight. “They’ll think we’re part of it.” He set off down the trail. Richie was paralyzed. “Richie, they’re just goofing off. Come on.”

He hesitated, then followed Keith. They skidded down the first steep stretch, then Richie paused and listened. Crickets chorused, nothing else.

Keith turned. “What the fuck are you doing? Come on, man. We don’t want those guys on our asses.”

“I don’t know.”

“Those girls were going along with them. You saw.”

Richie couldn’t move.

“Listen, if you want to be a dork, that’s your fucking problem.” Keith moved off at a fast clip.

The flashlight’s beam bobbed into the darkness. Keith was probably right. The girls were looking for trouble. He’d go back and find them all laughing. He’d look like a real douchebag. Richie jogged to catch up with Keith, but a lump formed in the pit of his stomach.

*

The rest of the weekend, Richie worked his hours at the car wash then slumped on the couch in the basement watching All in the Family reruns.

“You feeling all right, Richie?” his mom called down the stairs.

“I’m fine, Ma.”

As the laugh track played on the TV, Richie played the night over in his mind. The screams. The crying. “It’s your turn next.” Something bad happened. He should have gone back. He should have told Keith it was a lousy idea to go to the rock in the first place. Why did he ever listen to him?

Maybe it was just the pot that spooked him. Those guys would never have done anything to the girls, would they? They were just roughhousing, got carried away, like Keith said. And those girls really did ask for it. They wanted to go to the rock. They were making out with those guys. He wasn’t responsible for them. Or was he? He drove them there.

Richie felt a weight on his chest that made it hard to breathe. He’d experienced that once before, when he was ten and playing in the sea at Wildwood, letting the waves dance him around like a piece of driftwood. It was fun for a while, then the waves got rough, crashing over him and clawing him under. As soon as he got his head above surface, another wave slammed against his body, submerging him. He kept swallowing saltwater and his throat was burning. He thrashed and flailed but he couldn’t get his head above the surface. Then suddenly he was breathing air. He couldn’t remember how he got out, but he was able to swim to shallower water and walked back to his towel and collapsed.

*

Monday was a good day at the car wash. Richie made fifteen bucks in tips. Feeling lighter than he had all weekend, he strode into the kitchen after work and opened the fridge.

“Get out of there. Dinner’ll be ready soon.” His mother spoke without looking up from the newspaper she was reading at the table.

He grabbed the milk carton, poured himself a glass and gulped.

“There was a gang rape of some teenage girls up at Ramapo. They’re looking for the suspects.” His mother turned the page. “I always told you kids got up to no good up there.”

Richie spluttered on the milk.

His mother looked up in alarm. “You okay?”

He wiped his mouth with his forearm. “Went down the wrong way.”

He rushed into his bedroom and flopped on the bed, burying his face in the pillow. Gang rape.

He was responsible for two girls getting raped by three guys. Was he an accessory? An accomplice? A witness?

Richie didn’t feel like eating, but he didn’t want questions from his parents, so he shoveled down his dinner and retreated to the basement. Laverne and Shirley was starting when he heard the doorbell. A minute later, his mother opened the basement door. “Richie, some boys are here to see you. Mark, Butch and Lenny.”

His stomach clenched. “I’m not home, Ma.”

“I already told them you are. They said it’s important.”

Richie hauled himself up the stairs and out to the front porch, carefully closing the door behind him. His parents were in the living room, playing along with Jeopardy.

Mark stood on the porch. “Hey Richie, got a sec?” Mark cocked his head toward the driveway, where Butch and Lenny hovered. They walked over. Richie shoved his hands in his pockets.

“So, ah, you know the other night, well, nothing really happened, you know,” Mark said.

“You didn’t see nothing anyway, right.” The way Lenny phrased it, it wasn’t a question.

“We’re just saying because those girls were real wasted, and they might be going around saying stuff, but they were real easy, real teases, you know. Nothing happened like they might be going around saying. And you were there, and your buddy Keith, so they might have got all us guys mixed up. It was real dark, you know what I mean?” Mark arched his eyebrows.

Yeah, Richie knew. He was trapped. He wanted to knock that smart-ass look off Mark’s face with a right hook like his dad had taught him with the punching bag slung up on the tree in the backyard. He slapped at a mosquito on his arm instead.

Butch took out a hunting knife and cleaned his fingernails with the blade tip. The steel glinted. His old man was the police chief. Mark’s dad was a lawyer. And Lenny, rumor had it that his father was in prison for killing someone. Richie’s chest felt tight. He cleared his throat. “I really don’t remember much of that night. I was pretty shitfaced.”

“That’s what we kinda figured. We just wanted to make sure,” Mark said. “So now we got that all straightened out, we’re cool, man, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Richie’s skin squeezed his bones.

“Let me know if you want some help with that Duster,” Mark said. “We could do a real cool paint job on her, a racing stripe or flames on the fenders even.”

“Yeah, sure,” Richie mumbled.

Keith. He waited until they left, then he got in the Duster and cruised down to the Dairy Queen, keeping right on the speed limit although he wanted to go faster. As he walked to the door, Richie could see Keith through the window, scarfing down ice cream at a booth. Charlene was serving cones at the walk-up window.

“How’s it going?” Keith’s spoon clattered into the empty banana split dish as Richie sat across from him. Keith pulled a napkin from the dispenser and swiped it across his mouth.

Keith leaned over the table. “Charlene’s going out with me after work. Told ya I’d get her. Take it from me, girls like the chase.” He grinned. “I took a bottle of Southern Comfort from the liquor cabinet. The old lady’ll never miss it.”

“Cool.” Richie grabbed the salt shaker and spun it. “So Butch and them just came by my house.”

Keith lowered his voice. “I told them I didn’t see nothing, hear nothing, I was wasted off my ass. I don’t even remember how I got home. That’s what happened.”

“But we heard them, the girls screaming and all that.”

“Richie, we left. We didn’t hear jack. End of fucking story. You say any different, we’re going to land in a major pile of shit, capisce?”

Richie tipped the shaker and poured the salt onto the table. There was something soothing about watching it flow into a perfect white mound.

“Would you quit that? Charlene’s going to think I did it.” Keith glanced over his shoulder and brushed the salt on the floor under the table. He grabbed the shaker out of Richie’s hand and set it aside. “Besides, no one’ll ever believe us over them. One of them’s old man is the police chief.”

“It was your fucking idea to go to the rock.”

“Don’t dump this shit on me.” Keith jabbed his finger at Richie. “You were the one who begged me to go with you. Those girls were sluts. They were looking for trouble and got what they deserved.”

“Keith, I’m closing out the register. I’ll be done in five,” Charlene called. “Can you bring over your dish?”

“Sure.” Keith stood. “Think about it, Richie. You’ll see I’m right.” He grabbed the dish and walked to the counter.

Richie drove home and opened the garage door. He fished a wrench out of the toolbox and unscrewed the Duster’s rear bumper. He put on the welding mask and gloves and fired up the oxyacetylene torch. He twisted and melted the bumper into a contorted figure until his arms ached.

The next night after dinner, Richie went into the garage and dismantled the Duster’s front bumper and grill and started welding. His mother peered through the half-open door as she wiped her hands on a dish towel. Her brows knitted. A few minutes later, the door flung open. His father marched in, a rolled up newspaper in his hand.

“Son, what in God’s name are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

Richie focused on his seam.

His dad whacked the newspaper hard on the tool bench. “Richie, you pay attention to me when I’m talking to you! Turn that torch off!”

Richie didn’t stop.

His father took two steps and yanked off the spigots on the oxygen and acetylene tanks. The torch’s flame fizzled. “Get in the house!”

Richie, still wearing his welding mask, got up and turned on the tanks.

His father’s face looked like all his blood vessels had burst.

“Richard. Get. In. The. House!” His dad’s arm shot out toward the door. Richie lifted the torch. Its 3,000-degree blue flame spit directly at his father, who reeled back and crashed into the garbage cans.

“I never should’ve given you the money for that car. You’re goddamn spoiled!” He hauled himself up and went into the kitchen. “Jesus Christ, he almost killed me with that torch! I don’t know what’s wrong with him.” His dad’s voice floated into the garage.

“It must be girl trouble,” his mother said.

The door closed. Richie kept welding.

The next night, Richie came home from the car wash, took his dinner plate into the garage and started working on the hub caps. His father entered and sat on a milk crate.

“Son, you can tell your old man. You got some girl knocked up?”

Anger rose in Richie’s throat. He wasn’t going around knocking up girls. He ignored the question.

“Jesus, Richie, this is crazy.” His father combed his hair with his fingers. Then he got up and retreated to the kitchen.

“It’s that goddamn art teacher,” he heard his dad say. “I’m going to fix this once and for all.”

The next night, Richie went into the garage and flicked on the light. There was an empty space where his welding equipment and sculpture had been. He got into the Duster and banged his forehead against the steering wheel. He slid the key into the ignition and backed out the driveway. He roamed downtown for a while, feeling his rage descend into a dark but stable mood, then decided to head to Burger King for a shake.

“Hey Richie!” Mark, Butch and Lenny were sitting at a table with trays of burgers and fries. Shit. He considered walking out, but he’d look like a wimp. He nodded at them and ordered a chocolate shake, then added a Whopper and extra-large fries that he didn’t want. Maybe they’d be gone by the time his order was ready. But they weren’t.

“Richie, over here!” Mark waved at him. He twisted toward them, pulled by the string of obligation, and sat at their table. “We’re going to borrow a swimming pool, if you want to come.” The others chuckled. “The Politanos are away so we have a little swimming party there at night. The house is set back. No one sees us.”

“Sure.” Richie heard himself say. His chest constricted again, the waves buffeted him, closing over his head. He couldn’t breathe.

“Let’s pick up Veronica on the way,” Lenny said.

“We know what that’s about,” Butch said.

“You betcha!” Lenny wiggled his eyebrows.

They all laughed.

Richie tried to smile, to go along, but he couldn’t. He knew his father would kill him for sneaking into someone’s yard. Did he really want to turn into another Mark, Butch or Lenny? Did he really want to join their club? Then memory struck him like a lightning bolt. It was his father who had plucked him out of the ocean all those years ago. Dad had deposited him in shallower water where he could safely swim to shore.

He stood up. “I just remembered. I gotta do something.” He walked off.

“Hey, you want your food?” Butch called.

“You can have it,” Richie said.

He drove home and entered the living room. His father was in his recliner, watching Wheel of Fortune, a folded newspaper on the table beside him.

“Dad, you gotta minute?”

pencil

Christina Hoag is the author of novels Girl on the Brink and Skin of Tattoos (Onward Press). Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous literary reviews including Lunch Ticket, Shooter, the Santa Barbara Literary Journal and the San Antonio Review and have won several prizes. She is a former journalist for the Miami Herald and Associated Press and Latin America foreign correspondent. Email: choag24[at]gmail.com

Boys Will Be Boys

Posted on by

A Midsummer Tale ~ Second Place
Robin Kirby

Photo Credit: rockpool73/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

“I think Toby Gardiner lives in that house.” Miranda pointed at a low-set fibro beach shack, set in an overgrown garden. “Do you want to see if he’s home?” The house itself was unimposing, but the places along this stretch of dirt road backed on to the open sea. My parents’ beach house was a luxurious high-set with views forever, but it didn’t have that mesmerising sound of waves breaking on the shore night and day.

It struck me that Miranda may have contrived staying with me for the sole purpose of putting herself in the path of Toby Gardiner. She had mentioned this latest crush when we were discussing our plans for the summer holidays.

“He’s such a doll.”

Toby Gardiner was a year older than us and had attended a different school. He would be going to university down south soon. Miranda had met him through a friend one weekend and had watched out for him when we attended the end of year inter-school swimming carnival. Neither Miranda nor I were very sporty, but we’d been in the cheer squad, dressed to kill in short skirts and tight T-shirts. During their animated conversation, she’d found out that he was an only child and that his father had recently died of a heart attack. She had also found out that his family beach house was walking distance from mine.

“OK,” I replied, “but if he’s there I don’t want to stay very long.”

Miranda sauntered to the screen door. “Anyone home?”

“Hey, Miranda, isn’t it?”

I had to admit that Toby was pretty cute. He had a bit of a surfie look about him: bleached blonde hair, bronzed skin. A shame all his attention was on Miranda. Boys always seemed to go for Miranda. She was my best friend and all, but really, she wasn’t what you’d call beautiful. A little on the chubby side, baby blue eyes, blonde curls. I guess buxom was the word that fitted best, maybe even voluptuous.

It turned out that his mother was due home in a few minutes, but would be at work the next day. While she was away, some of his mates would be coming over for a game of cards and a few drinks. Toby said it would be fun to have a couple of girls there as well. How about it?

“Bingo,” said Miranda as we meandered back home. The sun beat down relentlessly on our bare heads, but we hardly noticed as we giggled together and concocted a plausible story to tell my parents about what we’d be doing the next day. I wondered what the other boys would be like.

*

“That’s it for me,” said Shane, throwing his cards into the middle of the table.

I had been checking him out for a while. He was the one who owned the dust-streaked car outside Toby’s place. He had been intent on the poker game and his restless eyes rarely left his cards. The boys had started with piles of coins in front of them, but his had now dwindled away to almost nothing. They were drinking beer from cans and laughing about the fun they’d had last night when Shane had hit 100 miles per hour down the straight stretch of Harbour Road.

It felt like Miranda and I were privileged to be on the sidelines. I didn’t know what to make of the third boy. They called him ‘Cliffo’ and when we sat down, he announced with a perfectly straight face, that he had a certificate proving he was sane. He didn’t sound like he was joking, so I repressed my desire to giggle. I had no experience with mental illness. He might be for real.

Shane and Cliffo had been hurling the empty cans through an open window in some kind of ‘who can get his can the furthest’ competition.

“Hope you’re going to pick those up,” said Toby.

“Ya going to make us?” said Cliffo.

“Thought my mum scared you shitless.”

Shane shrugged and wandered outside and collected the cans, put them in the rubbish bin, then grabbed his car keys. It turned out he was off to meet his girlfriend in town. Drat. The three boys had a muttered conversation near the door, there was some skylarking and laughter and I heard the car spin its wheels in the dirt as it took off.

Toby came back to the main room with Cliffo. By now, Miranda had gone to sit on the lounge and Toby sat down close beside her. There was some desultory conversation about holidays and school and how hot it was. I could see that Toby had an arm around Miranda and I tried not to watch as his hand surreptitiously slipped inside her blouse. She blushed and moved side on so we couldn’t see.

Cliffo watched unblinking for a minute and then went and got himself another beer from the fridge. He came and stood right in front of me and I noticed for the first time that he was tall and that his eyes were an intense blue.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Suited me. I just wanted to get away from the embarrassing situation of sitting around watching my friend being seduced.

“Alright.”

Cliffo walked through a doorway and I automatically followed. He closed the door. We were in a starkly furnished bedroom. I panicked, but then realised that there was probably nowhere else to sit down in the small beach shack. At least we couldn’t see the others.

We both stood in silence. He took a few sips of beer then handed me the can.

“You finish it. I’m not supposed to drink ‘cause of my medication.”

I walked to the window but couldn’t see the sea, just bushes. There was no breeze. The room was stinking hot. No fans. No air-con. I’d never actually drunk a full can of beer before. It was bitter on my tongue, but at least it was cold. Perhaps I’d relax a bit more and be able to string more than two words together if I got a little tipsy. I gulped it down and put the can on the sill. Cliffo was still standing, just watching me.

“Did they tell you why I was in the funny farm?”

“No. No one said anything.”

“Tried to commit suicide.”

For some reason, that made me feel better. I could relate to depression and suicide. Not like madness, which to me was a scary kind of unknown.

“Oh. Sorry.”

The room was starting to spin a bit and I felt a little woozy. I sat on the edge of the bed. Cliffo lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.

“It’s OK,” he said. “I’m not going to jump you or nothin’. You can lie down.”

It was tempting. I was decidedly dizzy by now, so I carefully stretched out, keeping to the edge of the bed.

After a few more minutes of silence, Cliffo propped himself on his elbow.

“You’ve got a nice belly.”

I was wearing black footie shorts and a midriff top. Yeah, my stomach was toned and tanned. Looked pretty damn good really, despite the sheen of perspiration.

“Can I touch it? Just gently?”

What could be the harm? It wasn’t like a sexual thing. And anyway, he was suicidal. If I said no, I might hurt his feelings.

“OK, but nothing more. Alright?”

Up ‘til now, I had only experienced some sweaty handholding and a couple of sloppy kisses from pimply youths at school. I was starting to worry a bit about being left on the shelf or that maybe I came across as an ice princess or something. I was nearly sixteen, after all.

He lay a hand on my stomach. It was warm and not unpleasant. After a few more minutes, he gently began to draw small lazy circles around my navel. I closed my eyes. I felt less nauseous that way. And I could almost imagine he was someone else. Some romantic hero from that shadowy world of my imagination.

The lazy circles slowly, slowly expanded and a distant part of me was aware that disembodied fingers had ever so gradually pulled down the elastic waistband of my shorts. Those sensitive fingers were now trailing across my lower belly, creating pulsating tingles lower down. The beer had certainly relaxed me and I experienced these new sensations with a dazed sort of detachment.

Something in the back of my mind was tugging at me, bothering me. It was that irritating goody two-shoes part of me demanding to be heard, to remind me that this was wrong, and nothing like the romance of my imagination.

He wasn’t the one. This person beside me had discoloured teeth and I was becoming increasingly aware that he smelled of stale beer, cigarettes and rancid sweat. While I tried to summon up the wherewithal to somehow extricate myself from this situation, I lay inert like a rabbit in a spotlight. The problem was that a wilder, more untamed part of my nature that I barely recognised was willing me to continue, to keep exploring the sensuous mysteries that Miranda was no doubt experiencing in the other room.

I felt a clumsy, inexpert fumbling between my legs. OK, enough was enough. This was downright tacky now and most definitely not what I wanted. I started to pull away but he was big and heavy and kind of pinning me down. There was a rough probing into the area my mother euphemistically described as my ‘private part’ and I finally galvanized into action and yanked frantically at his hand while desperately trying to pull my shorts up. God, surely that wasn’t the end of my virginity.

Without warning, he leapt off the bed and headed out the door, gleefully shouting to the others. I sat up, stone-cold sober.

“I win. I win. Fingered her. Come on, Toby, pay up.”

I felt my face flushing. I ran from the room, not caring what state of undress Miranda was in. Slamming the screen door, I pushed blindly through the bushes to the road, hoping against hope that Miranda would follow.

She did. “Are you for real? You let Cliffo do that?”

I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t bear the thought of her judgement or her pity. “He was lying. He just touched my stomach. That’s all.”

“Didn’t sound like it,” she said.

“I didn’t want to say anything back there, because I felt sort of sorry for him. You know, because of the depression and suicide and stuff.”

“What? He told you he was suicidal?”

“Yeah.”

“The lying toad,” said Miranda. “Toby reckons he’s a bit of a psychopath. Really weird if he’s off his meds.”

“So, it’s because he’s insane that he made that bet with the others?”

“Nah. Boys will be boys. That’s what a lot of them are like.”

That was the initial turning point of my summer. It hurt me right to my very core that the other boys had gone along with the bet, that they’d laughed about it and thought it was a great joke. I was deeply ashamed about the way my own body had betrayed me. Deep inside, I knew that never again would I put myself in a position where I could be humiliated by anyone. I didn’t care anymore if boys thought I was a prude or if I became an old spinster. No male would ever make a fool of me again.

“So Miranda, what about you? Was Toby trying to win a bet too?”

“God no. Toby and I are in love.”

Later, Miranda and I sat on the warm sand watching the dancing, foaming waves as the shadows lengthened. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I told her the truth about what had happened.

“You should report him,” she said.

“Who to? It’s not like I kicked and screamed.”

“But you didn’t say yes and you certainly didn’t know he was just doing it for a bet. That would have to be deception or false pretences or something.”

“You know how embarrassing it would be to tell a cop? Or my parents? Anyway, he’d probably say I led him on.”

“Yeah. I get what you mean. Guess you’re just going to have to live with it.”

*

A few weeks later and the humidity was almost unbearable as the torrential rains of the wet season threatened. Miranda and I were back at school, and it wouldn’t be long until Toby left for university. I didn’t care what Cliffo or Shane were planning to do with their lives. I hoped I would never see any of those boys again as long as I lived. I received sporadic reports from Miranda about Toby’s phone calls and the frenzied trysts in the back of Shane’s car, on the occasions when Toby could borrow it.

On my way out of the house one oppressive morning, I glanced at the daily newspaper on the dining room table. The macabre picture of a smashed-up car caught my eye. The impact had been so forceful that the car had split into two and the roof had peeled back, as if a giant had opened a can of sardines.

Toby Gardiner and Shane Walker had been killed in the single vehicle rollover.

For a moment, I could scarcely breathe. Miranda would be devastated. Then it was almost as if a switch had been flicked, and I turned and walked into the mind and spirit of my more mature self. I breathed deeply and was calm and in control. I would be Miranda’s support. I had been a part of her idyllic summer and we would weather this together. I understood. I was the only person who had known the unfolding of her first real love. I knew I could do this.

*

The small church was filled to overflowing for the double funeral, despite the teeming rain. Miranda and I stood at the back and vainly scanned for spare seats.

“We should be up at the front with Toby’s mother,” whispered Miranda.

“But you’ve never met her, have you?”

“Yeah, but I was his girlfriend. Do you think I should introduce myself before the service starts?”

I instinctively knew that would be a disaster. I had noticed a woman come and sit in the front row by herself and guessed it would have to be Toby’s mother. She moved like an automaton, face drawn, eyes dead. And so alone.

For a few moments she sat staring at the two coffins. I felt that she was trying to work out how she would ever bear the dreadful weight of the deaths of first her husband and now her only child. Then people came and surrounded her, hugged her, kissed her cheek. Cliffo was among them. I shuddered.

Miranda and I remained squashed among those standing at the back. We sang the hymns and said Amen at the right times in the prayers and then the eulogies started. A petite slip of a girl came to the front. She looked Eurasian to me. Thick black plait, liquid eyes. She took a deep breath and began:

“For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Raya. I’ve been Toby’s girlfriend for two years and we were the world to each other.”

There was an audible gasp from Miranda, thankfully drowned out by people fanning themselves with their service sheets.

“Of course, there was another woman in his life…”

I felt Miranda stiffen.

“…his beautiful mother, Leila, who is heartbroken.”

Raya went on to explain about Toby’s mother sending a telegram to her in Malaysia, where Raya had been caring for her sick grandmother. She talked on about the plans she and Toby had made for opening a mental health clinic for disturbed youth once she and Toby had qualified, plans to volunteer overseas, to marry, to have a family.

I whispered in Miranda’s ear. “Do you want to go?”

She tearfully nodded and we quietly sidled out into the damp churchyard and found a sheltered seat on a low brick wall.

“I think I need to set the story straight,” said Miranda. “I think Toby’s mother and Raya need to meet me, to know that Toby had fallen in love with me.”

I was silent for a minute. It was clear to me that Toby Gardiner wasn’t the Mr Nice Guy everyone painted. He had been quite content to keep his exotic princess as his long-term plan but to have fun with my friend Miranda while Raya was off the scene. This was a powder keg just waiting to be ignited.

“No, Miranda. What good will it do?”

“It would make me feel better. Less like a bloody stupid idiot.”

“I know you’re hurting. But if you tell them, then three people will be hurting. It’s not like Toby’s mother or Raya did anything wrong. They knew Toby for a long time and shared heaps of experiences with him. You’ll make their memories of those times ugly and distorted. Would that be fair?”

Miranda dabbed at her eyes with a damp, twisted tissue. “Guess we’ve both learned a lot about boys this summer,” she said, with a weak smile.

More than that, I thought. We’d learnt a whole lot about life.

pencil

Robin Kirby followed her heart and studied English Literature at University in Townsville. It taught her to appreciate great writing. A Creative Writing course gave her the practical tools to try herself out as a freelance writer. As a result, she was fortunate to have a few short stories published but that was many years ago and it didn’t seem she could make a career of it. She turned to other professions and also saw a bit of Australia, moving from Townsville to Darwin, then on to Perth and finally back to the Tropics again. Working as a psychologist in a psychiatric unit gave her insight into personality and behaviour; university administrative positions encouraged her to be meticulous and to respect high standards; teaching piano lessons opened her eyes to the rhythms and cadences of expression. Family? Well, family is her reason for being. Full circle. Now she’s back following her heart, but with a lifetime of experiences to add colour and authenticity. Writing. Email: robknibb56[at]hotmail.com

My Virginity and Other Losses

Posted on by

A Midsummer Tale ~ First Place
April Vázquez

Photo Credit: dianne.dacayana/Flickr (CC-by)

The first thing Kyle Mayhue says to me when he opens the door of the trailer where he lives and finds me standing on the front step is, “You look tough with your hair like that.” He pooches out his mouth in a pucker and nods approvingly.

I haven’t seen him in over a year, since he dropped out of high school and stopped riding my bus. He looks older, like an adult almost, with a sparse reddish beard and tan, muscular arms. His curly, dark auburn hair is a little longer, but his face is unchanged besides the beard: coarse, with a wide nose and a long, deep scar on his right cheek that crinkles into a dimple when he smiles. I probably do look different to him, with my eyeliner and bizarre clothes. My hair is shaved down to an inch on one side, and down to my chin on the other.

Kyle works third shift at the factory at the bottom of the road. He lives here on a dirt hill with his grandmother in the wasteland of shacks and trailers that lie between the factory and Kingstown, the Black neighborhood at the edge of Larrimore. Even from the doorway, the place smells like fried food and cigarette smoke. Behind him I can see a box of powdered sugar donuts on the kitchen table among a mess of papers and clothes, under a glaring light bulb with no shade. A dreadlocked dog shuffles around the dusty yard on a long rope.

I’m here, ostensibly, to buy weed from him, but what I really want is to get into the habit of seeing him again. What I’m buying is his time.

“Come in,” he says.

I visit him once a week all spring, buying marijuana every time. When I’m there I smoke a little with him, but what I buy I don’t smoke. I scatter it out in the woods and rake leaves over it with my foot, then I wad up a piece of notebook paper around the baggies. The truth is that I don’t really like to smoke it. It’s just a way to justify my visits.

Kyle’s grandmother, Marlene, is loud, vulgar, and good-natured, with a raspy voice and wheezy laugh. She has a big bosom and disproportionately small waist, and she draws on her eyebrows in thin, brown pencil lines that give her face a quizzical look. She chain-smokes Marlboro Reds and loves the Jerry Springer show, which, because it conflicts with her work schedule at Ruby’s convenience store, she watches when she gets home at night. I’m here in time to see her today because it’s a teacher workday.

“You gonna tape Jerry for me or what, Kyle?” she says, twisting her lips to exhale out her cigarette smoke to the side.

“Naw. I’m sick a you watchin’ that shit. It’s embarrassin’.”

“You know what’s gonna happen if you don’t tape it,” she says, balling up her fist and shaking it at him.

This is their shtick. He gives her a hard time, but he tapes the program for her. He even watches it. One day I arrive in time to catch the last part of the show with him. Two surly brothers are in love with the same girl, a scrawny, pasty-looking child from Alabama, not yet in her twenties. They scream and curse one other as the audience chatters like primates, urging them on to an open brawl.

“Ain’t this sick?” Kyle asks, yawning.

“Yep,” I say. But we keep watching it.

As time goes on, I stop buying weed from Kyle, and he eventually stops offering it to me, even to smoke. Instead we watch TV or play video games or listen to CDs. To listen to music, we go into his room, where the stereo stands between a weight bench and the bed along the far wall. At first we sit on the floor, which is covered with thick, orange carpet and smells faintly musty. Then we sit on the bed, on top of an old green sleeping bag, then eventually we lie on the bed, though we don’t touch. I begin to visit every day, inventing excuses for being out in the afternoons. I say I have activities after school, science club, Spanish club, National Honor Society. Or that I go to Becca Bradham’s. I know my mother won’t check up on this story; she considers Becca’s family beneath us.

Kyle never touches me. He lies on the bed and smokes cigarettes and softly sings Pink Floyd songs, occasionally getting up to change the CD. He waits until I’m ready.

*

On the day I’ve chosen, I skip school. Anyway, it’s winding down now; the seniors are out already, leaving the rest of us restless and indignant about having to show up. We’ve come to the purgatory of post-yearbook signing and academic awards, with nothing to look forward to except interminable exam reviews and, finally, the exams themselves. Crestdale High can spare me for the day.

I spend the morning at Don’s Pancake House, having a leisurely breakfast, then on a bench under a maple tree at the city park immersed in The Bell Jar. I wake Kyle up at just after one o’clock, knocking softly, then louder, on the door of the trailer. It’s hot as hell, the hottest day this year, the kind of sultry summer day that makes the whole outdoors feel like a sauna in central North Carolina. The top of Kyle’s Buick radiates heat in squiggly waves, and as I stand on the cinder block step, sweat beads on my upper lip and brow and makes a pool in my bra.

He comes to the door bleary-eyed, with a slight flush to his skin. He’s wearing only pajama bottoms, emblazoned with the Duff’s Beer logo. “Why didn’t you come earlier?” he says, squinting into the sunlight, grinning. He closes one eye, scratches his chest. “Come in, lemme brush my teeth.”

When he comes out of the bathroom, he has little drops of water on his face. They glisten in the sunlight. I walk over to him, stand in front of him, closer than I’ve ever stood before, and with one finger wipe a drop of water from his cheek down through the groove of his scar.

“Be soft with me,” I say, biting my lower lip. “It’ll be my first time.”

His skin is salty. He keeps his eyes closed, and I see that the lashes are longer than I’ve ever noticed before. His back gets slippery with sweat, there’s more hair than I thought, and a dog howls, far away, from the direction of the factory. The air conditioner rattles. It hurts, but not too much.

When it’s over I notice there’s a little blood on the sleeping bag. “I’ll tell Grammaw it’s motor oil. She prob’ly won’t even notice,” Kyle says, kissing my nose. I decide I’ll keep a tally, I tell myself we’ll do it twenty times. Surely once you’ve done something twenty times, you know how it’s done.

This is how I begin, but the weeks spread out into months, and I lose count of my tally, knowing the number was well beyond what I’d planned. There’s nothing I can really pinpoint that I don’t like about Kyle. I keep waiting to tire of him, not to want to see him anymore, but the feeling never comes. So not seeing him has to be a planned act, a decision. Just like going to bed with him was, but harder to make. Anyway, it’s summer, and the ungodly heat seems to have trapped me into a sensual lethargy. Like Daisy Buchanan on the day in New York City when Jay Gatsby challenges her husband, I can’t imagine taking any serious action, making any change in such heat.

I keep it up till September. It’s only when the mornings grow cooler and the first leaves show a pale cast of pale orange and yellow that I begin to imagine letting Kyle go. On the day I’ve chosen, it’s raining.

“I can’t see you anymore,” I say to his shoulder as soon as I walk in. I look up at his face, where his grin has frozen, then, in an instant, he’s made his expression blank. He takes a step back, his movements stiff. I watch him pick up his denim jacket where it’s slung over the arm of the couch. A fine white cat hair sticks out from the collar, reminding me of the thistles I used to get stuck in the cuffs of my pants when I played outside as a child. Like tiny archery arrows.

“You getcha a boyfriend?” he asks. “A rich one, that you don’t have to sneak around with?”

“Yeah,” I say softly.

“That’s cool. I’m just gonna run out to the store, get me some cigarettes. I’ll see you around.” He doesn’t look me in the eye.

While he pulls on his jacket and gets his keys, I look out the window at the drizzle hitting the leaves of the nearest tree, light green but veined with red-purple lines that bespeak the cold to come. I feel it already, in all the blueish veins that lead to my heart.

Kyle leaves without another word. He’s never looked as good to me as when he walks out the door.

pencil

April Vázquez is the winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and Carve’s Prose & Poetry Contest, and her work has been nominated for Best of the Web, the Orison Anthology Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in dozens of publications, including Salon, Ruminate, The Windhover, and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America. Email: aprilsosaso1111[at]yahoo.com

The Shave

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A Midsummer Tale ~ Third Place
Emma Williamson

Photo Credit: Chris Michaels/Flickr (CC-by)

Quarantine ends tonight, and my husband has decided to celebrate by shaving his beard.

I watch as he sits on a folding chair underneath the old oak tree, balances the shaving supplies on his lap. His thick, full beard gleams reddish brown in the rich afternoon light.

Our three acres grew unchecked during the year of quarantine. Sprawling wild rose bushes climb the sugar maple; untended grass and shrubbery tangle in the field. The overgrown copse of cedar to the east shimmers in the August heat. And up high in the branches over my husband’s head is the papery husk of a wasps’ nest that I was supposed to destroy, swaying gently in the breeze.

I frown, hoping he’ll sense my distress. Tell me he’s changed his mind about the beard.

Instead he stares at himself in the tiny hand mirror. He pulls at his beard, sets his jaw. Turns his head this way and that.

“Just tell me why,” I say.

He angles the mirror with one hand, maneuvers the scissors with the other. Hacking away at his beard, a sound like so many whispering blades.

“It’s itchy,” he says.

He rubs his chin as if to prove it to me.

“But you know how much I love it.”

A breeze ripples the foliage, tall grass brushing my bare legs. My arms prickle with the sun’s heat.

“I just want to,” he says finally.

“You just want to.”

He splashes his face with water from the plastic bowl.

“Yeah, I just do. Okay?”

He pumps shaving gel into one palm and rubs his hands together to get a thick lather. Then pats down the remaining bristles.

“Look, Anna. The pandemic is over. We start work in a couple of days. Everything is going to go back to normal.”

“So?”

“So,” he says, “I can’t fucking stand this beard anymore. I want it gone before I go back to the office.”

I press my lips together, thinking of my own return to work.

The drive: forty minutes in my aging Toyota Camry, travel mug of coffee beside me. Talk radio blasting opinions on how the government fucked up its response to the pandemic. The death toll. What to do with all the bodies.

The office: dull cinderblock walls and fluorescent lighting that make my fine lines look like trenches. Tupperware of soggy greens and cherry tomatoes, a listless chicken breast.

And the people: Karen and Maude, constantly asking me why I’m not pregnant yet, and James, my lecherous boss, his eyes sliding neatly to my breasts. Irate customers beaming their misery directly through my headset into my brain.

And I can’t forget the other banal details of living. Obligatory pedicures during sandal weather, monthly trims and root touch-ups. Scrolling through the endless glossy posturing of social media. The bright beep of each grocery item as it moves from the conveyor belt into my cloth sack.

The rest of my life.

“Where’s the razor?”

“What?”

“The razor,” he says. As though I don’t know what a razor is.

“I’m sorry, I forgot.”

I can feel his eyes burning into my back as I walk through the yard toward the house, tall wild grass tickling my forearms.

Sunlight flashes on the upper windows as I reach the back deck, like the house is blinking its glassy eyes. I’ll miss the way our home comes alive with light as the day unfolds.

Then I imagine it—the house—waiting for me to return from my cubicle every day. Like a barren womb, empty and useless. Waiting to be filled with life.

*

Inside the house is thick with hot, stale air, the loamy scent of earth and foliage. I’ve stopped caring, but it’s impossible to ignore. With a day of air conditioning and a wipe-down with lemon pledge, maybe it’ll go away.

The razor is in the medicine cabinet, as expected. A straight razor, gleaming in the daylight filtering through the bathroom blinds. The drugstore sold out of the plastic ones early on. This is all we have.

I unfold it and press the blade to my finger, watch a thin line of blood seep out. I’m not sure how the razor is this sharp when he hasn’t used it in months. He might cut himself.

That might not be a bad thing. Maybe it would force him to reconsider the shave.

I find myself opening the vanity drawer, where last year’s used pregnancy tests sit. Row after row, all negative.

That’s when he’d started working late. Looking at me as though I didn’t exist.

I close my eyes, watching as his long, achingly romantic text message history with the other woman unfurls behind my eyelids from memory. It still hurts, all these months later.

But I know it’s all over now.

After all, she’s dead.

She was one of the first to die, bringing back the disease from a girls’ weekend in Miami. I read about it on Facebook. There wasn’t even a funeral because gatherings were banned at the time.

I never told him about her death. I assume he knew, though. Shortly after the woman’s mother posted her obituary, my husband went completely blank. He didn’t eat. Barely slept. Once I heard him sobbing in the shower.

I waited for him to get better with the patience and commitment that only a wife can provide. I continued snapping the tomatoes off the vine and chopping them for the salad and barbequing the fish he’d caught and smiling and stroking his beard and massaging his neck. Eventually we started having sex again and I forgot all about her.

Other than wondering where her body would be stored until the morgues re-opened.

I squeeze the blood from my finger, watch it drip into the sink and slide slowly down the drain.

I remember his beard from the early days. When we first started dating. The pleasant roughness when he kissed me, my lips raw and aching afterwards. Its scrape against my skin when he moved down my body, pleasure throbbing at the edge of pain.

When his scruff started growing a few weeks into quarantine, I swallowed my excitement. My husband breaks anything I love too much. Better not to mention it at all. But I longed for that beard under my fingertips. In bed, I gripped it in one hand, pulling him in. Eyes closed, so he wouldn’t see how greedy I was. How much I needed him.

*

My husband strokes the razor down his face as I hold the mirror. I gulp the swampy air, trying to dispel the pressure building in my chest.

There are so many lasts.

This is the last day I’ll wear that old embroidered caftan from my college days. The one he hates me wearing in public.

The last day I’ll let my hair dry into wild, beachy waves.

My tan will fade.

There will be no more long, leisurely suppers by candlelight. No more fish from the river, no more evening games of Scrabble. No more silence.

He’s already disappearing from me, bit by bit.

The power’s supposed to be up and running by tonight. By tomorrow morning we’ll hear the hum of the combines from the neighbour’s field, distant strains of morning traffic from the highway. Our charged phones will bleat with text messages sent months ago. Grass will be mowed. Stores will open.

I’m teetering on the precipice of a world that I will never be able to escape.

“What do you think?”

I snap to. It’s worse than I expected.

I’m staring at a stranger. His cheeks are gaunt and sunken, his brow more pronounced without the balancing effect of his beard. All these months of eating no processed food, of hiking and fishing. He’s lost weight, maybe ten pounds.

I make a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

“It can’t be that bad,” he says uneasily. “Hard to do it in front of a hand mirror, but I think I did a good job.”

This was the face she saw. She looked into this shorn face and she pressed her hands to these bare cheeks. And that smooth, hairless chin pressed between her legs as he fed upon her.

You see me like no one else does, he had written to the other woman.

Was that true?

I’ve always wanted to ask him that. Is that true, what you wrote?

“You missed a spot,” I say, pointing to his throat. It’s a tiny patch, no bigger than a quarter.

“Aw, shit. Really?” He moves to feel it.

“No, don’t touch it, it looks sensitive.”

“Ok, can you hand me the mirror?” He sits down, motioning to the tray.

“I’ll do it for you,” I hear myself say.

“Thanks, babe,” he says.

He sits back down, and I stand before him. He hands me the straight razor. It sits heavy in my palm, the metal warm from his touch.

A wasp investigates, possibly drawn by the shaving cream’s cloying scent. The cream has melted into the bowl of water, leaving a scummy sheen on its surface, but the smell still hangs in the air. Or maybe it’s us, our bodies ripe with sweat. The insect buzzes lazily around my husband’s head. He swats at it aggressively.

“You’re making it angry,” I say.

“I thought you said you got them all,” he says nervously. “Do you have my epi-pen?”

“It’s in my pocket,” I lie.

“Can I have it?”

“Hold still.”

I pat water on his neck, watching as his jugular pumps blood steadily, wondrously. I prod his springy flesh. I marvel again at the fact that we didn’t get sick, that we are still here. So fully alive.

“Well, come on,” he says. “What are you waiting for?”

I swallow. “I just want to make sure I do this right.”

“It’s not rocket science, for fuck’s sake.”

My fingers itch to feel it again, that bristly tuft of hair. What I’ve held onto all these months of quarantine.

I press the razor to his skin, trying to get the angle right. And I see myself—like I’ve skipped a few slides ahead in the film reel of my life—plunging the razor deep, watching the blood spurt from his clean-shaven neck.

His eyes are huge, terrified. His fingers paw at his throat, slippery with blood. His mouth opens in a strange sort of grimace. The metallic smell of his blood mixes with the heady floral scent of the yard.

I could do it. It’d be easy. He trusts me. Perhaps then he would understand how important the beard was, how much it mattered.

He raises his eyebrows, gesticulates. As if to say I should get on with it.

“This is the problem with you, Anna,” he says. “You take forever to do anything.”

I stare back. I don’t know why, but I’m thinking about the Polaroid tucked into a picture frame by our bed. My husband and I on our wedding day, framed by a silky-looking Jamaican beach. I wear a pure white slip dress, hair loose; he’s in khakis and a white collared shirt. It’s always bothered me, that photograph. His smile is wide, earnest, his cheeks pinked with sun. To any casual observer, he looks happy.

But if you look closer, you can see it.

His body, his hips, are angled slightly away from me.

The razor trembles in my fingers. His artery pumps. I am standing outside of myself, looking down at him. I’m floating, fading away. The sun moves from behind a cloud, drenching my body with light.

I see my long wave of hair, the light cotton caftan skimming my knees.

I see my hand held to his throat.

And I watch as the wasp circles him, me, us, its buzzing violent and electric, like the thrumming of my heart. Almost as though it’s deliberating which one of us should kill him first.

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Emma Williamson is a Canadian lawyer turned emerging poet and fiction writer. She is a graduate of Queen’s University, the University of Toronto School of Law, and the Humber School for Writers. Emma is working on a novel and several short stories, and was recently long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Alice Munro Short Story Prize. Emma lives in Toronto with her husband and son.

Morning Run

Posted on by

A Midsummer Tale ~ Second Place
Justine Gardner

Photo Credit: Corey Butler/Flickr (CC-by)

The fragrant main dish lies steaming on the restaurant table: a cat, whole and deep-fried, and still alive. It purrs when she pokes its crackling skin with the knife—

Something nudges her, leaving a moist slick to cool on her chin. She rises out of the dream, gasping, fingers in her cat’s fur. Listens to its purrs. Her husband’s congested snores that move his body, the bed, with every inhalation. She counts the seconds between his breaths, measuring his need for oxygen. Her watch says it is five-thirty. A glance at the monitor shows the baby smooth with sleep.

She gets up. She pads to the bathroom, then the kitchen, feeds the cat before taking her own half-cup of thin coffee. Her ten almonds, the bite of dried fruit. The jar of apricots is nearly empty. The snip of sky out the kitchen window is dark, but tinged with the early glow of sunrise.

She pulls on leggings, a tank top, straps on her phone. She slips out the apartment door, easing it closed behind her. The hall is ripe with the smell of the overflowing trash closet. The super has been sick, she heard. She hasn’t seen him since last week. Or is it the week before? She can’t quite remember the last time she spoke to a neighbor. The last time she heard the children crying from 6D.

She adjusts her mask, her hands already in their latex gloves, and takes the stairs. Fifth, fourth floors quiet, the lights out on both landings, the bulbs smashed. On the third floor, she smells fried fish through her mask and she thinks of that purring, crusted cat from her dream, feels the sour sip of coffee at the back of her throat. On the first floor there is a man sprawled in the stairwell, mask half slipped from his face, a bottle of vodka spilled from his hand. She does not recognize him as she steps over his prone body—but then there are so many people in the building it is hard to know for sure. He could be a stranger off the street; it wouldn’t be the first time.

She walks briskly through the lobby, pushing open the glass doors with her elbow. The air feels lighter outside; it moves with a slight breeze. The streetlamps are bright against the indigo sky. She breathes, as deeply as she can through the mask, feeling it tighten against her face and then bowing out on the exhale. She smells her coffee breath. And then under that, the rich, moist stink from the garbage bags piled at the base of the thin street tree. Soon, she thinks, there will be a wall of trash. A rat burrows through one bag, looks at her as she looks at the trash and then digs back in, stringy tail the last thing she sees.

She starts to run, slowly at first, letting her muscles warm themselves. She is sweating already. At dawn the air is cooler but it is still August, it is still eighty degrees at six a.m. She runs, faster now, catching sight of the park, the park she cannot enter—not since June—so she will run alongside the stone walls, imagining herself within.

Leaves crunch underfoot, making her think for a moment of that crackle of fried skin, the purring cat. She keeps running, her pace growing comfortable, her legs feeling their place in the usual rhythm. She adjusts the face covering, keeps it from sliding too far forward, although part of her wants to let it slide all the way, untie it, and throw it in the gutter with the bags of spilled trash and let the heavy August air encase her. Maybe she’ll take off her gloves, her clothes one piece at a time as she runs, dropping each item on the curb, her crumb trail home, until she is naked and sweating, pores open, ready to absorb everything around her.

She keeps running, the mask in place, counting off the red posters set intermittently on the park’s low walls. She can read only a bit as she passes each one, but she knows what they say: Closed until further—by order of—the Department of Health—and Mental Hygiene—Do not enter—Penalty can include a fine and—or arrest.

She doesn’t want the fine, or to be arrested, although that last part she knows is a lie—the jails were emptied out months ago and not by an order from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. As for the fine, they would have to catch her to give it.

She smiles, considers this as she runs, approaching the nearest entrance. There is no way to seal it, not completely. A police car will be stationed there, waiting to stop anyone trying to slip through with their dog, their toddler, their bottle of vodka.

But there is no one at the entrance—no police car, no soldiers. The barricades are open slightly as though someone pushed against them, sliding in. She pauses, looks left, right. The streets are empty. She wonders: has she seen anyone at all? Not a single car driving down the avenue, not one siren heard crying in the distance.

She slips between the barricades and runs, faster now, across the main road toward the glinting flash of lake. How long has it been? Three months? She can’t remember. She can’t think of the last time she went this far from their apartment—this far alone, even. But now that she is here, inside the park, she feels something brighten within her, wake up. She runs, enjoying the pound of her feet against the pavement as she nears the water.

The lake is still, and barren. Where are the geese? The birds? And then she remembers: they’d been removed by the same force behind the red posters. Known and probable vectors. She runs faster, the mask slicked to her face with sweat, her throat dry. Still, she runs. Who knows when she can do this again? Who knows if they will catch her, return her to the apartment, to her sick husband, her baby, her—

A cat streaks past on the path, a wiggling kitten in its mouth. She jumps, startled, and stops, panting, hands on her thighs. She watches the cat dip into the brush and vanish from sight. A cat is alive. A cat is alive in this park where the birds are all dead and the humans forbidden.

She starts running again, around the edge and down the steep hill. She catches a smell through her mask, something deep and chemically sweet. There is a fog rolling at the base of the hill, the sound of a motor; she sees a truck’s shape through the cloud. She stops. Backs up, watches the slow progression of the gray vapor as it seeps up the hill, creeping toward her. She turns back the way she came, running now, the mask slipping from her face. She pulls it up, holds it to her nose, her throat burning with that sweet, too sweet smell.

She crosses the road, races out the park entrance and crashes into the armored chest of a soldier.

“What are you doing here?” the soldier yells through their gas mask, eyes wide behind their goggles. “Didn’t you get the order—” They clip something at their collar. “We have a civilian at the east gate—”

She runs, faster than she has ever run before, her legs flying over the concrete. She runs and runs until she is at her building and up the stairs, panting and coughing her way over the body of the man and his vodka, up and up and up until she is at her front door, pawing for her keys in her pocket. She sheds her clothes on the doormat, there in the hall, leaving everything, even her underwear, her sports bra in a heap, and slams the door behind her.

It is a long time before she can breathe normally again. Ten minutes? Twenty? She leans her bare skin against the wall, feeling the searing in her chest, her trachea sandpapered and salted. Finally, she takes in air, a gulp, then another. But the smell is on her, that sweet, sweet smell.

She lurches toward the bathroom and runs the shower, standing under water that is too cold, scratching at her skin with the thin piece of soap.

She emerges, eventually, wrapped in a towel, shivering in the air-conditioning, her throat burning. She enters the bedroom, her husband just sitting up, looking at her with sticky eyes.

He points to the window, toward the tips of the park trees they can just make out over the roof of the building opposite. They are glowing, gold, orange—they’re burning.

She sits down on the bed next to him, watching the flickering, the rising smoke. He coughs, and leans against her. She puts her arms around him, kisses his cool forehead. Behind her the baby cries out on the monitor.

She thinks of the cat, the kitten it carried. She wonders if it knew before she did that it was time to run.

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Justine Gardner is a former dog trainer, past pizzeria proprietor, and current freelance editor and writer. She was born, reared, and still resides in Brooklyn, NY, along with her husband, young son, and two cats. Her story “Nature Will Provide” was a finalist in Regulus Press’s 2018 Literary Taxidermy Competition and published in the contest anthology, Telephone Me Now. Her story “Blood, Bone, Feather” appears in Issue 51 of the quarterly NewMyths. Follow her on Twitter @JBGrumpstone. Pronouns: she/her. Email: justine.gardner[at]gmail.com

Staring At The Sky

Posted on by

A Midsummer Tale ~ First Place
C.A. Rowland

Photo Credit: John Brighenti/Flickr (CC-by)

Sarah’s gaze was drawn to movement outside the window. Dawn had broken, but there were still more shadows than light among the oak trees that were beginning to fill out their branches with delicate light green leaves.

She’d looked up from the sewing machine where she was adding the last stitches to a face mask. A child-size face mask of bright colors of oranges, yellows, and greens, which she hoped would help banish some of the fears and illness that had swept through Virginia, as well as the rest of the world.

What Sarah had seen outside was more substantial than the waving of a branch when a bluebird launches itself into the air. A spotted brown deer maybe, since they wandered early in the morning hours, seeking out the moist leaves of the deep green hostas that had burst through the soil to reach for the summer sun.

As she watched the trees and shrubs, nothing else moved. She hadn’t yet opened the window after locking it for the night since her nearest neighbor was half a mile away. Still, she should have been able to hear a few birds singing in the new morning.

She brushed off the feeling of unease, attributing the movement to the shadow of a large bird soaring about the treetops, which were twice the height of the three-bedroom house she lived in. Sarah got up and moved to the window, wondering if maybe Al had been right about curtains.

He hadn’t cared that they were surrounded by woods or a hundred yards from the county road, he wanted windows with coverings. To reduce their utility bills, he’d said. She’d removed them shortly after he died, but she now realized that anyone could see inside if they wandered the property. See her and that she was alone, four years now and counting since he’d passed.

With each minute, the light filtering in through the dark bark of the pine and oak trees strengthened until it warmed and cheered her, chasing away any thought of what might have been there. She moved back to the sewing machine and the rhythmic hum of the needle moving up and down, piercing the fabric and then pulling out, lulling her into calmness.

Sarah looked up, her aching back and the growing stack of face masks, letting her know it must be close to noon. As with all her quilting circle friends that were home sewing as well, she’d stocked up on food for the next two weeks. She was well inside the virus’s target zone of those over sixty-five, although she had no underlying conditions that the virus might use to weaken her system. A ham and cheese sandwich with a few chips was on the menu today.

Sarah moved to the kitchen, where she busied herself. Over the sink, a small square window looked out over the backyard and the rust-red stained deck. She and Al had searched for several months for a green aluminum table and rocking chairs that would blend into the surroundings. They’d spent many a summer evening outside around that table.

As she turned back to the sink, her arms filled with the lunch makings, she looked out, her mouth dropped open, and she jumped, spilling everything from her arms to the floor. For just a quick second, Sarah had thought Al was sitting here. Much as he’d done when he was alive, basking in the sunlight while drinking a cold glass of tea.

The man sitting there was not Al. He was skinny like Al but seemed bonier, almost like a drug addict or someone deep in the throes of the last stages of cancer or other disease. His head was turned toward the forest behind the house, with a beige cowboy hat shielding him from the growing heat of the day.

His camouflage backpack sat beside him, leaned up against his blue jean-clad legs. He seemed relaxed.

What the hell was he doing there? Would he leave on his own, or would she have to run him off, or maybe call the police?

Who was he? A drifter?

Sarah remembered her grandma telling her stories of the Depression. If there was anything Granny knew how to do, it was stretch a meal. Six kids and an alcoholic husband who didn’t always have work, she pinched pennies. She also had an open back door for those down on her luck.

With three growing boys, she’d had no worry about any stranger getting out of line back then. Most had just been grateful to partially fill their bellies and move along. Was that what Sarah faced now? Someone just down on their luck as the pandemic fears caused businesses to close and workers to lose their jobs or worse?

The man seemed cleaner than Sarah expected. If he had no home, it hadn’t been for long, or he had a few resources to call on.

Times had changed. Last year, a man had been seen wandering the woods behind several houses after he lost his home to foreclosure. There’d been break-ins before he was caught. That was when Sarah began sleeping with the pistol underneath Al’s pillow.

Sarah hugged herself. She’d been raised by Granny to help those in need. Was this her time to step up, or would going outside to confront this man be foolish? She wished Al was here. He’d know what to do. No doubt he’d step outside and talk man to man with the person.

Could she live with herself if she failed to act? She might never know if one gesture from her might make a difference. Or would he just leave?

Sarah looked around. Safe in her house. Making face masks for unseen recipients—safe from the disease ravaging the country. Safe. Safe. Safe.

What would her mother do?

She’d been a child of the Depression, and it had had an impact. Her mother saved every penny and spent as little as possible.

But her Granny—there was no doubt that she’d lend a hand if she could. She wasn’t stupid or careless, but she never turned down those in need, even when it meant she went without.

Sarah had always hoped she’d be like her. Now, she had the choice to step up or not.

She watched the man for another couple of minutes. Then she picked up the food she’d dropped, stalling as she struggled with the decision.

Sarah turned and headed down the hall to the master bedroom. This room had no curtains on the windows either. She grabbed some jeans and a long sleeve shirt to replace her thin t-shirt and shorts.

The closet was the only room that didn’t have a window, so she changed there.

Exiting, she stared at the bed for a moment before she moved to Al’s side. She stared at the pillow.

She’d never liked guns. She’d never wanted to own one.

Al had insisted when they bought the house. Too many animals around that could be a threat. Plus, their neighbors were even further away back then. Al wanted her to be able to handle any situation. Now she was glad she’d been to the range to shoot. She still hated the idea of killing anything, but she was on her own and wanted to think she could protect herself.

She removed the gun. Checking that the safety was on, she tucked inside her jeans in the center of her back, the cool metal sending chills up her spine. She pulled the shirt tail over the top of her jeans. She might not be able to get it out as quickly as she needed, but Sarah was still quick for being sixty-eight years old, and she could run if she needed to.

Sarah headed back down the hall and out her back door onto the deck. She closed the door with a click so that the man would hear her coming. Sounds carried in this area of the county.

She took a few steps forward and approached him from the other side of the table. Keeping her distance, both for safety and because the last thing she needed was to be so close to someone, she could catch the virus.

“Can I help you?” Sarah asked.

The man’s movements were slow as if he was aware that she was being careful. He turned and lifted his head to stare at her.

“No, ma’am. Just stopped to rest my feet a while. I’ve been traveling some through the night. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

Sarah wasn’t sure whether she could trust that. At the very least, he was polite, although knocking on her door to ask permission would have been the ordinary courtesy.

“That’s fine,” Sarah said. “You from around here?”

“Was.”

That wasn’t so helpful.

“Planning to move on?”

“Sure.”

The man reached down to pick up his backpack. He looked back up at Sarah as if to ask her if she meant right now. His stomach growled.

“Have you had anything to eat today? I was about to make myself a sandwich. Making two is no trouble.”

“I’d appreciate that, ma’am.”

“I’m Sarah. I’ll be right back.”

Sarah turned to walk back to the kitchen, her nerves on edge. This was her most vulnerable time with her back to him.

“They call me Leon.”

She smiled, and her shoulders relaxed a bit. Names were important to know.

In the kitchen, Sarah quickly made two ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches. Each went on a paper plate with some potato chips. She grabbed a bottle of water for him as she took the plate out to Leon.

Still careful, she laid the plate on the table with the water and stepped back.

“Thanks.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, this seems like a bad time to be traveling,” Sarah said.

Leon reached across the table and dragged the plate so that it was in front of him. He lifted the water and took a long drink.

“That sure tastes good.”

Leon took a bite of the sandwich.

Sarah waited. Her Al had been like this. Slow to answer and precise in what he said. He’d loved to tell a story, but you had to get him talking first and in his own time.

“Had a room in a house down the county road. I’m a day laborer, and the work dried up. She and her husband had lost their jobs, and they were barely able to put food on the table for the family.”

Sarah frowned. She knew times were terrible, but the folks who were her neighbors wouldn’t usually put someone out when everyone was struggling. Still, she could detect no guile in his manner.

“Sit as long as you like. There’s water from the spigot on this side of the house, from the well, so it’s fresh and cold.”

Leon nodded and took another bite.

Sarah turned and headed back in the house, placing her feet carefully, her back rigid with some tension still left.

Inside, she ate her sandwich standing up at the kitchen window.

She watched Leon finish his food and drink the last of the water. He set the bottle on the paper plate and stared off into the woods.

Sarah made sure the kitchen door was locked and headed back to sew.

A few hours later, she headed to the kitchen. She had some left-over chicken salad she’d planned to eat for her supper.

She checked the deck. Leon was still sitting there. She sighed. She’d hoped he’d have left so she didn’t have to face him again.

A man down on his luck. She’d seen a few in her lifetime. Al had brought a few home to work around the house, helping him with projects that were more than one man could do. Sarah had fed them all. She could do no less now.

She filled two paper plates with the salad and grabbed another water bottle. Sarah headed outside.

“I was fixing myself some supper. I expect you’re hungry as well, so I fixed a plate.”

Leon turned toward her and smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it seemed genuine enough.

“Ma’am, thank you. It’s been a few days since I’ve had more than one meal.”

“You’re welcome. You mentioned you’d be moving on.”

“I will. I’m wondering if you’d mind if I spent the night on the deck. I’d be no bother. It just beats being in the woods.”

Sarah swallowed hard. She’d hoped her hint would mean he’d move along.

What could it hurt?

“I guess that’d be all right.”

Leon nodded and began to eat. Sarah picked up the lunch plate and water bottle. There were only crumbs on it, but feral cats, raccoons, and foxes might be drawn by the smell of food. She’d be back for the supper plate once Leon had finished eating. No sense asking for trouble.

Back in the kitchen, Sarah realized that if Leon attacked her or tried to steal from her, no one would know about it. She headed to her sewing room, where her phone was beside the machine.

She texted her best friend, Linda.

Sarah: A man stopped at the house today. I’ve fed him. He is sleeping outside on the deck tonight.

Linda: What? Who is he? Are you safe?

Sarah: I think he’s harmless and down on his luck. I’ll call you in the morning. But if I don’t call, call me just to make sure nothing’s wrong. If you don’t reach me, call 911.

Linda: I don’t like this. Should I come over and stay? Should I send Jeffrey?

Jeffrey was her neighbor. He was ten years older than both of them, and a turtle would win in a race with him. But he was a good man who’d do anything for Linda.

Sarah: No. Just being careful. Doubt anything will happen.

Linda: I’ll be calling at 7.

Sarah laughed as she put the phone down. Just a few texts and she felt better already. Someone would be checking on her if they didn’t hear from her. Not entirely safe but a bit of net, just in case.

Back in the kitchen, Sarah looked at the window and saw Leon had finished his meal. She went outside and picked up the plate.

“Need anything?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. I’ll just bed down here for the night. Gonna be a clear sky with stars. Better than any T.V. show.”

“All right then.”

Sarah headed back inside and locked the door. She checked all the windows and doors to make sure all were secured and walked to her bedroom.

She knew most of the sounds that the house made, but she quickly realized any noise was going to keep her awake. She turned on her book reader and scrolled through the unread novels. She needed something light, so mysteries and suspense were out. A soft light on the other side of the room was on, and she decided to leave it that way. She’d slept with it on before, and she’d do that now.

In the end, Sarah found an old favorite classic and began to read.

*

For the next three days, Sarah and Leon kept up the routine. She fed him lunch and supper each day. He sat on the deck during the mornings.

In the afternoons, he’d wander the property. He had a few pruning tools in his backpack, and she saw that he understood plants. A clip here and a clip there.

Sarah understood. Just like Al and a lot of the men she had known over the years. Unwilling to take a handout unless they found a way to pay their way. Leon was paying her for the food in the only way he could.

Every morning and evening, Sarah checked in with Linda.

Each day, Sarah got her mail and ran an errand or two, which took her away from the house. She checked to make sure the doors were all locked, and that nothing had changed each time she returned.

Linda: When is he leaving?

Sarah: Don’t know.

Linda: I don’t like this. I’m going to come over with Jeffrey so he knows you aren’t alone.

Sarah: No. I’m fine. I’ll ask him to move on.

Linda: Tell me when you do that.

Sarah headed out at lunchtime with a hamburger and chips.

“Seems like someone might be missing you. Don’t you think you should be contacting them or going to see them?”

Leon looked up at her from under the brow of his hat. He shook his head.

“No. Nobody to contact. But sounds like I need to be moving on. Tomorrow okay with you? Looks like its gonna rain.”

“That would be fine. I have a tent in the garage. Why don’t I get that out for you? You can use that to keep some of the wet off you?”

Leon smiled.

“That would be very kind of you.”

Sarah headed back inside, kicking herself for making the offer. She knew almost nothing about this man. He’d probably spent many a night in the rain throughout his life. Why on earth did she say that?

Because she liked him. In Leon, she saw what she’d loved in Al—the slow movements, his respect for her, and his paying her for what she was doing for him.

Sarah realized she was sad and a bit lonely, but not so lonely as to do something stupid like bringing him into the house.

In the garage, Sarah located the camping tent and a sleeping bag. Al had been an organizer, and she’d left it all where he’d carefully placed things. The tent and bag were dusty from being left in storage, and she shook them both, the polyester bright blue waving like flags in the wind.

When she took out the supper meal, she made a second trip with the camping gear.

“You can put this up in the grass if you’d like. Anywhere back here is fine.”

“I’ll do that shortly. Maybe by the garage so that the house breaks the wind.”

“That would be fine.”

Sarah pulled out a rocker and sat down.

Leon looked over at her.

“I come out most nights to watch the sunset. Thought I’d join you if you don’t mind.”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t realize I’d kept you from seeing the sky.”

“I don’t always do it, but with the storm blowing in, I thought I’d sit a few minutes.”

Leon went on eating.

Sarah realized it was peaceful, partly because she knew this was the lull before the rain and wind would arrive.

In the end, she got up and picked up the plate.

“Good night, Leon.”

“Good night, Sarah.”

Sarah closed the kitchen door and locked it. She headed down the hall to her bedroom, which shared a wall with the garage.

Sarah: I’m headed to bed. Leon is leaving in the morning.

Linda: I’m relieved. Text me when he leaves.

Sarah: Will do.

A few minutes later, she heard Leon pounding the stakes into the ground to hold the tent in place for the night.

She found her book reader and clicked it open to the novel she was reading. She’d always had trouble sleeping during storms.

Sarah sat up straight in bed, realizing she must have dozed off. Her reader was dark, but the light across the room was still on.

“Dammit, get off me. You bastard, I’m gonna kill you.”

It was as if the shouted words were inside the room. Sarah realized that they were coming outside the walls.

A man screamed.

Leon.

Sarah was up, grabbing yesterday’s jeans and shirt.

Pulling them over her flimsy gown.

She jerked the pistol out from under the pillow.

Jamming her feet in shoes, she ran down the hall.

Grabbing her phone.

Through the kitchen she ran, hitting the light switch that turned on all the outside lights.

Down the pathway to the garage area.

Around the corner of the house.

Sarah could see the tent was askew. As if something had attacked it.

The wind?

No.

Leon was on the ground outside, with two of the largest raccoons she’d ever seen around him.

They snarled, and he was fighting them off.

Sarah clicked off the safety and shot the gun in the air.

“Out. Get out,” she yelled.

Four sets of gleaming eyes turned to look at her. Then they turned back to Leon.

Sarah could see scratches on his arm where they had gone after him. The pants on one leg looked to have a large wet spot—from the rain or something worse.

Sarah moved so that she could shoot away from Leon.

She aimed and fired near one of the animal’s legs.

The ground poofed where the bullet hit.

She aimed again.

Fired.

The raccoons ran.

Sarah fired again—behind them but making sure they didn’t return.

She hurried to Leon’s side, leaning down to check for wounds

“Where are you hurt?”

Leon moaned and leaned back on the ground, his arm over his eyes.

“Those damned raccoons scratched my arm and leg. One bit me. Shit, that hurts.”

“You need a doctor. I’m calling 9-1-1.”

“No.”

Leon almost screamed the word, and Sarah fell backward.

“What?”

“They’ll take me to the hospital. They’ve got the virus there. I’ll die if I go there.”

Sarah had heard there were such fears. Linda knew someone who had a relative die because they wouldn’t seek treatment.

“You need bandages. I’ll be back.”

“No ambulance. You hear me?”

Sarah ignored the words. She’d already risen and was hitting typing the numbers on her phone.

In the kitchen, Sarah pulled out dishtowels and some plastic gloves. She headed to her sewing room, grabbed scissors and an old bedsheet she used as a foundation for quilt blocks.

As the operator answered, Sarah gave her address and told her what had happened. She had hung up before she was back out through the kitchen door. Leon was getting help whether he wanted it or not. Raccoons didn’t attack unless they were rabid. He needed a doctor.

Back around the house, Sarah dropped everything on the ground. She pulled the gloves on—the ones she used while washing dishes. Not ideal, but they’d have to work.

Sarah cut the bed sheet into strips. Leon had lowered his arm and was watching her.

“Your arm is bleeding. I’m going to put a towel over it and tie it off. I’m going to need your help.”

Leon nodded.

Sarah folded the red-and-white checked dishtowel and placed it on his arm where the deepest scratch was. Leon held it in place while she tied it off with a strip of the bedsheet.

She moved to his leg. It was by far the worst.

Sarah picked up another dish towel. She stared at it.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing. It’s one my mother embroidered for me.”

Sarah laid on it on the leg. It couldn’t be helped. A man’s life was more important than a keepsake.

She slid a bedsheet strip under his leg and brought it to the top. Tying it off, she moved to his chest and side.

“All of these need to be sterilized and treated. I’m not a nurse. I can only do so much,” Sarah said.

“No doctors.”

Sarah continued to put towels over his wounds and add some pressure to try to stop the bleeding. Leon laid still, his breathing labored from the battle he’d fought, and his eyes closed.

As the first sounds of the ambulance siren rang through the night, Sarah wondered what had brought the raccoons out. She hadn’t seen any signs that they were rabid.

Lights flashed as the ambulance turned into her driveway.

“Dammit. I said no doctors.”

“Raccoons can carry rabies, which is much worse than the virus. I had no choice.”

Leon opened his eyes.

“There’s always a choice.”

“You’re on my property. I’m not willing to let you die or become sick because I didn’t do anything.”

Doors slammed, and two uniformed male attendants hurried over.

“What happened?” a tall, young blond-haired man asked.

Sarah explained the situation.

The second man leaned down and began examining the wounds, pulling up the dishtowels to see below.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Leon said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you,” the blond-haired man
said.

“No.” Leon took a swing at the dark-haired attendant with the unscratched arm.

The dark-haired man opened his case and pulled out a syringe.

Stuck it in Leon’s arm as he continued to struggle. Then he went limp.

“We’ll be taking him to General Hospital. You can follow us if you want, but with the virus, you won’t be able to come in,” the blond-haired man said. “We can give the hospital your phone number if you want.”

“He’s only passing through. I won’t be going there.”

The two men nodded.

They pulled a stretcher from the back of the ambulance, placed Leon on it, and loaded him inside.

As they pulled away, Sarah wrapped her arms around her waist. She stared at the vehicle until it turned onto the county road and drove away.

She walked back to the house and washed up, throwing the gloves in the trash. What had happened outside while she slept?

Sarah walked back to her bedroom, knowing she’d never get back to sleep. She took a quick shower and sat on the bed, staring at the wall.

A couple of hours later, as the sun streamed in, Sarah changed into her clothes for the day and headed back outside. She took a new pair of gloves, just in case. The tent and sleeping bag would still be there.

As she rounded the corner, she caught her breath. The grass was torn up. The tent had deep tears down one side as if someone had cut it with a knife. Likely the raccoon’s claws. But what were they searching for?

Sarah took a couple of steps closer. Two empty tin cans were at the cloth door of the tent. Leon’s backpack was open, and more tins were inside the tent and in his pack.

What were they doing there? They reeked of days’ old chicken.

Not five feet away was her trash container. Why hadn’t Leon thrown them away?

All her care in making sure no trace of food was left on the deck, and he was storing these cans?

That might have been what drew them. It was like he’d sent out a smell invitation for the animals.

It didn’t matter. He was gone. Sarah needed to clean this up.

She moved to the waste container and threw the top open.

She gathered up the cans, the sleeping bag, and the tent, and tossed them in.

She slammed the cover shut.

Sarah had saved the backpack once she removed the tins. It held other things of Leon’s that he’d likely want, including the pruning tools he’d used on her plants.

Which meant he’d probably be back.

And none too happy with her.

Sarah picked up the backpack and raised it to her nose. Still smelled of food.

She took it inside. The last thing she wanted was to violate his privacy, but it couldn’t be helped. She emptied it and made sure it was washable.

Sarah texted Linda while the backpack churned in the washer.

Sarah: He’s gone. Had a run-in with raccoons and he went to the hospital.

Linda: There’s a story there. Are you okay?

Sarah: Yes. Just sad. He was scared.

Linda: But you couldn’t do anything else.

Sarah: I know. Still feels awful.

Sarah signed off and went to sew. She’d always found that her mind cleared when she sewed. Today, she kept wondering whether Leon would be back, and if so, how angry would he be. She’d decided to put his backpack on the aluminum table on the deck once it was dry. She’d leave it out all day, bringing it in each night.

Sarah didn’t sleep well that night or the next one. Not knowing if Leon would come back angry left her with keeping the light on at night and reaching out at times to make sure the pistol was there under Al’s pillow.

Two days later, Sarah returned from grocery shopping. As she placed her cloth bags on the counter, she glanced out the kitchen window, just as she had several times before.

The backpack was gone. In its place was something white. Sarah headed out the kitchen door.

The white was a dish towel with some light red stains, but it was clean. She turned it over, and a shiver ran up her spine. The towel was embroidered. Leon had returned the towel her mother had made for Sarah.

Sarah looked around, wondering if he might be watching from the woods. She figured she’d never know. What she did know was that Leon had forgiven her for sending him to the hospital. She knew he’d had to travel ten miles to return the towel, as well as he’d taken the time to wash it. No one did that who held a grudge.

She looked up at the sky and smiled. She wasn’t sure she could handle anything or anyone that came her way, but she knew she’d never question meeting a challenge like this again. She could stick to who she was and wanted to be, and be able to meet whatever came from that.

Sarah hoped Leon found his way to another who would help him, a place where he could watch the sky and was safe. That’s what she’d be doing tonight on her deck—watching the stars and the sky.

pencil

C.A. Rowland is a recovering lawyer turned writer. Raised in Texas, she now calls Virginia home—a place of history, folklore and inspiration. She’s published short stories and non-fiction articles and her first amateur sleuth mystery set in Savannah, Georgia, “The Meter’s Always Running,” is being published in June 2020. She has stories in the Fiction River anthologies, Spies and Stolen. You can keep up with Ms. Rowland’s upcoming fiction and travel adventures at carowland.com Email: carolyn94549[at]gmail.com

The Empty Mirror

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A Midsummer Tale ~ Third Place
Sarah Evans

Photo Credit: Mirage Lin/Flickr (CC-by-nd)

Gripping the phone tight between sweaty fingers, I close my eyes, breathe in the heavy air and say, ‘Thank you for letting me know.’ My voice sounds thin and tinny.

The voice reassures me that he will be in touch again soon. He reels off the digits of his direct extension along with a helpline number. ‘In case you need to talk to anyone.’

It’s a while before I realise that I am still clinging to the phone, the dial tone buzzing in my ear. I try to picture the person belonging to the voice, wonder what he is doing, now he has ticked off this awkward task from his list.

I stand and stretch and head to the bathroom where I splash cold water over my face then stare into the chipped enamel sink. Slowly I raise my eyes and turn, catching the mirror only obliquely, passing a glance at the image which is never quite what I expect.

In the kitchen, I half trip over the curling lino. Sun streams through the glass; it bounces off metallic surfaces, blinding me and threatening to turn the strain behind my eyes into a full-blown headache. For weeks the heat has built with no relief, mirroring my inner tension, as if I’ve been half-expecting something to happen.

I make a cup of coffee, splash in some milk, then cradle the mug between my palms, warming my hands, which seem to have retained a sensory memory of that time outside time, those clock-stopped days.

I gear myself to call my parents, wishing I could postpone, knowing that nothing could excuse a delay of any kind. Relief battles with frustration when the answerphone kicks in. I cannot blurt out my message, so instead I stall: ‘I’ve got some news. Please ring me back.’ I picture them listening and knowing instantly, the way that I did.

Good news or bad? Dad always asks that. It is hard to say.

This all happened long ago and I have pressing things to do, working from home no excuse for slacking. I return to my home office and sit in front of my laptop and manage to spill my gone-cold coffee. I try to re-immerse myself in the figures which fill my screen, grounding myself in the present, filling the crevices of my brain with facts, trying to force out the voice pounding in my ears.

Your sister has been found.

That morning…

The shriek of the alarm sliced through my thumping head. Emma groaned. It would have been so easy to curl up and drift back down; I was determined not to. I rolled towards the kitchenette. Emma was doing her best to feign sleep and I nudged her with my foot. ‘Come on Ems. Rise and shine.’

She opened her eyes. Her face seemed to mirror my own, looking every bit as crap as I felt. ‘What time is it?’ she asked, the same question every morning.

‘Time to get up.’ My same-old reply.

‘We only just got to bed.’

We’d crashed on the pull-out sofabed four hours ago; it seemed better not to spell that out. ‘We need to get there early.’ Rising with the sun was worth it—surely—to enjoy the early morning quiet on the slopes. ‘This is our last chance.’ We’d been travelling for several weeks now. Time had slipped past and we’d arrived at our next to final day.

Released from exams, the two of us had one last summer of freedom ahead of being shackled to the confines of office life. Friends were heading for salt-white beaches. Lazing in the heat and avoiding sunburn held no appeal. ‘What about skiing?’ I’d said.

‘Skiing? In summer?’ Emma replied.

‘Sure. There are plenty of places where you can do that. It’s just a question of going up high enough.’

As usual she was willing to follow my lead.

We plotted a train route, joining the dots between major European cities, stopping off at smaller places with hiking trails in between, but the highlight of the trip—literally—was Zermatt, the traffic-free town in the shadow of the Matterhorn, with ski lifts whizzing you from the alpine flowering meadows up to the glacier, snow covered twelve months a year.

Emma was unenthused about my insistence on up-with-the-lark starts. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be relaxing and enjoying ourselves?’ she said.

‘Come on. We can nap this afternoon. It’s never the same once the hordes get going.’ Plus the ski lifts closed at two, before the snow turned wet and heavy. I scooped generous measures of coffee into the pot, added water and put it on the stove. I started pulling on yesterday’s clothes, postponing till later the daily battle with the shower which cycled through from scalding hot to ice-cube cold. Emma finally stirred herself, giving in; she looked nine-tenths asleep as she took two steps to the bathroom, moving more slothfully than was necessary, a token protest. The rich aroma of coffee filled the apartment, promising wide-eyed alertness.

Outside, the air was sharp enough to cut lungs. I anticipated the usual progression whereby we experienced the four seasons in a single day. The ice of early morning would give way to two hours of a perfect spring, the sun warm on skin, the snow soft, exertion building up a sweat with fleecy layers needing to be discarded; later back at base the heat would build, the thin air strengthening the sunlight, so even though the temperatures were significantly lower than Geneva, we’d risk our fair skin burning if we weren’t careful; then though the evening would remain light, the warmth of the day faded quickly and it would feel more like autumn.

Freshly risen sun reflected off newly smoothed snow up above and dazzled my eyes. A brisk ten-minute walk would bring us to the lifts. My leg muscles were stiff from the accumulation of our daily exertions, first on the slopes and later on the dance floor. They’d soon loosen up. Neither of us had much to say, and we didn’t force it, content in our individual silences.

Approaching the chairs, we appended ourselves to a group of dour-faced people in luminously bright clothes, all speaking rapid German.

‘No Joel.’ Emma said it for me.

I shrugged, trying to deny the inner letdown.

It was from Joel that I’d taken this idea of early starts. Our first evening here, he happened to be seated on a table next to ours in the cheapest eatery. Instantly, I had him sussed: young and single-minded, carelessly conscious of his athletic beauty, his sun-tinted unkempt hair and sun-kissed skin, wearing the right casual gear in a vibrant array of matching colour, a cool Aussie accent.

‘New Zealand actually,’ he corrected me. ‘Lots of people get that wrong. Don’t worry about it.’

‘I wasn’t planning to.’

We slipped easily into casual conversation, with Joel keen to provide the insider tips for ski runs, eating places and nightlife, acting as if his hanging out here for several weeks made him some kind of expert. And though his easy chat could have been flirtatious, I knew it wasn’t, that I would never be his type.

He wasn’t my type either.

The following morning, I ensured we were at the chairlifts early. Sure enough, he was in place ahead of us and I hoped he didn’t imagine us being there was due to anything but the promise of clear slopes. He greeted me and Emma with a lazy ‘Hey,’ which I flipped back, feeling the rising flush, hating myself for the way he seemed to make me feel about fifteen.

‘What’re your plans?’ he asked.

This became the pattern. We’d exchange our itineraries and his always sounded vastly more thrilling. Emma and I had built up intermittent experience from childhood holidays, and we got up to speed on blue runs then progressed onto the reds. As the days went by, I was keen to go for black, wanting to press further, faster, pushing ourselves to our limits; Emma remained cautious. Each morning, Joel managed to convey how ordinary our ambitions were, in the nicest, yet most condescending way. He found the graded slopes too prescribed, too overused, too restrictive. Turned out he had skied all over the world and almost always headed off-piste. Not always harder, but certainly more satisfying, he said, his smile self-deprecating, seeming to imply the option was open to us too, if only we shared his spirit of adventure. Nothing like the pure expanse of the unknown. Even here, a popular area, often he could ski for hours and hardly see anyone. Just him alone in the mountains beneath the sky.

‘Awesome,’ he said, and I smiled tightly and mimicked the word sneeringly in my head. And just as he was getting into his swing, the chairlifts would come to life with a heavy clunk. He’d barely finish his sentence before turning, intent on claiming his place, focusing on what lay ahead, rather than lingering in timewaster chit-chat.

Out of sight, and Emma and I would disappear from his thoughts, while my mind still hummed with thoughts of him. And though the mornings passed well enough, I felt frustrated by the tameness of our chosen slopes, by the accrual of the middle-aged along with their precocious kids, all of them churning the snow up into criss-cross ruts. Today, I needed one last glorious morning to fix in memory, to help me through the dullness that was to come as I returned to England to embark on my fast-track civil service career.

Waiting in line, my mood was beginning to dip, exhaustion refusing to be shrugged off. I’d expected to see Joel and finally win some small measure of his respect. Instead, I had nothing but a conjured-up image of his supple limbs intertwined with those of the dark-haired woman I’d seen him with last night.

Not that it was any business of mine.

And not that I needed to see him. I had his ideas committed to memory, the most straightforward of the off-piste routes. No more difficult than many of the official ones. His claim echoed in my head.

This was our final chance.

The weather forecast was pinned up at the entrance to the ski lift: clouds bringing heavy snow were due to blow in from the West. Difficult to believe with the sky currently pale blue and clear, just as it had been all week. ‘Not looking good,’ Emma said.

I cut in fast. ‘Fine for now though. We’ll knock off early for lunch.’

It was almost time and I was muscle tense, waiting for the squeak and clank of well-oiled machinery, the passing moments before an officious Swiss official would open the gate barrier and bark at us and let us through. The group ahead took the first cable-cars. Close behind them, Emma and I moved forward towards the moving seats, choreographing things to settle ourselves and our paraphernalia of poles and skis and bags before the bars descended and locked us in, ensuring we could not slip out as we soared high above the soft cushion of white below, heading ever higher up into the mountains. I loved this. The stomach-drop moment of that initial swooshing upwards. The repeating stomach lurches whenever we bumped over one of the tall towers holding the whole thing up. I never fully acclimatised to the precarious feel of our high-flown transit, but that was part of the experience, the glorious aliveness which inhabited my body, fear mingling with exhilaration. Emma closed her eyes and tightened her fingers around the bar for the entire trip. She never managed to relax into it, or learned to enjoy the hammering of her heart.

The bars started to lift as we reached our destination and we jumped off. The Germans were still faffing around. I headed away from them and Emma tagged on behind.

I explained the route for the tenth time with Emma frowning at me; she never did have much of a sense of direction, choosing to rely on me, rather than putting the effort in herself.

‘And you’re sure you know what you’re doing?’ she asked.

‘Wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t.’ I tried to exude certainty, because confidence is a mind-trick, act it out and it’s there. ‘Just follow me.’

I adjusted my ski boots and checked the fastenings. I lowered my visor, positioned myself and then pushed away.

Images from the previous night kept flashing. Emma and me, dopey from afternoon snoozing, dressing for the evening in floaty cotton, taking turns in front of the cracked mirror as we applied make-up, intent on improving the canvas of youthful skin. Heading out to a cheap eatery and filling up on sizzling rösti washed down with wine. Moving onwards to a club, the hangout for youthful travelling types, and I’d never have admitted it to anyone, but part of me was on the lookout for Joel.

As always, he seemed surrounded by an adoring host of women. His fan club.

He came over, asked about our day, told us about his. Time slid by as we drank and laughed. Emma sipped the same beer for some kind of forever. Mid-evening and Joel drifted off, disappearing into the throng, and I allowed myself to coast with the crowd and anyone watching me would have figured that I was having amazing fun. But as I tripped the light fantastic out on the floor, unleashing an alcohol-fuelled lack of inhibition, inventing feverish dance moves amidst the swirl of coloured lights, despondency was taking hold. I caught passing glimpses as Joel paired up with a wispy looking girl with long dark hair and olive skin, the photo negative to my fairness, and though it was nothing to me, not really, somehow I minded. And the discontent lingered as we headed out into the snow that morning. I had no reason to believe that Joel would care, or even know about today, but I wanted to prove myself to him in the face of his casual dismissal, my mind forming the misconnection: I had lost out romantically; I was not going to miss out on adventure.

Slowly my mind cleared, unwelcome thoughts swallowed by the close-to-perfection scene. Unblemished white sparkling in soft early light. The thrill of the steep but manageable slope. My skill with the poles which had gained fluidity in the ten days we’d been here. I wouldn’t get far ahead, but I longed to immerse myself in the utter aloneness of the wild. To absorb myself in the pure tranquillity of the moment. A presentness untainted by past disappointments or future worries.

I assumed that Emma was close behind.

I felt the faintest pick up of the wind; a trickle of soft flakes melted on my lips and swirled in front of my eyes. Not enough to worry about. I heard nothing but the rustle of my clothes, the whish of skis slipping along the crust of snow, the whisper of my out-breath. Slowly the flakes built in size, in density, in churning momentum, building to form an encompassing cloud, casting a strange ethereal light, heightening my awareness of self, of existing within a time-stopped moment, a perfect harmonious dance of near-weightless body, mind and landscape.

I don’t know how long it was before I stopped and looked behind me for Emma. How long I waited, my serenity turning to an irritated disguise for fear. How long before I pierced the silence to call her name, listening to the rustle of wind in trees and no reply, before I started to walk clumsily up the slope. How long before I began to panic. Before I realised how alone and helpless I was. Before the weather closed in deeper and I could barely see the back of my gloves. Before I decided the best, the only thing I could do was carry on down and get help, my mind frantically constructing a scenario in which she must either have overtaken me, or turned round and taken the chairlift. She’d be waiting anxiously for me at the bottom, of course she would, and over a boozy lunch somewhere warm, we would turn the events to anecdote, an amusing tale to retell our friends.

 

The screen full of figures glows at me, the data failing to order itself and divulge its meaning, my mind struggling to make sense of the story, those crucial aspects that I have always kept secret.

My sister died in a skiing accident. It is so long since I have seen the need to tell anyone this. She got lost in a suddenly descending snowstorm which forced the two of us apart, in an area where snow sometimes formed a thin layer over deep crevasses in the glacier. Her body remained unfound. None of this version of events—the version I told the police, the journalists, our parents, various therapists and the people I have met and tried to be close to since—is untrue, in the same way that a mirror neither hides nor reveals things fully. I tell people of the hot-cold panic of waiting, those unreal days of searching, of my struggle to describe the route we had taken, everything blurring as if seen through a blizzard.

‘Your sister has been found,’ the man on the phone said and for one heart-soar second I pictured her alive. ‘Some skiers discovered her body where the glacier has melted.’ Perfectly preserved, perfectly frozen, stuck in time. And needing someone to make arrangements for repatriation and burial.

‘Can I see her?’ I asked.

‘Think it over. But yes, of course, if you want to.’

Time passes and outside the sun burns ever hotter, burning through the glass, scorching my skin. My screen has put itself to sleep. The phone rings, startling me from reverie and perhaps it is my parents, or possibly some journalist has got hold of the story. I make a move towards the phone and I catch my reflection in the blackened screen and imagine staring into a frozen mirror. Staring at the clock-stopped face which will stare back, the image of the self that was lost to me twenty years ago. The face of my much-loved twin. Youthful. Hopeful. Light still dancing in her eyes.

pencil

Sarah Evans has had many short stories published in anthologies, literary journals and online. She has been shortlisted by the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and been awarded prizes by, amongst others: Words and Women, Stratford Literary Festival and the Bridport Prize. Her work is also included in several Unthology volumes, Best New Writing and Shooter Magazine. She started her career as a theoretical physicist before moving into economics and policy advice. She and her husband live in Welwyn Garden City, UK. Twitter: @Sarah_mm_Evans