Xenophobia

By Bobbi Steele

I tried not to look at the mirror in front of me, but it was drawing me in. The tugging on my eyes pulled them further up from the sink, to the faucet and finally to the edge of the mirror. There were lint and dust covering the sink in the back, and I used my finger to slowly push it off into a small, wet ball on my finger that I promptly washed off.

The tears were still running down my face, and I heard a toilet flush behind me. It was too crowded here, and I could still hear them laughing in my mind. The images of them pointing and laughing at me while I tried to give my presentation assaulted me over and over again, making my muscles constrict. Making it impossible to breathe. The others in the hallways now snapping their necks in my direction and whispering to their friends about the cause.

There had never been a time where I had felt foreign. Where I had felt different. I had been born and raised in a monolithic culture where everyone was just a copy of the next. Same eyes. Same Hair. Same goals in life. It had suffocated me, so I ran. Just as I was running now, but this time, through the hallways padded with unruly red and blue carpet, I knew I had someone there for me. It was a quick message after class on the toilet begging for someone to make the pain go away.

The door swung open to the smoking area, and I saw Nisan. She had been my friend since the beginning of my second master’s degree, and she knew how mean the other students could be. How they followed me to the bathroom. How I lost my job for my sexual orientation. They had also come from villages around Germany that had raised them to think that anything foreign was bad. Most of the others had quit and joined the comparative literature program, but the thought of only having six seminars didn’t scare me.

Nisan handed me a cigarette that she had rolled and tried to tell me how it was all going to be okay. My ears were rushing with sounds and her voice was blended out by my anxiety. It was the slow turning of the gravel and the grass in front of us that alerted me to something wrong. I felt myself fall as the ground began to shake and the slight tilt that I had assumed was imagined began to become impossible to ignore.

Small rocks were sliding down as the earth began to tilt and the ground began to look more like a ramp than an actual place to stand. But people continued walking as if they didn’t notice anything. Nisan continued to talk to me as if there wasn’t a serious problem and the ground itself wasn’t moving underneath our feet. My eyes darted around as I held onto the ashtray that was mounted to the ground for support. The cold metal felt good against my skin, but I could vaguely hear Nisan’s voice in the background asking if I needed help.

A woman and her friend walked past us and laughed as they saw my face. I heard them talking to each other about how the foreigners come to Berlin to take drugs and become prostitutes, and I looked at Nisan to see if she had understood them. Her eyes were still on me, and I felt the small tilt of the ground that had been uncomfortable turn into an almost 45-degree tilt.

The ashtray was the only thing that was holding me to the ground as Nisan started to call an ambulance on her phone. I tried to tell her that I didn’t need one, but no words came out. I felt the flashbacks of earlier semesters hit me like bullets: following me to the toilet after class to tell me that I was too stupid, telling others that I only got a job with the professor because I slept with her, in Kassel when I had a German writing tutor help me write a paper and had a professor tell me that it wasn’t written in German, being taken on a walk on my first job and having my boss tell me that I would never learn German, never make friends and how I should go home now.

The 45 degrees had slowly warped into 90 degrees, and I was holding onto the ashtray while dangling in the air. Nisan was still able to stand, but I couldn’t look up at her without seeing my red hands that were slowly sweating and slipping around the pole of the ashtray. I saw my bag next to me that also seemed fine. Even my tears hit the earth while gravity pulled me to some unknown place.

The earth began tilting faster now as people stared at me from a distance and pointed. Nisan yelled for help and my body was dangling from the ashtray at the same 135-degree angle as the earth. I could feel inside of me that if I let go, there would be no finding my way back to the ground where the others were. I could see more and more of the sky replacing where the ground was.

One of my hands slipped from the sweat, but I caught myself quickly enough to keep my balance. Nisan yelled and tried to hold my body. I could imagine from her perspective, it must have looked like I had incredible upper body strength, but I hadn’t gone to the gym since I was in Kassel. There was this irrational fear that one of the Germans would follow me and hurt me.

The ground had stopped moving, and I hung from the ashtray. We were now completely parallel to the sky, and I cried tears that hit the ground. Nisan was trying to communicate on the phone to the ambulance while the Germans watched us from a safe distance. I heard them hang up on her since she couldn’t explain to them what she wanted in German.

The memories continued to hit me, and I felt my muscles cramping. Janos telling me that I just had a bad personality and would be unhappy anywhere. Being told that I was overdramatic when I saw a man beaten in a bus when he wanted to open a window to let the cigarette smoke out. Having my German friends introduce everyone by name and me by nationality. Having the Germans continuously call me fat and racist because of where I am from. Not being able to go to the grocery store without my girlfriend being treated poorly for the color of her skin. Watching the woman at the foreigners’ office yell „AUSREISEN! AUSREISEN JETZT“ to a woman from Africa because she couldn’t speak German without a French accent. Watching her coworker look away ashamed and attempt to push me and my girlfriend out of the room quickly as she told him to deny her application.

It was too much. The trauma. The fighting for acknowledgment. Trying to integrate into a community that doesn’t want anything to do with you. I let go and felt my body dangling. The voices were still chattering, but I knew that I couldn’t hold on for much longer. I didn’t want to. I let go with my other hand and felt myself moving through the sky. The people got smaller and smaller until I eventually could make out some of the lakes in Berlin. Some of the cities in Germany. Other countries around Germany. I was free.

Bobbi Steele is currently a writer and lost literature student in Berlin, Germany. She is completing two masters’ degrees in New German Literature and English Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin with a focus on cognitive narratology. This focus has led her to mix literary theories with creative styles of writing to inspire something entirely new.

Photo Credit: Devil in the Devil´s grotto at the Hercules Monument in Kassel, Germany © Angela Rohde / Adobe Stock

The Mattress

By Amber Baird

Samantha told him about the Russians. Her parents told her not to, of course, but she had to tell someone, and Charlie was her best friend. He sat beside her, under the tree in her backyard, and squinted at her through the sun filtering through the leaves.

The remains from their picnic lunch were scattered around them — empty store-brand yogurt cups, the leftover crust from Charlie’s sandwich, half-full cans of pop. Samantha used her spoon to dig a hole in the dirt idly. She liked the feel of the dry groundbreaking and crumbling as she forced the spoon in.

“Aren’t you scared?” he asked.

She shook her head. “They don’t know I’m the princess they’re looking for.”

He nodded. “That makes sense.”

*

It was Charlie that found out about the guy on the corner first. His grandmother had warned him not to go near his house because something nasty had happened. He’d agreed, as always, but discarded her instructions as soon as he was out from her watchful eye.

He wasn’t going there without Samantha, though. No way. She was a year older than him — eight, rather than his seven — and usually knew what to do when the situation got complicated.

He waited for Samantha to walk home from the private school she attended, which got out later than his public school. He sat on the stoop of her porch, his chin in his hands.

The sound of a plane flying overhead shook him out of his thoughts. It must be the Russians, looking for Sam.

*

They didn’t usually go that far down the street, anyway. If Charlie’s grandmother hadn’t mentioned it, they probably never would have, but now they knew there was something to see, some reason to be there.

Honestly, Samantha avoided it when she was with Charlie because she didn’t like to pass the empty lot where his old house used to be before his mama blew it up making drugs. Charlie pretended it didn’t bother him, but she knew better.

They had to take care of each other.

*

They were only a few houses away when a kid called out to them from a well-manicured yard that didn’t really fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. He was maybe four or five, just a little baby. “Hey! I know you guys. Can you play with me?”

“No, you don’t!” Charlie exclaimed because it felt like something he should refute, though there was really no reason the kid didn’t know them.

“I’m Jacob,” the kid said. When neither Charlie or Samantha introduced themselves, he just kept talking. “Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?” the kid asked.

“None of your business!” Samantha shouted just as Charlie said, “No!”

The kid was playing with a yellow truck. He made vroom-vroom sounds as he moved it back and forth in the grass. As if the sounds were merely part of the conversation, he continued, “You know about Buck?”

*

It wasn’t the Russians that burned her up, her parents said. That was an e-lec-tri-cal fire. She liked to pronounce all the syllables, to really feel them in her mouth. The word felt like make-believe. How could a house just decide to burn?

How could a house just decide to burn a little girl?

It was no one’s fault, that was the main thing her parents wanted her to remember. It was no one’s fault. Samantha thought that was silly, though, because it was obviously the Russians’ fault. Houses don’t just decide to burn.

They moved to Dayton after, put her in the fancy school with Jesus to remind her that someone was looking out for her. No one knew she was a princess there, they just knew her as the girl-who-still-smoldered, her skin giving away her history.

*

“Did that hurt?” Jacob asked, pointing to the overly-smooth patch on Samantha’s cheek. He stood with Charlie and her outside Buck’s house at the end of the street, a tall Victorian painted puke-green.

Charlie didn’t want Samantha to answer. Sometimes when they talked about what happened she got really mad, and other times she got really sad, so he changed the subject. “What happened to Buck?”

Jacob shrugged his little shoulders, barely covered by the oversized Dumbo t-shirt he wore. “Melissa said he had a gun and ate it.” He mimed a gun with his finger and stuck it in his open mouth. He didn’t mention who Melissa was.

Charlie let that settle over him.

“Why?” Samantha asked. She looked very serious, her eyebrows knit in concentration.

“I dunno,” Jacob said. “Melissa said he put out his brains.”

*

It was the next day when Samantha and Charlie decided to go back to Buck’s house. Neither one of them could explain why they felt like they had to go, and neither one questioned the other’s motives.

Samantha felt like she needed to be close to death, to sit beside it. It wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, though.

There were people on the front porch of the ugly greenhouse, coming in and out, so the kids decided to go behind it, to see it from another angle. Behind the house, in the alley, was a pile of furniture. An old writing desk, missing drawers. Tables. A couple of beat-up dining chairs. And a mattress, bright white and yellow and red all over.

They stood there together, looking at the mattress, the evidence of Jacob’s story. Charlie grasped for her hand, and Samantha accepted him readily. She would try to forget what she saw that day, but she would always remember the feel of Charlie’s hand in hers, as they both shook.

Amber Baird is a writer whiling away most of her days in the IT industry. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife and two cats.

Photo Credit: © gabe9000c / Adobe Stock

Voodoo

By Gary Singh

Slim occupies a vinyl bar stool, accompanied by a personalized chalice with hoppy German lager direct from the tanks downstairs. His name is carved onto the side of the mug.

Camille’s alto voice, a younger, more dusty version of Edith Piaf, floats in like counterpoint to the chaos of sports on nine televisions. She emerges from the kitchen right when Slim struggles with the newspaper crossword he swiped from the bar. It was Camille’s crossword, the one she usually folds up and places into her ticket book, the crossword she always works on, between schlepping garlic squid, sliders and identical glassware. He often watches Camille make fun of the brewery customers, usually convention delegates with ill-fitting rack suits, identical lanyards, and tote bags.

Slim remembered one time when every patron was mauling his way through a $25 salad, all of them wearing the same trade show exhibit-floor clothing: a sky blue dress shirt one size too big, khaki slacks and white Reeboks. He looked at Camille’s crossword puzzle and she laughed out loud when she showed him the clue for 27 down: Robots that look like humans. The answer was “androids.”

“We live inside a crossword puzzle,” Slim told her that day. “Every time I come in here, it seems that way.”

“Crosswords will help you with everything in life,” she said. “They’re like therapy.”

On most days, Slim would find time to escape the office for a few hours in the afternoon, deadlines be damned, taking his own copy of the crossword with him, bringing it down here to the brewery during her shift, just so both of them could compare answers and support each other while she worked the bar area, slinging plates of obnoxious Kobe beef sliders, the kind of thing he refused to pay for.

But today is not one of those afternoons. Back at the office, one of the ad reps had snagged the office copy of the newspaper, leaving no crossword for anyone else. So here at the brewery, Slim takes a pen to the crossword that was already lying around on the bar.

He doesn’t think Camille will be upset that he’s hogging the crossword, her crossword, and she proves him right. Just as he begins to get stuck, she appears without him even asking. She glides over, decked out in the brewery’s all-black uniform, a goddess of mercy assisting with the clue for 23 across — It has its charms — the answer of which he’s too confused to realize is “voodoo.”

Growing up surrounded by perpetual conflict had its charms too. Like when he woke up every morning to a different set of circumstances, his parents in harmony one day, dissonant and screaming the next. If dad came home with flowers and a pizza, it was always temporary. The next day, he’d stumble right through the screen door, recently 86’d from the bar down the street. Mom was more obvious. She threw a lamp across the room, smashed his vodka bottles, scratched his face and pulled his hair out. Every day from Slim’s youth until he left home at 16, nothing was constant. His nervous system remained on guard forever, always ready to jump in response to a shadow moving across the wall or anything similar. Inconsistency became necessary and routines became exotic foreign voodoo.

Now it all spirals back to the end of the bar, where Slim sits every other afternoon. Even above the television noise, Camille’s alto voice sails through the chaos. He looks over to the opposite end of the bar, where Camille is showing her phone to another dude. It triggers him to think of the few times he’d attempted to hit on her, only to have her whip out the phone and answer a text from her boyfriend, as if the text had arrived right that moment. They went through this two or three times before he finally got the hint.

So he eventually scribbles in the answer for 23 across, “voodoo,” not with a pencil, but with a pen, because Camille once said this turned her on. Taking a break for a second to finish his lager, he turns to see that she’s come back once again, this time to look over his shoulder at the crossword as it lies on the bar in front of him. With precision, she puts her finger down and taps on the empty boxes designating 47 down.

“I know what that one is,” she says with a slight wink.

“Which one?”

“I’m not going to help you. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”

“That’s OK, I’m used to it.”

“I’ll give you a hint,” she says. “It’s too many letters for measles, mumps or chickenpox.”

He hasn’t even reached that section of the puzzle. But after hearing her voice, Slim looks straight at the clue for 47 down: Childhood disease.

She’s right. He would have to figure it out himself.

Gary Singh’s byline has appeared over 1100 times, including newspaper columns, travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry, and short fiction. He is the author of The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy (2015, The History Press) and was recently a Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. His website is: https://www.garysingh.info

Photo Credit: picnote / Adobe Stock

Ghost Voice

By Victoria Giang

They called it the ghost voice because of the way it crackled and warbled into a piercingly high register. It was a voice to captivate and bind the listener. Ros had it.

“Once I fed a flower only music,” she confessed to Eung, her manager, confidante, and lover. Likewise, he slaked her thirst with a stream of abuse so endless that her sobs lost their sounds.

That cattleya she had cared for bloomed only once, then its green tongue hung limp, and the plant never again burst out in color. A flower is a leaf that has gone mad with love, so says Goethe. She had always thought that a flower was a leaf trembling with song. Her people were pleased to have produced Ros, flower among leaves, and she sat happily among them, offset by their adoration.

Eung was one of those hopeless decadents first to die under the Khmer Rouge, an unknown bourgeois to be slain on sight – you only had to see his paisley satin shirts to know – but that foreknowledge wouldn’t have provided any consolation to a heart so rare.

The cattleya of her confession was born in a little village outside of Battambang when it was emerald green with recently sown rice. Can you see her then? In those sun stricken fields, a child too shy to speak one day broke into song, a clear and unearthly voice. Issued from a little girl, it was eerie and entrancing. Those who heard her stood stiff as the young shoots. Was she possessed by spring fever? Or was she a ghost in the body of a girl? How strange that she should suddenly sing! Now that the habit of silence was broken, she gained the power to inflict it on others, their voices caught in throats choked with sobs. As she sings, she appears, girl and woman, only through a veil of tears, conjured like a specter.

In ancient times, apsaras only danced, so in Siem Reap, kings kept hundreds of lovely slaves who could channel these supreme beings dancing on a rotation to ensure the continued spinning of the globe. Shiva creates the world with his dance atop a turtle’s back, and it stops turning when he tires. Maya, the illusion of reality, is revealed or disappears.

As puppets, we spin and twirl to move the world. What a heavy burden to bear! At every conceivable moment, a person is moving their limbs in this eternal dance. When the ghost voice pierced the veil, the burden somehow became joyful again. After all, what other choice is there? Bending in the fields, quick gestures of the hands to dig and pluck somehow seemed refreshing, like the hand motions of earthly angels who pluck strings in the air. The endless entertainments of Sihanouk’s capital, which had become so forced and tedious were festive and novel again, if only for a moment, but the impression of that moment brought vigor with it.

Now let’s conjure him up again, Sinn Sisamouth waiting outside the studio door. Strumming his mandolin with downcast eyes and a half-smile, he leans against a wall, his face inscrutable as the severed heads of statues sleeping beneath Bayon, but he comes alive at the call of Ros’ voice, as if he were a spring that patiently endured being wound, and she, in her infinite mercy, had released him.

At twenty-eight, she has the fresh, sweet face of a naive girl, but carrying along the memories of two miserable husbands has given even her romantic songs a melancholy hard to bear. So light, she seems fragile enough to die of heartbreak, but the ghost voice has as much a hold on her as anyone who has heard it. It sings inside her head. Though she badly wishes to die, it infuses her with a warmth and vitality that has her continue to open herself to love and betrayal.

They’re all phantoms now. I hear their voices floating to me through the aether of the tape deck. The brutality and senselessness of death at the hands of dead-eyed children, sparkling only with blood lust, boys in black shirts. The edges of these violent memories have dulled now. Little is left of that generation, those on either side. A prince powerless to fight against stronger powers descends into decadence, signaling the end of an empire. Everyone in the capital drowning in meaningless luxury. The golden parasol shades them all, hides the harshness of a life stripped of any authentic action, and any freedom. So no decisions were made, each day was lived to the height of its pleasure. Opulent films starred the prince, inviting the citizenry to share in this depraved decline. The party swept the provinces and our Ros, a little snail selling girl with a supernatural and alluring voice was caught up in it.

These empty pleasures, this opulent escapism was imbued with dignity and meaning again. Chasing women led to love, revelry gave way to celebration, and slowly the peasants, never shaded by parasols, prepared themselves to gaze at the sun, to face fate and the future boldly and meet its challenges.

We all know how that turned out. The ghosts still surround us, their voices carry through. That kind of vitality to face up to reality, to swim, fly, and dance through life’s pains and pleasures, that never really dies. It haunts us always, waiting for a chance to come alive again.

Victoria Giang is a writer from South Florida who has lived in Taipei, Taiwan for the last several years. She is currently a graduate student of Asia Pacific Studies at National Chengchi University. In her free time, she writes and edits a feminist zine called Frisson.

Photo Credit: simon gurney / Adobe Stock

Join Us

By Lee Matthew Goldberg

Rockabilly music about the Holy Ghost pumps through the windows of the Salvation Gateway Fellowship Church, a small, red shack with a giant neon cross on the roof, its buzzy light flickering in the dawn. Nestled between two deflated hills in the Missouri Ozarks, this wonky, stitched-together building is the only beacon for miles. The surrounding landscape provides enough acoustics for God to hear if he wanted, but God hasn’t cared to listen to the town of Salvation in a long time, at least not the same God one would expect to cup a hand around his ear and listen for praises.

Dusty roads petering off into swells of dirt have led a dozen cars toward Preacher Earley and his snake-handling show. For over half a century, the Earley clan has performed these rituals in their Pentecostal church. Beginning with Preacher Earley’s father Cy Sr., and the man’s unwavering belief in the taming of serpents, the Earleys have shocked and awed the local folk and proven their speck of a town could be touched by a greater power since neither father nor son had ever been bitten before. Unfortunately, Cy Sr. died of untreated gangrene in his foot in the 1970s, wholeheartedly convinced that he’d be protected from above even after his toes turned black and yellow and began to fall off. Cy Jr. has been running the circus ever since, now an elderly man with a cane and a slipped capital femoral epiphysis, which causes immense pain and his knees to wobble and knock together.

Much like the son took over from the father, the rickety church welcomes the children of those who first came to see Cy Earley Sr., even though the population of Salvation has dwindled. The allure of a burgeoning meth trade and even the group of isolated people living beyond the lone mountain have also begun to siphon some of the regulars. The Gateway Fellowship adheres to strict dress codes such as uncut hair, ankle-length dresses and no cosmetics for women; and short hair and short-sleeved shirts for the men. Tobacco and alcohol are frowned upon, an antithesis to the “Meth-ers” and the bacchanal nature of the people beyond the mountain.

Still, on Sundays especially, the little outhouse with the neon cross roars. Jasper with his long, calloused fingers is a whiz at bass guitar and Ike’s been playing banjo ever since he was big enough to pick one up. Mose with his missing teeth reaches a heavenly sound on the harmonica and Mary Lou bangs the keys of the piano like she’s trying to release the spirit from within. But they are all just backups to Preacher Earley, the true master of ceremonies.

So it’s on the cycle of April’s full moon that Moon parks his pickup truck in the dusty lot and hops out. In a different life, his chiseled good looks may have led him down a path as a model, but in this one, he has a higher calling. He’s let his mane of hair grow wild, the scruff on his face hasn’t been shaved in weeks, and dirt has been trapped under his fingernails for even longer. He wears a loose shirt, seemingly homemade, which exposes a thick tuft of chest hairs; but his eyes are his greatest gift, a smoldering green with the ability to make someone feel special, and wanted, and drawn to him. Once in St. Louis while he was up on a soapbox spouting about the ills of capitalism, a woman thought he was Jim Morrison, risen from the dead. She was so convinced that she wept when he told her he wasn’t and that his name was Moon. When she asked if it was his first or last name, he replied: “it’s the only one that matters.” He told her the past never had to exist if you didn’t want it to and that he’d been reborn with a sole moniker and she could as well. The next day he gave her a new name and she found herself leaving behind all of her possessions and traveling with him, not the first to become spellbound and far from the last.

The morning of this cycle, Moon had received a message while he was hanging upside-down nude. Just the words Salvation Gateway Fellowship floating behind his irises—he knew what it meant. So he immediately came to stalk the church, making a snake-like sound with his tongue as he enters. The inside is erupting in a din of sounds; the noodling notes causing him to tap his foot. Amaleen, a middle-aged woman who looks as if she’s swallowing her top lip, has a microphone in her hands, her throaty voice singing about the “Holy Ghost’s Power.” Two-dozen hard scrabbled townies raise their palms to the ceiling and spin around in a trance. On shaking legs, Preacher Earley pivots from side-to-side. He wears coke-bottle glasses an inch thick, his comb-over pasted down on the left side of his head with spit. He holds a pit viper snake in his hands, purely in his element, a smile so wide his molars show.

“You’re gonna die in the flesh!” he shouts. “This flesh is gonna go back in the earth!”

Amen. C’mon, preach now, rumbles the parishioners, the ones whose eyes haven’t receded yet in their skulls, or collapsed to the floor in dizzy exhaustion.

Moon watches the snake curl around Preacher Earley’s arm, his eyes blazing.

“But that spirit you got gon’ stick around through Armageddon! Till the end of time!” Preacher Earley declares.

Jangling a tin bucket, a cross-eyed woman weaves between the parishioners. She stops in front of Moon.

“Save your soul?” she asks, her cross-eyes only looking at her nose. Moon stares her down until she moves on.

“Now I can help y’all pray right if you’re willing to give!” Preacher Earley proclaims. “But ya gotta really give and feed this church.”

Moon raises his eyebrow, skeptical. Sticking out his tongue, he hisses at the snake. The snake becomes aware of Moon, as if understanding. It lunges at Preacher Earley, sinking its teeth into his cheek.

Preacher Earley lets out a cry, his knees giving up the fight as he crumbles. Foaming at the mouth, he shakes as blood oozes from the bite.

The parishioners are all caught up in the spirit, oblivious.

Moon calmly backs out of the church.

The snake slithers through the crowd toward the exit too.

Later, the congregation has gathered outside as Preacher Earley is being led on a gurney into an ambulance. The onlookers are wailing, lost in their grief. The cross-eyed woman sits shell-shocked on the curb.

Moon goes over to two teenagers. He wears a Polaroid camera around his neck. The boy and girl hang back from everyone else, close to one another as if a magnetic energy connects them. They rest their heads on each other’s shoulders in mourning.

The boy is slim, his arms like broomsticks hanging out of his short-sleeved shirt. He’s got a few hairs for a mustache that looks like it started sprouting yesterday. His hair is haphazardly cut in a bowl shape, the sides shorn and prickly.

The girl has a sucked-down lollypop on her ring finger, her mouth purpling from the grape taste. Yellow bangs cover her eyes, leaving just two black dots peering through. She wears a baby blue, floor-length dress that only allows her hands to breathe, everything else hidden.

“Terrible shame,” Moon says. His voice has a laconic Southern sway to it like it could rock you to sleep.

Sniffling, the teenagers both nod.

“Preacher Earley was so kind,” the girl says. “He used to make a quarter appear behind my ear when I was little.”

“Makes you wonder where the Holy Spirit was to protect him?”

The boy and girl look up confused.

“Luke 10:19 says, ‘I give unto you power to tread on serpents and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’” Moon says, shaking his head. “But I certainly didn’t see that power earlier. Just the good preacher’s eyes bulging out of his sockets as the venom got him.”

The boy lets out a heartbreaking gasp.

“Just makes me question is all…”

“Question what?” the boy asks.

Moon leans in close, moving in for the kill. “The good book mostly. Definitely not god, never god, but I question if we’re interpreting Him the right way. If He truly is who we believe Him to be.”

Moon puts his arm around both, breaking them up.

“Now my momma used to say food is the best remedy for tragedy. Why don’t I buy you both some breakfast at the Limbo Diner?”

The girl looks at the boy for approval. “My stomach is grumbling?” she says.

“Their peach pancakes are out of this world,” Moon replies.

“Pardon, but who are you, sir?” the boy asks.

“You can call me Moon, just like that luminous pearl hanging in the night sky.”

Moon lets go to take a Polaroid of each of them.

“What you do that for?” the boy asks.

Moon waves the pictures until they develop.

“See how sad you are in those pictures? I guarantee you’ll never be that sad again now that you’ve met me.”

Moon pats his pickup truck that idles behind them.

“Come, y’all can jump in the back and let the wind dry your tears.”

“You don’t look familiar,” the boy says. “You from around these parts?”

“No, but I’ve been in the area for about three hundred and sixty-five cycles. Or a year as you might call it. Long enough to know I’ll be staying.”

The boy and girl still hang back uncertain.

“We better get a move on,” Moon says, with a shuffle. “Come noon those pancakes’ll all be gone.”

The girl shrugs and climbs into the back. The boy hesitates, but he doesn’t want to let her go by herself, and he doesn’t want her to think he’s scared and not a man. He’s eighteen now and he figures it’s time to stop being so afraid of everything. Finally, he climbs in the truck beside her.

Moon goes to the driver’s side door and catches a glimpse of the ambulance as its siren blares. He faces the Mountain in the distance and gives it a sly grin.

“But are either of these the one we’ve truly been waiting for?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper as he thinks his thoughts out loud. “The one who will help take us beyond our wildest dreams?”

Moon jumps in the pickup and revs it up. In the back, the teenagers huddle as they drive away down the dusty road until the Gateway Fellowship becomes nothing more than a blip along the horizon.

Two parishioners, Jasper and Mary Lou watch them go. Jasper works on chewing off a hangnail.

“Who’d those two head off with?” Jasper asks.

Mary Lou shields her eyes from the sun and frowns.

“One of them people o’er the mountain. The devil in his flesh.”

They watch as Moon’s pickup gets smaller and smaller until a swell of dirt blocks it from sight.

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of Slow Down, The Mentor, and The Desire Card with two other books coming out in 2020. He lives in NYC. Follow him at Leematthewgoldberg.com and @LeeMatthewG

Photo Credit: mrjo_7 / Adobe Stock

Inconvenienced by Death

By William Lemon

The guests poured into the hotel pool dressed in robes, bathing suits underneath their fake, downy fur. The children did not bother with such pretense. They wore as little as possible, unafraid of cancer or the judging eyes of their peers. I joined the procession, tie still about my neck.

Near the entrance to the pool, a cry from the bushes brought my progress to a halt. A small bird, no bigger than my fist, shrieked in desperation. I scanned the area, expecting some doting fowl to race toward him, a reluctant progenitor with a mouthful of worms. Not a soul stirred, though. The little bird remained all alone in the bramble.

When I cried for help, the congregation inside ignored me. The drone of adult conversation suppressed my voice. Not even my flailing arms caught their attention. The parents drank and laughed, heads turned away.

Below, the wailing became louder. I hovered above this poor bird, hand placed on my cleft. After a plan failed to materialize, I went with my only real option: I stormed the lobby, armed with photographic proof.

At the front desk, a man in a suit stood upright like a scarecrow, eyes hollow.

“How may I help you, sir?”

“Um, yeah, well, there’s this bird that’s by the pool.”

“How dreadful.”

I waited for him to continue speaking, but the words never materialized. The man shifted his vision to the middle distance, eyes blank with a doe-like sincerity. I repositioned myself to meet his gaze.

“And? What will you do about it?”

“The situation will be handled promptly.”

“Well, good.”

I drummed my fingers on the desk. Though I tried to create a rhythm, the beat came out wonky. Even to my ears, it felt like a disjointed mess.

“Can I offer you a drink voucher,” the man said. “The bar makes a lovely Caipirinha.”

I paused for a moment. White cotton formed at the sides of my mouth. “Ah, well, I suppose so,” I replied. “I’ve earned it, right? Good Samaritan and all.”

“Of course, sir.”

His smile trembled when writing out the coupon. It reminded me of how my arms used to quake in gym class, straining to do just one pull-up. I could not look back as I exited the lobby, sure I’d notice something else from childhood.

I positioned myself toward the pool before ordering my drink. Despite the impossible warmness of alcohol, my tie felt attached, even though I removed it upon arrival. Like a phantom leg, it throbbed for attention. After one more, then another followed by another one, the noose tighten. I called for a shot just before leaving. The sweetness from the lemon drop made my tongue and canker sores pulse with electricity.

On the way back to my room, its cry echoed through the concrete canyons of the hotel. My little bird sat atop a black plastic bag inside the garbage area, resting in a pool of unknown fluid. With drunken hands, I constructed a burrow of newspaper and plastic bags. Like baby Jesus, he cooed in his makeshift bed, unaware of the future that awaited him.

In the lobby, the man now slept upright, hands in the shape of a y to support his chin.

“Uh, excuse me, sir,” I said, cupping my hands so that my voice would travel. “Thanks to you, the hotel has an almost-dead bird on its property.”

He blinked before answering, eyes slowly registering our connection.

“I am sorry, sir?”

“You tossed the bird into a dumpster. How is that taking care of the problem?”

“Sir, I will handle this personally this time. There is no need to–.”

“No, there is a need to get angry. I am so goddamn peeved right now. You cannot imagine the review I am going to write on Yelp. What’s your name again?”

“It’s–.”

“It’s what, guy?”

“It’s–.”

Tears began to stream down. In the middle of speaking, he slumped over, curling into a little ball. He rocked back and forth on the floor.

“Mister?”

“I just want to go home,” he whimpered.

“Ah, well, yeah, I’m sure you—” I said, not bothering to finish my sentence. He retreated further underneath the alcove.

“You don’t get it,” he replied, voice muffled. “I haven’t slept in forever; the hotel wants us here in twelve-hour shifts. I can’t think anymore.”

I walked around the front desk, moved his chair out, then sat down next to him. I folded my legs like a kindergartener, inching closer.

“I’m a good person,” he said.

“I’m sure you are.”

“I told the maintenance guy about the bird, and he said he would take care of it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I replied, “It must be that jerk’s fault.”

He stopped rocking for a brief moment, positioning himself toward me. While his eyes were red, he had a calmness swirling about the center.

“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough?” The man’s voice shook at the end, wobbling ever so slightly before crashing.

“But I did,” I said. “I went and told you as soon as I found him.”

“And then you put it on me,” he replied. “Just because I’m here in this position and you’re there in that one, why do I have to deal with it?”

“I mean, I suppose it’s not all on you. It’s on me maybe?” I said, not intending it to come out as a question. “I can take a swing, I guess.”

His head no longer sagged between his knees but rather swiveled like a bobblehead.

“Let me get you Animal Control.” He scribbled the number out, then folded the paper into fours. After passing off the responsibility, he managed to stagger to his feet. A faint smile crept over his face, curving slightly at the edges.

Back at the nest, I found only darkness. The lights above me buzzed for a moment before turning on. The bulb created a halo over the whole garbage area. Though shadows obscured the bird, I pictured two different possible outcomes. One bird, languidly, lifted its head, meeting my gaze with an almost half-smile. The other, however, slumped over at my touch, no longer in control. Both scenarios had their own set of consequences, none of which seemed preferable. With eyes closed, I thrust my hand into the shadows to secure the little bird.

A faint sound appeared when I pulled him out of the darkness. I imagined nursing the little guy back to health in my hotel room, wrapped in Kleenex so I wouldn’t catch any diseases. I’d have to take him to the conference, too. My hand hesitated a moment. I didn’t let go. I held him in the darkness. The daily slog of parenthood kept playing in my mind, every monotonous aspect of life now a routine, scripted. I held my hand inside the darkness until the light above me went out. His chirping reappeared, louder than when I first met him at the pool. I scampered back to the lobby with him wrapped in plastic, hands shaped like a nest.

The man at the front desk barked at me when I left him on the doorstep.

William Lemon teaches literature and composition at Los Angeles City College.

Photo Credit:  Gudellaphoto / Adobe Stock

Smell You Later

By Paul Beckman

The Sunday of my sixth birthday I was waiting on the stoop for my father to pick me up. Usually he’d take both my older brother and me together on his monthly pickups but not on birthday months. He wanted those to be special and memorable.

That Sunday turned out to be memorable but not special. I sat on the stoop from eight in the morning until it got dark and mom made me go into the house. I fought her. “What happens if he comes in fifteen minutes or ten or even two minutes and I’m not sitting and waiting?” I asked, “He’ll honk his horn,” my mother said, “so go sit in the kitchen and have something to eat. You know he’s not coming. You know he doesn’t like you and that means he doesn’t want to be alone with you.”

“I haven’t eaten because he always takes us out for a special birthday dinner, and I don’t want to miss it,” I said.

The shrink listened as I told this story, made a few notes, and hmmed after each sentence.

“How did that make you feel?” he asked.

“I’m not going to answer that question,” I said.

“Is it too painful?”

“No. it’s too trite. Be creative, show some interest, don’t ask the question that’s become a cliché.”

“We should examine why that question bothers you so much.”

“You bother me more,” I said as I got up, grabbed my jacket and walked out of his office. He followed me. There was a young woman sitting in his waiting room. “Same time next week?”

“Not on your fucking life,” I said. And then I told the girl the shrink was useless, and she should leave, and she told me he was her father and they were going out for dinner, “Watch he doesn’t duck out the back door,” I told her.

I’m forty-eight and this was my fifth and last shrink. I had other more pressing issues besides my father but after sitting they all asked me to tell them about my family and the shrink problem finder always homed in on him.

Later, I got on the I95 parking lot that some call a highway and headed to Milford to pick up my ten-year-old son, James, to go to Chuck E. Cheese and then a batting cage. I didn’t call because he had no cell phone and I didn’t want to get ragged on by my ex so when I pulled into their driveway forty-five minutes late they were out in the backyard at the picnic table eating pizza with a couple of James’ friends.

“Hey, buddy. Did you save room for Chucky?”

“No. I got hungry and mom heated up a couple of pizzas.”

“OK. Grab your gear and let’s hit the batting cage and we’ll have time for a movie.”

“Too late, Dad. Sorry. I figured you weren’t coming so I invited Mel and Alex over for the weekend.”

“Well, why didn’t you call me?”

“Why didn’t you call me?” James asked.

“Talk to you later,” I said.

“Bye, Dad.” He said and I could hear the sadness in his voice, so I turned and waved him over and we sat on the front lawn. “James, I’m sorry. I was at the doctor, left my appointment early and got caught up in the turnpike rush hour traffic. You’re right. I should’ve called but I didn’t want to get into an argument with your mother.”

“You shouldn’t blame her for your mess up, Dad.”

“I’m not blaming her. I already told you what happened and apologized. What more can I do?”

James shrugged.

“Why don’t you say goodbye to your friends and grab your duffel and come over for the weekend.”

“I can’t. I gave them my word we’d hang out together and they could stay the weekend. You wouldn’t want me to not keep my word, would you? Smell you later.”

I stared at James as he walked back to his mother and friends and never turned around to look at me. With tear-filled eyes and angry thoughts, I headed over to the batting cages to take out my frustration with some cuts at the ball. On my third time hitting with the speed cranked up I turned and saw James and his friends standing, watching me. I stared at them as ball after ball passed by me. “Three strikes, you’re out!” called the ticket taker and I dropped my bat on the ground and walked to my car.

Paul Beckman’s short story collection Kiss Kiss (Truth Serum Press), was a finalist for the 2019 Short Story Indie Book Awards. He had a story selected for the 2018 Norton Micro-fiction Anthology and was one of the winners of Best Small Fictions 2016. He won the Editor’s Choice Award in 2016 from Fiction Southeast and was in the Wigleaf Top 50. His stories have appeared in Spelk, Necessary Fiction, Litro, Pank, Playboy, Thrice Fiction, and The Lost Balloon.

Photo Credit:   22 North Gallery / Adobe Stock

Orion

By Lucy Zhang

The first room to the left on the second floor was my brother’s room. Four pieces of tape held a poster of NGC 2024, the star-forming region—ribbons of cloud and smoke, specks of light that penetrated greys and blacks which, instead of obscured, conjured an inexplicable hope to where stars glimmered, mysticism to where they did not. Constellation Orion hung on the door and we had a piece of the sky in our house. The inside of his room remained unremarkable during the day—white walls surrounding a full-sized bed, an IKEA desk, and a collapsible chair taken from the basement. But at night when the lights were off, the blinds drawn, phones on do-not-disturb mode, stars emerged: circular pieces of glow-in-the-dark stickers positioned one after another, wall to wall, stretched constellation after constellation. My brother didn’t care for spatial accuracy; he’d cram the whole sky into his room if he could.

“I’m hoping to research quantum foundations. Which is basically quantum mechanics and is really weird, and maybe that means we don’t understand it perfectly. So I want to help understand it better,” he told me when I was nine and he was thirteen. He tried to explain his research interests to me several times and I eventually learned to stop asking “What does that mean?” and instead say “Cool.”

When it was his twelfth birthday, my brother received a telescope—not the kiddy telescopes but the over one-thousand-dollar type that astronomers use. That night, we sat outside on the deck, both of us in thin cotton pajamas weathering the chilly April air, and he pointed out every single star and astrophysical body he could find to me. Every time he located something new, he’d hold the telescope positioned towards the star, and then he’d crouch down to my height to readjust the view as I walked up to the eyepiece. I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I remember feeling small against a world so big, and how my brother seemed to have transcended the telescope, swept up with the world.

***

On Fridays, when neither of us had school work due the next day, we’d stay up for hours after my parents went to sleep, lying side by side on his bed. One summer night, when the house had already cooled and we could close the window without fear of melting, I found myself tuning out my brother’s descriptions of the same constellations glowing from the room ceiling. I tilted my head to the right to face him, watching his eyes dart from one sticker-formed star to another, his mouth movement stretching and loosening the skin over his cheekbones, his words coming out more loudly than he likely realized. My eyelids dropped before flickering back open—I knew he didn’t like it when I fell asleep. But then my eyes fell shut again and I, now only aware of the soft cotton comforter and subtle heat of a body next to me, heard but no longer listened. Maybe if I had listened, I would have been able to wake up the instant I noticed when the stream of words about Cancer, the constellation under which he was born, had halted.

When I first felt his hand, I thought he had misplaced it. But then it traveled: his large hand and his fingers and their calloused distal interphalangeal joints from gripping pencils too hard, down my ribcage, following the steep dip from bone to stomach–a swamp of smooth skin—then back up at the edge of my hip bone, the last sharp edge before the soft flesh of my thigh. Wandering. Then a finger slid between my thighs, as though unaware how to approach this new territory—with a childish hesitance. A curiosity. Eyes still shut, I turned onto my side, facing him, maintaining my slow breath. I fidgeted my head on the pillow, curled a hand close to my chest, and remained still. Sleeping. His hand shot away from me the instant I moved to adjust my sleep position. The next day he acted as though nothing had happened. I did the same.

I was thirteen and he was seventeen.

***

“Mail me my telescope” was the last thing my brother told me. Or more accurately, the message came as a phone vibration against my thigh and a push notification that I swiped away from the screen and marked as read.

Before he left for college, I had asked him: “Do you want your telescope?”

“No, I’ll be too busy to use it,” he told me. “You can have it so you don’t forget about me.” We laughed—although I wasn’t certain what was funny. Then he left with one suitcase and a backpack and no telescope, and I headed back to my room—the first room to the right on the second floor with an entrance blocked by a bare door.

I didn’t mail him his telescope. He didn’t have a telescope, after all, it was mine: my telescope standing in his room, peaking at the window as though to beckon someone to draw the curtains apart so it could lift open its eyelids and see the world.

I thought it was silly that my brother died in a car crash, of all things. The other driver was drunk, and there’s no match between a BMW X6 and a Honda Fit. The police said it was hard to tell who was in the car at first, the body blanketed by a steering wheel, blood, and darkness. He was returning to the university from Death Valley that night, they said after finding his phone’s GPS attempting to navigate a corpse back to next morning’s midterm. I was fourteen back then, and I pulled an all-nighter, staring up at the ceiling of glowing stickers that supposedly represented big exploding balls of gas. They looked more like holes puncturing the wall to me, and on the other side a hidden light source—nothing I needed a telescope to see, but when I closed my eyes, I refused to sleep.

Lucy Zhang is a software engineer and holds a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science. She watches anime, writes poetry and fiction (when patient enough), and sleeps in on weekends like a normal human being. She can be found at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/.

Photo Credit:  ©Maximusdn / Adobe Stock

Saturday Siren

By Kathryn Ordiway

‘I mean, the hotter the weather, the more people murder,’ your husband says as he wades waist-deep in the murky water. ‘Serial killers and Kansas, you know?’

You have only your feet in the lake, legs stretched long from your place on a blanket because the color—the twinges of red and brown and earthy green—disgusts and concerns you.

This is your husband’s idea of a date: July humidity, a pebbly beach that hurts to walk on, egg salad sandwiches from a 7-Eleven en route, a chorus of shrieking and splashing children. Later, there will be fireworks and more shrieking children, less splashing. Later, he’ll crack open a fresh beer, cross his legs at the ankles, and look for lost magic in those fireworks. Later, he’ll probably snake his hand around your neck and bury you alive with his weight and his kisses.

Your husband is carrying a Miller Lite with him, a damp offering to his young-twenties memories of lakeside fourths with cooler, clearer water, cooler, cleaner air. Cooler friends, too, he’s quick to remind anyone who will listen. This date, this attempt at sparking intimacy and common enjoyment, it is just a ritual in remembrance of his past without you, a backward gaze you don’t quite fit in.

The Saturday test siren goes off, and you tilt your face into the sun. Here is a long, blaring reminder that you have barely reached the heat of the day, that you have hours to go until you rest easy in the cool embrace of the ceiling fan–chilled bedsheets. Noon, the siren cries. Nine-plus hours until the fireworks.

You had to pack the car on a whim this morning, barely even remembering where the beach towels were hidden. Swimsuits had to be fished out of plastic bins where rarely used clothing is stored. Water shoes, lost. Sun hats, missing in action. And all the while, your husband pacing around in the kitchen, tapping his too-long nails on the countertops to signal his impatience, sometimes clenching his fists.

You were invited to a neighborhood barbecue to celebrate the holiday, had RSVPed and volunteered to bring a raspberry and blueberry torte, but he decided not to go. ‘Too square,’ he said from in front of the stove where he was frying thick pepper bacon. ‘I have a better plan.’

Too square, as if you hadn’t spent the previous evening in your overgrown backyard, sitting in plastic Adirondack chairs, swapping facts from two separate presidential biographies about two separate assassinated presidents.

Too square, he said, and you picked up your phone and tried to figure out how to apologize for bailing on appearing and bringing dessert.

‘Think of it this way,’ he says now as he comes out of the water, dripping and goose-pimpled, to stand before you and the picnic blanket. ‘It’s hot all the time, and flat probably, and there are almost no trees, zero air-conditioning. Every time you go outside is a danger. Too hot to run or to bike. Too hot to do anything. No shade.’

You cannot tell if he’s describing his image of Kansas or the eventual apocalypse. You’re busy peeling one of the sandwiches apart, watching small chunks of egg fall onto your crossed shins. Sweat inches down your spine as your smack the sandwich back together—you hate, and he loves, egg salad, just as you hate, and he loves, the heat.

‘It’ll just go on and on, the heat, with no relief. Wouldn’t you go crazy?’

‘You haven’t even been to Kansas,’ you say in response, and you lie back on the blanket. He offers a line of shade across your feet and ankles, a welcome relief.

‘I’ve been to Kansas tons of times.’

But you’ve closed your eyes to him and the sun and the flies and the lick of green at the edge of your vision that is probably a tree.

‘Tons of times.’

Somewhere behind you, there are children throwing rocks and jumping about. You can hear the thwack of frisbees in palms, the thump of a father tossing a baseball into his daughter’s mitt. There are women comparing sunscreen brands, kids smacking each other with foam noodles.

You overhear a boy telling a girl about the octopus that lives in the lake, red and bloated, tired and angry, waiting for food, snaking its tentacles toward the shallows for prey. You hear her squeal, then giggle.

‘Serial killers and Kansas,’ your husband mutters as he joins you on the blanket. Shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, the spots where the two of you touch are momentarily cooled by the lake on his skin.

‘What else is there to do?’

You turn and squint into his wide face, certain you’ve missed something.

Kathryn Ordiway is a technical editor for a scientific journal and a fiction writer. She studied English, with concentrations in Creative Writing and Literature, at Saint Vincent College. Her work has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, 805 Lit + Art, littledeathlit, and Francis House. She lives in Oklahoma, where she’s always waiting for it to rain. She’s on Twitter @KatOrdiway.

Photo Credit: ©ricardoreitmeyer / Adobe Stock

Reeled In

By M. Devoe Talley

I saw you then in the summer from the promenade of that county fair as you lay on your back in the near grass and I wandered with girlfriends I barely knew. The late low sun dazzled your tangle of blond hair, and a mustache made you look older, closer to twenty-eight—which was good. Demigods of a lesser mythology, callow and vain, ignorant and cruel. Aware of our powers, but not mindful of how fast they might fade, with the sunset, with the summer.

You seemed a prince in exile, yet the center of attention, and I felt something, perhaps not love, but a desire or demand. I wanted one of you. I’d thrown away yesterday’s university boys and wanted tomorrow’s man. I was of the moment, at my zenith, and therefore entitled to have you. Our beach tans cast us in bronze, the photo-aging of the sun’s revenge decades away. And I reeled you in, as I could do, for the initial catch is easy; it’s only the keeping that requires a sustained spell beyond pheromonal witchcraft—an anguished concentration.

You might have made eye contact and advanced toward me even had I been another, more conventional, less exotic.

“Hey, babe. What’s happening? Never seen you before.”

You deserted your coterie of male friends and the random women lingering nearby trying not to look hungry. I wore light blue eye shadow, knock-me-down pumps, and a halter top. Together we were fashioned of mirror sunglasses, pastel colors, and faded jeans, carrying Salem menthols and looking for beers, and somebody had a joint so no reason to hassle about all that. Be patient, bliss will arrive.

My girlfriends retreated in whispers, beach grass in the wind. While your sports car guys were still sprawled languorously on the green, waiting for the electricity of night to animate them. Aware of the magic, our magic, they nodded their heads, almost bobbing in a rhythm of agreeance. Spellbound. The whole scene playing out as if predestined, the magnetic pull of moon and tides bringing us together as shadows extended and a slight breeze kissed our hair. The wind couldn’t chill the long day’s warmth baked into the ground.

Then we walked, laughing about things that may not have been funny but were because we chose them to be. “That Ferris wheel looks crazy.”

“Yeah, I know. So many lights.”

Smiling when words failed. Baring teeth in an ancient mating ritual.

The sunlight came in slivers and shards, a sky still pale blue, and only the children had confusion worrying their faces. Where’s mom and dad? When do we eat? And perhaps dinner could be improvised, somewhere down the road. At IHOP or Friendly’s or Howard Johnson, ordered off embossed menus while parental restrictions wavered from the exhaustion of an eternal day that stretched right past eight at night. As ice cream and milk shakes melted over young mouths then spilled over their clothes in messy nocturnal joy, and at the very nature of being alive. Because of summer: not much of anything to do or not do, nowhere to get to in a hurry or stay at for any given time. Deadlines and curfews, the restraints that harness the world most of the year, becoming vague, almost intangible near the solstice.

The cotton candy and popcorn we gathered were discarded along our trajectory through makeshift avenues created by rows of carnival game booths and food stands.

“Check out all this stuff.” You spoke using simple phrases, and during those beginnings we imagine more interesting people hidden in the shy silences.

The fairway grass lay flat, trampled beneath our feet, a faint tang of manure wafting from distant pony rides, and carny voices hawking for our attention but receiving none. I brought you in close and nuzzled your neck, and pressed my breasts against you casual-like when it’s never casual-like, after we shared a forgotten Schaefer beer plucked from melted ice water in a cooler. We fell into one another when the sun came down to greet us, glowing orange like live coals nestled in the high branches behind a wall of trees to the west. The whole slender long island of Long Island stretched out before us: potato fields and manicured gardens, orchards and tangles of brush. Mountains impossible, the flat topography mapped by houses and lanes, by the open meadow just beyond us with a lone horse whinnying in a paddock.

In the finality of night, we searched for a bar or club on a jetty, the slap of bay waves against dock pilings, where a band might play a favorite summer song, or we could find a jukebox that never quieted. Only the urge to be orphaned from our families a constant. Indifferent to politics and churning foreign wars that could barely grip us, the greater world remained a rumor we chose to ignore.

And later we undressed, if not that evening, then soon after and time again. No details linger, but it doesn’t matter if it was fantastic, or drunken, or fumbling and apologetic, or wild and animalistic. We looked good together, and when we walked nestled in a symbiotic form, people watched us, not so much in jealousy, but in understanding that such was the way of the world, and to hate this thing, to hate us, would only expose their thorny, embittered souls. For that was the reason to live while young. Applaud it as it passes by, pay respect and then seek it for yourself, or go cradle a memory of when it once burned inside, relentless.

We were bonded forever and ever, and our forever lasted through August. I came from the city; you were a local. “Bonackers” they called you. You skippered boats, day fishing trips where you reeled-in the big one for clients. In the lazy recumbent hours you confided, “I want to sail the coast with you, clear down to South America and then across Cape Horn.”

We would somehow end up eventually, miraculously in the Mediterranean—beyond our struggles, and relaxed in a facsimile of love that had traveled stormy and arrived intact. It would all occur the following June after my senior year ended and you made more money, and it was as good a plan as any hatched in youthful passion. And might have even happened. But graduation took me to Europe and I never returned to Long Island and you never wrote or called me. Perhaps someone else joined you on our delirious, insane voyage.

#

I woke up throbbing with this memory, a fever dream that submerges the sleeper then throws them back onto land startled and uncertain in a reality that appears strange after being so deeply immersed. To navigate a marriage not sparked by electricity, but comforted by the sameness, the lasting quality of longtime possessions when so much that is transient falls away in life. We choose the things of worth that ground us, to remind us who we are, not who we were. It’s a selection process, and the autumn of life brings different choices than during those prolonged sunsets of our brazen youth.

–

Max DeVoe Talley was born in New York City and lives in Southern California. His fiction and essays have appeared in Fiction Southeast, Gravel, Santa Fe Literary Review, Entropy, Hofstra University – Windmill, Bridge Eight, and Litro. Talley’s novel, Yesterday We Forget Tomorrow, was published in 2014, and he is an associate editor for Santa Barbara Literary Journal.

Water Color Illustration:  ©  lcrms / Adobe Stock