I met Pammie one summer evening on the Carson’s grassy lawn. People were standing around holding plastic glasses of wine. The old house rose above the party, its grey heightened to blue in the dusky light. Edward and I had recently moved to the neighborhood. It was a gathering of homes on the bay of a salty inland sea. There was a small marina near a lighthouse that still rang out on foggy pre-dawn mornings. People seemed to know each other well, bringing meals when someone was injured or had a new baby. Our youngest would start kindergarten at the little school behind the marina in just a few weeks.

Pammie was at the party with her husband, Fred. She wore turquoise and he was in off-white muslin. They had the permanent tans of people from a sunnier clime. She apologized for their distressed skin. They had lived in the dry New Mexican air for too many years, she laughed, and needed the moist Northwest climate. She was small, shorter even than me, with frosted hair cut to her shoulders. She waved her hands when she spoke, sweeping away her words as if to show how unimportant they were. It would be years before I realized the strength residing in that small, self-deprecating turquoise woman.

Fred wandered off and I spent close to an hour chatting with Pammie, captivated by the sparkly and fun personality she projected. She was intelligent and engaging, though extremely modest. She talked about her children and New Mexico and their move north. She didn’t mention her work or Fred.

Later in the evening she approached me with an older man. “This is Bob Garrett,” she said. Bob was her father. Small like her, with thin hair and wet eyes, he smiled.

I said, “You are to be congratulated; you have produced a wonderful daughter.”

He said, “In four days it will be the sixtieth anniversary of my marriage to her mother.”

Pam’s mother had died thirty years before. Every year, they still celebrated with a big dinner flowing with champagne and brandy. Pammie remembered having dinner in a famous New York restaurant on her parents’ fiftieth anniversary and not hearing a word anyone said. Someone standing with us at the Carson’s party that night, asked, “But was the food good?”

Pammie laughed, “I don’t know; I couldn’t hear it!”

After the party, while we were undressing for bed, Edward told me he had sat and talked with Bob for quite awhile. They talked about Florida real estate costs and judgeships. Bob was a Federal judge. His chambers looked out on the hole in the ground called Ground Zero, where the planes hit on that September day. He wasn’t there, though. He was in Florida looking at property. I thought about how grateful Pam must be for that chance of fate.

Once school started, I ran into Pammie fairly often. Our children were in the same class and became friends. Whenever I saw her, she smiled with her whole face, eyes crinkling and head nodding. Over the weeks, she told me about her work. She was running an environmental law agency. In New Mexico she had recruited school kids to lobby for legislative protection of toads and lizards in precious, irreplaceable desert lands. Now in the northwestern climate, she was organizing fourth graders to convince the legislature to name a little frog the state amphibian.

Edward and I started seeing her and Fred socially. We invited them over for wine and cheese one night by the fire in our living room. Pammie raved about our home, saying it was just lovely and in such good taste. Fred had a glass of white wine, then said he needed his own coke and rum and left to get it. We sat, waiting for him to drive the blocks to and from their house for his drink. He came in with a plastic grocery bag sagging from the weight of the two liters. Ice clinked in the kitchen and Fred came back into the room, his cheeks flushed from the cold wind outside. The rest of us drank red wine, swirling it in bright glasses like blood.

One night later that year at their home, Fred and I began to talk about the Boy Scouts. I questioned their discrimination against atheists and homosexuals. He was a loyal Eagle Scout and grew enraged. He yelled at me for upwards of forty-five minutes. He demanded I agree they were a great organization. I stayed quiet while he roared. I didn’t know how to respond.

As we said good-bye that evening, Pammie pulled me aside and murmured, “Now you see what I have to put up with.”

That spring we attended a neighborhood party at a local park. Under a wooden shelter, food was spread out on picnic tables. Kids chased each other down a long green field. They played football and frisbee and climbed trees. Our son climbed so high he scared the other adults, but Edward and I were used to it. The men drank beer from bottles and the women held paper cups of wine. Edward and I stood off to one side watching the crowd. Pammie arrived with her children and a cheese platter. She smiled and waved to us and came over to say hello.

“How are you doing, Pam?” asked Edward.

“Oh, I think I broke my back!” she laughed. “It’s so silly, really, but I think it’s cracked or something.”

Edward expressed concern. “Oh, it’s just silly,” she repeated, laughing again. “But, I think I really broke it.”

I didn’t see her or Fred much the rest of that spring and summer except to wave as we drove our kids to and from places. Once I saw them from a distance at the Farmer’s Market. She was eating an ice cream cone, licking the frozen chocolate while he talked to her. She kept eating while he gesticulated broader and broader points. I don’t think he meant to hit her arm, but the ice cream fell in a ball of plop on the hot pavement. She stared down at it. He walked away.

In September I saw Pam’s car parked by the school and went over to say hello. She was bubbly as usual, asking about my children.

“Your kids are so great,” she gushed, “I just love them. Jack is so smart and Karen is just beautiful!”

Then I asked after her. “Oh, I lost my job,” she laughed, “and then I had to fly to West Virginia to rescue my brother.”

“He lives way up on this beautiful mountain. It’s just gorgeous. He lives up there alone with three dogs. That’s part of the problem. It’s too beautiful and he loves those dogs so much he just stays up there and drinks. He only comes down to buy more whiskey! I had to go get him and take him to California for rehab.“

The rehab people told her, “Don’t let him stop drinking before you get here. He might die,” so she traveled with a tote filled with dozens of little airline sized bottles of vodka to keep him pickled.

“Then I wanted to fly back and clean up his house, but he won’t let my dad go near there and he won’t let me go alone. I don’t know why!” she laughed again. “It’s so crazy. My family is just crazy.”

About a month later, I saw Pam’s car again. Her brother was in the car with her. He was unshaven, wearing a paint-spattered sweatshirt. His eyes were red and sad, but he smiled when he said hello.

“Oh, you have to meet my brother,” Pammie called as soon as she saw me. “This is Bobbie.”

Bobbie had spent nine weeks in the rehab center before realizing the counselors were preaching Scientology. Pammie went and brought him to her home. She took him to see the volcano that blew in 1980, Mount Saint Helens. It made his home mountain seem small, a mere bump on the landscape. All the world is small compared to a volcano when you are sober and standing at the edge of its crater.

It was fall and a new school year had started. She and Fred held a little party to celebrate and so, Edward and I went to their home. Pam bustled around serving everyone hors d’oeuvres. Fred held court in the little kitchen. She kept apologizing for having to pass by him to get more crackers and black olives. At one point, Fred turned to me.

“I finally got her where I want her: in the kitchen and cleaning the house,” he laughed.

He was referring to the loss of her job. She grimaced at me as she went by with another tray. Fred got sloppier and sloppier as the evening went on, eventually degrading into sexist jokes and demanding of Edward, “Come on, Ed, laugh! Whose team are you on?”

Pammie glanced at me. Edward didn’t say anything. He told me later he was too angry to talk. “I couldn’t trust myself to speak,” he explained. “I knew I would blow up at him. That guy is such a jerk. He treats Pammie so badly.”

I convinced Edward to invite them over for dinner one night a few months later. I felt the need to normalize relations after that unpleasant evening. “I don’t want to be estranged from a neighbor,” I explained to him.

Pammie called in the afternoon before the dinner, “Fred had to go out of town. Do you want to reschedule?”

“Oh, no. Come over anyway. We’d love to see you.” I was relieved.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be an inconvenience. We can reschedule, really. It‘s so much trouble to go to for just me. Why don’t we look at our calendars? We could have you guys over here!”

“No, no, really. I want you to come. It’ll be nice and you can get out of the house. I’ve already got dinner started,” I assured her.

Edward built a big fire in the fireplace and we sat near it with glasses of merlot. She began to talk.

“Fred had to go take care of his father. He lives down in Arizona. He had a fall. He was drunk and he fell and cut his head really badly. Fred’s embarrassed to talk about it, but his dad is a real drunk,” she looked down. “I know you guys will understand. I wish he would talk about it.”

“You guys are so great,” she seemed vulnerable. “I just wish he’d talk about it. It would help him so much.”

We sat there for hours that night, talking about our families, sharing stories that were sad and funny. She told a story about seeing her father falling down in the walkway leading up to the house three times before he got to the door while she and her sister watched from behind the curtains and laughed.

“We nearly peed our pants,” she laughed again, remembering. “You can’t understand how funny these things are unless you’ve lived them. We just laughed and laughed.”

It was six months later that I ran into Fred at the grocery store. Spring was turning into summer. I hadn’t seen either of them for a long time. His craggy face seemed cracked with worry. He was hunched forward over a cart filled with frozen burritos and pizza pouches.

“Hey, did you know Pam’s out of town?” he asked. He looked weary. “It’s just me and the kids.”

I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen him be anything but cocksure.

“Do you need some help? How long has she been away?” I watched his face. Pain moved across the familiar creases the sun had left behind.

“Oh, no, we’re fine.” I watched him move off down the aisle.

A few weeks later, I was surprised to hear her voice on the phone. Usually we communicated by accident, in parking lots or at parties. Except for that one call about the dinner without Fred, I didn’t remember her ever calling me. I asked how she was doing. I mentioned seeing Fred while she was away.

“Yeah. I went to a retreat. I almost left him,” I could her the shrug in her voice. “I needed to get away and think. I went to this place where you meditate all day long and there’s gourmet food at night. There’s no alcohol and everything’s organic. It was so great. I felt so relaxed. You’ve seen how he is. But, he’s so great, too. If you’d seen him when he was younger, so much energy and power. You know, forget it, it’s just the way it is. I’m fine really. Do you want to come to dinner?”

© 2012 Molly Knox

“I’m too young to be a grandmother,” I told Paul, over the phone. Puberty had come to my fledgling lady killer. He was taller now and his body was filling out. I didn’t have to force him into the shower or remind him to brush his teeth. Satin sheets were on his bed. Every waking hour, after school, was spent with Ellen. Once there even came a call—could he sleep over?

“Have you spoken to him about precautions?” Paul asked, kind of chuckling, although I knew the thought of sex sent him spiraling. Paul’s women were legend and kept surfacing, in Filene’s Basement, once, among the racks and harried shoppers, a striking older woman, titian-haired, make-up artfully applied, obviously well off. Me, in grubby tennis sneakers. Tra la! And once, in Florida, when I’d been playing bridge, a blonde who’d known him in Vegas. They both remembered him as a natty charmer and seemed surprised that we were still together. Maybe I seemed a real come-down for someone that Ava Gardner stood up Frank Sinatra to be with, but he was my go-to guy, when circumstances warranted. More than a significant other he was like that pencil-thin mustache guy who would always rescue Pauline off the railroad tracks in the silent movies. He had a mustache and the name on my birth certificate was Pauline, but I lied when I first met him, and the name I pulled out of thin air was his mother’s. Not a coincidence. Fate!

“Precautions? Are you kidding?” I answered. “ He’s got enough condoms stashed away in his room to start a drugstore. He must have bought a gross.”

Sean’s closet space where he slept was off limits though I’d stick my arm in every now and then to hang up his clothes. One Saturday, my customary day off to do the laundry and other nesting duties, I opened the door a crack, without knocking, so that I wouldn’t wake him if he were still asleep. “Got any quarters?” I asked, when I saw his open eyes leering at me.

“Get OUT of my room. Get your own quarters. I don’t have any.” The light of my life, my raison de tre. How had I failed? The walls were covered with enough signs to convict me of what? Danger Keep Out, in three languages, MBTA No Trespassing, the entire map of the Transit Authority, with its orange, green and red routes, spreading like capillaries across the city, even an orange sign: Danger Men Working Ahead. Here and there were evidences of his artistic temperament:cannisters of spray paint neatly aligned on a shelf, illegibly intertwined graffiti signatures on the walls, and a portrait of a Hawaiian dancer with exposed, lush breasts gracing the inside of his door. Michael Jackson’s poster reigned supreme.

My arms were filled with a basket of dirty laundry and I had to manipulate the lock in the front door knob so I wouldn’t get locked out. “Your father’s coming. You better get up,” I said, which elicited a muffled groan. I had a hard time saying the word “father.” I usually said: “You know who.” Now that Sean was a teenager, my ex was taking an interest, calling every other day or so and harassing me, saying I should take away the television, as if he knew how to raise a child better than I did. Cut off Sean’s television? I’d be the first person to admit that he watched entirely too much TV, but cut him off completely, and he’d have me up on child abuse.

Except for this fetish for the MBTA, and a penchant for turning concrete walls into psychedelic masterpieces, Sean seemed to be a normal, cantankerous teenager. What with my crazy family, the odds had been against it. Ellen’s family, on the other hand, seemed normal: a apron-wearing mother who didn’t have to work and baked, a father who worked as a salesman in a department store, and two other children, a boy and a girl. No wonder Sean enjoyed being there. It gave him a chance to feel as if he were part of a real family, play Monopoly, for example, which isn’t as much fun when there’s only two.

I took the laundry to the basement and walked to the corner store to get some quarters. There was a sign in front of the register We Do Not Give Out Change, but I was a regular, and had no problem. While the clothes were washing, I whisked through my housekeeping. The small apartment didn’t take long to clean. My predictable Ex would hit the bathroom the minute he came in to check out the toilet.

When he did come, Sean was in the shower and I was doing last night’s dishes. Letting them pile up in the sink was one of the perks of being unattached. At night I never had the urge to do more than shove a little Haagen Daz down my gullet, a pleasure I consistently felt I deserved after a long, lonely day in the trenches,driving taxi, babbling my head off to one customer after another.

When I finished the dishes, I came out of the kitchen, wiping my hands on my hips. I knew the first thing out of his mouth would be a complaint and I knew that one reason he refused to give me more money for child support was because he was itching to be a full time father, bored ,perhaps, with his BMW, his Apple computer, his regulation-sized pool table, his woofers and tweeters. Who knows? He’d never shown much interest when there were diapers to be changed, swings to be pushed, irate teachers to be faced.

“Why isn’t he ready? You knew I was coming for him today.” I hated to hear a grown man whine.

“He’s a big boy, now. He keeps track of his own appointments.”

He opened the closet door to peek in at all the contraband. His baby fine hair was beginning to grey at the temples. The jeans he wore had a just-bought look and so did the shiny new cowboy boots. Had he taken great pains so I’d think what a catch I’d missed? A smile played around the corners of his mouth in what I guessed was a nervous smirk. Sean was probably the only bank president’s kid in the country who slept in a closet. A jolt of remorse coursed through my body nearly knocking me off my feet. Maybe I should have stayed in Florida where Sean had his own bedroom and bath, everything color coordinated. “It’s not funny,” I said. “He doesn’t get enough fresh air in there.”

When Sean entertained, up to six kids at a time could fit in this closet, all sweating, with clothes hanging in their faces. They didn’t seem to mind, but I did. The only ventilation came from a small square hole leading to the outside hall. Some night a city rat might find its way to this vent. Many was the time my headlights had picked up the sight of a nocturnal rat crossing the street in search of food. Twice a week in front of my building the trash was piled for the collectors, barely a hop, skip and a jump up to our second floor apartment.

My yuppie Ex shrugged his shoulders. “Lots of people live worse,” he said. “Quit complaining.”

We could hear the sound of the running shower and loud and clear, “Jeremiah Was a Bull Frog,” coming through the bathroom door. Sean was singing along with the tape player he kept on the clothes hamper next to his hair dryer. It had taken awhile, but Paul’s neat-freak influence had taken hold on my son, and I knew he’d be in there primping without any concept of time.

I caught the faint whiff of my Ex’s Aqua Velva aftershave. If I hadn’t felt so fat and ugly I might have dragged him into my bedroom for a quick shtup, soften him up a bit before I approached the touchy subject of more child support. The law had changed in Massachusetts and if a child was going on to college, the custodial parent was entitled to child support until the child reached twenty-one. The bathroom door opened, and Sean, wrapped in a towel, scooted past us.

I didn’t like to talk about finances within Sean’s hearing, although the niggardly dispersal of the contents of my mother-in-law’s house left no doubt in anyone’s mind that my Ex was a tightwad. We needed everything when we first moved here and we were glad to get the things he’d brought over: a few hand towels, a standing lamp with a ripped lamp shade that had been in the living room, and a blanket that might have been a family heirloom, for all I knew, ripping down the middle the first time I washed it. The day I splurged and brought home a colander and a potato peeler, we celebrated.

“You don’t know how lucky you are that he has the time for you. He’s got a girlfriend now.”

“I know. She’s coming with us, today.”

“Where are you taking them?”

“I don’t know,” he said, with another shrug. “Probably McDonald’s.”

“Bless you,” I said. “You’ve got a better stomach than I do. Sean would eat there all the time if I let him.”

“I don’t mind it. Once in a while.”

As we stood there in awkward silence, sizing each other up, seeing him there all spiffed up, I had the sense of time slipping away and the emptiness of lost passion. We were both younger than Sean was now when we’d first met, hanging around with a bunch of kids in schoolyard shadows, listening to someone’s portable radio, singing along with The Platters, Johnny Mathis, The Four Lads, Bill Haley and the Comets, memorizing every line, every shoe-bop shoe-bop. How innocent the first kiss. Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen. How bold we’d become, even after he’d bought his first car, making love on my mother’s couch within feet of her bedroom door, every Saturday night, turning the couch cushions, when we were done, to hide the semen stains.

“You’d better speak to him about this new love business,” I said, gruffly. Instead of dating other boys in college, I had braved the snowy, winding roads, a distance of a hundred and fifty miles each way, with something of the determination of a lemming. In all those weekends, my mother never once got up to get a drink of water. When I grew older, I came to the realization, with all her talk about my precious virginity, she hadn’t cared enough to interrupt. Now it was my turn, to lie sleeping with God knows what going on in the living room, sleeping the sleep of the dead, but never too tired to try to keep them honest, getting up for drinks of water from the kitchen, when I’d rather be sleeping. Paybacks are hell!

Sean came into the room, hair spiked up with gel, tail in the back, in a slight curl from the heat of the shower. He wore half a dozen silver chains, with a Playboy bunny medal that Ellen had given him, resting in the hollow of his neck. I’d put an end to that hickey business, right away. “Are you ready?” he asked his father.

“Is that what you are going to wear?” It didn’t matter what Sean wore, the question was always the same. When my son was younger and going for an extended visit, I’d have to rescue certain pairs of pants that seemed as if he were going begging. The pants he was wearing today were shredded at the cuffs and both knees showed through. Sean had used a razor blade.

“Yes, that’s what I’m wearing,” said Sean, testily. “It’s the style.”

He turned and went for the door. “Bye, Mom.”

My Ex followed meekly, his broad shoulders swaying from side to side in his leather jacket. How little concern Sean seemed to have for his father’s feelings. Served him right. If he had any feelings of desperation, he kept them well-hidden. My boy had grown up without him ever since we’d moved to Florida. In all that time, he’d only come to visit once, on a trip to Disneyland with his girlfriend. The precious childhood years had passed. The connection they should have made earlier was missing. Sean was almost as tall as he was.

“See you,” my Ex said, brusquely. “Get a job. Get a real job.”

“I do have a real job,” I countered. “What do you think I do all day, sit around and eat chocolates?”

Sean, eager to be off, reached around the door, and grabbed the leather jacket by one shoulder. “Come on Dad.” My husband’s face, so dear to me in my youth, looked back at me blankly.

I could have suggested a lot of things to lessen the tension between them, a real knock-down drag out encounter session, for example, to clear the air. But I managed to restrain myself. They would go on in this love/hate relationship which was so closely related to the subject of money, and figure it out themselves. It was safer to stay out of it and hire a lawyer if I could find one that would take me on without a retainer.

It had taken me years to resolve my own love/hate relationships. Perhaps, in figuring it out Sean would become stronger. Whenever they spoke on the phone, Sean would lock himself in the bathroom. Perhaps my husband was satisfied the way things were, a little together time, always buffeted by one of Sean’s friends. For all I knew, they could be having a great time the minute they left my door. Shoe-bop, shoe-bop, Life Could be a Dream, Sweetheart!

© 2012 Rachel Cann

I’m trying to write

but can’t

stop thinking about Frank Stanford.

How he shot

himself in the heart

three times

with a small caliber pistol.

Probably

the same kind

that killed Penny

the night of our groom’s dinner

for the thirty feeder pigs. The thieves

didn’t take anything

else, just the piglets,

didn’t know

they were missing until

daddy’s count was off

the next morning. I can see

the black hole

between the dog’s mud

brown eyes and

how the skull

brains and

blood were scattered

on the ground like busted eggs.

How looking at the exit

wound from behind

the dog’s head,

it looked like someone took

a hammer

and smashed out

the back of the twilit sky.

I feel like I can smell

the powder burns on Stanford’s hands,

sulfur reek like trying to

warm your hands by cupping

palms around lit fuse

firecrackers. I can see

the hole in the dog’s face and how

it died with a frozen snarl,

lips stretched to show

the roots of its teeth and

the black spots on its gums.

I imagine Stanford tried

to breathe between

each bullet and whisper

the name of

each woman

he had loved.

I wonder if

the walls of his heart

were worn

thin through

the pain of loving

two women at once

and if the chambers

collapsed in on

themselves without

a final beat;

gurgled,

spit and

sprayed

a speckling of blood

onto the table

where the moon first said

I love you.

2.         An Act of Contrition

Before I get attacked for

my inaccuracies about Frank Stanford

I want to

apologize to his wife

and CD Wright.

I can hardly imagine losing someone

you love in so

tragic and unfortuitous a way

I want to meet them

in the middle and say

I loved him too.

Maybe not him

as the person but him

as the writer who would make me

think for hours about

the pain of having my eyes

sucked out by soda straws. Who would enjoy

the tasteless jelly and

hard disk of my lens?

How they would have to suck

and suck to pluck the retina from my brain with a

pop

and final slurp

like a stale string of

spaghetti. I imagine I have offended

his women invading their last private

memories, infected those stained mental

pictures with speculation and half-truths. How

I would hate if they stepped into

my life and tried to picture my

grandfather’s deathbed and wondered about

his hollow cheeks and eyes

glossed with dementia, his

mouth permanently agape. How

grandmother’s tented hands tried to wet his

lips and tongue with a moist

sponge. His choking on the excess

drops; swinging wild

fists and bruising her

arms. She swore he was mad

drunk again,

pulling his belt through

the loops

and snapping it like a bull whip.

Ready to go

after the kids for smoking

that goddamned dope in the house.

Not sure if

he could even smell

the shit over the whiskey

soaking his shirt and vomit

mottling his beard. How

he had no last words just

a grunt

a last effort to stave off

death. How he never

rose and met the light but

sunk into the mattress

as we said the rosary. How

he just died and

no one noticed

until the smell

of his bowels and piss

plugged our noses.

© 2012 Travis Andries

hug keeps me warm as we begin

to prepare our Sunday feast.

You in your cracked brown shoes,

scuffed with dreams and hopes;

me, in Mary Janes squealing with newness.

Across the kitchen counter

your Lithuanian lilt rolls as we flatten

out dough, plump with nuts and raisins.

I watch your hands spotted and gnarled,

pound what will rise with heat and time.

“A pinch of dis, a smidgeon of dat,”

Your voice, like summer cornstalks,

rustles over pots and pans gurgling on the stove.

Kneading and braiding the Christmas bread.

© 2012 Camerone Thorson

When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and wheel wells didn’t matter. Movie-of-the-Week music thumping dire through his brain and his limbs didn’t matter. What mattered? Only that he identify Cato, busted head and all. Even the inner racket of his melanoma shrunk as he looked straight-on into the mess of his grandson. Robert’s scab from last summer that rioted cells from his foot straight up his leg instead of healing, well if it had itched right then he would have scratched it off just to see blood other than this boy’s.

All night he tried reaching Steve and Mindy in Vegas, where they’d entered one of those gambling tournaments. He kept ringing Steve’s cell and getting bumped into the message system. Damned things. Nobody around anymore to pick up, everybody on hold, all the world’s problems funneled into voicemail. He wouldn’t leave the shocker that was going to slam them soon enough, just said, “Call me at home right away. I mean it.” And “Where the hell are you? This is your dad and I need to talk at you right now.” And, “Don’t you ever check your god-forsaken phone?” He bet they were winning.

No sleep then, his head shiny-ache full with the brand new motorcycle Cato’d killed himself on. Robert didn’t plunk down the money for it, though God knows he had the cash, and had spent plenty of it catering to the whims of that boy—more than half his indulgences turned sour. Steve, who himself rode a Harley, refused to co-sign for Cato, begged Robert to stand tough on this one. When Cato bucked up the gravel drive, come to show it off, yelling, “Look Pawpaw,” over the growl of the machine, Robert told him, “You make one mistake, take one wrong turn with that, and I’m chaining it to this goddamned tree.”

He set his hand on the trunk of the oak. Felt good to lean on something sturdy, since his legs took to buckling without notice.

Kid had busted up so many automobiles, and other shit, it was a miracle he got out of high school alive. That girl Cato’d flipped for, the one who had his baby last Christmas, she co-signed. How she could back up the loan, Robert didn’t know because she was only a nail tech, whatever that meant.

News reporters rang, and Robert said they should go print what they’d already scooped from the police reports and the scanner, or they could all go to hell. When the caller ID listed Steve’s cell, Robert picked up before the first ring finished.

“What’s so important, Dad?”

Tinny and pissed off, his son sounded a million miles away, he could have been on Mars.

“Looks like your boy done killed himself on that motorcycle.” Robert had never been known to mince his words.

Steve screamed, “What?!” and in the background he could hear Mindy railing, the girl with a sixth sense about her boy and hitting Steve with incoherence while Robert hung on the line and waited.

His voice all broke and croaky, Steve said, “We’ll come back.”

Robert heard his daughter-in-law keening.

“You damned well better. And get Mindy something from a doctor. She sounds off the wall.”

“Dad—“

“I know. Get a flight. We’ll talk when you get home.”

Mindy begged to look before they fixed Cato, and Robert warned what she’d see would haunt her all her days, but she wailed, “Don’t you tell me. He’s my one and only boy.”

When the funeral director lifted the sheet, she collapsed as Robert knew she would. He bent and lifted her with a difficulty he hid from his son, and he kept Mindy in his arms, though honestly he wasn’t used to holding a woman. Margaret dead almost seven years, and even before that they’d had a good twenty where they lived together as roommates, nothing but fake kisses since they conceived Steve. Steve, who stood there dazed, no help, the three of them left to cope in that basement.

Mindy, her voice clotted with tears, said, “I should have had more children.”

“No replacing Cato,” Robert said. More words could be dangerous, still he tasted them. “Could have a dozen, but it won’t change this.” And wouldn’t do, either, pinning guilt on her and Steve for going off gaming. Cato had been twenty, with an apartment on his own, and he’d lived a life of flaunting their house rules all the way to the county’s legal code. He was of the tribe of good looking punks who get away with all kinds of shit and make you love them while they’re scamming you.

Some caveman with a prominent brow lay in the casket, the bones of his face huge and sculpted rock. Alive, Cato had been handsome. Everybody remarked on it.

Pastor said, “This death breeds a lump in our throats, but we need to talk of the good boy we knew, to celebrate Cato.”

Beside Robert, a drugged Mindy muttered, “That’s bull.”

The pastor told about the time Cato and his buddies had a BB gun war inside the house, shot up Mindy’s newly papered walls. The guys had to take Cato to the ER for patching up after he tried to dig a BB out of his arm with a razor blade. This drew laughs from the crowd. Another must have given over the details for the pastor to shape his story because he didn’t know Cato. Robert strained, trying to recall whether they’d ever even baptized the boy, but chemo had peppered his once-sharp brain.

Cato had sported the most expensive gym shoes and the baggy pants of a gangster. When the cancer started spreading above his knees, it swole up Robert’s legs so bad he couldn’t wear his usual slacks. The scabs from his ankles to his thighs seeped liquid that ruined clothes. What he found worked was wrapping his legs in cut-up adult diapers, held in place with masking tape. He said then to Cato, “Where can I go buy some of those big pants you wear?”

Cato’s narrow eyes laughed at him. “You’d look stupid.”

Robert said, “Like you don’t?”

He’d ducked away so his grand kid wouldn’t see him flinch, drove the truck to K-Mart for pants in the Big and Tall. Getting up and down out of the cab proved trickiest, as his knees had limited bend. Robert sped on the same county road that would weeks later flip Cato’s bike. Where’d the boy get off spouting cruel to him? Those guys he hung out with, they looked past Cato’s needling—well, sure, he was the source of their good time, as he’d been given every video game and bike and skateboard and drive-able thing. People gravitated Cato’s way, not only because of the dazzle-ly stuff he had; he charmed you with compliments, he roped you in with his smile. Which was probably how he first sweet talked that girl, who’d had his child, out of her clothes.

Come the day Benjy was born, and Robert’s heart still hadn’t opened. The world had rules, he lectured Cato, proper ways of acting, and improper. At the hospital, in view of all those babies in their bassinettes and nurses strolling the hallway, he told him, “Don’t think about giving him your last name without marrying.”

Cato said, “Pawpaw, things are different these days.” But he didn’t cross Robert.

Now they were talking with the lawyer about creating a trust fund for Benjy, about applying Robert’s last name to him in every legal way. Cato’s fiance still no part of the family, but she’d be tied to them forever because Benjy was the girl’s meal ticket, and likely she damned well knew it.

Inside his head, Robert preached his own tribute about the good and bad Cato, boy with a perpetual want that Robert rarely denied since he couldn’t bear his grandson’s face turned away from him for any reason.

The circumstances of how Robert came to possess a U.S. mail truck didn’t matter, but he drug out that little machine, three-legged in its looks, steering on the wrong side like in England, every time toddler Cato begged him to, putt-putted that engine around the block shout-singing, “I am the mailman, I work for Uncle Sam!” holding Cato tight when he cut sharp the curves. Kid laughed so hard he cried; Robert did, too.

That was pre-kindergarten, before Cato started kinging-it up, trading on a charisma he never had chance to figure the why of.

Nothing like the Mailman Song bound them together in that same hilarious way. Thinking back on it, preschool years were the prime time Robert had with Steve when he was boy.

Of course with Steve there’d been Margaret. Mother and son so tight, during Vietnam she vowed to boost him over the border and make her new residence Canada, too, though it never came to that, thank God. Froze out, Robert left them to each other, settled in at the shop where he welded for Diehl Steel, signed for all the overtime they’d dish his direction. What he contributed at home, when Steve would listen, touched on work, women, and doing what was right. Same things Robert failed trying to teach Cato.

Robert felt the distance jump just around the time his son, and then his grandson, grew old enough to challenge him, to suddenly see him smaller than God. Bullshit. He’d never had good communication with them, nor with Margaret either. He’d never told a single person how he felt about what held an ounce of importance for him. And just what did he deem valuable, anyway? He inched back from plumbing that mystery as this was no day to pick over the bones of his own lost cause.

Robert sighed and Mindy put her hand on his. She had Cato’s narrow eyes, or more correct to say he’d had hers. Eyes that didn’t betray much. He could smell the lotion she used on her skin, and the powder, the perfume, the layers she put on for the world all piled at the back of his throat to stop his swallowing. What he’d give for a drink of cold water. Where was that damned fountain he saw when the mortician hustled them through the maze of this place to look and choose a coffin?

Cato, too, had been a hustler. Robert suspected his grandson had been the thief who broke in one night, stole cash from his bureau and the World War I Luger Robert had been given by his own father. Never pressed charges, didn’t turn the boy in to Steve or even grill Cato about it. Wouldn’t have been the first time Cato shit where he slept, with Robert sidling in to mop up, lips zipped tight. He resisted confronting the boy, and this wrenched him deep. It might have made a difference, but who the hell could tell?

He was no whistle-blower. He’d taught Steve, and then Cato, the same: “Don’t be a snitch.”

Halfway through the funeral service, his skin-crawly legs tipped off the nausea he was getting to be old friends with. He had to excuse himself, half-bent to cause the least fuss, avoiding the trip laid out for him by the legs and feet of Mindy, Steve, and the girl with Benjy on her lap.

He wondered if corpses ever rested on the leather-like slab where the attendant directed him. Lying stretched out there in the dim back room, he dreamed Cato rode his goddamned motorbike right up and over a chest that already felt hollow.

“I’d take it from you if I could, Pawpaw.”

More useless yammering. Though with Cato, or even the ghost of Cato doing the taking, Robert supposed he might be able to knock heads with what barreled down the pike on the back of this cancer, especially since he’d numbed himself to the boy’s robbing him of most every other meaningful thing. Disease and Cato putting the squeeze on Robert in the back room of the funeral parlor seemed apt, as both resisted discipline.

Above the din of exiting mourners, he heard Mindy wailing her son’s name clear from the other room. Robert knew he should rise and get out there with the rest of the family taking their last look before they shut Cato for good, but his legs wouldn’t obey. All the cells of his body would rebel if he tried getting up. Robert felt like buck shot scattered through a carcass, and even that buck shot wasn’t going to hold it together.

“When you gonna grow up to be worth something?” he’d dared Cato at the very last, a memory that made him groan.

“You all right?” Steve said.

Robert nodded with his eyes closed. “I will be.”

Steve said, “We’re making our way out of here now.”

As Robert sensed his son shifting to the doorway, he said, “I’m with you,” but had to think about it deeply before his eyelids would peel and reveal the moment.

Cato’s bike had dented his ribs, nailed him flat, slit a trench in him so deep it cut at the leather-covered slab. What fired through his center beat Mindy’s shrieking by a goddamned mile. He was a two-faced granddad, and they’d not reconciled, damn it, he’d been unable to let love outrun despising, at least enough so the boy’d know it.

If Cato had been the dare-devil leaping the gorge, Robert was the lip of the land, awful far off and crumbling underneath the boy hitting ground, Cato whooping it up even as he was slipping, the crowd clapping, too, because they were always on his side, likely squinting, wishing hard he’d make it but afraid to look, everybody failing everybody else.

Robert swung his legs to the side and rose slowly to sit. This stole his equilibrium and he awaited what was never restored. “Who’s going to help get me unstuck from this slab?” he said.

The car doors outside were slamming, voices receding. His hands squeaked against the leather-like cover as he leveraged his feet to the floor, slowly, slowly, and the adult diapers he’d wrapped as a make-shift buffer inside his pants tore from where they’d adhered to his legs, allowing the sores their stagnant, copious weeping.

© 2012 Donna D. Vitucci

I get up everyday at six. I drag myself from bed, shower, make coffee, and then dress for work. I am always on the 8:15 train. I’ve never missed it and I’ve never been late, ever.

[You probably think I’m fucked up. You probably think it would do me good to wake up late one morning—to just for fun call in sick. But that can’t happen. That can never happen.]

By eight forty-five I’m ascending the stairs of the Powell Street Station, making my way to the department store where I work. I love watching the pedestrian traffic downtown, but I don’t let myself linger. I move on, weaving quickly through the crowd. As I said, I’ve never been late, not even once.

[My first boyfriend was a thirty-seven year old Persian. He just moved here from Iran and had a hundred grand in the bank. We’d meet at a café in a strip mall near my high school. I liked to ditch class and hang out there, drinking coffee and reading. Actually, I wasn’t really reading, just carrying around books from my father’s library. I wanted to read them. I wanted to be the kind of person who understood things. But I could never concentrate on the pages. My mind was always wandering. I couldn’t hold it still. I couldn’t keep from staring out the window, daydreaming.]

The employee entrance is at the end of a long, filthy alley. People live back there. I see them every morning, sleeping on old blankets. I dash by them, trying not to look, trying not to notice the tattered belongings they keep stuffed in bags. I don’t like to see the bottles and cigarette butts that surround them. As soon as I reach the back door, security buzzes me in.

[I was sixteen when I met the Persian. At the time I was living in a house way out on a lonely highway in the Central Valley. My dad left my brother and me there with no money and three large dogs to feed. He said he had business to take care of in Los Angeles—he had to sell an antique tribal weaving, or a Pre-Columbian stone carving, or perhaps it was the Turkish runner that used to line our hallway. Two months went by and he still had not returned.

First they turned the electricity off, which wasn’t so bad because there were candles. Then the phone was disconnected, which we could deal with because there was a mini-mart a mile down the road. But there came a point when we actually began to starve. I met the Persian just in time. "You need money, don’t you?" he said, noticing that I always paid for my coffee in change. When he picked me up in his Mercedes, I had my clothes packed in grocery bags. I threw them in the trunk and we drove away. My brother stood on the front porch waving.]

Once safely inside the employee entrance, I pick up my keys from security. I then go straight to my office, turn on the computer, powder my nose, and comb my hair.

[When the Persian’s ex-wife decided to come to the U.S. for a visit, I was asked to leave. I didn’t want to go back to the house on the highway, so he set me up with a studio apartment in the old part of town. He covered the bills for a few months, but soon he started cruising the young actress that lived next door to me. They would go out for coffee together in the morning and sometimes meet for drinks at night. She enjoyed coming over and telling me all about his advances, about the pretty Indian earrings he had given her and the promise he had made to take her to Italy one day. When he stopped paying my rent altogether, I got myself a job selling dresses in a small boutique. I earned just enough to cover my bills and buy cigarettes. But I soon discovered that if I wore make-up and high heels, I could pass for an adult, so I started going out at night. That’s when I met the Armenian.]

Usually by ten I’m ready to collect the orders. First I check with furnishings and shoes. Then I make my way to the suit department. The guys up there like to joke around, asking me things like when am I going to get married or go out with them and what the heck is wrong with me anyway that I’m such a loner and a quiet girl and why don’t I ever have some fun after work, just once?

[The Armenian picked me up one night in a bar when I was out drinking with a friend. To be honest, it was actually me who picked him up. He was my type—tall, wearing an expensive suit and a heavy pair of wingtips. I said something about liking his shoes and we started talking. Within a week I was living with him. The first night at his apartment he asked me to make him dinner. I was petrified. He ate differently than I. He wanted his meat cooked in richly spiced sauces. He wanted his vegetables prepared the way his mother back home made them—lightly par boiled, a squeeze of lemon and some yogurt on the side. What did I know of making such dishes? The best I could do was a pot of rice and some sautéed zucchini. As soon as he discovered I was useless around the house, he wanted me out. But he was too ashamed to admit it. He felt he had assumed an obligation in taking me in and he bore it. Not like a stoic though. He still fucked me when he was drunk and he drank heavily. But the message was clear—I was a burden.]

By eleven I’m back downstairs in my office. Before processing the orders, I check over the employee timecards from the previous day. The manager likes me to report to Human Resources anyone who punches in over five minutes late. My co-workers despise me for this. When I enter the lunchroom, the place immediately gets quiet and one by one people leave. Once everyone’s left, I shut off the TV and read.

[During the day I attempted to fix up the Armenian’s place. I went to the Salvation Army and picked up some furniture. I found a chartreuse vinyl chair and some cool ceramic lamps. I even started experimenting in the kitchen. I bought cookbooks and learned a few recipes. I made baked chicken with rice pilaf. I could do it, I told myself. I could be a good wife. But at the end of the day, he’d just laugh at the things I bought. “Where I come from, we throw that old shit out.” My cooking was never right either. “You poor girl,” he’d say. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”]

Once I’ve processed the orders, I pick up the completed ones from the receiving room. The receiving workers are a rough, alcoholic bunch. I handle them carefully. If they say to come back later, I turn and leave. If they say they need coffee before they can help me, I go and get them coffee. I do what I have to get my orders filled. After signing for the packages, I return to my office and match the merchandise with the forms.

[I was finally able to escape from the Armenian and move to San Francisco. Actually, he paid me to leave. One Saturday morning he loaded me up in his car and drove me to the city. He found me a furnished room in an apartment building downtown. It had a nice view overlooking the street and a charming little walk-in closet. He then helped me arrange my things. We hung all my dresses and coats in the closet and folded my sweaters and put them in the drawers. Later we went to the store and he bought me a pound of freshly ground coffee, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker black label. Afterwards he handed me an envelope with three thousand dollars in it and left.]

I leave work promptly at five. Once I find a seat on the train, I sit and read. I have a stack of books at home that I’m slowing making headway on. Mostly philosophy. I’m half way through the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. I like to imagine myself as embodying the categorical imperative. I don’t even allow myself to think things that can’t be universalized [Obviously I do, but these thoughts have not been consented to, they just come –I do not choose them].

Once home, I slip into my house clothes and pour myself a beer. I only have one, except on weekends, when I have exactly two a night.

[The first night in my room it was so cold I used one of my vintage coats as a blanket. I lay in bed shivering. I could hear men and women passing by my door laughing and the scratchy sound of mice scampering inside the walls.

I did okay for a few months. I got a job in a dress shop on Fillmore. I worked during the day, drank myself out of existence at night, and somehow managed to get by. But I was starting to wear down a little. I’d wake up late, my head throbbing and my clothing strewn about the room. The first thing I’d look for was my wallet—the money was always gone; spent or lost somewhere the night before.]

At eight I make dinner, usually steamed vegetables with brown rice. Sometimes, as a treat, I indulge in an avocado salad. I eat in silence, reading Kant, occasionally glancing out the window into my neighbor’s apartment. I am in bed by nine.

[One day I forgot to show up for work and my boss fired me. I was seriously in debt at the time and on the verge of being evicted from my room.

That night I cried myself to sleep. I cried myself into a state of hysteria. I cried until there was nothing left to cry. I wept so violently the gods couldn’t tolerate it any longer. “Look,” Father Zeus said, placing a hand on my shoulder, “From now on I will take care of you. Only, you must do exactly as I say, and never, not even once, deviate from my orders.”]

*****

One morning when I boarded the train there were two homeless people sleeping on the seats, a teenage boy and a young woman. The boy had an Afro. Not the kind of cool afro kids get to annoy their parents, but the kind of afro people have when they can’t afford to take care of their hair properly. There were no other seats, so I sat next to them. The boy’s arms were tucked inside his t-shirt and he was shivering. I looked over at the girl. A blanket partially covered her face. At her feet were several shopping bags filled with clothes. I quickly turned away and the young boy saw me—he was staring straight at me. I tried to avoid his gaze, but he kept looking. Soon tears formed in his eyes.

I tried to concentrate on my book, but I couldn’t. The letters and paragraphs were swirling together, melting into a gray blur on the page. My mind drifted and soon I was staring out the window. Cherry trees filled with white blossoms lined the street outside and their petals were blowing in the wind like snow. Underneath them, a little blond boy was running and laughing. I waved to him as we passed, but he didn’t see me. He just kept running and laughing, reaching into the air, trying to catch the petals.

© 2012 Mira Martin-Parker

Previously Published San Francisco Bay Guardian 2005

when she was living in Knoxville, applying for teaching

jobs when one came up at a Quaker college. She read

the dogma, and there wasn’t one, but she found a meeting

house that Sunday in the woods. The Friends

believe in silent worship, which she hoped might solve

her contention of thoughts when people talked

about anything holy. She liked that they didn’t

have a locus of the service in the form of a preacher,

but communed waiting for the spirit to come

through anyone. It seemed applicable

to the classroom she was always trying to shift

around with questions they had to re-make like beds.

At the first meeting she attended, no one spoke,

so it was like meditation in folding chairs

where everyone sat as if around a dinner table

listening to the birds and people’s stomachs pinging

in the quiet intimacy of sighs. She was convinced

there was something to it, and liked its high windows

onto the yellow birches outside. The second time

was so crowded she joined people sitting on the floor.

A woman with an Appalachian accent thick as cornbread

spoke up about a movie she “wartched,” then

out of nowhere some fifteen minutes later,

an old man said he used to fly planes in the Army

to poor regions where kids gathered around soldiers

to beg for money. Once he gave a dollar to an eight

year old, recognizing the moment he did it

heʼd gone wrong. The boy took off running.

An older boy chased after but, unable to outpace him,

grabbed a rock from the ground & stopped him.

The soldier held the boyʼs head

while his life slid out of his arms.

If this gathering operated according to southern

etiquette, no one would have spoken

into the gravity of that silence. But the spirit rose up

in another woman to talk about the school system,

which Lord knows, has needed fixing a long time.
© 2012 Amy Wright

I wake in the half-world of our time,

Willing the whittle of my thoughts

Into a wind-shaped mask.

So much takes shape as I sift through these words.

Here’s a once fallow wish

That’s taken root

On my tongue’s brim; a sprout

Ascending through the sway of this line.

Here’s a sweetness that won’t recede

As I press forward; the weave

Of a well-felt moment

Removing a shard from my torn cuff.

Here’s the sea’s pitch and pull; the roiling
Of winnowed dreams; a light that clings

To the nib of my thoughts.

Nothing seems shallow;

Limiting.

© 2012 Joseph Murphy

The Seeker

My cares seemed an illusion

That mild day: fists

Unclenched; clarity;

Renewal.

I’d begun to sift

Through clutter and symbol;

Rethink my track,

Ear to ground.

Rising, spirited, determined:

I knew I’d find you; breathe life

Into your chalked image;

Coax hope from the grit; restore

My dust-covered globe.

I soon began to sort

Through phrases I’d broken,

Hunting for the right one

To wish upon.

I hadn’t yet begun to wonder

Which illusion I’d live: the brilliance

Of our joined bodies,

Or a glance

Milled from thought.

 © 2012 Joseph Murphy

Dear readers,

Truth has a way of reverberating inside the human psyche in ways that few other things do.  It stays with us long after it first reveals itself and forces us to look at society and ourselves in ways we haven’t before.  The piece I have selected to open with does just that.  Liz Tucker’s short story, Apartment 14b, takes us inside the seemingly mundane world of two individuals and reveals a variety of truths that haunts readers long after the story’s conclusion.

Thank you to all the talented contributors that trusted me with reading their work and to the Whistling Fire for giving me the opportunity to sit with the various truths submitted in the form of poetry, fiction and nonfiction.  I hope you enjoy this month’s selections as much as I did.

Best,

Massiel Ladrón De Guevara
Guest Editor

© 2012 Liz Tucker

His farm would be sold today. The realtors and lawyers would pick apart the remnants of his life: the rusting white pickup, the broken  John Deere tractor, the wheelbarrow, tools in the shed, what was left in his house and all he’d left in the sagging, misshapen barn. He was selling it lock, stock and barrel, except for the gruff and unsightly giraffe, which no one would buy.

He memorized the balding hills of his farm, the clefts in the black dirt, the loamy smell of his rotting onion fields, the shambles of his barn and coops. Nearly deserted now, the cows were gone, the chickens rousted from their coops and hauled away in thin wire cages, brown and white feathers flying. The last goat was waiting, tied to a fencepost at the top of the driveway, waiting for Minnie, the Pilewski’s Organic Farm manager to come and take it away.  Who knew what end it would find? Just as well, he thought. Most of the farms were gone now, turned into lavish developments, their owners retired to Florida or wherever the hell it was they went.

Unsure the giraffe was dead, Borkowski stooped over its twitching hind quarters. He lifted his shotgun once more, but stopped, not able to fire again. At length, its legs ceased moving and he said a short wordless prayer. Now what would he do with it? Leave it for the developers, he guessed. They could figure it out for themselves.  Wouldn’t they be surprised to see a flyblown giraffe carcass in their field? Borkowski smiled, imagining the smell of rotting flesh drifting through the upscale neighborhoods surrounding him.

It had been a star once, the only giraffe in a formerly Communist zoo in Poland. As the story went, it had been content to be alone. It was so cantankerous and rude, no one went near it for years. Bankrupt and overwhelmed by capitalism, the zoo eventually closed, and its directors sold the giraffe to a film production company. Supposedly the animal was expected to perform, but soon it became clear it would never cooperate. Eventually Borkowski came by the giraffe through a friend of a friend whose wife was a secretary at its offices in New York. The giraffe was nearly insane, the friend said, and wouldn’t take direction, would Borkowski board the giraffe until a more suitable place could be found? He’d not heard from his friend again after he cashed the sizeable check, so Borkowski boarded the giraffe like a horse in winter, feeding it, covering it with a blanket and affording it most of the barn. Generally they had a decent relationship; he fed it and made sure it was warm, and the animal never bit him.

Borkwoski knew they would build ugly and identical townhouses or estate homes right over the giraffe, its bones buried among foundations, its grave made into a rec room with a widescreen TV. He sensed the grey sky carried rain, the clouds aimless and stalled over his head. He watched as a red tailed hawk drifted over the ridge, its slight wings tipped against the wind. There would be plenty of rodents for her, with all the garbage and grass seed. The nearby sod farms would still do well, at least until all the new lawns were planted; then the sod farmers would take their checks, too.

He watched from a distance as a red luxury sedan rolled toward the house, uncertain where to turn in. It was a Lexus LS, their latest, the one with automatic parallel parking and a six CD changer.  He might buy one of those when the sale was done, Borkowski thought. The sedan rolled to a stop at the house and a woman stepped out. He recognized her as his lawyer from the closing, Meredith something … Instinctively, he tensed. He could just make out the color of her hair from where he stood. She favored dull oversized suits and flat shoes and carried a large tan bag over one shoulder. He wondered where she lived, if she were married.

He watched, amused as the lawyer found the path to the front door and knocked politely, then grew upset. She called someone, while peering into the lower windows.  His wife, Abby, would have just hollered, but a farmer’s wife is different from a lady lawyer, he guessed. Borkowski watched her drop her bag onto the lawn and pull her fingers through her hair. She would spot him soon enough and then he would go inside the empty house, or not, and sign away the last of his life. In a way, he was glad the giraffe wasn’t alive to scrutinize him; the shame was his alone.

For years the giraffe was an attraction in Pine Island, although no one paid to see it. The grumpy animal wandered his 20 acre cow pasture with impunity while local school children, their heads hung out of roaring SUV’s and sleek minivans, pointed to the barnyard oddity as if his farm were a suburban safari. Few stopped to chat or say hello if they saw him; even his neighbors tended to keep away as if keeping a giraffe in upstate New York made him a curiosity, someone frightening. If they had seen him shoot the animal, watch its blood drain into the grass, they would be horrified. He felt like a heathen.

He walked carefully around the giraffe’s body, allowing himself to step in the blood, debating whether or not he would go up to the house. She’d come back again tomorrow or the next day, anxious to give him a million dollars and expecting he’d be happy about it, generous even. He could not go back on the agreement he’d made even if he wanted to. There was nowhere to go. He’d had to sell: there was no money to pay hired hands and he’d sold the farm equipment long ago to pay for heat and hot water. He had hoped to subsist on vegetables and eggs, things he could grow himself, but even he had to have hot showers. There comes a time when an old man bends, so when the realtor asked would he sell, the decision seemed already made.

He patted the giraffe’s cooling flesh. He stroked the coarse hairs and tough bristles along its neck, feeling the summer heat simmering in its pale black spots. With a sharp, empty pang, Borkowski wished the animal would spring to life again on wild reedy legs. The giraffe had been the last of his compatriots. At least the money he got from the land would give him a decent burial; not so for the giraffe.

He turned and searched for the lawyer again. He didn’t want her to come out here. As if on cue, she began waving wildly at him as if flagging down a cab and started toward him. He had no desire to walk the distance between them, no interest in leaving his farm, this inelegant body, but now he was on his own. Borkowski walked slowly back toward the house, his back bothering him again. He noticed how young the lawyer looked and slowly turned to survey his land one more time. The giraffe would be his last regret.

© 2012 Aimee Henkel

Originally published at Sleet.com