The Plume Magazine Fall 2012

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Revised 12/14/2012

The Plume the literary magazine of

Keystone College La Plume, Pennsylvania

Fall 2012

The Plume Editorial Board Heather Clark Nora de Freitas Macaulay Glynn Stephanie Manganaro Alissa Petty Kathleen Roland

Louise Cortazar Jessie Feeney Breana Liebowitz McDaniel Norma Paisley Jeffrey Reuther

Faculty Advisor Dr. David Elliott

All works used with permission.

Authors and artists retain all rights to individual works.

Contents Front Cover: Photograph by Pat Rokos Henneforth Design by Norma Paisley Poetry A Life Condensed Macaulay Glynn Want Ad Kathleen Roland The Skeleton Key Stephanie C. Manganaro Obscurity Norma Paisley Our First Snowstorm Jeffrey Reuther Hope Meredith Colohan One Hundred Years Old Heather Clark It Just So Happens Louise Cortazar Forward Alissa Petty Photograph Shelby Fisk Addition Lisbeth Gelatt Half-Life Jennifer Matarese Clockwise Breana Liebowitz McDaniel Yesterday Stacy Ferguson-Snedeker Photograph Stephanie C. Manganaro Appetite For Love Breana Liebowitz McDaniel The Maple Norma Paisley Plumage Macaulay Glynn Behind Closed Doors Kathleen Roland Northern Light Macaulay Glynn The Morning After Jeffrey Reuther Happiness Heather Clark

1 1 2 2 3 4 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 15 16 17

Photograph Pat Rokos Henneforth I Know What Happened to Snow White Lisbeth Gelatt Morning Alissa Petty The Desert’s Curse Stephanie C. Manganaro I want to win Nora de Freitas The Tree Man Louise Cortazar Photograph Shelby Fisk The Bridge Meredith Colohan Ghost Light Jessie Feeney First Visit to the Gay Bar Jennifer Matarese Contemplating our silences Jeffrey Reuther River Man in the West Virginia Mountains Stacy Ferguson-Snedeker Prospect St. Jessie Feeney Photograph Stephanie C. Manganaro

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 25 26 27 28 29 30

Fiction Walkabout Jennifer Matarese Photograph Pat Rokos Henneforth The Wrong Side of Freedom Norma Paisley Photograph Shelby Fisk The Tourists Richard D. Priebe III Photograph

Stephanie C. Manganaro The Washing Away of Dreams Stacy Ferguson-Snedeker Photograph Pat Rokos Henneforth Bullet Lisbeth Gelatt

31 43 44 64 65 67

68 69 70

A Life Condensed Mary Agnes Salas Stazza loved the way Indian skin shone like crushed rubies. In South Asia, widows shaved their white hair and erased bright bindis with weathered hands.

Mary’s father died of paralysis. He had worked testing gunpowder in the royal artillery, her mother soon followed by remittent fever.

Later, an Irishman in the British army stole away her heart and Spanish name.

The sandalwood and rose water of Madras sealed like a flowerhead at night.

They lived with their five children in a dirt-floor cottage in Gort, County Galway. How black, she admired, the wet bark of the oaks which loomed over the lane in a storm. After spring rain she could see the raven-hair of Indian girls perfumed and slick with coconut oil. When her husband fell from their roof catching an escaped lovebird he’d gifted her, Mary took what she knew of mourning, smudged her vermillion eye, boarded a ship with five hungry children to America.

--Macaulay Glynn

Want Ad Is all I ask for too much to ask?

I’m looking for that energy that can electrify my bones resuscitate my heart and pump my blood like horsepower.

I’m looking for a smile that can ignite a dark tunnel and hold my hand as I walk through oiled puddles, and avoid shards of glass from broken mistakes.

I’m looking for the careful mind that will grab my soul, toss it up high and fly up after me like superman, just so I can land softly.

--Kathleen Roland

1

The Skeleton Key To enter into an old house, Or even a forgotten chest of vanity One might suggest an old skeleton key An antique of different sorts Made out of shiny brass, with weight A necklace pendant if looped through the heart A skinny tongue with sharp teeth Its surface is smooth Reluctantly perfect It is exotic, thrilling, secure Something from a scary movie Something from your armoire A fine craft Nit-picking at a door --Stephanie C. Manganaro

Obscurity I have known the toil of the pitchfork.

Hanging on the wall, sticking from a bale of hay, or standing in steaming mountains of manure.

Delivers fodder to the front of the stocktakes away muck from the rear.

First tool snatched to remove snakes, or dead chickens, then stabbed into the ground to be leaned upon.

Tine tips dulled from digging worms, body bent from busting ice in troughs.

Frame twisted from prying, hay chaff and silage stick to wet steel, polished clean and shiny, pitching straw. Then, hung, stuck or stood— unsung hero of the stable.

--Norma Paisley

2

Our First Snowstorm You think in silence as queer as looking into a snow globe, dark circles under your eyes, expecting a change without motion.

Your wick is half-spent, burning silently under amber curls. The scene draws all light, all sight, sepia, desaturated, or else, to you. Lovely, I’d say, but I don’t.

The pip of your lip props up and my brow rises astonished. Would you command a frozen dead hand to rise from some forgotten grave?

Your gaze falls again, clipped; I flat line.

What’s up with your ammunition, your drawing ever more realistic: blank upon blank; is it fear, or loneliness?

Torrents of thought drift by me to go, go and connect our weather patterns, hot and cold, one goes under the other, you know.

Instantly, you warm up as I pass by; unpredictable they say.

--Jeffrey Reuther

3

Hope It is her choice to make, though the bond itself will never sever.

I remember seeing it – not seeing, feeling.

Feeling the presence of love the way warm sun blankets cold skin, feeling the dynamic electricity shocking between them.

If only his fate stopped pricking his fatal wounds, perpetuating suffering.

Yet, his physical breath gasps once again, he is the lizard who grows back its severed tail.

The bond will always remain, but is his crux beyond repair?

Warm sun and electricity will not halt a life of perpetual misery.

Never knowing when his end will inevitably, and prematurely, begin – it is her choice to make, this ill-fated life with him she can escape.

--Meredith Colohan

One Hundred Years Old Millions of lights shine on through a dark eternity above-nature relaxes, while the world sleeps.

The moon’s glow reflects off the green roof.

Lit, glistening, the hundred year old home stands-And a bat flutters overhead.

--Heather Clark

4

It Just So Happens It just so happens that the Earth loves the sky Like the sea loves a tide Like a boy loves a ride On a dolphin’s slippery hide It just so happens that there needs silence to be noise It takes imbalance to have poise Your own whisper makes a voice It takes freedom to have choice It just so happens that love begins inside Home is where you close your eyes Only truth reveals a lie Your cage teaches you to fly It just so happens blindness brings you sight Fear not the rustling in the night There needs the dark to see the light There needs the fall to take the flight It just so happens that the breeze the tall grass sweeps Down where the weeping willows meet In prairie sultry summer heat You’ll catch a fleeting glimpse of me --Louise Cortazar

5

Forward Blindly forward time pushes us Forcing memories into dust, But like a tattoo upon the body An eternal reminder of who we once were.

Alissa Petty

6

Addition* *with thanks to the line from Emily Dickenson’s Poem #244 about the pain of love, “ache in the bones” You don't know how I ache in the bones, Bleed from the marrow, Feet all bruised walking on stones.

You don't care how the sun blinds my eyes.

You don't know how I ache in the bones.

You don't care how the sun blinds my eyes, Color to grey tone, Shriveled and left unable to cry.

You don't hear my labored breath.

You don't care how the sun blinds my eyes.

You don't hear my labored breath, Gasp when I can't cry, Heart beats the rhythm untimely bereft.

You can't see that I long to escape.

You don't hear my labored breath.

You can't see that I long to escape.

You with your milk breath, Frown at the object that won't meet your fate.

You're about you and I'm about me.

You can't see that I long to escape.

You're about you. There is no me.

You the warp, I the weft.

Locked tight to you with padlock and key.

You don't care how I ache in the bones, Exactly, now, as a newborn should be.

--Lisbeth Gelatt

7

Half-Life They tell us she's gone lumpy and gray a wad of flesh, a waste of space.

Nothing beats in a rhythmic hum in the still cold depths of her silent decay.

I carry her home: no choice in the matter.

The doctor leaves her in to walk out by herself.

She'll come out on her own, is his sickly sweet promise, his icy hand on my stomach, my new portable grave.

Her heart's not beating and you expect her legs to work?, I scream, and tighten my fingers in rough hospital bedsheets.

I should point to the prominent cross on the wall and ask the doctor who he thinks my baby is.

No one volunteers to escort her out.

Fine upstanding gentlemen they aren't.

So we three go home, we unhappy three, my husband and I and our free-floating corpse.

We put away dolls, we throw away formula, We sit the crib on the curb, happy, yellow and lying, and put a sign on it: Free to a good home – for putting babies in.

He crosses out that last part, a sneer slashing his face.

Now's not the time for jokes, he says.

How easy for him to say, how simple and true.

But the rules are off for me, aren't they?

I'm a walking coffin, an urn on legs, a biology lab specimen jar with slowly flaking contents, my stomach swelled for all to see with a fat cheerful corpse.

I wonder if the next rude person who walks up to me and shoves their palm onto my stomach without my express permission will find their fingertips rotting off, then their hand, then their wrist, contagious death swallowing their arm like a zealous kudzu vine.

8

I stay silent, though, blessedly silent carrying out my oh-so-holy mission, because it only counts as a birth if she crawls out the usual way, hauled out like her living peers, and pushed into my arms – a discolored dead infant is still a present from God, right?

But instead of opening my mouth, of gallows humor and biting rage, I pack tiny pink clothing and donate the diapers to charity.

I start a bonfire with that scattershot pile of “Congratulations” cards and plan ahead for her small quiet burial, when they'll drop me in a hole, whole, the walking coffin that I am.

--Jennifer Matarese

Clockwise The tooth brush turns in the same way time tends to, The paste suds up my mouth; as if describing the anger of the day it’s had to deal with.

Taking away recent tastes I’ve had the honor of diving into But, it’s time for them to go.

Open wide and reach the wisdoms.

They sometimes hold the most.

Minty fresh on my tongue, Scrubbing away sleep and the awful tastes that dreams tend to bring and love tends to leave.

Spit.

Spit out the mint, the tastes, the food, those tasteless good bye kisses, the day and the night.

Gargle.

Spit.

Smile.

-- Breana Liebowitz McDaniel

9

Yesterday Woke up with a pounding headache because I ended up working late.

Bartending at the bowling alley where the loud, obnoxious customers, like Troy when he thinks he can sing Journey or Barbara who could talk all night about her lost youth. just never wanted to leave.

The clock read 7:30 am, I could already hear the girls Talking, laughing, shouting out my name, “Mommy!”

I labored with my own body, so weary and burnt out, back sore from refilling coolers over-used legs from running for orders, over to the edge of the bed slowly rolling over onto my side just like the therapist said.

Standing up, my feet began to throb, feeling like I had run a hundred miles a and it hasn’t even turned eight.

Quietly I tip toed down the hallway, Crossing my fingers that the kids wouldn’t hear.

I have to go to the bathroom, before the stampede beat me there.

With an empty bladder and a freshly scrubbed face, using eye drops and mouth wash to chase away any bad mood trace.

Then the short walk across the hall opening the bedroom door to reveal, a smiling, super happy mommy.

--Stacy Ferguson-Snedeker

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11

Appetite For Love

Appetizer: .Eye contact Your him, prepared with a solid 30 seconds of deep gazing back at you.

Usually served with a loss of breath or a skipped heartbeat. .His scent Most likely in a brief amount of time. He walks by, you inhale, usually devoured in seconds. .Butterflies Leaves you empty, however; will set heavily on your stomach.

EntrĂŠe: .First Conversation Served with giggles and blushing and if cooked well done, possibly even a slight flirtatious touch. .Spare time Nonchalantly planned first date. Handled publically with less care than you actually feel on the inside. .Anticipation Marinated slowly. You wait for the call.

Dessert: .He calls Butterflies return as if you’ve up chucked your appetizer and yet again your stomach does dances making it hard to keep still.

You smile. (continued)

12

.First Kiss As if any description necessary, you spin.

Every expectation has been fulfilled.

Hunger is no longer a problem you face.

Love digests.

--Breana Liebowitz McDaniel

The Maple She stands tall and massive in the front yard, Spring, summer, her arms reach toward the sun, the nourishment flows from her fingertips to her toes.

Fall, winter, her shoulders hunched against cold, her flesh stripped, body bare.

Venerable, offering shade, sanctuary, conversation— her voice soft and lush, then dry and crackly according to season.

Alone, she bears the storms, whipped by wind, pelted by sleet, snow, enduring she waits, then basks in sunglow.

Her breast is the live thrumming heartbeat of a beehive, her arms dance and sway under the weight of a rollicking squirrel, and song-makers attach their homes to her wrists, she displays them like jewels.

My friend, sitting in her lap, back to smooth, yet creviced skin, her toes dug deeply beneath me, I know I am safe.

--Norma Paisley

13

Plumage When I was a child we had a yellow cockatiel No one could touch him. He would screech and bite at you, his small grey beak parted in a hiss All day he would tear out his plumage in tufts and spit them about his cage, revealing a sore pink reptile beneath. Who could know the hysteric tic of his mind? The vet called it avian stress.

I am wondering of this bird, long dead, while as driving to work I pass one of the waitresses in her morning ritual: a concentrated march in the direction of seventy pounds.

This is Colleen. Veins and tendons twitch visibly over her bones as she lifts trays of food she won’t eat in and out of the kitchen. The hair on her head has thinned to sparse cilium while lanugo thickens up her back.

There is another name for her stress.

One can still hear whispers of the way her green dress hung at the Christmas party, as if dependent only on the wire of her clavicle, how the fabric simply slipped free from the fleshlessness of her breast.

Nightly Colleen will retreat to the bathroom to pull out her feathers while we pretend not to see the meatless cage of her ribs, never to know the stony lonesome of her mind.

--Macaulay Glynn

14

Behind Closed Doors It takes ten seconds for my garage door to open…and to close.

As quiet as a mouse, a man gracefully tip toes over the sensor.

I did not expect to have an anonymous man follow me from my car to my house, into my garage.

I come home in the pitch black every night, so vulnerable to what I can’t see.

How can I see what is not in front of my head lights?

Little do I know what’s lurking behind.

I would not expect a man to peep through the cracks and the key holes.

I would not expect to sleep so sound when a stranger opens my drawers, sits on the floor inside my closet, pulls a chair next to my bed and watches my eyes twitch through REM. I did not expect to wake up in the morning not knowing a man serenely slipped down the stairs, and out the front door.

--Kathleen Roland

Northern Light I remember your teeth, those crooked incisors I found so perversely attractive, and your laugh, like a sharp coil that released all the tension in me, if only for a moment. I wonder if I am the same person who sat apart from you in the coffee shop memorizing your face so I could find you if I woke up.

--Macaulay Glynn

15

The Morning After Breakfast offered orange slices when your teeth divided our time.

Sucking succinctly, your lips relinquished drips as if gravity failed to call, too awed, cooed to silence.

Sunset dropped like dew and humans blinked without clandestine abruptness trading every moment in microseconds laced with danger. Who understands biology anyway?

Trolls in stories are bound by no greater love than what you slightly manifested, 100 shattered charms (they say). Nothing but wonder escapes the vice of manhood.

Turncoats turned in for the night, pitiless employees of a failed revolution won by letters not numbers.

All love letters are still fashionable; still to you, I said, “Give me your number.”

A bitter taste of sour neglect and can’t brush my teeth yet.

They say you have a name but I’d prefer to forget.

--Jeffrey Reuther

16

Happiness It is when the sun shines through gray clouds on a rainy spring day and children all around are seen soaked from head to toe in muddy rain water after spending hours jumping in puddles.

It is when the sun shines in the middle of summer, blazing bright, reflecting off the water in the pool and darkening the skin of relaxing people as they lay in their yards.

It is when the sun shines down on the newly fallen leaves scattered around the pavement and dark green grass and warming up the cool, crisp air away from the shadows.

It is when the sun shines in winter, making the chilling bites of wind less painful on cold, pink cheeks and turns dull days bright as snow begins to fall.

--Heather Clark

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18

I Know What Happened to Snow White She sat at the table, mutiny written all over that eight year old face.

How the hell am I gonna feed this child when she just won't eat?

Not bacon, not pork chops, no beef steak, not my special baked lemon chicken.

Big sister flaps skinny arms: Brock! Brock! I'm a chicken!

Christ! No wonder She won't eat.

Thirty years ago when I was eight my father, wanna-be farm boy brought home two beautiful white bunnies. Don't name them he warned us.

But of course the doe was Snow White.

That made the angry buck Prince Charming, spring kits the seven dwarves.

Each kit grew, cozy in its own cage.

We snuck them carrots and potato peels, Brussels sprouts smuggled from dinner.

We shoveled scoops of Rabbit Chow: Alfalfa sawdust nuggets.

But the bunnies ate them, grew fat and round and fuzzy.

Smart enough to know us, gentled, allowing the touch of silky ears, wedge of tail.

We'd pick them up by the scruff, Dopey cradled like a baby, Doc given buttercups and green grass, Sleepy and Sneezy penned together to play.

What did we know, city urchins thrown on the distant shore of abandoned farmstead?

Our stupidity came in not realizing their water would freeze, wondering which one would leave our Easter eggs in a shoe, the crook of a tree, under the Bridal Wreath bush.

One night Daddy's boss came to dinner, stopped to see the grand experiment.

He stuck a finger through the mesh.

Prince Charming bit the tip of his finger right off.

Boss left soon after, wad of stained cotton towel pressed against the steering wheel.

A week later Daddy paid the bill.

He wrote that check, set down his pen solemnly, went outside.

For the next hour we heard the steady dull thwack. Cages banging open.

One by one, they screamed as he seized two hind legs, Swung the body up, before banging the head hard against the cinder block wall.

In my heart, I knew my father was a Murderer.

By the time he was done, nine carcasses bagged and cleaned lay in the freezer drawer. Only a mountain of rabbit droppings, empty cages sitting crooked on saw horses, as witness.

(continued)

19

Every so often one bunny was dished up as the special guest at dinner, swimming In gingered sauce, or fried golden with parsley potatoes.

Sick at stomach and heart I would sit, hand over my mouth to hold back my gorge, wonder who we were eating today. Sit forever until my plate was clean, it being a sin to waste good food.

After, I vomit that lawlessness, fear and loathing into the forgiving white oval of the toilet, try very hard, never succeeding, at forgiveness.

Now, when my baby girl looks at her plate and sees Chicken Little, maybe The Red Hen, or Henny Penny, I remember Snow White, silently rise to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

--Lisbeth Gelatt

Morning It’s going off again—that stupid, broken— Piece of shit clock. Its continuous racket Screaming “get up; you’re late GET UP YOU’RE LATE”.

I fight the sheets twisted around my body Tumbling out while cursing that blasted clock, Praying it doesn’t wake the rest of the house.

Sun pokes through the curtain, Blinding my poor eyes with the promise of a good day.

The sweet temptation to revisit that king-size mattress, That soft foam pillow lying there so casually Those warm cotton sheets smelling of meadow flowers, In all their wonderful glory are mocking me.

“Come back come back” --Alissa Petty 20

The Desert’s Curse I see a lit up path Filled with red roses A scent like no other man’s Reaching the end Of a dead end The only path left Is to go through the One you came through Having to go backwards Back to a fork In a road In a desert It was too numb to rain Fill my heart with sand A pendulum rocking On an hour glass With passages unlit And blank signs with no writing Empty promises A desert at night Stars stare at me The cold hearted They stay contrited Because there are No ways in And no way out How to fulfill empty space?

(continued)

21

Ask the next guy Who comes around Who tries to fill the cracks With bitter Then sweet moods Maybe he can pretend To have some way out Of confusion In a desert There are fields of drought That field mimics This field Looking into an invisible mirror Congruent patterns We are running out of time Break this curse Dirty green cactuses A howl at the moon I stand on a cliff The cracks in the sand Match your flesh You are a curse Even in the dead of winter The sun still finds a way out --Stephanie C. Manganaro

I want to win!

I no longer want to fight this battle I no longer want to give up I no longer want to be held accountable for the things that I don’t do I no longer want to discriminate on the things that I hate I no longer want to stay quiet and believe my thoughts are loud enough to protect me I no longer want to lose, beat me down and replace my shoes. I want to win I no longer want to give away my private thoughts because in the end I will lose I no longer want to decide my future, I want to create it I won’t.

--Nora de Freitas

22

The Tree Man They call him when a tree gets in the way when they can't live around it anymore But, why should they live around it when they can live with it It was there first maybe it is us that have gotten in the way of it Let it live The old tree bends its withered limbs and twists down into a saddening droop that closes its boughs into a plea to remain a tall, aged, dying, sentiment to the ground to the field, to the mountainside He mounts the ancient piece of landscape with a rusted chainsaw dangling from his belt His spikes dig deep into the dry-rotted, faltering, bark and he climbs, climbs, climbs My feet are planted on the earth below him as I look up, up, up, through the wilted branches and the buzzing saw cuts into the dried arms, creating an overhead cloud of dust He saws through it expertly dropping limbs below him It still towers against the grey firmament, with just a memory of how it could embrace the sky its arms once outstretched and reached out to shield and protect bearing bright lives that rained upon the earth's floor in a rich whirlwind of red and orange When the tree stands naked he makes his way down, down, down and re-equips his chainsaw He pulls at the cord to make it scream through the thickened stump It's trunk snaps, like the crack of a neck It's upper body leans forward and, in an instant, shoots down with such a forceful thump that the boughs beside it spring back up It, too, has a life story and it deserves to be told; to be remembered It deserves to live --Louise Cortazar

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The Bridge A two lane road twists along the low-lying coastal waterway, carved from pastures where cattails hug the perimeter of the bay, swaying in the sweet southern air. As the road rises, the bridge reflects over the bay like outstretched arms accompanying a yawn, peaceful serenity reflecting over its glittering waters.

Suddenly sinking, the darkness swallows the bridge halfway as pavement perforates the brine.

Restraining breath, all falls silent but the roar of time passing, grasping for the growing light until resurfacing, finally taking a breath.

Yet, glistening waters no longer reflect the bridge, but a mirage Plush and grassy fields now are stifled by hot pavement, antique farmhouses torn to shreds evolve into strip malls, the smell fresh paint wafts over the honeysuckle, stark neutral buildings gulp the corn fields, multiplying one by one, consuming their territory.

Identical twins become triplets, then quadruplets.

--Meredith Colohan

Ghost Light The ghost light shines upon the empty stage as a way to keep ghosts at bay.

When the theater is drenched in darkness is the best time to spy her.

It seems like she waits till everyone has gone to remake her stage debut every night.

She dances without her transparent feet ever touching the stage, her white dress swaying as she twists and turns.

Those who do catch a glimpse of her, say that she is smiling sweetly as she dances to unheard music, unaware of anyone else’s presence.

She’s always alone as she dances in the ghost light, her spotlight.

--Jessie Feeney

25

First Visit To The Gay Bar In the parking lot she asks, Can I tell them I'm with you?

And I shrug because – well, why not?

Tell them we met online on some quirky blog for biker chicks or knitters.

Tell them we saw each other at that Thai place, that I picked out all my peanuts and you scattered them on your salad.

If anyone asks, say we first kissed in your bedroom, sweet and silent and dear, with your mom downstairs watching “Jeopardy”.

Make up some story about our first time, how you'd never been with another girl and you giggled as you fumbled with my broken bra clasp.

They won't ask, but go ahead – tell them we march in parades, make lame jokes about U-Hauls, show them photos of our “kids,” the cats.

No one's going to check your credentials, but you can kiss me if you want: a light buss on the cheek, something more if you're brave.

Pretend we're engaged or – hell, invite the bartender to our grand New York wedding.

We're getting married in a month – we're in love, haven't you heard? (continued)

26

And if all else fails, hold onto my hand and just smile, smile, smile if you're so damn afraid of another girl calling you beautiful.

--Jennifer Matarese

Contemplating our silences Most of the time, everything I say makes perfect sense after the fact, like flowers that bloom in the winter as only slivers of time, they remain obstacles between us, subtle as the seasons change from dark to light; listen to this methodical shifting of gears, open and snapping shut, like a fish with little to say.

Season my speech with salt, I hope, and burn my neurons with candor, usurping the old ways to an unknown schedule of transistors and metal grinding to a new purpose.

Love is wet, eviscerated happily along the long line of trees, handprints of each like hearts carved.

I am myself in you sometimes, feeling what I feel more relentlessly, two sides to the same mask, both revealed in earnest, trading in angelic tongues if only understood the next morning, silent tongue musing upon my incisors.

--Jeffrey Reuther

27

River Man in the West Virginia Mountains The West Virginia River Man is hearty like the mountains, His tall, lean body, filled with long muscles, showing the strength and endurance he has forged from over forty years of grueling river work.

Work on the river can be hard and unforgiving, then smooth and easy.

His beliefs never waiver, ingrained into him from growing up in the harsh beauty of the Appalachia Mountains.

His smiles are often, for he finds pleasure in his simple life, most teeth are missing, not from lack of caring but from an up-bringing that doesn’t believe appearances are a priority.

He is full of pride, almost to the bursting point as he tells the stories passed down through generations of Indian ancestors, long ago battles that were fought and lost.

The River keeps the two states on their opposite sides, dividing them into two separate worlds.

It is the giver of life through hard work and the taker of life, through floods and strong currents.

He looks to his left, his side of this world lush and vibrate shades of green covering the mountains that roll on endlessly.

Approaching one of the many small towns that dot the river here and there, life is isolated and unchanged.

They are filled with his people who are never in a hurry as families walk slowly to church, elderly women sit on their porches, sipping sweetened sun tea and reminiscing.

Absent are the taverns and gaming halls for gambling is only seen on a folding wooden table surrounded by weathered old men telling war tales.

Children ride in the back of old, rusty pick-up trucks and running around barefoot in hand-me-down clothes from their second cousin, on their mother’s side.

Tree sap stuck to their bodies as they have grand adventures made up by their own imaginations, making sure they get home in time for dinner.

Not wanting to make mom upset they get their version of kool aid, sugar and water.

28

The River Man has seen it all and is relaxed and welcomed, as the town folks wave a hello while he slowly wonders through town.

Stopping only for a few supplies, making sure to take a short hike to gather Sassafras roots, a local cure-all made into tea, claiming to help any ailment, from a cold to the flu, stomach aches to teething babies.

At the end of the day approaches, the multi-colors above look like a water painting melting down the sky, he returns to his boat to glide on down the river through the mountains he calls home.

--Stacy Ferguson-Snedeker

Prospect St. It was a white two story house that was split into a double.

We lived in the downstairs apartment.

It was the house where I played Mario Brothers on Nintendo 64, admittedly bad, with my older sisters.

I always liked Duck Hunt better anyway.

It was the house where I drew a pumpkin on the wall by the front door.

And where I marked the wall with my green Flintstones stamp.

It was the house where I learned to tie my shoes and ran through the house looking for my mom so I could show her my great accomplishment.

It was the house where my sisters and I would play offices in the empty upstairs apartment.

It was the house where I received a black eye thanks to my sister’s incredible flying shoe.

And where I got the wind knocked out of me when I fell down the back steps.

It’s the house where I got an electric shock from the light switch on the back stairwell.

It’s the house where a guy wandered onto our porch and fell asleep on the glider.

It was the house that we moved out of when I was twelve.

It’s the house where I lived out my childhood.

But it’s the memories that I carry with me still.

--Jessie Feeney

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Walkabout

By Jennifer Matarese August drapes over the lake in a damp sheet, viscous humidity clinging to every blade of grass and plank of wood, but the summer houses remain empty, unsettling.

Liquid sunlight turns the air into a glowing haze which deadens the vivid colors of the cabins with their apple-red paint or lavender shutters, washing out my familiar world in a natural sepia tint. My own miniature cottage looks a sickly white, jaundiced and dying, its weather-worn dock sticking out into the lake like the coated tongue of an emergencyroom patient waiting to accept the weight of a thermometer.

Every so often, when I shuffle out to the dock in the mornings with the last of the coffee and settle into one of the pair of wooden deck chairs plunked down on the far end, I can smell death on the breeze. I'm well-practiced by now at stifling my baser urges. I don't even gag anymore when the eye-watering stench of rotting flesh slaps me in the face in a repugnant wake-up. I thought I buried them all, but I guess after burying nearly every single year-round tenant at Lake Piermont, I'm allowed to be wrong.

This morning is another scorcher, the sun slowly melting its molten heat over the lake. It's seven o'clock, far too early for anyone not still awake from the night before, which sure as hell doesn't describe me. I fell asleep on the couch last night, a wilted paperback Harlequin I borrowed from the Henderson cottage dangling from my limp hand. The two candles I lit before bed withered away on their own in the night, pale wax pooling in glass jars as they spewed forth the smoky artificial scent of vanilla beans.

I could have burned the house down, and no one would have come to help me. I can't bring myself to care.

I fold my legs underneath me as I get settled in the more inviting of the two deck chairs, the one Dad wore a substantial groove in with the persistent weight of his broad carpenter's body. The well of his impression in the wood cradles me as I wriggle my smaller, lighter body into a comfortable position. I close my eyes for a moment, allow myself the dubious gift of imagining sunburned arms hugging me tight, then huff out a shaky breath and reach down for my steaming cup of coffee.

If there is one thing I will let myself do now that I'm alone, it's indulge in coffee.

Mom never would let me, claiming it would stunt my growth. Her dark eyes would narrow in a silent warning over her own enormous mug of steaming hot java if I had the nerve to point out that given that I was seventeen years old and five feet tall, she may have gotten coffee mixed up with vegetables. On the day I buried her, I patted down the dirt with grimy hands blackened by fresh earth, walked in careful steps back to the cottage, made a Thermos full of her special Colombian blend, and walked back to the grave to drink the whole damn thing in her honor.

I'm sure if my father were still alive at that point, his guffaws would have startled the Thermos from my trembling hand. He always did enjoy the two of us engaged in our deadly quiet games of mother-daughter one-upmanship.

It's been four weeks today since I buried someone. I almost miss it. At least burying people gave me something to do.

I sip at my coffee, piping hot in spite of the oppressive weather, and test the air for that ill tang, that mocking odor playing hide-and-seek with me for the past few days.

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It isn't there, or if it is it's been smothered by the mingled scents of marsh and coffee, the burnt firewood still in the backyard fire pit. Two houses down, raccoons must have tipped over the four overflowing garbage cans in the neighbor's garage, the place where I'd been dumping my own trash for the sake of cleanliness and safety, and the stinking perfume of moldy bread and pasta quickened by the heat forces my eyes to water.

No more dead people, though, not from what my nose tells me. I must just be imagining it. Maybe I should do another sweep of the cottages, go door to door and climb through the same windows I broke during my first few visits. I could clear out vermin, rifle through other people's kitchens for supplies, try on their clothes, steal their useless DVDs. I could burn down a house or two if I felt like it. All I need is some marshmallows to roast over the smoking corpse of that woodsy log cabin or that enormous fishing cottage across the lake and I'll be all set.

I sigh. Oh, marshmallows. I miss marshmallows already.

Knocking back the rest of my coffee like a tequila shot, I fumble to my feet, still half-sleepy from the stifling humidity. I shuffle through the damp grass back to the house, ignoring the storm-tumbled patio chairs littering the lawn. It's not worth it to put them back in their place. It's not like anyone's coming over ever again.

I abandon my shoes on the rear stairs, toeing off Mom's dew-soaked gardening clogs and nudging them to the far end of the top step. I expect to be slapped in the face with the fresh chill of air conditioning when I enter the house, but the power's been out for weeks. Walking into the glassed-in porch is the equivalent of stepping out of a piping hot shower into a steamed-up bathroom. I already feel soaked through with enthusiastic sweat and it's not even eight in the morning yet.

Walking into our cottage is like the pleasant surprise of discovering a quirky antique store in the unlikeliest of neighborhoods. I wake each morning in the attic bedroom where everything is always faintly scented with wood polish and mothballs.

Before the plague I napped on the yard-sale leather couch in the living room while bigband standards swelled from the stereo and Mom tucked me in under boldly colorful afghans she crocheted on quiet winter nights. I've dyed my hair every shade of the rainbow in the sole bathroom with its black and white tile and blood-red accents.

Something in the kitchen smells of rot. I wrinkle my nose and drop my coffee cup into the sink with a clatter and what sounds suspiciously like a crack. It doesn't matter. If it breaks, it breaks. Washing dishes has become a hassle since the plumbing's stopped working.

I peek in the cupboards in a search for the stink of something else dying right underneath my nose. It's a quick process. The cupboards are bare for the most part, holding only a few useless packets of instant gelatin, some graham crackers, and the last and most tasteless of the canned goods: bean sprouts, clam chowder, cranberry sauce.

The kitchen's a smorgasbord of food I can't make, cans of nasty stuff I can't stand the taste of. I finally find the source of the smell behind a box of dry pasta, a lonely potato Dad must have forgotten to toss in the woods when the electricity failed and everything perishable went ahead and perished.

It only takes a moment to wrap the lumpen black potato in a paper towel and fling it from the back door, pitching it into the woods behind the cottage. It arcs through the air and pierces a verdant patch of ferns, the lush overgrowth quickly settling back into undisturbed stillness.

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I close the door behind me with a hard slam. There. Not quite the burial I've gotten used to, but it would do.

Sighing, I sit down at the kitchen table as though I plan to eat. I'm not hungry, through, not for the few stale flecks of potato chips or for the final package of graham crackers. Maybe I can eat the newspaper.

I tap my fingers over the papers I've left scattered over the kitchen table for weeks, over the untidy altar of my morning ritual. My acceptance letter to Stanford, Dear Maia Blackburn smudged under an intruding coffee ring. The last newspaper Dad brought back to the house, a New York Times cheering a major football trade but not bothering to mention the plague. Bank statements and budgets written on yellow legal pads in Mom's compact script, figuring out precisely how to send an only child to a private university on the other side of the country. Another life, one I would have started only a few short days from now, lies in a sloppy jumble before me.

My lips thin together, a painful pressure, and the next thing I know, I'm gathering crumpled papers into my hands. I grab everything in a torn and rumpled pile and rush out to the porch, nudge open the door with my elbow and stomp down the damp steps. My thin socks soak up the dew from the grass as I hurry over to the fire pit and stuff the budgets and letter and newspaper into the charcoal-edged firewood. It swells when I push it into the cracks and spaces, poking from inside like crushed misshapen flowers.

I'm not crying, but I wish I were.

I rise to my feet and glare at the fire pit, my hands tightening into fists. If I could I'd light the fire with the concentrated heat of my bitter frustration. I could light the fire now and burn the more fragile parts of the kindling into ashes, but the more sensible part of my brain calmly points out that it's a waste of a good match. I can't waste anything if I can help it. Every match must be rationed, every can must be used. “Clam chowder,� I snap, and it comes out with the vehemence of a filthy curse. I hate clam chowder. The canned kind can't be much better than the creamy chowder my father used to loudly slurp without embarrassment when we went out to dinner. I bet it will slide from the can like a cylindrical gray slab.

I need more food. I can't just continue to rob the abandoned cupboards of the other cabins on the lake like some trouble-making teenage boy pulling pranks in the summer houses. I need to leave, if only for a few hours.

My breath catches in my throat, snags on an invisible hook just short of my lungs and won't let go. I can't grab a hold of it, and the world jolts and swims around me.

By the time I stumble back into the house, tripping up the stairs and fumbling through the back door, I'm hyperventilating. I slump to the hardwood floor, a trembling mass of weak limbs, and fight desperately to suck air into my chest. My eyelids flutter from the effort to force my breath to steady, and when I raise my hands to shove my tangled blue-tinted waves from my face my fingers shiver wildly.

Two months ago, I left the lake with Dad to pick up supplies for the yearly Memorial Day barbecue. I struggled into his rusty Ford pickup truck, heaving myself up with such force I practically threw myself into the passenger seat, my stick-figure arms and legs all over the place. Dad chortled at the songs on the radio as he drove us to the Mason Family Grocery, his round jelly belly vibrating with laughter under his full auburn beard. With Dad, you took one look and then another, smiled in disbelief, then cracked jokes about a younger, more Irish Santa Claus.

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When we walked into the grocery store, I paced the aisles with Mom's list, picked up precisely what I was told, rifled through neatly cut coupons alphabetized for easier shopping. Dad would pop up on occasion, presenting a trio of enormous steaks or a case of cold beer like a well-won prize, then respond to my whined four-syllable, “Daaaaaad,” by cramming his found treasure into the cart and rumpling my shoulderlength hair. I shopped and he socialized, shaking hands with Mr. Mason, telling jokes to Jessie the cashier.

As we left the store, Jessie coughed hard, a phlegm-wracked shudder which took over her entire body from her fumbling hands grabbing for a Kleenex to her swollen shaking belly. In my memory, that cough sounds more like a witch's cackle, high-pitched and ominous, full of subliminal threats.

Two weeks later, my parents were dead.

My breath finally runs at a steady pace, in and out of my chest in a forced evenness. I never had panic attacks until this summer. I didn't have a reason.

“Later,” I murmur. There's plenty of time to have a mental breakdown later. All the time in the world.

I wash in the lake, a newly acquired habit. Once the electricity died, the well water pump keeled over. The toilet works well enough with a bucket of lake water poured into it, but it's not worth waiting to lug in lake water and boil it on the stove. The lake already steeps in the August heat, as warm as good bathwater even in the early morning.

I scrub at my sleep-tangled hair with furious energy, strawberry shampoo frothing up underneath my fingertips. It slides down my neck, over the bikini I wear every morning when I wash, and stains the surface of the water in faintly pink bubbles. I fixate on the bubbles, a wry smile twisting my lips. I suppose I can make all the mess I want now. Leave chemically-created shampoo in the lake, toss crumpled fast-food bags out the car window, spill oil in the oceans. Who's going to stop me?

The thought makes the smile drop from my face so quickly I almost expect to see it float past me on the surface of the water. “No one,” I murmur. “No one's going to stop me.”

It's not true. Mathematically, it can't be true. If I'm alive, someone else has to be as well. I spent a month wiping brows, whipping up canned chicken soup, gathering phlegm-crusted tissues into wastebaskets. I cared for my mother and nursed my father to death, then went door-to-door around the lake to tuck in the sickly and feed the dying.

For weeks I was Nurse Maia, warrior princess, fighting the swarming plague army with a soup spoon full of generic cough medicine and every box of Kleenex I could muster. If I could survive that, it would be unfair if someone else out there hadn't had to put up with it, too.

Frustrated, I close my eyes and lean back into the sun-warmed lake water, dunking my head and swishing it back and forth. Bubbles slip from my hair across the lapping pond water. I rub the last dregs of shampoo from my hair, then get back to my feet and shove myself back onto the dock.

I don't bother to dry off. A short while in the smothering August heat will steam the pond water from my skin. Even the bikini dries soon enough. It saves me the need for a towel, one less thing for me to carry out to the dock in the plastic shower caddy meant to be used for the communal bathrooms in some Stanford dorm.

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The reminder makes me glance toward the garage again, the hundredth time today since I realized I need to leave. I haven't even been in the garage for weeks. There's been no reason. I borrowed the wheelbarrow from the Kovinski brothers' cluttered backyard to cart the bodies to the golf course across the street from Lake Piermont, too afraid of what might happen if I drove anywhere to attempt to drive them to a real graveyard. I wasn't planning on building anything or throwing a party with Mom's comprehensive collection of celebratory decorations for all occasions. There just wasn't a point to going into the garage at all.

Now there was. Part of me was terrified of what I would find in there.

The past two months had taught me never to be truly surprised. Don't be shocked when Mrs. Wells strips down in the midst of the final fever and waddles toward me dripping with rancid sweat, paste white and sagging all over like an old lace curtain.

Don't express surprise when Gus the history teacher from the gray ranch house begins shouting in the midst of his last death throes that “I hope my faggot brother in Cincinnati got this goddamn disease twice over.� Don't startle when you find upsetting things in other people's bedrooms while you're caring for them: hundreds of pictures of violently murdered people, sex toys and porn, the mummified corpse of an unfed cat.

I could find anything in there, and I've grown used to my options not being very good.

Sighing, I pick up the shower caddy, carrying it into the house and placing it on the now-cleared table. Rumpling my hair to shake some of the water free, I jog upstairs to my bedroom. I rummage through what's left of my clean clothes from the last lakeside scrub-down and put on a black tank top decorated in white skulls, khaki shorts, low-top Chucks, a handful of silver jewelry. The ingrained need to dress presentably is the only thing which keeps me from leaving as-is, wearing a black bikini, my blue-tinted hair soaked through and shoved away from my face.

In the kitchen, I scarf down the last of the graham crackers, cinnamon and sugar and half-chewed crackers clogging dryly in my throat. I choke down my sad excuse for a breakfast without bothering about a drink. I'm not even sure why I'm bothering with breakfast. I have a sneaking suspicion I'll just see it again later splattered across a country roadside.

When I leave, I lock the doors behind me. Hey, you never know.

Miraculously, the truck is untouched. I'm not sure what I expected. The tires to have deflated somewhat in the heat, sure. The entire damn vehicle to disappear in the night, maybe. Being left alone makes you paranoid to surreal extremes.

It's the usual scramble to get into the truck. Dad taught me to drive on this pickup, but he didn't bother to teach me to grow longer legs so that I could get into the driver's seat without a struggle. I settle into the bench seat, then let out a shaky breath.

I rest my hands on the steering wheel, running my fingers over the cracked vinyl.

I haven't touched the truck in weeks, haven't even thought about it since the day Dad stepped from the driver's side hacking up bloody wads of thick pungent phlegm. It sat here, idle and lonely, locked away in the garage between Mom's old ten-speed and Dad's spare sawhorse. It silently suffered in the miniature sauna of the garage while I lugged aspirin and canned chicken soup and fresh bodies to and fro past the dusty windows of the folding door. I'm not even sure it will start.

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“One trip,” I murmur. “That's all I ask.” Holding my breath, I turn the key in the ignition.

The engine yawns and coughs, then roars to life with a growl at being awoken after all this time. I run my hands over the steering wheel again. “Thanks,” I say.

The truck hums sleepily in a silent response.

I drive in silence down deserted country roads that wind through the dense trees like a ribbon in the wind, peering in abject curiosity into the darkened windows of every house I pass. Most of them have the shades drawn, their driveways devoid of cars.

Occasionally, I spot a recently dug mound of dirt near a pretty patch of flowers or a picturesque copse of trees.

I never see another living soul. Not a person, not a dog, not even a curious squirrel. My hands tighten with each passing moment, wringing the steering wheel like a wet dishrag.

At one point, I slow down to gape at the smoldering shell of my high school, firescarred bricks tumbled to the surrounding grass. The gym looks like a bomb hit it, only a few ragged remnants of wall still standing. Inside, the blackened skeleton of the scorched bleachers pokes out like the last remnants of a decomposing body. It could have been a sparking appliance or a discarded cigarette, maybe a lightning strike during the last summer storm, but I doubt it.

I wonder briefly what the hell was going on while I was spooning lukewarm soup into the Kovinski brothers.

It's a twenty-minute drive to the grocery store even with the lack of other traffic. I pull into the parking lot and park near the front entrance, then turn the truck off with a flourish. For one shining accomplished moment, I resist the urge to cheer.

Dad's rustbucket truck chugs softly for a long moment before quitting, unused to active duty. I reach to remove the keys from the ignition, then let my hand drop limply in my lap. Why take the keys with me? It's not as though anyone's alive to steal it.

Fumbling from the driver's seat is a struggle. The truck sits high on the axles, and I'm five feet tall after a good stretch. Sitting in the truck with the door wide open feels like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and casually thinking about how to dive into the river below. I plant one foot on the running board, then lower the other towards the ground, feeling around with the toe of my black Chucks until my foot presses against solid ground. With a low, “Oomph,” I drop myself the rest of the way, holding onto the driver's side door to steady myself.

Before the plague, the Mason Family Grocery used to cater to charmed summer people and locals with enough sense to stifle their eye-rolling. The exterior is all unstained pine wood and earthy green shutters, none of which actually shuttered. A clapboard sidewalk misplaced from the front of some Wild West saloon snuggles against the facade, recommissioned as a cheery porch precisely lined with homemade wooden rocking chairs all with old-fashioned price tags. It all looked so authentic most shoppers allowed the anachronistic handicapped ramp and sliding electric doors some leeway.

The weeks since the plague left their mark. By now summer storms must have battered the grocery's facade with unchecked glee, leaving one of the shutters dangling at an awkward angle from one persistent nail. Browned pine needles and loose leaves sprinkle the porch, unswept and scattered like sprayed playing cards. The frame of one sliding glass door held only the ragged edges, the inner glass broken by something large

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slamming through it. Even from ten feet away, I can see shards of glass glittering the floor.

I swallow back fear, sour and green like fresh lime juice. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this.

Gingerly, I step through the gaping maw of the broken door, too afraid of injuring myself if I try to wrench the remnants of the destroyed door from the frame. Slivers of glass crackle underfoot, and I wince at the unnerving sound.

A moment later, the smell hits me, and I rear backwards, tripping foot over ankle until I land on my ass on the warm wooden planks outside.

Steaks and chickens for grilling. Mounds of corn and carrots and lettuce, good for crispy picnic salads. Plastic cartons of whole milk and Styrofoam crates of eggs. All of them roasted in the late summer heat, cooking in the festering oven that had once been a thriving grocery. Those that weren't had spoiled and spoiled hard. I get the sudden striking mental image of an angry milk carton throwing a childish tantrum, the face under the MISSING label sobbing silent tears as the cardboard carton stamps up and down on a refrigerator shelf. The only reason I don't laugh at the ridiculous image is that I'm too busy retching up stale graham crackers over the edge of the porch, staining the packed dirt with my miserable stomach contents.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, spit, then wipe my mouth again. It's the best I can do under the circumstances.

I don't pause to think. Thinking will just make me smell that stench on my poor defenseless clothes, will just lead to me heaving up stomach acids and bile onto the ground. I bolt to the rear of the truck, fiddling with the hatch until it falls open with a metallic thunk. It takes a bit of awkward wriggling but I'm finally in the truck bed. Dad's truck bed is the automotive equivalent of Mary Poppins' carpet bag, a mismatched depository for every piece you might never know you may possibly need. I wade through discarded flannel shirts and balled-up old socks, fishing line and measuring tape, a ratty blue tarp and a plastic bucket of broken tools. I finally find what I'm looking for knotted around the end of a snapped plank of wood. A baggie of rusty clothespins lies not far away.

When I carefully jump down from the rear of the truck a short time later, I've tied the handkerchief around my face like a pathetic bank robber, a loose clothespin clipped over it. All I can smell now is wood and dirt, the remnants of good work, the scent of my dad's hands after a long day.

The sob escapes me before I can catch it, a raw sound ripped from my chest. I suck in a breath through my mouth, and now I can taste the rot in the air. I shudder, then raise the handkerchief from my mouth and spit again.

I could just keep driving. I could heave myself back into the truck and head to the next grocery or mini-mart, crossing my fingers that just one of them will contain enough food that I can salvage: canned goods, chips, cereal that the rats and squirrels haven't torn their way into. I shoot the truck a suspicious glance. I'd prayed when I turned the key in the ignition earlier, a quick all-encompassing plea to whichever deity might be in charge up there. It's shuddered and gasped for months and years, but it's more ominous when Dad's not alive anymore to stick his head under the hood and crack lame jokes about catching his full beard in the fan belt. I could get stranded somewhere, trapped by the side of some deserted backwater road, no cell phone or stuck-out thumb to rescue me.

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The Mason Family Grocery, in all its wretched reeking glory, will have to do.

Steeling myself, I step back inside.

Even with the makeshift face mask, the persistent stink of the abandoned grocery store permeates, teasing my gorge and forcing it to rise ominously. My eyes water, and I blink away the well of defensive tears as I step cautiously through the aisles.

The vegetable section is a total loss, now no more than a strip of gestating mulch growing thick and rich. Battered boxes and cartons lie scattered across the linoleum floor like fallen soldiers, rough holes torn into the cardboard with small sharp teeth. The meat freezer, its lid open to the stifling air, writhes suspiciously out of the corner of my eye. I ignore it and pluck a plastic shopping bag from a roll of them jammed between the register and the lottery machine, glancing in the direction of the canned foods aisle. It's the only food in the store worth salvaging, but beggars and choosers, right?

I go for the soups mostly, tomato and chicken noodle, cream of mushroom, cream of broccoli. The cans are small, and enough fit in a bag to last me a week. I contemplate trying to snatch up more food, carting it home, hoarding cans like my own personal army, but stop myself before I can. I can't stay at the cottage forever. The more food I get, the longer I'll want to stay. Better to paint myself into an edible corner, to force myself to have to leave the cottage again. This impromptu trip to the Mason Family Grocery is just a first step. I need to remember that.

Still, though. One lone bag of canned soup? “Ramen,� I blurt out, not thinking. The air swamps my mouth, a rancid taste burning a path across my tongue. I wince, spit twice, then crouch down to the bottom shelf when the bulk packages of ramen noodles roughly squeeze together. It can be a justin-case food, I think, and grab onto the red plastic block of beef-flavored noodles in front.

I yank hard and the mouse comes with it, his wee rear end still sticking out from the hole he chewed into it, his tail waving a frantic surrender. I drop the ramen, startled, and he wriggles free of its confines, squeaking indignantly before scurrying off for less action-packed pastures.

Okay, so maybe I could live without ramen.

In a hurry, I get to my feet fast enough to make me dizzy and rush toward the glass doors. I don't see the box of Rice Krispies until it's too late. When I trip over it, fumbling forward with all of the grace of a giraffe with vertigo, I only barely manage to keep a firm grip on the soup cans. I slam hard against the front counter, my knees taking the brunt of the force as I grab onto the counter.

I'm not quick enough to stop myself from seeing what lies on the floor behind the counter. The bloody body of a large buck, its antlers speckled with chips of broken glass, festers with fat happy maggots. My stomach lurches, and I bolt from the front door like a rocket.

Fresh sweltering air slaps in the face like a warm shower as I stumble through the broken door, scattering broken glass like spilled sequins across the porch. I refuse to look back. I pull off the makeshift mask and throw it aside, then toss the bag into the back of the truck without looking, the cans singing out an ominous clang as they slammed against the truck bed.

I haul open the driver's side door, spidering my way into the bench seat, then shut the door behind me. Like a reverse record scratch, the world pulls back into place. The

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breath shudders from my lungs, acidic with bile, and I surf the edge of an aspiring panic attack. When I suck air back into my chest, everything tastes like rot.

I wonder suddenly, like a jolt, like a vivid spark of static, if that dead smell cuts through aluminum.

My gaze jerks toward the rear view mirror, as though the bag of cans will jump up in midair and wave happily in a cheerful greeting. The bag smelled. The labels probably smelled. My entire life has turned into a churning ocean of the stench of death, clinging to everything even when the bodies disappear and the reeking tide goes with it.

Releasing a shaky breath, I start the engine and pull out of the parking lot.

I drive a little faster than I did on the ride there. With everything that's happened today, home swims in my memory like some magical castle I may have imagined. A cold shower of paranoia washes over me, and I'm abruptly afraid that if I don't return to the cottage quickly enough, the house will ripple like heat off midsummer pavement and vanish in the next stiff breeze.

I turn corners too fast, squeal my tires as I pass through stop signs I don't need to pause to acknowledge. I'm a race car driver, a speed demon. If I press the gas pedal hard enough, I bet I'll grow wings. Or maybe I just hope so.

Something darts out of the wood to my right – small, tan, sun-dappled – and out in front of the truck. Reflexively, I jerk the wheel to the right, and the wheels scream in protest. The world wrings in the hands of an unseen god. The next thing I see clearly is the mossy tree trunk I slam into.

The truck whines and hisses, then dies like a struck animal.

Something whimpers. My head jerks from side to side, my gaze darting over every worn surface of the truck, every nook and cranny where a small scare animal could hide. The whimpering increases, chilling and pregnant with growing sorrow. Did I hit a puppy? Did the poor thing end up in the truck cub somehow, terrified and hurt, begging in wordless sobs for help?

I pause as my fingertips rest on my dashboard. From my elbow down, my arm quakes with wild tremors. My forearm is the San Andreas fault, and its frightened tantrum births a tiny mountain range of fresh gooseflesh on my skin.

It's not some injured animal whimpering, I suddenly realize. It's me.

I allow myself a bad cry. I've had a month of good cries: when my parents died, when the last of the lake's inhabitants coughed his last breath, when the electricity went out in one sad low whine. They were clean understandable cries, with tissues within arm's length for blowing your nose with and water nearby to splash across your tear-stained face. Those were expected cries crossed off an invisible checklist.

This is different. I'm completely unprepared for this. Hell, I don't even have the handkerchief anymore.

Finally, I can take a breath without sobbing. This is nothing. An inconvenience, sure, but as my mother used to say, my legs aren't broken. I can walk home from here. It's not that far, even in the middle of a righteous heat wave. I'll have to carry the cans, but I can take breaks whenever I want. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

I punctuate the last thought with a smack against the steering wheel, then sniff back the last of my tears and remove the keys from the ignition. I stuff them in the pocket of my shorts before climbing out of the truck, then reach blindly into the truck bed and skim my fingertips over the mangled mess in the back until I snag a loop of plastic.

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Heaving the bag carefully from the rear of the truck, my shoulders sag in minor relief. None of the cans appear to have escaped from the bag and rolled free into the wilds of Dad's mess. So my day isn't going entirely downhill, then. Good for me.

For a moment, I stand in the middle of the road, my feet centered across the yellow lines. I look north and south, east and west, and contemplate my options.

Following the roads will probably make my trip longer, but I'm not quite sure of what I'll find if I delve into the lush depths of the early August forests. It'll be cooler under the overhanging branches of trees healthy from a rainy spring, but I can just imagine what I might find: dogs or cats gone feral from the loss of their human packs, unseen holes in the ground I can easily break my ankle in, the bodies of the sick and lost soaking up the sun's damaging rays.

Now is not the time to take my chances, I think. I turn uphill toward the northbound lane. A nice, refreshing walk in ninety-degree heat and full-stop humidity.

This will be fun. “Sure, it will,” I say out loud. “Lots of fun.” I'm trying to pump myself up, but the words are spiced with misbehaving sarcasm.

I make it about fifty paces up the hill when the shopping bag breaks.

My fingers loosen, and the shredded shopping bag wafts to the ground in the stiff humidity. It settles against the pavement like a dead jellyfish. The cans roll merrily down the hill, clattering away from me with masochistic glee. For a long moment, I debate chasing after them, scampering in their wake, then sag at the thought of carrying an armful of battered cans back to the cottage. I didn't see anything in the rear of the truck to carry them in the last time I looked, after all. It was either the plastic bag or nothing.

Nothing it is, then.

Finally, my fists clenched to restrain myself, I take the first step on the long walk home. * The sun is skimming the edge of the horizon when I finally trudge down the rocky dirt road toward home. My feet silently cry in agony from the unexpected torture of walking from the truck to the lake. It might have been better if I'd seen it coming, but the long walk home had been the worst sort of surprise.

“No one expects the Trail of Tears,” I mutter. It shocks me, how shredded my voice sounds. Someone could have pulled out my voicebox and squeezed, wringing it out like a wet dishrag.

Once I reach my lawn, I yank off my sneakers without undoing the laces, tossing them aside blindly as I move toward the lakeside. My bare feet sink into the swampy grass at the edge of the lake, murky watery muck forming tiny pools under the writhing weight of my wiggling toes. The water-softened mud and grass soothe my sore feet, and I hum a tuneless song under my breath as I plop my rear end down on the drier grass a foot or so higher on the bank. The change in position forces my feet deeper into the soft juicy muck, a makeshift spa-style mud-pack for my throbbing feet.

“Eight miles,” I say softly. It's an estimate, but I'll take it. Eight miles of trudging along the shoulder of Black River Road, the stifling heat pressing me down into the pavement like an enormous wet paw. Eight miles of waiting for someone who never came: the military, a cop, another driver on his way to look for help, maybe even just a

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stranger bolting from a farmhouse with happy cries and a bottle of cold water. By the time I glimpsed the flicker of the setting sun glinting off the lake's surface, those eight miles felt like Hannibal's trek across the Alps without the advantage of an elephant to ride.

I shove my fingers through my sweat-soaked hair, overwhelmed by a startling wave of pride. I went on a grand adventure, didn't I? Unintentional, sure, but I stormed the castle and rescued the princess in the shape of a bag full of abandoned cans. Maybe I couldn't bring the bag home, but I still invaded the grocery store like a storming angel.

I huff out a breath, tired and raw against the scraped interior of my weary throat.

A moment later, an odd sounds sneaks through my exhausted consciousness. Thunk.

Thunk. Thunk. The slow bumping noise smacks lazily in time with the rhythmic swell of the lake's gentle waves.

Frowning, I heave myself to my feet. I only weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, but it feels as though I'm made of steel and gold and rocks.

Thunk-thunk-thunk.

I move onto the dock, my sneakers scraping against the rough wood. The air above the lake is clogged with humidity, choking with it, drowning. I may as well be attempting to walk through Jell-O or custard, the atmosphere a thick, viscous slab.

When I reach the end of the dock, everything stills, hazy and unreal like a Thomas Kinkaid painting.

“Hi,” I say softly.

The body, bobbing in a repetitive thunk-thunk-thunk against the dock, doesn't respond.

Gentle waves nudge the bloated corpse against the sturdy wooden posts.

Absently, I lift my left hand to my mouth and nibble at the skin around my thumbnail, tasting dirt and sweat and shredded grass. I should wade into the water and pull whoever it is out of the pond. I should latch onto their muck-mottled tank top and haul them onto the grass. Hell, at the very least I should flip the body over and find out who it is. I thought I'd been in every house on the lake, checked every room and turned off every electronic device. I guess I was wrong.

I bathed in that water this morning. There's a body floating in my bathtub.

The laughter bursts out of me, a firework of a noise, a seal's bark. Burbling giggles burn through my stomach muscles. Suddenly it's a good thing I'm the only one alive. I can picture the curious ghosts of everyone on the lake watching me: the Kovinski brothers putting aside their beers to crack jokes about my hyena laugh, Mrs. Wells pausing in watering her tulips to chuckle along with me, Mom leaning out from the back door to grumble about me making a scene.

I expect to stop laughing at the mental image, but it only makes things worse. I start to cry, the giggles growing painful, weak tears shaking from under my trembling eyelids. I'm vibrating, an earthquake in girl form.

“You died in the lake on purpose, didn't you?” I choke the words out between bursts of laughter. “I bet you did it just to gross me out, right? I'm right, aren't I?” The body still doesn't answer.

My sides pull tight and electric from the strain of too much laughter. “You hid out in your cottage and didn't let me find you and waited by the lake when you knew you were going to die as, like, the world's worst practical joke. I'm right, aren't I? Right?”

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Still no answer.

My giggles calm to a more acceptable level as I reach for a stick lying on the ground nearby. I'm still humming with energy as I walk onto the dock and poke at the body, pushing at the shoulder until it bobs and turns.

I'm only seventeen years old. I'm no coroner or medical examiner, and I never wanted to be. I planted myself firmly in the confined forest of the county library from the time I was six, but there's only so much forensic information you can glean from the occasional pulpy mystery. I couldn't tell you how long that body has floated miserably in the bath-warm water of Lake Piermont, or what it expired from.

What I do know is that I have no idea who this man is.

I know everyone on this lake. Even the summer people I can recognize by sight, but this swelled man with his bristly black goatee is a stranger.

There are two facts that I need to know to get by on this lake without losing my plague-fragile mind. I am the only one alive, and I am the only one here. If either one of those facts becomes untrue, my inevitable slide into post-traumatic stress disorder's bound to come galloping into my brain with the force of stampeding bison.

Without a word, I turn and walk up the short path to the door to the sunroom, wrenching it open, my clammy fingers trembling. From here I can see the kitchen, the living room, the open door to the bathroom I can't quite use properly anymore. Mom's pink water glass still sits drying in the rack next to the sink from weeks ago. Dad's mudcrusted boots haven't been moved from the cluttered shoe mat in the sunroom where he left them the last time he entered the house, his lungs rattling with phlegm.

I live in a tomb, I think. It's not a nice thought.

A moment later, I'm in my parents' bedroom. Mom and Dad's closet is a carefully organized compact jungle of shoe trees and clothes hanger vines. Mom fought clutter with the fierce might of an angry god, the closet her mortal enemy. Pressed clothes hang from the bar in order by color and season and style, even Dad's wash-worn herd of faded flannel shirts. I only barely resist the urge to bury my face in them and smell the faint hint of oil, tar, sawdust, sweat.

The top shelf is purses and bags, a colorful parade of festive accessories. I pull the stepstool from inside the closet and unfold it, climb it like a spider monkey and peer over the wall of loud prints and bright leathers to the back of the top shelf. That's where Mom kept her hiking supplies.

I fish around blindly with one hand until I feel sturdy nylon and knotted mesh under my fingertips. I snag it and pull, knocking clutches and hobo bags across the floor.

I stare at them for a long moment, then climb down and nudge them into the closet with the toe of my muddy sneaker. This house isn't a shrine. I need to start reminding myself of that.

In my bedroom, I pack light. A photo of my parents. Socks, underwear, T-shirts: durable cotton, easy to wash. The glasses I rarely wear. A sturdy notepad. In the kitchen, I line necessary items up on the counter top: matches, a hardy saucepan small enough to fit in the knapsack, a can opener.

The front door of the cottage draws my gaze. Tonight, I'll sleep in my bed for the last time, the covers thrown back, the blankets only multiplying the oppressive heat. I'll wake in the morning and forage in the barren landscape of my kitchen for the last of the food. I'll unplug everything – the television, the alarm clocks, the fridge – just in case.

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I've had nightmares since the power went out, bad dreams where the power comes back on and the toaster sparks in surprise and I burn to death in my bed.

When I leave, I'll lock up. Just in case.

With a deep breath laced with steel, I reach into the cabinet and pull out the can of clam chowder. For my last meal at home, it will have to do.

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The Wrong Side of Freedom

By Norma Paisley I Caleb stood on the back porch of his family home. In the cool, pre-dawn air he paused as he did every morning since he began following his father to the barn to do chores. How old was he when his mothers’ skirts and warm cookies were less appealing than the smell of earth and livestock on his father’s clothes and boots? While most families wouldn’t think of allowing a child of three or four to wander to the barn, this family and this community encouraged it. It was good for the boys to get an early start learning about manly responsibilities and the ways of animals and the land. It was their future, their calling, it was just how it was. He was barely bigger than the bucket he attempted to carry, as fresh milk sloshed over the sides from the pitching and heaving of the bucket as he half carried, half dragged it toward the house. The warm, frothy milk splashed onto his bare toes leaving clean rivulets on his feet as it washed away the barn dust and dirt. Barn cats followed gratefully, lapping up the little drops of nourishment.

Once the two family cows were milked, it was on to other chores; this was springtime in North-eastern Pennsylvania and that meant the fields needed to be plowed.

Although spring was the most long awaited time of year, because of the promise of new growth, fresh food and birthing of the livestock, it was also the time when the work was hardest and tempers were shortest. On this farm, they only had eight work animals. These consisted of five mules and three draft horses. Four of the mules were used in a four-mule hitch. The remaining horses and mule were separated into teams of two. Looking across the fields one would see a man behind four mules pulling a large plow while two teams pulled smaller plows and were manned by boys barely tall enough to see over their backs even with the standing platform of the plow beneath them. Yes, spring was certainly a time for new growth, and in spite of the fond memories and the comfort of his family and home, this young man was aroused by a pull much more powerful than that of the upturned earth or the warm, low sounds of the barn. He was being seduced by the temptress known as freedom. At seventeen, he had already worked harder than most men do before they reach thirty, and his tall, muscular frame left a long shadow behind him in the early, meager sunlight as he stepped off the porch, crossed the yard, turned onto the two lane, and headed east toward town. Today was the day, and he swallowed hard remembering his mother’s tears and his father’s stony silence last Thursday after supper when he told them of his decision to leave. Today was Monday and he had felt like a dirty liar yesterday at church, keeping his secret close and singing the hymns with everyone else as though nothing had or would change. But today, today the truth glared. He wanted out of this life, this culture, this-as his seventeen year-old mind called it- prison. He was tired of wearing their clothes, following their rules, being thought of as plain and simple. He was tired of the Amish life.

II By the time the sun was fully up he had covered three of the seven-mile walk to town. He had plenty of plans and figured he would have most of his transformation completed by suppertime. He had plenty of money, so he wasn’t worried about taking

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care of himself until he found a job. He had saved nearly everything he had earned working in his uncle’s sawmill for the past two years. Since Amish boys only attend school until they are fifteen, and only attend one half day per week in their fifteenth year, he had been able to get a full time job running a band saw and making the same money as the older men. He even had a place to stay until he figured out whether he was going to stay around here or move on. He had heard of many Amish who had left the community and got construction jobs in the southern states.

As he walked along, these thoughts and more swirled in his head. He was so caught up that he barely noticed the horse and buggy approaching from the rear. It was Daniel, a neighbor and friend of his family.

“Caleb”, he called as pulled up alongside him, “do you want a ride? Hop in.”

Not wanting to be disrespectful to his elder Caleb obeyed and got into the buggy. “Why are you walking?” asked Daniel. “You bought that fancy horse and buggy at the sale last fall, has he gone lame?” Caleb was sick over this. He had not anticipated having to tell anyone but his family about his decision and now he had no idea what to say or do. It was simply not in his wiring to lie. Lying was a sin and not only punishable by God but by his father, who Caleb was certain dealt with liars much more fiercely than God. He decided to be truthful no matter what.

“My horse isn’t lame Daniel, he is fine.” answered Caleb. Never ones to pry, Daniel didn’t push the issue and Caleb was grateful. They rode into town where Caleb told Daniel he needed to go into the Wal-Mart. Explaining to a perplexed Daniel that he did not need a ride home, Caleb hurriedly walked away from the buggy and away from his old life.

III He knew what he wanted. He was going to buy some Levi Jeans. It was the name he saw so often on the back of the denim pants worn by ‘English’ men and boys.

He liked the way they looked and the way the people who wore them seemed to blend in with everyone else. He made his way to the men’s department and then to the jeans.

Now he had a problem. Since the day he was born his mother had made his clothing, he never had a concern for the size of his clothes. He wore what his older brothers passed down or what his mother made for him. He began to slide the individual pairs of jeans on the rack where they hung. Finally, aware that an employee was watching him curiously, he chose two pair of different sizes and took them to the dressing room. It was several trips later that he finally found a pair that fit him. He went through the same procedure with shirts. He spent a lot of time trying the clothes on, but he found that he didn’t mind.

He actually liked zipping and unzipping the fly on the pants, a forbidden accouterment of Amish clothing. He enjoyed the belts as well, since suspenders were the only accepted means of holding up one’s pants. Finally, his arms laden with two sets of clothing from jeans and t-shirts to a baseball cap and boots, he made his way to the checkout. He went through the line without looking up, certain that the checkout girl could see what was transpiring. Once his purchases had been made he headed back out into town. He walked to a McDonalds where he had a cup of coffee and two hot apple pies. After swallowing the last bit of coffee from his cup, he threw away his trash and went into the men’s room with his bag of clothes and chose the large, handicapped stall. He removed his buttoned down shirt and replaced it with the new t-shirt that had a picture of a buck

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with large antlers on the front. Next, he changed from his pants, with the built in buttons that attached his suspenders and the button fly, to the stiff denim Levis. He removed the straw hat, with the exact size of brim, from his head and replaced it with the baseball cap that had a John Deere logo on it. Lastly, he unlaced the black boots from his feet and put on the new buckskin colored ones. He stuffed his ‘old’ clothing into the Wal-Mart bag along with the other change of new clothes, picked up the bag and walked out into the restroom. The bathroom had a full-length mirror and his appearance was shocking to him even though he had seen himself in the dressing room mirror in the Wal-Mart as he tried on the pieces. He hadn’t been able to see the whole ensemble there though. Now, he stood looking at some other person, somebody who could fit in anywhere, somebody ...cool. The only problem was his hair. He still bore that trademark Amish haircut, what many called the ‘bowl’ cut, where it seemed that someone had placed a bowl over your head and cut off whatever stuck out beneath the bowl. In a sense it was sort of true. Not given to vanity or fanciness, the Amish culture typically cut in a straight line around the back and sides of the head and simply cut it shorter over the eyes. The men shaved until they were married, then they grew a beard, but kept the mustache shaved. They were never to trim or cut off their beards for the rest of their lives after marriage. In keeping with this tradition, women never cut their hair or shaved any parts of their bodies throughout their lives. Caleb couldn’t wait to break this tradition and as he walked up the street, he watched for the place he had taken notice of when making his plans to leave.

He spotted it quickly and reassured himself as he read the sign declaring “Styles for Men and Women/Walk-ins Welcome”. Feeling terribly self-conscious he opened the door and cringed as the little bell over his head gave a chirpy ring to announce his entry. He stood near the entry and took in the scene trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. Two older women, under dryers, looked up momentarily then went back to their magazines. A younger woman had, what seemed to be, hundreds of rods curled up in her hair and she looked into the mirror in front of her to see him behind her. She showed a little more interest than the other women and Caleb blushed, thinking this was not such a good idea. As he was deciding to leave, a young, pretty, woman stepped from the back and, with a knowing glance, motioned for him to sit in the chair, which she had spun around to face him. He sat, and without hesitating, the woman picked up her scissors and comb and asked, “Just need a cut Hon?” He nodded, and then quickly remembering his manners replied, “Yes Ma’am.” Although he tried not to, he found himself glancing repeatedly into the mirror. He wasn’t just looking at himself, but at her, as she snipped and combed and snipped and combed. Mirrors were only for shaving or making sure your bonnet was covering your hair. Mirrors were never to be used for vanity and he felt the shame of watching himself receive a haircut while he was doubly ashamed for watching the woman doing it. He was grateful for her attention to his hair and that she did not notice the blush that crept across his face and down his neck. He closed his eyes and felt something strange inside his belly as he shifted his attention to the woman’s fingers touching his hair and scalp intimately as she worked.

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IV He still couldn’t believe it. He stood on the street looking at his reflection in a store window and just couldn’t believe he was really looking at himself. The young man staring back at him from the reflection was tall and muscular with dark hair and eyes. He looked like any teenaged boy. He looked ‘English.’ The woman at the salon had given him a modern, layered cut then blow-dried his hair, a feeling he had never felt before, and the result was shocking. Feeling his ‘transformation’ was complete he continued on through town to a house he only ever passed but never entered.

V “Randy!” she yelled, “Randy, get your butt down here when I’m talkin’ to you!”

No response. “Damn-it Randy,” she muttered as she marched up the stairs and banged on the bedroom door, “would you please turn down that stupid stereo and listen to me?” She flung open the bedroom door as she yelled this last part and frowned when she saw that Randy was fast asleep on his bed, arms crossed behind his head, while the stereo blared loudly enough to get them evicted, again. She approached him and shook his arm, as she turned down the volume on the stereo. Randy, eighteen years old, and not pleased at being woken, opened one eye, stretched longly and loudly and asked, “Whadya need ma? I gotta get up in an hour for work.”

“Well, I have to go out too Randy, and I need you to make sure your little sister gets some supper and that you drop her off at Patty’s on your way to work.”

“Why can’t you drop her off?” He asked, annoyed.

“Because I am not going in that direction for one thing, and for another thing, I hate to drop Lily off when she hasn’t had any supper. I don’t want Patty to think I don’t feed my kids”. Randy bit back the remark he was about to make about his mother hardly ever feeding her kids, but decided not to start a fight now. After all he was the one who took care of Lily and spent so much of his own money on food. Because Lily was only six he had to buy things that she could make herself when she was alone, so a lot of it was not very nutritious but it kept them from starving.

Lily and Randy did not share the same father but they were very close and Randy felt an instinctive need to care for his younger sister, especially since their mother didn’t seem to have the same instinct. Randy did his best not to leave Lily at home alone and tried to arrange so he was there, even if he was sleeping, when she got home from school.

He worked nights at a local convenience store and he knew it wasn’t the best job in the world but, it gave him some spending money and it was close to home if Lily needed him on nights when their mother forgot her way home. On several occasions Randy had to leave work to go get a scared and crying Lily, and bring her back to work with him. She would curl up in her Barbie sleeping bag in a corner of the office and sleep until his shift was done. After his shift he would pick her up, sleeping bag and all, and carry her to his beat up, but still functional pick-up truck, doing his best not to wake her. This was small town and everyone knew Frannie, Randy and Lily’s mother, including Randy’s boss who shook his head but never said a word when he had to sit sideways at his desk to accommodate a sleeping Lily. He would even close the door to the office so loud customers wouldn’t disturb her. On these mornings, Randy would drive the few miles home, get Lily dressed and fed and get her off to school before heading to his second part time job at the livestock sale barn. There were only three main sales per week so Randy

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only had to work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and they sold everything from ducks, rabbits and chickens to goats, cows and horses. The work was dirty and sometimes hard but money was money. Most of the clients and customers of this sale barn were Amish and Randy knew many of them. He knew a lot of their traditions and beliefs and had a respect for their way of life even if it did seem strange to other English. If all went well and no animals escaped, the sale could be over by 2:00, leaving Randy time to get home and try to get something ready for Lily to eat when she got home from school.

After leaving her with her homework and the television, he would go to his room, turn up the stereo and get some sleep before leaving again at 10:00 for his job at the convenience store.

Often, as Randy fell asleep, he dreamed his favorite dream of the day when he and Lily would live in a clean, nice house with real food and regular meals. Somehow, he would get a better job and get Lily some nice clothes and a new backpack. His mother was never included in this other dream-life. He didn’t consciously exclude her; she just didn’t fit into it. He was not worried about his mother or what she might say or do about it if they ever got the chance to leave. She would probably be happy to be rid of the responsibility. He drifted off with this dream of being free. Free from the worry of having food, or having the electricity shut off, free from the fear of answering the door to another angry landlord with an eviction notice, free from working until he was exhausted so Lily could have a new dress or shoes once in a while, free from being this premature adult in a role he wasn’t prepared for.

His mother worked, when she felt like it, at Ruckel’s garage, keeping the books and doing whatever other office type work there was. Randy couldn’t imagine that Ruckel’s had enough business to keep her busy for the thirty hours she was supposed to spend there each week. ‘Supposed’ because she often had such a good time at night that she forgot, or just didn’t bother, to go to work, or even come home the next day. Jerry Ruckel never seemed to get too upset with her over the missed work and this was probably due to the way she dressed and flirted with the poor old guy. On the other hand, Randy and Lily were left wondering where their mother was and whether she was even alive. Randy did his best to keep Lily from knowing when their mom didn’t come home because he hated the way it hurt her. She was just a little kid and she needed more than a big brother to care for her. Randy knew how it felt, his mom had been doing this for years and when he was little she would leave him with almost anyone so she could go out on the town at night.

The best place she had ever left him was with an Amish family. In this community it was common for the English to seek out and hire Amish babysitters. They were cheap and they were always available. He was scared to death of them at first, in their strange dark clothes and bonnets, but once he settled in he never wanted to leave.

The food was good and plentiful, he played outside all day with other boys, and when he needed a nap, he got to take it in the lap of an Amish woman who held him like he was her own and rocked him while he drifted off, his face pressed into her body and the rough cotton material of her dress. He always woke in a large bed with the other boy his age and they would go right back out and play some more; digging up worms, jumping in mud puddles, where the dirty water splashed up inside his pants and ran back down filling his shoes, climbing in the hayloft with the sweet smelling hay sticking to their bodies as they rolled and tumbled down the huge stacks and onto the floor, and sitting on

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the porch steps holding half tame kittens and drinking glasses of milk. His mom would show up to get him and he would cry as he clung to Mrs. Yoder, and knew, even at that young age, how this humble Amish woman disapproved of his mother even though a word was never said. He was intelligent enough to be embarrassed of his mother even at the age of four and he would get on his knees with the other Amish children on the nights he stayed over, and while he had no idea who he was praying to or why, he understood that this was the time to ask someone for something you wanted really bad. He would pray that he could stay here with the Yoder family, his best friend Caleb and all the rest of the children forever.

VI Caleb kept walking through town until he came to the outskirts. This was where the landfill, auto repair shops, rundown apartment buildings and second hand shops were.

As he walked he noticed that the sidewalk beneath his feet changed from a smooth concrete to a broken mosaic of cement, grass, dirt and debris. He looked for the house with the number 47 on it. When he finally saw it he was a bit surprised. He didn’t really know what he expected to find but he knew it wasn’t this. The house he grew up in was a large, wooden farmhouse, with lots of windows that let in ample light, and shutters that could be closed against a storm, a huge wrap-around porch on the front, a smaller, more secluded porch on the back, and a large green lawn with maple and oak trees that you could climb and hang swings from. This house was small in comparison; it was dingy and it seemed slightly slanted. The front stoop wasn’t even large enough to support two chairs, and the railing on the right side was broken and dangling. It had a gray, sickly look and there was no yard to speak of. Perhaps a patch of grass between the sidewalk and the foundation, but nothing you even needed to mow.

Caleb mounted the steps after double-checking the number and knocked on the door. He waited, and just as he was about to knock again the doorknob turned and the door opened slowly to reveal a young girl with red pigtails. Lily looked up at him and said, “Hi, are you Caleb”? Although Caleb knew that Randy had a little sister he had never met her and it took him a moment to process this.

“Yes,” he stammered a little, “I am.”

“Okay, come in and I will go get Randy up.” She said over her shoulder as she ran away toward the stairs, leaving the door open and him standing in the doorway.

Caleb entered the house slowly and closed the door behind him. He stood and waited for Lily or Randy to return and looked around while he waited. This room, what could be called the sitting room at his parent’s house, was gloomy and small. He saw a couch and a recliner at one side and a television was playing in the corner on the other side. It was perched on a tiny table that had such spindly legs that he wondered why the television didn’t collapse it. He watched the television in awe for a few moments. He had seen television before in different stores and businesses but he had never been able to catch more than a few glimpses of the rapidly moving colors and figures. He had always averted his eyes, when his parents were with him, and kept walking past anything like a television or a radio. These things were forbidden in his culture and considered to be sinful. Television, radio and the electrical lines that linked them ‘connected’ one to the world and his culture was about not becoming connected or plugged in to modern ways.

Now, he stood watching an animated children’s show and he had no idea what it was

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about or what he was seeing. Colorful characters that resembled dogs, but who walked upright and talked, were on the screen arguing with what he could only guess might be an alligator or crocodile who was wearing a gun-belt and holster. The actions of the characters were accompanied by funny noises. Caleb was fascinated! The argument escalated until the crocodile/alligator shot one of the dogs and the dog fell over and his eyes were replaced by small x’s. Caleb was very concerned about this. He had never seen such violence from a human let alone a talking reptile! What was this stuff?

He tried to listen for returning footsteps but there was just so much noise in here!

He glanced around to see if he could identify what all of the clamor was. He knew that some of the noise came from the television, but there was so much more than that. His eyes went methodically around the room looking for the source. To the left were the television and a window, with an old bed-sheet for a curtain. To the right were the couch with stained and lumpy cushions and a recliner with the stuffing coming out of the seat.

A small coffee table sat in front of and between the two pieces of furniture. It held an overflowing ashtray, several children’s coloring books, a half-empty box of crayons, which were mostly broken, and a stack of job applications. It was somewhat dark in the room so Caleb couldn’t tell where the job applications came from but he was pretty sure they were the ones Randy said he would collect for him. He continued to scan the room and finally noticed a metal plate in the floor that had beveled slits in it. It didn’t look the same but Caleb was sure it served the same purpose as the wrought iron, ornately designed grates that had been fitted into the polished hardwood floors of his parent’s house. The grates allowed heat from the wood burner, in the basement, to rise up into the house. When you stood on those grates on a cold morning, the heat would waft up and make you want to close your eyes because they would burn from the dryness. With your eyes closed you could smell the air and guess which wood papa had filled the stove with by the earthy or nutty aroma. He had always loved it when they cut down the rare birch tree and burned it. It smelled so sweet and spicy. Caleb came out of his reverie and looked back at this rusted grate set into the stained carpet and smelled only a foul smell of damp and sewer that came from the basement. No heat came from the register but he had detected that, at least one of the noises was coming from the basement. It was a rumbly, low sort of noise and it annoyed him. The cessation of another noise made him look up and he realized that he could now hear footsteps descending the stairs rapidly.

Randy had shut off his stereo before leaving his room and he trotted down to meet Caleb.

VII Randy smiled with unabashed joy at seeing Caleb and he reached out his right hand to grasp Caleb’s while he cupped Caleb’s right shoulder with his left hand. It was as close as Randy came to hugging anyone but Lily. He stepped up to Caleb and gushed, “So you found it! Man, look at you, I wouldn’t a known ya on the street! Look at your hair! I just can’t believe it; you look so … normal! How ya doin’ man? Sorry the place is such a dump.” Caleb smiled back, glad to see his childhood friend and glad to have someone on his side as he entered this new world. He had felt some reservations throughout the day and right up until this moment, he wondered if he could go forward, but now, seeing Randy smiling, he felt better and after all, he was free right? He could do anything from this point on. He could wear what he wanted, watch television, listen to a radio, wear a wristwatch, drive a car, get a cell phone, go to a movie theater, an

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amusement park, anything! All those stupid rules were behind him now. He grasped Randy back and smiled.

“You gave good directions, it was easy. How are you?” Asked Caleb.

Randy looked around, slightly embarrassed, “Well, it is what it is right? I’m doin’ okay though, as long as I can keep duct taping my truck together so I can get to work I do alright.” Randy noticed the Wal-Mart bag that Caleb carried and guessed that it was all of the luggage Caleb had.

“Hey man, let’s take that stuff up to my, uh our room. You can use my dresser; I have two empty drawers.” Caleb followed Randy through the house and up the stairs.

Randy entered the room ahead of Caleb then stood aside so Caleb could get the full view.

Randy was proud of what he had done for his friend and he hoped Caleb wouldn’t be too disappointed. He had purchased a second bed, one of the twin sizes, just like his, and a mattress at the second hand store and set it up against the wall opposite his own bed. He had found and washed the nicest sheets he could find, out of a heap of them in mother’s bedroom closet, and while the bottom sheet, top sheet and pillowcase were all mismatched, they were clean and neat on the made up bed. Caleb wasn’t sure what he thought. He had never been in any but Amish homes so he had nothing to compare this to, but he did realize that his friend had made an effort to welcome him and he was grateful. He set his bag on the bed that Randy indicated and began to unpack his meager lot. Randy watched as he folded and put his things in a drawer. Caleb placed all of his new clothes in one drawer, his ‘Amish’ clothes in another and he realized he had overlooked socks and underwear. Randy noticed this too and quickly offered, “That’s alright, we can go out later and get whatever else you need, you gotta learn to drive sometime anyway.” Caleb smiled at this and finished putting his things away. It seemed he had waited all his life to sit behind the wheel of a vehicle and master its journey. He couldn’t wait.

“Can we go now?” He asked.

“Only if Lily is done with her homework, I have to take her with me.” Randy offered this last almost as an apology. “I don’t like to leave her home alone”.

“Fine with me, of course she should come.” Caleb knew that the English and the Amish had different ideas about rearing children. His family and community rarely, if ever, left a child with someone else to watch. Mothers were with their children from birth until the day they married and left home. English seemed to like their personal freedom and left their children with all sorts of strangers, or so it seemed to Caleb’s mother. Many English liked to leave their children with Amish families because they were excellent caregivers and the children liked it, even if they did go home speaking short sentences in Dutch as the young Amish children spoke until they attended school and learned English. As far as Caleb was concerned, everyone went everywhere as a family, so taking Lily along was only right. Randy showed Caleb around the rest of the house while Lily concentrated on math and Caleb discovered more noises. The refrigerator hummed, the hot water heater in the bathroom hummed and ticked and every now and then a steady buzz would come from the basement, then stop again. Randy explained that this was the water pump. Caleb asked, “How do you stand all this noise?”

“What noise?” Randy looked around. “Oh, you mean the TV and my stereo?”

“No, I mean all this other noise that never stops, doesn’t it bother you?” Randy stood quietly to consider what Caleb meant, and then it dawned on him.

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“Oh, you mean the household stuff?” Randy chuckled, “Sorry man, it’s just part of being ‘plugged in’, ya know? It’s the nature of electric appliances.” Caleb nodded his head and grinned.

“Yeah, I guess I have to get used to that kind of stuff.”

VIII Lily announced that she was done with her homework and the three of them stepped out into the bright afternoon light and climbed into Randy’s truck. After buckling Lily, Randy started the truck and off they went to get Caleb the rest of his wardrobe. They pulled into the parking lot at the very same Wal-Mart Caleb had been in earlier today. It seemed like a lifetime ago already. As he walked in he glanced around for the same checkout girl who had rung him out earlier. He wanted to see if she recognized him but she wasn’t there. No matter, he knew he looked different and it made him feel different. He walked confidently toward the men’s department and found the socks and underwear he needed, and then headed for the checkout lanes. “Wait a minute.’ Randy called. “You’re gonna need a jacket unless you plan on wearing the one you brought. It’s still pretty cool at night”.

“Oh, I didn’t think about that.” He walked back to the men’s department and found a jean jacket that he liked. It was lined with flannel and felt like it would be warm enough for the spring season.

Back in the truck, Randy peered into his wallet, counting his money. With a satisfied look, he put his wallet back and started the truck.

“Tonight we’ll eat at Danny’s Diner. It’s the first day of your new life and we should celebrate.” Lily clapped her hands and squealed happily. Caleb smiled. He had eaten at Danny’s before twice. Once for his older brother’s birthday and once when his mother was giving birth to one of his younger siblings and his father took everyone out of the house to leave his mother and the midwife to their business. He had eaten at other restaurants when they traveled to visit other communities in other states too. It was common for the Amish to hire a driver with a van to take them places they couldn’t go with a horse and buggy. He was used to the stares and the whispers.

Randy parked the truck and they walked together into Danny’s. The hostess seated them and waited for their drink orders. She never even looked at him, and other than glancing briefly at him to get his order, their waitress didn’t look at him either. He had no idea how he felt about this. All his life, he had been stared at and talked about in nearly every public situation he could remember. Now, he didn’t even get a raised eyebrow!

After their dinner Randy drove to the outskirts of town and pulled over on a gravel road. He got out of the truck, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door where Caleb still sat and motioned for him to get out. “C’mon man, it’s time to learn to drive.”

“Are you sure?” asked Caleb, hesitating to get out of the truck.

“Yep, c’mon, get out and get over there and let’s get this thing moving!” Randy tugged on Caleb’s arm.

“What about Lily?’ Caleb was nervous and he didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“What about Lily? She’s ridden with mom before so she can sure deal with you, right Lily?”

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Lily joined in, “C’mon Caleb, you drive!”

Caleb climbed slowly from the passenger’s side and walked around the front of the truck to the driver’s side. He climbed in behind the wheel as Randy got in the passenger seat. Randy made an elaborate display of buckling his seat belt and laughed at the look on Caleb’s face. “You should see your face! White as a ghost! I’m just kidding about the seatbelt, start her up, let’s go!”

Caleb had seen this a hundred times. Randy had gone over it with him and he had memorized the steps. He knew that the driver just turned the key and the engine would fire to catch. He also knew that this truck was an easy one because it only had two pedals on the floor. He had enough to think about without adding footwork to the equation. He turned the key and the truck’s eight-cylinder engine roared to life. He sat for a moment feeling the rumble of the engine. Just as Randy was about to prod him again, Caleb put his right foot on the big pedal, grabbed the shift lever and pulled the arm until the orange arrow pointed at the ‘D’. He glanced over at Randy to be sure that he was on track so far.

Randy nodded, unconcerned. Caleb took his foot off the big pedal and the truck started to drift forward. He just let it coast while he concentrated on steering and didn’t bother to put his foot on the little pedal. Five minutes later, the truck still coasting along at an idle, Randy began to fidget.

“Okay man, I know that your horse doesn’t go much faster than this, but this truck does so step on it.” Caleb pushed his foot down on the little pedal and the truck shot forward pinning them all against the seat for a moment before Caleb reacted and stomped his foot on the big pedal again. Now they all shot forward, Lily and Randy with arms straight out before them to prevent crashing into the dash.

The tires left skid marks in the gravel as the truck slid to a halt. Randy, cool as ever, reached behind Lily to pat Caleb on the back. “It’s okay, just try it a little easier this time.”

Caleb summoned his courage and, this time, he pressed gently on the little pedal.

The truck responded by rolling away smoothly and they were off! They traveled miles of dirt roads and Randy made Caleb back up and turn around several times. Caleb was actually quite good at maneuvering the pickup. It wasn’t nearly as long as a team of horses hooked to a manure spreader or a hay baler and the whole unit backed up straight, unlike a team with machinery behind them. It was so much simpler to just cut the wheel and back up! Randy pronounced that Caleb was a natural and he would have no trouble acing his driver’s exam. Caleb felt good and pulled over when they came to the paved road again so Randy could take over and drive them home.

IX The sun had set and the air was cool by the time they were heading home. Caleb was glad for his new jacket. Lily nodded off to the rhythm of the truck and fell toward Caleb. Her face and head rested against his arm and he tried to keep still so he wouldn’t disturb her. When they got back to Randy’s house, and after he found a place to park on the street, Randy picked Lily up and carried her toward the house. They noticed that there were lights on as they approached. “Mom must have found her way home tonight.”

Randy remarked.

“What do you mean?” Asked Caleb. “Was she away?”

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“Yeah, I guess you could say that. She just comes and goes as she pleases. I really don’t know why she bothers to come back at all.” Randy said scornfully.

Lily awoke and lifted her head from Randy’s shoulder, “Is mommy home?’ She asked hopefully?

“She’s here Lily. Now you be careful and don’t get too upset if she doesn’t want to visit with you much. You remember I told you that she’s sick right?”

“I remember.” said Lily solemnly. Randy could never tell Lily the truth, that their mom was a drunk and drug user and that she would sleep with any man who could give her a ‘fix’ for the night. She came home when she couldn’t find anyone to support her habits and this usually meant she was miserable because she was sober. The only thing worse than this was when she brought one of her sugar daddies home with her. On those nights Randy would go take Lily from her room, bring her to his room and turn on the stereo so Lily couldn’t hear the sickening things that were said and done in the room next to hers. He remembered one time, it had been a Friday night, that his mom had brought home one of her men and since Lily didn’t have to get up for school, Randy and Lily were still sleeping in his bed when his mom opened his bedroom door, saw the scene and hissed “Pervert!” at Randy. No matter that Lily was in her sleeping bag and he was completely dressed. In spite of her weak accusation his mother did nothing about it. She just closed the door and a moment later Randy heard low voices and giggling as she opened, went in, and closed her bedroom door.

Now, as they climbed the porch steps and entered the house Randy had no idea what to expect. Frannie was not in the living room or the kitchen. Lily ran upstairs to see if she was in the bedroom but came running back down after not finding her up there.

Caleb couldn’t believe you could lose a person in a house this small. The bathroom door was closed and Randy tapped on it with the knuckle of a crooked finger. “Mom! Ma, you in there?” They could see a sliver of light under the door but there was no reply from within the bathroom. Randy, tapped harder, then after several seconds, he used his balled fist to bang on the door. “Mom!!” he yelled. “Hey, are you in there?’ Finally, Randy tried the knob and it turned easily in his hand. He entered the bathroom and Caleb and Lily could hear him mutter, “Dammit!” Randy came back out pulling the door closed so Lily couldn’t see in. “Hey Lily, why don’t you go upstairs into mom’s room and get her bed ready, okay? Fluff up the pillows and find her a nightgown too.” Lily’s expression showed that this was not what she wanted to do but she shrugged her shoulders and obeyed her brother. Once she was gone Randy turned ashamedly to Caleb. “I need your help.”

Caleb didn’t hesitate. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“Help me get my mother out of the tub and up to her room.”

Caleb’s brows knit on his forehead. “Huh?’ “You heard me. Just help me please.”

Caleb followed Randy into the bathroom and Caleb nearly hit the floor with shock. He had imagined that someday he would see a woman naked, but he had always assumed that woman would be his wife, not the mother of his friend. His face went beetred and he turned his head, trying not to look. He was certain that the floor was going to open up and he was going to plummet straight to Hell if he even glanced back over at her.

Randy was grabbing towels and covering her body where she lay in the tub half-covered with cooling water. Once he had covered her, Randy turned his face away and only used

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his arm to reach down into the water, between her legs to pull the plug and let the water drain. He then turned back to face his mother and began to pull her by the arms in an attempt to extricate her from the tub. “Help me out here.” He wheezed to Caleb as her limp body came forward and her head fell back. Caleb stood petrified. Was he really going to have to touch her? He swallowed hard and took a step forward but stopped.

“Come on dammit! I need your help!” This got Caleb moving and he reached out to help half-pull, half carry Randy’s mother from the tub. Caleb was mystified by the feel of her bare skin under his fingers. Never had he seen or touched a bare skinned woman. She was a small woman, probably no more than 110 pounds, but trying to lift her out of a tub without letting one of the towels slip off was quite an effort.

Finally, they had her out and Randy supported her in a slumped, but standing position as he tried to adjust the towel that had slipped down revealing her body from her neck to her waist. “Get another towel!” Randy said tight-lipped. Caleb gratefully turned away to get another towel and was happy to drape it across the front of her body and over her shoulders. Randy bent down and reaching his arm behind her knees, he lifted his mother and told Caleb to open the door. Lily was just coming down the stairs as Randy was headed up them and she asked about her mom.

“Is mommy okay”?

“Mommy’s okay, Lily,” Randy assured her.

“What’s wrong with her?” Lily asked.

“Nothing Honey, she’s just sleeping. She’s very tired.” Randy replied. “Can you help me get her into her nightgown?” He asked Lily.

“Yep, I got it all ready on her bed.” Lily scooted ahead of Randy into the bedroom. Randy’s face was red with the effort of carrying his mother’s limp form up the stairs and he laid her heavily on the bed.

“Okay Lily, let’s get her nightgown on.” Randy said.

Caleb backed out into the hall where he could not see anymore of this. His heart was racing. What in the world was going on here? Not knowing what to do, he went downstairs and paced the house. He walked around the tiny kitchen looking for something to do. Back at home he could have done any number of things like splitting firewood and hauling it in, or pushing the grass mower with the blades that worked on a rotary, and whose speed and effectiveness were entirely dependent upon how fast the mower was pushed. It was springtime so he could have taken a hoe to the garden, scraped out the stalls behind the cows or mended fence where the cows and horses always pushed it down reaching for the ‘greener’ grass on the other side. This thought brought to Caleb a story that his father enjoyed sharing. In reference to the old adage about the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence, his father had often told him and his brothers that the cow, once escaped, spent the rest of her day pacing the fence trying to get back in with the herd that she had left, not getting to enjoy the grass anyway. Had his father always known about this longing to break away? Had he experienced it himself?

X Later, after getting Lily to bed and showering, Randy and Caleb lay in their beds in the dark. Randy had the stereo on low and they didn’t have to raise their voices much to talk. Both had a great deal on their minds. Caleb laid thinking about how far he had

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come in one day. He felt like he was light years away from this morning, instead of mere hours. He had experienced so much already! Trucks, zippers, baseball caps, light switches, and drunken, naked women. For the first time in his life, Caleb had gotten into bed without first kneeling and praying, handing over all of his worries and troubles to God and thanking God for all He had provided and asking Him to continue to provide, and seeking forgiveness for his trespasses. Was pulling an unconscious, naked woman from a tub a trespass? His mother would know the answer to this but he couldn’t ask her now. Suddenly, he realized that all his troubles and burdens were his alone. He had no one to share them with.

Randy had worked the weekend at the convenience store so he had tonight off and it took him a long time to fall asleep. He was so used to being up all night that his body resisted. He had so much swirling inside of him that he knew he wouldn’t sleep for hours anyway.

“Caleb, you up?” He asked “Yeah, I’m just thinking.’ Caleb replied.

“I’m sorry about what happened tonight, I mean I’m sorry you had to see all that.

I don’t think she can help herself cause she’s so messed up. I used to remember all the names of the guys she would go with, and sometimes I would even get to know them a little if they stuck around, but I lost count a long time ago and she goes through them so fast now that I don’t even try.”

“Why do you think she’s like that?’ asked Caleb.

“I don’t know.” Randy answered. “I used to think she just liked to be drunk or stoned, but now I think that maybe she needs to be. She can’t deal with anything when she is straight, but give her a double whiskey and she is a bookkeeping whiz! She becomes this take-charge-I-can-do-anything person when she’s wasted, but she always takes it too far and winds up passed out somewhere. Tonight it just happened to be in her own tub.”

Caleb considered this then asked, “What about your dad or Lily’s dad? Can’t they help her out?”

Randy scoffed at this. “Hmph, I am not even sure she knows who my dad really is and Lily’s dad is dead.”

Caleb didn’t speak, trying to understand this. How different from what he knew.

How different from his family, where mothers and fathers both spent their lives tending to and raising their most precious gifts, their children. Although it was not apparent outside the home, Amish fathers were very tender and caring, laying on the floor and playing with babies, teaching young boys about barn chores and animals and reading and playing board games as a family, evenings after supper. As darkness settled in and the dishes were cleaned and put away, papa would light the kerosene lamp and get out a book or a scrabble board and the family would spend hours playing, talking and laughing together. Caleb felt the void here where family members didn’t even notice each other and the children took care of the parents. He wasn’t sure how to respond to Randy’s statement and didn’t want to pry but he felt Randy wanted to talk.

“What happened to Lily’s dad?’ He finally asked.

“Killed himself. Took a shotgun and blew his own head off.” Randy said with no emotion. He continued, “I don’t even know what his real name was, but she called him Buzz. He was a jerk and he was always coming in drunk and beatin’ up on mom. Finally

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she couldn’t take it anymore and Lily was still just a little baby, not even a year old yet, so mom just took us, and some clothes and we left him. We stayed at a homeless shelter for a while until she got the job with Mr. Ruckel. As soon as she would find a place to rent, Buzz would find her and beg to come back, next thing ya know they’re fighting again and we get thrown out. I guess we had four or five different places in two years while Buzz drove mom almost insane. Lily was scared to death of him and she still won’t go near any man with long, dark hair. I don’t know if she ever even knew him as her dad either. Anyway, one time Buzz showed up and he was actin’ all sweet like he always was when he was trying to get back with mom, so she let him in, like always. He beat her so bad that time that she was in the hospital for almost a week. I remember I was fourteen and I stayed home from school to be with Lily, and this lady from the school showed up because we didn’t have a phone and they couldn’t call to see why I wasn’t there. I answered the door and tried to explain that mom was in the hospital and I had to take care of Lily. Her name was Mrs. Carmichael and she was so angry. I don’t think she was ever angry at me, she was just angry and she took me and Lily to a house with really nice people and we stayed there until mom got out of the hospital. I know mom talked to her a couple times after that and then mom filed for a ‘protection from abuse’ from Buzz. I think Mrs. Carmichael told her what to do. Buzz showed up one time after that and mom sent me next door to use the phone to call the cops. The cops took Buzz away and I guess he went to jail for a day or two. Next we knew, someone found him on a back road, sittin’ in his car with his brains blown out. I think that messed mom up even more cause that was when she really started drinkin’ and using the hard drugs.”

“But I thought both of you had the same last name, Jenkins, right?” Caleb asked confused.

“Yeah, well we all have the same last name. Mom just used her name for us. She never named our fathers so she never got any child support either.”

Neither spoke for a while then Randy spoke softly, “Did you know that I used to imagine that I had your mother? I always had this idea that your mom was the one they talked about in books and on TV shows where there was this perfect mom who cooked meals and helped with homework and was home when you got home from school.”

“Wow, no. I didn’t know that.” Caleb was surprised. “ I guess she was just my mother and I never thought of her being anybody else’s. She always watched lots of English kids for other families and she liked it. She talked about you a lot. She still wants to know if you’ll come back to see her. You haven’t been there in what, five years?”

Randy thought about it. He used to ride his bike out of town to the farm and spend the weekends with the Yoder’s and Caleb when his mom was home and he could leave Lily. He had never taken Lily to meet them. He didn’t know why. He quit going after Buzz died and his mom went off the edge. Although he knew Mrs. Yoder would never blame him for his mother’s situation, he somehow was ashamed, not just of her, but for her.

“Yeah, it’s been a while. How’s your dad and everybody else doin’?”

“Everyone is good, Mose and Joseph have gotten married and Viola is courting.

Henry will be taking his vows this fall. The younger children are just growing like weeds.” Caleb felt a stab as he said this. Taking vows with the Amish church was not to

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be taken lightly. It was a huge ceremony for young adults and it sealed their future as they committed their lives, not only to God, but also to their community and promised to uphold this way of life. The Amish belonged to a group known as Anabaptists who feel that one should be conscious of this commitment and needed to be old enough to make this decision. They did not believe in Baptizing babies who had no concept of committing to the Lord or this life. This ceremony often took place from ages sixteen through eighteen for a girl and eighteen through twenty for a boy. Many young men left the Amish before they took their vows because they could still return if it didn’t work out. Once you took your vows, leaving the Amish was the same as dying to them. You became invisible. You could stand right in front of them and they wouldn’t see you.

You had ruined your soul and so you were dead to them. Caleb was supposed to take his vows this spring. He made up his mind that this was not life for him and he wanted out before he was trapped.

“I miss them, your family I mean. I miss being there. I even miss shoveling shit and doing it in bare feet.”

Now it was Caleb’s turn to snort, “Hah, that’s why I left! I’m tired of it and I don’t mean the work or the bare feet, I mean the way everything has to be done a certain way, according to the ‘rules’.” He drew out this last word elaborately. “Look at you, you get to do anything you want.”

“I don’t know if I’m doin’ everything I want, but I’m doin’ what I have to do. I sure wouldn’t mind having a brother or a father to help.”

Finally they both fell asleep and when they woke in the morning, Frannie was gone, but she left forty dollars on the table with a note to pay the electric bill. Randy shook his head. Forty dollars wouldn’t pay a quarter of the past due bill.

XI Caleb did his best to adjust in the ensuing weeks. Somehow, he thought this would be so much easier. He had started filling out job applications but was stuck when it came to the section where they wanted your social security number. Caleb knew that the government insisted that they all receive a social security number but no one in the Amish culture knew their number or even carried the little card you got with your number on it. Amish did not pay into Social Security because they had their own system for the elderly who could no longer work. Accepting or paying into social security or medical insurance was considered being connected to, or dependent on government and this was shunned at all costs. After many legal battles throughout the 1960-70’s, the Amish won out and were now exempt from having these deductions taken from their pay. The Amish took care of their own retired or ill. Everyone tithed to the church and the church took care of the community. Now Caleb was struggling with getting a job because he had left home without this number and he couldn’t go ask for it now. He did have his certificate of birth and he was grateful for that. By the time he was born, most of the midwives understood that they had to record the births of all the children they delivered with the county. Many of Caleb’s older relatives, and even two of his brothers had a simple piece of paper with their name, birthdate, and time of birth written in black Magic Marker for a certificate of their birth.

He hit roadblock after roadblock trying to get a job with no social security number and he had no idea how to go about contacting the government about getting another one.

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Finally, out of sheer despair, he got a job at a local sawmill, where the owner understood about the Amish and agreed to pay him cash. Caleb was grateful for the job, but chagrined at the same time. Isn’t this what he had just left? Did he really turn his entire life around just to work in a sawmill again? Oh, well, he thought, at least I know the job.

He was a hard worker and the owner liked him so he made good money but he had nothing to show for it. He still couldn’t buy a truck because he couldn’t get his driver’s license until he could prove that he was who he was. The Department of Motor Vehicles had insisted on two pieces of identification and he barely had one!

XII Randy, Lily and Caleb settled into to a routine that was far from perfect but suited the three of them. Frannie came and went, and sometimes she was part of this routine for a day or so, then she was gone again. Caleb would get up in the morning and do his best to make breakfast. He had never had to cook so it was a learning process. He’d have it all ready when Randy came in from work and the three of them would eat together. It was two miles to the sawmill, and most days, Caleb walked, unless it was raining, then Randy would drive him. Randy slept while Caleb worked and Lily was at school. Caleb would get home from work shortly after Lily got home from school and he would help her with her homework until Randy got up. Lily would climb up into his lap at the table and put her homework or a coloring book in front of them. She was perfectly content to do her work or color this way. Sometimes her long red hair, usually in pigtails, because that was the only way Randy knew to do her hair, would brush against Caleb’s cheek as she bobbed, forward and back, choosing a pencil or crayon, and this always unsettled him. Amish girls wore their hair tucked up under bonnets their entire lives. Only their husbands were privy to loose and uncovered hair. Impulsively, Caleb reached up and encircled one of her pigtails in his hand. He slid his hand down the length of her hair felling its silkiness. He had always been very close to his two younger sisters at home, and he had seen them often without a bonnet, but he had never touched their hair. Lily tilted her head back to look at him, smiled, and went back to her work. After Randy got up and dressed, the three of them would eat supper together. Sometimes they went out for burgers or chicken wings, but most of the time they did their best to cook at the house.

Often, after they had eaten their own cooking, Caleb would long for his mother’s roasts and mashed potatoes. Randy shared this sentiment and would mention how he would love some of Mrs. Yoder’s pie or homemade ice cream. Lily listened to these exchanges and agreed that she would like some too even though she had no idea who Mrs. Yoder was. After supper they would walk, play ball in an empty lot near the house, go driving in Randy’s truck with Caleb at the wheel when they were on the gravel roads, or watch a movie if it was raining. Frannie interrupted on occasion, but she was usually gone by the next morning. Caleb could sense Randy’s frustration and anger over his mother’s behavior and he knew that Randy worried more for Lily than for himself. He wished he could do something but his own life was quite a mess right now. The only thing he could and did offer was money. He had brought several thousand with him when he left home and shared it willingly with Randy and Lily although Randy had never once asked. Now, Caleb’s own resources were dwindling just helping to keep the bills paid and his dream of a truck was getting further and further away. He made good wages at the sawmill, but now he was giving Randy a large portion of his wages to put toward

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food and bills. He had no idea how far in the hole Randy’s mother had left him. Caleb, out of pure rebellion, bought a cell phone with a two-year plan and it had everything including the internet, a camera and games. A week after he bought it, it still had not rung. He had no one save Randy to give his number to and Randy didn’t have a phone to call him anyway. He bought more clothes and some very expensive sunglasses that he thought made him look cool.

One morning as Caleb was getting Lily and Randy’s breakfast ready, there was a pounding at the front door. Randy wasn’t home yet and Lily was upstairs getting dressed, so Caleb shut off the stove and went to see who was there. A short, rotund man with a round face and small eyes glared at Caleb as he opened the door. The man held up an envelope and shook it at Caleb.

“This is your eviction notice, get out. Do you people think you can just live anywhere you want for free?” He grumbled. He handed the envelope to Caleb, turned and walked away. Caleb stood there for a moment, stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he took the envelope, closed the door and went back to finish making breakfast. He laid the envelope on the table for Randy when he got home.

Randy shook his head as he read the notice.

“I didn’t know how far behind mom was in the rent. I was using all the money to get the electric bill paid and buy food and stuff for the house.”

Caleb stepped up, “How much does she owe?” Even as he asked, he knew he did not want to stay here in this awful house. He felt so lost lately and he figured this was due to the newness of everything. He kept telling himself he would get used to it but he wondered how in the heck Randy did it! How did he deal with these worries and problems everyday?

“Well,” sighed Randy, “it looks like she hasn’t paid the rent for almost five months, so the bill is $3250. We have ten days to get out. I can’t come up with that much money, but I have no idea where we’re gonna go.” Caleb didn’t have that much now either. They were both lost in thought in when Lily announced it was time for her to go to school.

XIII Caleb was awoken by a loud noise and he sat up quickly, glancing at the red LED display on Randy’s alarm clock. It read 3:19 in the morning. Randy was at work and he listened to try to determine what he had heard that shook him out of his sleep. It was June and he had been here now for two months yet he still woke up each day wondering where he was. Sometimes, in the fuzzy limbo between sleep and awake, he was certain that he was still home, on the farm, in his bed and he was content. Now though, he heard another noise followed by a muffled cry. He jumped up and yanked his pants on running barefooted and bare-chested for the hall. He noticed that Frannie’s bedroom door was open and a light was on. He stopped and listened again. He could hear quiet sobbing and he noticed Lily, hunched down in the corner of the hallway. He hurried to her and scooped her up still unsure of what was happening. He heard another loud noise and this time he was certain it came from Frannie’s room. He carried Lily into his room and deposited her on the bed, telling her to stay put, before venturing back out to investigate.

He approached Frannie’s room and wished now that he had put on a shirt. Another noise, this time it sounded like a crack and then,

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“You bastard! You think you’re so tough, gotta beat up on women!” Caleb had reached the door and was now looking in. Frannie laid on the bed, her shirt torn nearly off and her face bleeding near her eye. Her cheek was a brilliant red from the recent slap.

A large man with a beard and multiple tattoos stood over her on the side of the bed.

“Shut yer mouth, you useless tramp!’” He raised his hand again and Caleb spoke, ‘Stop!” He yelled. The man turned and Caleb could see right away that he was as wasted as he had ever seen Frannie.

“Who the hell is this?” The man yelled at Frannie as he jerked his thumb toward Caleb.

“He’s nobody. Caleb, go on back to your room!” She said, but her eyes pleaded to Caleb for help.

Caleb wasn’t sure what to do but his instincts propelled him forward toward the man and he grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. The man outweighed Caleb by sixty pounds and he swatted Caleb’s arm away as easily as a fly.

“Get outta here kid.” He growled and gave Caleb a shove backward. Caleb fell back into the bedroom wall and while the big man’s attention was on him, Frannie crawled off the other side of the bed and made for the door. Drunk and/or stoned as the man was, he saw what Frannie was doing and caught her by her hair just as she was reaching the door. He yanked hard and pulled her back. She lost her balance and fell back onto the floor in a sitting position. Caleb had recovered by now and approached the man again. He had never fought in his life and had no idea what to do next but he knew that hitting anyone, especially a woman was wrong and he would do what he had to do to stop it. He thought he could reason with him and said, “Hey now, you don’t want to do this, just settle down now.” Caleb used the calmest, bravest voice he could come up with. The man turned to face Caleb and Caleb knew right away that there was no reasoning with this person. He was beyond any state of reason and now his target was Caleb. With one, big meaty hand he punched Caleb in the face and Caleb went down like a sinking stone. Frannie was trying once again to get out of the room and he went after her.

Caleb had no idea how long he had been out while he lay on the floor, but he felt the blood dripping from his split lip and tasted it in his mouth. He was alone in the bedroom but he could hear noises from downstairs and he fought a wave of nausea as he stood. He went to his room to check on Lily but she was gone. Very worried now, he started down the stairs. He heard crying, yelling and screaming all mixed together with the sounds of crashing, banging and sirens. The sirens were coming closer and Caleb had no idea who had called them but he hoped they were coming here. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen and tried to sort out what he was seeing. Frannie was barely able to move and she was actually crawling across the floor away from the enraged man in the middle of the kitchen. Only now, looking across the kitchen for Lily did Caleb notice another person. It was Randy, he was sure and he was just as sure from the angle of his body that Randy was dead. It looked as though he had skydived down from the sky and onto the kitchen table, then slid headfirst off of it just before it collapsed. The result was that he now lay with his neck bent forward much further than it was ever intended to go and obviously broken. Caleb was frozen, he couldn’t move. What was happening? He fought back panic and was on the verge of bolting when the sirens stopped right outside and there was a pounding on the door. The man released Frannie’s arm and bolted for the

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back door but the police had anticipated this and he was caught quickly. In seconds it seemed like the house was filled with police officers, people from the coroner’s office, and emergency workers. Frannie sat in the sagging recliner in the living room as the police questioned her about the man’s identity and what had happened. Caleb was questioned too and only told them what he knew, which was very little. Neither of them thought to mention Lily and it was hours later after everyone was gone and they had taken Randy away in a silent ambulance that Caleb realized he didn’t know where she was. He began to search frantically, calling her name as he opened closet doors, and looking under beds and furniture. Nothing; Frannie had never moved from the chair and sat there still, staring at the wall in front of her and smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Caleb was beside himself with worry over Lily and incensed with Frannie, who, he admitted had suffered a trauma, but did not seem to realize that she had another child who was missing. In desperation, Caleb flung open the back door to go outside and look for her, and there she was, curled up on the stoop. She wasn’t making a sound but tears streamed down her face and she had a blank look. Caleb knelt down beside her, “Lily.” He said gently. Come on, come with me.” No response.

“Lily please,” He reached his hand toward her, “come with me and I will take you to bed.” Still nothing, she hadn’t moved or even blinked.

“Lily, if you come with me, I will stay with you all night, okay?” Caleb waited.

“I took your cell phone and called Randy at work.” She said, still staring straight ahead. “I lost it outside, I’m sorry. I was scared when he hit you and you fell.” Caleb reached out with both arms, lifted her and held her tightly.

“It’s okay, I don’t care about the phone.” Lily began to sob in huge gasps that racked her body. He carried her up the stairs, went into her room to retrieve her Barbie sleeping bag and laid her on Randy’s bed. He sat stroking her hair and whispering comforting things to her until, exhausted, she cried herself to sleep. Caleb went downstairs to talk to Frannie but she was gone. He looked all over the house and even went back upstairs to check in her room in case she had somehow come back up while he was sitting with Lily, but she was not to be found. Her purse was gone from where she always kept it when she was here, on the corner of the kitchen counter, so Caleb had to assume she had simply left. Now what? He had no idea.

XIV Caleb and Lily continued through the next few days in a fog. Frannie came back, for just a few minutes, to gather some clothes from her bedroom and to tell Caleb when and where Randy’s funeral would be. Caleb tried to talk to her but she never gave him a chance. Lily was so desperate for her mother’s attention that she latched herself onto Frannie’s leg, crying and begging her not to go. Frannie pushed Lily’s hands away without a word and walked back out the door.

XV The funeral was simple and sparse. A few of Randy’s friends from high school, and both of Randy’s bosses attended and they were genuinely sad and upset. Caleb, Lily and Frannie stood together although they didn’t speak. Lily ached for her mother’s attention and comfort, but, wise beyond her years, she knew that reaching out to her mother was in vain. She stood with Caleb holding his hand and crying. Once again,

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Frannie slipped away before Caleb could talk to her and Caleb and Lily returned to the house alone. According to the eviction notice, they had only two days left to get out now.

Caleb put Lily to bed and tried to sleep himself. He was plain exhausted but he hadn’t been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time since the ‘incident’. What in the world was he doing here? What was he to do with Lily? Her mother was obviously not in any state of mind to care for a child, and truthfully, didn’t seem to care.

Caleb awoke around 4:00 a.m. and just couldn’t get back to sleep. He rolled to his left side, then his right trying to return to slumber but it was no good. He sat up in bed and put his feet on the floor. Outside, the moon was already low and it would be just a couple of hours before the sun rose. He looked at Randy’s empty bed, walked over to it, sat on it. He turned on Randy’s stereo, being sure to adjust the volume so it wouldn’t wake Lily. As the music filled the room Caleb put his head in his hands and cried. He cried for Randy, he cried for Lily and he cried for himself. He cried long and hard until he was empty and there was nothing left inside him. By the time he was done and had wiped his eyes and nose, he had made up his mind. He was getting out of here. He flipped the light switch, carefully selected clothes from the drawer, and dressed. He walked quietly into Lily’s room, grabbed some things from her drawer and stuffed them into a bag he was carrying. Then he bent and scooped her up, sleeping bag and all and carried her to Randy’s truck, which sat, parked on the street. Caleb started the truck and drove away.

XVI Caleb stopped the truck, put it in park and shut off the engine. He sat in the murky gray of the pre-dawn and waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long. Lily slept on the seat with her head resting on his leg. His eyes, already burning from a lack of sleep and crying, felt full of sand as he watched intently, staring through the windshield. He was so tired and caught himself more than once, as his head dropped to his chest in exhaustion.

Finally, there it was! The flare of match, a tiny speck of light in the darkness, then as the match was touched to a wick, the orange glow as the fuel caught and the wick was consumed. The orange brightened to white as the wick was adjusted and, now as the sun began to peep over the horizon, Caleb could make out the shape of the house. Caleb sat.

He wanted to give him time to notice, to see what he would do and when the sun has risen enough to cast the most meager shadows Caleb could see him as he moved through the house, passed a window, disappeared, then reappeared as he passed the next window.

Caleb’s heart quickened, as he became certain that his father was coming out to meet him. By the time he had gathered Lily and climbed out of the truck his father was off the porch and coming down the walk. Caleb met him halfway and they both stopped, facing each other.

As the sun crept higher, it cast the shadow of two men, in their hats and suspenders, walking toward the house together. The older man had his arm around the younger’s shoulders as he carried the sleeping child, and as they mounted the steps to enter the house they heard a low soft sound out near the fenced pasture, and both recognized that one of the cows had escaped and left the herd and now, paced anxiously, seeking to go back where she belonged.

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64

The Tourists

By Richard D. Priebe III A quick breath of heavy salty air shot through Nick’s nose as a weak chuckle grumbled in the back of his throat. His girlfriend squeezed his knee.

“I think we’ve been scammed.”

Nick watched as the boy with the beautiful coffee-colored skin ran down the dusty street and disappeared around a corner with their money. Forty U.S. dollars. The American couple sat on the steps next to the old wooden dock on Calle 1 between Lili’s Café and Iguama Bar and stared at the transparent water that rocked the docked boats like a mother and child.

“Shit. I think you’re right.”

Nick put his hand on Brianna’s hand which was still resting on his knee and smiled in admiration, not so much of the scam itself, but in its execution by the two Panamanians. He was more embarrassed than angry.

This was Nick’s first trip outside the United States. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Brianna’s father to let her go to Bocas del Toro, but Nick argued that he held a second-Dan rating in Taekwondo and spoke fluent Spanish. He promised to take good care of Karl’s daughter and, knowing that they would probably go with or without his blessing, Brianna’s father agreed to let her go. Nick was glad Karl couldn’t see them now…

Nick looked back on the day through the flawless lens of retrospect and wondered how he could have been so stupid. It had started innocently enough. That morning Nick and Brianna ate breakfast at Hotel Limbo. The restaurant at Hotel Limbo consisted of two levels, the roofed but open bar and main dining area, and a slightly lower level of wood planks that extended over the glimmering blue and green Caribbean Sea. Nick pulled out a storm-weighted chair for Brianna at a table on the lower deck, and adjusted the large umbrella above. The air was already hot and heavy with humidity, but the shade of the umbrella combined with the salty sea breeze felt good in contrast with the frosty March weather they had left behind in New York. Nick ordered huevos revueltos, papas, and tostada for Brianna, and a tortilla de tres huevos for himself. They shared a pitcher of jugo de naranja. It was a simple breakfast, but tasty, and Nick was glad he had saved what was left of his student loan money for a boat tour instead of blowing it all on expensive food.

After breakfast, Nick and Brianna decided to explore Bocas on foot. On the suggestion of Margarita at the front desk, the couple made a left out the front door onto Calle 1 and followed it south to Calle 3 and las tiendas. That’s when the haggling began. ¿Quiere una lancha? ¿Necesita una lancha a la playa? Nick and Brianna couldn’t take more than a few steps without a barefooted preteen asking them if they wanted a boat tour. At first, Nick tried to explain that they might be interested later and tried to make arrangements, but soon realized his Castilian Spanish was very different from the Andulsian-descended Spanish of Panamá, and though the Panamanians seemed to understand him, he had no idea what they were saying in response. He decided to keep things simple. No. No quiero. But instead of making things easier, the boys took his response as an invitation to describe how wonderful the tours were and offered him bargains if he agreed to go on their boat. Nick couldn’t understand most of it. Finally he

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told them he already had a boat. Lo siento. Ya la tengo. It wasn’t true, but the hustlers moved on and left the two gringos alone to shop.

Brianna stopped in a handful of the shops, admiring the many handcrafted souvenirs. At a lean-to near Hostel Caribe, she fell in love with a painting by a local named Marley. The painting was full of bright greens, yellows, oranges, and blues, and depicted women working in a rural Panamanian village. The figures and shapes on the cut of canvas were simple and indistinct, like a childhood memory, and Brianna especially liked the way the earthy browns and tans of the women contrasted with the vibrant colors of the casitas and landscape. She told Nick she would pay him back when they got back to their hotel room.

Nick came over to bargain with the vendedora, calling to mind the wise words of a wealthy man he had once worked for—never pay full price for anything. The painting was tagged at thirty-five U.S. dollars and Nick offered fifteen. Nick was glad Panama used American dollars. The large black woman in the light cotton dress smiled. The games began.

“Treinta dólares. Nada menos.”

Nick countered.

“Veinte.”

The smile disappeared off the woman’s face, and she gave her best apologetic expression.

“Lo siento pero no puedo. Treinta dólares.”

“Veinticinco.”

“No. Treinta dólares.”

Nick was surprised. The woman seemed to be set on the thirty dollars and he had the feeling she wouldn’t go lower. He thought of a possible compromise and offered— thirty dollars for two of Marley’s paintings. The woman countered with thirty-five. Nick accepted willingly. Brianna was ecstatic.

Nick and Brianna took the paintings back to their room at Limbo and tried to decide what they should do for the rest of the day. Brianna wanted to relax on the beach.

Nick wanted to snorkel. Either way they would need a boat—there was no beach on Isla Colón, and snorkeling off the docks was risky. Nick thought of the sign next to the toilet in the bathroom. Please place all toilet paper in trash bin. He didn’t want to think about what he would find if he snorkeled too close to Bocas, and quickly took money out of his suitcase for a water taxi.

It was almost eleven o’clock and Nick and Brianna had to walk halfway down Calle 3 before they found a local boy pitching boat trips—almost all the private boats were already out. Nick called him over. The boy’s name was Marco, and he spoke a little English.

As they discussed the tour and prices, Marco led Nick and Brianna back up Calle 3 to Calle 1, and to the dock next to Iguama. Marco introduced the “captain” and guide, a skinny young man in his later teens, and pointed out their boat—a 20’ long white and red craft with four wooden benches and a blue canvas roof supported by plastic poles. A large Yamaha engine weighed down the back of the boat and lifted up the front end to expose black letters that read El Afortunado. Marco explained that the tour would first stop at the restaurant in Coral Key for lunch and snorkeling, and then end up at Red Frog Beach. The cost was thirty dollars, not including Red Frog’s two dollar entrance fee.

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Nick handed Marco forty dollars. Marco didn’t have any change, but suggested that one of the other passengers might be able to break a twenty. If not, he could get Nick change at Coral Key. Marco left to round up the other passengers signed up for the tour, and Brianna and Nick were left alone with the captain and a little curly-haired black-eyed kid who was probably the captain’s son. Nick and Brianna were getting excited and began to talk about the tour. They had heard a lot of good things about Coral Key and Red Frog Beach, and couldn’t wait to see both for themselves. In midconversation, Brianna squeezed Nick’s knee. That’s when Marco, now a good hundred yards down the street, sprinted around a corner and disappeared with their money.

Worried, Nick looked to where the captain had been standing moments before—he and the little kid had also vanished. Nick began to wonder who actually owned El Afortunado and asked himself how he could have been so stupid.

Nick and Brianna talked quietly for a few minutes. They laughed at themselves.

What else was there to do? Eventually Nick stood and helped Brianna up, and the two started toward a cheap restaurant they had passed earlier on Calle 3. Before they had taken more than three steps, Marco came around the corner with the captain and the other tourists. It was their boat, and Nick and Brianna had an amazing second day in Bocas del Toro.

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The Washing Away of Dreams

By Stacy Ferguson-Snedeker The rain was relentless. Sophie had been waiting in the small diner for what seemed like forever. Checking her watch again, she noted that it had actually only been a little over two hours. With every drop of rain she got more and more depressed over the events of that day. This was her honeymoon, damn it! She had been dreaming about this trip for over a year. Well, to be honest with herself, she had been looking forward to it almost her whole life.

When she had been a small, awkward eight year old little girl, with nothing to do over Christmas break, her mother had suggested that she watch some her old movies.

Since she had already watched everything else, she decided to give them a try. She had expected the black and white movies to be stupid and boring, but by the time she was done watching Sabrina, she was wiping tears from her eyes and hitting the rewind button.

Fred proposed last year and she said yes. She immediately knew where she wanted to go on their honeymoon, Paris. Looking back now, she realized she had spent too much time planning this trip and not enough with her fiancé. Maybe she would have noticed his withdrawal sooner, or maybe it was because of her that he had done it. But she didn’t notice and here she was, in the city of love, alone and abandoned.

The rain sounded like it was finally starting to slow down. She glanced out the window, trying to see if she would be able to walk back to the hotel now, when she spotted a dark figure walking on the opposite side of the street. His shoulders were pushed up to help stop the rain from going into his dark coat. He came abreast with the diner and abruptly stopped. As if sensing her inside, he turned to face the diner and looked directly into her window.

Her vision blurred as the floor rushed up to meet her. Her lips parted to let one word escape, “Paul?”

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69

Bullet

by Lisbeth Gelatt The sea was rough through the straits of Corinth. There were times when Jack could hear the sides of the ship scraping along the narrow stone passage, and the sound created fear deep in his belly. He knew he wasn't the only one who was afraid, however.

Deep below the deck, Bullet, Jack’s half grown Collie- Irish mix pup was scrabbling at the door of the hold, wildly trying to escape the enclosed darkness. The sound of his cries echoed up the short hallway, the staircase, and out into the night. Topside, they mixed with the sounds of gaiety coming from the dining room. Periodically a crew member would stomp to the top of the stairs and shout at the dog, making Bullet temporarily quiet. Every time it happened, Jack jumped in surprise. As the night grew stormy and the sea more choppy, Bullet’s escape attempts became increasingly frantic.

The Turks who made up the crew were not amused at the dog’s antics, and made it clear to Jack’s father that they considered it a sacrilege to bring a dog onboard. jack thought perhaps it was because a dog has to do his business somewhere. Jack was very careful to clean up anything the Bullet left behind, but it didn't seem to matter judging by the dark looks from the crew members. Eventually Jack’s father slipped a handful of folded bills to the Exotic looking Captain to still any objections to live animals on the luxurious tourist cruiser.

The truth was, though, that Bullet was like a brother to Jack, since there would be no more children for the family. Jack was adopted, and in the normal course of things would have been joined by an adopted brother or sister. When Jack’s father began showing signs of epilepsy, a relic of his time spent as a prisoner of war at the end of World War Two, his parents hopes of adopting a sibling died. Jack found the fits frightening, even though his father seemed the same as usual afterwards. Jack worried about what might happen if his father were driving a car or went walking alone when a rare fit came upon him. Quickly Jack’s father re-enrolled in the service, keeping the epilepsy to himself, and was deployed for office work abroad, where Social Services would be unable declare his father unfit, and take Jack from them.

Jack was taken from his comfortable old farm house, from his young school friends, and from most of his toys. They moved at first to Virginia, where instead of fields and streams, hills and valleys, there were miles and miles of houses built for hundreds of families. It seemed as if life was reeling out of control. He didn't know a soul, wasn't used to the city, and sometimes, when he felt truly down, he would blame it all on his father. In turn, Jack often begged his parents for a dog to keep him company, and eventually his father gave in. Bullet, named after Roy Roger’s dog, would be Jack’s companion. They were normally inseparable.

When Jack led Bullet onto the luxury touring ship, the first drops of rain began to fall. The suave Captain stopped to greet his two smallest passengers. Bullet casually offered a paw to the captain, who laughed heartily before he shook. jack knew it was a real laugh because it came from the Captain's belly and showed in his eyes. The Captain looked at Jack seriously before also shaking Jack’s hand. "You will clean up after your dog, yes?" Jack nodded. When the captain smiled, Jack’s eyes widened at his gold capped front tooth. Before Jack could ask about it, however, his mother hustled them to their staterooms.

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As the cruiser cast off, a crew member arrived to lead Bullet down to the hold.

This was where the dog was expected to stay the night. Jack ate his dinner in the hold with Bullet, and gave him a turn around the deck when he thought no one was looking.

Together, they watched the straights of Corinth edge closer. Tomorrow, they’d be at Ephesus, a spot Jack had begged to visit. Somehow, his parents turned his wish into a luxury sight-seeing tour, even though he was sure they didn’t intend to leave the boat.

Tomorrow, though, Jack and Bullet would walk the marble streets of Ephesus, a true adventure. For now, though, he had to put Bullet back in the hold and go to his stateroom for bed.

In later days the space between the towering cliffs that made up the Straits of Corinth’s narrow passage would be widened, but for now, 1958, when Jack was eight years old, the torrential downpour and rough seas were nearly more than he thought the craft could tolerate, waves pushing the boat against the stone sides of the strait. Each time the boat thumped against the cliff wall, Jack would shudder, imagining the boat taking water, maybe swamping. He wished Bullet were allowed to come up to his stateroom. Many of the Turkish people did not believe in having dogs for pets, though. In some eyes, dogs were farm animals like cattle and nothing more. Jack’s Aya, or maid, was the first to express doubt about the trip with a dog. She had never been on a boat.

Neither had Bullet. As Jack grew more frightened, though, she begged Jack’s mother to allow the dog topside. Louise, being an Army nurse, had set herself in opposition of the dog from the beginning. In her eyes, dogs were unhygienic. Louise was decided. The dog stayed below.

The storm reached it’s peak just as they cleared the narrow walls of the Straits, about ten at night . The sky was as dark as the water, a uniform black barely relieved by an occasional shore light when the gusting winds blew a chink in the curtains of rain.

Below decks, an unearthly howling began. The Aya retired to her small room, having given up asking for the dog in her limited English, and too seasick to be of help to Jack.

Patras, the city near the end of the straits, was reduced to a faint set of yellowed lights.

They slipped past along the port side, the lights of the Lighthouse throbbing between bursts of rain. Far away, a fog horn sounded a warning not to drift too close to the shore.

Jack turned from the window in his cold room, the wild movement of the sea making him nauseas. On and on Bullet howled.

Jack, alone in his own stateroom, fought back his tears as he imagined his friend imprisoned below decks. He imagined the water rising, the boat wrecking and Poor Bullet stranded under water. How had the trip gone so wrong? This was meant to be a treat. They were en route to fabled Ephesus, whose marble streets and ancient ruins once housing the heroes Jack so loved from his classic comic books. Founded with words from the Oracle at Delphi, a conquering Alexander the Great riding through in triumph, the city had been ruined by war, earthquakes and the rising silt in its bay. Ephesus was now about three miles inland. He and Bullet had a hike tomorrow, but first they had to make it through the night. Below deck, Bullet yipped as something in the hold thumped, loose from its ties and slid along the floor in the dark.

Next door, the tinkle of glassware and voices of the other tour guests in the dining room filtered through the night. Over the sound of the surf, occasional shrieks of faux fear and laughter could be heard as the women exclaimed over the tossing of the boat.

The robust accent of the sleek Turkish Captain always intervened, calming worries,

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offing more liquor to soothe his guests’ fears. Awake in the night, listening to the party in progress and Bullet below, Jack wondered if the tiny gold hoop in the Captain’s left ear and the gold cap on his left front tooth meant that the man was really a Pirate. Once upon a time, Turks had been famous for their Pirates.

Jack shivered in his bunk, imagining the Captain under a striped sail and Jolly Roger. Then he sobered, remembering the sight he’d seen on his way to school last week, one he’d never shared with his mother. Three thieves were hung by their necks in the market place, faces grotesque, the soiled bodies left hanging as everyone ignored them and went about their business. Jack had stopped, looked, and then thrown up his breakfast. He slipped back to the house that day, telling his Aya about the sight, and begging her not to tell his mother he’d stayed home from school. So far, she’d kept her promise. Pirates were hung just like thieves, even in modern Turkey. Jack didn’t wish that fate on the Captain.

There would be no dancing tonight, Jack thought. No phonograph, either. The rambunctious waves tossed the arm of the record player, ruining the precious recordings.

Instead, an aging piano, bolted to the floor in the dining room, tinkled a honky-tonk ballad Jack remembered from back home. His mother must be playing. She only did that when she’d had a few drinks, professing to be scared of performing in public. Jack could hear his mother laughing as she missed a yellowed key or two. This was the first time she’d played since they left Fort Lee Virginia, deployed to an Army base in Izmir, Turkey. The move had afforded them a nice house, himself a seat at the American School in Izmir, and the difference in the standard of living between Virginia and Izmir meant that his Grandmother, who’d declined to come on the boat, could stay home and oversee the rest of their house staff. His Aya came along instead, certain she and Jack would have a fine adventure in Ephesus.

As the ship lurched abruptly to starboard, Jack carefully climbed out of his box bed, built so that he couldn’t roll out accidentally. They were standard issue on the luxury boat. He already had a large bruise, misjudging the sideboards and catching his inner thigh when he first leapt into bed that night. Now he gave it plenty of room as he clambered over, then tiptoed across his floor. He put on his robe and belted it tightly. He took Bullet’s leash from the hook, and wrapped it just like the belt of the robe around his waist. The port-wine colored carpet with its mysterious flowers and swirls muffled his footsteps as he tiptoed across the room.

He cracked the door slightly, just to see if anyone was in the hallway, and quickly shut it again as a crew member hurried past. Waiting a few minutes, he tried again, this time seeing only the emptiness of a dark sky, and rain close by in the slanted light of the lantern along the gangway. Jack flattened himself against the wall, squinted against the rain lashing his face, and inched along under the window to his parent’s stateroom. He sighed as he passed the open door without incident. He could smell his father’s cherry pipe tobacco, which he knew was smoldering in an intricate ivory pipe with a face carved on it. His father brought it out for vacations, usually preferring his richly burled walnut pipe for everyday. Peering inside as he passed, he spotted his mother’s pumps lying on their sides on the carpet, as she touched the foot pedals on the ancient upright with her stocking feet. Looking down at his own feet, now cold and wet, he wished he’d remembered his slippers. Jack breathed deeply of the scent of pipe tobacco, of gin, beer,

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and cigarettes. His heart beat wildly with fear, in case an adult would look his way as he crossed past the open doorway. No one did.

Just beyond the dining room was a corner, and when he turned it, there stood the doorway to the stairs leading down to the hold. Now that he was outside, Bullet’s howls and scratching seemed even louder, and Jack hurried down the steps to reach him, slipping a little at the bottom where a small puddle of water had gathered. The lantern that lit the passage from the top of the stair well swung wildly on its hook, causing shadows to dance eerily along the walls of the staircase. Very little of its light reached down to the lower level.

The ship lurched again, finding more play in the waves now they were in open water. The movement dumped jack on his behind into the puddle, and he picked the sodden pajama bottoms away from his legs as he stood. “Ugh,” he said, forgetting to be quiet. The water made a dark stain on one leg, and on the right sleeve of his robe. The movement of the ship began to scare him, and he thought of poor Bullet, still howling from behind the door the length of the long hallway. He couldn’t afford to be scared, though. What would Bullet do without him?

Jack thought of himself as a brave Jason, rushing in with his Argonauts to save the Golden Fleece. In his mind he conjured a wide blue sash, a scimitar, and floppy sailor’s slops, mentally tying a rakish red bandana around his upper arm, and in his imagination adding a dagger between his teeth. He supposed Bullet, with his long Collie’s snout and Irish Setter’s tawny coat, could be the Golden Fleece. Or maybe a monster. For sure when they reached Ephesus tomorrow morning, he would pretend to ride Bullet in to the ruined city like Alexander did on his elephant. Bullet wouldn’t mind.

Slipping silently along the floor, he passed his Aya’s room, where he could hear her muttering quietly under her breath, something she always did when she was mad. No wonder, with Bullet making all that noise just a few doors down. “Aya Anna!” Jack knocked on the door and whispered again, “Aya Anna! It’s alright. I’ll take him upstairs.

No one will see until tomorrow.”

“I will help you,” Anna said, opening the door and lurching into the hallway.

Together, they staggered towards the door of the hold. Anna’s thick dressing gown flapped madly around her skinny calves in the wind off the sea. Her embroidered nightslippers gave little traction on the slick wet wood of the hallway. When the boat plunged into a trough, she fell to the floor with a cry. Bullet stopped crying for a moment and Jack knew he was listening. The pause lasted a few seconds before Bullet began to whine and bark again, clawing in a frenzy at the door of the hold.

“Anna, go back to your bunk. I’ll be okay. Honest,” whispered Jack, helping Anna to stand. Gratefully, the woman clutched the wall and inched towards her room.

“You get to him quick, Mr. Jack,” she whispered fiercely. “He wake everyone, and they will be angry. That poor, poor animal. ” “I will,” Jack vowed, and then turned back to the end of the darkened hallway as Anna closed the door to her small room, shutting the gleam of her bed lamp off from Jack’s sight. He blinked for a few minutes, to adjust his eyes..

The ship lurched again, and the tinkle of smashing glass sounded from upstairs, and then laughter. When the ship lurched, Jack abruptly sat down, this time forceful enough to smart. Instead of standing again, he inched his way on his bottom along to the door of the cargo hold. Slowly, he reached out his hand, whispering endearments to the

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dog on the other side. Bullet quieted. He knew his master’s voice. “It’s Ok fella,” Jack cooed to the dog now on the other side of the door. “We’ll get you out in a second, you just see. And then you can come up topside with me.” His hand felt for and found the brass lever, and slowly he pulled the mechanism down towards to floor and pushed inwards, cracking the door open.

Instantly he was slammed backwards by a joyful Bullet, who wagged his shaggy Collie tail and licked Jack’s face repeatedly, prancing in the hallway. For a moment, joyful childish laughter rang out, before Jack smacked his hand over his mouth, remembering to be quiet. Anna cracked open her door, and a loud “Sshhhhhh” issued forth. Bullet’s enthusiasm was not to be shushed by the Aya, however. Four feet left the floor as he leapt down to her door to nose enthusiastically at her hand. jack grinned, feeling much better now that he had liberated his friend.

Jack slipped down the hallway, and caught Bullet by the collar as the dog leapt towards Anna’s face. The wiggling dog made it hard for jack to unwind the leash and attach it to the collar. Jack hugged the dog tightly, glad his friend was alright. He struggled to his feet, and pulled Bullet along the hallway towards the light at the top of the stairs. “Good Night, Anna.”

“Good night, Mister Jack. I am so happy he can be quiet now. Maybe we’ll all get some sleep. You Keep him quiet now!”

“I will.”

“And make him sleep on the floor. No Dogs on the bed!”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Jack started up the stairway, which was still lit by the swinging lantern. Bullet seemed reluctant to go up the stairs, and stopped halfway along. “Bullet, c’mon.” The dog stopped and refused to go any further. Jack tugged at the leash and then at the collar, but Bullet would not budge. In fact, he began to growl. Just as Jack prepared to push the dog from behind, he noticed that most of the light in the stairwell was gone. Jack looked over his shoulder. At the top of the stairs, a large shadow blocked most of the light, the figure of a man standing with his hands on his hips.

“Just what do we have here?” The Turk-accented English was spoken carefully.

Jack recognized the voice of the Captain. He was almost a little afraid of the captain, not quite sure of him. Bullet stopped growling, but wasn’t quite acting his usual friendly self either.

“I’m just walking my dog, sir.” Jack stood straighter on the stairs below the Captain. “I think maybe he should sleep with me, or else he’ll wake all the guests.”

“I suppose he doesn’t like the weather?” The Captain spoke softly, menacingly, and Jack shivered.

“No Sir,” he said. Being with Bullet, Jack felt much braver. "You can’t keep him down there though. He’s keeping everyone awake. Would you throw your best friend in the luggage room when the sea is rough? It’s not a nice thing to do!” jack was beginning to feel indignant on Bullet's behalf.

“Well, then I suppose we’d better do something about it.”

The Captain swooped down the stairs and plucked eight year old Jack up with hardly any effort at all, and Jack gasped in surprise to find himself face down over the captain’s back. The leash was snatched from his hand, and before he could even catch his breath, the Captain swiftly jogged up the rest of the stair and down the passage to

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Jack’s room. Jack found himself standing outside his stateroom door, Bullet’s leash thrust again into his hands. Surprised, jack could only stand there, wondering how the Captain had managed the trip so swiftly, without stumbling or banging against the walls. jack was so surprised, he forgot to be afraid.

“Here you go, young Sir,” the Captain said. “Put some papers down for tonight.

We wouldn’t want the dog to be swept overboard doing his business.’

“N-No, Sir,” Jack stammered.

“You’d better let him sleep in your box bed, too.”

“Oh! My mother won’t let him get in bed!”

“But how else will he be kept quiet? You tell your mother it is Captains orders.”

“Yes, Sir.” Jack turned the knob and opened the door to his room.

“One more thing,” the Captain said, laying his palm on Jack’s shoulder. “Do not wander out again at night, Jack. With a sea this choppy, you or Bullet could get lost overboard and we would never know. You have a duty to keep Bullet quiet and happy and safe. Now you see to it.”

Jacked looked up at the Captain, looked at the earring, at the gold tooth, and then looked the Captain right in the eye. “Yes, Sir, and thank you, Sir, for helping us.” As the captain turned, jack took a deep breath. “Are we going to be safe, Sir? I mean, this is a terrible storm.”

The Captain looked at Jack for a moment. “Do you think I would risk us all in a storm if I weren’t certain we would be fine?”

“Well, no, Sir. But Maybe it’s worse than anyone thought. Or maybe we’ll hit some rocks or something.”

“Nonsense! Let me tell you something, young man.” The Captain leaned forward and turned his head to the light so that jack could see, quite clearly, the one tiny gold loop in his ear. “Do you see this?”

“Yes, Sir.” “This loop is from my younger days when I was quite foolish. Back then I went to sea when I was just twelve years old, my mother having too many mouths to feed, and not enough to feed them.” Jack shivered, thinking of himself alone on a large ship. The Captain continued, “Only certain ships will take an underage lad, you see. They aren’t exactly legal, or concerned with who might own certain valuable items. If you catch my meaning.” Jack nodded. “My first storm at sea was a terrible big storm. I thought for sure I would lose my breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once. And worse, I had to climb the rigging to look for land, to avoid it while the storm blew, and so that we could put in for repairs afterwards.”

“Nowadays, I prefer to use a quite motoring cruiser for short trips. But you see, I am still a part of the sea-faring tradition, so I will make a you bargain, just like my Captain did all those years ago. When you survive this, your first storm at sea, I will give to you what was given to me after my first storm.”

“What was that, Sir?” “Oh No! First you must survive the storm, Then, you’ll know. no one in your room gets lost overboard, no one gets hurt from stumbling about. Do we have a bargain?”

The Captain put out his hand for Jack, and after a moment, Jack shook it. Then, the Captain offered his hand to Bullet, who offered a hasty paw to shake.

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“Now, young Sir, inside you get with your fine animal. Put on some dry Pajamas.

And get into bed with your dog. He will keep you warm and dry. Just the thing for a stormy night at Sea. Good night to you, Jack, and you too, Bullet.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Jack offered over his shoulder as he stepped into his room.

“Good Night!”

In the morning Anna came in to the room quietly so as not to wake her charge.

She stopped and looked down fondly at the boy, curled in a tight ball in one half of the box bed, a bundle of shaggy gold taking up the other. Anna ran her hand across Bullet’s fur, and he picked up his nose, opened one eye. Not a spare inch of space around them showed anywhere between the side boards for either of the two on the bunk. Bullet thumped his tail twice, and lay his head back down alongside Jack’s spine.

Anna selected clothes from Jack’s case, and lay them across the chair, confident now that they would stay put in the calm of the morning. She opened the curtains over the tiny window, letting in the bright sun. The sun lit a small card, lying in a saucer on the table next to Jacks bed. In Arabic, the Script said “To Jack, a gift from a true Sailor.”

Underneath it, in the saucer, lay a small gold loop, just big enough to circle her pinky finger, and was split in one place. An earring.

Anna crossed to the bed, and gently shook Jack’s shoulder. “Come on, Mister Jack. It is time to wake up. You adventure is waiting for you.”

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