Issue 11

THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE RED LINE

11 JOY

2 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Contents

Editor’s Introduction……………………………………………….……………………………3 The Kiss of Sisyphus.………………..………………………………………………………….4 Time is Spend Together……………………………….………………………………………..11 A Pyrotechnic Fix………………………………………………………………………………...18 If You Wake Up Dead………………..………………………………………………………….21 One Man’s Paradise……………………………………………………………………………..31 Nobu’s Writing Therapy…..…………………………………………………………….……..39 The Judges………………………………………………………………………………………..46 The Judgement…………………………………………………………………………………..47

2

3 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE RED LINE Welcome to our eleventh issue, where we're hoping to bring a little pre-seasonal joy to the proceedings.

Firstly, however, there are changes afoot here at The Red Line headquarters. Our Canadian friend and long -term reader James Sandham has decided to call it a day. He has been a dedicated reader for a year now and was a strong supporter of the magazine before that, helping with the judging our Time Issue back in 2013. But, having recently become a father, James has found that juggling submissions and nappies to be a near impossible task. As a farewell gesture, he has joined us in judging this month's issue. He will be joined by our two new readers, Mark King and Tamara Jones.

In this latest issue we have six writers who we feel have successfully tackled our theme. The question of joy in fiction is a tricky one given that states of happiness tend not to result in the conflict that spurs on dramatic, exciting fiction. But, as our writers show, joy is a delicate subject best contrasted with the darker side of life. Both Virginia Hayes' Kiss of Sisyphus and Bruce Harris' One Man's Paradise put their central characters through the wringer but lead them ultimately to a better place though questions may remain. Joe Halstead's oddly-titled Time Is Spend Together and Fikret Pajalic's If Y ou W ake Up Dead explore a more melancholy side of joy through a pair of simple human relationships that cross generations. Fireworks are the source of joy for a rag-tag group of misfits in Fikret Pajalic's A Pyrotechnic Fix, while Yoko Morgenstern's Norbu's W riting Therapy searches for new-found joy in the unfamilar as we follow a Japanese businessman trying to adjust to his new life in Bali.

So, have a read and see if you agree with this month's judging panel, whose results and feedback can be found at the end of the magazine. Also, check our site for further announcements, blog posts and developments between now and the new year.

Stephen & Josh

3

4 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

The Kiss of Sisyphus

By Virginia Elizabeth Hayes

The blue-backed wasp buzzed around the pack animal's ears. Frightened by the noise, the beast of burden stopped in the middle of the twisting mountain road. He bobbed his head, flipping his sensitive ears.

Thaddea leaned forward in her saddle and snatched the wasp from the air, holding it in her closed hand.

She lifted her eyes up to her destination, the summit. The sky over the peak seethed as if it were on fire.

"Move on, Pul." She tapped her heels against the animal's sides. "It's safe now."

Instead of stepping forward, Pul dipped his head down to the weeds growing beside the road. He took a bite from a sprig of orange flowers.

Thaddea looked down, recognizing the plant. Her mother used to grow the weed called Hagsbrush in her garden. She said it was because it was too stubborn to wilt.

Once fortified by his snack, Pul continued the slow course up the narrow trail. The wasp buzzed in Thad-

dea's closed hand, but did not sting. She knew it wouldn't. The insect smelled the poisonous scent of death. The wasp's instincts would not allow it to sting her.

Thaddea felt it wriggle. She would release it once they reached the summit, and she no longer needed Pul's cooperation.

As Pul plodded around a twist in the rocky highway, Thaddea heard a strange grunting and grinding sound.

Turning, she saw a boulder moving her direction, but slowly and uphill. After it rolled forward a few feet, she saw a sinewy man bracing his hands against the rock, pushing it.

"Make way," he hissed between gritted teeth. "Can't you see I've got a burden?"

Thaddea looked down at the man. She'd been told about Sisyphus and his immortal task to roll his rock up the mountain. Although he tried, he failed to reach the top and end his time in Tartarus. The rock always slipped out of his hands before he reached his goal. Down it rolled. So he trotted after it and started again.

And again. And again.

Thaddea did not wish to share the Road of the Damned with this man, but she needed to go to the peak. It was the only road a mortal could take to get to the gates.

A distant shout echoed up the mountain. "Thaddea!"

4

5 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Sisyphus cocked his head toward the sound, but Thaddea did not. She looked at the side of the road.

Wildflowers, shrubs, trees and lush green grasses populated the roadside at the bottom of the hill. Further up, the vegetation began to thin. Jagged rocks, dying grasses, wilting shrubs and hardy Hagsbrush were all that remained so close to the gates of Tartarus.

"Is that for you, then?" Sisyphus shoved the rock forward a few more feet, then winked. "Why don't you go back and investigate who's calling for you? Leave the beast. I'll take care of him."

"I know who calls. And I cannot leave Pul's back. I cannot walk any distance unaided."

"What do you mean you can't walk? Oh." Sisyphus paused at the sight of a demon perched in the center of her back. Its hind legs and knobby spine stuck out over the back of her dress. The rest of its body strained against the fabric in its effort to devour her. As it chewed, it made loud sucking noises.

Sisyphus stumbled once. Bracing his legs, he turned his body and placed his back against the great rock.

Once facing her, he pushed his burden as he walked backwards.

"You have a demon." He squinted at it. "Looks old. What is it, five, six years along?"

"Ten." "I've never heard of one living that long."

"Neither have I." The distant voice called again, sounding slightly closer. "Please stop."

"Who is that?" Sisyphus scratched himself. "A doctor you owe money to?"

"All of my doctors demanded payment in advance."

"Yes, and in gold, I expect."

The voice called again. "Thaddea!"

Sisyphus scowled. "Who is that?"

"Teucer, my husband. He does not want me to be on this road."

"Can't blame him. You never know what reprobates you might meet here."

Sisyphus eyed the moving shape of the demon as it sucked away mindlessly. He cleared his throat.

"There's no danger to your soul from being on this road. Mortals may go to the edge of the summit, but may not enter the realm, which starts at the road's end."

"So I was advised by my priestess. Then she said: 'follow the signs.'"

5

6 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

"What signs?"

"I've no idea." Thaddea looked at the sweating, grunting eternally damned man next to her, wondering if he were 'a sign'. She hoped not.

"There's no peril in speaking with me," Sisyphus said. "You can't help me with my burden. The penalty is a lightning strike for you and a bigger rock for me."

He let his gaze drop from the uncomfortable sight of her ravaged body, to Pul's large, bulging muscles. A light glittered in his eyes. "Your animal, however, is another story. If you, for example, were to become fatigued and wished to lie down on the side of the road to rest, then I, quite selflessly, would watch after your beast."

"Quite selflessly."

"Thaddea!" The voice echoed up the road.

Sisyphus glared. "Stubborn lout, isn't he?"

"So are his sons."

He gave Thaddea a sidelong glance. "Did the boys inherit this from their father or their mother?"

Their grandmother, she thought, then shrugged. "Something within me refuses to go."

"Some would say that is an admirable quality."

"They have never carried a demon for a decade."

"Have they tried burning it out? That works more often than not."

"I've been burned three times." Thaddea recited the litany. "Then blistered. Then flogged. Then boiled.

Then dunked, bled and starved. Buried up to my neck in sand and smoked with incense. They even flayed all the skin from my back. When none of it worked, they brought out ants, leeches, snakes and wasps, but by that time, nothing would bite me. I smelled too much like death for their tastes." She looked down at her closed fist, sighing at the angry buzz. The poor creature would die from exhaustion soon.

"Which was the worst?"

"The waiting. I wait to get better, and I never do. Then I wait for it to be over, but it never is. The next day always comes and Death never does." Thaddea's lifted to the summit. "That is why I am on this road.

I am going up to the peak, to ask Death to come to me. I am tired of the wait."

Sisyphus blinked twice, then broke out in a hyena-like laugh. "That is by far the most self-indulgent thing I have ever heard in my entire life. That's something coming from me." He pushed against his rock. Both 6

7 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

his face and his tone hardened. All trace of laughter ebbed from his face.

"Woman, you have endured this for a decade. You have ten years more worth of strength than any mortal in this whole pathetic world. You have a husband who is racing up a mountain to pluck you back into the realm of mortals. You can't be bitten by anything. Yet, you appreciate none of it. You want to give up and die."

Thaddea looked down at her hand, listening to the buzz of desperation. "You are in perfect health. How can you understand?"

Sisyphus paused at the sight of a demon perched in the center of her back. Its hind legs and knobby spine stuck out over the back of her dress. The rest of its

body strained against the fabric in its effort to devour her. As it chewed, it made loud sucking noises.

Another unkind laugh bubbled out from his gritted teeth. He slapped a filthy hand across his chest. "Oh yes. I will live forever in perfect health so that I may do nothing else but roll this damnable rock up and down this road. I can't smell flowers, read poetry or drink wine or kick a passing cur. All I smell is my own reek and the last thing I kissed was the hard surface of this road when my rock slipped away. But do you want to know what is the worst part?"

7

8 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

"No." "Too bad. The worst part is, the one person I've had to talk to in a god's age is a whiny little woman who actually wishes to be here."

The wasp, desperate to escape, began to ram its tiny head against the palm of her closed hand. Thaddea stared down at it, then sighed.

"Shouldn't you be paying a little more attention to your burden?" She turned her head toward the end of the road and the entrance to Death's domain. "Considering where you are?"

"The peak." Sisyphus jerked a glance around the rock. "Only a few more steps." Pressing his shoulder and setting his hands, he dug his feet into the path. As he shoved the rock forward, his sweat-covered feet slid on the gravel. The boulder slipped and rolled backward.

Sisyphus moved his hands and repositioned his feet. The rock moved half and inch, then slipped again.

He stumbled backwards. One foot dug into the roadside, where the roots of the Hagsbrush kept the gravel immobile.

Thaddea looked at the orange blooms crushed under his foot and thought of how angry her mother would

be to see any flower stepped on, even if it were a weed.

Thinking of her mother, she opened her fingers and set the wasp free.

The wasp buzzed around Thaddea's head twice, then flew away from the smell of the demon, zooming down at Pul. The wasp circled his head, flying between his sensitive ears. The animal brayed with fear and spread his feet wide, standing immobile.

Sisyphus slid backwards. The rock followed.

Neither traveled very far. Sisyphus' body fell against Pul's solidly set shoulders. As the rock rolled, Sisyphus raised his hands. Bracing his back against the immobile beast and setting his feet in the gravel again, he caught the rock.

Frightened by the physical contact, Pul swung his head, striking Sisyphus in the center of his back.

Bolstered by the push, Sisyphus took a step forward. Gritting in, he took another step. Then a third. On the fourth step, the gravel ended. The road leveled off to a flat, smooth surface of barren rock. Sisyphus pushed forward one more step before he realized he no longer traveled up hill.

He looked down at the flat surface. Sucking his breath back in through his teeth, he pulled his hands back.

8

9 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

The rock remained where it was. He stepped backwards with trembling amazement.

Sisyphus stared at his empty hands.

Thaddea gripped her saddle as Pul lumbered back and forth.

Sisyphus leapt back down onto the road, grabbed Pul's head and wrangled him into stillness. He looked up at Thaddea with a shining face. "Thank you."

"I did not help you." She smoothed one hand along Pul's shoulder, not meeting the man's eyes. She looked at the stubborn little Hagsbrush, stepped on, but not broken, defiantly growing up to the very edge

of Death's realm. "If I had, lightning would have struck."

"But." "I released a wasp before it died of exhaustion. That's all. It could have just as easily stung you someplace tender. Release my beast."

Sisyphus blinked twice, then let go.

Thaddea pulled on the reins, turning Pul down the sloped path and away from Sisyphus' former rock.

Sisyphus looked back at the summit. "You're not going all the way?"

"No. I read the signs and reconsidered."

Baffled, Sisyphus glanced around. "What signs?"

A private smile lifted her laughlines. She flicked the reins. Pul snorted once at Sisyphus then stepped around him.

The sweaty little man's hands flopped twice at his side as he spoke to her back. "I apologize."

"How odd. Don't you have better things to do?"

As the realization dawned on him, a loud triumphant whoop exited his mouth. He jumped up and down, wagging his tongue. That done, he somersaulted once, then began to hop, skip and cartwheel down the road. When he reached Pul and Thaddea, he stepped in front of them and threw open his arms.

"Give me a big kiss, sweet one!"

Before Thaddea could react, Sisyphus jumped forward. He placed both hands on Pul's muzzle and kissed him firmly on his furry nose with a loud smack.

Thaddea laughed in surprise. Pul snorted in disgust and shook his head in protest. Sisyphus stepped aside and saluted Thaddea, clicking his bare heels. His eyes sparkled. Cackling with frenzied glee, he did a back-flip down the road.

9

10 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Thaddea followed him with her eyes until he disappeared behind a large rock as the road turned. A few moments later, another man, a tall, familiar man, came up the road. He was bathed in sweat from running.

Thaddea raised one hand in greeting to her husband.

"Thaddea." Teucer reached her side, draped his arms around her waist and laid his head in her lap.

She stroked a hand through his hair but did not speak.

A piercing hoot ripped through the air.

Teucer raised his head at the sound. "I met the most unusual man. He was walking down the road on his

hands, reciting a poem. Something about an octopus, a priestess and a blacksmith. When he saw me, he flipped to his feet, gave me a rather smelly kiss, then jumped away with a handspring." He looked down the road and shook his head. "He was quite peculiar."

"I agree."

They walked a few more steps, then Teucer darted an easy glance up to the peak. "So, besides the strange man, did you speak with anyone up there?"

She shook her head. "Do you remember how my mother always said I was as stubborn as she was?"

"Yes." "I'd forgotten how useful it could be." She cupped Teucer's cheek. "But I've remembered now."

He kissed her hand. "Good. I'd fare poorly without you."

"You will have to adjust to my absence eventually."

"Eventually. But not today."

They walked a little further. Her eyes strayed down to the valley of the living where the grasses and trees and shrubs grew abundantly. So did the weeds.

"Teucer," she said, glancing over to him. "When we get to town, I want you to buy a cake with almonds and honey."

"Your appetite has returned?"

A grin softened her lips. "I want to watch you lick your fingers when you pick out the almonds."

"Well." He kissed the back of her hand. "If you insist."

Thaddea rested her hand on Teucer's shoulder and tapped Pul's side. As they walked, they listened to the echoing cackles of joy from Sisyphus which drowned out the endless sucking sound of the demon.

10

11 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Time is Spend Together

By Joe Halstead

I was driving home, though to anyone who cared I was just getting out of the city. My wife and I had been fighting and I wasn’t happy. I missed flowers. I missed the smell of them outside the post office on the street corner west of my parents’ house. Drove me crazy. My memory was full of these smells.

There was the smell of rain that fell from the mountains and drenched the country. In my grandparents’ barn there was the smell of chicken shit, and in the houses of all my aunts, the smell of coffee brewing. I smelled the cigarette smoke in my mother’s mother’s house and the Chef Boyardee pizza sauce in my father’s father’s house. To tell you the truth, I thought I’d never get to go back again, so I just went.

I drove down country roads, tree limbs criss-crossing the telephone lines above me. I didn't know what I was looking for, really. Some sign, I guess. I tried the radio again once I crossed into West Virginia. FM was nothing but the same Nineties songs played over and over again from one town to another.

Sirius was out. I turned the radio off. I saw the golden arches, 99¢, exit 132, flashing before me. I didn’t pull over. As hungry as I was, I kept going. I listened to the purr of my engine and the silence of the mountains. Those were the most plangent sounds I’d ever heard, and I cried. I drove like this for several hours until the gas tank hit E. I pulled into a Sheetz and filled up the tank. I walked inside to the back wall of glass doors and grabbed a five-dollar thing of Starbucks coffee then paid for everything and got back in the car. When I put the coffee in the cup holder, I sort of sat there bowled over because there it was—my arrowhead. I’d found it as a boy, at a cave my father had called the Indian Place. It’d traveled with me thirty-some years before I lost it. For a year or more I’d not seen it. Now there it sat in the sticky cup

holder. Were it not for its sentimental value, I could’ve used it for hunting; its craftsmanship was flawless.

Almost two inches long, the sides narrowed until they reached the tip, pencil thin and sharp. The right side was shaped with a precise curve to make removal from a kill easier.

I ran my finger along the thin arc of the blade and looked past the highway to the mountains. They were beautiful and distant, like a postcard of heaven. A person could get to love that view. I plunked the arrowhead into my pocket and drove on. A couple hours later I saw the sign advertising Mount Lookout, next exit. I knocked the turn signal then eased the car to a stop in my parents’ driveway a mile later. My father was sitting on the porch steps.

11

12 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

As I write I’m aware that my memory has made a lot out of very little. There was my old dad sitting there, smoking like he did. He wasn’t altogether remarkable. Never went to school, worked in the coal mines his whole life. All his friends could sit on their heels in their old age while he just kept on working, and he did it by preference. He was sensible and well-meaning and always had a look of honesty about him. I believed at the time that my love of writing had been beamed down from space—it couldn’t possibly have come from him. He could barely put a sentence together, and, sure enough, although whip-smart, I thought he lacked a higher wisdom. And yet the compulsion arose to figure out what his thoughts were.

Because the more attention I paid, the more I felt—for all his unreposefulness, endless silence and lack of humor—he was hiding a dark, alien sadness from me. Or was it from himself?

We had a particular way of addressing each other when we were happy to be talking. I doubt he’d remember most of our conversation that night. I told him I’d be visiting a few days, and he said why, and I said my wife and I were going through a hard time, and he said why, and I said, because we hate each other, and he said, I don’t think you hate each other. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, you don’t hate each other, as if that settled the matter. I said, how’re things down here, and he said, place ain’t changed

since last time, and I said, and Mom? And he said, usual. He said, what’re you writin now? I told him nothing really, not at the moment. And he said, you write some of the prettiest things. The more we talked, the more things evened out. It surprised me how fast we went from awkward conversation to frank intimacy, and I thought how “at peace” he was with himself, and what a change from when I was a kid.

He squeezed my shoulder again and took me to the extra room behind the kitchen, the one with the window that looked out at the woods. He rummaged through a closet, taking a small pink bag. “This was your sister’s after she had lice when she was little, remember?”

“It’s not too late for me to get a room.”

“Hell, you’d have to drive to Summersville.” He took an inflatable Barbie bed from the bag and laid it on the floor and turned on the pump. It throbbed and began to inflate. “I forget—what’d you have on your bed when you was a kid?”

“A blanket.”

“You know what I mean. Cowboys or spaceships?”

He sat half-hunkered down in a vague and vulnerable way, watching me get ready for bed, as if I were a boy again. When I told him I couldn’t remember that far back, he said, “There’s soap, shampoo, all that stuff, for in the morning.”

12

13 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

He left the mattress inflating and walked to the door. I looked out the window. I could smell grass and manure. There was a radio on the floor in the corner. I plugged it in and put on a country song, a woman singing about a man leaving on a quest and how she waited, patiently, years, for his return. I reached into my pocket past my keys, fumbling for the arrowhead. The stone was cold against my skin. I looked back and saw my dad standing in the doorway. He took a few hesitant steps down the hallway, waving at me, as if waving could pull me home.

When we drove into town the next day, I wished I hadn’t come back. Most of the old places I remembered had been torn down and replaced with look-a-like fast food chains, gas stations, and department stores, all run by white people. It wasn’t completely a working town anymore, but it wasn’t set up for locals looking for good food, either. Eventually we landed on Maloney’s Sports Bar. I took my dad to thank him for letting me sleep at his house. We both ordered steak. My dad had rib eye and I had the New York strip. Never had a better steak in my life. It was so tender I actually took time to thank the cow for being such a pussy.

We ordered a bottle of Wild Turkey and shared it. My dad put his left hand to his cheek and looked wistful; then he began to shake his head and said, well, what’re you writin now? I sighed and said, I don't know, and he said, well, you must be writin somethin, and I said, I don’t know; I still can’t figure this place out. Then he said, why do you think your wife hates you, and I said, I don’t know, and he said, well, you must know somethin. I told him it was like that John Prine song about love being like a Christmas card. I told him I thought I loved another woman, a better woman. He tried to explain that a different woman is still a woman—and therefore not so different from a wife. Even in my drunken state, I thought this was

bullshit. He said, sometimes women are real trouble—they make you want to give up. Then he said, but that’s how things have to be: they’re the ones who give birth. They should be in charge, he said. They know best, he said. Insofar as that was the truth, I still thought how sad it was. My dad knew this from experience. Or so I assumed. I had no idea, actually, how he and my mother operated. But I don’t want to talk about the ache I used to get every time I imagined him being dragged down by her. Her multiple sclerosis limited her to short walks, and, like a dog bound by a chain, she stuck around the house most of the time.

She’d been getting weak for years. There were noticeable signs (which were alarming because I couldn’t imagine her getting old). At the start there was muscle twitching and cramping. She’d wake up and have difficulty moving then be tired throughout the day. Illness wasn’t the first assumption; no matter how much 13

14 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

of a realist she was, it would’ve never been the first assumption. Now her hands shook with a constant palsy. She developed a kind of tired lag in her speech. Words came slowly, in awkward bursts and dodging ways. Twice or three times a day she felt the need to run cold water in the shower and cool off. She noticed she was losing control of her mind, her emotions. Finally, she stopped dreaming altogether, which is what scared me most of all. When she first got sick, my dad did kind of know she was really sick, that something was really wrong. He had, at one point, I imagine, truly loved her. Here’s a story they used to tell and laugh about. Once, when they were newlyweds, they had dinner at a nice place in Charleston. Afterward, they took a ride around downtown in a taxi, something neither of them had ever done. Their food had been expensive, the ride seemed silly, and yet, and yet. Mom glowed with gratitude. Her eyes full of life and fun.

She was happy, giving off a warmth that Dad soaked up as he wrapped his arm around her. I doubt they’d’ve thought embellishing this part was quite as good as what actually happened. Anyway, he used to enjoy it, just being next to her. This was where he’d gotten his strength. Now she’d turned into a shut-in.

Her face had lost all joy, all hope. Her dead spirit had taken over her very body. I don’t mean to imply that he resented her. I didn’t believe that, though at times I wondered.

“What about Mom?” I said plaintively.

He looked over at me, his eyes shining. Since he’d spent the past few years dodging this moment, you’d’ve thought I asked him the question at gunpoint. I’d never seen him show such solicitude for anything and I can still picture, all too clearly, how he looked.

“She keeps me sensible.”

We sat quietly for a long time. The place was packed and there were too many faces. My dad raised his head. “What’s goin on? The pope here or somethin?”

“If it’s too crowded, we can go somewhere else,” I said.

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “You still got your arrowhead?”

I pulled the arrowhead from my pocket.

“I can’t believe you still have it.”

“I always wondered what it pointed to.”

“Maybe the search for whatever it’s pointin to is better than whatever it’s pointin to.”

I thought for a long while. I downed the Wild Turkey then sat the empty glass down and basked in that moment of thought. I decided he was wrong, that there was no use searching, no use having an arrow to point you somewhere, if there wasn’t something worth finding at the end. It might’ve been the bourbon 14

15 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

that made me dwell on this just a hair too long because I said I needed to be reminded of why it wasn’t a mistake to leave West Virginia in the first place.

A short silence. There was almost a note of apology in his eyes.

“Does no good to look back. What choices we make, they’re gone now.”

“I thought about moving back down here.”

“This is serious shit, Russ. You don’t want to wade through it. You have a good woman and a life.

This place’ll suck you down faster than quicksand in one of them old Tarzan movies.” He stubbed out his cigarette and exhaled smoke. “You’re not always gonna be happy,” he said, and poured another glass. “But when you feel like you can’t do nothin for yourself,” lighting another cigarette, “that’s when you know how it feels to be a good man.”

His response was both mild and fated and sounded like the tone that he would use to calm a crying child. He smoked his cigarette, which gave his silence an omniscient air that I found especially peculiar.

But the gravity only went so far.

“Remember that time those girls believed...what was it you told em—really had em goin—that if

you all ran naked through the football field? That thing. I forget.”

“Hell, I don’t remember,” I laughed.

We drank more. I talked about girls I’d fucked in college and we listened to loud music until we couldn’t even hear each other talking anymore. We were talking very loudly and laughing, and the people near us were laughing though they couldn’t’ve known what we were talking about because the bar was so loud all they could probably hear was the laughter.

“You know what would be funny?” he said. He told me we should streak down the street like I did

on that football field with the girls, so we stripped off our clothes and ran down Main Street, our pasty white bodies as jarring a sight as one living in West Virginia could expect to see. My dad ran ahead of me, eyes closed, laughing the whole way. He stopped laughing but kept running, like Wile E. Coyote running along a tree limb that ended in thin air.

Later that night I woke on the floor of my childhood bedroom. I felt very drunk, like a TV with the “mute” button stuck. After we streaked and ran back to my dad’s SUV, I slipped into the door and smashed my eye on the side mirror. It’s really easy to misjudge how high you have to step up on those things, even if you aren’t shit-faced. It hurt, and there was a little blood, so I thought I’d check the damage in the bathroom.

15

16 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

I walked to the end of the trailer and stepped into the bathroom. I leaned over the edge of the sink and checked myself in the mirror. My eye looked like a hardboiled egg covered in crusted chocolate syrup.

I wondered how I could see through the scabs, through all that blood. I stood there gathering my thoughts, trying to decide whether to go to the emergency room or simply wash my face. What had it all meant, I wondered—the arrowhead, the father-son bonding, the chummy streak through my old hometown, and all the talk of women?

Behind me, I heard the sound of my dad clearing his throat.

It occurred to me that I had walked into my parents’ bathroom. I whirled around and saw both my father and mother sitting on the lip of the tub. My dad had a razor and a can of shaving cream in his hand.

My mom’s legs were covered with shaving cream. My dad took the razor and ran it down the length of her calf. The razor was so full of gunk I could practically hear the scrabbling sound it made against the stubble of her hair. It was so violating that I didn’t have the capacity to do anything but stand there. My dad pressed the razor deeper and the blade stuck to a rough place. I saw the dark line of blood and gunk trickle down her calf. There was something suddenly tender and kind in the tableau. Embarrassed, I closed my

eyes.

I decided there was no point in sticking around. I backed out slowly, as if I’d crossed an imaginary line, but almost reluctantly, which, I think, surprised myself even more. They didn’t come out of their room that night. I know because I waited. I waited in front of the TV and ate an entire box of strawberry Pop Tarts and chased it down with milk, watching an A ndy Griffith marathon on TBS. I had some time to think about the whole thing. It was one of those times when I could almost fool myself into thinking that things weren’t all that bad with my wife. It felt good to be alone and thinking of my wife, of how the things we

think we want most in life are so rarely what we actually need that when we get them we seldom believe it, and, without knowing, sometimes let them go. I rinsed my glass out in the sink and went to bed.

The next morning I got up early to leave before my parents woke. I’d made my mind up. I’d try to take care of things with my wife. Sacrifices are made, but not in vain. Going into the living room I stopped in front of my parents’ room and leaned in with my ear, but I heard nothing. I reached for the arrowhead in my pocket, but it wasn’t there. I figured I’d lost it when I hit my head the night before. I continued into the kitchen, making no effort to keep the floor from creaking. My dad had left a note lying on the kitchen table which read: 16

17 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Russ, We’ll glad you came to visit & we wish you the Best in Life. Tell your wife we said hi. Always Remember Time is Spend Together & enjoy each other.

Love you, Dad

I still have that note. I saved it in my wallet.

17

18 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

A Pyrotechnic Fix

By William Blomstedt Fireworks were never the goal. In fact, they were never included the docket of activities, the to-do list or even reserved as a Plan B. But no matter what was intended for the evening, we always seemed to end up in one of the house's turrets or even straight on the roof as Bob Cloff, or Bill or Goiter or whoever sent bottle rocket after bottle rocket high into the night air. Those of us with more self-control wouldn't make it that far, claiming a well-filled bean bag or a fresh orange whip was all one needed to be content, but others had their eyes set to the sky and if there wasn't a bright flash or loud explosion to meet their senses, their day could not be stamped complete.

When Mikhail Iliovanovitch heard the pop and crackle come from overhead he'd open up his window and start cussing in Russian, which we didn't understand and so rightly refused to heed. He disdained at our amateur efforts, though we constantly reminded him that we were dedicated amateurs, for he was

one of the world's premier composers of pyrotechnic scores. His walls and shelves held every accolade one could obtain in this surprisingly deep field, and his scores had been performed at all the great venues of the world: Sydney, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, even Des Moines Iowa, which, while not as known for its magnitude, is considered by most auteurs as the premiere locale for ground-breaking experimental displays.

Despite his threats our evening pyrotechnics continued and Mikhail would throw himself on the bed, weeping over the trashy, unskilled racket forced upon him and then don his industrial sound-proofing headgear to eventually pass into a fitful sleep. We knew this because Andrei, Mikhail's assistant, would slip out of the room soon after and join us up on the rooftop, where he was absolutely forbidden to go on pain of deportation to a gulag in Kamchatka, but we all know that what is forbidden tastes the sweetest, so as soon as Andrei appeared we'd give him a simple 50c bottle rocket and he'd hold the thing in his teeth as he lit it and waited for that sparkling rush.

After the initial fix, Andrei would bring out what they had been working on that day, for he was Mikhail's amanuensis, and we'd discuss the score's style, pacing, color, or why he chose to include so many weeping willows in a passage that most certainly could have used a bit more more flash-bang depth. We could scoff at his score and criticize the insular F'works world all we want, but Mikhail was the one with 18

19 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

the Nobel Fireworks Prize, not us. Despite being a curmudgeon, we really did like Mikhail's work, though mostly his earlier stuff when he was a bit more daring and drove home the finales instead of just futzing around with them like he does now. But no matter what level of refinement lay in each of us, we were all really on the same fuse – each holding a love and awe for that splendiferous mixture of force, sound and color set against the black sky.

Then again, our fireworks supplier might call the above sentiments a spadeful of goosefat. Elvin Forklinks didn't have a good word to say about Mikhail Iliovanovitch, and despite the prestige of the Russian master, many would side with Elvin's word on pyrotechnic matters. Like the multitude of accolades on Mikhail's wall, Elvin was equally honored as a trustee or president emeritus or honorary member for every Fireworks Association of any repute (including the infamous Montana Pyrotechnic Guild who have secretly run the state for decades). Yet despite this fame, he has lived simply and quietly in the fireworks trailer down at the Crossroads for the last 70 years, though he didn't look a day over 70, but perhaps he was born in that very trailer and promptly started working the register or in the stockroom. We didn't know, but like Grandpa always told us; fireworks people are different. Grandpa also said that you should never trust a fireworks guy who still has all his fingers, and we sure trusted Elvin because he didn't have any of his fingers left, or even arms. He was just a head propped up by a pillow by the register. His pillow case often had stenciled flowers on it.

So Elvin kept our fireworks supply steady, even in the low months like April or September when the Sparklerheads (those who only buy around the specific and seemingly random holidays) aren't thinking about fireworks. We liked to believe we were some of Elvin's best customers but the Crossroads was always decorated with shiftless people we didn't recognize and a glance in their eyes showed they needed the same fix.

They say fireworks were invented by the Chinese but Elvin might try to gnaw at your wrist over that statement. Apparently a few generations back some spilled gunpowder caused a disagreement between his family and the Chinese, with one of the sides casually throwing out a curse throughout all ages of time and no one nowadays was willing to stand up and end the feud. It continued on with an occasional aggressively aimed Roman candle one day, an warehouse explosion the next, perhaps, we hoped, heading towards some

great finale.

19

20 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

But even Elvin couldn't deny the Chinese had good fireworks. Their shack sat opposite to his trailer on the Crossroads and sometimes we'd buy their fireworks to mix things up. While Elvin always had the old standbys, the ones we knew and loved from our days in the womb until now, at times we would crave something new and different. So, after looking both ways, we would wander across the Crossroads to the Chinese shack and find fireworks beyond imagination; new colors (they have discovered and tamed a fourth primary color which can best be described as 'fuzzy'), shapes (they called it an Oolumbacus), noises (one that sounded exactly like the listless roaming of a young water snake) and even some fireworks that

momentarily split time and space, so that when it exploded you could somehow see what it looked like twenty, sixty years or a hundred years ago standing in the very same spot. Clearly the Chinese had a well funded Pyrotechnics branch of their government and were leading the way into the brightly-colored, sparkling future.

But the Chinese didn't give us credit, and they never allowed leisurely browsing (how they could tell, we never know) so when we were short on cash we'd go to Elvin, because he knew we were good for it.

We paid him back at the end of the month. Some weeks we might not have milk from the milkman, or flavor for the Slurpee machine, but we could always could scrape up enough cash or coin to pay Elvin. He'd see that desperate look in our eye and smell the gunpowder coming from our pores and then blink twice, meaning we could fill our sacks and overcoats with a Spinners, Mortars, Smoke Bombs, Wheels and Poppers; with each hand laid upon igneous instrument we could already hear the whoosh and bang that filled the cold hallways of our lives with the baked-good smell of happiness, if just for the moment the sound stayed in the ears and the color hung in the sky. As we walked back to the house laden with goods, already some of the formerly ardent would be waffling and claiming they should get a good nights sleep, or that they don't have the dough right now, or they had their fun when they were younger but now they should take up more adult hobbies like shuffleboard or knot-tying. Some would certainly peel off under the gaze of the ever-responsible Frau Boobeater in the main foyer, but for most of us “the call� adequately overwhelmed her influence and we strode forward, tromping up the circular stairs towards that beautiful, black sky canvas. But just before the top we heard a steady, familiar pop... pop... pop... pop. Instead of bursting out, we cracked open the door and peeked through. Against the pinpricks of stars we could see the robed back of Mikhail Iliovanovitch with the refuse of a Roman candle in his hand, his head tilted towards the sky.

20

21 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

If You Wake Up Dead

By Fikret Pajalic

This old bloke, with cowboy legs and a mutt in tow, crossed the street and headed our way. It was the first Monday of winter school holiday and rain, colder than a witch’s nipple was pelting down. Little rivers ran down the window. The old-timer hobbled up the steps of the porch of our house. Under the porch roof, he

and the dog shook off the rain. He took off his hat and hit it against the post. His hat was one of those felt made, dark green, Bavarian numbers. It was missing a feather on the side as a trim. He was called Eddie, I didn’t know his real name, and he was our neighbour from across the street.

His small, sausage type dog, had short legs and was leashed on a long metal chain. This mongrel was so short it looked like his belly and his privates were touching the ground. The dog barked when I opened the door, his wet tail swished left and right like a windscreen wiper, his ears looked like two boat sails and were pricked high on alert. I could tell he wanted a pat or a nice word like good boy or what a cutie. The mutt must have been used to attention from strangers. If you want to know the truth, the dog was kind of cute, but I kept quiet and still. I was in no mood for neighbours or animals or anyone. Not today. I’m not always like that. Unfriendly, I mean. Just when I’m busy.

My marbles collection needed to be sorted out. I had a buyer coming over for one of my Japanese cat’seyes, a vintage, black colour, three vanes, and no-tint glass marble made in 1946. The original box had some Japanese letters on it and I got it translated. I made a copy of the bottom of the box on the school photocopier and sent the letter to the Japanese embassy in Canberra asking for a translation. I didn’t know any Japs. Our street had every kind of Asians but no Japs. The rest were Greeks and Maltese and of course us, the Yugos. The embassy was my last chance after my trip to the sushi bar on Collins Street ended in disaster. I asked the chef for a translation and he almost kicked me out.

‘No wonder you got nuked,’ I yelled from the pavement. A passing woman holding a boy by the hand gave me one of those ‘shame on you’ looks, but said nothing.

Of course, I knew it wasn’t a nice thing to say. It was terrible. I knew that. But I said it anyway. I don’t know, maybe the chef lost family there. Maybe he was born in the area and got exposed to fallout. Maybe 21

22 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

his cells didn’t divide properly when he was growing up. Maybe he just thought I was being a nuisance, wasting his time. Later I found out there are three types of Japanese writing. Maybe he couldn’t read the one on the box.

The very prompt response I received from the embassy, via telegram that I had to pick up at the post office, surprised me. The translation read: Tanaka Marble Factory, Nagasaki, Japan and underneath ‘Glad we could help’. So when I ‘marketed’ this marble for sale during recess in school, I added there is probably some radioactive dust, from the bomb, caught in the glass. Kids listened with their mouths open and wanted to touch the marble, but I would only let them watch. They had to pay to touch.

Eddie’s mutt would not shut his gob so he jerked him a little with the chain and said ‘quiet Lucky’ and the dog went quiet and parked himself between his crooked legs. What job did this man do for a living to end up with such a deformity? Briefly, the image of Eddie on a horse, a young jackaroo, mustering cattle and ordering his heelers, went through my head. Instead of an Akubra he’s got his little green Bavarian hat on, this time with a feather.

Eddie said his two lemon trees were full of fruit and if we wanted some we were welcome to come and get it. He said he is too old to pick lemons, otherwise he would have brought some over. He said something about his knees and his bad back and some other ailment that troubled his old body, but I tuned out. In my book it was a wonder he was still walking. Eddie was, I kid you not, a corpse pretending to be alive. A dead man they forgot to bury.

I opened my mouth to call my mom but the old man Eddie kept blabbing about his lemon trees. I am not completely without manners so I let him talk and waited for him to take a breath so I could excuse myself. While I pretended to listen, I was trying to figure out how to acquire ‘the Holy Grail’ of all Animal Kingdom cards. The card, it was rumoured, has never been printed, which wasn’t true as I’d seen one four years ago. At the time I didn’t know the value of it.

It was the Labrador dog card. I did not understand that. Why would you make your most valuable card a dog card? Why not a tiger or a lion or even an eagle? A wolf would be perfect, I thought. The apex predator. The master of winter. The beast that is unmatched in the wild, unless we talk about the unbeatable tandem of human and dog. Now, those two could bring down any prey.

My temples throbbed while Eddie held forth with his citrus lecture. One was just a regular lemon, he 22

23 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

said and pulled out a lemon from his left jacket pocket. His jacket was also green, one of those tram conductor numbers, with epaulettes. The other lemon is a beauty, he said and pulled another fruit from his right jacket pocket. This lemon was nearly orange in colour, smaller and smoother. He extended his hand and I took it.

‘It’s called a Meyer lemon. It is thought this lemon is a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin or an orange. It makes the best lemonade. As sweet as a mother’s lullaby,’ Eddie said.

I handed him the lemon back and he went on about grafting and watering and peeing on the lemon tree and sticking rusty nails in the ground. All this was needed for a lemon tree to succeed, Eddie said and I noticed a hint of a German accent. How old was this bloke? When did he come to Melbourne? Could he be a Nazi hiding in the suburbs? It’s happened before. I read about it.

‘You must graft a branch of Meyer lemon onto the true lemon. It takes about four years for a tree to get this high.’ He lifted his hand above his head. ‘Over time you must make sure you prune back all of the true lemon and let the Meyer branches grow, until they’re the ones only visible.’

It appeared the bell wouldn’t be cutting short the lemon history lesson. Eddie knew more than your regular fellow about citrus fruits, I’ll give him that. But, there was still so much on my ‘to do’ list.

I actually never write anything down. All is kept in my head. I still had to post my footy cards to a buyer in Perth and check the classifieds in the papers, both local and dailies. There was a book called Rare, Vintage and Collectible Serviettes waiting to be read on my desk. I tell you, it took me forever to track it down, and now it’s sitting unopened.

‘But don’t worry, young man,’ Eddie interrupted my thoughts. He took my hand into his and I felt the coldness of his old weathered palms on my warm skin, ‘the blood of the true old lemon is still somewhere in the branches and leaves of the new lemon.’

I was curious about the word he used. Blood. I was going to ask him about it but at this point my mother came from behind me and greeted the neighbour. I stayed for a few moments listening to them exchange pleasantries and then walked off not saying a word. Five minutes later my mother came to my room with two bags. She spoke while I sorted my collections. Later, when she called me for lunch I saw the two large

hessian bags on my bed. They were the bags potatoes come in.

23

24 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

My father, my mother and I ate lunch in silence. We almost always ate in silence, like hungry mutes, which was perfect for me. It was a time when I collected all my thoughts and placed them in the correct drawers in my head. I munched on my burek, my favourite food, not lifting my eyes from the plate. My mother served it with salad and yogurt. The heavenly combo of pastry, minced meat, potatoes and onion melted in my mouth, even though I wasn’t quite in the mood.

This boy from school who was supposed to come and see my cat’s eyes marbles didn’t turn up. He was also supposed to bring his collection of onionskin marbles. He reckoned they were worth something. They wouldn’t be called onionskins if they were worth something, I told him. He asked me if he could bring his marbles anyway, just to make sure. So I told him he could. I told him to be on time.

He called from a payphone somewhere on Main Road West and said he couldn’t come because he had a collision with a dog. A collision! That’s what he said. He said his bike’s been ruined and he has to go see about the dog. He asked me if he could come tomorrow instead. I told him OK, but that I had another buyer lined up for later this afternoon, which was a lie.

So this boy, they called him Dino, I didn’t know his real name, screamed into the receiver. ‘Do me a solid, don’t sell the black cat’s eye to anyone and I’ll owe it to you.’ A solid! He said. Can you imagine?

That’s what he said. I made no promises and hanged up. As I did the word wanker came out of my mouth.

I ate my burek and I could hear a bell ringing, like one of those annoying wind chimes, and then someone called.

‘Over here.’ My father was tapping his knife on my plate.

He asked me if I went to see the neighbour about the lemons. I shook my head. He sighed and started talking about some bloke at his work he didn’t like. He said this fellow was lazy and giving him a headache. My father kept looking at me while he talked about this slack-arse at his work. I figured fast he was talking about me. He’s been doing this for some time hinting at his disappointment with me. He would ramble about some fictional loser at work while he really meant me. This passive aggressive crap was a real pain in the neck.

‘He’s becoming a real pain in the neck, this bloke,’ he said and jolted me out of my thoughts. Was he

reading my thoughts now? My father put his knife and fork down and sighed again. He sighed a lot. For an

24

25 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

instant I didn’t know what he was going to do. My mother was quiet. I was quiet. My father used to have a temper. That’s what the whole neighbourhood said. ‘The old man Sokol,’ they said, ‘he’s got temper. Best to stay away when a mad minute grips him.’ My father wiped his lips with the back of his hand, got up and left the dinner table. I don’t know why they said that thing about his temper. I never saw him lose it, but he always looked like he might.

He said he drank lemon with tea, used lemon rind in compost, made lemonade and lemon cake and used freshly squeezed lemon juice as aftershave.

He used lemon juice to clean around the house.

I quickly finished my plate, got the bags and left the house. In one of the garden beds in Eddie’s front yard, tucked cosily under the red bottlebrush and safe from rain, lay an orange-and-white cat sleeping. The cat glanced at me, rubbed its fat chops with a paw and went back to sleep. I wanted to have a better look into the cat’s eyes. Are the marbles true representations of feline visual organs? I came closer to the cat but it didn’t move. Its fur was fluffy and I felt a momentary strange itchiness at my fingertips. I wanted to give the cat a good rub under the chin. Imagine that!

Two bags of lemons and that’s it, I said to myself. Then I can go back to doing my thing. My thing in school was that I could evaluate anything that had any value and I had collections of stuff. Kids wondered 25

26 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

how I knew things and if you asked me I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that I knew. It was in me, I guess, the burden I didn’t ask for. The moment I saw the thing in question I knew. Footy, cricket and basketball collectible cards, marbles, rare serviettes sets, stamps, pins, badges, comics, limited edition toys and dolls, autographs and everything and anything kids were collecting or were interested about. Sometimes I had to touch stuff, give it a closer inspection, but my initial visual assessment never changed.

‘How does he know? Young Sokol is weird like that.’ Kids said about me. I took their words as envy.

And their words bothered me.

Before I could knock on Eddie’s front door, he opened it and invited me in. I walked inside his living room. It was large and plain. There was an old television on four wooden legs with rabbit’s ears antenna in the corner and it was on. The black-and-white screen flickered. A small coffee table was in the middle.

There was a recliner and a car floor mat, for his dog, next to it. The space was dominated by a large birdcage atop which a large grey blue, white and red Galah cockatoo sat.

Eddie said, ‘come in, come in, I’ve been up since before sunup.. He stared at my bags in a curious way but said nothing. It looked like he didn’t remember he was at our door earlier today.

‘I go to bed early, with first sign of the night.’ He started to ramble. ‘I should not complain, I’m eighty-four after all, but I have to admit my eyesight is failing. I’m afraid I’m like a chicken as soon as it gets dark. Can’t see a bloody thing.’

Or remember a thing for that matter, I thought.

I stepped in and the cockatoo screeched ‘visitor, visitor’ and his head bobbed up and down.

‘Yes, François, we have a visitor,’ Eddie said. ‘I call him François because of his colours, they’re like the French flag. He can’t fly. Someone shot him in his left wing. You can feel a pellet lodged in there.’ I got a little closer and Eddie asked me if I wanted to hold him. I said no. The cockatoo lifted his left wing and gave a loud piercing cry. ‘Not the bullet, but a pellet.’ The bird repeated the words twice.

Just then Eddie snapped his fingers and pointed at the bags. ‘Lemons,’ he exclaimed and I nodded. He took me outside to his backyard. There, I saw a meticulously maintained backyard with various fruit trees, rose bushes, garden and vegetable beds, water tank and a large compost bin. On the side of his

house there was an aviary and next to it there was a bird stand. Six identical white birds were perched on

26

27 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

it. The birds had small black markings on their necks. Eddie said they’re called Barbary or ring-neck turtledoves.

Soon, I found out Eddie had had these type of birds for the past forty years. He explained that during the opening ceremony of Melbourne Olympics these doves were released in the air together with white pigeons. The organisers didn’t have enough white homing pigeons so they used Barbary doves and since they lacked the homing ability of pigeons some got lost and two landed in his backyard. He bred them ever since.

The old man Eddie was a chatterbox. He told me he had quadruple by-pass surgery nine years ago. He got Lucky shortly after so he could walk and be active. He got him from the council’s pound, as he was the only dog he could carry. He had no leash or a cage so he wrapped the dog in his jacket and carried him home like a baby. He got dead tired after half a kilometre so he hailed a taxi. He hadn’t enough money for the fare so he paid the cabbie the rest with lemons.

He said he drank lemon with tea, used lemon rind in compost, made lemonade and lemon cake and used freshly squeezed lemon juice as aftershave. He used lemon juice to clean around the house. He mixed a couple of drops of lemon juice with water and used a spray bottle to chase away the neighbour’s tomcat that was constantly on the look out for his turtledoves. And Lucky was no good in protecting the doves as he befriended the tomcat. ‘Or the tomcat put a spell on him.’ Eddie said. ‘I can’t let that cat take any of my doves.’ His voice got real serious. ‘I could depart any time now, and I need my doves.’

‘In case you die, you need doves?’ I asked him in disbelief, looking at the six white doves murmuring softly.

‘No, in case I wake up dead, I need them. Doves will help me get my bearings in the afterworld.’

My body turned toward the house to leave but my brain betrayed me. It opened my mouth and made me ask the question.

‘What?’ I frowned.

‘Where I come from, the tale goes, when you wake up dead all your senses are gone. They fly off and go inside the nearest birds. That’s why I keep six doves. Six doves for the six senses.

Eddie’s death would be caused by senile dementia, I was sure of that, killed by a bus or electrocuted in 27

28 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

his bathtub, but my feet wouldn’t move. Made of lead they were. It popped into my head there are only five senses.

‘There are only five senses.’ I said it as a question.

‘No, there are ten senses. Five outward and five inward senses. One can only take one of the inward senses. I would like it to be the estimation or what we would call today instinct. But it’s not up to me.’ Eddie gazed upward.

‘What are the other inward senses?’

‘Well, I can tell you one of them is called common. I see you have plenty of that. I’m sure you’ll figure out the rest.’

He switched back to the doves. The doves, he went on to explain, give back people that wake up dead the six senses so they can find their way in the world of the dead. They guide them to the other side. As far as Eddie knew these white doves have been bred for centuries for just that. And for the magicians who used them in their cruel tricks.

‘Magicians are the devil’s apprentices,’ said Eddie, the man who believed doves would take him to heaven. ‘Their fingers are smeared by the blood of thousands of doves.’ He raised his voice for the first time and his right hand was in the air, his index finger pointing at the sky.

It was time for me to be off. I started picking the lemons but his sausage dog came from behind me pushing the basketball larger than him, with his muzzle.

‘Lucky,’ Eddie shouted, ‘my soccer player. You want to play, mate.’ Eddie kicked the ball but it rolled

only couple of meters. The dog pushed the ball to me again and I kicked it as hard as I could and the ball flew to the far side of the yard. But Lucky came back with the speed of light, pushing the ball.

‘You can kick it further than me, that’s why he likes you. Play with him a bit.’ I looked at dog’s pleading eyes. There was a hint of rapture in his eyes just before I kicked the ball again. Both the basketball and the dog were dark brown in colour. When they moved together it looked like the ball was dragging the dog. This went on for about good fifteen minutes. The dog and I got into it. I could not recall the last time I witnessed such happiness.

Then, unexpectedly, Eddie grabbed the ball, ordered Lucky to sit and nudged me toward the lemon 28

29 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

tree.

‘It’s time,’ he said, ‘the lemons, get into it, mate.’

So I did. I started picking the lemons. First, I picked all the outside lemons, and then I got inside the tree and got into those lemons. Sweat beaded on my forehead. My hands got bloody from thorns. Soon, thorn scratches decorated my face and skull. My shirt got torn. I grabbed the tree and shook it and ripe lemons started falling. I went on my knees, my pants got wet and muddy, and collected them into my bags. The six doves watched me intently, cocking their heads left and right for a better view. Lucky, God bless his doggy soul, ran around me, helping me. Some lemons rolled away and Lucky picked them up with his jaws, one by one, not piercing the skin, and placed them in my bags.

Eddie kept clapping his hands and clog-danced from one foot to the other, full of joy. He kept egging me on. I thought Lucky was the epitome of happiness chasing the basketball, until I saw Eddie watching me pick lemons.

‘That’s the way,’ he yelled and raised his both fists in the air as if he just crossed the marathon finish

line. ‘Make the tree breathe again.’ That’s what he yelled. Imagine that! After a time my bags were full and Eddie brought some buckets and I started filling those. I would lift my shirt and fill it with fruit and then carry it to the bucket, walking deliberately, making sure I don’t spill. Sweat entered the corners of my mouth and the saltiness bit my dry tongue.

I fell down on my knees exhausted and thirsty. My heart was beating in my chest, in my ears, head, feet, arms. Eddie sat next to me and passed me a bottle. I took a swig and drank until I emptied it. It was the best lemonade I ever had. The old man was right.

He pointed at the lemon tree.

‘It’s seventy years old. I was a young man, about your age, when we got it. It has outlived many men.’

One of the doves landed next to us and started picking grass. Eddie picked it up and handed it to me. I wiped my dirty hands on my shirt before I took it. I was surprised at the lightness of the feathery creature.

The dove cooed, spread its wings and tucked its beak under it and groomed itself.

‘What if one of your senses gets into François?’ I asked, while slowly gathering my breath.

‘The senses only go to the chosen birds. Those birds are the doves. Besides, François can’t fly.’

29

30 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

After, we went quiet and we stayed quiet for a time. We just sat on the muddy ground. I was still on my knees, my hands clutching my kneecaps. I was afraid to let go. There was a strange comfort in this. Holding onto my own kneecaps for balance. It felt like gravity didn’t have a pull on me anymore. I looked at Eddie and he was sitting like an Indian chief, legs crossed, chin up, eyes closed. He looked different, sprightly even.

‘Will you be able to carry those home?’ Eddie spoke and nodded at the full bags.

I nodded back and got up. I wasn’t tired anymore. I tied the bags with string and lifted them with ease. I knew I shouldn’t carry such heavy bags at the same time, but I did it anyway. They were heavy. I knew that, but the lemons I picked felt like carrying feathers. Like carrying two doves. Eddie tapped me on my shoulder and I was off.

Dino waited for me in front of my house. He was sitting on the porch cracking his knuckles and mumbling to himself.

Suddenly I didn’t care for marbles or cards or pins anymore. I decided to give everything away. I would

start with Dino. He can have my marble collection, I decided.

I made my decision and my feet lifted off the ground. I was floating in the air. It was just for a fraction of time and only an inch or two. It felt like I was carried on the wings of six doves. It felt like nothing I felt before. I took a deep breath through my nose, filled my lungs with the winter air and exhaled. Steam enveloped my face. It was the same air as before I went to Eddie’s, cold and wet. I knew that. But it went through my mouth and into the lungs of a newborn.

Dino approached me. He glanced at the lemons and then stared at my face. I don’t know what he saw, but he asked me if I was all right.

‘Never better,’ I said.

30

31 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

One Man’s Paradise

by Bruce Harris

We are an hour out from Santuario, on the south coast of Lampedusa island, at a steady cruising speed so as to see everything there is to see. After this shift, we will enjoy three days off; not long enough for me to go back to the mainland and my family, but long enough to take our ease on Lampedusa – take in a beer or

two, watch and marvel at the tourist boats.

Beside me on the bridge, my No. 2, Giulio Laterza, is his usual vigilant self. Giulio is a Sicilian, which is perhaps why he is good at constant vigilance; there is hardly a second when his eyes are not skittling around the instruments and screens. It is bad of me, but there are times when I can’t help teasing him a little.

‘Are you looking forward to a bit of leave, Giulio?’

He is straining his face towards a surveillance screen, but he has heard me alright.

‘Yes, sir. I suppose so’.

‘Oh, dear. You don’t sound very enthusiastic, No. 2. We’ve earned a little rest and relaxation, haven’t we, policing this damn stretch day in and day out?’

‘Yes, sir, of course. I’m just not very good at indolence –‘ He breaks off; he has seen something. As his face leans towards me, such young features to be looking so disgusted and careworn, I can see he really was hoping it wouldn’t happen today. I can see he really is under strain, and while that makes me feel a little ashamed of myself, I cannot help wondering about the exact

nature of the strain, and whether it’s conducive to him successfully doing what I’m doing in the relatively near future.

‘Positive identification, Captain Benedetti. Clandestini vessel to the south and east’.

Like most of us on the patrol boats, Giulio calls them ‘clandestini’, illegals; I prefer to just call them refugees. Balance is necessary for this job, which is what worries me about Giulio.

As it happens, they are already visible to the naked eye, though little more than a dot as yet. Being oldfashioned and easily wearied with staring into screens, I fetch up my binoculars from their little drawer below me. I know, without looking at him, that Giulio has or is shooting across one of his lip-curling looks, 31

32 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

the kind of look he would give his grandmother lighting one of her old oil lamps. Whatever. Binoculars don’t rely on internet connections.

It is the turn of my heart to sink. It does seem unfair on the last day of a shift, though it’s now happening more or less every other day. They are refugees or clandestini right enough, probably in the region of two hundred of them, men, women, and I can see even at this distance, children, jammed onto a boat built for fifty passengers at most, and even then, passengers just making a ten-minute crossing of some fast-running river in Libya or Tunisia. Probably the second, by the look of it. The thing will have some kind of engine,

which has doubtless long since given up when faced with the demands of the open sea. Mahdia, in Tunisia, where some of the most rickety boats come from, is no more than 140 kilometres from Lampedusa. It’s a gamble worth taking, in a boat which has ploughed across rivers, maybe for fifteen/twenty years, that it will hold together long enough to travel less than 150 kilometres. The case is persuasive enough for desperate people.

I put the binoculars back.

‘O.K., Giulio. Turn us towards them. Course whatever the hell it is’.

‘Yes, sir’, he says, but with such weariness and sullen disapproval that when he’s looked at his damn screens again and given the necessary orders, I feel it’s time we talked about it.

‘You don’t think we should approach them, No. 2?’

‘It’s not for me to say, sir. You are the captain of this vessel’.

I move a little closer to him, and one of his cheeks flinch, as if he has some ridiculous presentiment that I am about to hit him. I look straight into his eyes, and after a blink or two, he returns my stare.

‘Adriano’, I call over my shoulder, and a floppy-haired puppy in uniform, even younger than Giulio and another of the near-juveniles who surround me on all sides, for my sins, ‘Lieutenant Laterza and I will be in my office for the next seven or eight minutes. Report anything untoward to me there immediately’.

‘Yes, sir’, the boy says, and he, at least, sounds keen enough.

In my plain little white office behind the bridge, with nothing much more than a desk and an armchair, I lean my hand on the desk and stare at my No. 2 again, while he stands vaguely to attention, seemingly thinking he’s going to be shouted at.

‘Yes, Giulio, I am the captain of this vessel, but if something should suddenly happen to me, you would be the captain of this vessel. In any case, if you are seriously interested in promotion, as I assume you are, it 32

33 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

could be only a matter of years, maybe even months, the way we’re leaking people, before you’re captaining one of these vessels yourself. Now tell me, rank aside, one man to another, do you think we should approach that boat?’

‘No, sir, I don’t’. This is better; there is some passion, some emphasis, about him. Perhaps we have finally ‘got to the meat course’, as my father used to say when one or other of the seven of us were standing before him trying to exude pop-eyed innocence.

‘I tire of your sulks and tuts, Giulio. Reasons, please, reasons, man to man’.

I heard some of the men talking in the night; now that the engine has stopped, I can hear every groan, every conversation, every strange noise. There is nothing in my life now but questions, all kinds of questions, ever since my mother came home in tears and told us that our father had been shot down and left to die in the street like a dog. ‘Halim’, she wept, ‘Halim who had the name of the gentle, such a good husband and father, he deserved so much more’. We clung together, rocking and weeping, on and on.

‘This Libya, this is hell now. That Gadhafi was a – ‘ - we all knew what she wanted to say, but even then, she remembered she was talking to children - ‘very bad man, but they were all afraid of him and there was something like peace as long as his apes did not come for you. Now there is nothing but fighting, we are living in hell itself. We cannot even go and bury your father for fear of being shot or’ – again, she would not say the word, but we knew the word alright, both boys and girls – raped – ‘or both. We must gather what we have of our savings and belongings and go, far, far away’.

And so my questions started, through the rest of my country and on into Tunisia. ‘Now I am the man, Mother. Now my father is dead, I should be making decisions, and you will not tell me what I have to know’.

Her eyes turned to me, liquid green, tired and resigned, but still in charge.

‘You are eleven, Dhaamin; there will be time for you to show your manhood, but not yet. For now, you must trust me. Help me with the young ones and trust me, Dhaamin’.

This I did, even as we left Libya and sneaked in the dark across the border into Tunisia, even as we made our slow painful way up the coast to this place called Mahdia, even though I know my mother had given almost everything we had to the men who were leading us, men with hard eyes and long knives, who do not take back talk from boys.

Then Mahdia, beautiful low white houses, hotels where rich lazy people from the West spend their time, but 33

34 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

none of them spared us a glance as we made our way through and on to an isolated coastal wharf and an old boat. I started questioning again, and my mother held back the arm of one of the Tunisians when he put the steel edge of his knife against my throat.

‘He is just a boy, sir. Please, please sir’.

His eyes flashed as he snapped into her face.

‘If he wants to ever get to be more than a boy, you whore, tell him to keep his mouth shut or he will no longer be able to open it’.

I wept at my mother being called such a name and he threw me away from him. Since then, I have swallowed my questions. But I hear men talking in the night, men who have now realised that they have been robbed. This boat supposed to be taking us to their Western paradise, where everyone will be safe from fighting and have something to eat every day, is now drifting like a log in a river and will most likely sink before it ever sees a coast. I am eleven, but I am not stupid. This so-called Paradise is a dream none of us will ever realise.

‘There are too many on the boat. I believe a few are already dead. We must lighten the boat of corpses, the too old, the too young, or we will all die’.

I hear their whispers in the night, and there are moments, cold, damp, shaking moments, when I could almost wish them to come for me and throw me over, away from the stench of piss, shit, disease and death.

But for my little sisters…but for my poor mother, lost and frozen at my side….

Giulio thinks for a few seconds, and even blushes, believe it or not, before he nerves himself to say what’s in his mind.

‘There may well be disease or death on that boat. There could also be armed terrorists or suicide bombers.

If we have to move it at all, we should tow it, from a distance’.

The last sentence is the only one to surprise me; I thought his eyes were better than that.

‘It’s sinking, Giulio. I could see that from this distance. Couldn’t you see that? Are we going to watch, like tourists on a guided tour, as they all sink into the water and drown?’

‘If they can’t swim, they shouldn’t be on a boat’.

Now he is ridiculous.

‘Giulio, most of the navies in most of the world, even the one and only Royal, were staffed by a vast major34

35 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

ity of men who couldn’t swim. Your other arguments, to be frank, are covered by procedure, as you well know. Nobody goes on the boat until a few well-protected medics have checked things out. Nobody goes on the boat until the weapons guys, combat suited, have run their Geiger counter things, whatever they’re called, all over it’.

‘They’re still our staff. They’re still going to get back on this boat, and there are some bugs no suit will keep out. Those people could be carrying bugs no-one’s heard of yet. I have a family, Captain Benedetti.

An Italian family, full of people who are entitled to live in Italy’.

There it is, one little bug I know of well enough, one which doing this job makes you come across quite a lot. I find it difficult to feel much else but weariness, but as it happens, I have only just opened my mouth when Adriano’s voice shouts from the other side of the door, though it sounds as much of a gasp as a shout.

‘Sir? Sorry. I think you need to come –‘ I only need to open the door to understand why he thinks I need to come. We are downwind of the refugee boat now, and we are getting the sickening stench of it full on. I know that particular miasma of death and disease well enough by now. Back on the bridge, Adriano is throwing up over the side of the bridge as a

sailor on the lower deck who thinks we can’t see him watches him with amusement. I watch him with something oddly like envy.

‘Take us in closer, No. 2’, I say. He sighs, and I am suddenly angry. ‘Take us in bloody closer! We are back on the bridge now! Do as I bloody say!’

‘Yes, sir’.

I turn on the intercom.

‘Captain Benedetti. Medical and explosive teams standing by, five minutes max. Thank you’.

He is standing behind my right shoulder, but I can still see the lip curling.

We can see them. We can watch them watching us. They seem to be just sitting there. No-one really knows what to do. We can see the boat is armed, but we can’t see how the men are dressed. A few children are crying. A woman is weeping; she seems to have discovered that her child is dead, but there is nothing anyone can do. Someone even tells her to keep quiet.

My mother, ever hopeful, pulls me in closer to her; I can feel the cold and damp of her body. I loose my arm a little from my sister Gina; she is only four, and too scared now to even open her eyes. She, too, is 35

36 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

very damp and very cold. Too cold.

‘Now you will see, Dhaamin, that there can be a new life, even for us’.

‘What do we do if they start shooting?’ someone says.

‘Die’, says another voice.

‘They are moving towards us’, says a boy leaning over the edge of the boat, and now we can see that they are.

‘Thank God’, my mother says quietly; a man sitting only a few feet away turns on her.

‘You people and your God’, he says scornfully, but he says no more. The big boat is coming closer and closer. People are standing up and waving. One or two are even clapping.

Maybe my mother and her God are right after all. Maybe this is our rescue, these men who are coming to take us to Paradise. No more fighting, no more hunger. I close my eyes and try to say a few words of my own to this God. For the sake of my mother.

Giulio and I should always be the last two to leave the boat anyway, but this time, I have made it clear to

him that I insist on it, because we must talk before we go on leave. We are both dog tired, right enough; it has all taken a long time. Technically, the shift finished over three hours ago. But the medical and explosive teams were a long time on the boat, the first much more than the second, predictably enough. These people pay everything they’ve got to get on the boats in the first place; they can’t afford to buy weapons, and any they might have been carrying would have been taken from them days ago.

But there were three corpses in the boat, two lying almost under the floorboards, one old woman and one toddler. The first was in the early stages of decomposition. The toddler had drowned, ridiculously, in no more than about six inches of water; the incoming water was the reason why the boat was slowly sinking.

They couldn’t plug the leak and they couldn’t get the water out more quickly than it was coming in. The body of a youth, probably no more than fifteen or sixteen, was lying with his back to the stern with a broken back; either a violent lurch of the boat had thrown him back, or he was a mouthy little sod who had said his piece once too often and been sorted out because of it.

The full stories will emerge in due course, as my report will probably say, in the antiseptic officialese we have to write. We had to call up a second boat to get all of them off before the boat sank, and that took time as well. But they did have a couple of speakers of the various languages and dialects that are most com36

37 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

mon, particularly Libyan and Tunisian, and we have French speakers; there are always a few fluent in French on the boats.

We are not in my office now, as there is only him and me on the boat; we are looking towards the quayside, where they are shuffling all those people into various dockside buildings for them to be questioned, medically examined and what have you, most of them as a prelude to being taken back to where they came from, though they don’t know that yet.

‘Look, Giulio’, I say, without looking at him – I am too tired for a vigorous confrontation – ‘you have to

bear in mind that there are people, mostly media people, who are always watching from the shore. Your precious instruments are not that rare or that expensive. You turn tail and go, leaving two hundred people to drown slowly, and that footage will be all over the world in a matter of hours, believe me’.

‘You are afraid of the media?’

This is a bit too much. I turn full on to him, and he flinches again. For a man not particularly well-equipped for confrontation, he does have a big mouth.

‘If you mean, do I want to be seen as a cruel, feckless bastard across the entire world, no, I don’t. I don’t want my wife to watch the TV and see me as a cruel, feckless bastard. I don’t want my children to watch the TV and see me as a cruel, feckless bastard. But mostly, Giulio, I want to be sure, in my own heart, that I really am not a cruel, feckless bastard. Don’t you?’

‘We can’t go on like this, we can’t go on letting them flood in. When we haven’t enough food or space in our own country, who are the cruel ones then? What kind of father, brother, son, uncle, have I become then?’ He is suddenly passionate and on the verge of tears, it seems.

I quieten and turn away from him. For now, this must finish, or one of us will say or do something we will regret.

‘Most of them don’t get in. You know that as well as I do. You also know you will never be any kind of father, brother, son or uncle if there is no room in your heart for compassion. What you do if and when you are a captain is for you and your conscience. Just as long as you are on a vessel which I command, you will do as I tell you to do, and do it in a professional, business-like manner, without churlishness or insubordination which might upset the crew. If not, I can and I will get myself another no. 2. Now get off the bloody boat and go on your leave. Maybe you would do well to spend some of it thinking’.

As he gets out of my sight, and not before time, I see one young boy, the one who was standing right at the 37

38 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

front of the boat as we moved towards them ready to take them off, who is not looking at the beautiful view out over the Med. His eyes are turned inland, and even at this distance, I can see they are shining, alight, with hope and wonder, every bit as if he is standing on the edge of Paradise looking in. His Paradise is probably as big an illusion as Giulio’s all Italian, all-white, so-called patriotic version, but I know which illusion I prefer and so, young as he is, does he.

They are good, these people. They didn’t shoot at us; they saved our lives, and took us all to safety in two

of their big smart boats. Men in smart uniforms, too, giving and taking orders, such work as I would love to do myself one day. Even now, they are helping my people get warm and fed. This is a good country. As I turn away from the sea which nearly took us down into it for ever and towards this land which is to be mine, I think of living in a place where no-one can shoot down innocent men in the street and all of us can live in peace with enough to eat and a solid roof over our heads.

My mother is smiling in my direction and I can even see Gina waving to me. Maybe there is a home for us here. Maybe Mother’s God really is smiling on us at last and all our troubles are over.

38

39 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Nobu’s Writing Therapy

By Yoko Morgenstern

Nobu Takahashi is standing on the terrace in front of his bungalow, looking up at the blue sky. Above him soar banana and papaya trees. From branches and stems hang their fruits: his breakfast. Wayan walks to the

trees. She climbs up the ladder over the hibiscus, hibiscus that has grown as high as Nobu’s height and higher, almost like small trees, red and pink and white. The hibiscus, which he has never seen grown so high.

This is his second week in the town of Ubud on the island of Bali. He is a new branch manager of a Japanese trading company. Wayan, his secretary, plucks a bunch of bananas, and a papaya. She comes down, takes them to the kitchen, and comes back, straight toward Nobu.

“Here you are,” says Wayan, putting the fruit platter on the table.

“Thank you, Wayan-san.”

“You’re welcome, Takahashi-san.”

“Just call me Nobu.”

On this island, almost everyone is named Wayan. The first child is named Wayan, boy or girl. There are a few other options, but most of them are just called Wayan. The second child is Kadek, with, again, a few variations, the third is Nyoman, and the fourth Kutut. The fifth? Wayan again.

After breakfast, he takes a walk. “Where are you going?” the locals ask. None of your business, he used to think, but now he understands that it is a mere ritual here. “Jalan Jalan,” he answers: taking a walk. He walks along the country road, where the offerings, pink flowers and flower-carved carrots, lie on woven rattan plates, underneath bamboo trees.

Nobu gazes off when the blue at dawn turns gold over the rice terrace beside his bungalow. The morning sun drops itself equally into each pool of water, onto each stage of the rice terrace. Like hundreds of suns shining from within the earth. A white heron swoops down over the mirroring fields.

39

40 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Smiling at Nobu, Wayan goes to his wife’s bungalow with another tray. Emiko never eats fruit from the property, and so Wayan has to prepare another set of breakfast for her. The bungalows are made as bachelor studios, each of them only US$30 a month, so his company has rented two for them. A raspy voice comes over the hibiscus above Nobu’s head. A man living in the bungalow next door has been on the phone for half an hour, speaking an unknown language. Dutch, Wayan once told him. And that he ran a casino on this island.

Wayan comes back from Emiko’s and says, “Mrs. Takahashi must be doing some chemical experiment.” Nobu explains that it is just a Japanese thing to wear a surgical mask all the time. Emiko the wife is always wearing a deep bucket hat and a hoody made of UV-proof synthetic cotton, sleeves stretching as far as the back of her hands, thumbs poking out from thumb-holes. When she’s out she always shades her face with an umbrella. “Ah,” says Wayan, “that’s the secret of keeping that beautiful fair skin.”

Well, Nobu thinks, that’s a nice way to put it. He isn’t very fond of his wife’s ungainly outfit. He can’t see her eyes, the eyes sunk in the shadow of the brim. Her family used to be in the Japanese nobility and this marriage is, for her, a downgrade. He was a muko-yoshi: to tie the knot, he had to be adopted into her family. Takahashi is actually their surname. She had been lured by the chance to be an expat’s wife — though in Paris, not in Bali.

They seldom visit each other’s bungalow. How free he feels, being alone on the bed again. How quickly he forgot the warmth of someone’s skin, someone who once shared a bed with him. Emiko feels the same, perhaps. Once he visited her room when she was taking a shower, and as she noticed him she pulled a towel prudishly over her chest as she might to a stranger, and stalked off.

* On the terrace, in front of his morning fruit platter, Nobu opens his day-planner. He has to get ready for the day’s Skype meeting with his colleagues in Japan. He inclines his head over the planner, and drops of sweat from his forehead tint the page like a treasure map, and it wrinkles. In this Indonesian languor he can’t think of a single word to put down on it. His pencil drifts over the ruled page.

“Mr. Takahashi,” says Wayan.

“Nobu,” he chides her.

40

41 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

She blushes. “Nobu-san. Are you keeping a diary?”

Nobu doesn’t know what to say. “Yes,” he lies.

“Then write,” she says, “you and I had mango juice here today.” * On a Saturday Nobu visits the Neka Art Museum. Going through a shadowy grove and over the bridge, and there it is, a peach-coloured house with an open tropical garden. The whole museum smells like some

kind of wood. On the wall hangs a watercolour painting of a young Balinese girl. Below her waist is wrapped in red ikat cloth, her upper half is naked. The slight protrusions of her breasts are topped with tiny dark nipples like coffee beans. Nobu opens his diary and starts to sketch the painting. With his pencil he shades her skin and her breasts. Wayan’s face has swum into his mind. He puts a flower in the girl’s hair.

In the evening he watches the Kekac dance or Ramayana Monkey Chant in the town theatre. He tried to take Emiko but she wasn’t interested. When the show is over, he waits for Kadek, Wayan’s brother, to pick him up outside the theatre. Kekac, kekac the dancers chant in the lingering music.

But it is Wayan who shows up.

“So sorry, but Kadek couldn’t make it,” she says, and beckons him to the backseat of her Japanese scooter.

“You didn’t have to come,” says Nobu, “I could have made my way home.”

“No, no,” says Wayan, “there are a lot of wild dogs on the way.”

On the rear seat of the scooter, his arms wrapped around her waist, he smells the faint scent of her hair, freshly washed, the scent of shampoo, of a bouquet. Hibiscus, bougainvillea? The dogs bark in the darkness, their yellow crescent-shaped scratches of eyes drift in the blackness. * People from Nobu’s company will be visiting the island next month. They are going to stay for five days. He has to make plans to entertain them. He leafs through his guidebook. Wayan walks by. He asks her for advice.

“We could fly to Java, the neighbour island, for a day trip. They are Muslims, unlike we Hindus, and 41

42 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

yet they have the world biggest Buddhist monument, Borobudur. I hear Japanese people love it. Your colleagues will like it too.”

That sounds like a plan. She has a plate of some spiky, badly smelling fruit in her hand. He winces at the stench in spite of himself. She reads his face and laughs.

That smells like… poop, thinks Nobu.

“It’s called durian, and it tastes divine! It’s almost our national fruit, you must try it!”

He holds his breath and tosses a tiny piece of the creamy flesh into his mouth. It tastes okay, actually.

Nutty, rich, slightly oniony.

“And?” she says.

“Not so bad,” he says.

He opens his day planner. Today, W ayan and I made a plan for my colleagues, and ate poop fruit. * It was very sunny today. Wayan and I had a picnic. It was a very nice day, Nobu writes, and scratches it out.

The meadow dappled with the sun and the clouds in green and gray. We had a picnic down by the river, and had grilled chicken sandwiches that Wayan made. After that, she tried to explain me about the Ramayana dance I saw the other day. I asked…

He hears footsteps and looks up from his diary. Emiko is coming to his terrace. She plunks down on

the bench beside him, and opens her Japanese fashion magazine.

“There’s a lizard in my room. So creepy.”

“That must be a gecko.” Geckos are cute, he thinks, but he doesn’t say that to her. Instead, he says, “So we are taking Matsushita-san and Kawada-san to Borobudur next month.” She nods in silence. “It’s a UNESCO site, you wanna come?” He goes on, she keeps mum, flipping the pages of her magazine.

It happens to be their wedding anniversary. “I’ve found a nice restaurant that overlooks the rice ter-

race. Their chicken’s great. Chicken’s so great on this island; free range chicken, all of them!”

42

43 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

“I don’t give a damn,” she says. Emiko believes in raw foodism. “Besides, people on this island don’t use toilet paper, didn’t you know? They use their own hands! How could I eat anything made with their hands?”

“They wash their hands, of course,” he tries to demur, though mildly.

Emiko closes her magazine with a slap, and shoves it onto the table. *

The party of four lands at Yogyakarta on Java. A van picks them up and they arrive at Borobudur.

Among numbers of stupas that look like round church bells, the biggest one on the top of the monument reminds Nobu of a breast, of the breasts with coffee bean nipples he drew in the museum. Blasphemy, he thinks, and tries to shake off the thought.

In the afternoon they see a plume-like, carbon-grey cloud in the distance, and the next moment darkness has fallen over the sky. It’s started to rain. The wind howls, and they take refuge under a huge banyan tree in the middle of the square, their backs pushed by the gale. The branches of the trees flanking the square toss up and down, down and up, like necks of nervous horses. White, forked shoots of lightning are like lizard tongues, crisscrossing the black open sky, followed by a roar. Nobu looks around, and realizes that Wayan isn’t there.

“Where is she?” he asks his colleagues.

“She went to make a phone call to see if our flight is okay,” says one of them.

“Alone?” Nobu says fretfully. The other two face each other and shrug. Nobu thinks of the blasphe-

mous thought he had at the monument.

She returns soon after, drenched. Tiny raindrops drip from her long, curly eyelashes. “Our flight is cancelled,” she says. “We have to stay on this island.”

They rush through the downpour to a nearby street. Wayan finds a forlorn inn. The innkeeper baulks but in the end he gives them rooms. After soup in the dining hall, they retreat to their rooms.

Nobu is so excited he can’t sleep. The rain is banging the windows and shingles, like those soy beans

they throw at the beginning of spring in Japan.

43

44 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Fidgety, he goes to her room and knocks at the door. It swings open at once as if she were waiting right in front of it. She smiles. She is bundled up in white bed linen, her hair still half wet. He takes off his halfwet shirt and dries her hair, tousling it. And kisses her.

The beat of the bombardment mutes the creak of the bed. Lightning flashes through the windows, on and on, and whitens her smoky-topaz skin under his own, well-oiled, coconut scented, pearls of perspiration slipping over it. He can’t resist an impulse to add more sheen to it. He pulls himself out.

Next morning he sees the blue sky through the dewy windows. A farmer with a cone-shaped hat is leading water buffaloes across the field, wading through the roiled soil. * The diary is open in front of him but Nobu cannot write. Today I was… I did… I. Since the night in Java, he hasn’t been able to complete a single sentence. Writers’ block, he mutters to himself, and chuckles.

Instead, he starts to draw. Wayan on a rung of the ladder, plucking bananas, her mango-shaped bottom quivering. * Nobu’s trading company has just announced that they are going to end the package-from-home service to its expats. Up until now they have been sending products from Japan, such as food, books, and DVDs, once a month, valued 10,000 yen. The company is sharply cutting back spending. Emiko freaks out. She needs her fashion magazines and Shiseido night cream.

Two months later the company decides to withdraw from Indonesia, and Nobu’s office is going to be

closed down. Emiko is happy to go back to Japan, but Nobu feels an odd twitch in his stomach. When she asks where in Tokyo they are going to live, he says, “I don’t think I’m going back.”

She slightly raises her brows. “What did you just say?”

“I’m not going back.”

She curls her lips, which makes her look almost smiling. “Are you saying you are staying here?”

He nods.

“Quit the company and stay on this primitive island?”

44

45 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

“Indonesia is said to be the next potential commercial hub. I could start my own business, perhaps.”

“Ooh,” she drawls, in an almost inaudible voice. “And what about us? Are we splitting up?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Her cheeks swell and she laughs. “Are you out of mind?” she says, cupping his face with her hands. “Is that worth no longer being a Takahashi?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Suit yourself,” she spits out. “Well, then. You’ll hear from my lawyer,” she says, her voice stolid.

Three days later his wife leaves. She tells the taxi driver, whose language she has never learned, to go to the airport. * Nobu still doesn’t know what to write. His pencil drifts tentatively over the blank page. Flipping it, he realizes that it is the last page. He muses for a while, and starts to rip up the diary.

He doesn’t know what to write so he knocks at her door. He knows Wayan is waiting, making a fruit platter, oiling her skin, smiling.

45

46 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE JUDGES

There are five of us doing the judging for this issue. You know Josh, Stephen, and James (or you should do) so let’s have a look at our two newest readers.

Mark A. King enjoys writing Flash Fiction. He normally enters a few competitions each week and is equally bewildered and delighted when he gets mentions or places frequently. He is enthusiastic about supporting others and is one of the founders of the FlashDogs movement, a community of talented Flash Fiction writers. He lives in Norfolk, UK, hiding from the psychotic calls of geese. You can say hello to Mark on Twitter @Making_Fiction, visit his blog makingfiction@wordpress.com, join #FlashDogs

@FlashDogs.

Tamara Jones is a former languages teacher pleased to be devoting all her time to writing, a lifelong ambition that can now be fulfilled. Beats lesson preparation and marking any day. Winner of Jotters United ‘Spirit’ short story competition. Story ‘Stalking the Watcher’ also published in Jotters United. Here she is with a cat.

46

47 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE JUDGEMENT

Stephen 1. One Man's Paradise A suspenseful, carefully constructed story that showed how the feeling of joy is realtive to one's perspective. Both the backstory of the refugees and the conflicted nature of the officers on duty were well-developed and convincing. Having said that, I could have done without some of the on-the-nose dialogue between the Italians near the close of the story. Overall, a timely story whose structure reflects both sides of a difficult situation with detail and sensitivity.

2. If You Wake Up Dead Focused on character rather than plot or action, this story was full of nice touches and details – the Japanese marbles, the Meyer lemon, a cockatoo with a pellet lodged in his left wing, the six doves for six senses. Though the closing epiphany was somewhat forced, I felt the well-drawn characters were engaging and carried the piece well.

3. Kiss of Sisyphus Interesting idea. Some of the details were fantastic – the demon on Thaddea's back and all the grotesque ways in which she had tried to rid herself of it, for example – though there was some confusion in the description of the action at the end which lead to Sisyphus reaching the top. Still, it was an original take on the Greek legend and a sideways look at the concept of joy.

4. A Pyrotechnic Fix Eschewing plot and a clear central character, this is more of a portrait of a scene. It's multicultural jumble of characters, names, and places was both its charm and problem in that it was a little difficult to figure out which part of the world we were in. There was a confidence, a swagger even, to the writing that worked overall.

5. Time Is Spend Together For me, this story walked a fine line bewteen poignancy and sentimentality. The setting and premise were both very familar and I was hoping for something a little more distinct to set it apart from other stories that have mined this material before. The father and son's night on the town seemed to escalate from how's-Mom-doing conversation to full-on drunken streaking in a way that was jarring and farfetched. Nonetheless, the image of the father shaving the mother's legs and the sad finality of the goodbye note made for a strong ending.

47

48 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

6. Norbu's Writing Therapy There was a great sense of place and some nice details in this fish-out-of-water story. However, the ending felt rushed ('Two months later the company decides to withdraw...') and I wasn't entirely convinced by the central character's decision to leave it all behind – a little too neat and abrupt.

Mark King Time is Spend Together (1st) Joe Halstead has produced a subtle, layered tale of seemingly simple decisions and unremarkable lives yet it left me pondering much deeper questions. This really appealed to me because it could be happening anywhere in the world, right now, to thousands of people. Russ is lost in life. The relationship he has with his father is reasonably well defined and they play their nervous roles out but as time progresses the bond grows deeper and Russ starts to understand more about joy and starts to change his views. There is great use of an arrow as both a physical and metaphorical object. The story had me hooked fairly early on by Joe's writing style. The writing is incredibly tight and precise. The journey in the car could have been expanded by hundreds of words, but it's truncated, snappy and reads like the someone recalling a journey; you only remember snapshots, tiny microscopic fragments of a long trip in a car. There were many other moments like this. This entry really really stood out and had a satisfying and joyous ending, that most people could relate to.

The Kiss of Sisyphus (2nd) Sometimes stories take you by surprise. Sometimes you don't even know why they resonate so strongly, they just manage to somehow connect and engage you as a reader. Virginia has done that with this story.

It is based on mythology and the main story revolves around the journey of Thaddea and Sisyphus who find themselves trying to resolve their individual burdens. There is a real chemistry between the characters here. I'm sure there are lots of clever references to mythology that I have missed, but the point is that this story worked in isolation because of how it was written and not the genre aspects. Thejoy was there in abundance for one character. For another it was in the simplicity of acceptance. I drew parallels with many that are living with terminal illnesses but through acceptance and strength they have come to teach the rest of us what it is to be alive.

One Man's Paradise (3rd) From the first few lines, it is clear Bruce is a fantastic writer. This is a harrowing tale and it is richly told from several points of view. I enjoyed the switch of narrative, which was well executed. Vivid scene setting, compelling characters with strong opinions and tension throughout - it was right up there. In the end, however, I found myself with a lack of empathy for the crew and I became entirely focused on the fate of the traumatised individuals longing for joy, but they would only find temporary joy, if any. Despite the main tread of the story focusing on two crew members I did not have any strong feelings about their fate in the end.

If You Wake Up Dead (4th) If I am honest with myself, I worried about the length of the piece before I started reading it. I feel that tales of this length have to work hard to justify themselves as every word should count in short stories, padding and pacing can be an issue. However, my fears quickly dissolved. This flowed seamlessly from beginning to end. I found a wonderful sense of connection to the main characters. Fikret gives us the old man, Eddie, with his lemon obsessions and need to be near six birds. Then there is young Sokol, with his collections and gift for estimating. I loved the sense of progression and sense of joy at the end, this was a re-birth for the boy and a pivotal moment in his life. Thought provoking and uplifting.

A Pyrotechnic Fix (5th) A very interesting take on the theme. The joy is very much evident in either the complexities of creating pyrotechnic wonderment or in mindless explosive shenanigans. In work or play, joy can be found in unusual places by unusual characters. This was a bizarre but well crafted world that I enjoyed visiting. The reason it didn't contend was really only down to me, as a reader, not having a close connection to the main characters, other stories really made me connect in this sense.

48

49 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

Nobu's Writing Therapy (6th) I found this to be well written and pleasant to read. There were some wonderfully descriptive phrases and the link to the Joy theme was clear. However, while pleasant and charming, it didn't really stretch me as a reader.

Tamara Jones The Kiss of Sisyphus – First Choice An intelligent and creative incorporation of the myth of Sisyphus into a well paced multi layered story whose title initially grabbed me and whose very first line hooked me in and kept me reading. I loved the image of the demon on Thaddea’s back, and that the wasp would not sting her for fear of the poison of death within her. I found this story to be both profoundly spiritual and a good and satisfying tale at the same time. The author generated suspense effortlessly to keep me wanting to find out more. A story of hope and optimism that left me feeling moved and positive. Title fitted story and content definitely related to theme of Joy. Time Is Spend Together – Second Choice I finished this story before I realized I was even reading it, it hooked me right in. A many layered and poignant story about fathers and sons and marriage, with much left unspoken but clearly intimated. The writer shows very well the internal life and feelings of the narrator, without it being didactic or obvious, and so I felt a lot of sympathy for him (the narrator). The story wasn’t pleasant reading but it was meaningful and had depth and made me think. I found the title curious and though the poor grammar is repeated at the end of the story, it still didn’t make proper sense. I can only assume it was meant to indicate the poor language skills of the father, but that was not evident in the dialogue between father and son. Unsure about the title, and can’t say that the content matched the theme of Joy. If You Wake Up Dead – Third Choice The story was deftly and confidently written, and flowed nicely from start to finish, though I found it rather overlong. Perhaps some of the detail concerning the marbles and the Japanese translation could have been omitted. I thought the narrator came across as much older than a schoolboy and this jarred, the depth of insight he showed seemed too much for someone his age. There were some nice and moving touches which balanced the cynicism of the narrator, but which also struck me as a tad contrived, almost excessively nice in order to explain the narrator’s sudden rejection of everything that had till that point interested him. I did very much like the spiritual undercurrent of the story and the magical elements of Eddie’s explanations but felt that these didn’t explain the narrator’s ‘conversion’ properly. Despite all these negatives, I thought the story very skilfully written and it kept my interest right to the end, which I also found fitting. I enjoyed reading it. Thought the connection to the theme of ‘joy’ somewhat contrived, and describing Eddie’s clog-dancing as ‘full of joy’ jarred somewhat. Title good and attention grabbing.

Nobu’s Writing Therapy – Fourth Choice Took me several rereadings of the first couple of paragraphs to get the hang of the nomenclature, and the story nearly lost me right from the start. I also found the linguistic switching a bit irritating, the flow of the language used in the dialogue which was initially formal Japanese in English translation, then suddenly becomes Americanized (creepy, great, cute). Apart from the jarring Americanisms though, it was extremely well written with a few choice words describing a great deal, every word laden with meaning, and both Nobu and Wayan came across sympathetically. Unfortunately I found the premise of a stranger in a foreign land with an unsympathetic wife meeting a local girl and starting a new life to be a bit cliched and that spoiled the story for me. There’s an obvious connection with theme of ‘joy’. Title apt and interesting.

A Pyrotechnic Fix – Fifth Choice Good style, I liked the easy flow and chatty but detailed way the author had of speaking to the reader, carrying me unsuspectingly along despite myself. Initially though I was distracted by some glaring grammatical errors. And unfortunately the content and subject matter didn’t appeal enough to me to make me rate this story as highly as the skill of the writing perhaps deserved. I thought an addiction to fireworks an amusing idea and the author built a nice story around it, but ultimately I found the story unsatisfying and lightweight, and thought it was trying too hard to be amusing and different. I found myself glossing over the fireworks details – more focus on the characters and less on the fireworks themselves would have 49

50 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

made this a much more powerful and memorable story. The sketches of the characters the author did make showed a skill with characterization, his Mikhail was interesting and attention grabbing and in a few words he portrayed this character brilliantly. Elvin on the other hand, while also being sketched beautifully, was stepping a little too far over the unrealistic line for my liking. A nice ending, it rounded off what could have become a rambling story going nowhere. Connection to the theme of ‘joy’ obvious. Title good and apt.

One Man’s Paradise – Sixth Choice I found myself asking, do people really think and speak like this? To me, the inner thoughts of the boy read like a fantasy version of what a westerner would think innocent and hard done by political asylum seekers/refugees speak like, attributing formal and almost poetic language to the character which I doubt is how such a character would think or speak in reality. It seemed contrived to me, in order to paint asylum seekers in a sympathetic and positive light. I thought the narrator was poorly written and came across as neither rounded real interesting nor sympathetic at all, and that he seemed to me to be merely the mouthpiece for a moral lesson expounded by the author. I also thought the story was cliched, and there were no characters drawn interestingly or sympathetically enough to engage me. The conflict between the ‘good’ narrator and the ‘bad’ racist number 2 was too black and white and I found myself irritated by both. Tenuous connection with the theme of ‘joy’ with the refugee boy’s gratitude and anticipation of living in a safe country at the end. Title apt.

Joshua 1. Time is Spend Together Although initially close run between my top two, as I thought about it this became my clear winner. I felt there was a melancholy, universal story here. I feel the real core of this story is disillusionment and adjustment for men growing older and trying to do the right thing, the way that fathers and sons reach out to each other across the differences between them, and how this imperfect relationship is elevated by those attempts. Sometimes the earnestness of the writing nudged over into something that felt trite (“Maybe the search for whatever it’s pointin to is better than whatever it’s pointin to”) but these moments were very rare compared to the regular human touches that showed a fantastic ability to identify the telling detail.

The image of the father shaving the mother’s legs in the bathroom was a very powerful one. Though not entirely comfortable with how the mother was mainly perceived in terms of her effect on the father, suggesting a possible lack of empathy on the part of the narrator, this was only really a mild concern as the emotional connection that was there with the father seemed very genuine. I should probably disclose that someone close to me has MS, so the story spoke to me on that level especially.

The pay off with the title at the end also shows a good grasp of how to use a title to great effect, the ambiguous meaning making it stick in the mind until the context is revealed. It reminded me a little of how Carver would use titles, like “They’re not Your Husband” and “What’s in Alaska?” to make you want to understand what is happening right from the start.

2. If You Wake Up Dead I think this is the work of someone with obvious talent. The grammar threw me off in places, with commas where there would typically be full stops/periods, and then a sentence missing words: “The mutt must have been used to attention from strangers.” Later on there was a sentence that talked about watching a marble where I felt that, because the object was inanimate, they would probably “look” at it. That sounds a bit picky, but for many readers that is enough to be discarded, and this writer runs the risk of distracting people from his ability by not editing properly.

This story was crammed full of interesting ideas. The doves carrying the senses, the radioactive dust trapped in the marble glass, the Meyer lemon, and the passive/aggressive father at the dinner table; to me these all showed signs of an inquisitive mind with an eye for telling and evocative detail. I was drawn into the world and into the character of the boy, which I felt was fully realised in a very short space.

I was a little underwhelmed with the end of the story. I was not sure how finding joy in work meant that the narrator needed to discard his collection, so it did not feel like a natural step to take. Work and collecting just did not feel mutually exclusive. I was also not sure what the significance of the title and the spiritual/metaphorical discussion about the birds and the afterlife tied into that idea. I had in mind the assertion (not mine, Poe) that a story builds towards a single effect, but I felt this story had a lot of different effects that did not necessarily build towards the conclusion. That’s why I chose it as second rather than first.

50

51 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

3. A Pyrotechnic Fix While it does not feel like story as such, more the description of a point in time, this story none-the-less takes me on an evocative journey. It also accomplishes some wonderful descriptions of fireworks, and of a group of people caught up in their love of fireworks, elevating this beyond mere addiction to the level of grand passion. Or maybe it shows all of the gradations between the two. It is as colourful as the world it describes so well. I really enjoyed it. The missed opportunity for me, if there is one, is that it does not really tell a story. I think we have a great beginning, a fantastic character is introduced, a situation is established, and then the story ends. What is there is wonderful (could have done for a grammar and spelling edit, though) so maybe it is not a bad thing I wanted more.

4. One Man’s Paradise I continue to admire Bruce’s desire to attack difficult, contemporary subjects. This is the third story of his that has made the short list. Like his others, it uses a dual narrative to look at a situation or idea from two different viewpoints. Whereas in earlier stories I felt this has led to a slightly disjointed narrative this story keeps the two strands together, as both viewpoints are engaged in the same action.

I think the story establishes a purposeful relationship between the captain and the first mate early on, and this relationship facilitates the central conflict of the piece, between liberal and protectionist sensibilities.

Sentence by sentence there are a couple of jarring moments (“whatever”, and “what I’m doing in the near future” where what that is and whether it has been established is a little vague “Set course for whatever it is”, “the Geiger counter things, whatever they’re called”). These do detract a little from the overall effect for me, as I found it hard to believe that the captain of a vessel would not know the course to be set or the name of standard equipment.

I felt the last paragraph was a strong one, and that the confrontation between the two sailors was wellwritten, so the story finished quite strongly. I felt it dealt with the subject in a bold rather than a nuanced way, which was probably a more appropriate route to take given that it is a shorter piece dealing with a complex issue.

5. The Kiss of Sisyphus This story means something, though I’m not sure what that is. Sometimes I feel like I’ve understood it but, for a story so obviously metaphorical in construction, if you asked me to read across for meaning I would not know where to start. This suggests to me that I’ve missed something or that there is another story here which is intensely personal to the author. Normally I am quite wary of stories like that, but in this case I do not think it harmed my enjoyment of what is a well written tale.

An enjoyable story, then, but one that left me grasping a little at the end.

6. Nobu’s Writing Therapy I really enjoyed the lightness of touch in this story. After some exposition at the start the story mainly progressed in brief exchanges and a lot happened in a short space of time. The dialogue all seemed realistic and in keeping with the characters. I felt it was a simple story, simply and elegantly told. I particularly liked how the writing exercises would describe what Nobu was doing with Wayan in such a way as to capture their relationship.

That said, I wanted more. The rich business man with an unhappy marriage falling for his secretary is not a new story, and the characters did run the risk of being a little bit like cyphers. When compared to “If You Wake Up Dead” or “Time is Spend Together” this story falls a little short on character complexity, although it is very skilful in that you know exactly how to feel about each character after relatively few words. The exposition at the beginning, explaining the situation rather than demonstrating it, also made me wonder if there were better ways to establish the marriage and why they were in Bali.

James “The Legend” Sandham 1. Time is Spend Together Beautifully written. A natural comfort and flow to the story. It felt genuine and humble, exuding a joy that is not idealized or sensational, but earnest and imperfect like the lives here depicted. A real pleasure to read.

2. One Man’s Paradise A moving and pertinent story exploring the two faces of inequality in our modern, global world. The dual 51

52 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

narration worked well, and I really liked the concluding section – optimistic, but consequently steeped in dramatic irony, which I felt effectively highlighted the story’s dissonant narrative subjectivities.

3. The Kiss of Sisyphus I’ve never been very good with understanding parables but this one was well-written nonetheless, though personally I didn’t find it particularly engaging.

4. Nobu’s Writing Therapy There is a beautiful languor to the style of this writing that fits the story perfectly – it ambles along unhurriedly, as if making its way through a heavy, humid Balinese afternoon. And despite chronicling the decay of a marriage, the piece is pervaded by a care-free sense of insouciance – it almost seems to smile, optimistic that no matter what happens, it will all work out. There is a genuine, humble sense of joy that comes from it, rooted in an appreciation of small, sincere pleasures: love, beauty, simplicity. And while some of the sentences are a bit oddly structured or uncomfortable, ones like this – “She tells the taxi driver, whose language she has never learned, to go to the airport” – are more than compensatory, managing to capture so much in so few words. The end, however, felt a bit too abrupt, and the female characters were almost offensively one-dimensional: the sexually cold harpy of a wife, and the subservient, young, exotic girl that eventually replaces her.

5. A Pyrotechnic Fix An odd, dreamy sort of piece that evokes pleasant memories of boyhood or early adolescence – but set in a strangely surreal context. Though somewhat disjointed in places, the tone of nonsensical innocence manages to hold the whole thing together.

6. If You Wake Up Dead This was an odd little story about a boy in Australia who goes over to his weird neighbour’s house and learns a love of lemons that replaces his strange and almost preternatural skill for valuating rare items and collectibles. I’m not sure I really understood where the author was going with this, or what he was trying to achieve, but it was nice to read something unorthodox and innovative. I liked the colloquial vernacular.

Nonetheless, overall I was particularly captivated or moved.

Which means that, taking an average of the scores for each of our five readers, the winner is….

TIME IS SPEND TOGETHER by JOE HALSTEAD

THE RED LINE 52

53 THE RED LINE www.overtheredline.com

THE END OF THE LINE 53