Finding a Book Under the Bureau You Keep Your Keys On
by Michael J. Rosenbaum

As you move toward another day, on your way to work, your hand absently, mechanically, swings over the top of the bureau that sits next to the front door of your apartment, meaning to grab the keys that are kept there. But in its haste to move on toward the door knob, your hand doesn’t completely close around the keys and they’re knocked to the floor. A shock goes through you as the keys make the kind of small, crashing sound that keys make as they hit the hardwood floor, and you stare at them for a moment, unsure—the routine broken (strangely, the hand has continued on and turned the knob and opened the door). Recovering quickly though, you bend over for them. But as you do, you notice a stack of papers under the bureau.  Another incongruity. You drop to your knees and press your face close to the cool wood for a better look and you find that it’s not a stack of papers, not in the way you thought it was, but is a book instead. So you reach under, curious, mind whirling through the memory bank, trying prematurely to solve the mystery, even though the answer is only a moment away.

As you pull the book—thick layer of dust across the cover—out from its dungeon, your mind scores a minor victory by remembering the title before your eyes are able to read it, the series of journalistic pictures across the cover being the final clues needed: Evidence of My Existence. And immediately, though you’re still on your knees, by your open front door, you are in New York City. You are in a small restaurant in Greenwich Village that serves gluten-free, vegan-friendly food. You’re not there because you’re allergic to gluten or because you’re vegan, but because there are no restaurants like this where you live. Having already eaten and paid, you’re walking out the door with your partner, chatting about how amazing the duck—that of course was not really duck—was, when your eye catches this book on a shelf amongst twenty or so other books. Evidence of My Existence. The book says its title to you in a tragic and yet hopeful way, like a parent that has caught a child cheating at a game but seeks to guide rather than to punish. You pick it up and look at the cover. There’s a photo of men with darkly-masked faces carrying automatic rifles. There’s a picture of a naked man lying in the red powder of a foreign desert, his body caked in sand. Two small Buddhist children wearing the traditional robes of monks smile at you, a vast temple in the background. This book is a documentary of the life of a photographer. It is evidence of his existence and you know that you need to read this book because it will tell you something about yourself by telling you something about the world. You know this because you’re a traveler in this moment, because going to New York and eating duck that was not duck has brought you closer to something beneath your surface, the world’s surface. It’s not by any means the same as the dead body being carried by soldiers in one of the other pictures on the cover, but it has made that reality something conceivable. It means that just because there are not gluten-free restaurants where you are from does not mean that they do not exist, and if you can taste from them then you prove that you are real by acknowledging that they are real. It is a step. Seeing the pictures on this cover, not as news, seeing the people, not as statistics, seeing as evidenced by the author, is a step. Reading this book is the next step.

And so sitting now, on your knees, by the open door that leads to work, you wonder how this book got there. It’s been months, maybe a year, since that New York trip. The book had been left on the bureau as a reminder. How could it have fallen down there, unnoticed? Evidence of My Existence, sitting there as you went to work, as you went to the gym, as you went out to eat and to drink with friends. It, sitting there, hidden, as you grocery shopped and got oil changes and wrote checks to the credit card companies and sat in movie theaters and called the landlord eight times about the broken washing machine in the basement. Work—eight hours out of the day. An extra hour for commuting. An hour for grooming and maintenance:  showering, brushing, scrubbing, shitting, wiping. Two hours a day for preparing food and eating—more if you go out and you have to go out. You have to go out with people to not come apart, to take a break. You have to go out and let someone else make the food and pour the drinks. This is life. Your fingernails grow, your driver’s license expires, your parents want to see you and sometimes you need to see them. You get weary. You get languid. You get shiftless. You get hungry. You get fucking hungry.

Your heart rate goes up as you think of what you want and what you have and what you do and what you do not do. And it is then that you remember that you had to be coaxed into taking the book. The restaurant owner, a woman of middle age with long salt and pepper hair and a forearm full of bracelets and a full-length, white, cotton dress who sat drinking wine with a friend in a then-otherwise-unoccupied restaurant in Greenwich Village, had seen you stopped in the doorway and had said the words, “Take it.” She had had to say the words “take it” because you were deliberating.  You were thinking of all the other books you had that you hadn’t read yet and that were sitting in a pile on a shelf at home collecting dust and you were telling yourself that it might be unwise to add another to that stack, to add Evidence of My Existence. And here she was, middle-aged and saying ‘take it’. It was a ‘take a book-leave a book’ shelf, and so you told her that you didn’t have a book to leave but she said that was fine, she said that she understood.

This thought makes your heart beat all the faster now and you feel anger at her for a moment but the anger, the resentment, passes because so much time has passed that you can’t even call up a face in your mind to feel anger and resentment at.

You can feel your heart in your head, in between your ears, pounding like it wants out, like something trapped in a closet. You can feel time crashing. Someone is passing by your open door, on their way out of the building. You look up and he, a young boy, maybe ten or eleven, looks down at you, you sitting there on your knees holding Evidence of My Existence in your hands, which have fallen idly, listlessly, to your lap—the book moments away from dropping to the bare, hardwood floor. You see him as he slows his pace to better look at you. He is wearing a Yankees baseball cap and in his hand there’s a stick, like that of a broom handle broken in half, and you wonder where he’s going with that stick, what he needs it for. And just before he passes completely, past the frame of your door, you smile at him. He starts to smile, too, to smile back. But then he stops, his facial muscles going limp. And then he’s gone

* * *

Michael J. Rosenbaum is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso and is currently enrolled in the MFA Fiction Program at Texas State University. This piece previously appeared in The Rio Grande Review.

Dog Farts and Dancer Girls

by Brady Allen

Emotions. They are misleading. Of this, he was sure.

They puttered along in the downtown traffic. Snowflakes were clinging desperately to the windshield in the borderline freezing weather, seeming to know that a sudden burst of sunshine could end their already short existence.

Anger: not as it appeared—beneath it was always sadness.

And sadness was impossible without first having happiness.

No wonder so many people are just generally fucked up. Emotions aren’t clear cut or reliable.

Next to him, she put on her makeup, looking into the mirror in the passenger-side visor. In her late thirties and she still had the face of a child, a face alive with curiosity, but with a certain sadness, too, if you looked deep into her eyes. This said that she must have been happy once, and the childlike quality said she wanted to be happy again. She had the look of a kid who has suddenly realized that she must grow up one day and that it won’t be everything she expects it to be.

He had a can of Coors between his legs. Ice cold from the cooler in the back seat. And he had one in his hand, sweating, almost empty.

She worked the mascara on her lashes. “So?” she asked.

Neither of them had spoken for five minutes or more, but he knew exactly what she was asking.

“Still thinking,” he said, taking a swig and emptying the can, crushing it and throwing it into the back seat, hitting his dog on the rump. Broad daylight and he paid no attention to whether or not there were cops around, or even goody-goody busybodies.

She flipped up the visor and leaned back against the headrest. “We’ve got to move beyond thinking. It’s important. Jesus.”

“It’s not easy,” he said, opening the Coors between his legs, “to talk about it without thinking first.”

“You sure didn’t think first before it happened.”

In the back seat of their old Buick, the dog sneezed and blew snot on the window. This only minutes after farting and causing a synchronized front window roll-down.

“Fucking dog,” she said.

“Shut up,” he said. “Waycross likes you.”

“Humping my leg isn’t like. It’s pornographic. It’s exploitation. Waycross is a porn dog.”

“I don’t think a dog can exploit a woman.” He looked at her sideways. “Besides, you used to be dirty.” He turned his head toward his window and muttered, “You used to be fun.”

She had nothing to say to this, and he smiled secretly behind his lips. She always shut up when she knew she’d said something stupid. Porn dog.

“So?” she said again some time later.

“I told you. I’m thinking.”

“Fuck it. Drop me at the house,” she said, and the dog farted again.

#

Joy wasn’t a heightened form of happiness; it was really relief. It was Thank god something happened that doesn’t suck up the ass.

They sat in a corner booth in the bar, and he couldn’t help but think of his dog. Waycross somehow defined their relationship. Even beyond humping her leg and farting.

She was checking her makeup again, peering this time into a compact the size of a golf ball and looking at herself in golf ball-sized chunks.

He hated golf.

But wasn’t hate just a form of jealousy that came about because of loneliness?

He smiled briefly, then realized it had nothing to do with golf. He didn’t hate golf because he was lonely, did he?

“So?” She was semi-smiling, too, as though his own smile had spread like a grinning rictus plague across the table.

“Thinking,” he said. And he was: of his dog, and of shooting golfers from behind one of those pretentious stone walls surrounding their private courses and country clubs.

And then his thoughts shifted to the dancer, the young dancer with the tight, round ass and innocent face. He’d met her nearly a year ago on campus. She had always walked out of class quickly to make it across campus to a dance class, her buttocks taut and quivering as she walked ahead of him—she had given him the strongest erections he’d ever had. He had thought of her frequently while he and his wife had lain in bed, not talking, not sleeping, not fucking or making love, and the erections were just as firm then on those lonely nights as they’d been upon first seeing her and following her along.

He felt guilty. But wasn’t guilt just a form of sadness that came from loneliness, which was brought about as a repercussion of anger or jealousy?

Christ.

“We have to discuss it soon,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. Just give me a chance to think about it.”

“Oh, fuck,” she said. She got up and walked out.

#

He sat in his office at his desk, surrounded by books—Sartre and Freud and his John D. MacDonald collection, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka, his books on Dali and Van Gogh, his own book: Relationships with the Nude—and he thought of the dancer girl, thought of what her ass had looked like under the leotards and tiny shorts, thought—

The phone rang. He picked it up and said his name.

“So,” she said, “are we going to talk about it tonight?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll think about it,” he said. And continued to think of the dancer girl as he nestled the phone in its cradle.

#

“May I take your picture?” he had asked the dancer girl.

And she had said, “What do you mean?”

“I’m something of a painter, and I think you’d make an interesting subject.”

She had touched him on the arm, lightly, and said, “Calling a girl a subject will get you nowhere.” She chewed her bottom lip and looked away thoughtfully. “Unless it pays,” she smiled, touching him lightly on the hip.

“I’ll give you twenty dollars,” he said, and she giggled as she wrote down the time and place.

“We’ll see,” she smiled.

“Would you—can you pose nu—is it okay if—?”

“We’ll see.” She turned and walked away.

The image of her butt stayed in his mind until it came time for the pictures. Lust, he thought. That might be a feeling I can trust.

#

He took a bite of his clam chowder and looked around the kitchen. Their house seemed foreign to him.

“So?” his wife asked while she looked into her compact.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still thinking.” His dog rested at his feet, under the table.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow we talk about it, or we don’t talk about it at all.”

He nodded and started humming an old Willie Nelson song to himself.

She sighed. Waycross licked her leg under the table. “I told you to leave that fucking dog outside,” she said.

He took another bite of his clam chowder, thought absently of those crazy Russian writers he loved so, and tried to will his dog to fart.

#

The dancer girl had been a few minutes early. She had taken her clothes off without his asking.

She had asked him to get naked, too. Her pubis had been hairy and soft looking, and he liked that. She seemed to know he’d like it, and she confirmed it when she put her mouth on his cock and took it all down her throat. That’s what he’d thought then: Jesus, she took my cock down her throat. And then he had felt bad for thinking it, felt crude, until she’d said, later, as they rested naked, side by side on the hardwood floor, semen trickling from between her legs, “Were you surprised I swallowed your whole cock?”

He’d never heard a woman talk like this. Never. Not even his wife back when she’d been . . . different. And he still thought that not many did.

“Were you?”

Surprise can only follow expectations, can only follow judgment. I misjudged her, that’s all. Even though I don’t even know how I judged her to be.

“Yes,” he said, “I was.” He considered this statement. “I mean, not because it’s so big or anything, but . . .”

She looked at him funny then, and he knew what she thought. He started, “I didn’t mean—”

“Save it,” she said. “I’m not a slut. Lots of girls do it.”

This statement, this thought, lots of girls—a room full of dancer girls in leotards and tights—aroused him again, and she rolled over without hesitation, straddling him, not bothering with her mouth.

#

“We’re going to talk about it today.” His wife plucked at her eyebrows with a pair of tweezers.

“Okay.”

“No more thinking about it.”

“Okay.”

“So what do you have to say about it?”

Waycross humped a pillow in the corner of the room.

“Nothing yet.”

“Fuck. Just get out. And take the damn dog. I’m going to have to trash that pillow.”

#

He had painted her body the next time she’d come by, and she refused his twenty dollars.

She was a delicate canvas, and at the same time, a wall for foul-mouthed graffiti. She was sensuous, but she also talked dirty, acted dirty. All, apparently, for free.

“Do you still love your—do you still love her?” she asked, her fingers grazing his thigh as she stretched out between his legs, her breath hot on the underside of his balls.

He didn’t say anything.

“Do you?”

“You shouldn’t ask.”

She wiggled and wormed up his body, hovered over him, kissed him lightly on the lips.

“You shouldn’t ask,” he said again. “Because—”

She filled his mouth with her tongue.

Once again, they did. And she was art in motion.

#

“I don’t love her,” he’d told his wife when he found out the dancer girl was pregnant, and that there was no way she was having an abortion.

“Fuck you,” she said and kicked his dog on the way out of the room.

He stayed with the dancer girl, and lived, mostly, out of his office on campus. Every call home to his wife during the nine months had resulted in a hang up, mostly his before he’d even said a word.

#

“I may have loved her a little, just a little,” he said to his wife on the telephone after the dancer girl died—complications after childbirth. Something rare but not unheard of.

He cried briefly but wasn’t sure why.

#

In the car again, remotely neutral territory but for the dog, who licked himself in the backseat.

“Well?” she said.

Waycross farted just as he answered her. “I think maybe I’d probably like to raise the baby,” he said, “and I understand if you can’t . . . won’t . . . help.” The dog’s trumpeting was affirmation.

“Fucking dog.” She paused. “I’d like you to drop me back at the house,” she said.

“I thought you wanted to talk about it.”

“We just did.” She pressed herself against the passenger-side door. “Fuck,” she said.

He stared straight ahead, unsure but decided. He spent almost all of his free time in the infant ward holding his daughter. She’d be released in a day. His sister had flown in from California to help for a bit.

“I guess I don’t have to raise the baby,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror, watching Waycross lick his crotch again, “but I will and—I mean, I want to.”

He thought of the dancer girl, walking away from him, her shapely ass growing smaller and smaller, until it was but a pinprick in the membrane of memory, and then he re-imagined her and she was as clear as ever again. All this while wondering, also, about the futility of guilt.

* * *

Brady Allen lives and writes in Dayton, OH. He has published stories in the genres of horror, crime, literary, and magical realism in magazines, anthologies, and journals in the US, England, and Ireland. Twice he has received honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and he has received an Individual Fellowship in Fiction from the Ohio Arts Council. You can learn more at www.bradyallen.com

The Minx
by Cassandra Dunn

Like me, the minx was a ten o’clock regular at Lily’s Cafe. She wasn’t friendly, although she wasn’t rude, she just never returned my smiles or made any effort to exchange greetings. She always hid behind her oversized sunglasses, feigning absorption in the man beside her, a magenta smile on her face, a girlish giggle squeaking out of her throat.

She was Asian, slim and petite, probably early forties to judge by her hands, as my years of living in LA had taught me to do. Faces lied about age all the time, bodies, too, but hands kept you honest. She always dressed like a young girl, in short skirts, low-slung tops, with chunky jewelry and ridiculous heels she tottered on. She never came alone, was always on the arm of some older man.

Today’s guy was fairly casual, in his jeans and button-down shirt, and fairly young, with his hip shaved head, his recent tan, his confidently squared shoulders while he waited for their order.

I took my coffee, tried and failed to exchange a smile with her, had to settle for one from her latest guy, which made me like him and made the game of people-watching less fun. Now I was invested. Now I was worried about him, this complete stranger, resting his hand casually around the waist of the minx.

Her guys were usually in ill-fitting business suits, were frequently the awkward geeky type: balding, doughy, stoop-shouldered, broadcasting insecurity like a car alarm. Some wore wedding rings, some didn’t. All hung on her every giggly word, each flirty gesture, blushing dumbly at her attention.

She had long sleek black hair, the kind I’d once had, but in brown, before I’d had kids and it had thinned and grown brittle. Why having children had to cost me my beautiful hair I didn’t understand. But there it was. The minx liked to twist her hair around her finger, watching him watch her, then toss it behind her shoulder, gestures borrowed from a sixteen-year-old girl, to lure him in. She’d rest her hand on his arm as they sipped coffee together, moving her palm to his thigh under the table after a while.

The man changed every couple of months, but the look in his eyes as he took her in, the Asian beauty showering him with attention, was the same each time.

Until today. This guy liked her, you could tell by the softness in his brown eyes when he looked at her, but he wasn’t fawning over her, wasn’t blushing at her lacquered nail, tracing a streak down his muscled forearm. Maybe this one was her real boyfriend. Maybe she’d finally met her match.

I certainly hoped so. I wasn’t sure what her deal was, with the regular coffee dates for six or eight weeks, when a new man would rotate in. It was too innocuous for a prostitute, too consistently tame for a tryst. Was she after their money? They never looked wealthy, her soft businessmen in cheap suits, driving their aging Corollas and Civics. Was she simply lonely, possibly damaged, courting the affection of these harmless un-macho types she’d never have to fear? But then why toss them aside every other month for a new model, who looked exactly like the one before him? There was a game here, I was certain, I just wasn’t sure what it was.

Was it some woman like this that Clark had fallen for? The one he’d said had tricked him, into trusting her, betraying me, forsaking our family, enraging me until I simply had no choice but to leave? A lithe minx, with her thick shining hair intact, promising him, what, exactly? Not that it mattered anymore. My divorce was nearly final. In a matter of weeks my name would be mine again.

Once I’d seen the minx in the cafe with a young man she introduced as her brother. The businessman on her arm that day–balding, with dated glasses that pinched his nose, belly resting on the belt of his slacks, one she’d had for nearly a month, who’d grown quite comfortable with laying his arm around her shoulders in public–seemed uncomfortable in this young man’s presence. She kept it up, the hair tosses, the hand on his inner thigh, but he wasn’t gazing at her with adoration, he was staring at his coffee cup, his hands wrapped around it, on the small round table before him. It sounded like they were discussing money, some trouble the brother was having, how grateful they were for the man’s help. The wrinkled-suit suitor, who didn’t touch his little minx the whole time, had the look of a man being taken, who knows he’s being taken, but is powerless to stop the events unfolding before him. That was the last time I saw that man, and I hadn’t seen the brother since.

I took my usual seat, near the door, with the crossword puzzle before me to pretend I was doing something other than eavesdropping on the more interesting puzzle of her dating life. She always sat by the window, in the sun, maybe to justify her ever-present large sunglasses. What did they hide? I would not find out today. Today the tan, toned, head-shaved man took his coffee, handed hers to her, and led the way outside. They drove off, in his new Acura, taking their story with them.

I returned to my coffee, my crossword puzzle, my brief break from the hectic office down the street and my life happening all around me without my permission to do so. I touched my hair, now layered and colored and the shortest I’d ever worn it, a look the stylist promised would take years off my hair, but only made me feel like my mother.

I gave in and read the first crossword clue: Sneetches have stars upon thars. It was a Dr. Seuss-themed puzzle today, on Theodor Geisel’s birthday. I smiled, grateful for the reminder. The minx could have them, these lost men with their understroked egos. She could have the abundant hair, the mini dresses with legs to match.

Right now my children were in school, and my coffee break was just about over, but at three o’clock I’d blow out of work, race over to Dawson Elementary to meet them, their smiling faces hurrying toward me, proudly holding out a picture they’d drawn, or an A on a paper, arms open for a hug. The minx, and Clark, had nothing like that waiting for them, I was fairly certain.

* * *

Cassandra Dunn received her MFA in creative writing from Mills College. She was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, and has appeared in or will be published in All Things Girl, Midwest Literary Magazine’s Bearing North, Read Short Fiction, Literary House Review, The Battered Suitcase, and The Scruffy Dog Review.

Man Murders Wife
by Judy Viertel

I’m running. I stop to retie my shoe, and find myself looking at a young woman’s breasts. She’s walking towards me—I don’t mean to stare, I’m not a lesbian, although my short hair and lack of makeup often confuse people. It’s the way her tight shirt pushes her breasts up that makes them difficult to ignore. They’re oddly rounded, like two cereal bowls propped against her chest. As I finish with my shoelace, she wobbles past on spiked heels. Ankle breakers, my grandmother would have called those boots, and her leather skirt is so tight she can only manage tiny, nibbling steps. The two men she’s walking with have to support her as she steps down into the crosswalk. They look ten years older than her. They outweigh her, each of them, by at least a hundred pounds. It’s none of my business. Even so, I start thinking about something I recently read.

A man murdered his wife. She was a fashion model. Did he use a gun, or was it a knife? I can’t remember. He killed her and dumped the body. But first, he cut off all her fingers. He pulled her teeth. Why? No fingerprints, no dental records. There was no way for the police to identify the body. But those detectives, they were smart. They traced the serial numbers in her breast implants. That’s how they caught the husband.

I wonder: those fingers—how did he get rid of them? They were fingers he’d kissed many times, fingers that had, no doubt, curled themselves tenderly around his penis. Did he drop them into a garbage disposal unit? Did he smile as he flipped the switch?

The woman and her companions sway down the street, laughing. They’ve been drinking, I figure. I decide to follow them. There are many upscale clubs on this street, places with polished wood and carefully composed cocktails. Places where, on a warm evening like this, a young woman might easily drink too much and find herself in trouble.

Those men, I think: they look dangerous. And even if the police are able to identify her body by the numbers bar-coded into her beautiful, artificial bosom, it won’t be any consolation to her. Not when she’s dead. The woman looks a few years younger than me: I’d guess she’s about twenty-two. Given the chance, I’d speak to her like a sister. Be careful, I’d say.

When I was a child, my parents often left me in the care of my older brother. He used to make me watch horror films. I’d cry, and he’d say: don’t be so sensitive. They caused terrible dreams, those movies. Sometimes I still have nightmares: a woman is tied to a chair. She sees a man coming into the room with pliers. She screams. A boy, shackled nearby, blindfolded, hears the screams and wonders, is he next? Horror movies are just stories, but they teach us about human nature. It’s possible for people to hurt each other—not for survival, not for the sake of some ideal, but just because they enjoy inflicting pain.

I watch the three of them enter a restaurant. I lean my face against the window, but I can’t see through the tinted glass. The door swings open and a woman comes out. She’s another young beauty, but of a different type: snake tattoos twist along her muscular arms. She looks at me, checks her clipboard, and asks: are you waiting for someone? May I help you?

I notice her assessing my sweatpants and messy hair. No, I say, but thanks for asking.

Okay, she says. Smiling, she retreats into the restaurant.

I move along, embarrassed to be caught looking in the window, and suddenly feeling silly for thinking I might be of help to a young stranger. Before the door closes, I catch a snippet of music. It’s just a few minimal, tinkling notes, but I find it compelling. I think: I might like it in there. Not wearing skimpy clothing, of course, and not surgically enhanced, but still: enjoying a drink. Chatting with a man, perhaps someone I’d just met.

I’m running again, my powerful legs pushing me through the fading light. I wish I could free myself from my brother’s hand, but I still feel it, pinning my wrist to the couch. All those movies we watched, those broken bodies—how do I make them go away?

* * *

Judy Viertel leads the Drunken Goats, a San Francisco-based group for wine-swilling writers. She wrote Miss Judy Goes to the Yucatan, a journal of her adventures among the Mayan people of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. She’s previously been published in Mad Swirl, and two of her stories have recently been selected for publication in Gargoyle Magazine.

The Limo Driver’s Diary
by AJ Profeta

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

This is the day I remembered what Leonardo Da Vinci once said.

I was on my way back to Connecticut after an early-morning run to LaGuardia. Dawn was breaking over the Hutchinson River Parkway as I approached the Westchester County line.

I was trying to settle in and prepare myself for another long day of shuffling self-important yuppie business types to and from New York airports. So help me, if I had to hear one more conference call dotted with corporate speak, I was going to have to fight to keep from tossing my breakfast. Terms like “I reached out to him” so he could “get his head around this” and “produce a positive R.O.I.” are so blatantly phony, they make my skin crawl.

I was thinking about the next passenger who would greet me with “how are you?” when he couldn’t care less when I cruised around a wide bend and was temporarily blinded by the sunrise. Automatically my right foot went to the brake as my left hand went to the visor.

Just as my vision cleared, I was startled by a thunderous roar coming up on my right. A maniac in a Nazi helmet and outlaw colors blew by me — he had to be doing well over a hundred.

“Jesus!” I screamed. I got that iceball-in-the-stomach feeling. Soon I collected myself and settled in at my comfortable and safe sixty miles an hour.

A short time later, I came up on the snake-like curves of the Merritt Parkway in Greenwich. Again, the morning sun caught me by surprise. Again, coming around a bend, I was blinded by the now stronger, larger dawn devil. Again, the automatic hand-and-foot thing slowed me as I hoped it wouldn’t take more than a split-second to see clearly.

Brake lights! Hundreds of brake lights turning my entire world panic-red. The worn brake rotors on my Town Car tank made the whole car shake and shimmy as I braked harder.

About three seconds after I realized I was not going to crash, I saw him. He was sprawled face-down on the shoulder, motionless, his Nazi helmet securely covering a brain that had just had its last thought.

A thirty-something woman stood in the shoulder, talking frantically on her cell phone. The trunk of her car was pushed in, nearly covering the rear windshield. An ambulance was screaming up behind me. A few cars had stopped near the mangled Harley, and several people were now running toward the victim.

I snailed past the body slowly enough to read the lettering on the back of his leather jacket. It read: IMMORTALS. BRONX, N.Y. The only thing immortal about this guy would be the carnage of this scene, frozen in my memory.

7:30 a.m.

Second run, New Canaan. I picked up a couple going to JFK. Not a pair you’d expect to see walking out of a two million dollar home in one of the wealthiest towns in America: the mid-fortyish wife had more make-up on than you’d see on stage at a KISS concert, and I remembered my ex-wife wearing her hair that way twenty years ago. Her husband had a shaved head and wore two large gold hoops in his ears, a black shirt, and black jeans—I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew the IMMORTAL. It turned out they were very nice people, and my heart went out to them when they told me why they were flying out west.

It seems their son was undergoing major surgery as we spoke. He’d been involved in a terrible car wreck, and I could tell that they weren’t sure he was going to make it. I felt clumsy. I didn’t say anything for fear of tripping over my tongue.

The husband asked me if he could smoke. The company’s policy is “Smoke Free,” but there was this overwhelming sadness that permeated the Town Car like an all-encompassing fog. I just told him to crack the window. For the rest of the one-hour ride, I concentrated on my driving and kept my mouth shut.

When we arrived at the airport, I popped the trunk and got their bags. He shook my hand and said, “Thanks, I really needed a smoke.”

“No problem,” I said. “I hope your son is alright.”

8:36 a.m.

JFK. Caught a break. Dispatch called on the Nextel and told me to wait an hour at the airport, and I’d have a pick-up back to Norwalk. This one turned out to be a severe reality check for me.

You see, I’m one of those guys who hasn’t quite grasped the fact that at fifty-nine, I’m rapidly approaching senior citizenship. People tell me I look younger, and I know I think younger than my years, but, sooner or later, we all have to face the truth, and sometimes, that truth can hit you like a brick in the face.

When the dispatcher gave me the name of my passenger, I recognized it: Pangaski. If it wasn’t who I was thinking of, then he must be a relation. How many Pangaskis could there be in Norwalk? Anyway, Jim and Jack, the Pangaski twins, played saxophones in my former brother-in-law’s rock band. Since they were identical twins, wore the same type of glasses and were pudgy, I could never tell who was who. The only time I could tell one from the other was when they were on stage, because Jim played the alto sax and Jack the tenor. Anyway, I’d met them at a local gig more than twenty years ago; they were both going grey, and in their mid-forties then. I looked forward to a pleasant ride to Connecticut talking about good time rock ‘n’ roll.

So I’m rolling by the terminal, looking for a paunchy grey-haired guy with glasses. Suddenly, a thirty-something couple with a six-year-old starts waving at the car. What’s up with them, I thought—and then the brick hit me. Too much unnoticed time had passed me by. This guy must be Jack or Jim’s son and his young family. I felt a little like Rip Van Winkle.

After they’d gotten in the car, the dad confirmed he was Jack’s son, John. Jack had passed two years ago. Since John had grown up around the band, though, we still had that to talk about on the ride to Norwalk. We arrived at their home safe and sound in less than an hour. I retrieved their luggage and we exchanged good- byes. John shook my hand and made a comment about what a small world we live in.

“Yeah,” I said, “You never know what kind of curve life is gonna throw at you next.” He was nodding his head in agreement, when the annoying beep from my Nextel interrupted us. “Well, gotta run,” I said, sliding behind the wheel.

Dispatch told me to head into Manhattan to pick someone up at the Harvard Club. On the way in, I thought about the day. I had started thinking it would be boring. Then I remembered what Leonardo once said, when he was near the end of his life — “I am still learning.” I’m not sure what he meant by that and I may not be as old or as wise as Leonardo, but this fifty-nine-year-old-stuck-in-a-rut limo driver learned a lot about life today.

* * *

A.J. Profeta’s short fiction has been published in several science fiction, horror and literary magazines. He lives in southern Connecticut with his wife, Mary Ann. He is currently working on the final edit of his first novel.

Long Time Gone

By Gary Carter

One sunny morning in 1969, dressed for his job at Randall’s Business Supplies, Alfred Burns—just plain Al to most folks—pecked his wife of nine years on the cheek, walked out the door and disappeared. He was thirty-one, in good health and had given no signs of anything that would prompt him to evaporate from a life about which he had never complained or even hinted at discontent. There were no indications of foul play, and a missing person report yielded nothing.

He was not seen or heard from again until a slightly overcast afternoon in 1973 when he opened the screen door and strolled into the kitchen, walked past his wife, who froze at the sink, and the man at the table, whose arm hovered between a bowl of soup and his open mouth. Al nodded to both as he passed into the living room, where he stood and slowly rotated as if examining the elements of life within. There was a slight, seemingly pleased smile angled across his lips that were partially hidden beneath a scraggly mustache. His hair hung below his shoulders, its dark brown now streaked light by the sun. His pants appeared to be the same pale chinos he had worn the morning he disappeared, though the edges of the cuffs and pockets were frayed. Instead of the short-sleeved white shirt, which Evelyn had starched and ironed that long-ago morning, Al’s upper body now was covered by a loose-fitting blouse with billowing sleeves that was trimmed in intricate embroidery that seemed vaguely Mexican.

At least it was nothing that Evelyn could pinpoint as she followed Al into the room, stopping a few feet away to watch him spin slowly as if reacquainting himself with the place and what was in it. He came around to face her, giving her a quizzical look.

“What?” he said, his voice the same but somehow different to her ears.

She started to speak, paused, then tried again. “Where have you been?”

“Been?”

“Yes, Al, where have you been for the last four years? Where did you go? What did you do? Why didn’t you come home? Why didn’t you let me know where you were? Or just why?”

The words tumbled out, and Al listened politely. Then said softly, “Just why what?”

Which smashed into Evelyn like a fist in the nose, making her head jerk back and tears well in her eyes. “Goddamn you, you walk back in here like you own the place and jabber nonsense. Tell me where you’ve been, you thoughtless son of a bitch.”

Al considered the outburst, and said, “Well, I’ve just been.”

Evelyn stomped her feet and clenched her hands in front of her face. “Tell me where you’ve been,” she screamed as the other man came to stand in the doorway, his soup spoon still in his hand. His glare was hard and mean, but he didn’t come any closer, as uncertain as Evelyn about the strange visitor.

 Al turned to the side, tilted his head back and gazed at the ceiling. “I’ve been just what I said, Evelyn. I’ve been. Been here, been there. Been here one instant and somewhere else another. That’s what living is about, you see. About being.” He turned back to her, his eyes brighter. “There’s the past, which is gone but still back there. There’s the future, which you can only wait for or maybe guess at. And there’s now, this instant, which is here then gone, like that.” He snapped his fingers sharply, and Evelyn flinched. “Just like that,” he said, snapping again. “Here, gone, then another and another and another and another, all adding up to something. You know, I used to think a lot about the past before, look back at things that I did or didn’t do, or things I could have or should have done differently, and it used to upset me, make me want to live my life over again. But you can’t do that, it’s all gone. There’s just now, and now is gone before you know it’s even here. And then it’s the past and what was the future is now. That’s where I’ve been, Evelyn.”

In the ensuing silence, the tick of his grandmother’s little clock on the mantle counted off each now and, in the instants between, welcomed the future to now and shuffled what was now into the past to gather dust. The man in the doorway swiveled his head from Evelyn to Al and back, as if seeking some sign as to what he was expected to do, his role in this unexpected drama unfolding in the living room like Ibsen live.

“You want me to toss him out?” the man asked Evelyn’s back. He advanced one step into the room. Only the ticking invaded the silence.

“Who are you?” Al asked, as if finally noticing the man.

Before he could speak, Evelyn said, “He’s my husband.”

“Husband,” Al said.

“Yes, Goddammit, my husband,” Evelyn barked. “I thought you were dead. No word for four years. I needed somebody. I couldn’t live alone with your ghost, wondering where you were. Or worse, why you left me without a word, never came back, never even sent me a letter or called me to tell me…to say…to let me know…”

“I’m not dead,” Al said.

Evelyn snorted. “Now I know that. But you’re dead to me, to this house, this town. You were declared legally dead two years ago. And Harold is my husband now. I have a new life now.”

Al watched as Harold moved next to Evelyn, slipping a hand under her elbow.

“Now,” Al said. “You see, Evelyn, you’re starting to get it. There was then—that’s me and you—and now there’s now—which is you and him and your new life. This instant, and now this one and this one and this one. That’s what it’s about, this living thing we do. But funny how we don’t seem to get it until…until something makes us sit up and take notice.”

Al made one more turn, took one more long inventory of the living room. Then he stepped toward Evelyn, but Harold moved in front of her. Al stopped, reached out and took Harold’s unwilling hand, and shook it briskly. Then he patted Evelyn’s bare arm. She shivered at the touch.

Saying nothing else, Al ambled from the room, and Evelyn and Harold heard the hiss of the screen and the thud as it shut. Al was never seen or heard from again.

* * *

Based in North Carolina, Gary Carter is a writer and editor whose most recently pubilshed work is Eliot’s Tale, a reverse coming-of-age road trip novel that contemplates things done and left undone.

A Safe Deposit

By Mark Charney

Lena welcomes Barry home from the memorial service around two o’clock, his gray eyes moist and dulled behind the tortoise shell frames. He removes his jacket, loosens his tie, unbuttons his collar, and sits in the chair before the bay window where he scans the bookshelves, desk, and the fireplace mantel with a photograph of three men: Meier, Goldman, and himself. It’s a photograph that she would have preferred taking off the mantel years ago. Barry insisted, “No, leave it.”

She had not gone with him this morning, had decided not to. It had been years since she’d set foot on campus and it would have been too difficult, too many memories there. She’d been an active faculty wife in those years, contributing her share to the school’s fundraising and campus causes, but had stopped after what happened, happened. She had stopped attending events related to the university after Barry had become persona non grata because by extension, she too had suffered the same.

Goldman’s death and today’s service might have been a special occasion, but she didn’t care to put up a front. Barry could. It was his choice and he could or would not stay away. He’d flown in from his consulting work in Florida to attend the service because it was his last chance to say goodbye to an old friend and mentor, pay his respects to someone he cared about and admired. He’d asked her to come along too, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t, and after she met his second request with a hard stare and a steady head shake, he didn’t ask again.

She joins him in the den now because she’s making a grocery list, and she wants his input. Setting her pad on the end table, she turns to him quickly. Her motions are rapid but fluid, elegant. She keeps her hair pulled back with a black scarf, exposing a high forehead, coppery skin, delicate features. Her body is petite and the limbs angular, attenuated like those of a ballerina. “May I bring you anything from the store?” she asks.

“No,” he says, staring absently at her pad and pencil. The back of her hand brushes a statue of Ganeshu that rests atop an arts and crafts writing table. The carved lava Ganeshu swings his trunk, holds a broken tusk in one hand and a stony sweet treat in the other. It isn’t an antique but she likes quirky objects as much as she likes antiques, and this one didn’t come cheap.

“Lena?” he asks, chin lowered into his chest, eyes ignoring Ganeshu but not her.

“Yes.”

“Was there ever a letter?”

“A letter?”

“Yes, when I was at the service today, I saw Bobby Meier. He invited me to lunch at the club afterward, told me that Isaac had spoken to him about a year ago. He said Isaac had discussed getting in touch, sending me a letter. Bobby wanted to know if I ever got that letter.”
She refuses to swallow, refuses to have an awkward motion in her throat betray any secrets. “No, I never saw any letters,” she says.

“Are you sure?

“Yes, sure.”

She blinks once. The light behind him from the bay window is brilliant, snow on the ground, reflective and blinding. The valley roads might still be icy. She isn’t sure. They have a heavy car so it’s never a problem.

“Doesn’t matter,” Barry says. “Maybe he never got around to it.”

She confirms that he has no requests from the store and picks up her pad and pen, retreating into the kitchen. But his question has shaken her and she takes a moment to stand at the counter, gaze out of the narrow window that frames their backyard. Snow melts and puddles on the cover of their pool, tiny glaciers erode and expose the white lines on their tennis court. Barry’s tin-domed observatory drops ice cycles from its circular eave.

Should she have handed the letter over? Should she do it now? At least tell him that such a letter had come but she threw it away, because it had, showed up in the mail one day a year ago about this time. She’d held the envelope to the light, thought about steaming its seal open. How she had wanted to read the contents, and she expected that he would want to as well. For awhile its folded and glued paper geometry sat on the kitchen table, waiting for him to come home from Florida and his consulting work. But his being away had given her time to think. The house quiet, the children grown and gone with families of their own, and it was just Barry and her surrounded by antiques in the sprawling house with its telescoping wings, the back yard full of expensive toys that lay dormant. Barry could only find work in Florida now.

There had been other letters too, a shoebox full of them that he kept beneath his desk. Letters of reconciliation that Barry had been receiving in recent years, notes from those who despite all that had happened, admired him—former Hopkins colleagues, coworkers, leaders of utility companies, presidents of engineering firms, PhD students, people who felt that he had been singled out and given a bum deal. They’d written to tell him that they knew he probably wasn’t the only one to have acted dishonestly in those years. It had been the politicians really, and the climate of the time. Barry was not the only one to have ever taken a bribe, asked for one, or passed one up the ladder. “When you’re in Atlanta, won’t you come by?” one correspondent might say. “When you’re in Cleveland, some see us?” said another. Even Bobby Meier, long ago retired from his teaching duties, had a letter in the box.

But she knew. Barry would have traded the whole boxful for the one that had lain on the kitchen table that day, the one from Goldman, his friend, his mentor, the grand old man of Hopkins engineering, the man who had given him his first break when he came to Maryland and who used to come over and play tennis in a yellow polo shirt and white shorts, white socks, even at age seventy-five, all five foot three, one hundred and fifteen pounds of him. But when Goldman found out what Barry was involved with, he had turned his back, did not wish to associate. The tennis fun and private violin recitals had stopped because Goldman had a reputation to protect. Barry tried to talk with him, had hoped to have a conversation and explain his position, what it was like to actually be in government and not just a figurehead on a blue ribbon panel. But Goldman would not listen, and because he would not, neither would anyone else, at least not in the circles that mattered to Barry.

It had taken fifteen years for Goldman to come around, fifteen years for his letter to arrive in their mailbox. And after much deliberation, Lena decided, this one was not for Barry but for her. This letter would be her compensation for the treatment she’d endured from faculty wives, from neighbors and former friends. She kept it, and Goldman never wrote another, never called, and certainly never stopped by for a game of tennis.

And now Goldman was dead.

Finding herself in front of the bedroom closet, Lena remembers that her intention was to shop at the grocery store. She removes a coat from her closet and returns to the living room. “I’m heading out now, Barry,” she says to his still figure, frozen in the light by the bay window. “Sure you don’t need anything?”

“No. I’m fine thank you.” His voice is kindly as he stares down at the cover of a National Review on the table. She’d just finished it, cover to cover, pundits predicting the demise of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev experimenting with his Glasnost, George Bush taking over where Ronald Reagan left off.

“That’s a pretty coat,” Barry says, peeking above the tortoise shell bifocals.

“This?”

“Yes.”

She extends a sleeve and turns it over to examine the underside, a white mink with vertical black striping, each black stripe on the front about a closed fist’s width apart. “Don’t know why I don’t wear it more often,” she says. “You gave it to me.”

“I did? I suppose I should remember it then shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, it was so many years ago. I’m sure you wouldn’t remember.”

“I wish I did.”

“Oh Boo Boo.” She moves closer and puts an arm around his shoulder as he remains seated, leans down and squeezes him to her bosom. “I’ll wear it more often,” she says, kissing the top of his head through thinning hair. “Then maybe you will remember.”

He smiles at her and she leans over to kiss him a second goodbye. “It’s good to have you home a few days early,” she says, misty eyed and anxious for him not to see this mist.

She exits the house to the driveway and gets into her car, tucks her pocketbook with the shopping list beside her, bundles her coat to cover her gray turtleneck, and pushes up a leaver to heat the interior. It’s early March and the snow doesn’t seem to be letting up. The weather man says there will be more, nothing major, but more. She starts the engine and backs from the driveway, past the sign on the lamp post that reads “B. T. Feigl” on the top line, “Moot Point” on the bottom. Her idea, not his. Because what else is there to say?

She drives along a winding Green Spring Valley Road and past the old yellow painted mansions on the hills, one-time horse and dairy farms behind dilapidated stone and iron fences, farms owned by old Baltimore when old Baltimore used to have a house in the valley and a house in the city. She stops at a light, and while her thoughts have resettled on grocery shopping, she sees the marquee for her bank. At the last minute, instead of turning right toward the grocery store, she pulls into the left lane, a lane that will lead her straight through the intersection. The light turns and she crosses into a small strip mall, nudges the big car into one of the parking spaces. She pauses in her seat before getting out, checks her lipstick in the rearview mirror. Her hands are shaking, and she needs to slow her breathing.

The money, all of the money that Barry stashed away, $72,000 by his own tallies, was kept in three safety deposit boxes in three separate banks, two in Baltimore, one in Washington D.C. Barry was too afraid to spend it. Extravagant purchases might have appeared suspicious, he later explained to the judge. The mink coat that she is wearing today, like so many of the things that seemed like luxuries to the reporters who’d staked out their home during the trials, and those neighbors bold enough to inquire, had not been purchased during his tenure as the Governor’s Roads Chairman or later as the Vice President’s Science Advisor, but instead had been acquired long before, when he had his own businesses. Other luxuries had been purchased by her, with the dividends earned off her family’s investments.

She walks into the bank and it’s not busy so a young female bank teller invites her up to the counter. Aside from her shopping list, her purse contains a small renter’s key. The bank teller is friendly, but when Lena requests to see her safety deposit box, there are protocols and the woman asks for identification. Lena straightens her headscarf, grins, and removes a wallet from her pocketbook, producing a driver’s license from among the plastic cards. “And how are you doing today, Mrs. Feigl?” the teller asks, raising her magenta eyelids to confirm the license photo.

“Fine, thank you.”

The girl hands over a book to sign, then retrieves a key, directing Lena to follow her down an aisle to an opening at the end of the bank stalls. A small door leads her to the mouth of the vault, and the woman uses a step ladder to reach the box, descends, and directs Lena to a paneled room with a door adjacent to the vault.

They enter the room and the teller uses her guard key to open one of the locks on the box, then she leaves the room. Lena unbuttons her coat and takes a seat in the stiff backed chair, inserting her corresponding renter’s key to open the box. Inside, on top, a few pieces of jewelry, her mother’s diamond ring, earrings, a cameo broach. She takes each item from the box and sets them on the table. Then she reaches to the bottom, extracting a deed to some property in Illinois left to her by her father, the birth certificates of her children, and another envelope beneath this. She removes the envelope, turns it over and reads the writing on the outside. It’s addressed to her house, and Barry’s name is on it.

She holds the letter to her nose and breaths in its pulpy fragrance. She has never opened it, but she has an idea about what’s in it. She runs her fingers along its edges, sharp but not sharp enough to cut, runs her fingers over Goldman’s return address, the cancellation stamp over an illustration of a John Bull locomotive. Leave it to an engineer to use a stamp that honors engineering.

The envelope reassures her, calms and steadies her breathing. She was getting nervous about it not being there. How safe are banks really? Banks, like houses, can get robbed. But she thinks it’s safer here. At times, like this afternoon, when she’d told Barry that the letter didn’t exist, she’d almost frightened herself into believing that it didn’t. Now she has reassurance, it does. And that’s good. After a few more moments of study, she taps the letter on her purse, considering, but she’s not ready yet.

She requires both hands to push the envelope once more into the bottom of the box, covering it over with the deed, the birth certificates, the diamonds, and the cameo brooch. One more glance at the packed contents and she drops the metal top closed, turns her key, and calls for the teller. The bank will close soon, lights out, vault locked, and her letter will be secure for a while longer. It is still her letter, not his, and she can do with it as she pleases. She buttons her coat, prepared to meet the cold, but with shopping to do and errands to run.

* * *

Mark Charney has written advertising copy, edited scientific journals, and contributed to a book about the history of Maryland roads. His non-fiction has appeared in Maryland regional magazines and trade publications. He holds a degree in architecture from Virginia Tech and a Masters degree in writing from Towson University. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two daughters.

Sunshine and Stones

By Cynthia Wilson

We were on our way to school in Jack Spyder’s truck jammin’ to the tunes when an announcer’s voice broke in the middle of “Blinded by the Light.”

“Late last evening, a Convair 240 carrying the members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, crashed in a swamp near Gillsburg, Mississippi.” The announcer had tears in his throat. “Dead are lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt, guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines, his sister, vocalist Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, along with both the pilot and co-pilot.” We sat with our shirts stuck to the back of the seats, a sudden sweat upon us, while the truck slowed down as if from its own shock. We could hear the announcer shuffling papers, attempting to collect himself before going on. “The plane was en route from a concert in Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana when sources say it ran out of gas and went down. Injured are drummer Artimus Pyle, Gary Rossington, and Leslie Hawkins. Guitar player Allen Collins and bassist Leon Wilkeson  are both in serious condition. We will have more details as information comes in. Again, the plane carrying members of southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd has crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zandt, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines are dead. And now, a moment of silence.”

The truck drifted over to the side of the road. The silence was black. The decision to skip school that day was unspoken, and Jack went off to find dope. Sarah and I went to raid her parents’ liquor cabinet. All we came up with was a bottle of cherry vodka. We met up in the cemetery. It seemed the appropriate place. The headstones were a scattered Stonehenge baked silver by a hot sun. We sat among them, legs crossed Indian style.

It was 1977. Like the sixties without riots about black and white and protests against war. Free love and drugs floated like good incense into the next decade. The kids in the sixties had experimented and we were the receivers of the results. We knew what we liked. Southern Rock and hard partyin’ was the flavor of the time, and Lynyrd Skynyrd was our icon for freedom, southern style.

Jack and Dane were already there when Sarah and I showed up, cherry vodka in hand, Skynyrd shirts on from the last concert tour over hip-hugging angel flairs, and Candies slides. Jack sat on the open bed of his truck, legs swinging, licking the tip of the paper on the joint he had just rolled. Setting it down with the pile he had already rolled, he picked up the bag of yellow-green weed and stuck his nose deep into it as if it were a brandy snifter full of Louis Tres. The doors were open to his truck, the eight track playing “Gimme Back My Bullets.”

“Nothin like it, man. Makes ya high just thinking about it.”

Dane leaned against a headstone, Budweiser longneck in hand, peeling the label off bit by bit, dark bangs covering his face. He looked up.

“I’m tired of thinking. Spark one up.”

Sarah took a seat next to Jack. Stuck the bottle in front of his face.

“Cherry Vodka. The folks keep the good shit locked up.”

Jack smiled and stuck a joint in her mouth. “ ‘salright, Dane brought beer. Couple cases.”

He dug a matchbook out of his pocket, Millie’s Craft and Head Shop it said on the front cover. We’d been there many times. He struck a match and lit the joint. Sarah sucked in the smoke, and coughed while she exhaled. She grinned. The unmistakable smell of pot and sulphur filled the air between us.

“Good shit.”

“Yeah, well pass it over.” Dane reached out his arm, just out of reach from where Sarah sat. I walked the joint from Sarah to Dane, taking my share on the way.

The sun was a juicy peach by the time Dane stuck out his hand, uncurled his fingers, and showed us the tiny orange barrels in his palm.

“Orange Sunshine,” he grinned.

“Holding out on us?” Jack reached his long bony arm across the space between us, his snake tattoo uncoiling its full length. He took a tab and rolled it around in his fingers before popping it in his mouth. He smiled so wide that his cheeks touched the ends of his hair that fell in brown strings around his face.

Dane put his palm before Sarah and me, offering the goods. We each took one and put them in our mouths. I curled the end of my tongue around mine. It felt like a jujube. Dane licked his off his palm like the things he wanted to experience had been written there. Ronnie Van Zandt’s voice came from the truck, “Swamp, swamp swamp, swamp music…”

Jack opened the cooler for another beer. He tossed one to Dane. “So, what do you think they were thinkin’ when they knew the plane was going down?”

“Shit, we’re gonna die.” Dane began peeling the label from his beer.

“No, really, man, like do you think they had the whole life-flash-before-your-eyes thing, or what?”

“I think they probably prayed to whatever they prayed to, I mean God, or whatever.” I said. I took a swig of cherry vodka, and curled up my nose, looking at the label as if I had grabbed the wrong thing.

“Do you think they can see us? Right now?” Sarah’s face was shadowed in the dimming light. A bullfrog squawked somewhere behind her.

“There’s your answer, man!” Jack rolled on his back, holding his stomach, laughing.

Sarah looked behind her as if someone might actually be there. “Don’t be a dick. I mean, do you think there’s anything after we die?”

“You mean like heaven?” Dane peered into the opening of his beer bottle.

“Or ghosts,” Jack got up and skipped between the headstones around us. “Woooooooo,” he jumped on top of one and stretched out his arms, “woooooooooooo.”

Sarah took a long pull from the bottle of vodka and jumped up, throwing her arms in the air in a whiff of cherry and sandalwood.  I could tell by the extra light in her expression that she was starting to get high. She was on her way over the rainbow.

“Woooooooo,” she waved her arms at Jack, chasing him, “wooooooo.”

I turned to Dane, who sat peeling his beer bottle, smiling after them.

“So, it’s like an ending, man, like the end of something. With Skynyrd and all,” I looked at him, pushing a stray bit of hair out of my face. I could feel my skin turning to rubber.

“There’s no ending, just a beginning. All endings are beginnings.”

I looked at Jack dancing on top of a headstone, all golden purple shadows.

“I am the ghost of music past!” He did a little tap dance and fell, laughing.

Sarah came dancing between Dane and me. “We’re all the ghosts of music, man, we carry the music with us. That’s why we have music, man, so we can vibrate with the universe.” She did a sort of pirouette and deposited herself cross-legged next to me.

“Ronnie Van Zandt was the best, man, the best. Every man feels he has to be exceptionally good at something. He’ll keep those closest who both know and admire this thing.”

The peach sky had turned to black velvet with holes in it where the stars should be. Just as I was about to comment about the missing stars a single light began approaching us from across the cemetery illuminating headstones as it came towards us and we all stopped, froze, not sure if it was the drugs or not.

“What the hell you kids doing here?” came the voice behind the light. “This ain’t no place to party, this here’s a cemetery, don’t y’all have any respect at all for the folks resting here? Ever since that goddamn Easy Rider movie, suddenly graveyards are the place for you kids to trip out or whatever it is you do. Not on my watch. Y’all get now, go on home.”

Dane smiled angelically, his dark hair hiding his brilliant eyes, eyes that changed color with his voice, like one of those colored strobe lights that changed with the music. “Dude, we’re not hurting anybody. I mean, c’mon, everyone here is already dead. What could we possibly do to them? Just chill, dude, chill.”

Sarah stepped into the light and made a grand sweeping motion with her hand and said, “The cemetery is a great place to picnic, if you don’t mind aunts.” Then she took a deep bow, turned to us and said, “Haiku.”

“Gesundheit,” Jack shot back.

Everybody laughed, even the man behind the light.

“Well, don’t do no desecrating and take all your trash with you. Don’t let me catch you here again, got me?” the voice said.

“Don’t worry man, we don’t like to desecrate in public, we can use the bathroom at the 7-11 down the road. Thanks for considering our bowels though,” said Jack.

The voice made a hmmmph sound and the light turned away, illuminating the headstones again.

“Watchman for the dead. How cool is that? Think Ronnie and Cassie have a watchman?” Dane looked at me, his eyes flashing purple, pink, orange, then black. “I think it would be cool, I want someone to watch over me when I’m dead.”

I could feel the top of my head buzz like it was a radio receiver. My tongue felt thick. “Geez Dane, don’t you ever get scared of dying? Doesn’t death scare you?”

Dane considered me for a moment, looked out where moments ago dozens of headstones were lit up like monuments.     Suddenly the dark became intense, like it was emanating from Dane’s words. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a dark hole, falling, and I can’t see where I’m going. Then I get real sad and afraid, and it feels like a million ants with frozen feet are running up and down my skin.”

Sarah held her hands in front of her as if she were looking for ants. She rubbed her arms and shivered. “Bad scene, man.”

Jack jumped off a headstone and landed next to us, pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket and lit it with a Millie’s match.

“I’m learnin there are no absolutes,” he said as he inhaled, his voice strained. “There’s no definites, no solutions,” his words came out in puffs with the smoke. He passed the joint to Dane. “It’s all just how we deal with it, you know?”

Jack was still gold and purple. Suddenly we were our own counsel, an ancient counsel of druids bathed in our own light among the headstones. Our own private Stonehenge. The October night was warm, the moon was cut in half like the day had been.

“Yeah, but it’s still just another entrance to the dark hole of unknowing,” Sarah took the joint, a rainbow trailing her hand, took a long drag, then passed it to me. I looked at it, the fingers of smoke dancing up toward the sky, rainbow-like, like Hindu goddesses. I got up and raised my hands to them, then danced on the nearest grave and said, “Look at me, I’m Kali, the Hindu goddess of Tantric eternal energy. The Goddess of change. She danced on Shiva’s dead body, and he was her lover. But she could never separate herself from him, she is his creative energy.” I danced around and stomped my feet as if I were dancing on someone. “Just like a man to need a woman for creativity and eternal life. Funny thing is, it happens again and again, without end. Shiva always dies and Kali always dances.” I stopped my dancing and fell to the ground, laughing, watching the holes where the stars used to be turn into a kaleidoscope of color.

“Maybe there isn’t an ending or a beginning,” Dane said, “ maybe all we have is feeling. Like when the sky’s so red it feels like the world’s life is bleeding over me. Other times I feel like the world wraps itself around me like a blanket. Pure feeling, man, that’s the wisdom.”

“Merry-go-rounds are my favorite,” Sarah announced, “I mean, you go round and round, and up and down, and you just keep going in circles – never going anywhere and never expecting to. Just comfortable in the ride. Round and round. Yeah, Merry-go-rounds. I like ‘em.”

I looked at Dane through the Goddess-smoke, his black hair hanging over his eyes like he held some ancient mystery there. His eyes were so dark they looked like the ancient springs at Delphi. I thought he was crazy and beautiful.

“Where do you think you’ll go when you die?” I asked Dane.

“Depends on who’s taking me there, maybe I’ll go to Gillsburg and hang out with Ronnie. Yeah, that’d be cool. Free Bird live whenever I want.” Dane turned into a Sphynx.

Jack bounced back between the silver and purple stones, rainbows trailing behind him. He was a jester, a God, a muse.

“We can just go then,” Jack announced.

Sarah looked up at him, eyes wide, her face awash in color. “With Skynyrd? With Ronnie? Now? I mean, don’t we have to die first? I know, it’s a suicide pact, right? Just like the Kool-Aid. I like grape.”

Jack swung Sarah around and sat her atop a stone and told her, “This ain’t no suicide pact girlie. I’m talking driving to Gillsburg, man, see the place where they went down. Talk to ‘em, like maybe there’s messages there that only true Skynyrd fans can get.”

“Yeah, man, like to where they landed. Crashed. It would be so beautiful. To crash,” Sarah mused, still intent on understanding death from first hand experience.

My life came back to me. “To Gillsburg? To the swamp?”

Dane jumped up, animated with purpose, his hair parted over his face. “To the swamp!”

Sarah looked at me, her eyes palettes of color. “I’ll plant some resurrection ferns.”

“No resurrection fern is gonna bring back Skynyrd. Besides, you can’t plant resurrection ferns, they just grow. You know, like when it rains, then after the rainbow comes the resurrection ferns,” Dane explained.

“Hey man,” I said, “Maybe that’s it. Ya know? Like the resurrection ferns. Maybe they’ll come back, you know, if it rains.”

Jack wove back and forth between headstones, leaving a long trail of rainbows behind him. He started singing:

“I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a haaarrrd rain is gonna faaaaallll.”

“Bob Dylan, man, he’s like, Jesus or something, like, he always has the right message.”

“What is it with you and messages anyway, Jack? Dude, there’s a message in everything.” I watched him as he turned from gold to purple to orange, then back to gold again. “Jack, you’re golden, man. I mean really golden.”

Jack immediately pounced on to the top of a large headstone and stretched his arms out wide. “That’s because I’m a God! Didn’t you know all Gods are golden? Ever see a picture of them big ass Buddhas? They’re golden. Golden Gods.”

I got up and walked to where Jack was still perched on his stone, looked straight into his kaleidoscope eyes and said, “If you’re a God, then why did you let that plane crash? Why did you take Ronnie and the Gaines? You’re a shitty God, man.”

Jack crouched down, still atop the headstone, and said in a conspiratorial tone, “We’re all shitty Gods. That’s the secret. That’s what everyone is trying to figure out. That’s the secret of life, man. That’s it right there. We’re all shitty Gods.”

“But what about Ronnie, and Steve and Cassie, they weren’t shitty Gods, they were musicians. The greatest southern rock band to ever live!” I protested.

“Yeah! The greatest band to ever live!” Sarah joined in, twirling in circles; rainbows followed her every move, she became lost in the light.

“You mean to ever die,” said Dane.

* * *

Cynthia Wilson holds and MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Hyperbole, The Aquila Review, The Pitkin Review, Fine Flash Fiction, and several small house publications. She is currently working on her novel and lives at home with her life long love and her two dogs.

You can visit Cynthia at her blog, www.cypresswillow.com.

The Tale of Rauðúlfr
By Lisa Farrell

Hulda watched the flames dance until her dim eyes saw only light. She listened to the snapping and popping of the twigs, and ignored the sound of women’s voices through the wall. A bird was screeching outside, and she wondered how it could bear to open its beak and call out in such cold.

She had not thought she would survive this winter, but the children told her that the signs of Harpa-month were already here. Well, she could not yet feel it. Her bones still felt like the twigs in the fire, though under siege by ice rather than heat. She could barely move, but spent her hours trying to fold herself up small, keeping her face in the glow, until they teased her that the bristles on her chin would singe. They did not respect her, these young women whose bellies still waxed and waned like the moon. They had continually knocked into her as they prepared the day meal around her, as though she were an unwelcome guest. Yet this was her seat, her place, and she had earned her spot by the hearth-fire, having cooked on it for so many years. At least Rauðúlfr had made the women promise not to let the fire die. He was a good boy; he took care of his mother, as a son should.

Hulda sat up suddenly, and had to readjust her dress to block the chill air again. She sniffed. There was something in the air; sweet, like sheep-dung, but stronger. She stood, and arched her back until it clicked. Then she shuffled to the door in her calf-skin shoes, and through into the hall.

They were both sat there at the loom; her daughter, Saldís, and her son’s wife, Erna, who played at being mother, mistress of the farm. They looked up quickly, then back to their work, but did not speak to her.

Hulda went out into the snow. It turned to slush beneath her feet and she could feel the dampness seeping through. Mountains loomed on either side of the farm and cast great shadows over the valley, so though there was no wind, the air was sharp.

As she approached the animal shed a new smell reached her nostrils; the thick, warm stench of soiled hay and dung. She walked around the shed to the back where, between the wooden slatted wall and a hardy, scraggly bush, lay the body of a sheep. The wool was tangled, and crawling with lice.

“How can the shepherd not miss you, eh?” she asked it, as she pulled away the brittle branches of the bush to get a better look. She did not like to stoop for so long, but took hold of a curved horn and dragged the dead sheep from its hiding place. She stopped when she realised what else lay under the bush. The small, malformed body of a premature lamb lay in what must have been a sticky pink puddle, but had now dried into stiff, dirty spikes on its back.

“Now,” said Hulda, “just look at you!”

The still-born was shrivelled, short black legs wrinkled under its swollen little body. On its neck was not one head, but two. Two identical white faces, with closed eyes and open mouths, below four little stumps of horn.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” she said, “and at last, transformation… ‘Twas all I lacked.” She looked up to the mountains. “Now I can see you again, Fálki,” she murmured. “At long last.”

She reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a small bundle. Unwrapping her treasure, she fingered the contents carefully; a lock of his blond hair, made delicate by age, a falcon’s feather, like the one he used to carry, and a length of blue thread. She reached down again, and pressed the thread against the twisted body of the lamb, rubbing it hard into the skin of the belly and then the face, until it came away dyed red. She spat into her palm and moistened the thread there, before wrapping up the bundle and knotting the thread tightly at its neck. This took some time, as her fingers were red and bent with cold. Then she moved a little away from the dead sheep, before burying her wish in the snow. Hulda lowered herself slowly and knelt on top, her knees turning numb the moment they sunk onto the frozen ground. She spread her cloak over herself, before she began her chant in the privacy of the darkness there.

#

His body lay inside the belly of the mountain, pinned by blades of ice. He was reflected and fragmented across craggy walls, which captured the pricks of light that infiltrated the cave and so shone even in the dark. His limbs were stiff, splayed, his arms like broken wings. His neck bent back over a rock, split to reveal a ridge of bone in his throat, visible only when the sun was directly overhead and beams of yellow light cascaded through the hole in the roof of the cave. He had not been disturbed; he had lain with his sword useless at his side for what could have been a hundred days or years. His flesh, though cold and brittle, still retained a hint of pink.

As the spirit reached him, crawling into his ear like a familiar voice and squatting there in the dry hollow of his head, his body tried to twitch. Feeble spasms crossed from the tip of one forefinger, to the tip of the other. His toes curled tighter in his boots. The wrinkled fruit that had lain still in his chest for so long, began to warm.

His icy prison lost its glow and faded, as his body began to move. His eyes had remained open, but only now did they become aware of the dark. When he stood, it was as though the ice meant nothing to him. He placed one foot heavily before the other, and passed through the rock in the direction of that voice, that smell that felt like Hulda’s breath upon him.

She said his name, that he had long ago forgotten, and he was drawn on.

#

They lit the long fire in the hall that evening, and she could hear their voices deepen and thicken with drink as the hours passed. That son of hers had more friends than he had workers; she hoped he could afford enough ale for them all. She had needed the latrine for some time, but refused to move from her bench, and her own, more benevolent fire. She could hear his wife cackling and squawking in there, and men stamping their boots. They would be dancing next. She would not pass among them, even for the sake of her bowels.

Then the noise stopped. It took her a moment to realise that this was real silence, not just a trick of her ears. They could not have all left so quickly. She rose, and pulled her shawl tight around her neck before moving to the door.

They sat along the benches in the hall, drinks half-raised, staring across the flames at each other. She hobbled towards the fire. This seemed to rouse them.

“What was that?” whispered Saldís, who should have known better than to keep such company at such an hour.

“What was what?” Hulda asked, peering at the faces, trying to distinguish those she recognised from those she did not.

“A knock,” said Rauðúlfr, “that’s all.”

“A single knock, and after dark,” someone said. “That is no friend outside.”

She was too far from the door. She tried to get out, but the chill had long since stiffened her legs, and Rauðúlfr was there before her to bar her way.

“It’s only superstition,” she told him, “don’t leave the poor soul out in the cold.”

“Sit down, mother.”

She shook her head, but her son was taller and broader besides. He only had to place a heavy hand on her shoulder and she would be rooted there where she stood.

Then they looked up, as they heard a hollow thumping on the roof, and a scrabbling, and then the beams began to shake as if someone were sitting up there, kicking their heels and causing the whole hall to shake. The banging made the children cry, and even Erna, Rauðúlfr’s formidable wife, shrieked in fear.

“No, no, it’s just a storm! That’s all!” Hulda shouted above the din. But dust and cobwebs were filling the air, landing in the fire and on her head, and she allowed her daughter to usher her into the corner with the other women, while the men crouched at the door, in case.

“Will no one go out to him?” she wailed, but no one answered.

#

Few slept well that night. Even once the spirit seemed to have passed, they were afraid to speak or move. She did not tell them who it was, because it would do no good; they still believed Fálki had left her of his own accord, because she nagged him.

As soon as light could be seen through the cracks around the wooden door, Rauðúlfr led some men outside. The rest soon followed, and even Hulda moved to stand in the snow and stare. The gate had been flattened, as though by some giant’s foot, and the animal shed nearest the house had been turned on its side, as though only a toy. Remains of the animals were scattered in scarlet heaps. The snow had already formed veils over the bodies, and would gradually bury them.

Rauðúlfr strode towards the gate, clumps of wool drifting around his ankles as he moved through the destruction.

“Where is the shepherd?” he asked, but the shepherd could not be found.

#

The next night Hulda did not make the same mistake. She left the hall while the women were busy cooking the night meal, and crunched her way across the snow in the dark, heading towards the gate. It still lay on the ground, so she walked over it, her footsteps echoing, and out of the farm. They would miss her, but not for some time yet.

She walked until her knees refused to bend, and then she stood and waited, feeling the chill spread up her legs and into the very core of her. She shivered and cursed, but stayed where she was, staring up at the mountainside in the moonlight.

Until Fálki came.

He came swiftly, silently, though he had swelled to three times the size he had been in life. His eyes were two eggs bulging from his skull, and she almost feared to meet their gaze. But as he stopped before her, one huge hand supporting his head, she readied herself to speak to him at last.

“Away! Away, evil draugr!” shouted Rauðúlfr, running towards them with his sword drawn. Hulda screamed, but as the blade came down the ghost was gone, and a falcon soared away up towards the top of the mountain.

“What have you done?” she asked, grabbing her son’s arm. “Why couldn’t you let me speak to him?”

He shook her free of his arm and sheathed his sword. “I feared it was you that had loosed this ill upon us. When I saw you leave the hall tonight, I knew you went to meet it.”

“It was no ‘ill’, it was your father’s ghost,” she cried. “I wanted only to speak to him, to see him one last-”

“That was not my father,” Rauðúlfr said. “That was trouble caused by your meddling. You should have let my father rest.”

“How can he rest when he is lost in the mountains? You should have sought him out long ago, when he was newly lost. But even you believed that he had left me, that he did not want to be followed, that he did not need your help.”

Her son gripped her by the wrist and led her quickly back towards the hall.

“Just because he is a ghost now, mother, does not mean he did not leave by his own choice.”

#

Rauðúlfr waited until the sun rose again before following the creature. He climbed the mountain, and though he would never admit to such a feminine skill, he followed his nose to the cave.

From outside, it was no more than a hole in the rock, a gap through which snow and rain would travel, and sometimes light. This was a hole that could trap the unwary traveller, but now Rauðúlfr lowered himself through it with a purpose. The fit was tight, but he drew his shoulders in towards his chest and wriggled, rubbing snow into his armpits as he slipped through at last, into the darkness.

He did not want to move away from that pool of light, but there was a glint in the back of the cave that called for his attention. He drew his sword, and carried it before him for those few delicate steps across the slippery floor of the cave.

In the dark, he could barely tell the head from the body, but he waited and listened to his heart pound like an animal beneath his tunic, as his eyes accustomed. He lifted his sword above his head, and swung it down in a practiced arc. It only took one slice to decapitate the ghost, whose neck had been already broken. Rauðúlfr grasped the hair, frail as straw between his thick fingers, and positioned the head between the feet of his enemy. There was no danger of it rising again now.

Rauðúlfr returned to his farm with no trophy but the dull stain on his sword. His mother was waiting at the broken gate to meet him.

“I can smell your father’s blood on your sword,” she said, “and so you have killed your mother too.”

He took her back into the warmth of the hall, telling her to keep her peace and not to frighten the children. Erna was in the hall and she waited, her arms folded, as he led his mother to her accustomed seat. Erna went outside, and though she did not speak, he knew to follow her. The world was frozen but her cheeks were red.

“Why did you leave the farm? Where did you sneak to today?” she asked. “The men are suspicious enough already, and everyone is afraid. Could you not have told us where you were going?”

“I can tell you now that you are safe,” he said. “I followed the ghost, and found my father’s body at long last. I have put him to rest.”

When the day’s work was over and everyone had returned to the hall, the fires were lit and drink was passed around. Rauðúlfr was toasted for his bravery and his skill with a sword.

Erna went to the hearth-fire where lamb was boiling for the night meal. Hulda seemed to her to be sitting very still.

Erna placed a hand on the old woman’s to rouse her, but found the skin cold.

* * *

Lisa Farrell holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and her short stories have appeared on pulp.net, Open Magazine, and in Volume magazine, among others.  You can visit Lisa, and read her other online stories, by going to her blog.

The Man Who Shot Stonewall Jackson

By Gary Beck

It happened once before, when I was a young man. The newspapers clamored for war, self-appointed know-it-alls told us why we had to fight and everyone believed them, especially the youngsters like me who got all fired up to join the army. So now, when those big headlines screamed ‘Remember The Maine,’ there wasn’t any more doubt that there would be war with Spain. And off they went to enlist, just like they were going to a picnic, as irreverent and ignorant as we were back in 1861. My eldest son told me he had to join up and I tried to discourage him. I told him how crazy it was for two groups of men to stand and blaze away at each other, but he wouldn’t listen. All he said was: “War’s not fought that way anymore, Pa.”

So I held my peace and watched him go, like my pa watched me go. When he died of yellow fever, before he even fought in a battle, it was another terrible affliction that I had to accept. But I guess he was right about it being a new kind of war, because it was over pretty quick and we got all these new places; Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Philippines and Guam. I never even heard of Guam. So I kept on farming and doing my chores but I was pretty much empty inside. I had been that way ever since the surrender at Appomattox, which ended my daily suffering, but left me a hollow man. I went through all the motions of the living and tried my best to be a good husband and father, and I never told anyone how I felt. How could anyone who hadn’t been there understand? Sometimes, when I went to town and saw the few old hands who survived the entire war, like me, there was nothing we could say. We just looked at each other for a moment, nodded in recognition that we were still alive and moved on.

Then one day, long after Spain surrendered, I saw a soldier who had just come home from the Philippines. I was buying something in Dahlgren’s general store and his pa brought him in. He had that look that I hadn’t seen since the war with the Yankees. His flesh was sagging on his bones and his uniform hung on him like a scarecrow on a hard luck farm. He walked as if it was a great effort to put one foot after the other. Old Mr. Dahlgren kept prodding him to tell us what it was like over there, but he refused to talk, until his pa urged him. Then he looked at everyone for a moment and said coldly: “You want to know what it was like? I’ll tell you. I watched my buddies die in ambushes, or of tropical diseases, or in battles with savages who just kept coming at us, even after we shot them. I watched my friends butcher women and children!” A look of absolute horror ate his face. “All I saw was death and suffering. Is that what you wanted to hear?” Then he turned and walked out. I couldn’t get him out of my mind the rest of the day.

That night I thought about the war with the Yankees, which I had shut out of my life a long time ago. I remembered how I had rushed to join up that spring of 1861. I ignored Pa when he told me not to go, just like my boy ignored me. Then Pa told me how bad it was when he fought the Mexicans in ‘46, but I didn’t believe him. Everyone I knew was hurrying to the colors and I wasn’t about to be last. We were going to whip the Yankees good, then go back home with our chests full of medals. Once I was in uniform it didn’t take long for me to wake up. Almost half the boys I joined up with got killed or wounded in our first battle at Manassas. Maybe the Yankees finally ran off as fast as they could for Washington D.C., but not before they put up a mighty good fight. We fought up and down Virginia for the next two years and got leaner, hungrier, tireder and sicker. The more we ran out of ammunition, food, or shoes, the more the Yankees kept coming. We learned everything about the horror of soldiering the hard way.

One day we were camped somewhere near Chancellorsville, after a tough battle where we whipped the Yankees good. Of course it wasn’t like when the war first started. Then we knew we were better men then the city folk and immigrants they were going to send against us. Before First Manassas, most of us talked about beating them proper, then going home. If anyone thought it would go on and on for years, they didn’t say it where I heard. Anyhow, we had been resting because it had been a long, hard fight and these Yankees weren’t like the rabbits who used to run when they were beaten. When these Yankees lost, they retreated resentfully and we knew they’d be back. Then the word raced through the camp. Stonewall was dead. Rumors, like disease, travel swiftly in an army, especially when it’s bad news. This hit me and the old hands particularly hard, because we were the 31^st Virginia and we were Stonewall’s men from the beginning.

We rushed to Colonel Barstow’s tent, but he didn’t know any more than we did. Messengers kept arriving, each one with different news. The only thing they all agreed on was that Stonewall had been shot. The colonel finally got tired of our pushing and shoving at the messengers and he sent us back to our bivouac area. But he promised to let our company commander, Lieutenant Rambeau, know as soon as he learned anything. We thanked the colonel, who was one of only three officers left in the regiment who had been with us from the start. All the others had been killed or invalided out. Colonel Barstow had started as a young lieutenant, full of fire and noble speeches. Now he was as old and tired as the rest of us. We snickered about Lieutenant Rambeau as we walked. He was a momma’s boy, a blonde-haired string bean with a mushy face that always looked ready to cry. He had reported to the regiment a few days ago, but he disappeared somehow before the fighting started. The joke going around the camp was who would shoot him first, us or them. Soldiers deserted other regiments before a fight, but not in the 31^st Virginia.

We waited for news, but didn’t relax much. A couple of the younger boys babbled about beating the Yankees again, but the old hands quickly shut them up. By now we knew we could beat them and beat them, but they would still keep coming. We were sick, tired, cold and hungry and we didn’t have much hope left. The gossip around the campfire was no longer about victory. A few diehards still kept trying to convince the rest of us that massa Robert and ole Stonewall would find a way to defeat the Yankees. Most of us didn’t buy it. Now Stonewall was dead. One of the kids asked what would happen if General Lee got killed, but an old hand kicked him a few times and the kid slunk off, leaving the rest of us to brood about things. I couldn’t help thinking how lucky that kid was to get off so lightly. We had just lost our father and that dumb kid was talking about losing our grandfather. We didn’t need any more bad luck.

Later that night we found out that Stonewall wasn’t dead, he was just badly wounded. He had been returning from the battlefield in the dark and a nervous sentry, thinking he was a Yankee goblin or something, shot him. After two years of hurry up, then wait, it wasn’t a hardship to wait for news. We lost so many men at Chancellorsville that I guess they forgot about our regiment for a while, so we loafed in our tents. Once we packed up all the dead men’s belongings, they finally remembered us. They even gave us some food, probably pilfered from the Yankees endless supply of everything. Then the word flew around camp faster than wildfire. A new recruit named Billy Rawlins had shot Stonewall. They didn’t rightly know what to do with him, so they sent him home.

After Stonewall died, the war went on and on and the Yankees kept us on the run. When it was finally over, those of us who survived went back to our homes. I was one of the lucky ones. Pa had kept the farm going somehow, despite the voracious armies trampling back and forth across poor, battered Virginia. I had only been home for a couple of months when I heard that the man who shot Stonewall Jackson, Billy Rawlins, had hanged himself. It seems his pa kept telling him that he killed the man who could have won the war for the Confederacy. I guess the damned fool kid must have believed him, because he went into the barn, threw a rope over a beam and ended his life… But that was a long time ago.

I hadn’t thought about Billy Rawlins for many years. Seeing that soldier in Dahlgren’s store reminded me about what had eaten so much of my soul away. It all came back to me from a distance, like hearing a voice on that new telephone invention: the useless waste of young men, the suffering that devastated so many lives, the ease with which we forgot the dead. All I could think of was that if I knew then what I knew now, I could have gone to see Billy. I could have told him that what he did was just one more crazy mistake in a succession of terrible events. That Stonewall couldn’t have won the war. Hell, it was lost way before that. Only fools believed that we could win after the first year or so. The Yankees had everything. We only had pride and courage. Once they wore out our pride, courage just wasn’t enough. But my understanding of things came much too late to help poor Billy. I couldn’t help that trooper who lost his soul in the jungle. And I sure couldn’t help any of the other innocents who don’t start wars, only rush to fight them.

* * *

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook ‘Remembrance’ was published by Origami Condom Press, ‘The Conquest of Somalia’ was published by Cervena Barva Press and ‘The Dance of Hate’ was published by Calliope Nerve Media in 2009. A collection of his poetry ‘Days of Destruction’ has been published in 2009 by Skive Press. Another collection ‘Expectations’ is being published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. He currently lives in New York City, where he’s busy writing.  His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines.