Stork Magazine Volume 35—Fall 2023

STORK Fall 2023 ISSUE • VOLUME 35

Stork Magazine is a fiction journal published by undergraduate students at Emerson College. Initial submissions are workshopped and discussed with the authors, and stories are accepted based on the quality of the author’s revisions. The process is designed to guide writers through rewriting and provide authors and staff members editorial support and an understanding of the editorial and publishing process. Stork is founded on the idea of communication between writers and editors— not a simple letter of rejection or acceptance.

We accept submissions from undergraduate and graduate Emerson students in any department. Work may be submitted at stork.submittable.com during specific submission periods. Stories should be in 12-point type,double-spaced, and must not exceed 4 pages for the “flash fiction” issue. Authors retain all rights upon publication. For questions about submissions, email storkstory@gmail.com Stork accepts staff applications at the beginning of each fall semester. We are looking for undergraduate students who are well-read in contemporary fiction and have a good understanding of the short story form.

Copyright © 2023 Stork Magazine Cover design done by Katherine Fitzhugh Illustrations done by Katherine Fitzhugh and Aubrey McConnell Typesetting done by Eden Ornstein and Aubrey McConnell

MASTHEAD Editors in Chief Nina Powers Hannah Meyers

Managing Editors Kate Rispoli Sage Liebowitz

Head Designer Eden Ornstein

Design Team

Aubrey McConnell Katherine Fitzhugh

Head Copy Editor Anna Carson

Copy Editors

Ella Maoz Ava Belchez Maggie Lu Nathan Lentocha

Prose Editors

Gabriel Borges Sam Kostakis Aubrey McConnell Sydney Flaherty

Staff Readers

Dana Guterman Levy Ryan Forgosh Ruth Fishman Jessie Jen Kaya Westbrook Trish Smallwood Mars Early Reid Perry Stella Lapidus Callan Whitley Michael McMahon

Social Media Manager Georgia Howe

Faculty Advisor Jon Papernick

Letter From The Editors Stork Magazine is proud to be Emerson College’s premier fiction-only literary magazine, publishing bi-annual issues for over a decade. In the fall, we focus on stories anywhere between five and thirty pages. In the spring, we focus on one-to-four page flash fiction. We publish the best fiction Emerson College has to offer, and we are honored for the chance to continuously uphold Stork’s legacy.

Our job would not be possible without our amazing staff, who are the heart and soul of this organization. We deeply appreciate your commitment to literature and are forever grateful for each staff member who makes Stork a reality.

We would also like to thank Jon Papernick, our faculty advisor, for his sage guidance this semester.

Of course, Stork is nothing without its wonderful authors—past, present, and future. We are immensely proud of the work we publish and are excited to add another six writers to our crop of talented storytellers. We also want to extend

our gratitude to every person who submitted, whether we were able to publish you or not.

Throughout our time as Co-Editors-In-Chief, we have watched this organization grow. We’re overjoyed to say that the fall of 2023 garnered the greatest number of submissions received to-date. We even published an extra story this semester, finding that the quality and breadth of submissions called for a larger magazine.

Finally, a thank you to our readers. Your readership keeps small literary magazines like Stork alive, and we hope that as you delve into this fall edition, you feel a sense of satisfaction knowing you are helping amplify the voices of new writers.

We see this collection of stories as an example of short fiction’s versatility. Ranging from grounded realism to high fantasy, these authors each take their own stylistic approach to the form. Whether on the earth or in the heavens, familiar or fantastical, the characterdriven work in this edition speaks to the power of a good short story.

Once again, thank you to all who write for, work on, and read Stork each semester. We hope you enjoy the 35th edition as much as we have!

Nina Powers and Hannah Meyers Editors-in-Chief

Fall Fiction 2023

CONTENTS 13 43 55 75 87 97

PROFFER

By Scott Pomfret Illustration by Aubrey McConnell Vanishing Walls

By Ella Maoz Illustration by Katherine Fitzhugh Spirit Goes West

By Jack Miessner Illustration by Aubrey McConnell The Lake

By Ryan Forgosh Illustration by Katherine Fitzhugh The Post Office

By Maia Cataldo Illustration by Aubrey McConnell In the Mill of the Morning

By Brigs Larson Illustration by Katherine Fitzhugh

PROFFER M

by Scott Pomfret Illustration by Aubrey McConnell

y boyfriend hasn’t told me everything.

This very morning, two hours from now, in a tiny windowless conference room stinking of burnt coffee, stale dress socks, and despair, he’ll confess more to three perfect strangers in rumpled Men’s Wearhouse suits than he’s ever revealed to me. I hand him a yellow necktie and hope it strangles him. He shakes it off like a pitcher telling his catcher he doesn’t want to throw a curve.

“Scarlet?”

“Nope.”

“Navy with anchors?”

He shakes his head. “I wanna make the right impression.”

“They’re straight, sweetheart. They won’t notice.”

“I’ll notice.”

Silently, I hand him a sober green tie that’s the soul of earnest propriety, and—because it looks as if I’ve somehow offended him—I offer 13

to lend him cufflinks.

“My lawyer says cufflinks are too fancy.”

Holding a purple paisley tie to his neck, he stares at himself in the mirror hanging on the back of the closet door. Then he turns to me for judgment as if I were a better, final reflection.

“How do I look?”

“Fancy.”

The arm holding the tie goes flaccid. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Play the hero—this Stand-By-Your-Man bullshit. It’s OK to slink away. No one would blame you.”

“I’d blame me.”

“Not like we’re married. We haven’t been dating that long.”

“One year, two months, and thirteen days.

But who’s counting, right?”

He nods curtly. Shiny and backlit, he’s drop-dead dangerous, the kind of guy people instinctively suspect must be skilled with a switchblade and doubly good in bed.

He says, “This isn’t going to get easier. You’ll be out at some party, and in walks this hot ass bandit, and I’ll have been in prison for months, and you won’t have had any action, and your dick’ll be rock hard, and this guy’ll come straight up to you and flirt and dish and ask for your 14

number. You really going to say no?”

I shrug. “Probably not. Not for a hot ass bandit.”

My boyfriend looks startled.

“That’s not what I’m supposed to say, is it?” I ask innocently.

“Fuck’s sake! Of course not!”

“I’m joking! Just joking! It’s just . . . I’ve never heard you use the term ass bandit.

Actually, I’ve never heard anyone use it.”

We stare at each other helplessly. We’ve never really talked about the future, so what would be amazing right now would be for me to say something from left field, something oddball and zany and counter to all expectations and silly enough to dissolve us into giggles.

The only words my brain devises are dismally sincere: “My love for you is so pure and so strong, it can’t be mucked up by fucking another guy. As you know.”

He stiffens with wounded pride.

“Like I give a shit. Fuck who you want. Fuck ‘em all.” *** This is what I’ve been told, or read in the indictment, or had to divine on my own: Two years before we first hooked up on Grindr, my boyfriend began working in the IT department of a major international bank.

15

The bank’s investment arm had a complicated AI-driven algorithm that placed trades in the stock market based on certain quantitative inputs—interest rates, price volatility, the price of a loaf of bread in Tuscaloosa. Whatever. The algo was wildly successful. It won far more than it lost and generated big profits. The computer code behind the algo was therefore top secret. Only a few heavily monitored employees—not my boyfriend—could access it. If any of them tried to copy the code and send it outside the bank via email or fileshare or upload, alarms would sound.

Exfiltration software would suspend the transfer automatically, and the offending employee would be canned on the spot.

A confederate (that’s the term the Feds use— they have a language all their own, and in the last few months, I’ve become unfortunately fluent) found a way to get around the safeguards.

He persuaded my IT boyfriend to disable the exfiltration software. The confederate then liberated a few chunks of code and sold them to the highest bidder. He and my boyfriend split the profits.

Could be worse, right? No orphans or widows were harmed in the making of this scam. Just a big nameless faceless bank. And my boyfriend didn’t steal anything himself. He just made stealing possible—what the Feds call a 16

conspiracy.

The primary customer for the code was a group of Russian mobsters. They were content with the arrangement until the confederate fed them a chunk of worthless open-source code downloaded from the internet instead of stolen from the bank and still charged the same high price. When the Russians failed to locate the confederate to discuss their disappointment, they insisted on a tête-à-tête with my boyfriend.

Not long after, the cops found the confederate’s corpse floating in the Mystic River.

I asked the obvious only once: “What exactly did you tell the Russians?”

My boyfriend stared into my eyes as if he was looking into the barrels of a shotgun. I couldn’t look away, even though it felt like he— or maybe a brick, but certainly something with undeniable physical existence—was zooming toward me.

“I’m not even sure they were really Russian,” he mumbled.

“Well, whoever. What’d you tell them?”

“Do you really wanna know any of this?”

“No. Hell no.”

He looked relieved.

“But tell me anyway. It becomes bigger than it really is if you don’t name it.”

He took a deep breath. He said, “Once upon 17

a time, there was a gay IT boy working for a very big bank who did a very naughty thing.”

He smiled weakly. Disarmingly. Dazzlingly.

My mouth went dry, equal parts horror, disappointment, and lust. “You gave up the goods on the guy they found dead?”

“Something like that.” *** I tweak my boyfriend’s lapels and collar. He adjusts his crotch, which gives me an erection that’s a complete humiliation because his adjustment actually excludes me. It’s the kind of gesture a guy makes when he thinks he’s alone.

“I love you,” I say. “You’re gonna crush it.

You’re gonna knock it out of the park.”

He puts his hands on each side of my head.

He kisses me. For a second, he seems like the guy he was before the indictment, the carefree, free-spending, phone-sex addicted faggot who swept me up in the fun and never, ever talked about his past. The bad boy who loved me because I was always game for whatever hijinks he invented. The one who knew exactly where he stood with me because I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.

I push aside his hands and wriggle into that narrow buffer that always surrounds him. I crush my little body against his brawn until I hear his deep indrawn breath. My desire for him and my 18

desire to reassure him fuse.

He tilts my head up and searches my eyes with a desperation that he can’t conceal.

“I can’t go through with this. I just can’t! I’m gonna run. Gonna fuck with them.”

“OK,” I say, but I’m thinking, The fuck you are, cowboy. I haven’t put one year, two months, and thirteen days into this relationship (not to mention my fragile heart) to have you go sideways and AWOL. I’ve already put up with enough surprises, what with the 6:00 a.m. wake-up call three and a half months hence—the pounding on the door, the flashing of badges, you being cuffed and stuffed, me clutching a bedsheet over my naked body while one bored G-woman trained a Glock on me in case all 135 soaking pounds of me got obstreperous on her ass.

Not that I don’t get where my boyfriend’s coming from. His impulse is perfectly normal.

It’s occurred to me, as well. I’ve compiled extensive research from Google about which countries have no extradition treaty with the United States. There’s a small handful. They’re mostly warm and tropical and sometimes dangerous.

But the reality is, my boyfriend has no choice. After his arrest, he surrendered his passport to the Feds in return for his freedom pending a plea or trial. So, whatever happens, 19

paradise isn’t in our future. If we flee, it’ll be to Idaho. Off the grid. Making friends with preppers and people who fear black helicopters.

Shaking his head as if I’ve disappointed him, he retreats down the hall like a startled rabbit.

Flooded with a tart mix of resentment, puppy love, nostalgia for our now-upended future, determination to do the right thing, and temptation to torpedo the whole relationship and be done with it, I give chase.

I try to be helpful. I say, “Kitchen! Good idea. You should eat something before we go.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“No, I mean it. It’ll be good for you.”

He wheels around.

“Don’t you think I know what’s good for me?” he asks, whapping his right fist into his left palm. “I made this goddamn decision of my own free will, in light of all the fucking circumstances, most important of which was the Feds want to lock me away for the next twenty years if I don’t help them put the Russians behind bars.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Did I say something wrong? Is that, like, one of the stupid things people say to you to make you feel better? ‘Eat something?’ Like, you know, something a grandmother might say?”

I sense I’m just continuing to annoy him, but 20

I’m unable to hold the words back.

I say, “I mean, I might have said something like ‘Make lemonade from lemons’ or assured you, ‘The Lord wouldn’t give you anything you couldn’t handle.’ Right? Could be much worse.”

“That’s the worst.”

“What?”

“To say, could be much worse.”

“But it could be,” I whisper.

Even to my ear, it sounds like a threat.

*** Here’s what I’ve learned about how a proffer (more Fed-speak) works: Proffer is a fancy name for an abject confession in hopes of saving your ass.

Accompanied by a lawyer, the target (more Fed-speak: a target is more than a mere witness; it’s a person against whom the prosecutor has substantial evidence linking him to a crime) sits down in a small windowless conference room on the seventeenth floor of the federal courthouse with a pair of FBI agents and the federal prosecutor. He spills his guts. The idea is to convince the sentencing judge to be lenient when the target pleads guilty and to give the Feds evidence to use against others involved in the conspiracy (for example, Russians who might not be Russian). Doesn’t mean the target’s not going to prison, just doing less time, or at a 21

prison less scary, at a point closer to home.

My boyfriend’s lawyer has described a standard ploy at the proffer: Around noon, the Feds bring in a lunch sack for the agents and prosecutors, who look at the target (my boyfriend) with surprise, pretending just to have noticed him so he feels left out, like the kid who didn’t get picked on the playground. Then, when he’s done feeling sorry for himself, the target worries maybe he’s not getting any lunch break at all. Finally, when the hunger pangs kick in, the Feds share what they’ve brought with the target, which softens him up better than if they had just ordered a corned beef sandwich for him in the first place so the target feels like he owes the Feds a favor.

My boyfriend hates these petty games. He hates corned beef. He hates the idea of giving the Feds what they expect. He wants to be a wild card. The kind of guy who zigs when the Feds are thinking zag.

Even long before indictment or conspiracy were words we understood, my boyfriend was a nervous sort. He’s deeply suspicious of any stranger’s glance, jumps a mile at a tug on the sleeve, and never remains too long in one place before he gets antsy and starts prowling the perimeter and cataloging exit signs and reciting stats on how so many were killed in the Pulse 22

nightclub shooting because they failed to scope out the best means of escape in advance. His eyes never stop moving. Even when he forces himself to meet my gaze, there’s a time limit, and possibly a second set of eyes in the back of his head to take up the slack, though I know every inch of his body and haven’t found them yet.

I feel sorry for the G-men and G-women he’s scheduled to meet. I know my boyfriend at least this well: the G-people aren’t going to get what they need from him. There’s always more inside he won’t yield because he thinks withholding it offers him an extra layer of protection.

Waiting to meet my boyfriend’s lawyer on the plaza outside the courthouse, I ask, “Have you ever killed anyone?” The reason I want to know is because sometimes I fantasize about someone cornering us in a dark alley and bringing out the worst in him.

“I’m not allowed to talk about that, except with my lawyer.” He scans the crowd. “The fuck is she?”

“C’mon baby. Nothing? None of the evidence can be used against you, right? That’s the whole point of a proffer.”

He squeezes my shoulder. He takes a big billowy breath. He says, “Feds don’t care about corpses. They leave that to the DA. They only 23

give a shit about stealing code. White collar.”

That’s the risk, his lawyer has advised. The deal with the proffer only binds the Feds. What a target says during the proffer can still be used by the DA to bring state-level charges. Like, for example, being an accessory to a confederate’s murder by Russians who might not be Russians.

My boyfriend says, “You don’t have to hang out here. The proffer could last all day. Go to work. I’ll see you at home.”

“I can’t go to work. I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking of you.”

He snaps, “Then get a mani-pedi or something.”

He realizes he’s being an asshole. He realizes he’s being unfair.

He says he’s sorry. Or I imagine he does.

Because he definitely would have apologized if he weren’t so preoccupied with the proffer. I’m sure of it.

“There she is!” he says, pointing at his lawyer with the same enthusiasm as when he pointed out the hawk.

Without a word of goodbye, he beelines toward her. She says something that obviously makes him self-conscious about his tie. I assure myself that even though he didn’t say it, no doubt it meant a lot to my boyfriend that I accompanied him all the way to the courthouse 24

steps as if we were getting hitched.

*** Down the street from the courthouse is a gay dive bar called The Alley that’s somehow survived the city’s attempts to make the block new. I get to talking with another patron, a guy with a shot and a beer in front of him even though it’s not yet 11:00 a.m.

“My boyfriend’s in prison,” I say, conscious that the coolness of the empty bar has made my nipples hard. In the mirror behind the bottles, my hair is tousled, my face is flushed, and I definitely look younger than my thirty-one years.

“Really?”

“No. Not really. Not yet anyhow.”

I slide my stool over so I’m right next to the uneasy stranger. I pat his forearm.

“But I used to have a friend,” I say, “whose girlfriend really went to prison, who used that line to get laid while she was inside, because it gave him a whiff of bad boy, but not bad enough to be actually dangerous.”

“That’s genius. I’m going to have to try that line.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to,” I say.

“Not with me. I’m easy. Just ask.”

“But, wait . . . you just said you have a boyfriend.”

“Well, yes. And he’d have to kill you if we 25

hooked up.”

My new friend shifts uneasily and tips back his shot.

“Sounds like you got caught up in the wrong crowd,” he says finally.

*** Here’s how you get a break on your federal sentence for stealing computer code from a big international bank and simultaneously avoid getting put behind bars on a state charge of accessory to murder: Make a proffer, plead guilty, waive a jury trial. Help the Feds put other bad guys, guys worse than you (e.g., Russians), in prison. Above all, don’t give up a goddamn word about the circumstances leading to your confederate’s death.

That’s the catch. The FBI agents and the prosecutor have to certify to the judge that the target’s proffer was truthful and complete before the judge will act. If the Feds sense a target is withholding or misleading, they’ll tear up the agreement and hang the target out to dry.

Naturally, along with the confession, the target must also provide the Feds with any tangible evidence in his custody or control: hard copy files, texts, emails, hard drives, phone logs, credit card bills, social media. My boyfriend has therefore stopped using modern communications 26

entirely. At this point, he wouldn’t trust a smoke signal.

“The phone’s a witness,” he’s warned me more than once, and each time I imagine the Feds listening intently to our phone sex and parsing through our nasty text exchanges before we even knew they were on my boyfriend’s tail.

“And even if you’re doing nothing wrong,” he adds, “like just mentioning where someone’s hiding out, they can make it sound like it was the worst thing imaginable.”

This morning before the proffer, I made coffee while I listened to his shredder shredding.

It churned my guts, because I’m fairly certain the Feds have a word for what he’s doing, and it’s called obstruction.

“Have you talked to your lawyer about whether you should be doing that?” I asked.

He fed a document into the shredder’s maw.

ZZZHHT. “If anyone asks . . .”

ZZZHHT. “. . . we never owned a shredder . . .”

ZZZHHT. “. . . let alone ever used one.”

ZZZHHT. He glanced up at me. “Do I make myself clear?”

He motioned for me to pass him another 27

stack of documents, and I handed the stack to him like it was my head on a platter.

*** I’m a fucking lightweight. After a couple shots, I make a truthful and complete confession to the uneasy stranger at the bar. But even as I speak, I find myself wanting to please him. To persuade him that neither me nor my boyfriend are bad people. Just people who got caught in the wrong set of circumstances.

“Sometimes guys with bad boy reputations are actually bad guys,” the uneasy stranger says.

“Not my boyfriend.”

“How’d he help the Russians?” the bartender interrupts.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“Who’d he get killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“How well do you really know this guy, your boyfriend?” asks the uneasy stranger.

My mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out, which is itself a betrayal. In a bestcase scenario, this is, perhaps, the only help my boyfriend gave the Russians—a culpable silence.

“You’re gonna love this,” I say, intending to change the subject and talk about ass bandits, but I realize I’m a particularly unreliable predictor of what men love.

I correct myself: “I mean, you’re likely to love 28

this.”

Which sounds less accusatory than saying, You should love this. But maybe it would be better to turn it around. Make it’s not about the uneasy stranger, but about the ass bandit. I could say, for example, This story may appeal to you, which would make the uneasy stranger the passive bottom of the sentence, and therefore less responsible (but also more to blame, more reprehensible).

Seriously drunk now, I have no idea what I’m talking about, and neither do the bartender and the uneasy stranger, but I see the bartender’s expression harden and the uneasy stranger’s face begin to reflect a glimmer of opportunity.

“Who’s got your back in all this?” the bartender asks.

“You’re not supposed to ask that,” the uneasy stranger murmurs to the bartender. “Our young friend here is trying to be a selfless martyr.”

Friend in this instance seems like it has a special meaning, which someone more familiar with Fed-speak would undoubtedly know. Like the Inuit, the Feds have fifty-plus words for snow.

Isn’t it possible, friend, I want to ask, that I’m trying to be a selfless martyr solely to mask or make up for the hostility I feel toward my boyfriend for having fucked up our future so 29

badly?

“Turn up the music,” I say. “Give my confused friend here another drink. Tell me, guys, do you think the right way to say it is hot . . . ass-bandit? Or hot-ass . . . bandit? I wanna get it right.”

The uneasy stranger ultimately picks up the tab, which makes my drinks taste sour, but the gesture relieves me, too, because I see how easy it would be under other circumstances, if my boyfriend’s situation and mine were exactly reversed, for a complete stranger (an FBI agent, for example) to get into my pants just by doing me a little kindness.

Personally, I love corned beef. I’d tell the Feds everything they want to know. *** Here’s a wrinkle we almost never talk about: Among the Russians who might not have been Russians was a twenty-something my boyfriend came to love. Or, I think he did. He’s never divulged the young Russian’s name. Never even confessed to an actual hook-up. But all lovers leave detritus, whether it’s a matchbook, a photo fallen behind the armoire, an odd Facebook post. The phone’s a witness, right? I’ve managed to divine from digital clues that the Russian exists. I know his name. I’m dying to know more, but I also want to know nothing.

30

Am I going crazy? Am I making this up?

I hold my own personal proffer—me as target, FBI agents, and prosecutor all wrapped up in one. I think: Fuck this. I should just rat my boyfriend out to the Feds and the DA. Testify about his obstruction. Put an end to these endless questions about what’s going to happen next: What else hasn’t he told me? What shoe’s going to drop next? What will it be like when he’s in prison?

What routines will I miss? How much loneliness can I tolerate? Can I trust that, after I wait out his sentence, he won’t decide he doesn’t need me? Is the Russian boyfriend a threat? How much do I really want to know? Do I bear any responsibility for the confederate’s death? Does my boyfriend? I’m a little terrified of my terrible secret, that some small part of me wants to give up and be done with it.

When am I going to crack? When am I going to reveal the information so eagerly sought that the interrogators ask me the same thing ten different ways?

A few days ago, before the proffer, my boyfriend declared he wasn’t going to regret all the rest of the days of his life.

“I’ll go to trial if I have to. I won’t lie for them. For the government. I won’t make stuff up.”

“Is it him?” I asked, sounding vaguely, even to myself, like Blanche Dubois. “Is that why?

31

You don’t want to betray him? Your lover?”

My boyfriend looked spooked. “Lover?

What? No. No. What’re you talking about?

Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no loyalty there. I spent four years doing business with him and never knew him at all. He’s the one who . . . never mind.”

“Murdered the confederate after you lured him out of hiding?”

A long beat. An exchange of glances.

If he didn’t say something soon, I was going to have to do a silly dance for him. Or put a soup tureen on my head. The status quo just wasn’t possible.

“What’re you asking, exactly?” he drawled.

It felt like he wanted to pat me down to see if I was wearing a wire.

“Never mind,” I said. “I fold.”

He looked relieved.

“Wait.” I grabbed his hand. “Would you ever turn against me?”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I berated myself. What good could possibly come from having asked this question? Or from hearing the answer?

But maybe I didn’t want good to come of it. Maybe I wanted to be a bad boy. Maybe I wanted to hear the worst, because there was certainty in the worst, a floor to stand on, and 32

only upside from there.

*** The uneasy stranger rams me up against the tile of the men’s john. I reach down and unbuckle his belt. I think: Here I am in the men’s room of a gay dive bar. Here I am being a bad boy.

A cheater. An outlaw. We muckle around, kissing and pressing, like eager teens who have no idea what they’re doing. He lifts my shirt over my head and tosses it to the tiles. He bites my nipple.

He gasps, “You never told me your name.”

“I’m bigger than I am if you don’t name me,” I say. I drop to my knees and unzip his jeans.

“You seem like you’ve done this before,” he jokes.

I consider it a second before I go down on him.

“Um, no,” I say, “not since me and my boyfriend started dating. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

The bartender barges into the john and barks, “Get the fuck out of here!”

He throws my shirt after me into the street.

Outside, the stranger is apologetic.

“Never mind,” I say, struggling into my shirt.

“A man hasn’t lived until he’s been thrown out of a gay dive bar for making out in the men’s room.”

The uneasy stranger says he’d invite me 33

home, but he’s got something to do.

“Something to celebrate,” I say.

He cocks his head. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Beer and a shot before 11:00 a.m.,” I remind him. “It’s cool. Glad I could distract you.

Says something important about me.” I hiccup.

“But I gotta get back to the courthouse.”

“In case he makes a run for it?”

“Something like that.” *** Here’s how this morning started before we even chose a tie or shredded a few hundred documents (I’ve run it through my head a thousand times, aware that my boyfriend has somehow made me complicit): I woke face to face with my boyfriend. His eyes were wide open staring at me.

“What’re you doing?”

“Pre-membering. So I don’t forget your face.”

“That’s sweet,” I said. But I was thinking: creepy. Besides, I knew that look; it was the look of a man scoping the room to find the closest exit.

I kissed him just under his ear at the hinge of his jaw. I concentrated only on that one piece of his body. It’s perfection. It’s a place I’ve kissed many times before. Therefore, I reasoned, I could trust it. Then I moved to a spot immediately 34

adjacent and kissed him there. I decided I’d work my way over his whole body until his flesh trembled and quaked, and we both knew there was a what-comes-next moment, and we were both pretty sure what it was, and at the same time, we had no idea at all, and the fact that the situation could go south suddenly only added to the thrill. No Russian lover ever did this for him, I thought.

I considered the likely sentence the court would impose. I thought how I, too, would simultaneously be sentenced, and the sentence would give my life structure. Once my boyfriend was in the system, a number, I’d be somebody, too, a very particular somebody—the boyfriend of a convict. My years would be mapped out: Weekend bus trips to the prison upstate.

Conjugal visits. Loneliness.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed and staring out the window.

“What if you get a boyfriend in jail?” I asked.

“I mean, one you want. Not the rape-y kind.”

He muttered, “It’s not that kind of prison.

It’s for white collar guys. I’m not gonna get raped.”

“But what if you like it?”

His head swiveled like a great horned owl.

He raised his eyebrows. “What’re you talking about? Prison? Rape?”

35

“Any of it.”

“Are you really saying these words?”

I nodded.

After a minute, he said, “Ok, let’s play that game.”

He described his future cellmate in pretty good detail, but there was nothing of me in this stranger neither of us had yet met.

I put a finger to his lips. “I take back what I said.”

“What?”

“I changed my mind. I don’t want to hear anything. Not a word. I don’t want to know stuff that would make me have to hate you.”

He hopped out of bed. “You’re getting pretty worked up. I’m the one going to jail.”

“I know. I don’t like it either. But there it is. I feel like I’m going to jail.”

“But you’re not.”

Unwanted and unexpected, this indignant thought popped into my head: Of course I’m not going to jail. I’m not a fucking criminal.

I bit my tongue. I slipped out of bed and took his hand.

I said, “You’re better than you think. You’re in darkness. You can’t see it just now, so you’re just going to have to trust me. I know I can walk away. But I won’t. Because that’s not me, and because that’s not you. You’re not the type of 36

person people walk away from.”

He looked stunned. Perhaps grateful? Maybe penned in? Obligated? Measuring me for a straitjacket?

I wondered whether I really meant it. I wondered whether I could accept his coming out of the Big House thirty-six months from now and saying, I changed my mind. Thanks for waiting, but I want my freedom.

On the other hand, what exactly was I giving up while he was gone? I certainly had no intention of abstaining from sex. I hadn’t been joking with my friend, the uneasy stranger; I plan to take advantage. Prison’s a rare aphrodisiac. For once, I’ll be the bad boy, the one who’s interesting and exotic and pursued. *** Here’s what happened just before we left the apartment for the courthouse plaza: Yet again, I had to bite my tongue not to bring up hot ass bandits. Everyone knew this dilemma—oh, let’s call it what the Feds call it, this indictment—had arisen too soon in our oneyear-two-month-and-thirteen-day relationship.

My Stand-By-Your-Man routine would probably have entailed fewer forced heroics if it had been ten years later. With a decade under my belt, I might have reproved and smoldered and considered the quick out of betrayal, but in

37

the end, I’d have fulfilled the prescribed role without much question. I’d zig exactly when they expected me to zig.

I said, “I’m so proud of the way you’ve held it together. You must be terrified of going to prison.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, I mean, someone like you who’s so claustrophobic he has to identify all the exits as soon as he enters a room. Gotta be your worst nightmare.”

“I lied about that. About the exits. I don’t actually do that.”

“OK,” I said. I blinked. I stifled an urge to vomit. I said, “But don’t lie to the Feds, OK?” He drilled me with a look like I was even dumber than he’d ever conceived.

“They want me to lie. Don’t you know that?

They want me to be more precise, more certain, more eyewitness than secondhand. More of everything.”

“They want the truth.”

“You want the truth.”

“Well, I do. That’s right.”

He stared at me a second. Then he grimaced and did his best Jack Nicholson impression from A Few Good Men, snarling, “You can’t handle the truth.”

I cocked my head and tried to decide 38

whether to let my boyfriend off the hook. He stared at me like a guy trying not to get in the habit of backing down or looking away.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“Me too.”

I thought, You can’t show weakness in the joint, which was also probably a line from a movie. *** Eight hours after it starts, the proffer ends.

I’m waiting for my boyfriend in the courthouse plaza at a pre-arranged spot from which, I assume, if he was lying about lying, he’s already scoped the closest exit.

I give him a hug. It’s like hugging a redwood—smells nice, a hint of the spiritual, but not particularly satisfying.

“How was it?”

“It was a long, sustained screaming orgasm.

How d’ya think it was?”

I must have pouted, because he adds, “Sorry.

I’m bad at this. I know this sucks for you.” He wrings my hand like he’s trying to squeeze out the bones.

I interrupt, since I know he’ll give up nothing about the proffer. He won’t tell me if the agents were hot. He won’t tell me if the prosecutor was demeaning. He won’t tell me what sandwich they ordered him for lunch.

He won’t say whether they were satisfied he

39

was truthful and complete and committed to supporting his bid for a lesser sentence.

I say, “I wanna be perfectly open with you.

Complete and truthful, as they say.” I tell him about the uneasy stranger and the bartender and getting thrown out of the Alley. “First for everything.”

“Are you cocked?”

“A little.”

“You got sloppy drunk and made out with a complete stranger while I was making the proffer?”

“I did.”

My boyfriend’s eyes cross, and then he glares at me like a prosecutor, as if there’s still a bit of evidence I’ve been withholding, some other set of facts I’ve not yet yielded. All of a sudden, he grins.

“Don’t look so guilty. It’s ok.”

“It is?”

“It makes me love and respect you all the more.”

He kisses me. Thrilled I’ve unexpectedly pleased him, zigged when he expected me to zag, I loop my arm in his.

We’re fucking free, I think. We’ve gotten by the worst of it, and we’re headed somewhere warm and tropical and not too dangerous. Together. Sooner or later, however the judge decides.

40

But as soon as we’re back in the apartment, which is—since my boyfriend forfeited his illgotten (Fed word) fortune—unsatisfactorily small for prowling, he’s again on the move with a cloud of rebellion and dissatisfaction all over his face.

I know it’s not my fault. It’s not me he’s thinking of. It’s the proffer. It’s the humiliation of being in someone else’s control, which is also a temptation, because submission has its own ripe satisfactions.

Biting my tongue, I make myself small and obedient. I offer helpful suggestions as to how my boyfriend might relax. I tell him the worst is over. I speculate that my boyfriend’s carefully chosen suit and purple paisley tie did the trick.

He snaps at me, but I’m firm on this. I double the fuck down. I may be 135 pounds wet, but right now I’m fierce. I’m afraid of nothing. I’m perfectly certain that if my boyfriend and I can only find the right words, which we share solely with each other, and not with G-men or prosecutors or former lovers or uneasy strangers, we can weather this storm.

But only if we fuck this very instant.

41

Vanishing Walls I

by Ella Maoz Illustration by Katherine Fitzhugh

think a lot about the insides of bees. I saw Mom crush one once with the heel of her sneaker. Pink sludge—like the movie theater slushies Mom never lets me get—poured from the crack in its body. I was walking behind Mom up the stairs to the backyard. She didn’t realize she’d stepped on it, and I didn’t say anything.

Mom got me a book on bees when we had our bug unit in school. I spent hours flipping through the pages staring at the close-up pictures of their hairy little bodies. The one time I touched a bee was on the playground at recess.

I rested my hand on the gate and pulled it away when it brushed against something fuzzy. The bee hadn’t stung me; Denise said it was probably too disoriented to get mad. I said Denise was stupid. She cried. The school called my mom.

There is a giant beehive in the backyard of our new house. It’s hidden inside one of the bushes in front of the tall fence. Denise and I 43

found it one weekend playing pirates. Denise was the princess (she only plays if she can talk in a British accent) and I was the captain sneaking onto the enemy’s ship to kidnap her. Denise had watched some pirate movie the night before.

I was crawling through the bushes, doing my best to disguise myself as if I was Murray, who had already disappeared over the fence when I started chasing him with a bent metal clothes hanger and yelling “Argggg!” I guess cats don’t like pirate movies. I found the beehive built partly around the thick base of the bushes and partly on the wooden beam of the fence, glued on like a glob of dried paint. It blended in so well with the dead leaves and muddy ground that I had almost crawled right into it. I picked up a stick and, not knowing what the hive was, poked it.

The fabric of the hive caved in around the stick like those damp paper-mache heads of ourselves we made last year in art class. At first, I didn’t even notice the bee landing on my arm, but then I was tumbling out of the bushes, screaming, clutching my inner arm where the sharp sting had dug into me. When I told Denise what happened, she laughed at me and told me, “That’s why you don’t crawl through bushes.” I told Denise she was a loser and “that’s why you don’t have any friends.” She went home 44

crying.

Mom looked up how to heal bee stings on the Internet. She said there’s a guy who purposely got himself stung by three bees so he could test out what healing method works best, which I said was evil because bees die when they sting you—I learned that from my book. Denise said it was evil that they sting people at all, but I told her they only do it when they’re scared.

I spent a week layering thick white toothpaste on the sting with bandages wrapped around it to numb the itchy bump. When Denise saw me for the first time at school with my bandages, she got all freaked out. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I kept telling people my lower arm had gotten chopped off and stitched back on. Denise waited for me to finish reapplying toothpaste before lunch, her purple lunchbox swaying as she rocked back and forth on her feet.

Denise told me I smelled minty. I didn’t know how I felt about that—it went against my signature scent: vanilla. Denise doesn’t understand why I have a signature scent.

“Because sophisticated girls have them. You wouldn’t understand,” I tell her. I learned this from Bella when we went over to her house for dinner. Mom and Bella’s mom are friends, so we see their family a lot. Bella’s house is huge; she 45

even has her own bathroom connected to her room. There are two sinks in her bathroom—she says it’s because her room is supposed to be for a couple. When I asked her why they didn’t also put two toilets and two showers, she said, “Why would they do that?”

Dad loves Bella’s house. He wants to copy their dark wood floors in our house, and one time he even asked the name of the paint color on the walls in the dining room, which I thought was funny because they were just white. Bella’s whole house is black and white—except for the furniture, which Dad doesn’t like as much. He says all the colors give him a headache.

Bella’s mom doesn’t let her wear makeup to school, but she lets her wear perfume. Bella says every girl should have a signature scent. She doesn’t have clothes, she has outfits—earrings that match her shirt that matches her pants that match her shoes. Bella’s scent is orange blossom, which washes over me when she breezes by my seat in class on the way to her friends.

Dad called the exterminator when he found the beehive. I didn’t tell anyone but Denise exactly how I had been stung, just that it had happened in the backyard. It was the new gardener who told Dad about the hive, which prompted Dad to go up to the backyard for the first time since he had toured the house to see 46

it for himself. Since we had moved in Dad had been suspicious that there was a hive somewhere nearby, but he had assumed it was in someone else’s yard. He’d scoff grumpily every time he saw a bee around the house (which was often) and start complaining about “some people”— whoever they are. Every imperfection Dad notices in the house he assures us will be fixed once the house is redone. I wonder if he knows that nobody else sees the issues he does. When I told Dad about the ant trail I like to watch climbing up the tree, he patted my head and said, “Don’t worry—that tree will be cut down soon, and you’ll never have to see those ants again.”

Mom lets me draw on the walls, since they’re gonna get taken down soon anyway. Sometimes I let Denise draw on them too, although one time she drew an ugly bird by the door and I got mad at her and told her she wasn’t allowed to draw anymore unless it was something notugly. She said she couldn’t promise that I would always think her art was not-ugly, so now she’s only allowed to draw behind the dresser. I help Denise push the dresser out of the way when she wants to draw, and then we push it back so you can’t see any ugly drawings. I tried drawing the beehive once, over the head of my bed, but it came out all funny and I couldn’t decide whether 47

to draw it with the hole I stabbed in it or not.

I also couldn’t find the right color—everything either looked too orange or too poop-brown.

Denise told me to try blending the colors, but that just made everything look like a big brown clump above the bed. She was blending pink and purple for a butterfly behind the dresser when Mom came in and started yelling at me for getting my muddy feet all over the white bedsheets. She made me help her strip the bed while Denise sat in the corner, picking through bright markers for her butterfly. We threw everything into the wash, even though Dad hates the way the washer shakes his office when he’s in there, and then I sat on the countertop while Mom scrubbed my feet in the kitchen sink with dish soap.

She asked how my sting was healing. Fine.

Is it still itchy? No. Is the bump still there?

Yes. Does it still hurt? Kinda. Do you still need the toothpaste and bandages? Yes. Dad came in and asked why his office was shaking and Mom told him it was “just a little accident, don’t worry about it.” He glanced at me for a second and then turned and left the room. Denise had finished her butterfly and was waiting crisscross on the naked bed when I came back. She asked me what I thought of her butterfly. I told her it was kind of good—not better than any 48

of my drawings, but not awful to look at. She had blended all these colors together and made these symmetrical swirls all over the wings.

“The symmetry is kinda boring though,” I said.

“But it’s authentic,” Denise said. I told her, “Authenticity is for boring people who have no creativity.”

The grass in the backyard had been overgrown for a while when the gardener finally came. It had been a few weeks since we had moved, and Dad still hadn’t been able to get someone to come over to cut it. He spent one morning on the phone yelling at some gardening company as he drove me to school. When he picked me up from school in the afternoon, he spent the drive ranting about companies putting “idiot children” in charge. I didn’t mind the tall grass because it meant there were better bugs to find crawling underneath it. Denise and I would spend afternoons raking through the grass for big beetles, ladybugs, ants, and anything else we could cram into old glass jam jars we found in the kitchen. We ripped up grass from the mud like hair from soggy skin and stuffed it into the containers, along with some sticks and leaves and dirt so the bugs would feel at home. Murray would watch us from his spot in the tree, and sometimes on warmer days he would stretch out on the grass next to us, soaking up the sun. But 49

then Murray would try to eat the bugs, and I would scream and he would climb back up the tree.

Denise only likes rollie pollies, which she cradles in her hands, her entire body unmoving until the bug slowly opens up and begins crawling all over her. I’ve never had a rollie pollie open on me. Denise says that’s because I’m too impatient and always move too soon. I say that maybe it’s because they feel more comfortable with dumb people than smart ones, ‘cause they know that dumb people are too dumb to eat them.

It was a while before Dad even thought to get a gardener for the backyard, because he and Mom didn’t want us having anyone over before the house looked at least “presentable,” as Dad put it. They let Denise come over though, which is good because her house is really small and there isn’t a lot to do there.

Dad claimed one of the few downstairs rooms with a door as his office, and usually nobody goes in there. It’s one of the rooms toward the back of the house, which means it gets a lot of sun—this pisses Dad off. He hates the way the sun reflects off the shiny, orange, wooden floor; he says the squares of light stain his vision when he’s trying to work, so he pinned up a blanket over the window to block the sun 50

out. On days when Dad is gone, Mom takes the blanket down and Murray stretches out in the patch of sun. We don’t tell Dad because one time he got mad at Murray for all the scratches on the floor, when really it was the dining room chair Dad dragged in as a temporary replacement office chair that did all the damage.

Sometimes I lay with Murray in the sun— quietly, so he doesn’t notice me and run away.

We stretch out on the floor together and I stare up at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the paint with my eyes. There is a big one that twists its way from the window to the middle of the room and I imagine it splitting open and bugs pouring out of it into the room. Dad would hate that.

There is a window in the kitchen that doesn’t shut all the way (Dad nearly broke it trying to).

One day, while we were eating breakfast, a bee floated in through the slit and I thought Dad was going to break all his bones trying to swat it away with a cookbook. Now we eat breakfast in the dining room, even though there is a missing chair—the one Dad took into his office—that forms a gap like a missing tooth.

I cried when the exterminator came to get rid of the hive. I screamed and I begged Dad not to kill them. He grabbed my hands, sticky from mint toothpaste, to try and calm me down and explain that these were the things responsible 51

for my sting. I ran into my room, grabbed a red marker, and drew Dad’s face on the wall with horns and big sharp teeth. Mom says candy is bad for people so I drew a big candy bar next to Dad’s face. I pulled the book on bees off of my bedside table and threw it across the room. It hit the wall right next to Denise’s ugly bird and fell to the ground, uninjured. I lay on the floor for a while and Murray came and sat on my stomach.

He purred and stretched out until he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and darted out of the room. Mom came into my room and sat with me on the floor.

“I know change is hard,” Mom said. “But Dad’s gonna make this house all pretty, like Bella’s. Don’t you want a house like Bella’s?”

Sometimes, when I draw something really good on the wall, I try to copy it onto a piece of paper so it won’t disappear with the rest of the house. We once took a field trip to the museum, where we saw this ugly painting that they told us was a replica of the original. I couldn’t understand why someone would want to recreate such an ugly thing. At quiet time in class, Denise often draws that same bird over and over again.

She has a pile of papers that are just different versions of the bird, each one with the lines more mangled, the body more hairy, the eyes more bulb-like than the last one. She tells me that one 52

day she’s gonna draw a bird so pretty that I’ll beg her to put it up over the ugly one on the wall. I tell her that by the time she does, the wall will already be torn down.

53

Spirit Goes West T

by Jack Miessner Illustration by Aubrey McConnell

he only horse Cowboy had ever seen was on a cigarette billboard on Park Street, and the only cow on the side of a milk carton. Cowboy didn’t look the part, either; he was scrawny, even for a fourteen-year-old. He began each new year with unheard prayers that his shoulders might fill out, that he might grow into the clothes that larger boys left behind once they became even larger men. Thick black hair grew on his head and nowhere else, none of those rugged good looks. Where a wide-brimmed hat might sit upon the head of a cattleman, he wore a Red Sox baseball cap, sweat-bleached from years of abuse.

If this evidence has served its purpose, then by now you’ll be convinced that this boy is neither the gumptious cowpuncher nor the grizzled lawman, and is certainly not the righteous drifter. Yet days after his arrival in Victor he became the cowboy. Maybe it was the way he arrived: a black sedan motoring into view over the open horizon, sudden as a summer 55

storm, like a white hat in a Western. Perhaps it was his unique loneliness, like the rogue heroes of those films. He was born to the cold concrete in front of the Boston Pentecostal Church, which, between the three orphanages he’d haunt in the next fourteen years, might have been the most accommodating home he’d known.

Joni and Simon Fischer tended a modest ranch a couple miles east of Victor. They’d lost six cows to the harsh cold of the previous winter, and since then business had been—as most business tended to be in Southern Wyoming— tenuous and slow. In May, Joni tore from a streetlight a flier offering ten dollars a day to foster a child, and in August, the two stood at the edge of their property and kicked rocks as they waited for the boy.

The black sedan arrived at the Fischers.

Cowboy stepped out into the cool, early evening air, and the solitude of it all made itself known to him. In all directions spread a vast expanse of ranch land, undisturbed by telephone lines or street lights. Plain and humble homes distanced themselves from one another; the strongest man on earth couldn’t throw a stone and hit the neighbor’s house. In the night, a total darkness enveloped the land, with the only light coming from furnaces dispersed like the stars so that even the birds couldn’t tell the earth from the 56

sky. The old couple showed Cowboy into the home. The floors, fashioned from turn-ofthe-century lumber, protested with every step the boy took. The door opened into the living room, which was adorned sparsely with rickety furniture. There were a few chairs, an old sofa, and in the center, an ornately detailed table of polished oak; the Fischers’ prized possession, it belonged to John's uncle, once a master carpenter, now in the business of dirt and worms.

Cowboy’s bedroom was boxy but uncrowded; a small cot took up most of the space, and against the wall sat an ancient .22 caliber air revolver, with a note taped to the barrel: Welcome to Victor.

When the sun went down over Victor, there was little to do besides talk, and the three gathered around the heirloom table and did just that. They spoke of similarities and differences.

The East was this, the West that. Did he like baseball? They couldn’t wait for him to meet this and that family! The Guthries, the Prines, and, oh, the teachers down at the country school, of course. The students were on break now, but he’d be starting up in the fall. What did he want to learn? What did he want to be? Cowboy had few answers to these questions, but he reveled in the conversation. Joni had a funny way of talking, he thought, like she wasn’t worried about where 57

the words went. Simon was quieter, his mouth always hanging a bit open like his head was full of meanings he didn't know how to reckon with.

As Cowboy prepared to turn in for the night, Mr. Fischer, holding a withered photobook, hobbled awkwardly into the boy’s bedroom. With labored grunts he lowered himself down onto the cot and opened the book to a black and white photo of a goofy-grinned young boy, sitting behind the same dining room table that Cowboy had that day.

“Is that you?” Cowboy asked. Mr. Fischer let out a hearty laugh.

“No, no,” he said, “That was our Orville.” He strung out the name like he didn’t want to finish saying it. He then told Cowboy the story. It was a long one, full of gorgeous joys and painful misfortunes, that ended with Valley fever. When Mr. Fischer finished, Cowboy’s eyes glazed over with mist. Simon’s did too, though his voice remained stoic. He heaved himself back up, and on his way out, he picked up the air revolver and brandished it towards the window. After a few moments of staring down the barrel, he rested it back against the wall.

“Always wanted to give this thing to somebody,” he said, before closing the heavy wooden door behind him.

58

News seldom came to Victor, and it was only about noon the next morning when a knock on the door resonated through the hollow house.

Cowboy was in his room, stroking the gift the Fischers had given him. He’d never seen a gun outside of television, and though the one he held only shot lead pellets, he was uneasy at the feel of it in his hands. Mrs. Fischer gleefully called out to the boy, and when he poked his head out from his room, two boys about his age stood sheepishly in the doorway. One was scrawny but rough-looking, with sharp features and a takeyour-milk-money face. The other had to crouch in the entryway. He was gangly, sort of awkwardlooking, and above all, enormously tall.

“My name’s Tweedy, and this here’s Tallboy,” the shorter one said. It seemed that hardly anyone in this town went by their Christian name. Tallboy looked down, as he often had to do, at the air pistol that the boy had forgotten he was holding.

“Well, look at you, Cowboy,” he said excitedly. It was the first time Cowboy would hear the name.

“What’s say you me ‘n Tallboy go shootin’?”

Tweedy proposed.

Mrs. Fischer pointed her big, toothy grin at the boy. “Be home by five,” she said. In the wash behind Tallboy’s old man’s trailer, a few 59

properties down from the Fischers, Cowboy brandished the pellet gun toward a picture of Jane Fonda ripped from a magazine cover.

Tweedy steadied his new friend’s arm and walked him through the steps, which, to Tweedy’s knowledge, were twofold: point and shoot. Cowboy drew his breath and brought down the hammer. He sighed. Fonda was safe, for now. “Easy there, gunslinger,” chuckled Tallboy. “We’ll practice.”

The next hours continued like this: point, shoot, miss, and “He’s gotta do it like this!” and, “Ain'tcha ever seen a gun before?” The three took turns with the revolver until the sun hung low in the west, and, in saying their goodbyes, Tweedy and Tallboy promised to take Cowboy into town the next day and show him the ropes.

When Cowboy neared the house, he pointed his nose to the air, smelling dinner on the stove. He found the Fischers on the porch stoop, Simon thumbing through the ‘74 World Almanac, Joni humming some ambiguous tune.

Simon beamed when he saw the boy holding the revolver. He told Cowboy he was glad someone was finally getting some use out of the thing, that when he brought it down from the attic before the boy’s arrival he had had to polish off decades of dust.

“Damn thing looked like this,” he said, 60

flipping his almanac around and presenting a photo of a tomb from some ancient place.

Cowboy laughed, and then Simon laughed, and then Joni. The three of them laughed together through the evening, through their dinner, which they took on the stoop. Through family stories and urban legends, town gossip and folk tales.

Laughing until Wyoming’s rising moon settled in some faraway place.

It was about noon again when Tweedy and Tallboy called on Cowboy, and as the three of them trudged into town, Cowboy took Victor in. There wasn’t much to see. A few ramshackle buildings of brick and wood, nearly all with false fronts, a bygone hope of industry. A lonely sheriff ’s office, a bank. In the center of town, if towns of that size truly have a center, the boys waited impatiently as a freight train slowed down almost to a stop and then accelerated again, as if to spit on Victor and all of its inhabitants.

“Santa Fe Railway, headin’ north,” mumbled Tweedy.

“What did you say?” Cowboy asked.

“Sante Fe Railway, headin’ north,” the boy repeated. “Comes up from New Mexico every day at three and then again at four thirty. Used to stop right in the middle of town when business was boomin’, but now it just passes 61

right through.”

“You sure know a lot about trains.”

“My dad rode those rails in the depression,” he said plainly. “Then he worked for the railway a while.”

“What does he do now?” Cowboy asked.

“Drinks.”

Outside the general store stood a massive statue of John Wayne, one hand clutching his hat, the other gripping the reins of a wild bronco. When the boys slunk into the store, the owner, a stocky, middle-aged man, pointed at a No Loitering sign. When they didn’t move, he exhaled gruffly and went back to his newspaper.

“What's his deal?” Cowboy asked.

“We never buy nothin’,” admitted Tallboy, “but we sure do borrow.” Tweedy and Tallboy wandered off, and Cowboy meandered up to the counter.

“What’s your name, sir?”

The man looked up from his newspaper.

He spoke with a slight German accent. “Felix Buckley, but call me Mr. Buckley. You?” “Cowboy. Well, at least those two call me that.”

“You a cowboy?” Mr. Buckley asked.

“I guess not.”

Mr. Buckley nodded. Cowboy could tell he was a man of few words, so he continued. “Never 62

really thought names meant anything, I guess.

I mean, the whole deal is your parents give it to you, and I never had those. So my name’s always just been a word from someone I never met.

Cowboy’s got as much meaning as any other name could.”

“Ah.” That was all that Mr. Buckley had to say on the matter. Cowboy, seeing that he had lost the man’s attention, asked him about the statue. Mr. Buckley told the boy that they filmed a Western in the town in the late fifties.

The movie was supposed to put Victor on the map, but it never saw a single theater, and residents were still bent out of shape about it.

The statue—once copper, now the color of mint bubblegum—was a gift from the studio. The town kept it as a bitter reminder of its brief proximity to glory, and, some nights, Victor’s barflies would empty their kidneys out all over John Wayne.

Tweedy and Tallboy left the store with their pockets full, and Cowboy joined them in the lot.

Tallboy stuffed his hands in his pants and pulled out his score.

“That a Twinkie in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” chuckled Tweedy. Cowboy laughed along. It was a different sort of laugh than the ones he shared with the Fischers, and he hadn’t understood the joke. Tallboy tossed the 63

Twinkie to Cowboy, who inspected the wrapper.

“You seen a Twinkie before?” Tallboy asked.

“Never.”

“What’s the deal? Got some of them healthnut parents?” Tweedy elbowed Tallboy, who let out a sharp groan.

“Shoot, sorry Cowboy. I forgot.”

“It’s OK, I never really cared much,” Cowboy said. The three stood in silence for a few moments.

“Anyways,” Tweedy redirected the conversation, “what did you grab?”

“Oh,” Cowboy said sheepishly. "I don't steal.

Or at least I never have before.” Tallboy teased him. “Never shot a gun, never seen a Twinkie, never stole. What have you done, Cowboy?”

“See, around these parts,” Tweedy explained, “none of us got two nickels to rub together. Hell, none of us even got two pennies to rub together.

So we learn to be resourceful. You see that?” He gestured toward the meters that sat in front of the only three parking spots outside of the store.

On top of the one nearest the boys rested a lit cigarette, nearly burned to the filter. “The town put those in a few years back to suck us dry of the money nobody’s got. Nobody ever puts any coins in ‘em, though, they just light a cigarette on top of it to show the cops they’re only gonna be in a few minutes. So what do we do?”

64

Tallboy plucked the cigarette off of the meter and took a long drag.

“Re-source-ful-ness.” He handed the cigarette to Cowboy, who admitted he’d never smoked, either.

“Another never,” Tallboy snickered. “Never, never, never. Cowboy’s full of ‘em.” Cowboy brought the cigarette to his lips and took a short pull, instantly exploding into a coughing fit.

The boys erupted into laughter. Tallboy slugged Cowboy on the back.

“That’s the spirit,” Tallboy chuckled. “Every cowboy needs a cowboy killer.” Cowboy beamed and took another drag, this time coughing a little less. Something had come over the boy, a sense of freedom perhaps, from the overbearing, watchful eye of every orphanage keeper who ever pretended to be his parent. All of that was behind him. He was out west now; things were different here. Another drag.

“You’re right,” he admitted. “I’ve never done anything my whole life.” Tweedy and Tallboy grinned at each other mischievously.

“You know what you oughtta do,” Tweedy said. When Cowboy stared back blankly, Tallboy jumped in.

“Go back in there and swipe somethin’.”

The words careened through Cowboy’s head.

He thought of the Fischers, of Joni’s sweet, 65

tuneless humming, of Simon's soothing air of steady quietude. But then he thought of Tweedy, of Tallboy, and the questions the Fischers asked that first night. He’d be going to school soon, what was he excited for? The thought of school, of being the outcast orphan with no friends; he’d never answered those questions because he knew what he dreaded.

“Alright.”

The boys cheered. Cowboy ducked back into the store, his stomach turning like an unbalanced washing machine as he walked purposefully up and down the aisles. The Twinkies were a perfect score: perfectly pocket-sized, and he knew they would earn him praise from his new friends.

Cowboy stole a glance at the counter where the owner still sat, his nose buried in the editorials.

Cowboy looked at Mr. Buckley the way a deer looks at a hunter, feeling out its chances of a bullet between the eyes before it crosses a clearing. He didn’t want to steal from the man;in fact, he felt a kind of solidarity with him.

Cowboy could tell when someone was lonely; those places he’d grown up, lonely reached every corner of the house. It was about the only thing you could be.

This had nothing to do with Mr. Buckley, though; it had to do with Cowboy. Had to do with freedom, with resourcefulness, with 66

Twinkies. Cowboy jerked his hand out and grabbed one, and when he went to stuff it in his trousers, his hand met the cold, metallic grip of his air pistol. He palmed the Twinkie and moved it to his other pocket, and then looked over at Mr. Buckley, who seemed completely unaware that the boy was in the store at all.

Cowboy grabbed one more to pay back Tallboy, but as the wrapper met his pocket, the plastic crinkled; in the pin-drop silent store, it sounded out like a church bell. Mr. Buckley’s head jerked up, and Cowboy met his icy gaze.

Before he could count to three, the man charged at the boy. Something had changed in Mr. Buckley; like a mad cow he snapped. His arms flailed wildly, and there was nothing behind his eyes. The owner of a failing grocery store in a failing town, he was under constant threat of losing everything. It was the kind of rock bottom, oppressive desperation that possessed mankind, that beat its victims into the earth and forced them to forget themselves in the name of survival. He had been stolen from for the last time. Cowboy had no time to react; Mr. Buckley was nearly upon him, and there was no telling what this man twice his size might do in his madness. He could squeeze the life out of the boy without even realizing, without even exerting half his energy. Cowboy shut his eyes 67

tight, and a deafening shot rang out.

The sound pierced the air, resonated through the hollow walls of the store, and made all silent. Cowboy lost all sense of place and time.

His vision spun and his mind briefly detached from this world and hovered somewhere above himself. The shot still echoed deep in his ears.

Had he died? He reasoned with himself that he must have a pulse, as he could still feel the store’s stale air on his face and the smell of an active chimney still filled his nose. He looked down at his hand, which was clutching the .22 caliber pellet gun, the barrel smoking like Tallboy’s cigarette. Mr. Buckley let out a long, haunting groan, keeled over, and collapsed onto the dusty floor. He clutched his face, his inhales and exhales sharp and laborious. A few unstifled whimpers escaped him, and the gunslinger stood over his body, mouth open as a grouper’s, his hand trembling under the weight of his weapon.

Cowboy hadn’t even known what he’d done— it was all a matter of untamed instinct. He had only ever shot the pistol a handful of times, but with his life at stake his hand went to the gun the way a baby reaches for its mother in the dark. And just like that, old Mr. Buckley was half blind.

Cowboy regained his wits and dashed out to the front of the store, leaving behind the 68

wounded Mr. Buckley. The lot was empty. He saw no sign of Tweedy and Tallboy who, when they heard the shot, scattered like field mice, leaving Cowboy completely alone in a world where he knew no one and no one knew him.

The bucolic dream that had been Victor was over. In the best case scenario, they’d lock him away in some juvenile facility; in the worst, they’d send him back to Boston.

As the sun prepared to abandon Victor, Simon Fischer sat behind his beloved table, stirring a glass of whiskey with his index finger.

The house had a sort of eerie atmosphere, he felt, when he was alone in its stillness. Joni was out at the post office, the boy was god-knows where.

According to the digital clock on the counter, it was a quarter past five. He rehearsed all the words he was going to say to the boy, words like structure and order and discipline. He was going to tell his temporary son all about these things, how they were wildly important in shaping a boy into a man. How, as long as he lived under the Fischers’ roof, he would not break curfew again.

He knew not to fret over Cowboy, though. He understood that young men got up to all sorts of fooling around. Mr. Fischer certainly did plenty of that growing up. He wanted Cowboy to enjoy the salad days while he was still young. He had even gifted the boy the air gun that he played 69

with in his own boyhood. He reflected fondly on the times when that revolver was his closest friend, shooting at tin cans, running around the backwoods playing cowboys and outlaws with his schoolmates.

But while Simon recalled his youth and watched the ice melt into his whiskey, Cowboy was not out palling around with the local kids.

He was not playing kick-the-can or dominoes or pick-up sticks or hopscotch. He was on the Santa Fe Railway, headin’ north.

Cowboy watched the sun go down from the door of a cramped lumber car, jamming his finger into the ridges and furrows of his air pistol. He settled himself against the cold steel wall, and despite the events of the day, felt an overwhelming peace. Tremendous mountains extended beyond the frame of the open door, so he stepped cautiously to the edge of the car to catch a glimpse of their snow-capped peaks.

Between the mountains, the vast stretches of earth, and the millions of stars overhead, Cowboy couldn’t help but succumb to the sublimity of it all. He felt it first in his legs, which seemed to lose all sense of weight, and then it traveled up through his veins so that, after a few minutes, he was light as a balloon.

The feeling was different from the one Boston's highrise towers gave him—a sense of comfort 70

that mankind, so long as folks worked together, were kings on this planet. The scene in front of Cowboy, miles of land untouched by man, suggested otherwise. That no matter how much people cooperated, they couldn’t be mightier than the earth. That, at any moment, nature could stomp you out like you were an anthill.

There was no safety in numbers.

A tragic veneer were those peaks, a trick of the eye much older than Cowboy, older than Victor. They were the same ones that, eras before his, bewitched disillusioned northerners who fled to the west over paintings of seductive temptresses in sparse, virgin landscapes. Of course, running from the railroad was no easy life, and many of those men starved and stole out of want and drank themselves to death all in pursuit of a life untouched, a society within the self. How fast that dream had poisoned Cowboy the way that it did those men.

Because it meant that the unity, the baseball caps, the dinner tables, none of it mattered. It didn’t make any difference if he had a mother or a father, or that his efforts to find friends left a man half blind. It didn’t matter that nobody in this world loved Cowboy, and he loved nobody back. That he couldn’t hold his new home for even a week was of little importance, and it didn’t matter that he left Victor just as 71

he’d arrived: entirely alone. He reached into his pants and found the Twinkie he had stuffed in his pocket earlier; the cakey treat smelled like the ponderosa pines that peppered the land behind Tallboy’s trailer. Cowboy gripped the handle of the air pistol, pointed the barrel at the mountains, and pretended like he could shoot right through them. Then he rested the gun on his chest, pulled his baseball cap over his eyes, and slept like the last man on earth.

72

73

The Lake A

by Ryan Forgosh Illustration by Katherine Fitzhugh

forest sprawls out in front of you. The night lights it a brilliant shade of blue, as deep as the sprawling sky, sparkling and beautiful, complete with what seems like its own stars.

One of these stars starts moving, circling in front of you before turning away. A firefly. Turning around, you follow the forest’s star with your eyes as it disappears into an ocean of darkness.

The darkness captivates you, leaving you staring into the nothingness. Something about it is unsettling. You swear you feel something there.

Something watching. You turn back around, leaving the sea of black behind you, and choose to instead face the beauty of the forest. It’s just anxiety, you tell yourself, attempting to stop your chest’s quickening pace.

You take a deep breath, letting the freshest air you’ve ever breathed enter your lungs. It’s cleansing—like all the anxiety that filled your thoughts just a moment prior is being ushered out of your body. The air of the forest rushes 75

through your nose, and quickly disperses throughout the rest of your body.

You look down at your hand. It’s as still as the forest around you. The night is almost completely silent, save for a quiet hum carried by a gentle breeze. You can hear your heartbeat. It’s slow. Steady. You can even feel the air touching your skin. It’s cold, but welcoming. It wraps around you, and you choose to lean into its embrace. Your blood rushes to the top of your skin to hug the air back, creating a feeling of warmth in the chill of the night. You savor it for just a moment, closing your eyes and taking another deep breath. But then the question that’s been in the back of your mind bubbles to the surface. How did you get here?

How did I get here? As I stare into the mirror, fervently adjusting the black tie wrapped around my neck like a noose, I can’t help but think about this question. Our friends are outside. They decided to give me some space. I still can’t decide if I should be appreciative of this or if I should resent them for leaving me alone with nothing but this stupid tie. Damnit!

No matter what I do, it doesn’t look right.

I give up and discard the tie. I can’t put this off forever. Or maybe I could. The door does have a lock on it. I could just twist it and hide 76

away forever. But no. I have a job to do. And after that, who knows what. I sure as hell don’t.

Our friends are out there to support me. And you, of course. But for some reason, everything feels like it’s on me. I wonder how you would handle this. I wonder if you would be stronger than I am. I wonder, I think, I imagine, and I start to cry.

I crouch down in the small room designed for people like me to prepare to say goodbye to people like you. Once I persuade the tears to stop, I wipe their stains away and rise. I pick the tie up and put it back on, disregarding the mirror’s opinion of me and accepting that it’ll look how it looks. I tie it tight. The piece of fabric squeezes my neck, making it hard to breathe. I turn the door handle and leave the safety of my isolation. I close my eyes and prepare.

Opening your eyes, you see something shining. Your head tilts inquisitively as your heart starts to beat faster. You take a hesitant but insistent step forward. The darkness behind you fades as you arrive at the lake.

You stand at the edge of the lake; the moonlight reflects from the water onto your face.

If one could peer over your shoulder now and look at your face reflecting in the water, 77

surrounded by the stars, their heart would surely stop. Alas, there is no one there to admire the sight. You stare down at yourself, just enjoying being. The weight of the world is like that of a feather here. You choose to spend some time just standing, enjoying the breeze on your face, the humming of the environment, the fresh smell of the lake. Simply enjoying the moment.

When was the last time you did this? And yet, something eats at you during this moment of relaxation.

Staring into the water, you start to remember. You furrow your brow in effort.

A bead of sweat drips off your forehead and lands in the lake. The droplet causes a ripple effect, making the clear water in the lake spiral outward. In the center of it all, an image forms.

A car. A flash of life. A split second. The flash fades. A bed in a white room. A figure upon it. You upon it. A familiar silhouette by your side. They hold your hand and cry, in more pain than yourself. The image dissipates, and the water steadies.

You know why you’re here, and you know that this moment can’t last, yet you can’t bring yourself to be the one to end it. Far behind you, a quiet crack sounds in the darkness, as if someone stepped on a twig. You turn around once more and look upon his face. You knew in your heart 78

that this couldn’t last forever, yet a part of you still held onto the hope that this moment would never end. You chose to walk back to the lake, the place you were meant to walk away from.

I’m the last one left. Everyone else has gone home. The midday sun is beating down on top of my head. Aren’t days like this supposed to be ugly? Rainy? Shouldn’t the sky conform to my feelings? Perhaps the universe missed the memo.

But that’s fine. I don’t need the sky to beat upon me with water for my face to be covered in moisture.

I’m surrounded by a field of green and gray.

It’s been meticulously maintained. To honor those that lie here? Or simply so people choose to lie here? I don’t know which. I don’t care. I’m too focused on the gray object in front of me to concern myself with the melancholic beauty of where I stand. The beauty that I long for is underneath it all.

There’s text on the gray stone. I wrote it. I don’t remember what it says. Something nice, I hope. I attempt to look at it, straining my eyes to examine it, to make sure it’s in pristine shape. Not that you can care. Try as I might, I can’t seem to look through the wall of water separating myself from the world around me. I leave it be for now. Pulling with all my might, I 79

force myself to turn away and leave you.

Yet I still feel you with me. No matter where I go, your presence refuses to abandon me. How is that fair, that you can follow me to the end of the Earth, yet I can’t hold your hand as we peer over the edge? You’re by my side. You’re at the field. You’ll never be by my side again. You’re just an object in the grass, and I the shell of what remains.

You take a step away from the lake, and it grows markedly less beautiful. You start toward the man standing in front of you. He is gaunt, yet handsome. As if his natural handsomeness is marred by starvation. And he’s tall—unnaturally so, like he stretched himself out to reach his current height. He’s dressed in all black, a stark contrast with the vibrance surrounding him.

His eyes have no color at all, yet are as vibrant as the forest around you. They’re like pools of black that you long to swim in; they invite you in, begging for you to dive headfirst into them.

He’s a shadow in the night. A silhouette carving out a hole in the world around him. You shiver slightly as a small tingle goes down your spine, but through this feeling you do not waver.

You look up at him. The same reflection that shimmered in the lake now stares at you from the pitch black pools in the man’s face. You stare 80

back, maintaining eye contact with both the man and yourself. Whether in the lake or in his eyes, you’re still you. Despite no longer being there, the beauty that shone in the lake still continues to shine within you. As you stare, the ground beneath you seems to crack and crumble.

Darkness fills your peripheral vision as the world around you fades out of existence; your eyes remain locked on the man.

He calls to you, beckoning you to approach.

Try as you might, you can’t resist his will. Your foot moves as if on its own, and your other follows suit. The shiver that you felt when you first saw him grows. The tingle down your spine becomes a shock, yet onward you walk, each step carrying you farther and farther from the lake as the world around you fades away. The breeze that tickled your nose by the lake is no more. You step forward. The gentle humming that filled you with such calm before is gone as well. Another step. A foot away from the man, you manage to stop yourself, pulling your gaze away from his eyes. Sensation returns to you. The breeze once again tickles your nose. The quiet humming of your surroundings once again calms your nerves.

You give the man a pleading look, and he lets out what you think is a sigh. You nod, thanking him, and walk back to the lake with confidence, knowing it’ll be your last time ever seeing it.

81

There’s a lake close by that we used to go to.

It’s surrounded by a forest. It’s not particularly pretty or grand or anything, but it is secluded and quiet. I don’t know about you, but when I was there, I always felt at ease, just wasting time by your side. I decide to go there now. I don’t really know why I want to, but it just feels right.

It’s like a tug. I don’t know what I expect to find there. It just . . . it feels right.

The lake glimmers, sunshine reflecting onto it through the crop of trees that block out the world beyond the grove. For some reason, it feels even more beautiful than it ever has before. I turn around, looking at the path I just walked. It feels dull and barren in comparison to the grove.

I turn back to the lake. The water’s a clear, crystal blue, and the trees feel greener than normal.

Like a filter’s been placed over this area. I fear, though, that if I took a picture to look at later, I would discover it was just my imagination. Has it always been like this?

As you look at it, the lake seems to be constantly shifting. The water moves a bit and it is filled with a dark purple hue. The man beckons you to follow him. You do all you can to ignore his call. Another moment passes. The lake turns 82

a deep crimson red. He attempts to summon you once more. You glare at him quickly and turn back to the lake. You refuse to give up your last moment with the beautiful sight. The place in which you’ve spent so long. The place you will never again return to.

Another moment passes. Blue. A blue just like the night sky. Another call from the man.

Mentally, you beg him to give you just another moment here, a little more time at the lake.

That’s all anyone wants, isn’t it? Just a bit more time. Just one last precious moment. One last time to be with the lake.

The lake shifts once more. Black. It is the purest black you’ve ever seen, just like the man’s eyes. There’s something peaceful about the lake.

It’s as black as night right now, but you know that it will soon return to being blue, or red, or yellow, or any other color you can imagine. Or even colors that you never could.

My walking corpse of a self approaches the edge of the lake. I look down and realize that the beauty that I perceived upon entry was a sham.

All I see in the reflection is myself. You’re not there next to me.

But the longer I stare, the more I feel that’s not true. You left the lake, but does that mean you left me? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I 83

wish I did. I wish I could know for sure if you’re standing next to me or not. Or do you truly, permanently leave, once you leave the lake?

You take your final look at the lake. It’s already changed again. It’s now white. You can see someone’s reflection in the lake, but it’s not your own. It starts as a familiar silhouette. Then they shift fully into view. They’re wearing a black suit with a messy tie, and they seem to be staring right at you. Tears begin to fill your eyes, matching the tears that are in theirs.

You reach down to them, intending to reach into the lake and join them, but the man behind you reaches his hand out and places it on your shoulder, stopping you. You pry your eyes away from the reflection in the lake and look at the man in black. From your crouched position, he is like a tower. He reaches his hand out to you to lift you up from the ground and you nod to him.

Right now, as I stare into the lake, I’m the only thing reflecting in it. But it’s held your image before. Maybe it still does. You’re not here now, but what does that mean for the lake?

Maybe I’m just trying to comfort myself. Maybe you’re gone, just another stone in the field. Or maybe you’re that, and yet still so much more.

You were once by my side, here at the lake. I 84

don’t see why that should change. After all, when I walk away from the lake, I too won’t reflect on its surface, but the memory of my doing so will remain, as does yours.

No matter how the lake changes, it continues holding all of the images of the night sky; but it holds your gaze in it no longer. You stare into his eyes. They are now green. Looking at the man, you realize something. No one knows what’s to come, or even if something will come if you leave the lake, and yet you know that it is the right thing to do. After a moment, you take his hand and walk alone into the unknown.

I will miss you. I will remember you. I will forever hold you dear. I will watch over the lake in your absence.

The sun rises, and the lake shifts.

85

The Post Office E

by Maia Cataldo Illustration by Aubrey McConnell

very day I wake up hoping today will be the day. I order breakfast with the touchpad on my night table. You can get whatever you want, however much you want, though I’ve found that no matter what is available I only ever want blueberry pancakes. I drink an entire pot of tea, luxuriating in the fact that I will never have to pee unless I want to. I rarely do, though sometimes I indulge in a satisfying poop when I have the time.

Breakfast appears and it is the most amazing meal I’ve ever had, as usual. I let the closet dress me. Outside it is perfect: eighty-two and sunny, but not too sunny. There’s a pleasant humidity to the air; it’s breathable and lovely, like nothing is touching your skin. I skip to the Post Office. I could just imagine myself there and it would be faster, but I enjoy the exercise.

Not that it’s necessary. I’m healthier than a baby here.

Nothing is old-fashioned, with the exception 87

of the Post Office. It’s the backbone of our community, they say; it’s a charming hub to socialize and connect with our past. Without it, there honestly wouldn’t be much to do. It’s about the only thing you really have to do here. The Post Office is where we get our Mail. It sounds obvious, but it’s more complicated than you might think.

Inside there is a bustle of people. I greet the Brontë sisters as they head out with a wheelbarrow full of messages. They are some of the only famous people I know here who actually go through all of their Mail and pick it up themselves. The Brontës are more than famous though—they’re Legacies. When someone is deemed a Legacy, you get a whole ceremony and you’re awarded with a permanent address here. In order to qualify for Legacy status your Mailbox must receive Mail every day for one hundred earth years after the last person you knew on earth dies. Mail is similar to Google searches, but it extends beyond that.

Every time your name gets mentioned on earth, or your work, your legacy, etc., you receive written Mail notifying you of the occurrence.

Sometimes it’s dull—like my friend George, who gets Mail every time the phone book is mentioned. He invented the damn thing.

Obviously those notifications dwindle with each 88

passing year, but you’d be surprised how often he still receives Mail.

It’s nothing very heartfelt or exciting. He stopped going to the Post Office entirely long before he achieved Legacy status. Leonardo, my neighbor, has a huge Italian family and they mention him all the time. His box is next to mine and it’s always stuffed. But he rarely empties it; he’s always out playing golf with Sinatra.

I died two years and seven months ago.

Usually your Mail dwindles about six months after you die, with slight resurgences on your birthday or holidays. I got a small but steady stream of Mail for a few months after it happened. The funeral was my best day: lots of stories about my life, many nice anecdotes. From then the stack started to dwindle into one or two a week, usually more to do with legal stuff—I left my Nantucket house to my nephews and they went through the logistics with a lawyer a few times during those months. Then I had hoped for something more sentimental; now I’m hoping for any mention at all.

It’s important—not only for my happiness, but if I want to stay here, I need something to earn my keep. That’s why many of the people I encounter on a daily basis are still fairly wellknown on Earth. You see, once a whole Earth 89

year goes by without Mail, I’ll be sent Elsewhere.

Turned to forgotten dust. If I stay here long enough my soul has a chance to be reborn, and I would get full benefits here. I could live a life of luxury for the rest of my death. I would also get to see any family members come in once their time is up. My sister-in-law came in the other day, but we don’t really get along so it wasn’t all that thrilling. Not that I want my nephew or my grand-niece to die anytime soon, but I would like to see them again someday, under circumstances where I’m not so old and crotchety as I was in life.

I wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Well, depending on who you ask. I was a businessman, plain and simple. I didn’t have time for anything that didn’t make money or provide me with an opportunity to make more money. I could not for the life of me tell you now what it was that I actually did. At the time what I did felt important. More important than friends, and much more important than family. I never had one. A family, that is.

I asked Lorraine Simmons to marry me right after college. She was gorgeous, a real stunner. I was never much for looks—I went nearly bald before I turned thirty—but she didn’t care about that. I was rich and only getting richer, and that she liked. But she said no. We 90

were young, and her prospects were good— much better than me. After that I threw myself into work. It’s a blur, truly; those years feel like minutes to me now. A thousand briefcases, a thousand wool suits and silk ties, a million meetings. That’s all it is to me now.

I like to think I mellowed out a bit after I retired. I took an interest in my nephews; I tried to buy their love by gifting them extravagant honeymoons and putting their names on the only thing I think I really did right: my house by the sea.

In my later years I sold my Manhattan apartment and the ski house in Vermont that I never used and moved permanently to Nantucket. It was a peaceful existence. I began reading for fun again; I went for long walks around the island; I spent time on the patio listening to the sounds of family radiating from the neighborhood. Like I said, I tried to connect with my nephews, but they were both grown men by then. They rarely brought their families to visit me, and even so, their kids were little.

Too little to imprint my big, bearded face into their memories. It was too late for me. If you live a lonely life, you die a lonely man. And that’s what I did. The worst part about it is there’s nothing I can do about it now but wait and hope that maybe I left a shred of something on Earth 91

that’s worth remembering.

The Post Office is large, but not nearly as large as you might think. I walk up to my box and I see Leonardo at his Mailbox. I wave. He’s got messages piled in his arms and he’s smoking a cigar.

“Hey Leo, good looking stack you got there.”

I always try to be polite even though I’m seething with jealous rage.

“They won’t shuddup! I got a notice saying it was a hazard to keep them all here. I’m missing golf for this.”

“Bummer,” I say, barely able to hide my disgust.

“You get anything yet?” he says. I shake my head. “How long has it been?”

“Not that long,” I lie.

“Don’t worry.” He looks worried. “They’ll come. You leave some hidden journals or something? Some money? Beneath a floorboard type thing? You could always contest that, you know.” It was true; if you had something worth waiting more than a year for, something you were sure would surface at some point, you could contest it with the Council and buy yourself more time.

“I don’t think so.” The trouble was I had an extremely boring life. No wife, no kids. I lived well, had several houses, made a lot of money, 92

like I said, but I lived quietly. I regret that now.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll thinka something,” he says, cigar still hanging from his lips. Leo limps away, trying to keep his Mail from slipping.

“You’d think they would digitize this shit by now!” He yells to no one as he stumbles through the building.

They keep Mail physical because they think it will tie us closer to Earth. Even though we technically don’t need it, the Council wants us to socialize as much as possible.

I take out my Mailbox key when it appears and place it in the lock. I think a silent prayer to myself. Today is the day, I repeat. The key clicks in the lock and my Mailbox opens. There, lying on the small shelf, is an envelope. I reach inside and gingerly remove it. My name is printed in big letters on the back: WILLIAM H. MACLAREN. I catch my breath. Below the name it says, One Instance, five mentions.

Available in print and viewing. This means the moment I was mentioned was verbal. My name was spoken by someone, not just read on a piece of paper or written down. I haven’t received one of these in a while.

Swiftly, I bring my precious Mail to the desk. After the transaction with the droning secretary, I am ushered into a room with a screen. I get to keep the written message, but the 93

viewing can only be screened inside the building until I decide to archive it, which isn’t cheap. The screening room is comfortable and airy. I sit on the chair provided. I hear a whir as the viewing begins. Suddenly I’m sitting on the floor of a kitchen. I think it’s my nephew’s; he had a big remodel after I died. I’m sitting next to a young woman and a small girl who must be my grandniece, Adeline. She’s so big now—she was only a baby when I died. They’re making a puzzle.

Everything looks so real, like I’m really there.

But as I reach for a puzzle piece I realize I can’t pick it up. I watch in wonderment.

“Are you excited to visit Nantucket soon?” the young woman asks Adeline. This must be her babysitter. She nods.

“You know what’s sad?” Adeline asks.

“What’s sad?”

“Uncle Willy died.”

“I know, that is sad.”

“It used to be his house on Nantucket. Now it’s our house. And Uncle Brian.”

“Right.”

“I miss him.”

“Uncle Brian? You’ll see him soon—” “No! Uncle Willy! He was old. It’s sad.”

Adeline’s head droops, her chin resting on her chest. I instinctively try to reach out to stroke her cheek, but nothing happens.

94

“Oh . . . yeah. It is sad. What did you love about Uncle Willy?”. My eyes are glued to the scene. It’s so much more than I could have ever hoped for.

“I don’t really remember. I was little.” I am on the ground pleading to my niece. Please remember something, anything. I don’t want to go.

“Right.”

“It’s sad that he’s dead. Are you sad?”

Adeline looks up at the young woman.

“Well, I didn’t really know your Uncle Willy, but it is sad when someone we love dies. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Even though it’s sad, I’ll bet Uncle Willy is really happy that you’re remembering him.”

“Why?” “Because people like to be remembered.”

“Oh.” The lights in the room come back on. Tears are dripping down my nose. I pay the archive fee and imagine myself home. I rewatch the message until I fall asleep.

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In the Mill of the Morning P

by Brigs Larson Illustration by Katherine Fitzhugh

yotr sank into the loam and breathed in the smell of dead things. In the distance the constant music of the factory rang, rattling into infinity as the workers readied the sun for rising. The moon hid behind a lace of whipping branches above him. She peeked out in flashes, her pitted face in need of repair. A full moon tonight. The workers would have to start the process of grinding her down to a waning state.

Soon she would be dragged down, replaced by the sun pushing its way up from the factory.

A bat twirled overhead, crossing the moon.

Pyotr reached up toward the bat, tracing its path with a finger. The crescents of black under his nails bit at his skin, a mix of coal dust and iron shavings.

They would notice his absence soon. But for now, he blew out a clean breath and coughed.

The dust in his lungs settled a little further. He reached for another forbidden swig from the flask in the pocket at his thigh. The burn traced 97

its way down his throat like the finger of a lover he only dreamt about. A lovely, faceless person.

“Pyotr? What in the name of every saint that breathes do you think you’re doing?”

The voice broke his reverie. Pyotr propped himself up on his elbows, wind catching at the hair that escaped his leather cap. The chinstrap cut into the soft spot where his jaw met his neck.

Sergei stood in the flickering moonlight. He looked nervous, as he did in every shade of day.

Pyotr swallowed down the taste of alcohol as if it would help him. “Hello. Lovely night we’re having, wouldn’t you say?”

“No thanks to you. Where in the seven hells have you been? Yegor told me to find you, and I’ve been looking all night.” Sergei pulled at the leather cords that held his shirt together.

The fingerless gloves that he wore despite their uselessness were beginning to fall apart at the base of the thumb.

“Not to mention your mother’s been worried sick,” Sergei added, shifting on his feet. He looked so strange among the trees, coal smearing his pale face. He stood out against the natural darkness of the forest. He was not from a place where things died to become homes for others, for opyata mushrooms and mud-black beetles and streams of ants. Neither was Pyotr, no matter how much he wished it.

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“My mother wouldn’t care if I climbed inside the moon and rode it up into the sky. She’s too busy with Yegor to care.” The factory foreman had begun to invade his and his mother’s home at lunchtime. He liked to laugh at his own jokes and eat their food to nothing. He especially liked to express his distaste for the mushrooms and acorns that sustained the two.

If you marry me, Agata, you and that boy of yours can eat real food.

“You know that’s not true.”

“Sit with me, Sergei.” Pyotr pushed his palm into the moss and mulch. It was damp.

Somewhere beneath his hand, worms squirmed, creating paths for rainwater to quench the thirst of trees. They devoured dead things, made them new and useful again.

Sergei swallowed hard. “Seven hells, I will not lie down with you. We’re going to have to work hard soon. The moon is coming down, and it has to be waned. You can’t just sit out here.” The mark of a whip poked out from under Sergei’s collar, curving from his back up toward his left ear. Pyotr shared the same marks, a thatching of ribbed scars on his upper back.

They’d received them together five years ago, holding hands and taking the pain. Pyotr had screamed. Sergei had stayed silent and developed the soft fear that now drove him.

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Twenty lashings for taking a walk in the forest instead of working.

“Sergei, what could they possibly do? They aren’t going to kill two fine young men who they need for a lifetime of waxing and waning and burning. And they won’t be able to find us out here.”

“I found you.”

“That’s because you know where I go, and Yegor knows you know.” Pyotr, for the first time, felt unsure of his safety in the hands of Sergei.

They’d been friends when they were younger, running into the forest and hunting bugs under the supervision of Pyotr’s father. But now Sergei followed Yegor, the towering factory foreman, as a new chick followed the first thing that cared for it.

“I’m not going to run, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll come back when the moon comes down. I’ll take up my file and work next to you and do everything Yegor expects me to do. But for now . . .” Pyotr let his head fall back, looking up at the falling moon. The wind murmured through the branches, joined now by the hungry cries of morning birds. “For now, I’d like to sit.”

“Suit yourself.” Sergei tightened the cords on his cap and turned, tamping the moss into the earth with his heatproof boots. For a moment, 100

his footsteps stopped. When he spoke again, it was soft. “Yegor will hurt you, Pyotr. He will do his best to torture you until you’re almost dead, but he won’t let you sleep.”

The wind brushed the trees together, flickering over the swaying moon. “You’re not one for threats, Sergei,” Pyotr said to the sky.

Somewhere far away, an owl screamed.

Silence hung heavy. Then came the tromp of Sergei’s boots, and he appeared over Pyotr, outline gilded by moonlight. He’d taken off his cap, hair cropped close enough to his head to show his scalp. It reminded Pyotr of trees on a mountainside in winter, dark against the snow.

“It’s not a threat. It’s a warning.”

Pyotr had done his best to put the pale green of Sergei’s eyes out of his mind when Yegor’s whip had driven them apart. But those eyes, fresh and soft as new oak leaves, were lodged somewhere deep in Pyotr’s mind. They reminded him of youth, of first and last kisses in the shadowed greenery, of running back to the factory town and releasing hands only when the buildings came into view.

That time was gone. Sergei straightened to leave, and Pyotr cleared his throat, turning his face away from the moon in hopes the night would hide his burning face. The memories didn’t help. They only hurt.

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Sergei trod on the moss once again, steps heavy and constant. Pyotr let his head fall back on the soft green for a moment, trying to breathe evenly.

The moss would bounce back. But if Yegor whipped him enough, Pyotr would not. With a final glance up to the sky, he shoved himself to his feet. *** The older workers were hauling the moon down as Pyotr followed Sergei into the factory.

Sweat shone in the dirty contours of the haulers’ muscles, straining against their skin as they pulled hand over hand on the web of ropes that bulged through the roof and into the sky. It was as if the moon was Rapunzel in her tower, and rather than climb up to her, the prince dragged her down by her hair.

The factory itself was a great hollow rectangle, windows lined the walls, sealed shut.

The glass panes had long been warped and blacked out by coal dust. Pyotr and Sergei stood on a metal staircase that rambled precariously downward. The factory was half dug into the ground to account for the great mass of the moon and sun.

Coal dust spiraled up through the open roof, a jaw waiting to devour the approaching moon. The Cradle, a great metal nest adorned 102

with scaffolding, stood waiting for her. Workers moved as one with a song on their lips, a great crowd surrounding the Cradle, arms moving together. A leader cried the next verse of a work song from somewhere in the throng, and the sea of people responded: Down to hell and up to the sky.

The sound rumbled in Pyotr’s chest. He would sing those songs one day, when he hit twenty. Three years. Further down the factory, another song echoed as more haulers heaved the sun up.

The light went strange, as it always did at sunrise.

Bend your back and break your bones.

“YEGOR,” Sergei yelled over the noise, hands cupped around his mouth. Somehow the sound reached the figure standing on the scaffolding of the Cradle, observing the scuffle of humanity below him. Yegor looked up, light catching in his blonde hair and turning it to white fire.

Heave. Heave. Heave.

Coal dust churned above the congregation of haulers, sucking downward as they breathed.

Ever downward.

Pyotr would join them if he did nothing. He remembered his father, how he’d return shortly before sunset to catch the few slivers of sleep 103

he could. As Pyotr’s mother served dinner, his father’s hacking shook the house. On new moons and eclipses, his father spent the day sleeping off pain as Pyotr helped his mother bake for the festival day. He sang work songs when he slept. On his best days, he took Pyotr and Sergei into the forest and taught them the names of the bugs they chased, which of the glistening mushrooms they could eat safely, how to take from the forest without harming it terribly.

That was, of course, before his coughing got the best of him. Pneumonia.

Yegor swung from his perch, disappearing into the crush and emerging on the other side.

He scaled the staircase with the speed of one trained in chasing runners down.

His heatproof boots thrummed on the staircase as he settled his great height above Pyotr. “Boy.” There was dried blood on the whip at his waist.

“Yegor.” Pyotr looked up and up and up. The moon was descending and haloed the foreman like a saint in a shrine.

“You’ve been gone.”

“Yes.” “Where have you been, boy?”

“I’m not sure.”

Yegor huffed out a sigh that brought with it a puff of black iron shavings. Coal had settled 104

in the bags beneath his eyes. A pair of welding goggles swung around his neck as he leaned forward. “I am easy on you because you are Agata’s boy. But I do not tolerate sloth. Not during a rise. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” “Good. I have work for you. I will find you when it’s time.”

A great mumbling went up from the legion of haulers. White light began to fill the room, and there was a great shuffle as every hauler took one hand from their rope to pull their darkened goggles over their eyes. The rumor was that the moon could blind you this close—if not from the brightness, then from the heat of the flames.

Yegor gave Pyotr one final glare before mimicking the crowd, pulling his goggles up and turning.

Pyotr shielded his eyes as he took out his own pair of goggles, nearly pulling out his flask in the process. He caught the leather-bound thing before it fell, shoving it deep into the pocket and buttoning it closed. He caught Sergei looking.

The lenses of Pyotr’s goggles were thick green, recycled from a discarded wine bottle.

They’d been his father’s. Now they were his.

The moon descended, bathing the entire factory with light like bleached bones. White105

hot flames licked her surface, gorging themselves on the coal the workers so diligently pressed into her each day. She resisted the haulers’ song, pulling upward like a trapped bird, before finally coming to rest in the Cradle. The haulers secured the ropes to hooks cemented into the ground, then swarmed the scaffolding.

Above, the ceiling rumbled closed, slowly sealing the workers in. The hoses started up, dousing the moon with water and drawing out a hiss and a mountain of steam that escaped through the closing roof.

The moon darkened. The heat increased. The haulers began their work.

Pyotr backed up to the door and slipped through it while Yegor’s back was turned. *** “Saints, Pyotr, look at you. Dirt and coal?

Have you been everywhere today?” Pyotr’s mother worried over him in the kitchen of the brick house they shared with three other families. She still wore her work clothes—layers of heatproof clothing and fireproofing. “I have my own work to worry about. Foolish boy.” She said it with love, sighing and wiping his cheek with a cloth. It came away covered in grime.

“I went for a walk, and Sergei found me—” “You went for a walk?”

“Yes, Mama.”

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“In the forest?”

“Yes, Mama.”

A work song drifted from the factory in the distance. Something about the moon and resting under her light rather than working on it.

Agata blew out a long, humorless laugh.

“Where else would you be? Saints, have you lost your mind? After everything that happened, after you almost died at the hand of Yegor’s whip all that time ago?” She turned to pull off her gloves and toss them on the table. The room was cramped, ceiling beams bending under the hand of time and water damage. The chairs surrounding the table were many and mismatched, shoved together over years of trying to make a brick box hospitable. A quilt hung against the far wall. It showed a circle of dancing children under a smiling sun.

“And spending time with Sergei, no less.

That boy has lost his way, doing that foreman’s dirty work.” Her hair, brown as mud fertilized with death, was braided and coiled up like a snake at the back of her head. She wore the heatproof boots that everyone wore, her pants a daring shade of tan. They stained easily, but they were one of her favorite garments, hand embroidered with vines and red-capped mushrooms.

“It’s not Sergei’s fault, Mama.” Pyotr picked 107

at a loose splinter at the corner of the table. A torn paper doily, yellowed with age, lay forgotten on the pink cushion of the seat next to him.

She hummed, brushing dust off one of the embroidered mushroom caps on her trousers.

“Perhaps no. But he certainly isn’t a very good influence.”

“Mama—” “Pyotr.” She silenced him with a look.

Above them, the Dorofeev children screamed across the floorboards, their footsteps shaking the very foundation. The six children must be enjoying the scant hours they had with their parents before the two older Dorofeevs fell into exhausted slumber from working all night on the moon.

Pyotr pulled at an escaped thread from the patch at his knee, unraveling it, and ventured, “What’s for dinner?”

A shriek of child laughter cut through the house, and his mother winced for a moment before recovering with a short scoff, crossing her arms. “Is dinner all you think about?” She cut her fingernails short to avoid dust catching, but there were still tiny slivers of black beneath them.

“How about this? I don’t know. You’re a strong, healthy seventeen-year-old. Make your own dinner.”

“But Mam—” 108

“I don’t want to hear it.” She turned her eyes toward heaven. She worked on the sun during the night, and there were pale circles around her eyes where she wore her goggles.

Pyotr took a loaf of cold bread from the cupboard and tore at it. “Mama.”

“What, Pyotr?” She’d begun taking off her factory gear. He went to help her.

“Mama, I’ve been thinking. What if someone didn’t want to work on the moon?” He considered, then added, “Or the sun.”

She laughed, still looking away from him.

“What would they do, leave?”

Pyotr was quiet for a moment as he helped hang up her gear. “I guess. Where would they go?”

“Well,” she turned back to him, inspecting his face with a knuckle under his chin, “they’d have to get past Yegor first. Then I suppose they’d run into the woods. Live a nice, quiet life there. Perhaps find the closest city. Why, are you considering leaving?” The sparkle of mirth in her face was marred by a more serious kind of question.

“You know I don’t want to be here. Not after Pap—” “Not a word about him.” She released him.

“We are happy here.”

“Are we, Mama?”

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She looked back with warning in her face, and Pyotr was quiet.

“You have your doses of forest when you forage, Pyotr. You work in the factory. You rest on new moons. They need a strong young man like you to replace your father.”

A pounding on the door and a dangerous look from his mother stopped Pyotr from arguing. “Go to work, Pyotr. Thinking about the forest will only make you long for it more.”

The thundering of the children was deafening as Pyotr climbed the stairs to the room he shared with his mother, where his gear sprawled across his side of the room. He fell onto the bed, burying his head in his pillow. For a moment, the coolness of the pillowcase, the embroidery that dug into his face, could almost make him forget where he was. He pictured himself diving into an ocean, a great body of water he’d never seen. The coolness of the water washing over his skin. Finally being entirely clean.

When he withdrew to don his working gear, he left a stain of coal dust and sweat on his mother’s embroidery. *** “What’s that, Pyotr?”

“A map.”

“Of the factory?”

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“No. Of Paris.”

“Where’s Paris?”

“I don’t know. But look at it. It’s beautiful.”

Pyotr huddles beside Sergei over a wooden print that Pyotr’s father bought yesterday from a traveling merchant. It’s small, only about the size of two palms held together, but it shows a maze of roads like some complex quilt.

“Seine,” Sergei reads, the word strange on his tongue. Pyotr watches his friend’s finger trace the thin curve of the river. Above them, spring birds sing full-throated, the leaves flowering after a long winter. The factory sings in the distance, but Sergei and Pyotr are safe in the trees. “It’s almost as big as the factory.”

“Almost as big?” Pyotr rolls onto his back, laughter shaking his chest until it hurts. The moss is softer than anything after a long winter of being dormant. “Paris could fit a thousand factories. That’s what Papa said.”

“Has he ever been?”

“No, but he knows these kinds of things.”

Sergei looks to Pyotr, then back down at the map, face screwed up in a half grimace, half smile, just like it always does when he’s thinking.

His hair is a messy scruff that his mama refuses to cut, falling into his eyes and growing over his collar. Past him, the sun simmers.

“Do you ever wish you could go somewhere 111

like that?” he asks, swatting a gnat away from his ear. “Leave everything and go to Paris or St. Petersburg or . . . anywhere.”

Pyotr cocks his head, propping himself up on his elbows. The nearby pond gurgles, alive with growing frogs singing new arias. He hears his mother talk of these things, of far-off places and high fashion and newfound innovation. But he’s always taken them as more of the folktales she tells at his bedside before she’s off to work.

“I’m happy here. I think.”

“I’m not.” Sergei sniffles. Spring always makes his nose run. “Nobody is, really.”

“Not nobody.” Pyotr pokes Sergei in the forehead, grinning and sitting up again. The pond catches the light through the trees—the water’s surface is already starting to green with algae. The beginning of spring marks a precious moment when the pond is clear of its green cover. All throughout late spring and summer, it’s bound in a thick cloth the color of Sergei’s eyes. “I’m happy,” Pyotr adds, “here. With you.”

Sergei looks away, the tips of his ears turning red. “Shut up.” He sniffles again, and Pyotr knows he didn’t mean that from the smile in his voice. But then Sergei turns. His eyes are focused on the map again. “I mean that nobody wants to live at the factory. Every day is the same, and why live like that when there’s so much more to 112

be had from the world?” He picks up the map of Paris, considering it. The sunlight catches in his eyes and makes them glow. “We only work in the factory because it’s what our parents do.”

Pyotr has never quite seen Sergei like this, but it makes his stomach jump and his throat dry. He has kissed Sergei before, and he wants to again. “So why don’t you leave?”

Sergei glances up at him. “Because I don’t want to go without you.”

“That’s dumb.”

He looks back down at the map in his hands. “You’re dumb.”

Pyotr shoves him to the ground, toppling over him and catching him in a chokehold that Sergei laughs against. “Fine. Maybe I’ll come with you to Paris. Although I can only steal enough food to get us to the next town over.”

“The next town over it is, then.” Sergei pushes Pyotr’s arms from around his neck and turns to cup Pyotr’s face with his hands. “Seven hells, you are going to be a most useless travel companion.”

Pyotr puts a hand over Sergei’s, then pulls him toward the pond. “I will make your life an eighth hell, Sergei Matveyev. Don’t turn your back on me now.”

Together, they plunge into the water, breaking the pond’s glittering surface into a 113

raging sea of light.

*** Yegor came for him, to make sure he wouldn’t run like Sergei must have warned him about. As the man led Pyotr back toward the factory, he rambled about responsibility and tradition and being part of a greater whole. Pyotr ignored him, watching the new sunlight kiss the tops of the conifers at the border of the town.

A chill breeze from the north brought the smell of pine and wet earth with it, and he longed to chase it.

But his boots were heavy on the gravel path.

“You are a hauler, just like your father was.”

Pyotr found himself wanting for the flask in his pocket. “That is a respectable job, a good position.”

They were passing the graveyard. In the hard-bought sunlight, the markers were blinding.

White posts for those who worked on the moon, yellow for those who worked on the sun. There were hundreds. A legion of stick soldiers.

“But today you will do something more important for me.”

Pyotr looked at the towering man. “What?”

Yegor remained quiet, the whip on his belt shifting as he walked. The sounds of machinery and work songs rang from the factory. Lights flashed through the holes in the blacked-out 114

windows. They approached the door. Yegor stepped aside for Pyotr to open it. The heat of the handle bit through Pyotr’s fireproof gloves.

Heat hit him like a frying pan to the face.

The moon sat dark in the Cradle, her light doused until she was set afire again that night.

Haulers seethed across its surface, packing coal to fill craters, waning one side down with scraping files. The dust from their files spiraled in the air, catching spare beams of light. Coal and iron. One to light it, the other to keep it hanging in the sky.

Yegor entered before him and stopped at the top of the stairs, observing. “There is a problem with the moon.”

“A problem?”

Yegor began walking, and Pyotr followed him. The heat ebbed as they descended, but it was no less unbearable. “The core is getting too warm. It needs to be vented. But the machinery is imprecise—if done wrong, it could punch straight through to the core and send all that heat spilling out. Do you want a leaky moon, Pyotr?”

“No.” “Good.” They reached the bottom of the stairs. The haulers cast spare glances at Pyotr.

Some were people he thought he recognized, but the exhaustion changed their faces so drastically 115

that he couldn’t be sure. “There’s a much higher degree of success if someone is guiding the venter.”

He kept talking, but Pyotr’s stomach had already turned to hot metal. He knew what Yegor was asking of him.

“We need someone small. The venter doesn’t make the biggest space, eh?”

The looks the haulers cast in Pyotr’s direction weren’t exhaustion. They were looks of mourning.

Guiding a venter meant crawling in a space barely large enough for a ten-year-old, guiding a handheld drill and praying you could get out again. He’d heard of people guiding them before, but it had never happened while he was alive.

His mother told him the stories with a grey face.

“Yegor, I’m not sure if I’m small enough—” “You will be.”

“But—” Yegor stopped short, grabbing Pyotr by the shirt and hauling him up so that he could smell the man’s sour breath. “This is what you get for wandering, boy.” He spit the last word into Pyotr’s face, rage shaking his pupils. “I’m making this easy. Don’t you remember what you got last time?” The lashing scars burned on Pyotr’s back. Years old, and yet he still felt the pain. White-hot and angry. Like the moon. The 116

haulers continued their work around them, the songs drifting between Pyotr and Yegor, a hair’s breadth of space.

They remained like that for a moment, breathing heavy, coal dust swirling around them.

“Do you understand?” Yegor’s voice was low.

Dangerous.

Pyotr stared back at Yegor, at the brown and green in his eyes. He thought of the mud, of the dirt, of the green smell of pine and the satisfaction of finding a crowd of mushrooms to bring back to his mother for dinner. If he made it out of this, he would run. His odds of surviving the drilling were small, but not insignificant. This would be his final task in this factory, then he’d spend the rest of his life living off pine needles and honey fungus. He’d build a crown of dead wood and wildflowers and scrambling ants. He’d join the great natural chaos of the woods, and he would never think about the factory again. Do you understand?

“Yes.” Yegor dropped him and strode on, hauling himself up the scaffolding of the Cradle with the ease of a flying squirrel. Pyotr did his best to cool the molten metal his stomach had become.

They reached the crown of the Cradle, and Pyotr’s thoughts stopped short. There was the drilling space prepared, the harness ready for

him, the venter pointing up at the blackened ceiling. Iron shavings glittered in its teeth. But beside the venter stood a person who should not be there, already harnessed.

“Sergei?”

He stared back, pale green eyes confident for the first time in five years. “Pyotr.”

Pyotr broke from Yegor’s side, hunching beside Sergei so his words were received by his old friend alone. He spoke just beside his ear.

“What in the name of the saints are you doing?”

Sergei’s answer came breathless. “Helping you. The drilling goes faster with two. One person guiding and the other person calling—” “I know how drilling works, Sergei. But why?”

The answer was immediate. “I don’t want you to die, Pyotr.”

Pyotr withdrew, meeting Sergei’s watery gaze. Pyotr’s mother liked to put the boys’ heads together when they were younger and say that their eyes were earth and forest, brown and green. And saints, Sergei’s eyes were the most beautiful green. The color of sunlight shining through leaves. Pyotr had told him that once, how if Pyotr was a squirrel he’d scamper to the very top of the canopy and peer through the branches like an observer in a church and see a green that could not even compare to the color 118

in Sergei’s eyes.

They were bright in the gloom of the factory, lit only by the sparks from filing machines.

“And you’re an idiot, which means you’ll need someone to keep you from dying,” Sergei added.

Pyotr wanted to laugh just as much as he wanted to lie down and turn to mud. “Saints, Sergei, why care about me all of a s—” “Enough. Get him into the harness. We need to get this over with,” Yegor barked, leaning an elbow on the metal railing and turning to look away. Perhaps it was with righteous disgust, although Pyotr liked to think it was shame.

Sergei held his gaze as Pyotr slid into the harness, as haulers with downcast faces tightened the straps and put the venter into his hands.

Sergei had such lovely eyes.

Pyotr reached out, found Sergei’s shirt, and pulled him close. He smelled like hot earth after it rained, somehow. “Sergei,” he spoke close to his ear again, staring past his hair to the dark surface of the doused moon. “I am running after this. Meet me in the woods, where you found me, an hour after we are finished here. We’ll go to the city. Live.”

He withdrew. Sergei stared at him a moment, eyebrows knit together. Then he nodded, nearly imperceptible, but still there. He 119

was not so inhuman after all.

The drill screamed against the surface of the moon. A long, angry, painful scream. The haulers pulled a mask over his mouth. One patted him on the cheek and whispered a saint’s blessing in his ear.

Once the hole was large enough, Pyotr climbed in headfirst. The tunnel was just wide enough for his shoulders to squeeze in, stopping his movement if he breathed too deeply. There was a lamp on his forehead, hanging in front of him like an anglerfish his father had once shown him in books. The black body of the moon fought against the drill. She did not want to be cut into.

Dust was in his eyes. He reached up a hand to pull down his goggles. Despite the mask, the dust filled his nose. It crunched in his mouth, spackling his teeth.

He felt Sergei tug the rope around both of their waists to let him know he’d followed him in. Something in Pyotr stilled at the feeling.

Relief, perhaps. Pyotr would never become a hauler. He would flee into the forest’s earthy darkness or he would die inside a different kind of dark.

Either way, he was not alone in it all. And after, after, after.

They would run after.

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About the Authors Maia Cataldo (she/her) is a first year graduate student in the MFA fiction program at Emerson. She has read for Craft's Literary Magazine and currently reads for Redivider. Her work has been published in Voyage and The Boston Theater Marathon 2022 Anthology.

Jack Miessner (he/him) is a third year creative writing major at Emerson, where he plays on the men’s volleyball team. Born and raised in Arizona, Victor is a real town that he encountered during a two-week road trip through the west.

Scott Pomfret is author of Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir; Hot Sauce: A Novel; the Q Guide to Wine and Cocktails, and over fifty short stories published in journals including Ecotone, The Short Story (UK), Post Road, New Orleans Review, Fiction International, and Fourteen Hills. Scott writes from the cramped confines of his Provincetown beach shack. A 2025 MFA candidate in creative writing (fiction) at Emerson College, Scott is at work on a comic queer Know-Nothing alternative history novel set in antebellum New Orleans. More at www. scottpomfret.com.

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Ryan Forgosh (he/him) is a junior journalism major from Manalapan, New Jersey. Ryan was previously published in Stork Magazine in Spring 2023 with his story "The Cheater". He also serves as a reader for Stork Magazine. His favorite books are The Princess Bride

by William Goldman, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Mally, citing them as major inspirations in his writing.

Brigs Larson (they/them) is a senior creative writing major from Rhode Island with a love for hiking, cowboys, and medieval marginalia.

Ella Maoz (she/her) is a creative writing junior from San Francisco. She is the head copy editor for Wilde Press and a reader for the Emerson Review, among many other campus orgs. She loves all things nature and has at least twenty houseplants between SF and Boston.

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About the Type The running text for this issue is set in Adobe Caslon Pro, designed for Adobe by Carol Twombly based on specimen pages by William Caslon between 1734 and 1770.

The display types for this book are Yu Gothic Pr6N designed by Morisawa Inc.

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