Rind Issue 14

Rind Literary Magazine Issue 14

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Rind Literary Magazine Issue 14 MARCH 2021

rindliterarymagazine.com

All Works © Respective Authors, 2021

Cover Art By: Melani ciarrocchi

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Editor in Chief: Dylan gascon

Fiction Editors: Johnathan Etchart Jenny Lin Melinda Smith Stephen williams Shaymaa Mahmoud

Nonfiction Editors: Collette Curran Owen Torres William Ellars Anastasia Zamora

Poetry Editors: Shaymaa Mahmoud Sean hisaka Lisa Tate

Blog Manager: Dylan Gascon

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Contents Acknowledgements

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Contributors

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Poetry: The kid on the corner/ john grey

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To a snail/ mark jackley

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Fill you in/ fred pollack

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Fiction: glimpses/ terry sanville

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birdhouses/ David obuchowski

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non-fiction: cigarettes/ katrina monet

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cross beams/ katrina monet

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sal’s diner/ susan waters

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Acknowledgements Thank you to all of our contributors, past and present, for helping us get this thing moving. Thank you to the creative writing faculty of the University of California-Riverside, Mount San Antonio College, Rio Hondo College and Riverside Community College for your continued support of this magazine.

Rind is on the look out for original artwork and photography for our upcoming issues. If you or someone you know might be interested in contributing, send us an inquiry for more details.

Please support the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival; find them at www.sgvlitfest.com. We’ll be there, and so should you.

Check out our listing on Duotrope. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter. Regular updates on RLM and other fun and interesting things can be found at our affiliated blog site: www.thegrovebyrind.wordpress.com. If you would like to contribute to Rind, send your manuscript to rindliterarymagazine@gmail.com.

Cheers!

–The Rind Staff

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The Kid on the Corner

By John Grey There’s an earthquake of mood, a collusion of fear and flesh, that unrelenting threat of spiked hair, jumbled red eyes, mouth like torn cloth, body jutting out of a street uniform of leather and studs whose hands, heroin nervous, draw pointless shadow pictures on the wall of a shuttered supermarket, whose expressions chomp down hard on the nervous oxygen between us as I move quickly by the hard grind of incomprehensible words

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spat in my direction, slip down the street trying not to look like an answer to any questions his bogeyman brain might be asking.

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To a Snail

By Mark Jackley

Thanks for the reminder: I was born with everything I need to cross the garden, a soul and a home for it

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Mission Beach, San Diego, California

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Glimpses

by Terry Sanville Billy pushed the dust mop across the checkerboard floor tiles, near the lunch counter where the sales girls sipped their afternoon coffees and pasted their chewing gum to the counter’s underside. They probably think nobody notices. Billy noticed, since he had to scrape it off.

At ten minutes to closing, the Woolworth’s five-and-dime had emptied, the popcorn machine turned off, the Spanish peanut roaster cooling. Myra, the floor manager, counted the cash drawer and closed out the last register while humming to the sound of The First Noel playing in the background.

From the photo booth in the corner came a loud moan then a giggle. Myra looked up from her counting and glared at Billy.

“Get them outta there, will ya,” she ordered.

“Really?” Billy muttered.

“Yes, really. I ain’t stayin’ late just so some kids can get all lovey-dovey in my photo booth.”

“All right, all right. I should get paid extra for this.”

Billy crept toward the wood-sided booth with its curved corners, its felt curtain pulled shut, hiding everything from the knees up. He leaned his mop against a glass case filled with porcelain knickknacks. Bending over, he stared at the two sets of legs: the boy sat on the stool with his feet pointing outward; the girl’s feet rested on top of his, her legs flexing.

Billy waved at Myra and thrust his hips forward and backward, putting Elvis Presley’s scandalous stage antics to shame.

Myra grinned. “I don’ care what the hell they’re doing. Just get ’em out.”

He stepped forward and knocked on the doorframe. “Hey guys, we’re closing. You’ve got to…got to finish up.”

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The couple quieted for a few moments before the girl broke into giggles. A rustle of her dress, the slide of a zipper and the boy pulled the curtain back, red-faced, not looking at Billy. Hand-inhand, they hurried from the store.

“I think you saved her from getting knocked up,” Myra called and laughed.

Billy nodded. While only six months out of high school, he’d worked at Woolworth’s for three years and had seen plenty of hanky-panky going on in the photo booth. Discarded snapshots littered its floor. The last couple had left their prints behind, a series of four poses, all of them a tease. The brunette girl with big boobs revealed just enough to excite any boy.

He collected all the discarded images and dumped them into the paper bag he kept in his locker in the storeroom. He laid his clip-on tie on the shelf, tossed his apron into the laundry bin and rejoined Myra at the cash register.

“Are you closing again tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yeah, should be one crazy Friday. Say, why don’t ya wait for me and we’ll go get somethin’ to eat, my treat.” She drew herself up to her full height, her figure impressive even covered by the apron. Her grin added parentheses to her mouth.

“Thanks, but I got stuff to do.”

“Stuff. What stuff? You live in a crappy room at the Alexandrian. What grand plans can you be cookin’ up in that dump?” She glared at him with dark eyes bordered by squint lines.

“How about tomorrow night, Myra? We can maybe, ya know, catch a movie.”

“Now you’re just bein’ kind to an old broad.” Her face flushed.

But Billy could tell she felt pleased. “So, I’ll see ya tomorrow…and it’s a date.”

He clutched the paper bag and pushed through the heavy glass doors onto the deserted sidewalk. The boulevard seemed quiet, even though the holiday season normally attracted loads of window shoppers. The tall Christmas trees with their festive lights marched up and down the 11

center of Santa Barbara’s State Street. They seemed forlorn in the cold night wind.

He moved swiftly past brightly-lit display windows toward Lower State with its pawnshops, billiard parlors, bars, liquor stores, and fleabag hotels. At the Alexandrian, he entered through Spanish arches, nodded at the already-drunk night clerk, and climbed the stairs to his fifth floor room. Once inside, he snapped on the radio. A station played the latest from Chubby Checker, Etta James, and the Ventures. Billy lit a Kool and sucked in menthol smoke. Maybe I should have gone out with Myra. I hate eating alone and I don’t feel like working.

He silenced the radio, clicked on the television and adjusted its rabbit ears, stared at James Arness in a fuzzy rerun of Gunsmoke. From his tiny refrigerator he grabbed a soda and the remains of a Sara Lee and sat on the ratty sofa bed, forking cheesecake into his mouth. I’ll go out later, but for now I gotta work.

He turned off the TV’s sound and watched the actors pantomime their roles. In his mind, Billy made up dialog for the characters, which made him laugh.

“Why Miss Kitty, you look so fetching tonight.”

“Well why don’ ya do something with it. I been waiting around for years for you to take me for a ride on that big…big horse of yours.”

“Now, Miss Kitty, you know I’m a upstanding pillar of Dodge City.”

“Matt, I’m more interested in that pillar between your legs. Now you gonna come upstairs with me or not?”

“Nah, it’ll just give the Longbranch a bad name.”

“Marshall Dillon, you’re such a prude.”

Billy smiled and turned off the TV. He could go all night, writing lines for any number of

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characters, good practice for his own stories. He leaned back and closed his eyes. But the pulsating light from the hotel sign across the boulevard burned through his eyelids.

Groaning, he moved to his closet. From its shelf he took down a shoebox, returned to the sofa and opened it. Discarded images of people from Woolworth’s photo booth stared back. He emptied that day’s collection from the bag into the box. The girl with the big boobs gazed at him, with her shy boyfriend barely caught by the camera in one of the frames.

Billy pulled his black journal from a bookshelf then plucked the couple’s photo from the unorganized pile. With scotch tape, he pasted it onto a blank page. He moved to the window, opened it and sat on the sill, smoking, staring down State Street toward Stern’s Wharf and the black Pacific.

After a few minutes he began to write, and didn’t stop until all the traffic lights on the boulevard blinked amber. *** At seven the next morning, the telephone on his nightstand rang nine times before going quiet. Billy dragged himself from bed, picked up the receiver, asked the day clerk for an outside line, then dialed.

After only one ring his mother answered. “Are you up? Did you get enough sleep?

You’re working today, aren’t you? You don’t want to be late.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I still don’t like you living in that flophouse…and the food from the diner is terrible.

Have you thought any more about coming home?”

“I haven’t changed my mind, Mom. This is what I got to do.”

“Got to do? That’s ridiculous. You’ve been accepted by three wonderful Universities.

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Your father and I are more than willing to pay and all you want to do is waste your time–” “Enough, Mom. I got to get ready. Thanks for the wakeup call.”

He hung up before hearing her response. But he knew her speech by heart, like the opening narration to the TV program Dragnet when “…only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”

Walking up State Street toward Woolworth’s, he passed the Copper Coffee Pot. Myra gave a holler and waved him to her window table. She had curled her auburn hair and wore crimson lipstick, eyeliner, and makeup that hid the dark circles under her eyes.

“You look nice,” Billy said. He turned the upside-down coffee cup over. A waitress filled it immediately. Billy took a gulp then fanned his mouth.

“You look worried,” Myra said. “What’s wrong, your Mama call again?”

“Yeah, every morning like clockwork.”

“I can’t really blame her…a young fella like you having his morning cup of joe with the likes of me.” She laughed and stared into his eyes, as if waiting for the denial and objection.

Billy grinned. “It’s not you. It’s the winos and whores that are my neighbors. She’s afraid I’m gonna wake up some morning with my throat slit.”

“There’s no wakin’ up from that.” Myra laid her fork down, her plate smeared yellow from the eggs-over-easy she always gobbled before work.

“Do ya know what movie you wanna see?” she asked.

Billy pushed his chair back. “I was thinking about Spartacus. It has lots of action and I know you like Kirk Douglas. It’s playing at the Granada and we could make the 7 o’clock show.”

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“That sounds great. Gives me somethin’ to look forward to. But what do you look forward to, Billy? You’re such a…a strange beanpole of a boy, still can’t figure you out.”

“Not much to figure. I’m drinking burnt coffee, stocking shelves and sweeping up for a buck twenty-five an hour.”

Myra shook her head. “Yeah, but you seem too smart to settle for that.”

“Now you’re sounding like my Mother.”

Myra glared at him. “I don’ wanna be your Mother. But if we’re to be friends, you…you gotta talk to me. What the hell are you doin’?”

“You know I want to be a writer, write stories for the magazines.”

“You mean like made-up stuff?”

“Yes, but I also like real stories. I could maybe become a stringer for the News Press, write human interest pieces, then novels, like Hemingway did.”

“Don’t they teach that stuff in college?”

“They teach English and journalism. But from what I can tell, good writers borrow pieces from what they’ve experienced. I’ve experienced squat, and I won’t get that in school. I’m tired of going to classes…just want to live on my own for awhile and write what I want.”

“So workin’ in a five-and-dime is gonna give you that? Am I one of your experiences?”

Billy ducked his head, his face warming. “You’re probably the best part.”

It was Myra’s turn to blush. She glanced at her watch. “Damn, the store opens in twenty.

We’ve gotta haul ass or get chewed out by Mr. Landry.”

“We can talk some more after the movie tonight.” He laid a hand on Myra’s.

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She pulled hers away, but slowly. “You’re such a lost boy, Billy.”

“A lot of that’s going around…people just don’t realize it.”

“Huh.” *** After the movie, they piled into her ancient Studebaker and drove to the Jolly Tiger on Chapala Street. Myra had seemed excited all day, even though the Christmas shopping crowds had kept Woolworth’s employees running.

They sat in a tuck-and-roll upholstered booth and watched the parade of cars filled with high schoolers fly up Chapala Street before turning onto Victoria then cruising down State, a circuit they’d repeat for hours.

“Do ya wish you were out there with ’em?” Myra asked in between bites of cherry pie ala mode.

“Nah, it’s a waste of time and gas.”

“You never tried picking up chicks on State?”

Billy smiled. “They travel in packs, and besides, Petersen’s Drive-in has all the action.

I’m just too…too shy to go there…even if I had a car.”

“Yeah, I can see that. So…so what do you do with all those pictures you take from the photo booth?”

“I stare at them a lot, then–” “That sounds creepy. Why do you–” “Let me finish. I stare at them, let my mind imagine their lives, their stories, then I write it down, whatever comes into my head.”

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“You’ve never showed me any of your stories.”

“I’ve never shown anyone. I keep them in a journal in my room.”

“Well, why doncha show me…tonight.” Myra smiled, reached across the table and touched Billy’s cheek.

“I…I guess we can do that. Do you really want to read my stuff?”

“Sure, Billy, sure. And I’m sure those fine folks at the Alexandrian won’t mind you bringing a lady friend up to your room.”

Billy grinned. “Not at that place.”

Myra frowned and changed the subject. “Is that all you want, tiny little pictures of kids foolin’ around, or sailors on shore leave?”

“Nah. If I want to be some kind of reporter I need to get my own camera. I’ve been saving up, but it’s slow going.”

“Tell you what, I’ve got this old Rolleiflex that my ex-husband left behind when he escaped my clutches. He brought it home from Germany after the war. I never use the thing, don’t even know how.”

“Jeez, that would be great.”

“Will you take some pictures of me?”

“Sure, Myra, sure. And I’d…I’d love to write your story.”

“It’s more like a novel, kid. But thanks for the offer.”

Myra parked the Studebaker on a side street and they entered the Alexandrian through its front arches. The night clerk sat with his head tilted back, snoring. They hurried across the carpeted lobby and climbed the stairs, the sound of Myra’s heels echoing in the stairwell.

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The hotel smelled of body odor, rotting food, and worse. Most of the lights had been busted out. Myra clamped onto Billy’s arm as they moved quickly through the darkness. At the fifth floor landing they paused to catch their breath then turned left down the hall. Billy fumbled with his keys and the lock, then pushed inside his room.

“Sorry about the mess.”

“Hey, my ex was a slob. But I loved ’im anyway...until he traded me in on a younger model.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. We had some good times in the beginning…but you don’t want to hear about that.”

“A story for another time?”

“Sure. So show me this journal of yours.” Myra collected the newspapers off the sofa and flounced onto its cushions. “I don’ suppose you got anything to drink?”

“I’ve got Coca Cola. I can go ask my neighbor for a bottle. She’s pretty accommodating.”

“I’ll bet she is. I’ve gotta pint in my purse. Just bring the Coke and some ice.”

They sat on the sofa sipping highballs. Billy paged through his journal and read short excerpts.

“Oh yeah, I remember that couple,” Myra said and pointed. “That broad gave me a hard time at the register, wanted new bills for change, not dirty old ones.”

Billy made a note in his journal. “Thanks for the tidbit. Dirty cash can be a strong symbol for–” “Yeah, I think your neighbor friend knows all about it.”

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From next door came various thumps and moans that Billy tried to ignore; Myra seemed to think they were funny. But as she finished her drink, then another, she started to talk about her life, as if confessing to Father O’Hara, the parish priest that Billy had avoided for the past year.

Billy scribbled notes in his journal.

“I left Omaha at sixteen. My boyfriend had knocked me up and my parents didn’t want me around…ya know those Bible-thumping types. I lost the kid anyway…and the docs said I couldn’t have any more. Spent the next months in LA…modeling.”

“Modeling?”

“Well, that’s what they told me at first. But after a year of partying and going to bed with strangers I wised up. By then I had the biggest damn monkey on my back.”

“Monkey?”

“Heroin, you dope. Don’tcha know anything?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Maybe I can teach ya somethin’.”

Myra leaned over and slid her lips onto Billy’s and held them there, mouth open, tongue exploring. She caressed his pale cheeks. Billy held his breath and closed his eyes. Now this is real, this is what everybody talks about.

They kept drinking, talking, and kissing. Sometime during the night, they unfolded the sofa bed undressed and slipped between the wrinkled sheets. They made love, slowly, gently, as if respecting her hard, loveless years and his youthful ignorance. When Billy’s mother phoned the next morning, he woke with a start, alone in an empty bed, his head pounding. He grabbed his journal and stared at the almost indecipherable scrawl, the seed of a story growing in his boozeaddled brain. ***

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They became part of Woolworth’s gossip mill. The stock boys flashed Billy broad grins and wanted to know details. The women looked at him differently. He didn’t understand, had never been close to any of the girls in his class, much less to a mature woman in her early forties.

He felt like he could tell Myra anything. And she responded with stories that made Billy feel, for

the first time, like an adult who could be trusted.

“I live over on the West Side,” she told him over morning coffee at the cafe, “in a little

bungalow off Chino Street.”

“Maybe we could, you know, go to your place after work.”

Myra shook her head. “I rent a room from a Mexican family. They’ve got three kids and need the money. But they don’t want any sleepovers.”

“Well why don’t you stay at my place?”

“Are you kiddin’? That room’s barely big enough for you. Besides, waking up and seeing me first thing in the mornin’ could…could scare ya off.”

“What are you talking about? You’re beautiful.”

“Thanks, but all of this takes more effort than you know.” She waved her hands over her face and down her front.”

“So it’s an illusion?”

“Most folks only show their good sides. You really have to…to love somebody to accept the bad stuff.”

Billy scribbled a note on the napkin, something to add to her story.

Myra sighed. “I may be rough around the edges, but I know about people, ’specially

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the lonely ones. They can pull at your heart strings, or smother you when their self-pity explodes in your face.”

Billy sipped his coffee and thought about himself as one of those lonely souls. *** On a blown-out Sunday afternoon in March, Myra met Billy outside the Alexandrian and they walked down State Street toward East Beach and the pier. At the foot of Stern’s Wharf they stopped to buy a bag of popcorn from Everett, the Popcorn Man. The pinwheels fastened to the top of his ancient truck spun madly and rattled in the breeze.

On a nearby bench a bearded man sat on yellowed newspapers, tossing birdseed to a flock of cooing pigeons at his feet. He wore an Army field jacket with three stripes on its shoulder. A battered felt hat held down scraggly hair that hung below his collar. Billy reached for his camera that he now carried everywhere, and moved forward. The man scrubbed at his face with filthy hands.

“Do you mind if I take your picture?” Billy asked while trying to focus the Rolleiflex and set the shutter speed and f-stop.

“Beat it, kid,” the man muttered, “and take your mother with you.”

Myra stepped toward the man. “Hey bud, who the hell do you think you’re–” Billy put a hand on her shoulder. “So you were in the Army?”

“What’s it to ya.”

“My father was with the 82 nd Airborne in Sicily during World War II.” “Yeah, well I’m fuckin’ happy for ’im. Nobody remembers Korea.”

“So what are you doing out here?”

“What’s it look like…feedin’ the damn birds.”

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“No, I mean, out here?” Billy waved his arm at the sea, the beach, and the hoards of Sunday strollers.

“I’m jus’ livin’ the good life while sleepin’ in the jungle.”

“Jungle? What’s that about?” Billy stared down into the camera’s viewfinder held at waist level and moved around the tramp, snapping shots from various angles.

“You don’ know shit, kid. The jungle, man, it’s where I’ve been livin’.” The tramp stared right through him with a far-away, withdrawn gaze.

“Come on, Billy.” Myra tugged at his arm. “You’ve got enough for a story.”

Billy stumbled over the rough planks as she pulled him along the boardwalk toward the Harbor Restaurant at the end of the pier. He repacked his camera in its carrying case and they walked hand-in-hand, silent, his mind racing. A litany of questions bounced around his brain. He turned and searched for the tramp. But the man had already melted into the crowd.

“Do you know what that jungle thing is all about?” he asked Myra.

“Yeah. When I first came to town I stayed there for a few nights. It’s a hobo camp along the railroad near East Beach.” She pointed along the palm-lined boulevard. “It’s just a few shacks. I hear they’ve built showers and toilets.”

“You lived there?”

“Yeah. I’d ridden a freight up from LA and one of the drifters clued me in. It’s not a place ya wanna stay. People get beat up. A lot of drunks, broken men and a few women…”

“Sounds like it would make a good story. Santa Barbara’s hidden secret.”

“Oh the cops know all about it. They sweep the camp every so often, lookin’ for the dopers and criminals.”

“Can we drive by the place and you can show me where it is?”

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“You’re not thinkin’ about going there, are you?”

“A reporter’s got to follow the story.”

“You’re nuts. You could get hurt. Ya know, dreamin’ up stories while starin’ at photo booth pictures is a lot different than dealin’ with the likes of that guy.”

Billy scowled. “I know, I know, but–” “Some of those folks aren’t nice.”

He smiled. “But you turned out nice, better than nice.”

Myra hooked an arm around his neck, planted a kiss on his lips. “Let’s go back to the beach and find a cool spot where we can do more of this.”

They returned to the shoreline, slid under the pier and made out. But they got so excited that they hustled back to his hotel room for an afternoon of sex that left them sweatcovered and exhausted. As Myra dozed, Billy slipped from bed and retrieved his journal, sat naked on the windowsill and scribbled ideas onto the blank pages, trying to empty his mind of all the possibilities about the Korean War vet and his jungle home. *** The heat hit Santa Barbara hard in July. Woolworth’s lunch counter did a brisk business selling snow cones to kids roaming State Street in their bathing suits, on their way to the beach and the municipal pool, The Plunge. Myra and Billy took their lunch break together, and walked the boulevard, window-shopping, talking about crazy customers, stockroom romances, plans for their day off.

Myra wore a thin summer dress, its neckline showing cleavage that attracted stares from Navy sailors on leave from the cruiser anchored offshore. On their return trip to Woolworth’s, Billy held Myra close, an arm wrapped around her slender waist. He glanced 23

across the street and froze. His parents stood on the steps leading into the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. They didn’t look happy.

“Shit,” Billy muttered.

“What’s wrong, hon?”

“My folks are staring at us from across the street.”

Myra started to twist around.

“Don’t look, don’t look.”

“Why not? They know about us, don’t they?”

“Not exactly.”

“What the hell’s that supposed ta mean?”

“All right, no, I haven’t told them. But my Mother suspects. Come on, let’s get inside.”

In the privacy of the stockroom they donned their aprons, not speaking. Finally, Billy sucked in a deep breath.

“I…I….”

“What is it Billy, you ashamed of your girlfriend? Still tied to Mama’s apron strings?”

“God no. But…but this is new to me. I know they’ll get all weird and the longer things have gone on, the harder it is to tell them.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. If I was in your spot, I’d probably do the same, or maybe get the hell outta Dodge.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I…I love you.”

Myra came into his arms. “That’s so sweet. I love you too, but I don’t know where this is goin’.”

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“What’s going?”

“Us, you idiot.” She kissed him just as Mr. Landry pushed through the swinging door.

“Alright kids, save that for after work. Myra, when you’re back from lunch help at the registers. Stay there until they clear then show the new girl the ropes.”

“Yes, sir.”

The store manager left. Myra and Billy sat on the bench next to the time clock and the posters that explained the minimum wage laws. Their silence became excruciating. Finally, Myra stood and turned to stare at Billy.

“Look, hon. We’ve gotta talk, but not here, not now. And I can’t do it without a few belts first.”

Billy felt the back of his neck go cold. “Yeah, I get it. You’re going to dump me.”

“We’ll talk after work.” She stuck her card into the time clock then hurried out into the loud world of afternoon Woolworth’s shoppers.

Billy sat staring at the clock. Maybe it’s time…but we’re so good together…and all of this seems useless without her. She is the story.

On the bench next to him lay a fresh copy of the News Press. Billy picked it up and paged through the sections, searching for the prize. A month before he had dropped off an article with photographs at the newsroom, neatly hand written, five thousand words, that featured the plight of the Korean War veteran. Myra had given him a tour of what the local hobos called “Jungleville”, introduced him to John Craver, its mayor, an old guy who had lived there for decades. Billy had interviewed the dozen or so transients who lived in

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shanties, took six rolls of photos and spent nights writing and rewriting his human interest story while Myra drank rum and cokes and watched TV. Billy continued his paging until coming to the end of the newspaper’s local section. He froze. There were his photographs, his words. And they’d even given him a byline! The article looked about half as long as what he’d submitted. He didn’t care…he was published.

He wanted to run to Myra and show her, to take her in his arms and thank her for everything.

But he held out. When they climbed into her car after work, he unfolded the paper on his lap.

Myra stared at the article. “Wow, is that yours? That’s that so damn fantastic…and they used your name.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Myra.”

“Oh yes you could. I just gave ya a shove.”

“You can give me more than that.”

He leaned over and planted a wet kiss on her lips.

“Hey, hey, wait till we get to your place. And I gotta stop at the liquor store. We need some booze to celebrate.” She seemed relieved that they would have something to talk about besides their uncertain future.

Billy waited in the car while Myra bought the booze. The sun hung two inches above the horizon, casting a golden glow over Santa Barbara. Crowds mobbed the evening cafés and restaurants and happy hours at the bars were well underway. Once at the hotel they hurried from the car and almost skipped across the lobby. The night clerk turned away from his muttering TV and grinned.

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“Saw your article in the paper. Good goin’, kid.”

Billy smiled and wondered if this is what it would be like if he became a writer. Climbing the stairs, he had to stop several times to let Myra catch up.

“Slow the hell down, will ya. I’ve been runnin’ all day and my dogs are barkin’ loud.”

“I feel like barking loud.”

They moved to his door and he keyed the lock and let Myra enter. She opened the window wide to air the place out, mixed them highballs, then slumped onto the sofa.

“You’re on your way, kid, on your way.”

Billy sipped his drink and read over the edited article. “Yeah, they ditched a whole bunch of background stuff but kept the interview quotes from the hobos. And they tightened it up. It reads really smooth.”

“Congrats, Billy. Ya got your name up in lights.” Myra took a deep gulp of her drink and laid her head back. “But we still gotta talk…about us.”

“I know, I know, I just don’t–” With a splintering crash, the hotel room door flew open. Myra screamed. They jumped up from the sofa. A scruffy figure stood in the opening, felt hat pulled down over his eyes, the Army field jacket opened to expose a bare beer gut. The Korean War vet staggered into the room.

“I’ve been waitin’ for ya, mother fucker.”

Billy backed away. “What do you want? You need to leave.”

“What I want is to slit your fuckin’ throat. That’ll shut your yap. Who told you to write that… that damn story ’bout me?”

The drifter edged closer to Billy, reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a shiv, a

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sharpened piece of metal with one end taped over to form its handle. Myra backed against the sidewall, her eyes huge and staring, but her mouth drawn into a tight line. The drifter took another step and stopped, swaying, his mouth open, eyes trying to focus.

“Why are you so mad?” Billy asked. “That article makes you look like a good guy.”

The hobo seemed to consider Billy’s statement, but continued to shuffle toward him.

Billy felt the window frame at his back, the cool ocean air, heard the sound of laughter drifting up from the crowded sidewalk.

“You think you’re so fuckin’ smart. Did ya ever think that I might not want my mug pasted in a newspaper for every cop to see?”

“So you’re wanted by the law? You’ve got warrants?”

“You just couldn’t mind your own damn business, couldja?”

“You want to kill me for that?”

“Yeah, pretty fuckin’ crazy, huh?”

The man stood in front of Billy, swaying. His smell filled the room, a mixture of booze, urine, and weeks without a shower. He drew the shiv up in front of his face to inspect the blade, then dropped his knife hand and lunged.

With a yell, Myra slammed into the drifter’s back and pushed, giving him the bum’s rush.

Billy dodged sideways. The drifter hit the opened window; his head took out the upper panel of glass and the wood sash. In a mist of glass fragments, he fell through the opening, screaming, twisting his body, trying to grab onto thin air. He continued to shriek until he landed head first on a Taxi parked at the curb, five floors down.

Billy bent at the waist and vomited. He stared at Myra, her chest rising and falling

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calmly, but her cheeks flushed, eyes blazing.

“You better get outta here before the cops come,” Billy croaked.

She nodded slowly. “I told ya, Billy. This is what the world’s all about. Is this what ya want to write about?”

Before he could answer she grabbed her purse and the bottle and ran from the room. In the distance sirens wailed. The whore from next door peeked around the doorframe. She held a kitchen knife in her hand. The thunder of feet on the stairs filled his head. Billy shut his eyes as Lower State and all its grit closed in. *** William sat at his oak desk and stared at the bookshelves. Outside his two-story home, the red leaves of autumn cast dancing shadows across the carpet in his study. He glanced at the photos of his grown children and their families and smiled. They would visit for Thanksgiving, the grandkids excited about exploring their grandparents’ Vermont farm. Sharon would mother everyone to death.

His recent retirement from teaching had been easy. I’ll finally have a chance to write, to practice what I’ve been preaching all these years.

He’d come east from Santa Barbara, earned advanced degrees in English and journalism from Columbia, worked as an editor for a New York City imprint, wrote two novels that proved moderately successful, and like many, settled into teaching at a small liberal arts college.

But on snowy days when the wind howled and it felt painful to venture outside, he longed for his summer beach town days, and mostly for the fire he once had as a young man, for writing.

After playing editor and teacher for decades, he found it hard to find the joy in it. But he still searched for those gems of ideas among the scree of his life.

He continued to scan the bookshelves, hoping to find some author he admired that would

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provide inspiration, something that would move him forward, challenge him. But nothing reached out. With elbows resting on knees and head in his hands, William stared at the woven images in the Persian rug and let his mind drift.

A mental glimpse of a banker’s box filled with old books and papers came into focus.

Sharon had stored it somewhere in the study for him to inventory and dispose of the junk. He rose and moved across the room and rifled through two cabinets. In the corner closet he found the box, carried it to his desk, and removed its lid. The stench of moldy papers filled his head, the box full of spotted and yellowed typewritten pages: his old college work; failed grant applications for study abroad; drafts of stories that he’d never finished; the start of his autobiography.

But near its bottom he found a black book, a journal of some sort. He opened its cover and gasped. Inside were page after page of faded photo booth pictures, mostly young people dressed in late fifties styles. Below each were scrawled paragraphs from his youth. The memories came flooding back. The last entries in the journal included black-and-white images of a middle-aged woman, wearing ordinary clothes, thick high heels and seamed stockings, but with a figure that would still stop traffic. The scribbled sentences next to her photos were almost illegible after nearly sixty years. But they brought it all back, that stabbing pleasure and pain of first love, the cheststomping ache of first loss.

He lay the journal on his desk and opened his laptop. After creating a new file, he stared at the woman in the photos, squinted his eyes, and began to write. He didn’t stop until all the traffic lights in his memory blinked amber.

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La Jolla Cove San Diego, California

31

Cigarettes

By Katrina Monet I used to quit smoking cigarettes every few months or so.

Today, it’s the thing that I’ve been longing for since the sun broke through the gray February clouds. The news has me under floor boards covered by sacks of cement mix: it’s the barrier I’ve built between myself and every other person I’ve had to grieve.

The wind restrained itself as if it was expecting my arrival and I acquainted the soft cylinder of my deviance and freedom with the fore and middle fingers that it had missed for 12 months now. The flame approached the round opening of brown grassy shavings and my lungs inhaled as if it were their first breath of fresh air. The smoke lingered in the red cave of its memories, rolled off of my tongue, and drifted off of my lips as if I were giving the State of the Union address and the air molecules surrounding me were the American population. I used to greet every summer morning with a cigarette.

As I pull a stale one out of the ashtray in my old SUV on the way to my childhood home, I’m half afraid that I might stumble upon a memory of us or them or him or her (preferred pronouns). What I can say is this; it’s safe here. I can relish

32

the slivers of light that peak through cracks in the wood. Grief is a state we eventually get to and must learn to exist in permanently because it’s constant. Each time I take a drag, on some level, I’m grateful to be brought that much closer to death.

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Cross Beams

By Katrina Monet I collect notebooks, usually on sad and lonely days. I start each one anew and hope that maybe it will change the way I feel.

There are piles of notebooks on my desk, in my closet, in the back seat of my car. Sometimes I think I might rip out the used up pages and weave them into their own mixed up story. One moment we are on the beach laughing. The next moment we are speeding down Interstate 5 back to San Francisco; each word shedding a new layer of awakening.

There are so many things I could say about the taste of the moon or how the last time I slept with a guy well over a year ago. I left his bedroom sobbing. There are always 127 ways things could have been different, but at the end of the day it’s me and it’s not; it’s mine and it’s not mine. It’s all the same.

It’s kind of like a cover band or going to a bar in a college town on Trivia Night. You already know how to play the game and you already know the words to the song, but for some reason the lack of lines or new drag of ink makes it feel safe enough to explore a new way of being even though you haven’t moved from

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that same patch of grass, still staring into space.

The only difference - day to day - when the days spin around on those blades of grass and you can almost taste the bleeding in that final kiss, is that it’s possible to love something so deeply that it changes inconceivable circumstances and it’s more than the sun shining down on you this moment. Here is a new notebook. Here is a new patch of grass. Here is the world turning.

There were so many times I wanted to be close to you but turned away. It was a longing to be alone to find meaning in solitude to fill new pages with nothing while hoping for something all the same. The only meaning I have ever known is in holding you steady enough in my thoughts to feel what it is like to be alive in the world as it keeps turning.

The place inside I go to feel safe is you.

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Mission Beach San Diego, California

36

Birdhouses

By David Obuchowski The A&P let my old man take their broken wooden pallets. Back when I was a kid, I figured they were being generous. Now I realize my father was probably doing them a favor since it kept their dumpster from getting filled up with all that old wood. Anyways, that’s where we’d just come from, the A&P. So my old man could pick up some pallets for his birdhouses.

We were waiting at a red light, when this big old convertible pulled up next to us. The man behind the wheel was dressed a bit like a cowboy with his pressed denim shirt and a bolo tie. He pointed and winked at me like we were old buddies, or something. Hell if I didn’t almost return the gesture, but then I thought maybe this old cowboy is makin’ fun of me. And then I thought how my old man would react if he saw me acting all friendly to some stranger. Or anyone, for that matter. So, instead, I did my thing where I sort of furrowed my eyebrows and gave him a mean stare.

The cowboy’s grin didn’t leave his face, but his eyes changed. They got real serious, if you know what I mean. He looked right into my own stare, and it took all my strength to not just look away, so I blinked instead---the world’s fastest loss in a staring contest. "Think half as hard as the looks you're giving, son, and you might just be alright."

Didn't know what he meant. Hardly heard what he said on account of how low he was talking.

But a man like that didn’t have to speak up. That was plain to see.

I felt about two inches tall, but I mustered everything in me. Dangled my arm out of the passenger side window, and leaned over so my head was out of the cab. "What's that, mister? What’d you say?"

"I said you best be careful who you givin' them hard stares to," the man in the Bonneville said a little louder. Figure his must have been the '68 model. Goddamn, that Bonneville was bigger than

37

the fucking truck. Longer at least. Looked like it anyway.

My old man, right next to me, was gripping the dark blue steering wheel of his '65 Chevy pickup so tightly his knuckles were white. But, for all the attention he was paying me or the stranger next to me, he might as well have been on Mars. He was just staring through the windshield in some kind of daze. Like he was lost in his own little world, no idea of who or what was around him, oblivious to where he was. He got like that a lot. In fact, he was like that most times when he wasn’t working on his birdhouses.

Between us, the pale blue bench seat was all torn up, exposing the yellow foam like a layer of fat beneath its vinyl skin. I picked at some of it nervously as I tried to figure out what to say next.

Finally, I settled on this lie: "I ain't scared of you.” And I do mean it was a lie. Shit, I was scared of damn-near everything and damn-near everyone. Always have been. That's why I was always scowling at everyone. My old man always told me. Don’t look scared. Act tough even if you don’t feel it.

"Real tough kid," the man in Bonneville.

“So what if I am?” I said, and I hoped he chalked up my quivering voice to the rough idle of the truck, only I knew he didn’t.

“Then I guess I wouldn’t want to be the one to get on ya bad side.” He made a clicking sound with his mouth, like he was telling his horse to get going, and he looked away from me and out into the same distance my old man was lost in.

“You got that right,” I said, and then I spit. Not at his car. Not at him. Just down onto the pavement. I mean, shit, I might not be smart, but I sure as hell ain’t stupid. Except for when I am.

“Maybe so. Maybe not. But remember this: tough ain’t how you act. It’s how you do.” He looked back at me, looking deadly serious. And then, worse, he smiled. It was a mean smile.

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Goddamn, was it mean. Ten years later, I still never seen a smile so mean as that. Well, except for one, but I’ll tell you about that later.

But it wasn’t just the smile that got me. It was what he said. Got me then, and still gets me now. It was like he could see right through me. As soon as I started grade school, my old man had never missed a chance to tell me how I needed to act tough if I was ever gonna get any respect. So even back then in elementary school, I’d walk around with a scowl. Didn’t exactly help me make friends, but people left me alone. And when they didn’t, I’d give ‘em a good shove. You want to make someone back off? Just give ‘em a good shove, right in the chest. Most times, they’ll fall over and look all confused, like you broke some kind of unspoken rule.

Breaking rules never really bothered me, spoken or unspoken.

I turned to my old man and asked him, "What's with the light? It's takin' all day."

Nothing. He just sat there, peering through that windshield, staring down Nelson Road, like he was trying to figure something out, like he was seeing something far off on the horizon that had him puzzled. There was nothing out there but Nebraska, and none of the interesting parts. Our town was too far from Omaha to have anything going on, and too close for it to have any of those real big sprawling farms and ranches---the kind that look like they’re straight out of one of them old oilpainted landscapes. There were just a few strip malls, some squat little office buildings that were always for rent, and a whole lot of cheap land mainly used as dinky little fields for growing corn or soybeans.

"Hey. Pop," I said. "Hear me?"

"Huh?" "I said, you hear me?"

"Hear what?"

39

The light turned green, and I looked back out my window, expecting to see that big old Bonneville right there next to us, waiting, growling, like the two of us were gonna run a quarter mile.

It was gone, though; replaced by nothing at all. Someone behind us honked their horn.

That roused my old man. He glared into the rearview like he might crawl right into the reflection. "Fuck you, stranger," he growled.

I turned around, looked over the bedful of broken pallets, and eyed the guy driving the Buick behind us. Gave him the finger, too. "Eat this, stupid!"

His eyes got all big at first, like he was really offended, like I’d really shocked him. Damn, it was just a finger. Wasn’t some other body part. Not that I’d ever have the balls to show someone my privates, no pun intended.

Funny. Not even one minute after I got that bit of wisdom from the Bonneville man, I went ahead and forgot it. Or ignored it. But that’s the thing about good advice. Sometimes, it takes time to realize just how good it is. That’s what the way I am with music, come to think of it. I can hear a song, and in that moment, it might not sound like anything more than background noise, you know?

People hollering about love or heartbreak or being rich or being poor or this, that, or the other damn thing. But, then two days later, I realize I’m humming the damn tune, wishing I could hear it one more time, wishing I paid attention to what that singer was going on about. Trouble is, most of the time I never do hear it again. So I try to keep singing it, only I never get it right, because once I really start trying to concentrate on how it went, or what the lyrics were, I find it slips away, like the way a dream does when you try too hard to remember it.

“Forget it, boy,” my old man said, though I could tell he was proud of me for flipping the bird to the man in the Buick. He pressed the gas pedal, and we got moving. Can’t even remember where we were headed. Then again, where we lived, there wasn’t any place to go, anyways.

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Guess it was Vietnam that did it to him---my old man, I mean. My mom said he was a real joker when he left in ‘70. Year and a half later, he came back with a backful of shrapnel and headful of nightmares. Never told me what it was that he saw. Asked him about the shrapnel once. “Booby trap,” he told me. “Ain’t nothin’ over there but booby traps and rain. Never seen so much rain.

Goddamn, there was a lot of rain.” He was real hung up about the rain. It was the only thing about Vietnam he would talk about. That was it. Just the rain. I quit asking about the war. Hell, I wasn’t looking for no weather report from fifteen years ago, you know?

But whatever it was---the rain, the booby traps, or something else he never bothered to mention---it really scrambled him up good. Most nights, he’d wake up yelling. In fact, my mom told me that when he first came back, he was screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night and my grandma came running in to check on him. He coldcocked her right there in the pitch black with his eyes closed.

“Ain’t his fault,” my mom told me. “And don’t act scared of him. He’ll come around.”

Never did. He and my mom got divorced when I was five. Actually, I can’t say for sure whether or not they even bothered to make the divorce official since something like that costs money, and that was one thing they never had much of.

He moved back in with my grandma. I lived with my mom most of the time. But I saw my father on the weekends. Daytimes. Helped him make his birdhouses. He never tried to sell them. Just donated them to the local thrift store. God knows what they did with them. Probably tossed them in the dumpster, which is kind of funny when you think about how they were made from those old pallets that should have been going directly into the dumpster in the first place. But, anyway, it’s what he did, my old man: made birdhouses I guess most people probably wouldn’t have gone for a birdhouse like the kind my old man made, but I thought they were interesting. None of the angles were square, and god knows if any bird 41

would ever want to live in ‘em, but I thought they looked kind of, I don’t know, different. Special, I mean. With their canted sides and proportions out of whack, they were certainly unique.

But what the hell do I know about birdhouses anyway?

Not much. In fact, I probably wasn’t that much a help to him either. All I’d do is measure and mark up the wood with a big fat pencil.

“That good, Pop?” I’d ask him when I was dumb enough to wonder how he thought I was doing.

“Don’t matter if it’s good, but I’ll tell you if it’s bad,” he’d answer. That is, if he’d answer at all.

Guess you could say he practiced what he preached when it came to being a hard ass.

Which brings me back to that man in the Bonneville. It was only a couple weeks later when I learned how right he’d been. Learned it the hard way, too. Went to the Dairy Queen to get a root beer float. Should’ve been a dollar-ten. That’s what it had been for the last two years. I showed up with exact change: a dime wrapped up in a crumpled-up dollar tucked into the folds of my sweaty palm. I was hot as hell. Thirsty. Hungry, too.

Some kid in front of me was ordering what sounded like one of everything. He glanced back at me kind of embarrassed like he knew he was taking up everyone’s time. I gave him a look that told him to keep his eyes on the ice cream.

When he got done ordering all the sprinkles and peanut butter chips and chocolate sauce, he paid with a five-dollar bill. Five bucks. Might as well have been a hundred for a kid like me.

He got his change and then he stood off to the side waiting for his feast.

“Root beer float,” I said, and handed over the dime wrapped in a buck.

The kid behind the counter took the money, clearly disgusted by how damp it was. Then

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he looked at me kind of annoyed.

“It’s one-twenty,” he said.

“Bull. It’s one-ten.”

“Yeah, well, they raised the price last week. It’s one-twenty.”

“Ah, crud,” I said. “Let it slide. I’ll bring an extra dime next time.”

“I’m not gettin’ fired over a root beer float,” he said, like he was offended that I’d ask him for ten cents.

I walked over to the kid who was still waiting for his extra-fancy sundae. “Hey, kid. Gimme a dime. I know you got it.”

“Sorry,” he said, and he looked down at the floor.

“You’re gonna be sorry if you don’t give me a dime,” I said in my meanest voice.

The kid backed up. He was real skinny. Pale, too. I remember thinking he looked almost sick.

Shit, I damn-near felt bad for him. “No,” he said, stubbornly.

“Gimme a dime,” I said again and then I went to give him a shove to really let him know I meant business. Only, the next thing I know, he’d moved to the side, and in the same motion, he grabbed one of my arms, and twisted it up behind my back. Goddamn, it hurt. It was like a bolt of pain that went right up into my shoulder. I went up on my tiptoes, and tried to twist myself away, but he had his other arm across my throat, and the more I struggled to move, the more he pulled up on my arm and pressed his arm against my neck. I started sputtering, “Stop, stop, stop!”

“I want you to leave me alone,” the kid said, speaking quickly.

“Okay, okay, okay,” I whispered as loudly as I could.

With that, he released me and stepped back into some kind of a karate stance like he was getting ready to go a round with me. “Don’t mess with me. I have a black belt,” he said calmly.

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I rotated my arm, trying to make the pain go away. “Cheap shot,” I said, and I heard a quiver in my voice that filled me with shame.

“Didn’t take a shot,” he corrected me.

The kid behind the counter started clapping. That’s what put me over the edge. It was the clapping. I just sprinted out of there, got onto my bike and rode all the way home, huffing and puffing, sucking in air, and crying like a fuckin’ baby. On top of everything else, I’d left without my dollar-ten. Talk about insult to injury. Talk about salt in the wound.

Never went back to that Dairy Queen. Hell, would you?

Wish I could say that was some sort of freak thing. But the older I got, the more I learned how right that Pontiac man was. I got my ass beat more than once. Like the time I went to the County Fair my junior year. As usual, I barely had any money so what I did was I spent most of it on the game where there’s a piece of paper with a star on it, and you try to shoot it out with an air-rifle that looks like a tommy gun. The prizes were garbage, of course, but still—I had my principles. I blasted the star right out of the paper three times in a row. The shady looking character behind the counter told me he could still see the slightest bit of a point left on one of them. Liar. They’re all fucking rigged those games, and if they ain’t rigged, they’re run by crooks. But I don’t need to tell you that.

Anyway, I had a buck and a half left, so I grabbed a hot dog and just sort of wandered around.

Didn’t want to go home. My mom had her new boyfriend over that night. He ran a liquor store out by the interstate. I know that because it’s all he ever talked about. That and his wife who he hated.

But, mostly he just complained about all the alcoholics. Imagine that: a liquor store owner who whines about drinkers. Like being a banker who doesn't like rich people. Anyway, he complained

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a lot and to make matters worse, he was always looking for a fistfight, so I did my best to keep my mouth shut and the eye-rolling to a minimum. I wouldn’t have put it past him to take a swing at the son of his mistress.

So there I was, just walking around, watching the rides twirl and spin, leaving trails of colored light in the darkness; the Viking Ship going back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch. Half expected the fucking thing to break and send a dozen kids sailing into the night sky out over the ballparks. Half hoped it would, too.

The Viking Ship. That’s what I was looking at when I sort of bumped into this kid by accident. It becomes second nature after a while, acting all mean. Somewhere in me, there was a person who figured he should just say sorry, and keep walking. But instead, I kind of looked down at this kid---he looked like he was maybe a couple years younger and a good six inches shorter---and I said, “watch it, Helen Keller,” which was supposed to be a smart remark about him not seeing me.

The kid didn’t hesitate. Reached back and gave me a right hook across the face that made my vision go black for a second, which is funny when you consider I’d just made a crack about him being the one who was blind. Didn’t even hurt so much at first, but damn was it a powerful punch. I was on the ground before I knew it, and by the time I sat up, the short kid was already walking off with his buddies like nothing happened. Like I was never even there in the first place.

I picked myself up and rubbed my cheek. It was starting to hurt, and I could feel the inside of my mouth bleeding. I spat some blood out next to whatever was left of my hot dog, which I’d lost in the scuffle, if you could even call it a scuffle. For a second, I thought about running after the kid, bashing him over the head with something from behind. But with what? Anyway, I won’t lie: I wasn’t exactly looking forward to having him lay me out all over again. So I kept wandering down the dirt path. A couple of people asked me if I was okay because they’d seen me get knocked out, but I just ignored ‘em.

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Came to the Fun House, and it was the damnedest thing. It looked just like a big version of one of my old man’s birdhouses. Slanted walls and a doorway that was all out of whack. Made me wonder what he was up to. Part of me wanted to find a payphone and give him a ring, see if he wanted to come down to meet me. Then I realized I probably had a black eye, and I didn’t want him to see me like that. Probably wouldn’t be too proud of me. Then I also started thinking about the swirling, twirling, spinning lights, the tommy guns, all the people, and the noise I guess I figured it probably wouldn’t be such a great spot for him.

I walked the train tracks home instead, and a train didn’t come once.

Not even once.

In the few baby pictures my mom had of me, my dad was this real skinny guy with long, thick, kinda greasy-looking hair. As I grew up, his hair thinned, and his belly got thick. By the time 1991 rolled around, I was a senior in high school, and my father didn’t look a thing like the young man in those photos from almost twenty years earlier. The little hair he had left was gray; his skin had gone leathery and wrinkled, and he had this real big gut that always looked like it was about to bust through his worn-out t-shirts. He’d been hospitalized a few times, but no one would tell me why. Something about his kidneys or liver. Maybe both. He looked like shit if I had to be real honest about it.

But his birdhouses were something else entirely. They’d gotten more bizarre than ever--more distorted, but also more complicated.

I went and saw him on my 18th birthday because I had some news for him. He gave me a beer, and he opened the barn.

“Watch the wasps,” he warned me.

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Sure enough, there were big, bulging wasp nests in the corners and rafters.

“You need to get some spray,” I said.

“Don’t bother me any,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” I said, trying to sound amused. Really, I was nervous I was about to get a face full of wasp stings. I took a sip of Grain Belt to distract myself. It was warm.

“Don’t know why you’d want one, but if you feel like it, you can pick one out,” he grumbled.

“Pick what out?” I asked.

“Eighteen’s a big birthday. I ain’t got money for no gift,” he said, shuffling over to a filthy burlap tarp that was draped across some old boards so that it hung like a curtain. With a small grunt, he pulled it down. The tarp crumpled to the floor, looking like a shrouded corpse.

“Holy hell,” I said.

“These are mine,” he said. “These are my birdhouses. The ones I keep.”

They looked less like birdhouses and a lot more like miniature churches from the Middle Ages. They had spires and stairs and alcoves and buttresses. The angles were still crazy, and the proportions exaggerated, but these were some kind of combination of beautiful and frightening.

“If you want one, take one,” he said, like he didn’t care either way. And maybe he didn’t.

But, really, I think he did.

“I want to,” I said. “But I can’t.”

“Fine by me,” he said and quickly began gathering up the tarp so he could cover them back up. “Probably all infested with wasps anyway.” He sounded like he regretted asking in the first place. Like maybe he was even a little embarrassed.

“I mean it, pop. I would if I could. But, I’m heading out,” I told him.

“Heading out. What’s that mean?”

47

“Gonna try to work on a ranch. Wyoming.”

“A ranch? Where the hell you get that idea from?”

“Guess it’s just something I’ve always wanted to try. Working on a ranch,” I lied. Truth is, I’d gotten the idea from a crossword puzzle I’d been doing in Geometry class. The clue was least populous state. Shit, I’d already had the first letter filled in as W, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out it was Wyoming. After class, I’d gone straight down to the library and asked the librarian if it was true about Wyoming having less people than any other state.

“Well, let’s just consult a reference book,” she’d suggested pretty excitedly. Then she pulled out some book—I don’t even know what—and looked it up. “That’s exactly right.”

“Even less people than Alaska?” I’d asked her.

“That’s what it says,” she’d smiled. “Would you like to check it out?”

“What? The book?”

“Correct. The book. Would you like to check it out so you can bring it home?”

“Nah,” I’d said. “But thanks for the info.”

From that moment, I’d decided Wyoming would probably be a pretty great spot for me to settle. Someplace where no one could bother me, and I didn’t have to bother no one else, either.

“I ain’t never heard you dreamin’ of a ranch life,” my old man said suspiciously.

I shrugged.

“What about school?” he grunted.

“What, college?”

“College? Hell no, not college. I’m talking about finishing high school.”

“Don’t need no diploma to work on a ranch,” I said.

“What are you? A goddamned expert on ranches all of a sudden? The hell you know

48

about ranches anyway?” The old man seemed disgusted, though I couldn’t tell if what it was he was disgusted by: ranches themselves, or how piss-poor my idea was. Maybe both.

I shrugged. “Nothin’, I guess.” Then I added, “Only that they’re supposed to be big, and if you work hard, you can make a decent living.”

The old man considered this, and failing to come up with much of an argument against it, he asked, “Guess I’m supposed to tell you no? Make you stay here and finish school?”

I shrugged again. “Don’t see the point. Doubt they’d even let me graduate. Flunking half my classes. Geometry’s a real bitch.”

“No it ain’t. Math’s easy.”

“For you maybe.”

“For anyone.”

“Anyway,” I said.

“Anyway,” he said, too. He exhaled like he’d just expended a lot of effort.

“Ain’t no shame in workin’ is there?” I asked him.

“Shame ain’t for anyone else to decide. You gotta wake up with yourself. Not me. Not nobody else.” He sounded angry. Though he always sounded angry.

“You pissed?”

“No,” he said, and then he pounded his chest, hawked up some Camel tar from his lungs, and spat some brown shit down into the grass. “No, I ain’t pissed. I’m just asking the kinds of shit fathers ask. That against the fuckin’ law?” he asked. And then, real slightly, he smiled at me.

“No it ain’t,” I said.

We sat there taking sips of our beer, not saying anything until, after a minute, I finally spoke up. “Well, anyways, I never once been out of Nebraska. I just wanna see somewhere else for a while.”

49

“Could do worse than working the land, I guess,” he allowed.

“It’s honest. All I want to do is mind my own business, work hard, earn a living. Don’t seem like too much to ask.”

“Ain’t nothin’ ever so simple. Don’t forget what I told you when you was little.”

He didn’t need to remind me what that was.

“I never told you this before, but someone once warned me to watch out who I was givin’ hard looks to.”

“The hell said that?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “You believe that?” I asked him.

“Nope,” he said. “Sometimes them hard looks is all you got.”

Guess if I was older or smarter I might have known he was talking about himself more than he was talking about me. But, hell, I wasn’t nothin’ more than a high school kid, and soon-to-be dropout. Still, I knew enough it felt like a good time to pay him a compliment. “I like your birdhouses, pop.”

“I don’t. I look at ‘em and they make me feel like I’m a fucking lunatic.”

“Well,” I said, thinking about him laying my grandma out with a single haymaker, “you ain’t. And I like ‘em. I’ll come back when I can and I’ll pick one out. Maybe when I’m ready to settle down, you know?”

“No law says you have to.”

“Never said there was,” I told him. “Anyway. Thanks for the beer, pop.”

“Let’s have another on account of you goin’ away.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

And I did even though we didn’t say another word.

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Thing of it is, I don’t like animals. Didn’t mind mending the fences, but I couldn’t stand feeding the livestock, making sure the heaters were working in the pens, waiting up all night during calving season. And even if Wyoming was a big place with a tiny population, working on a ranch meant working on a crew. Hell, it wasn’t too different from being back in high school again. Only instead of class, it was work. And instead of going home, you went back to a bunkhouse along with everyone else.

Lucky for me, I got fired that next spring. Guess they wanted someone who could do more than just pound nails or rebuild a small engine.

So, I took my duffel bag and headed to the nearest town. Worked at a C-store for a few weeks, where they let me sleep in a cot in the back. They let me go when the owner’s son got out of the county jail and was ready to come back to work. So it was further on down the interstate for me.

Put in for a construction job on this new development they were trying to build. Wasn’t half-bad ‘til they ran out of money, though. So, then I tried my hand at working the oil fields. It was something I’d been hearing about, and the pay was supposed to be better than any ranch or construction outfit could pay. Took a bus north to where I heard they were hiring. And they were. Only, turns out I wasn’t cut out for the job. Got flagged three times for safety violations, and they canned my ass.

Hardly lasted a month. The money was damn-near gone, so before I knew it, I was back to chasing another ranch job. This one was in Idaho.

So much for my big Wyoming dreams.

Got out there to Idaho, and told the boss I wasn’t much for animals but could mend fences, saw wood, even fix tractors and trucks so long as it wasn’t transmission work. Transmission work’s something you leave to the pros, I’ll tell you that. Especially if it’s an auto. The boss told me he’d see what he could do, and for a while everything seemed to be going ok. I even saved up enough

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money to buy my mom something for her birthday. Necklace with some kind of bird on it. Silver.

Don’t mean it was actually silver. I mean, the color was silver. It was nice. I got it at one of those fancy truckstops with the restaurants and the showers. Wrote her a letter, too. Called home the next week to make sure she got it, and she did. She loved it. She asked me when I was coming home, and I told her soon. What else would I say? Never? Anyways, I’m sure she knew I was lying. But I wasn’t lying to be mean, I was just trying to make her happy.

Like I’d ever made anyone happy.

After a summer of odd jobs, the boss called me into the house and told me they wanted to rebuild the pens before winter. He wanted to put me on the project along with this other fella named Tom. I was glad to have the work, but I wasn’t so thrilled to be paired up with him. He was one of these hot-shit guys who used to ride bulls and rope cows and crap like that. Everyone looked up to him like he was John Wayne or something, but I thought he was just a loudmouth. His clothes were always extra neat. No wrinkles. He was one of them guys who looked like a young man from afar, but when he got up close, you could tell he was probably in the back half of his 30s.

First day on the job we were clearing out the old pens and he says to me, “You the one who’s afraid of the cattle?”

“Afraid of the cattle?” I asked him. “The hell gave you that idea?”

“Boss says you ain’t much for animals.”

“That’s right. I ain’t much for ‘em,” I said, a little defensive. Truth of it is, of course, a lot of those cows are big as hell. Those bulls are mean bastards. You get a whole herd of cattle in a stampede, you’re liable to get your neck broken. “That don’t mean I’m afraid of ‘em.”

“Don’t mean you’re not,” he laughed and stuffed a wad of Mail Pouch into his cheek.

I didn’t say anything to that.

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Tom snickered.

I’d been shoveling rocks and old rotten wood and other debris, but it was slow work. So I tossed the shovel aside and grabbed the bow rake. It was dusty as hell in the pens, and it was hot even though it was getting to be fall.

We worked in silence for a few minutes. Well, I did. He pretty much stood there, not looking.

And he wasn’t silent, either. That Mail Pouch he was gnawing on made him spit every five seconds, and when the brown juice hit the ground, it sounded like vulture shit falling from a roost at the top of a tall pine.

I just kept working, scraping up debris.

“They tell you about initiation?” Tom asked me.

“No idea what you’re talkin’ about,” I said, trying to sound annoyed, which wasn’t hard, because I was.

“Musta not said anything ‘cause no one likes ya,” he said and cracked up laughing. “But, let me catch you up.”

“Ain’t interested,” I said.

“That ain’t relevant,” he said. “For you to be a real-life cowboy---” he started to say, but I interrupted him.

“Hell you know about being a cowboy? You look more like a jockey to me,” I chuckled.

That got him real offended, and he walked straight over to me, right up to my face. His eyes were nearly black, and he grimaced. The man’s face, which had narrow lines cut into it, was pure hatred and violence. He was looking for a reason to tangle.

“I’ll cut to the quick, son,” he said, and he spoke so low it was almost a whisper. “First week’s pay goes to me. You been here for awhile now. So the way I see it, you owe me interest.” He switched

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the chaw from one cheek to the other then spat on my boot. “Understood?”

No point in acting tough. Anyone could see I was scared as hell. I just looked down and got back to work.

“I’ll take that as a yes, sir,” Tom said and took a step back. Then he took another, and one more until he was about two feet from me. He ejected more brown spit from his pursed lips and smiled an evil smile. Meaner even than the one I got from the man in the Pontiac.

I tried meeting his eyes but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Now about that interest,” he started to say, “I figure maybe ten per---” Brained him with the fucking rake.

Wasn’t planning to. Just happened. Wham. He went down with a thud.

I didn’t stick around to see how he fared. I ran, and I ran like hell. I may be stupid, but I’m no dummy: I took the rake with me. Hopped into the truck the boss let us use for supply runs, and I drove the thing down 191 back to Wyoming. The boss would come looking for it before too long, but I’d be good for a few hours before he went calling the cops about a missing vehicle. Along the way, I stopped in Pinedale where I snapped the rake into a few pieces and tossed it into the Upper Green River. Then I made it the rest of the way to Rock Springs.

Ditched the truck behind a grocery store, and took the plates off. Threw those in a dumpster, just to buy myself even more time before the police figured out whose pickup it was. After that, I went into the store and bought myself one of those candy bars, a Whatchamacallit. I tucked into that and walked across the street, where I spied the train tracks out behind the strip mall with the K-Mart.

Always liked walking train tracks. So I figured I’d just walk the tracks for awhile until I came to a station, or maybe a station beyond that one. From there, I’d by a ticket to who-knows-where.

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And that’s just what I did. I walked those tracks, eating my Whatchamacallit, replaying in my head how I’d bashed Tom’s head in.

Not a single train came the whole time.

Not a single one.

Eventually, I came to a station. Took a look at the route map, then I marched right up to the million-year-old woman behind the window, and spent damn-near all my cash on a one-way ticket to Saltair, Washington. It was either that, or Omaha.

Why the hell would I ever do that? I’d never seen the ocean. Never stood on a beach. Figured it would be good to go someplace different. Also, I’d heard logging is big up there. And that seemed like a good fit. After all, I was good with a chainsaw. What the hell, couldn’t have been worse than clearing out the pens with Tom. Tom. As the train headed west, I wondered if I’d killed him. If not, I thought, well, maybe I wiped his slate, you know? Maybe he was laid up in some hospital bed in Idaho Falls wondering who the hell he was. I wondered if they were looking for me. The police, I mean. Probably they were. They were probably posting my picture up in the post offices, informing the public about how dangerous I was, asking the public for information on my whereabouts, warning them not to approach me on account of how vicious I was. Murder. Attempted murder. Grand theft auto.

Or maybe Tom got up and walked away, too tough to tell anyone it even happened. And maybe they found the truck and returned it to the boss, and he didn’t even bother to file a report since I never bothered to collect my last check.

Or maybe I was just that same scared, scowling kid, going from one knock-out to the next.

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Or maybe doing what I’d done to Tom did something to me. Changed me, I mean.

“Seat taken?”

“No, sir,” I answered. Would’ve been nice to have the row to myself, but who was I to say someone can’t sit where they want to? It’s a free country. At least, that’s what they say.

“Headed home?” he asked me in a raspy sort of voice. Not weak. Just raspy.

“Not exactly,” I shrugged. “Guess it could be if it works out, though.”

“Know what you mean,” he nodded. “I been there.”

“That right?”

“How else you gonna find home unless you go lookin’ for it?” he asked me.

“Guess that’s true, sir,” I said to him. And I guessed it really was.

We sat there in silence for a little while, but it wasn’t one of those awkward kinds of silences.

It was kind of nice actually. Kind of nice to just sit right there next to someone, knowing one of you ain’t gonna steal the other’s stuff, or that you weren’t likely to end up in a fistfight.

The old guy sighed like he was tired, but in a relaxed sort of way. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ll be alright.”

“I hope you’re right, sir,” I said to him. “I sure hope you’re right.” All at once, I wanted to fucking cry.

I went back to looking out the window, watching the world rush by. I kept thinking about my old man’s birdhouses, because all we kept passing out there in the Great Wide Open were sheds. I kept wondering what was inside of them all. Was it just old tractors? Or did other people have secrets like my old man? And if they did, what were they? An affair? A booby trap in Vietnam? A fear of damn near everything and everyone?

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I kept thinking about that tarp piled up on the ground, how it looked so much like Tom after I’d bashed his head in with a rake. Thought about the birdhouses he’d had hidden away beneath that tarp. They were ornate. They were irrational. Some kind of symbol of my old man’s madness, something that looked beautiful to me but that made him feel like a lunatic. I wished I could have taken one. Wished I could have brought one with me to the cold, Pacific Ocean, and nailed it high up on the trunk of an old elm. I wished I could have watched it fill with warblers, not wasps.

You know, it’s like that old song, I thought.

Only I couldn’t remember which, because I’d only heard it the one time, before the melody and words had slipped away like some kind of crazy dream.

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Fill You In

By Fred Pollack A transitional moment must have occurred. The bros (not yet called that) here for hours, except the few whose thing is to come late; where they sleep, if at all, is indifferent.

Now they rise from strobing cursors, half-completed lines of code whose aim is already uninteresting: There is no spot that cannot see you or change your life. They are wearing shorts (in contempt of contemptible winter), T-shirts with ads or obscurely obscene slogans, beards and piercings, mixed plaids.

In the new dispensation they won’t; will drive home to wives and second wives and children, the asocial become a mere ideal.

But by then the office will be bigger, a campus in itself, not looking out on a parking lot, one palm. Out there a wind is rising without symbolism.

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On the milky floor-to-ceiling panels at the end of the room, their principal, ideal, progenitor, the Boss appears. He looks born to corporate finery but the voice retains, as naturally, the tone of a trippy joke.

In the screen on the left he’s in Boston. New York, Vancouver pick up the tale.

There is wit about these places and drinks in these places but the story concerns very clearly stated amounts and assignments. The proto-bros know they must hop. But for a moment (perhaps) they want to smoke or inhale the treasures in their desks, repurpose code they’re writing (not to destroy everything, only as much as they like), break screens and windows. Outside, the wind is slapping the palm about.

Perhaps it will uproot itself and walk with a crude analog vitality.

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Winter in Austin, Texas 60

Sal’s Diner

By Susan Waters I was the waitress that everyone thought should be fired. I didn’t hear anyone say it, but their looks when I delivered their mismatched orders and when they responded with drunken rants— “I wanted my coffee with my meal! What kind of joint is this anyhow?”—made it abundantly clear that I should be summarily fired. All the customers’ unwanted (but not unjustified) comments and looks made me even more sullen. I have never liked being subservient and have only submitted to the outrage or even cowered when I absolutely needed the money.

Sal’s Diner was what one would expect from an eatery with a name like that. Wedged into a street-long string of buildings in Seneca Falls, New York, it was a respectable diner but sometimes a dive. It was open early and even far into the night to catch the drinking crowd, still drunk. The floor was checkered, a rust and yellowish tile which may have once been brilliant white. Maybe it always was drab because drab is easier to maintain. Nobody expected anything else. It was just the type of diner found all over New York state at the time. Trendy coffee did not exist in much of the country beyond the wealthy enclaves. Meals were hearty. No entrees with small bits of food surrounded by edible flowers. A staple at Sal’s was a hamburger and a mountain of fries smothered with gravy.

Some customers were perennial, probably because they wanted to be around people and to have some sort of routine to follow. I now understand why.

Sal had a firm grip on the reality he was faced with. He had to hire people like me, lackadaisical, partly sullen because that was what he had. Waitresses worth something, the ones who smoothly went through a shift, carrying large trays with one hand and not spilling anything ever, preferred an up-scale restaurant where they made better tips. They were a wonder to behold, the ones who made a career of it, breezing through the tables, immediately scooping up dirty dishes.

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They never seemed to have to write down an order, and when they did, it was in their own shorthand. In contrast, I took my time with orders and never seemed to get much of anything right.

To reprimand me for my inattentiveness, or at least to show me that there were worse things than waitressing, Sal once commanded me back to kitchen to scrub pots and pans. I was equally bad at that—slow, not getting enough of the grease out of all the pans. I must have been Sal’s nightmare, but in retrospect, I think he was patiently trying to guide me through the steps for what he thought was probably my career. Meanwhile, I was still fixated on that German degree which was meaningless in a small town. Maybe I could have taught German, but then I would have had to deal with comatose high school students who had their own dreams, dreams mainly about escaping the tedium of sitting in a classroom for endless hours.

Bill, the cook, was a hulking presence with outraged brown hair that stuck out at every angle, and he had the most striking glass eye in the universe. Because of some accident he never talked about, he had lost an eye. Because he didn’t have a lot of money or because he didn’t want to spend his money on something like that, he bought an artificial eye that was a peculiar color. The batch of glass eyes had been wrong and so his eye was almost neon blue with streaks of lightninglike yellow. It was hard not to stare at it, and I think he liked how intimidating it could be.

Bill may have had a regular name, but he was anything but regular. He became the cook at Sal’s because he had to stay out of trouble for a while. He was on parole and didn’t want to go back to jail. Prison was more than OK in the wintertime, when upstate New York froze into a picture mainly uninhabited because the cold had driven people inside to worry, at least some of them, about the cost of heating bills and houses which would need repairs because the winters wore them down.

Bill liked his summers free. Spring and fall are fine to be out, back to so-called reality. Bill’s occupation before his most unfortunate incarceration was theft. Even in that, Bill was not a regular

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thief. He only robbed businesses because he thought they could afford the loss. After all, they had insurance.

Bill was particularly good at glowering. Normally, his smooth face was a slightly darker white of mushrooms and without expression. But when the customers complained—and they so liked to do so when they were drunk, the alcohol coaxing them into being the bullies they wanted to be in normal day life—his face would darken to the color of winter woods and he would glower. The eye had a startled look, not just because of its color, but because it seemed oversized. Maybe it held his eye open; I don’t know if he ever blinked. When customers abused him, he would pretend an odd sort of subservient shame, take the steak back to the kitchen and throw it against a grimy wall.

Then he would put the meat back on the plate and graciously present it to the bully. He was a wonderful character, and had I not met him, I would have been tempted to create him.

When I was hired by Sal, I had a newly granted German degree in my tight, 22-year-old fist, and I expected the world! I thought the world was waiting for me. It took years, but I discovered that the world didn’t even know or cared that I existed. I didn’t know until way too late that connections and money have much to do with great success in every country. That was a long time ago, but I think many of today’s graduates feel the same. What I was faced with was a scarcity of jobs and certainly none in German. Stuck in a little town because my new husband wanted to volunteer as a soccer coach as a living, with a scrawny check from his night job at Howard Johnson, the bleak hours passed by only nearly. I also had to have a job so we could have the walk-up apartment in town with windows that were painted shut. I tried, like so many young women, to make a nest, but we were ill fated from the start. Our parents had pressured us into marriage. I didn’t have to marry, but his parents persuaded him, and he persuaded me. I don’t think of any of those instrumental in our walk down the aisle as having been mean-spirited; the expectation of marriage was just part of the time.

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I was just steps away from the Erie Canal, a place in history where cheating and/or mean customers were once dumped into the canal from a convenient trap door in a few salons. I was just a mile or so away from where women began the women’s suffrage movement. All of this did not interest me then as it does now. I was only interested in my life starting, or what I envisioned as starting, with unconditional love and a more than generous dollop of sex. I did not espy a future I thought was my entitlement as much as I tried. What I did see was the night shift from the local factory marching home, after a third shift stint, much like the workers in George Segal’s “Rush Hour,” except that Segal’s workers are better dressed. Heads slightly hung in the noose that some jobs require, the Seneca Falls workers walked in almost a file, with empty lunch tins in hand. In colder months, their breath could be seen, a small cloud surrounding each person. I saw them as a future I did not want. I now realize that they contained the courage needed to stay decades at a job to support their families, and that many of them were probably proud of what they did for a living, as they should have been. Mine was a generation that prefigured the present: even if the jobs were scarce or non-existent, I thought because I went to college, I was entitled to climb up the societal ladder. I didn’t know about the endless glass ceilings and the inequity in pay and advancement. I spent a lot of time banging my head against the glass ceiling to the point of an almost concussion. I guess it was worth it? I am still trying to learn the lesson Voltaire’s Candide understood at the end of the novel by the same name: happiness is found tending one’s own garden—in other words, in the circumstances of one’s life. In Seneca Falls, I was learning and living the imperfection of life, and in retrospect, I would not wish that it had been any different.

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contributors Mark Jackley lives in Purcellville, va. His poems have appeared in Sugar

house review, the cape rock, =, and other journals.

John grey is an Australian poet and us resident. Recently published in

that, Dalhousie review and qwerty with work upcoming in blueline, Hawaii pacific review and clade song.

Terry sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plumb cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted more than 370 times by commercial and academic journals, magazines, and anthologies including

the Potomac review, the Bryant literary review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for pushcart prizes and once for inclusion in best of the

net anthology. His stories have been listed among “the most popular contemporary fiction of 2017” by the Saturday evening post. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George shearing.

Katrina monet katrina began her writing career as a poet at the age of seven and works across genres in non-fiction and flash fiction. She has been nationally acclaimed through wiring awards, grants, and private scholarships. She has been personally recognized by and inspired the work of New York times bestselling authors.

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David obuchowski is a prolific writer of fiction and long-form essays. His short stories have appeared (or are scheduled to appear) in The

Balitomore Review, border crossing, twisted vine, west trade review, and many others. His non-fiction can be found in salon, longreads, jalopnik,

the daily beast, the awl, and more. His in-depth documentary podcast, TEMPEST, is a critical and popular success and serves as the inspiration for an upcoming television series. For work published in 2019, he was nominated for a pushcart prize for both fiction and non-fiction. David and his family live in Colorado.

Fred pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The

adventure and happiness (Story line press; the former to be reissued by red hen press), and two collections, a poverty of words (prolific press, 2015) and landscape with mutant (smokestack books, uk, 2018). Many other poems in print and online journals.

Susan waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York and for 13 years was a magazine editor and writer at the viriginia institute of marine science, college of William and mary. Her publishing credits are extensive. She has won 10 prizes in poetry and has been nominated twice for the pushcart prize in poetry. Her chapbook heat

lightning was published in 2017 by orchard street press. Currently, she is a professor emeritus at new Mexico junior college.

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