Crack the Spine - Issue 165

Crack the Spine Literary magazine

Issue 165

Issue 165 September 30, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine

This issue is generously sponsored by:

Outskirts Press

CONTENTS Linda Heuring Little Mister

Phillip Kane Cormorant

Vic Sizemore A Lone Gunman

Angel Dionne Doctor’s Orders

Tige Ashton DeCoster

Crucifixion in Cowboy Country

Christy Strick

Mathematics of Loss

Linda Heuring Little Mister

My momma don’t want nothing to go to waste or no one to go around without a goodly amount of loving. That’s why we wasn’t surprised when she bring home that little wiener dog that started all the trouble. I swear, your honor, on a whole stack of Bibles like that black one you got up there, it was that what started it all off.

Don’t think I’m fixing to blame my momma. No, sir. It ain’t my momma’s fault anymore than it’s her fault Cliff Claymore don’t know that thin line between drunk and sober excepting in his rear view mirror. No, sir, I ain’t blaming nobody, I’m just telling you the whole story, the truth and nothing but the truth like that woman there had me swear.

It started on a Tuesday. I know that for a fact because my momma been cleaning the Anderson’s house on a Tuesday ever since I remember. And ever Tuesday she bring home something them Andersons didn’t want no more. Like maybe flowers that still had a few more days on them. Once it was a perfectly good sweeper what just needed a belt and some oil. There’s plenty of Tuesdays all stacked up in my memory, judge, and there was a lot of shit stacked up at our house that started out in their big house. Beg pardon, sir, that “shit” just came out on accident. That gal from the public defender done warned me about that. As I was saying, my momma brung home that dog she say they don’t want no more cause it done bark all the time and pee on their carpet.

“That’s nice, momma,” I says, real polite-like. She raised me to be polite. “But what’s gonna stop that dog from barking and peeing on our floor?”

“I’ll be training him,” she says, and then she says to the dog, “Ain’t that right, Little Mister?” You could tell that dog just love my momma. He look up at her and let out one yip, smiled a big old wiener dog smile and wagged his curly-q tail. Next he hiked up one back paw and peed on my shoe. That’s the way it was gonna be, your honor. That dog done figured out day one which side his bread was buttered on. He got nothing but smiles for my momma. I just told you what he got for me.

You already know about my troubles, cause the po-lice told me you got my whole file, your honor, and I do apologize. I had me a mean temper back when I drank, but I ain’t had a drop in four years, god’s honest truth. It wasn’t my nature to walk away from nothin’, and I got a scar to this day right here on my forehead from that bouncer’s ring down at the Voodoo Lounge. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t no saint. But I ain’t drinking none, either. I been going to the meetings. I ain’t hit no one what didn’t deserve it in a long time. Cliff Claymore will vouch for that, judge.

So here it was a Friday, what you called “the day in question.” I was just coming out the Kwik-Pick with a pack of smokes. I always get them there because they’s a nickel cheaper. And there was Cliff Claymore setting in his Buick Riviera in the parking lot. He had his nose stuck in the ashtray running change around in there with his pointing finger. He was moving his lips, so I knows he was counting. I been there done that your honor. Cliff, he work real hard laying asphalt, making them driveways for all the Wendy’s and such, but his paycheck don’t last from one Friday to the next. That cheap so and so Franklin what he works for don’t hand out the checks until quitting time on Friday. So Cliff was fishing for change, and I wasn’t doing nothing that couldn’t be interrupted. I opened the passenger door and hopped in.

“Smoke?” I offered him a cancer stick.

“Hell, yes, you see me digging for nickels?” he says.

“Nickels don’t buy squat,” I told him. “What we need is some dollars.”

“I heard that,” Cliff says, leaning back in his seat. He blowed the smoke out like he was smoking a cigar. “I don’t know what’s worse. Gas at three bucks a gallon or smokes at five bucks a pack.”

“I heard that.” We smoked a while, and then I remembered I had something to do for my momma.

“Cliff, I gotta get myself over at the vet’s office and pick up something.”

Cliff, he didn’t need asking about a ride, he just started up the old Buick and backed her onto the street. There weren’t but one vet in town, Doc Brown.

We get there, I tell Cliff I won’t be a minute, and he says OK by him, but do I have an extra five on me for a pint? I had a twenty of my momma’s in my pocket earlier. Before I got the smokes.

“Maybe so,” I says. “Depends on how much Doc gonna charge me.”

They got a little bell rings when you open the door at the vets, but I swear I never understood why. Ever time that bell rings there’s a bunch of dogs in the back just go to howling. The girl at the desk was setting bottles of shampoo in little rows, like they was bowling pins just waiting to get mowed down.

“Steeerike,” I says. I did my arm like this, your honor, like I just laid a perfect hook ball on the lane, and I balanced there on one foot just smiling when that girl turn around and look at me with her head cocked to the side like one a them TV commercial dogs. Like she was saying, “What the hell?” Sorry, judge, but that’s just how she look.

“You got something held for my momma,” I says real quick, but polite. “Mrs. Bessie Fisher. That’s my momma.”

“What is it?” she asks.

“I don’t rightly know,” I says. “She just said ‘pick it up.’”

The girl just tilted her head again and clicked her pen against her teeth.

“Wait here,” she says.

She opened a door to the back and them dogs started howling again. I didn’t hear no bell this time, but maybe it was one of them silent bells just for dogs.

Right by the desk there was a cork board with pictures of dogs on it, and I was wondering if just anyone could bring a picture of their dog and tack up there. I thought momma would be proud to have a picture of Little Mister there.

Maybe I’d surprise her and take one in there myself for her birthday or something. Then I got to noticing the writing under some of them pictures.

“Stud service.” “AKC champion.” When I read what they was charging for them dogs for just a few minutes of their time -- some of them dogs was getting $500 a shot -- it was like a light bulb going off. Momma’s dog had to have papers.

Them Andersons wouldn’t a had no mutt. I find the papers, I’d be in business.

Wouldn’t momma be surprised when she seen all that money?

That girl come out with a see-through pouch with something red and white inside.

“Here’s the sweater your mother ordered, Mr. Fisher.”

A sweater for a dog? Now I seen everything.

“That will be $16.45 with tax.”

I felt my pocket for what was left of the twenty, knowing full well that after the smokes I only had a ten and a five.

“Are you sure she didn’t already pay for it? Since she ordered it special?”

“I tell you what, I’ll check with doctor later. If she still owes, I’ll send a bill.”

The girl sure was pretty, even if she did keep hitting her front teeth with that

pen. I wondered if she ever got the wrong end up and inked her teeth. It didn’t look like it.

“That’s be just fine, Miss,” I says. “By the way, what’s the other name for a wiener dog?”

“You mean the dachshund?”

“That’s it. Can you write that down on a piece a paper there?” She wrote it out nice and plain on a paper with “Flea Be Gone” printed on the top. Then I borrowed her pen and wrote momma’s phone number real big on the bottom and put STUD FEE $300. I didn’t want to be greedy. She just watched me write it all out and put it on the board. When I left she set there at the desk with her head cocked just tapping them teeth.

It didn’t take long for Cliff Claymore to catch my drift about the stud service.

We was sitting in the Buick in my momma’s driveway. I could hear that wiener dog just barking inside.

“Hell, you gonna be a rich man,” Cliff says. “Don’t be forgetting your friends when you get flush, man.”

“I ain’t gonna get that rich. Not Trump rich. I aim to be the same as I am now.

Just have me all the smokes I want and a pizza now and then what don’t come out of a freezer.”

That dog was up in the picture window standing on the back of the couch pawing the glass, barking. I wondered how he’d look in that sweater. Probably like a Christmas candy cane.

“I gotta get in there and find those papers,” I tells Cliff. Then I remembers the change in my pocket. I pull out a ten. “Here, Cliff. Get youself something and come on back. You can help me look.”

First thing that dog do is try and squeeze through that screen door and get out front. I push him back in the house with my foot, gentle-like, then he grab my shin with them sharp black claws and pee on my sock. This keep up I’m gonna have to wear my old Army boots.

Momma keeps her important papers in a big wood box on the kitchen counter that says “The Andersons, Bob and Peggy” on the side in burned-in letters. Them dog papers wasn’t in there. They wasn’t in her bedroom, either, or under the couch cushions. I was on my knees looking under the couch when they called. They wanted to know all about the wiener dog and his papers and stuff. I tells them...them people sitting right over there, your honor. That’s them.

The plaintiffs. I tells them all about the dog, and they’s asking me could I fetch him over to meet their dog. And I tells them yes, but I’m gonna need the money up front. I wanted them to know I wasn’t borned yesterday. They say it gonna depend on if the dogs like each other and about his pedigree. Now I didn’t know what part was his pedigree, but whatever it was, I was sure it was just in dandy shape. Like I says before, the Anderson’s don’t buy no junk.

It was Cliff’s idea to put the candy cane outfit on him. Cliff has him some good ideas when he’s drinking. I used to myself, back in the day. I know what you’re thinking, judge, but I didn’t touch a drop. Cliff done finished off the bottle before he got back to my momma’s house, anyway. Said he didn’t want to tempt me none, being as I was quit and all. I sweared to tell the truth, and I am.

That wiener dog didn’t much like that outfit. Cliff and I both had to hold him down to get it snapped. I think that dog knowed it was Cliff’s idea, cause soon as we was done he bit Cliff on the ankle and peed on his shoe. He might a changed his opinion on Cliff when we got in the car. That dog did like riding in a car. He hopped up and down and stuck his head out the window and barked. His ears

was flapping against his head so hard I thought he might knock his own brains out. I had to hold on his back legs to keep him from flying out.

We got there, and there was a chain link fence like they said. We parked in the gravel and first thing their girl wiener dog comes running down the sidewalk barking her fool head off. Momma’s Little Mister was jumping and barking, too.

“So far, so good,” I says to Cliff. He squeezed his eyes tight together and nodded. Cliff be feeling good. Bourbon do that.

“Why don’t you just hang out here, Cliff, and I’ll be right back,” I tells him.

Truth be told, I think he was relieved. He got blood on his sock from earlier.

I had a hard time holding onto Little Mister cause he was fixing to get down and see that girl dog, but I wasn’t about to let him do his business there without cash on the barrelhead, if you know what I mean, judge. So I kept hold of him best I could, him biting my fingers and scratching my belly while that girl dog nipped at my knees, trying to get at him.

That’s when the screen door slammed back against the house and them people come running out.

“Keep him away from our Petunia,” they hollered. I was already holding him so tight his eyeballs was bugging out.

“Howdy,” I says. “This here’s Little Mister.”

They scooped up their dog like they was a giant Dust Buster and motioned for me to come on the porch. We sat there across from each other a holding dogs for dear life.

“Well, she certainly seems to be interested,” she says.

“She’d be interested in a German Shepherd at this point,” he says. “We should have picked out a stud BEFORE she went into heat.”

“Well, guess who was just too busy watching football to do THAT?” she ask.

I figured this was one a them ongoing things, your honor, so I ask if we can just settle up before Little Mister do the deed. You’d a thought I had a gun to their heads. They start in about that pedigree again and ask for a bunch of papers, and when I tell them he my momma’s dog and I couldn’t find no papers, they get downright nasty. They trashed Little Mister. Call him a mutt. Say his eyes is too close to his nose and his legs is too long.

You know there ain’t no love lost between me and that dog, judge, but it’s one thing to have trouble in the family, and it’s something else for strangers to sound off like that. I squeezed Little Mister even tighter and stomped down them steps toward the Buick. That she-devil Petunia chased us all the way.

“We’re outta here,” I says to Cliff, and I slam the gate shut behind me. Cliff put her in gear to back out when Petunia push open the gate and run up to the car.

“Don’t squash her,” I yells at Cliff. He slams on the brakes. Little Mister jumps out the window right that second, and I grab for him and catch the sweater. He hangs there in midair for a second, and then he spins around like that girl in The Exorcist and hops right out a that candy cane thing. Before I can open the door him and Petunia is going at it longside the road.

Petunia’s daddy, well he comes flying off the porch swinging a metal baseball bat at Little Mister. He ain’t got good aim so he hits the gravel by his girl dog instead. She yelps and them stuck-together dogs scoot underneath the Buick.

Just for safety, I figure. They don’t seem to care none about privacy. Then the wife, she starts smacking her husband in the chest with her fists, cause that’s only how far up she can reach. And he turns around to swing at her, but breaks his swing at the last minute and hits the car instead. I could a told him that

wasn’t a smart thing to do when Cliff Claymore’s been drinking, but nobody asked me, and then the man scoots underneath the car in the gravel trying to poke at them dogs with the bat. Cliff, he stretches his long arms up in the air like he’s gonna make a jump shot, and then he tosses me the car keys.

“Open the trunk,” he says, and I barely gets it open when he drags the man out from under the car by his ankles. Cliff steps on the husband’s bat-hand so he lets go, and then grabs him by the scruff of the neck and shoves him in the trunk. I ain’t never seen so much banging in my life. The man’s banging inside the trunk, them dogs is banging underneath the car, and she’s banging on the trunk lid.

“Get out here if you know what’s good for you, you good for nothing so and so,” she be yelling at him like he could unlock it from inside. I’d a stayed in there, too, I was him. After while them dogs was done, and Little Mister just crawls over and falls dead asleep on my shoe. Cliff Claymore let the husband out. The woman, she reach under the car and put Petunia in a carry pouch she make with the bottom of her shirt. I was just asking for what was due me when the woman go inside and call the po-lice.

No, your honor, I don’t think they seen any humor in that. That’s why they file them charges and done get me hauled in here like a criminal when it be me and Little Mister been wronged. They owes us $300. I got them papers now. And Little Mister, he did the deed. They got the pups to prove it.

Phillip Kane Cormorant

1 Dear father, you gave me this cruel gift that I give back to you now, this writing spelled out in the alphabet of my years, these words spilling like black blood on the page.

You will not read them. They would not reach you, anyway, through the wall of memories and my language you will not comprehend, just as I have failed to comprehend yours.

They must be written, though. Soon the parting comes unbidden, and even wounded lives become less fractured as they fade away.

You’re living in each word that you don’t read or understand, and so unspoken love will speak beyond you and, then, beyond me.

2 What will speak beyond you, and beyond me?

I watched your skilful hands as they crafted the black hull of that toy ship I clung to.

You were shrouded from me, then and always, a shape misted within sweet scents of wood and the dimness of that shed you almost lived in. I reached out to take the vessel from your workbench. It was a flimsy thing that I named Cormorant. I would sail her over seas of grass in my search for you, your being as elusive as new land or a white whale. At times, voyaging west, I’d catch glimpses of you, bent over work that was as mysterious as you were.

3 That was as mysterious as you were, your childhood. You drew maps, told me stories that slipped away like eels through the currents of the past. There was nothing I could hold.

The few streets close to home were my country; your wartime orchards, fields, rabbit hunting, all as foreign as the whine of bombers in the air. You told me that you once broke open a flare you found on the Common, cracking it like an egg, with stones, until the liquid chemistry of light ran out like poison. A miracle it didn’t blow your hands off. Now light runs out of you, I look through the maps you once made for me.

4 I look through the maps you once made for me, as if in their topography I’ll find the clues that lead me back to you, hidden figure among your own long silences.

I learned to live in them as well, walking beside you on long treks by the river, keeping pace. Sunday mornings, heading out into the almost-countryside, the miles passing unpunctuated by our speech, our twinned footsteps printed on the dirt paths; in that world between the worlds we could feel as one, father and son, and both unbound for those few hours from all that was routine, the lonely contours of the daily round.

5 The lonely contours of the daily round ran from sea to factory. But for two years working on the railway. Remember me coming to meet you from the circus?

I was three, I think. I wore a headdress of blue and orange feathers and I whooped as I ran down the platform, as I’d heard those fake Injuns in the circus whooping.

Trains breathed as heavily as buffalo.

What other force of nature ran between, and separated us? So we became these loving foes, you behind your ramparts, while I wandered the naked plains alone.

Loss comes more than once for us, as grief does.

6 Loss comes more than once for us, as grief does.

Your own past betrayed you, that tropic sun brooding for decades before it burned through.

Seeing the ruin of your handsome face, I know that losses can mount up until they pass beyond the point of toleration.

“My run’s been good”, you said, the other day.

Already we are closing our accounts.

I disappointed you, I think; poet, a job description you’d not recognise.

You knew your place and kept it warm for me, but I don’t fill it. Yet another loss, perhaps, the father’s burden weighing more as age gains weight, and heft, and distance.

7 As age gains weight, and heft, and distance, some things fade while others find their focus.

For me, these poems order what we have to balance up. There’s no great schemata that we must fit, and meaning’s what we make ourselves of it. Now, where you are heading, I cannot follow. Meanings separate, that were once bound together. What you’ll cast behind are shadows; leaves will turn, and fall, then soon grow green again, while poetry may lie fallow through the generations before emerging. It’s all I offer, that I give back to you now, this writing.

Dear father, you gave me this cruel gift.

Vic Sizemore A Lone Gunman

When third shift was over, Perry put his snips and goggles in his locker and headed for the door. He had a full week off from both jobs. He and Missy were going to Myrtle Beach, to a hoity-toity place her mom got. It was behind a gate and you had to have a special card to get through. It was the cheapest week of the year for some reason, she’d told Missy, so she went with the very best for her girl.

Perry would just as soon have spent the week fishing at his uncle’s place out on the Coal River in St. Albans. He didn’t care much for traveling. He almost did just stay home, but it was Missy’s special week.

Missy had dropped him off for work last night and was waiting for him in his truck when he stepped out of the bay into the bright morning. With her little fingers gripping the steering wheel, she looked like a squirrel peeking over a branch.

As he climbed into the cab, she said, “All the blacks are up in arms over that kid who got shot.”

“Figures,” Perry said.

“Obama’s all over the TV and radio. I swear you can’t get away from that man.” She said, “He’s going to be president again.”

“Won’t happen,” Perry said. “People are on to his radical communist bullshit.”

“You give people too much credit,” she said. “You watch.”

Perry’s Ford F150 didn’t have air, or a working radio. Their two expensive green suitcases—gifts from her mother with only Missy’s initials on them—

were in the truck bed, with his black overnight bag, white fuzz pinching through cracks in the fake leather.

Perry kneaded the back of his neck. He’d just spent eight hours on the platform beside his high-pressure injection machine: setting molds, pulling PVC pipefittings and dropping them in water to cool, boxing them and sending them down the rollers. He’d made over six hundred parts last shift. Between three and five was the rough stretch for him, he could barely keep his head up, but third shift was pretty good money.

“Did you turn everything off at the trailer?” he asked.

“I swear I thought a woman would be president before a black would,” Missy said. She said, “I was sure it was going to be Hillary.”

There was a McDonald’s bag in the seat between them. The greasy smell filled the cab. Perry’s stomach growled. He pulled out a ham, egg and cheese biscuit, a hash brown and an orange juice in a plastic piss-sample cup with the foil top bubbled up.

“This is going to be a miserable drive,” Missy said. “It’s already hot.” When she lifted her leg to shift gears, her leg released from the plastic with the sound of pulling tape. Her sleeveless shirt is tucked into tan linen shorts.

“You get yourself anything?” he asked.

She made a glugging sound in the back of her throat like she might barf. The juice cup was cold, wet with condensation. He rolled it on his forehead before opening it.

Missy’s strawberry hair was still damp, pulled into a ponytail. The greasy smell of his food mixed with the smell of her after-shower spray. The armpit of her sleeveless blouse was already wet, a little dark sliver moon. It was sexy. Her

white canvas sneakers were well bleached but still stained brown at the toe tips. Hers looked like a child’s feet playing at the truck pedals.

“Want me to drive?” he asked, peeling the foil off the cup, spilling some down his hand.

“Maybe,” she said. “Rest a little bit first.” She backed the truck out of the parking spot and then shoved the gearshift into first. She popped the clutch; the truck jumped and stalled. She restarted it, scowling at the steering wheel. With three lurching hops, they got on the road.

The heat shield under the truck rattled like a jackhammer until they reached 35 MPH. Soggy clumps of biscuit had tumbled down Perry’s sweat-soaked shirt onto his jeans.

“Mom called,” Missy said. “To see when I was arriving.” Her mouth curled into a huge grin. “She has a graduation gift for me.”

“I thought this vacation was your present.”

She shrugged.

“No,” he said as he finished eating and drank down the last of the juice.

“Absolutely not.” He stuffed the garbage into the white McDonald’s bag and stomps it down on the floorboard.

“I need a car,” she said. “Look at this thing. I can’t go anywhere while you’re at work?” She giggled. “I think it’s a Lexus.”

He wiped his mouth with his hand. “How do you know what kind of car it is?”

“Air conditioning would be nice.”

Perry leaned over and unlaced his work boots. “No,” he said. “I will not let her do it. That’s final.”

He scooted down so he could rest his head on the seatback, and fell asleep.

Perry woke up. His left leg was tingling numb. Missy was rolling up her window. He sat up and started tensing and releasing his leg, kneading it at the same time.

She glanced over. “Foot fall asleep?”

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Winston-Salem.”

“I’m starving.” He put his hand on her thigh. “This is going to be a good week,” he said.

She took the next exit and pulled through the parking lots of a Cracker Barrel and a Wendy’s trying to get to the Texas Steakhouse. Finally, she entered the parking lot from the back of the restaurant. The smell of garbage was strong, and a guy in a dirty apron was wheeling a massive gray trashcan to the dumpster.

“Very appetizing,” Missy said.

“If that thing’s full of food trash, no way that little dude is picking it up by himself.”

Inside smelled of garlic and grilled meat. The hostess seated them across the entryway from the bar. The lights were off in the bar, but the television bolted to the ceiling was on Cable News Network. Missy faced the bar; she stared at the TV over Perry’s shoulder.

The waiter came, gave them a silver bucket of peanuts. “We’re in a hurry,” Perry told him, so he took their order right then. Missy ordered a Coke, and a Caesar salad with no croutons and the dressing on the side and the chicken breast on a separate plate not cut up. Perry ordered a sweet iced tea, and a steak sandwich with fries.

The waiter disappeared behind the swinging stainless kitchen door, and reappeared almost immediately with a bunch of others at the wait station. They all started singing along with that David Allen Coe song: “And I’ll hang around as long as you will let me…” he sang, and they sang.

Then they all shouted, “Let me, let me, let me, let me.”

A woman came out of the kitchen with a tray on her shoulder. She was singing too.

Perry said, “Looks like a fun place to work.” He cracked a shell and popped the two peanuts into his mouth. He said, “I could have a little place and sell my chili.”

The wait staff sang out, almost yelling, “You don’t have to call me darlin’.

Darlin’...”

“Go for it,” Missy said.

“I wonder why you don’t call me,” they sang. “You never even call me by my name.”

With whoops and claps, the singers broke up and went back to work. Their waiter brought their drinks. Perry’s tea was lukewarm and the ice was almost all melted.

The waiter brought their food out. Perry poured A-1 onto his plate and swiped a thick French fry through it, making a wipe of clean white that the A-1 immediately filled back in. He said, “I was thinking that maybe this week we could—” “I’m not ready.” She kept her eyes riveted past his shoulder at the bar TV. “I just thought—” “You said you would give me time and space.

He ate. She stared at the TV, nibbled at bits of lettuce, a small chunk of chicken here and there dipped in the thick gray dressing.

She said, “God, it’s horrible about that black kid who got shot.”

Perry turned and looked at the television: a picture of the black kid who got himself shot. He turned back around. “I’m trying to give you time and space,” he said. “It’s been six months.”

“Four months.”

“Five. Almost six.”

“I have to go to the lady’s room.” Missy pulled the napkin from her lap and dropped it on top of her salad. “Ask for the check,” she said. “Mother is expecting me around four.”

“I said no to that car,” he said as she slid out of the booth. “I meant it.”

“We’ll talk.”

“No about that we won’t.”

She stood and stalked off.

Perry’s neck is hurting so he asks Missy to drive a little longer. He usually is up by two or three in the afternoon when he’s on third shift, but truck sleeping isn’t doing it for him. He falls back into an uncomfortable sleep and wakes three hours later, right as Missy hits Highway 17. A gang of motorcycles throbs by her window in three, and then four more, screaming up, and screaming on by.

White sand is mixing with the gravel alongside the road, and the hot air smells of sea salt. The hot wind whacks at her left ear like a cupped palm.

“Where are we?” he asks as he scoots upright. His back is soaked through with sweat, and the salty stain on the chest of his olive drab t-shirt is like the white outline of some African country.

All the billboards are for marinas, hotels, putt-putt golf, water parks.

He says, “You want me to drive?”

“We’re here now.”

More motorcycles rush up in the rearview, lean out and zip around them.

“All these bikers,” she says.

“Café racers,” he says. “Rice burners.”

“At least they aren’t those outlaw bikers.”

“I’ve known a few outlaw bikers. They’re just good ole boys.”

“Whatever.”

They approach a green sign: N Kings Highway. Perry points and says, “Right here.” She takes the ramp and merges. The truck rattles underneath until they get up to speed.

“So,” Perry says, “what do you think?”

“About what?”

“You know.”

“Now isn’t a good time.”

“Seems perfect.”

“I didn’t want to do this this way,” she says, “but you just won’t let it rest.”

She says, “Perry, I got married too young.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“I just feel like my life is passing me by and I can’t let that happen.”

“There’s somebody else.”

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s not what’s wrong with our relationship.”

“That little Oriental motherfucker you studied with. I thought he was a fag.”

“He’s not a fag,” she says. “He’s Filipino, I’ve told you.” She says, “This is not about him. I’ve decided to go on to medical school.”

“Who is it about then?”

“I’m going to medical school.”

“Great,” Perry says. “I’ll keep the second job till you get out.”

“I got into Duke.”

“I can find something down there.”

A gang of café racers is parked at a convenience store—bright yellows and reds and glistening blacks—with their riders standing around with their helmets off. Black men. All of them are black. They are eating snacks and gulping like athletes out of fat Gatorade bottles.

Missy says, “I didn’t know blacks rode motorcycles.”

“I could find something easy down there,” Perry says. He turns to stare at the men as Missy drives them past. He says, “Why wouldn’t blacks ride motorcycles?”

They drive in silence for a while.

Perry says, “Are you saying you want to divorce me?”

Missy turns onto Chester Street. She says, “Can we talk about this later?”

“Does your mom know about this? I bet she’s even met the guy already, hasn’t she. It’s the Filipino guy.”

“Perry, stop it. This is not about David.”

“David,” Perry says.

“He’s a good man. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

Perry rubs his face. “That little piece of shit.”

Missy tries to downshift and steer the corner simultaneously and jolts up over the curb. Suddenly their truck is in a line of traffic—traffic made up of

nothing but black bikers. Black bikers and their Ford truck with free luggage in back.

“I’m pulling over at the Pavilion and calling my mom,” she says. She looks around. “This is some kind of black biker rally.”

“Call her now,” Perry says. He says, “I’m going to go see that guy when we get home.”

“You will do no such thing,” she says. “You will not get near him.” She inches the truck along in little surges among the slow moving bikes. Her thin arms shake. The heat shield under the truck rattles.

“See,” he says. “I can tell it’s him.”

“Did we drive through some time warp to an alternate universe?” she says, looking around. “Is this Myrtle Beach? Where are the white people?”

They inch forward. The blacks are everywhere, standing around partying, drinking and smoking pot right out in public. They give Perry and Missy bemused glances, curious stares.

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”

“I’m getting scared,” Missy says.

“I’m trying here,” Perry says. “What else do you want me to do?”

“I’m scared,” she repeats. “They’re still mad about that kid who got shot.”

“I have my nine millimeter under the seat. Don’t you worry about the blacks.”

“Do you have hundreds of bullets?”

“Here,” he says. “Let me drive.” He reaches for his door handle.

“No,” she shouts. “Don’t get out. Not here.” Now she’s crying.

“Son of a bitch,” he says, and rubs his whiskers with both hands.

Partiers on the sidewalk by Perry’s window stand in front of a bar drinking from cans that are neatly tucked into brown paper bags made just to fit cans.

One woman sings out to them, “You two get lost?” The whole group turns and looks at them—all staring black faces.

“What has this country turned into?” Missy says.

Perry says, “God damn it, let me drive.”

She grips the steering wheel.

On the other side of the street, a man stands behind a grill made out of fiftygallon drums sliced down the center with legs welded on. In front of the grill is a sign written in black marker on ripped cardboard: jerk chicken, curry goat.

Grill smoke wafts into the truck.

“Jesus that smells good,” Perry says. He leans up and looks across Missy at the meat smoking on the grill.

The man holds up two skewers of jiggling raw meat chunks. He glistens with sweat. “You two in the wrong place today,” he calls out in an accent like Bob Marley.

“Who knows what they might do if they get in a frenzy,” Missy says.

The motorcycle engines are loud all around. Revving, whining. Every time she lets up the clutch to move forward, the truck rattles underneath. She pulls her phone from her purse on the seat between them and flips it open. She pushes a button and waits as classical music plays loud out of the phone. Then it stops and her mother’s voice squawks something.

“Mother, what’s with all the blacks down here?”

Her mom says something.

“They should have told us about that.”

Her mom talks.

“We’re right off of Flagg Street, and there are so many blacks on motorcycles that we can’t move. We’re sitting still.” She says, “Is this America? What the hell?”

She bites her lip as she listens to her mom.

“Of course he’s here.”

She listens.

“Nothing,” she says. “He’s just sitting here.”

She listens.

“What are you going to do even if you do come?”

A man gives them a long hard stare and shakes his head. Missy sees him and gives Perry a frightened glance. Into her phone she says, “Mother, they are threatening us.”

“Keep cool,” Perry says. “In two blocks we’ll be on Ocean Boulevard. Call her back from there.”

“It might be too late by then,” she says.

“Jesus Christ.” Perry scratches his scalp with the fingernails of both hands, rubs his face as his scalp still tingles.

Missy says into her phone, “Mother, we’re in real danger.”

“The hell,” Perry says. He leans over, reaches for his gun under the driver’s seat. “No,” Missy screams. She pushes on the side of his face and yells, “Don’t.”

He sits back up straight and shouts, “Fuck.” He pounds his fist into the dashboard and shouts, “God damn it.” A dust cloud goes airborne from the dash.

The particles fall glistening.

All these black bikers start circling the truck, their bikes bright and colorful as circus flags. Heads turn—no faces; blank-tinted or mirrored plastic facemasks—and look in the truck at them. One of the masks kicks his bike out

of gear and twists open the throttle. The muscles in his ropy black arm shift as the bike’s engine rises into a piercing whine beside Perry’s open window.

Another biker pulls beside Missy’s window and opens his throttle. The screaming engines are deafening. More bikers join in until they have the truck surrounded.

Missy stares ahead, her cheeks wet with tears. She wipes snot from her nose with the heel of her hand. She is shaking so much that she can barely drive the truck.

“Roll up your window,” Perry shouts. The motorcycles are so loud he cannot hear his own voice. They are so loud that it begins to sound to Perry like a heavy, throbbing silence, not noise at all.

Missy rolls up her window and locks her door. A masked face watches her do this and lets his neck go loose so his helmet rolls back in laughter. She inches the truck forward in tiny lurches. Her chest heaves every now and then with a sob. The motorcycles circle, eight or ten of them, engines screaming away, more muted now that the windows are closed but still oppressively loud. Missy’s skinny legs tremble as she works the clutch and gas.

Perry leans up, sees traffic turning around and coming back out. There is no through route. It’s a cul-de-sac. Bikers circle the truck, twisting their wrists, gunning their screaming engines.

“That’s it, god damn it,” Perry shouts into the noise. “I’m driving.” He reaches for his door handle.

Missy turns and grabs his arm, and he sees her screaming, her mouth shaping the words, No, and Please. Her eyes are wide with fear.

When she pushes in the clutch, Perry slaps the stick into neutral and kicks his left leg over its knob. He scoots himself to the bitch seat and puts his boot on

the brake, pushing her little white sneaker out of the way. With the brake secure, Perry slides his left hand behind Missy’s back. He grabs her waist with his right hand and lifts her onto his lap.

She scoots her little butt, scrambles off him like he’s an alligator. She palms her face with both hands. Her shoulders shake with her crying.

Perry jerks it into reverse, muscles the steering wheel to the far left and pops the clutch so the truck jumps backward a little. He takes the wheel to the far right and jerks the truck forward. Like this—backward left a few inches, forward right a few, backward left, forward right, backward, forward—he slowly turns the truck around in the middle of the street. The bikers keep circling the truck, but they move out of his way to let him turn. As their gears engage, the engine’s whining pitches down one by one. His truck is sideways in the street now, blocking both lanes. Bikes are riding up onto the sidewalks.

Black faces all around staring at him. Laughing at him.

“I’ve got a surprise for you motherfuckers.” He can’t hear his own voice, only feels the vibration of it in his head.

Once the truck is heading back out, they only have a little over one block to get free of this. Traffic is still slow, but moving more steadily. One biker pops a little wheelie and jumps ten feet forward, and then has to wait again. Another one turns and heads the other way. They all lose interest in Perry and Missy, move on to other things.

Missy’s face is splotchy from crying. The truck cab is hot as a sauna. Perry cranks down his window and the cooling breeze wafts in the smell of grilling meat. Bass thumps far off.

Missy does not look up.

Now Perry can see the end of the street. Bikes are parked all at the same angle. Black people are milling around the man at his goat-meat grill.

Perry taps Missy’s damp shoulder. When she looks up at him, her face wet and splotched, he points to where they will emerge into regular traffic.

She glares at him like he’s the one who drove them into this. He sees what is happening. Her mom will come and get her, take her to that neighborhood behind the guarded gate, where people like him only get permission to come in long enough to mow the grass and fix the goddam toilet. She will marry that Oriental guy. They will both be rich doctors.

“Sir,” a woman’s voice yells. Sounds like it’s being yelled through a closed door. His ears feel stuffed with cotton.

“Sir,” he hears the woman’s voice again.

It is a black woman. In a uniform. She has a gun on one hip and a skull cracker on the other. She is talking to him, walking toward the truck.

“Oh, no fucking way,” he says.

Missy says, “Perry, don’t do anything.” She says, “Please.”

The black woman cop is at his window now.

“What?” he says.

“You need to keep it moving,” she says to him, pointing toward the way out.

He turns his head and gives Missy a look of disbelief. Her eyes beg. He looks back at the policewoman. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

She raises her eyebrows. She is a short woman. The gun is big on her hip, hiked up like a boot in her armpit.

“Perry,” Missy says. “Please.”

All these black people are staring at Perry. So is this black woman cop. So is Missy now. Staring at him like they all fucking hate him, like something here is his fault—like any of this is his goddamn fault.

“Keep pushing me,” he says. “I’ve got something for you all. Keep pushing me and you’ll see.”

The black woman cop waves her hand as if to shoo him like a goddamn motherfucking stray dog. “Go on,” she says. “Keep it moving.”

Angel Dionne Doctor’s Orders

He said it would help. Just keep it close to you. No, it doesn't bite. It's dead.

He placed the wooden box on her bedside table. It was a lovely box. Whooping Cranes had been carefully etched into the sides and a small golden lock held it firmly shut.

Yes, dead. Don't worry my Dear. It's not the putrid kind of dead.

A muffled sound emanated from the sheet covered figure.

What was that?

Another muffled utterance.

You know my Dear, I would be better able to hear you if you didn't insist on obstructing your beautiful face with your hair.

What kind of dead is it, you ask? Well, it's the skeletal kind of dead, of course. The sun-bleached bones the color of a pale moon kind of dead. The sanitary kind of dead. Sanitary like forgotten dreams and repressed desires. You know the desires I speak of. Desires so shameful we keep them locked in cabinets and treasure chests in an attempt to contain them. The ones we only bring out with the fine china during special occasions. Yes, it's that kind of dead. No need to worry.

A vague smile played upon his lips and he placed a cigarette between them. In one smooth motion he lit the cigarette. The congested room quickly became shrouded in a haze of blue-gray smoke. He inhaled deeply and allowed the wisps of smoke to escape his nostrils. The figure shifted in bed, her back now turned towards him. Another muffled sound.

Please don't worry Dear. It's quite exhausting for the both of us.

He patted her shoulder with his free hand and the figure seemed to relax.

At least two or three weeks. You should be on your feet again soon after. At least that's what the doctor said. Just keep it close. We can get rid of it later, when you're well. We can put it in the tea-room cabinet. The same one that holds your childhood hopes and self-righteous opinions.

The figure moved again. Damp bed sheets clung tightly to the large bosom and curved hips. The face remained obstructed by a sheath of golden hair. He watched as a single porcelain-white hand reached towards the ornate box. A perfectly shaped finger with almond nails stroked the lock before moving on to the whooping cranes. He lit another cigarette as the figure began to whimper.

Don't cry.

He sighed and put his cigarette out in the palm of his hand. An old record player sat in the shadows at the far end of the bedroom. He walked over and looked through the stack of dusty records piled up on the floor. A randomly record was

chosen and soon Edith Piaf's Non, Je ne regrette rien warbled from the gramophone. However, the sobbing intensified until it soon obstructed the sound of Piaf's melodious voice.

I know what will make you feel better. Would you like me to procure you a small vertebrate from the garden? Perhaps I could also bring you a quivering pear from the neighbor's tree.

The figure could be seen nodding between whimpers. He left and quickly returned holding a feathered vertebrate in his left hand and a quivering red pear in his right.

The quivering pears are quite upset today. More so than usual. Perhaps you shouldn't eat it. We will see if its humor changes later.

He placed the pear on a high shelf where it occasionally made upsetting noises.

The doctor warned that you shouldn't consume small vertebrates during the course of your treatment. Especially the feathered sort. I'm sure one wont hurt, however.

He held the small vertebrate out to her as her pretty fingers continued to stroke the wood and whooping cranes.

Tige Ashton DeCoster

Crucifixion in Cowboy Country

On the murder of Matthew Shepard

This is how you do it: nail the boy to the buck fence.

Nail him tight.

When you beat him, beat him. Just. Right.

Strike his temple, larynx, forehead tie his feet, light the match, to grass that’s green as Wyoming jade then drive as fast as you can drive to Mexico, where you’ll be men, belly-up to the bar order a drink and think you got away with it.

Christy Strick

Mathematics of Loss

Amy is studying division in school. She’s good at math, so she knows that three people cannot each get an equal number of slices from an eight piece pie. She knows about fractions, too, which can solve the problem sometimes, but you can’t make fractions out of a piece of pie. She guesses her dad forgot about math when he cut it.

Things were easier with four. Lots of things are made for four. Family passes to King’s Dominion. Their Prius. Groups of superheroes. Her mom used to call their family The Fantastic Four. Amy can’t figure out what to call just the three of them.

Four is an even number, three is an odd number. She likes even numbers.

Even the word even is a better word than odd. There are threes in lots of bad stuff, like three strikes and you’re out, bad luck comes in threes. Three’s a crowd. Though three doesn’t feel very crowded in their house.

No matter what she tries to come up with, she can’t find a fair solution. And Amy needs things to be fair. Her dad says sometimes things aren’t fair, but when he says this she knows he’s not talking about pie. There’s no reason Thanksgiving can’t be fair.

She tries to make it into a math problem, like they do in school. But she discovers not all problems have solutions. “If there are eight pieces of pie, and four people, but one person dies, how does anything ever come out right again?”

Amy does the only thing she can think to do. She slips into the kitchen while her dad and her brother are watching the parade, and she subtracts two pieces from the plate by the refrigerator. She stuffs them into the garbage disposal as far down as she can, then goes back to watch the Snoopy and Charlie Brown balloons floating over the crowd.

At dinner, her brother wants to know who ate the two missing pieces. Their father hushes him. Amy feels guilty, like she did eat the pie, even though she knows she didn’t, and she starts to cry. Her father hushes her, too, and puts a slice on her plate. The sight of it gives her a stomach ache. After dinner, her dad picks up her plate and dumps the uneaten piece into the sink.

All night in her room Amy thinks about the pie, how she knows she can’t eat it because her mother can’t eat it. How if her mother can’t eat it, then no one should. She can’t stop worrying about the pieces that are left.

The house is quiet, as quiet as any house with a ghost. She tip-toes down to the kitchen, picks up the aluminum-covered tin, and goes outside. Three pieces of pie thud against the bottom of the garbage can. Amy closes the lid and sneaks back upstairs. She falls asleep, the spicy sweet smell of the pumpkin clinging to her dreams.

Contributors Tige Ashton DeCoster Tige Ashton DeCoster is a professional musician, music teacher, and college student. Tige has been published in Calliope, Peeking Cat, Malpais Review, and Bricolage Review, and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship in 2009. He is currently an undergraduate at the University of Washington, studying anthropology and creative writing, with an emphasis on poetry and oral history.

Angel Dionne Angel Dionne is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. She currently resides with her partner, cats, and parrot. Her work has appeared in multiple publications including The Aroostook Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Penman Review, The Penman Review Anthology, Apocrypha & Abstractions, and Sein Und Werden. Her areas of expertise include surrealism and automatism.

Linda Heuring Linda Heuring is a short story writer based outside Chicago. She’s partial to the overheard phrase and bird dogs. Her work has appeared in Broad River Review, Kestrel, Alabama River Review, and Rosebud, among other publications.

She has been awarded the Fish International Short Story Prize (Ireland) and was a finalist for the Rash Award in Fiction and other honors.

Phillip Kane Philip Kane is an award-winning writer, storyteller and artist whose books include ‘The Wildwood King’ (Capall Bann, 1997) and ‘The Hicklebaum Papers’ (Mezzanine Press, 2010), as well as his latest poetry collection ‘Unauthorised Person’ (Cultured Llama,2012). His performances, readings and workshops have been widely praised. Active on the thriving North Kent arts scene for over thirty years, he has been dubbed “Medway’s Mephistopheles”

by Poetry Scotland. During that time he has been a community arts worker for Arts in Medway, and Artistic Director of Storytellers Live – a storytelling club for adults – as well as of the River Rootsfestival. He is currently Artistic Director for the Rochester Literature Festival. A founding member of the London Surrealist Group, he has built up an international reputation, publishing and exhibiting in a number of countries including Spain and the USA. Philip was featured in the December 2012 issue of WOW Magazine.

Vic Sizemore Vic Sizemore’s short fiction is published or forthcoming in StoryQuarterly, Southern Humanities Review, storySouth, Connecticut Review, The Good Men Project, Blue Mesa Review, Sou’wester, PANK Magazine, Silk Road Review, Atticus Review, Real South, Reed Magazine, Connotation Press, Superstition Review, A River & Sound Review, and elsewhere. Excerpts from the novel “The Calling” are published in Connecticut Review, Portland Review, Prick of the Spindle, Burrow Press Review, Pithead Chapel, Lettersand elsewhere. His fiction has won the New Millennium Writings Award for Fiction, and been nominated for Best American Nonrequired Reading and a Pushcart Prize.

Christy Strick Christy Strick’s short fiction has appeared in New South, Pearl 38 and Pearl 40, the Delmarva Review, Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction, Volume 3, and Prime Number Magazine. She was the recipient of the 2012 Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, and has been awarded residencies at The Studios of Key West, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, andHambidge Center. Ms. Strick is a founding member and past president of WriterHouse, a nonprofit writing center in Charlottesville, Virginia. She lives and writes in Charleston, SC.

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