by Rorie Smith

The First Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was opening a new exhibition of Socialist Art at the National Historical Museum in Tirana. 

‘My friends,’ he was saying. He was dressed in the uniform of an Egyptian Field Marshal. ‘Let us be serious for a moment.’

We were a group of aging Rotarians from Omaha, Nebraska, who had been following Enver, heads bowed, on a tour of the exhibits. We had stopped to examine the bust of a Chinese worker when an air raid siren sounded and all the pictures in the gallery got slowly down off the walls and walked hand in hand down the stairs to the basement where the father of the nation waited patiently to address them. 

When he had finished, seven hours later, a staff of Chinese waiters in dazzling white uniforms brought in trays of Red Star noodles.

But just as we were tucking in, a furious Hoxha shouted out: ‘Halt, there is a traitor amongst us,’ and pointed his Field Marshal’s baton straight at poor old Pete Gunter for whom I had worked, selling hinges and brackets, at his hardware store in Omaha.

                                                            The Second Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was at the wheel of the big old embassy car, wrenching it round the corners of the steep mountain passes as we made our way north to Valbona. At the same time he was puffing on his trademark Cuban cigar and cooing suggestively into the ear of the ambassador’s daughter, a flat chested society girl called Letitia. 

In the back seat I was taking photographs. Then Pete Gunter, who was alongside me, put aside the book he was reading and began to describe to Enver in a loud voice, with a surprisingly strong Welsh accent, how he had danced the Dashing White Sergeant and the Eightsome Reel at a hunt ball at Lydney Grange, Gloucestershire two summers previously.

I was well positioned to observe Enver’s reaction to this provocation. I took several photographs from a kneeling position with a wide angle lens until Enver slammed on the brakes so that we all pitched forward and the car nearly went into the river. 

Then in a bloody rage he leaned back over to Pete Gunter and placed his large red farmer’s hands round his throat and yelled dreadfully: 

‘In Albania we dance the Twelvesome Reel and the Dashing White Major, so fuck you capitalists. Hah! the Communist system is superior.’ 

After that we drove on staring gloomily out of the windows at the soldiers lining the route to cheer us. ‘They stand guard in all the Alpine meadows,’ Enver explained, cheery again, winding down the window and throwing out pennies and bunches of flowers. ‘They have been expertly trained to defend our borders from the savage hordes planning to picnic there.’ 

As dawn broke we were driving through the gorge of the Valbona, a small plane flew overhead trailing behind it a banner which read, ‘Enver, Enver, you forgot to wash behind your ears.’ 

Then the car stopped, the back door was yanked open and poor old Pete Gunter was dragged out. Enver helds his arms and Letitia who turned out to be very strong, having rowed for England ladies, took both his legs and suddenly poor old Pete Gunter was sailing through the air toward the turbulent blue waters of the Valbona with Enver shouting out: 

‘Swim to Italy from there you black Fenian bastard.’ 

                                                               The Third Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was holding a cabinet meeting in the corner of his bedroom. He was wearing a brocaded silk dressing gown and smoking a cigarette from an inexpensive holder. On the bed beside him was a top hat and around it was curled a small brown cat. 

After a seven hour address, during which he coughed continually, indicating bronchial problems, he looked quizzically at his ministers and asked: 

‘But if we let the Chinese workers go, who will wash the delicate silk undergarments of the American traitors?’ 

After that he stood up and moved quickly to a podium and speaking directly to a television camera began to instruct his generals on the delicate art of growing rice which, he informed us, to the surprise of Pete Gunter and the aging Rotarians visiting from Omaha, Nebraska, was a staple of the Chinese diet.

Then he rolled up his trousers in the manner of a peasant and stepped carefully into the giant children’s paddling pool which he had ordered erected in the main square of Tirana. As he paddled slowly in the icy cold waters, the large crowd watching anxiously, he shouted out, ‘Oy, Oy, Oy, the icy waters are good for my old father’s feet.’ 

Then he threw out rice seed from a blue plastic bucket and we watched it grow ten feet high before it was harvested by an army of carefully drilled soldiers. After that hundreds of white coated Chinese waiters came into the square carrying silver salvers on which were packets of Red Star noodles. Enver then showed us how to eat them, American style in the manner of cornflakes, with milk and sugar. 

                                                            The Fourth Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was in the mountains of Northern Albania dressed in the bright pink uniform of a Partisan, a brace of grenades at his waist. He was supervising the electrification of his country. He had a very detailed programme to which he assured us, we were with the Japanese Red cross as neutral observers, he planned to strictly adhere. 

We watched as he instructed young housewives to lean out of their bedroom windows so that cables could be passed about their delicate wrists and through the braids of their flaxen hair by nimble fingered children. 

Then the cables went over the spades of men digging in gardens, over schoolmasters teaching Latin in bare schoolrooms, over mountains, across valleys, into the arms of surprised shepherds in their barns. 

We watched as fishermen in boats on the lakes raised their arms to hold the cables aloft as they were passed from valley to valley. Bus drivers in Tirana threaded the cables through the exit and entrance doors of their public service vehicles. Pilots carried the cables to the highest snow bound peaks and stood, fur hats on their heads, holding the cables aloft. 

Like an intelligent gardener he planted us everywhere even those of us with the Japanese Red Cross. How happy we were! How excited! How confident of the future! Only the Chinese workers, thin as rakes and sour faced, declined to take part in this prodigious effort citing Health and Safety Regulations. 

Finally the whole joyous population of this small Balkan country stood arms upraised, cables aloft, in happy anticipation of joining the modern world. Then Enver in his mountain hideaway, with his generals and his engineers, counted backwards from ten and pushed the plunger down. At which there was a heart rending series of screams, heard even from outer space and the entire country was plunged into darkness. 

According to Pete Gunter and his father JY Gunter, who both attended the trial, when the verdict was pronounced Enver snarled, ‘That fucker Mao just sold me another pup.’ 

                                                        The Fifth Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he had put on twenty pounds and was sitting outside a hotel in Durres. He was cradling a Kalashnikov in his lap. ‘Hey buddy,’ he shouted at me as I passed. ‘Wanna buy a hotel?’ 

When I said no, that I had two already, he got up and as he uncurled I could see that on his tee shirt was a slogan which read in bright luminous letters, ‘Ronnie Reagan fux dux.’ 

I felt the tears coming to my eyes. Where was the youthful patriot who had come down from the mountains to liberate his people? Where was my leader who, a gleam in his eye, had encouraged me in my desperate bid to swim from Durres to Bari?

That night over a surf and turf dinner at a local sporting club, which he could only nibble on account of his cardiologist’s concern over his cholesterol levels, he explained in the soft tones of a southern Baptist preacher: ‘Everyone’s in property these days kid, wanna’ have a look?’

So skipping dessert, we went to a lock up at the back of the hotel and Enver put down his Kalashnikov and fumbled in the pocket of his baggy trousers mumbling, ‘Now where in the heck did I put those goddam keys,’ until finally they were located and the doors were rolled back on his Aladdin’s cave. 

The lights were so bright they hurt my eyes. Enver had lit up a big cigar. His gun was over his shoulder and his baseball cap was tipped back over his head. His large belly stuck out over his trousers. ‘It’s like I told you kid, these days I’m in property – everybody’s property.’ After that he started to laugh so hard he dropped the gun and it went off startling an old bear that was sitting in a tree watching us. 

Shielding my eyes from the bright lights, Enver had up to date wrap around ray-bans, we entered the Aladdin’s cave and I saw everything stacked up. There were chairs and tables and beds, some with people still in them, and office suites and farm labourers and terrified girls tied up with tape and ready to go and white paper bags with gold teeth in them, and hundreds of spare pairs of glasses, as well as shoes and trousers and suits and shirts and sweaters and ships and cars and cement plants and in the back whole farms and houses and even seas and mountain ranges. 

‘My, you’ve certainly got a lot of stuff in there Enver,’ I said shaking my head as we came out half an hour later.

‘It’s like I said, kid,’ He snapped the door of the lock up shut. ‘Everything’s changed now. It’s like I’m running the world’s biggest garage sale.’ 

Then he took a bottle of Bourbon from his back pocket, took a good swig and raised the gun and cocked it, before aiming at directly at my intestines. 

‘You got thirty seconds to get off this here property stranger,’ he snarled darkly. ‘Before I fill that belly of yours with good old Texan lead.’ 

                                                             The Sixth Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was a deck officer on a cruise ship on the Dalmatian run. He addressed us, in spotless whites, in the mutton chop manner of an English gentleman of the Edwardian period. ‘My dear old fellows,’ he began, his accent as clear and high pitched as the beautiful white gulls that circled above us. 

We were assembled next to the helicopter pad, the big H, a thin breeze waving through our hair. A small group of us, all well into our eighties, all from Omaha, Nebraska. Enver removed his captain’s cap and waved it in the direction of the mountainous shoreline of his beloved Albania heavy under the heat haze of the afternoon. 

‘You see before you my fiefdom and the homeland of my ancestors over which I ruled for so many years’ 

His voice trembled with emotion. We followed the direction of his outstretched arm and instinctively knew of the terrible cruelties of which he spoke. After that there was a pause while drinks were served and then we rushed and bound him. Then we dragged him, inch by terrible inch, across the burning deck like a cornered reptile. He resisted hard and there were effusions of blood but finally we had him over the poop deck and the youngest of the crew, whom he had abused terribly with both fork and spoon shouted out, ‘Chuck the bastard over, let him swim with the fishes.’ 

‘No, no,’ I yelled out in a panic. ‘We must give him a fair trial,’ but I was too late and he was thown overboard with a splash and I knew we had made a terrible mistake.

Enver had come into the hardware store in Omaha where I worked, my speciality was hinges and brackets, on many occasions. He was trying to recruit us for the union but old man Gunter, known as JY, who later handed over to his son Pete, always lay in wait for him with a loaded shot gun. 

For years they argued terribly over the price of nails but then JY finally said, ‘OK Enver you win, I’ll up the price of nails and then it’s all for one and one for all.’ After that we all joined Enver’s union and got a pay rise. So I knew that you could never beat Enver. 

We had put him off on a deserted isle, but he had hidden a small fold up saw in the back of his pants and when he opened it out he was able to quickly cut down a dozen trees and make a raft then he took out a great big handkerchief, which he had been using to protect his head from the sun, and worked it into the shape of a sail and then he blew and blew until his nose became horribly distended and suddenly he was sailing very fast, helped by the softest of breezes, across the Corfu channel, until once again he reached his dear Albanian home land. 

I looked gloomily around at my fellow passengers asleep in their deck chairs, empty champagne bottles rolling gently at their feet, knowing from my position high up in the crow’s nest that there was nothing I could do to stop the rowing boats that were approaching carrying Enver and his cutthroat crew with sabres in their mouths and old muskets over their shoulders. 

After those good citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, including Pete Gunter and his entire family, many of whom were Jews, had been murdered in their deck chairs, Enver looked up, a dreadful grin on his face and spying me in the crow’s nest shouted out to his second in command, ‘You can bring that bastard down now, I am certainly going to use my fork and spoon on him’ 

                                                            The Seventh Dream

The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was in the attire of a Romanian gypsy sunburned of face, gold toothed of mouth, rattling a tambourine as he encouraged a poor old bear to dance with a pointed stick.

There were six of us from the World Wildlife Fund, all trained snipers, led by the Duke of Edinburgh, hiding on roof tops scoping him. We were supported in our endeavours by the Royal Navy, which came up the Corfu Channel, line astern, flags flying proudly firing salvo after salvo until the town of Saranda was reduced to rubble and all that was left standing was Enver and his dancing bear.

Then the Duke raised his camouflaged helmet twice and gave the order, ‘WWF prepare to fire,’ then ‘WWF fire’ and we let rip with a wicked volley so that both Enver and the poor bear staggered and fell and lay in the dust. 

Later the Duke was drinking tea in the ambassador’s residence when he was heard to say: ‘Do you know it was the nose wot gave him away,’ and we looked at his nose and saw the resemblance straightaway. 

Then one of the matelots, who had come ashore in a boarding party and bore a striking resemblance to Pete Gunter, jumped behind the wheel of a small truck and said, ‘Follow me’, and the next thing we heard was that the hides of the pair of them, Enver and his blasted bear, were pinned up on display in the National Museum of History in Tirana for all people to silently file past and see.

And that was the last anyone saw of Enver Hoxha.

---

Footnote

When Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Party of Labour came to power after the war they chased out the avaricious landlords of the old order. Malaria and syphilis were eradicated. Land was redistributed from rich to poor. Income tax was abolished and a health service founded. An illiterate population was made literate, women were given equal rights. Electricity was provided to the whole country, even to the remotest farmhouse. 

But then this utopian and enlightenment promise, for reasons which can only be explained by criminal psychologists or experts on the vendettas of the Balkans, turned into gangsterism. When Enver Hoxha died in 1985, tiny Albania, about the size of Wales, was the poorest country in Europe. 

Enver Hoxha was cruel and tyrannical but he could also be vain and ridiculous. A French educated intellectual who could quote Le Monde in his speeches he ordered all the latest books from Paris – and then banned them. He also had shelves of books on vampires. He watched all the new films and then banned them as well. The films of Norman Wisdom were the exception. Enver considered the character of Pitkin a perfect portrayal of a worker exploited by the capitalist system.

It was the great Albanian writer, the late Ismail Kadare who worked out that Enver, steeped in the cruelties of Albanian history, was in fact medieval. Revenge and settling of scores was his priority. Punishments continued after death with burying and re-burying.

Rorie Smith is a former UK journalist now living in Bordeaux with partner Jeanne. Four novels published. The latest is The Wonderful World of Jane & Oliver  Bloke (WriteSideLeft publishers, Bridport, Dorset.) Considers Bordeaux the best city in the world but still thinks of his small wooden chalet on the cliffs at Freathy, Cornwall, as home.

by Michael Pettit

There are moments of wonder. Spot them.

It was late. I was too cold and too spent to barter with midnight. Pointlessness was at my throat. The only parking bay was next to a row of black wheelie bins. As I pulled in, I caught white wings flapping against the dark – a bird, no, not a bird: a book, a book on top of a bin lid, its pages in flustered argument with the wind. I was longing to be indoors, but I hesitated. Why hadn’t it been chucked in with the other rubbish? I got out and picked it up: A beginners guide to OUR BIRDS. There was a moment of wonder at this serendipitous connection. The thin paperback was bound with staples. I opened it. On a blank page, in a neat, childlike hand: 

For Colin,

Love Margie

I made coffee and paged through. As someone unable to distinguish a book from a bird, I felt it might offer help.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK prepared for the beginner (that would be me): At first glance there might seem to be a great many numbers in this book. I’d missed this. I glanced again. It was true: numbers were many.

A tape recorder is very helpful – and, it added brightly – You will always be able to find someone to identify the calls you have recorded. Really? I did a snap survey of my friends’ assorted skills and drew a blank, their knowledge of birds being more or less limited to boiling an egg.

A fledgling, eager to explore, I flipped ahead. It was clear Margie’s gift had been thumbed through many times. The layout was from another era. I flipped back to check the publication date: 1978. Alongside a photograph of each species was a block of facts: some birds look rather like little aeroplanes / one of the first to arrive at a carcass / when sleeping they hang upside down. Okey-dokey. The Blue Crane is exclusively OURS. It’s South Africa’s national bird; that I did know. I wondered if this accounted for its rather swollen looking head. The entry didn’t say.

A certain bird calls zzip-zzip-zzip over and over again. Other sounds to listen for: tree-ree-ree, hoop-hoop, and doo-doodle. Also (translated from the Zulu): My mother is dead! My father is dead! All my relatives are dead! OH, oh, oh, oh; and – a little less stand-out perhaps – cheep-cheep. Number 413 just utters harsh screams. The generosity of detail continued: When in flight they make a mewing call like a kitten / there is always a busy swizzling chatter.

One bird’s bio characterised it as a nuisance in orchards … and also as cheerful. The temperament of the next bird, 707, was not specified. Phlegmatic? Sanguine? We’re not told. Maybe, it too has a happy disposition in tandem with its darker side: a habit of impaling its prey of insects and frogs and small birds on barbed wire fences or thorns to keep a well-stocked larder. Gosh, I thought. And quite tricky to impale an insect, surely? I tried to visualise a bee on a barb. The mind boggles.

One poor creature, a duck, was dealt with in a curt, perfunctory note: most common … unmistakable. (Don’t count on it.)

The longest entry – HAMERKOP – highlighted the wisdom it uses in nest building … using sticks, bits of newspapers, odds and ends, and all sorts of rubbish. The wisdom goes on for about six months – which is so unlike the pigeons that check into the timeshare on my balcony. The guy just chucks a few stray twigs at the spot, hit-or-miss, and that’s it sweetheart, take it or leave it. And the attitude! It’s like, “What?”

Ten fresh watercolours, reproduced large, showed birds in their natural habitats. The one on the cover depicted a pair of OUR long-legged blue cranes in a sunny open field, tail feathers trailing to the ground. They had long, pliant necks and, yes, rather swollen heads. The husband had his beak open and, if I’m not mistaken, appeared to be smiling. Is that possible? Anyway, the vision of this unspoiled, lost Eden lay limpid on the page, delicately embellished with the circular stain of a wine glass.

A FOREWORD endorsed bird and book. Below it, a signature spanning the entire width of the page endorsed the endorsement. Bird-spotting, the foreword promised, will make the whole family’s … long car journeys … much more fun. So that’s what was missing. If only we’d known. 

Did you know a bird has three eyelids? 

There was an INDEX (I was ever so sorry not to find Swan. Not one of OURS, obviously. No Budgies either.) At the top of the CHECKLIST was a tip: if you use a soft pencil, you will be able to rub out the ticks later. (Colin had rubbed his out.) 

A teeny font listed the SPONSORS, all five hundred of them – Prof. & Mrs C W Abbott running through to Dr Nolly Zaloumis – each, I imagine, keen to tick off and then rub out a Boubou, Stone Chat or Chinspot Batis. There was sound practical advice regarding binoculars: adjust and focus them. Don’t sit for ages squinting … with one eye shut and wondering why you can’t see anything!

It was clear that the lively and informative handbook had been put together with care, expertise, and some degree of evangelical zeal. Its shining mission to preach and propagate Bird-Joy infused every page. The preacher, Jo Oliver, was as spot-worthy as the bird with only two toes, his voice so distinct he could have been sitting beside me with his own mug of coffee (more likely, a well-dented thermos flask), bubbly, sunburned, and binoculared.

The book had been a gift. I thought of how hard it is to throw out any gift anyone has ever given me. It matters not that the giver would never know, nor how horrid, daft, or space-guzzling the item may be – the thing stays. Redundant gadgets, goo in ribboned jars, ornaments that hurt … Get rid of them? I couldn’t take the guilt.

Did gift-guilt play a part in Colin’s decision not to dump Margie’s book in the bin but to leave it on the lid instead? 

Where, luminous and human in the night, it called to me, and took flight.

While the rest of the rubbish – bits of histories, jettisoned stories, scraps of lives – decaying in the dark, waited to be wheeled away. 

I sipped my coffee and thought of Colin and Margie and Jo and the frailty of it all, the radiance of passion, and the suddenness of beauty.

Enjoy your birdwatching – LOOK and LISTEN! A whole new world is waiting to be discovered. 

Not to mention busy swizzling chatter. 

Cherish difference.

Be a beginner. Always.

Use wisdom and all sorts of rubbish to build your nest.

There are moments of wonder. Spot them.

Michael Pettit is a South African artist – a painter. His short stories and poems have appeared in The Barcelona Review, The Bookends Review, Meniscus and in various anthologies: WestWord Prize (3rd Prize), Parracombe Prize, Bournemouth Writing Festival Competition, MTP Short Story Competition (Highly Commended), Hammond House Prize (Editor’s International Choice award, and also 1st Prize for song lyrics).

by Julian Fuller

Lean in a bit closer can you, son? I can’t turn my head to find you, and these rheumy eyes see you much better in close-up. Put that mobile phone aside for a minute, and listen to me. And squeeze my hand when you get what I’m trying to say. That’s it, squeeze – thank you.

My mind still whirs along, you know, even though my heart’s packing up, my speech has gone awol for good, and my right side’s useless. I couldn’t shuffle a pack of Jokers now if my life depended on it. I know you don’t think I’m making much of an effort, lying here like a sad sack, scanning your eyes for flickers of comprehension. But believe me, I’m shouting for all I’m worth.

It’s a bit late to get through to you, isn’t it? We should have had a proper conversation long before this. Face it, I’m rounding the bend into the home straight now. I’ve got this spartan bedroom ceiling for company, a blank canvas onto which I can project whatever I still recollect of my life. I sift and distil the memories, gift-wrap them and tidy them away. So my affairs are pretty much in order, do you hear? Do you hear, Jonathan? Squeeze if you…    No, I’m not sure that you do hear.

You keep pressing me about what to do with Laughing Uncle Bob’s gear, as if that were the matter of prime importance! Don’t be mawkish, Jon. My props were the tools of a simple magician’s trade, and it was just a pastime after all, never a profession. My act was a parlour affair – up close and personal. I worked with snug-in-the-hand stuff – cups, coins, cards. Dice, wands, handkerchiefs. The whole kit and kaboodle, including the collapsible top hat, fitted into a modest suitcase (unless there was a special request for Bernardo the Rabbit or Bernice the Dove to put in an appearance). Anyway, it’s sentimental value only. Why not just pass my case along to some young local apprentice keen to carry on the tradition? Laughing Uncle Bob Junior! There’s still quite a call for decent entertainers at children’s parties, you know.

Once I realised what real magic was, I no longer saw the point of big stage acts – all those gaudy illusions with their diversions, misdirections and clever mechanics. And who needs razzamatazz and glamorous assistants? (that meant divvying the fee!)  No, I stuck to small-scale solo trickery, and became devoted to my young audiences – dozens upon dozens of noisy wide-eyed Saturday afternoon kids who taught me over the years what impresses most. I loved the raucous to-ing and fro-ing with them, the swell and swoop of their excitement as they put me through my paces. 

The proper magic I’m talking about is rarer than you think. When I’d do simple tricks – like levitating a pencil, or passing a cup through a table – most youngsters got animated, and best of all, curious. They already knew in their bones it was a subterfuge, but they’d be thwarted because they couldn’t see how it was done. “Do it again, Uncle Bob!” they’d yell, crowding around, trying to clamber up behind me and crane over my shoulders. They’d squeal, jerk around and grimace. Of course, as soon as the trick was revealed, or they worked it out, the magic evaporated just like that, Poof! They’d be deflated, and groan and clamour for the next trick. But watch carefully, and once in a while you could spot a special child hanging back a bit from the huddle. The still, enthralled one. From a certain angle, and in a certain light you might just catch a particular shine, as from a fine slick of glycerine, radiating from their eyes. I think they had reached around the trickery, gone beyond and connected with some deeper, awesome possibility.

It resonated with me whenever that happened. It always took me back to my dear Dad’s passing – that afternoon when his frail bedridden body arched and he took his final deep shuddering in-breath. His expression widened, and in those few seconds his eyes glistened in that special way too. I think he was gifting, to anyone open to it, the accumulated magic of his life, its mysteries and its graces. His passing was like…a transcendence – but also a transmission. Those are the nearest words I can find.

Your Reece has the magic in him. You know that, don’t you? I remember watching him many years ago on his sixth birthday, when he unwrapped the kaleidoscope I’d given him. Stephanie showed him how to hold it to his eye, tilt it towards the light and rotate the tube. Remember how he was completely lost to the room? When he eventually put it down he sidled over to thank me. “Is that alright, then?” I asked. “Was that what you wanted?”. “It is, Grandad”, he said, pecking me on the cheek, his eyes flickering as though his soul had absorbed a myriad of dancing colours and patterns and stored them for later use.

Something special took root in him that day…which perfectly primed him as a teenager for his first astronomical telescope. It was the very best one you could afford for him at the time. He was jittery with excitement; couldn’t wait for nightfall to set it up on the patio and point it at the heavens, aching to see for himself what was out there in the farthest reaches of the darkness. I don’t know which planet or constellation or galaxy he homed in on, but it held him spellbound, until cramp forced him to stand back up for a break. He had that very same look, Jon. The lad found the magic again that night, I’m in no doubt.  I know you and Steph have big ambitions for him. Well I tell you, he will make a truly fine explorer. His intelligence and vision will take him far now. In time he will discover much, and he will do it for the betterment of all living things.

Alice as well, I promise you. She may be younger than Reece, but it happened to her too, one midsummer’s day two years ago while I was staying with you, convalescing after the second bypass op. I was resting in the shade, under your hornbeam tree, watching her play. As she skipped around the garden she must have spotted something floating in an old galvanised pail brimming with rainwater. She stopped, crouched down to take a closer look, then fished something out, brackish liquid sluicing down her wrist and trickling off her elbow. “Grandad!” she called, and hurried towards me. I sat up in the deckchair as best I could. “What is it?”. She proffered a dripping finger for inspection. Perched on it was what looked like a large dark fruit seed, encased in a blob of water. “It’s drowned”. Her face started to crumple. “Alice,” I said, “here, put it onto your other hand and let me have a better look”. She eased it off her finger onto her left palm. I smiled. “Ah! It’s a ladybird, darling”. “But it’s drowned, Grandad, it must have fell in and it’s not moving any more…” She teared up. “Alice sweetie, maybe we could try a little magic trick?” She frowned at me, her lower lip quivering.

 “I’ll show you what to do. First, hold it out in front of you for a minute, nice and still”. She stood there sniffling, her arm outstretched in the fierce morning sunlight. “Now bring it in close, so you can breathe on it. That’s good – nice slow, warm breaths –  one… and two…and three…”.  The inert ladybird was pinned by surface tension. “And try blowing”, I said, “but very softly”.  She puffed out her cheeks, blew silently, and the watery margin around the upturned insect shrunk by degrees. “Now hold it up and let it feel the breeze.”

“Is anything happening?” I asked after a while. Alice tilted her chin as we both peered at the tiny creature lying on its back. Suddenly there was a twitching of a leg. Two legs, then six legs stirred. “It’s not drowned anymore Grandad, it’s alive!” “OK, now turn it upright and breathe on it some more – that’s good”. The ladybird began dragging itself across the cup of her upturned palm, leaving a thin trail of moisture. The breeze rustled and lifted a damp wing. “Now show it the sun, Alice”.  Alice planted her feet apart and stretched out a stiff arm, supporting her elbow with her free hand. “Now watch. And wish”, I whispered. The ladybird found the base of her middle finger, crept up it and faced into some small air current it could detect. It waited, stretched and retracted its spotted wings, waited some more, then abruptly launched itself, a minute red and black whir of life that wavered towards the fence, then climbed for the sky. 

Alice stood motionless long after it had disappeared. “Well,” I said, breaking the spell as gently as I dared, “I think Ladybird Ladybird flew away home, don’t you?” And as she turned to me I saw the glistening in her dark eyes, not from tears, but from wonderment. “Come here, little girl, and give me a cuddle”. In the warmth of that hug I felt her stillness, enraptured by the mysteries of a resurrection.

So that is how I’m sure that Alice is acquainted with real magic too. She will carry its possibilities forward as she blossoms. She is so bright, her life choices are legion, and her soul will insist on wandering wide and away. She will spread compassion and kindness as she goes.

Squeeze my hand if you get that, Jon. For the love of God, squeeze!  Oh, my signal is weak, son, like a lousy network that keeps dropping out. You’re peering at me, but I don’t think you have an inkling. You’re itching to get back to your mobile phone screen to hide yourself and while away more time, aren’t you? Well, you’re right to be bored – bedside vigils can be interminable. Especially when you suspect there might be a few days left in me yet.

In years to come, I expect you’ll reminisce about your “special Dad”. You’ll recount all the devilish tricks I used to perform. You’ll say to your friends “He was my wizardy superhero”, and mean it sincerely. But the father you’ll remember was just a proficient deceiver, Jon, someone who mastered sleight-of-hand. Why, I could make the Queen of Spades dance in and out of a pack of cards like a crafty cormorant on the river, diving down here, popping up there. And then, just before your puzzlement threatened to blow a fuse, I’d double down and entice a threepenny piece from the shell of your ear. Ha, prestidigitation! Maybe I was too knowing and world-weary ever to attain real magic myself. Perhaps my talent was discerning it in others? But who can ever know for sure?

* * *

Come back into my eyeline, Jon, find my hand. Truly, I’m not sentimental about endings. But when the moment arrives, gather Steph and the kids around, if you can prevail on them. For I’m dumb now, but I still mean to pass something on if I’m able. Tell them to sit quietly, and watch my eyes. Open yourselves to possibilities. And son, if…if it happens – you might bear witness to some real wonders before the curtain drops. And it won’t just be a trick of the light.

After his teacher opined that his stonking whodunnit debut was “not very original” Julian decided, at the tender age of eight, that creative writing was strictly for the birds. 64 years on, and facing the mental desert of pandemic lockdown, he finally picked up his pen again. The signs are propitious that he may yet rediscover his childhood mojo.

by Jim Steinberg

In line at a polling place in Chapel Hill, an older man stands sideways four people in front of me. He waits and watches with a patience and curiosity no other early morning voter matches. His eyes are clear, observant, interested. I watch their dark pupils dance around the room and decide he would talk with anyone. But this crowd is impatient and inward, as if remaining aloof will hurry the procession through lines, registration tables, and voting booths to cars and freeway journeys. Like them, I came here enclosed in my cocoon, incubating myself for the daily rebirth of my work face. I want to complete this task and be on my way, but watching someone who seems tobe here so agreeably changes that. I wonder if age explains his easygoing approach and if I will become as patient. If he were closer, I would talk with him.

 I am certain he is Jewish. His nose crags outward a bit too far in a way not uncommon among Jews. In a way, I say to myself, because that caveat makes me more comfortable with my stereotype. I am a Jew, I say to myself, I am entitled to recognize another by his nose, though of course I could be wrong. I laugh at myself for this excuse that could work for any stereotype of any identity. I have others about Jews, and I enjoy them, too.

The old man is pleasant and warm and handsome, but more is going on here. Surely I stare as much at his Jewishness as at his welcoming face. I feel a connection so strong it unsettles me, and I know why. I have always been ambivalent about identifications that connect me with some and separate me from others. But here in the American Legion Hall, in line with so many strangers, I assure myself no harm can come. I give in to the connection.

I decide to give myself a generous allowance for sentimentality. The old man’s eyes contain a smile, a welcome he cannot escape offering. His bright pupils are mobile stations looking from still white ponds, periscopes from the bottom of his well. They move slowly about, waiting to greet. Shalom, they want to say. To anyone. They wait for contact, but in its absence seem content with watching.

Two lines crawl forward through the doors of the building in replication of the clogged highways everyone will be riding soon. “A through L” seems bottlenecked and slow to divide for the two registration stations reserved for it at the tables. By comparison, “M through Z” breezes by. The occupants of the slow lane show envy and disbelief.

“Same mistake every year,” says one. “You’d think they’d learn.”

“Splitting the population right down the middle of the alphabet clearly doesn’t work in this precinct,” says another. She shakes her head.

A few more remarks, half-smiles, light laughter, a few nodding heads. The stress of these folks seems to lessen, and they become more sociable. The old Jew begins to rotate slow half circles, trying, I think, to seize any opportunity for conversation.

Some Jews prefer a close identity. We are Members Of The Tribe, it goes. The Chosen. I’ve done none of this over the years, I haven’t approved. In my judgment that moniker, like so many others, elevates, separates, creates unbridgeable distance. I forget the centuries of experience that have forced many groups in on themselves behind circled wagons. Yet I pick from the crowd another Jew, though everyone in the room and in line all the way to the parking lot is responding to a call that should bind all of us together. Voting for shared participation in self government. For a moment my connection to that polity pales in comparison to the bond I feel with one stranger with whom I will probably never speak. Are we seeds from a single tree with roots in the ancient past, surviving in small, scattered groves all over the world? We are, but this should not be emphasized, I think. So many can say something like this. If you look at all history, how can you not see that ethnic, religious and national identity have brought us millennia of hate, warfare and persecution? Why is it so difficult for so many to see this commonality?          

But I like staring at this handsome old man, and I like that he is a Jew. I don’t want a self-inquisition denying me this feeling of belonging that I don’t get enough of from the places where I think I should, like this so-called melting pot of America. I don’t want to soil this moment with doubt. Whatever this feeling is, it arises from within me like a spring welling up from some deep unquenchable source at the base of a wooded bluff. I want to feel that welling up. Is it knowledge as in getting to know, becoming better acquainted? Felt knowledge, a sixth sense so strong it should be added to the list of five? Or something I should cast away?

I ask myself how I can read so much into a nose?

His crags downward like an eagle’s, practically pointing to a little mouth that moves about with the slightest touch of impatience, more for lack of contact, I think, than for hurry, because our line is moving well. Or the little cleft in his square chin, a real Kirk Douglas dimple, a mark I’ve always associated with active men. He scrapes his perfect lower teeth against his upper lip, then purses his lips together, the tip of his tongue occasionally protruding, making a slow arc from side to side, a touch of impatience now. But he’s not hurrying to work, not in that knit short sleeve shirt, those Khaki shorts, that windbreaker tossed over his shoulder, those running shoes. He’s headed for tennis or racquetball, the gym, or the golf course. He’s finished with freeway drives to work. I envy him.

His body supports the inference that he is no aging couch potato. He is small but athletically built and postured. Straight-backed, trim in the belly, he stands at ease with legs apart, one hand clasping the other wrist behind his back. He rocks lightly back and forth from heel to toe like a referee on a basketball court waiting for the end of a timeout. Now he folds his arms in front and trades his rocking for twisting at his waist to the ends of his range of motion. His broad shoulders have no forward bend at all, his arms still have visible muscle. He has been doing something healthy most every day, swinging a racket or a golf club, using his trim legs to carry him as often as a car does. I want to look like that in twenty years.

His face is ruddy and tanned soft leather, a topography of smooth, shallow valleys, no rough wrinkles packed together. His hair is pure snow above a high forehead. His warm eyes carry the satisfaction of his years. The neat little creases radiating from the corners of those eyes looking for places to land.

I realize this is how I want him to be, that I am giving him an identity and wishing it for myself. Yet I think it’s true.

He is chatting now with a few complainers from “A through L” and doesn’t notice “M through Z” splitting as it approaches the volunteers who will verify our registration. In two steps I am next to him. He sees me, smiles, and returns to rocking forward and back. I see him davening in an Orthodox synagogue or at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, where I’ve never been. His smile continues through his rocking. He looks at me, a silent shalom without a question. He is as certain of me as I am of him.

“Are you a native of North Carolina?” he asks.

“No, a St. Louisan by way of Colorado and California.” My standard short-form answer.

“New York,” he says. “By way of Cleveland.”

“I can hear New York, just a bit.”

He smiles. “I don’t mind I still have it. What brings you here?”

The line is too short for more than a footnote. I give him highlights of my zigzag route to Chapel Hill through cities and careers. He smiles in recognition.

“Like my son. You’d tell me more if you had time. You must be going to work.”

An invitation, I think. “That is so. What brings you to Chapel Hill?”

“The city next door, Durham, the City of Medicine.”

“You must work at Duke Medical Center.”

“Not at my age.” He smiles. “My wife’s doctor does. A fine young man, about your age. Forty, forty-five.”

“Fifty, thank you.” I return the smile.

“A saint, this doctor. I love him. He keeps my wife alive and well. No small accomplishment. You would love him for that, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“I love him so much he keeps us from Florida. That’s where we thought we’d retire. But a doctor keeps your wife alive and well, you stay. Besides, Chapel Hill is better. A very nice place. But a person sees things differently when he has a good reason. You know?

“Yes, I know. We came here for my wife to return to school. It was her turn to make a change.”

“Good, very good.” He is rocking back and forth from the shoulders again, as if in prayer. I can almost feel mine begin. We fall silent and move forward, only two people left between us and the tables.

“He keeps my wife with me, this doctor,” he repeats, his voice deep in appreciation. “For this I love him.”

I slide to the left, avoiding the right branch of the split but am still beside him. A voice from in front of him asks, “Sir, could you give me your name and address?”

As he turns I see another volunteer waiting for me, a woman topped with a small blue-gray beehive, blue-tinted bifocals, blue eye shadow. A blue woman. I move toward her.

“I’ll spell it for you,” the old man says. “M-o-s-c-h-o-v-i-t-z, Saul, 1808 South Lake Shore Drive.”

“I’ll spell it for you,” I say to the blue woman before she can ask. The old man, ballot in hand, looks over at me. He waits.

“P-a-s-t-e-r-n-a-k, Louis,” I say. “2478 Foxwood Drive.” We are practically neighbors. The blue woman peers through the bottom of her bifocals and flips pages until she finds my name.

“Your ballot, sir,” she says. “Thank you for voting.”

“Thank you,” I say. The old man waits, watches. I think of my father who didn’t get to grow old, who never seemed particularly like a Jew, my agnostic, totally assimilated, urbane, sophisticated father. For a flash I miss him terribly. This man feels every bit as modern, yet more a Jew. For a moment I am a Member Of The Tribe. I don’t remember feeling strong about this. I decide to like it. 

“Shall we?” Saul asks. We are going to do this together.     

“After you,” I say. His smile broadens.

Once again, Saul rocks forward and back. I say to myself that he rocked like that on many a Saturday morning at an Orthodox or Conservative synagogue where a cantor sang the ancient rituals in the ancient tongue, no watered down Sunday morning ceremony at a Reform temple like the one I stopped attending as soon as I could, for want of feeling. I may be wrong now, it has been years, and I was a kid. He had Bar Mitzvah, I only confirmation to feel more like the Protestants across the street from Temple Israel. Though in all likelihood I would have tired of his synagogue as I tired of my temple, one thing is sure: I have not been to the spring, nor drunk there, like Saul has.

He turns slowly to the left and walks the twenty feet to the row of black-curtained booths. I follow him until we are side-by-side at two that are empty. He goes to the left, I to the right. At the same moment our left hands reach forward and part the curtains. We turn toward each other and nod a simple acknowledgement. I feel the warmth, but this time from within me as much as from him.

He extends a hand. “Moschovitz,” he says with a knowing smile.

“Pasternak,” I answer. I reach for his hand, squeeze it firmly, hold it a few extra moments, then let go slowly. With a final nod, almost a bow, we disappear into our booths.

I read the instructions on the ballot and follow them, filling in the boxes this time instead of punching holes. There is so much to vote on, so many ballot measures to properly identify. I try to hurry.

When I come out, Saul is gone. I think about going after him but decide against it. Now the place seems empty, or not a place at all, but I look at the crowd around me. Shalom, I say, and walk into the sunlight.

For thirty years Jim has written about family, love and work. Eleven of his stories have been published  in literary journals. He has self-published Boundaries, a novel, and two collections of short stories,  Filling Up in Cumby, Stories and Last Night at the Vista Café and Other Stories. His two-novel series,  Third Floor, and Redemption, is looking for a home. 

by Hannah Hoare

The van winds up the hill swinging round one broad S-bend after another and Perran’s stomach lurches at every one. It’s partly motion-sickness, but it’s nerves too. He’s been doing this for more than a year but his intestines still get tangled before a flight. The radio plays some American pop music which he doesn’t recognise, and anyway the lyrics are drowned out by the hubbub of conversation.  He never joins in with the banter but prefers to sit quietly and focus, running through the take-off in his head. He calls to mind the feeling: the moment the wing rises and stretches above him; the moment he feels the pressure of the wind through his brake-lines; the run, always awkward with a passenger, and then that breathtaking moment when he steps into air.  He always pedals his legs a few times. The others laugh at him but sometimes the wind is tricking you and you dip back down and need to push off the mountain again. If you’re not ready… well, he’s seen many pilots bump down on their backsides and mess up a take-off like that.  

It takes twenty-seven minutes to get to the top and by the time the van comes to a halt Perran’s butterflies have settled. He steps out of the warm, plasticky fug and breathes in the cool scent of salt and cedar.  Cloud hangs on the mountain’s shoulders, but it will lift soon enough.  Perran lights a cigarette and walks to a broad, concreted patch of slope. Plenty of room, though it’ll soon be crowded.  There are always dozens of people elbowing for space at take-off, mostly tandem pilots, like him, with jittery clients.  Paragliding is big business here; a twenty-minute flight over the bay is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for most people, something to tick off the bucket list.  He still can’t quite believe he gets to do it as a job.  He always thought he’d work with his father, driving an airport taxi, ferrying tourists into town. He rode along with Baba now and again when he was a small boy and the memory still causes him to glow with pleasure. He’d wave maniacally at aeroplanes roaring upwards, never dreaming he would one day look down on the world himself.  He’d listen crumple-browed to incomprehensible foreigners who never spoke a word of Turkish and usually over-tipped Baba because they didn’t have a clue how much the lira was worth.  In between trips, while they waited for the next flight to arrive, there were endless games of okey and glasses of sweet tea at the café behind the taxi rank.  The men smoked black tobacco and moaned about the price of petrol, and the waiter slipped Perran an extra sugar lump.  Baba still drives his taxi, and bores every passenger with a sales pitch.   “Best thing to do in Turkey,” he says.  “Very excellent, very beautiful.  Ask for Perran, my son.” He taps his chest proudly. “My son.  Flies like…” He pauses.  “What is your favourite bird?” 

Swallow, they might say, or blue jay.  Or eagle.

“My son, flies like eagle”.

“Let’s have a smoke, Perran.”  It’s Temel, bumming a fag as usual.  Perran tosses him the packet and his lighter.  He’s known Temel since they were at school; he’s a couple of years older and it was he who taught Perran to fly, and got him this job.  “Flying is good for your soul,” he used to say, “but also for your head.  It’s about decision-making.  Do you want to sit on your arse your whole life and grow a belly like your father’s, or do you want to use your brain?”. Temel can have as many cigarettes as he likes. They smoke in silence. The hill slopes steeply away below them, the concrete take-off quickly giving way to scree, then boulders.  To their right a huge spur juts out.  It’s mostly hidden by cloud now, but Perran knows every contour.  When the time comes, he’ll fly out well clear and turn to pass it, and a few seconds later he’ll be able to see the bay.  He remembers the first time he saw it from the air.  A huge horseshoe gouged out of the coastline, a perfect inlet.  He was so high that the wide, curved beach whose gritty sand was always spattered with leather-skinned sun-bathers looked empty and pristine.  A different planet.  And beyond… that was what was so enthralling: the stretch of the ocean seemed infinite, a luminous stripe of reflected sunlight pulling him towards the horizon. But then Temel was there, carving a tight three-sixty around him and waving towards the beach.  When they landed a few minutes later Temel was shaking with anger and fear.  “Are you crazy Perran?  There are no thermals over the ocean.  Once you go too far, you’ll never make it back to land.  And if your wing goes in it’ll fill with water and drag you under.  You want to die? Fly out to sea.”

The metallic growl of a van door sliding open snaps him back to the present.  Ozan is here with the clients.  Eager, excitable, babbling tourists.  Perran braces himself.  He speaks pretty good English but he has a thick accent which foreigners find hard to understand, especially if English isn’t their first language.  Talking is tiring.  Today the clients are Japanese; seventeen of them, boys and girls.  They look like teenagers but they could be in their twenties.  A holiday after finishing university perhaps.  Ozan starts allocating each of them a pilot.  Temel clocks the prettiest girls and cajoles Ozan to pair him up with a beauty.  “Give me that tall one with the pigtails and I’ll make sure she comes back for more.” 

It’s the same every trip.  Sometimes it works and Ozan seems to take pleasure in handing over a stunner to the twinkling Temel, right under the nose of her queasy-looking fiancé.  But often Ozan’s got a beetle up his backside and is in no mood to be playful.  Today is one of those days.  Temel gets the chubbiest of the Japanese boys, easily ten kilos heavier than any of the others.  Perran winces as Temel rolls his eyes dramatically.  It’s so rude.  But the boy doesn’t seem to notice.  He beams and makes Temel pose for a selfie.   Ozan approaches Perran, propelling a slender girl who looks as though she’d rather be at home with a book than preparing to fly off a Turkish mountain.  

“This is Perran. My best pilot. Just for you.”  It’s Ozan’s standard patter; he’s said it to every other client this morning, about every other pilot. 

“Hello,” says Perran. 

“Hi.”

“First time paragliding?”   

The girl smiles politely but looks blank. 

“First time fly?” He points at the sky.  

She twigs, and nods.  

“Don’t be nervous.”  Perran speaks slowly.  “You’ll love it.  Ozan is right, I am the best pilot. My father says I fly like a bird.”  

She smiles again, more broadly.  “Yes. Bird.”  She flaps her arms. 

A breeze tickles around them; the cloud is disintegrating into wisps.  The girl’s smile fades, and she shivers. She’s wearing a t-shirt the same sharp blue as the sky, with a pair of cat’s eyes and some whiskers on it.  And a tiny pair of yellow shorts. 

“Here…”  Perran reaches into his bag and pulls out a black sweatshirt. “Put this on.”

It won’t make much difference. Why Ozan doesn’t make sure people dress better for this is anyone’s guess. It’s sweltering down in the bay where the hills stand guard on three sides, cutting off the wind and bouncing heat back down to the beach. But up here, six thousand feet above the shops and bars and ice-cream stalls, the breeze is cold. And when they take off and push out over the turquoise water it’ll be freezing.   The sweatshirt reaches almost to her knees.  

“Okay, let’s get you clipped in.”  He helps her into the harness, slipping straps over her narrow shoulders, and fastening clips at her chest and legs.  He pulls them tight and checks them.   “Don’t touch these,” he says. “Very important.  Only me.”  

“You,” she says.  “Best pilot. Bird.”  She’s smiling again. 

He grins.  She’s very sweet.  And behind that goofy pair of Hello Kitty glasses her eyes are dark and earnest. 

There’s a cheer. The first pilot takes off, his red-and-blue-striped wing fluttering as it fills with air and surges off the mountain.  The passenger squeals with delight and mock terror, and her friends wave and take photos with their phones. Another brightly-coloured wing pops up, then sails off the hill to another chorus of encouraging shouts.    

“See,” says Perran.  “Easy.  Come on.”   He finds a clear spot and rolls out his wing –corn-cob yellow vivid against the dusty ground. A network of thin lines runs neatly to two fat karabiners on his harness.  He shrugs on the rig, snapping buckles and tugging at each one, double-checking they’re fast.  Then he clips the girl’s harness in front of his own, pinning her to him.  Once airborne she’ll sit comfortably between his knees, but on the ground they’re clumsy and embarrassed by the closeness.  Her hair smells of coconuts.  “Ready? When I say run, you run. Okay?” 

“Ouch,” she says, fiddling with straps digging into her thighs. 

“I know,” says Perran, “but it will be fine once we’re in the air.  You’ll sit in the harness and the straps won’t bite anymore.”  Out of the corner of his eye, Perran can see the chubby boy coming towards them with a tiny video camera.  “Okay, here we go.  Your friend is filming.  Smile for the camera.”   He tugs at his lines and deftly spreads the wing across the ground.  It catches the breeze and begins to inflate.  He loves this moment.  His wing is suddenly alive; no longer an inanimate bundle of cloth, but a breathing being.  It quivers impatiently.  “Yes, here we go my friend,” he murmurs.

He lifts the risers and the wing arcs joyfully into the air.  Perran tries to run.  The girl does not run.  She sits.  Perran takes a few steps down the slope, and staggers.   Even her small frame is too much dead weight.  He pulls the brake-lines and the wing collapses around them, disappointed.  The girl looks confused.  

“Sorry, but I can’t take off if you sit down.  You have to run until we are in the air.  Understand?  Keep running.  Don’t sit till I say.  Don’t worry, we can have another go.  Go back to the top and I’ll bring the wing.”  Perran releases her harness from his, and points back up the slope.  Temel comes to help gather up the glider, once more inert and unwieldy.  

“Come on Perran.  No time to fluff today, the wind’s picking up.”  If it gets too windy to fly Ozan will have to give refunds, and Ozan hates giving refunds.  And if you fluff your launch twice, he’ll dock your wages. They carry the wing to the top of the take-off, and Perran hitches the girl’s harness to his again.  

“Okay.  Better luck this time.  But keep running, yes?”  He cycles two fingers in front of her face.  

She smiles and nods, and blushes slightly.  “Yes, run. Okay.”  

Perran takes a deep breath and lifts the wing above their heads once more.  He feels the pressure, and runs.  And this time the girl runs too.  A few steps are all it takes and their feet are off the ground.  Perran lifts one knee to nudge the girl gently back into her seat.   And in that instant, everything changes.  

She slips.   Perran’s butterflies come crashing back.  Not fluttering but pounding their wings in panic, thumping against his insides. She’s not clipped in. She should be snuggly secured in front of him, but instead she has slipped down almost to his ankles, her legs dangling in nothingness.  One arm is caught over the front strap of the harness, her elbow bent awkwardly, her hand gripping so hard her knuckles are turning white.  He grabs for her but she’s out of his reach and in trying he just yanks the controls. The glider veers wildly towards the craggy, limestone spur. He’s never been so close to it – pale and pockmarked, every rock poised to shatter bones.   Instinctively Perran turns his body away, shifting his weight and steering the glider out to the valley.   He flails his legs, trying to loop them round her, trying to grip her somehow, anyhow. But he can’t get purchase and all he does is kick her.  She starts to cry. Perran wants to cry too. He should speak; reassure her that this often happens, that he’ll have it sorted in a jiffy. But he can’t form the words.  How is she not clipped in?   He checked.  He always checks.  Did he?  Their second take-off, did he check again? The straps were pinching her; it would be the most natural thing in the world to undo them as she walked up the hill.  Did he not check?  He forces the thought away.  Temel’s voice is loud in his head.  “Paragliding is all about making decisions. Use your brain.”  Use your brain, Perran.  Think.  It will take at least ten minutes to fly out and spiral down to the beach… can she hold on that long?  Probably not. Her fingers are going blue. He swivels his head, craning to see in every direction, searching for somewhere to land.  The mountainside is a hundred feet below, giddyingly steep and chaotically strewn with rocks.  And then he sees it.  The ocean.  That glimpse of the bay he always loves.  Of course.  He must try and make it out over the ocean. How long will it take?  Six minutes maybe? Five?  It’ll be a hell of a drop but landing in water is surely better than hitting the ground.  His heart lifts.  He’s got a plan; it’s going to be okay.  If she can just hold on.

She can’t.  She makes no sound at all as she falls.  All Perran can hear is the blood in his own ears.  He can see no clawing hands or wild eyes; just a baggy, black sweatshirt billowing slightly over a pair of thin, pale legs. For a delirious moment he thinks it’s slowing her fall like a parachute. But then it sags as it hits the ground and the legs flip up, cartoon-like, and swing to one side, pulling the sweatshirt after them. The bundle tumbles once, twice, and abruptly stops against a boulder the size of a washing machine. The legs stick out at odd angles.  

Perran circles above.  He tries to remember his last moment of happiness. The surge of dopamine as his feet danced off the surface of the earth.  But try as he might to crystalise that split second of joy, to cast it in amber like a mosquito suspended for eternity in a dollop of golden sap, he cannot hold the memory clear of the horror that came next.  The shocking jolt as the girl slipped, and scrabbled, and whimpered.  Never will he have one without the other.  

So many lives have just been cracked apart.  He thinks of Temel, standing on the mountain, watching his protégé, his friend, do the unthinkable.  Did he see the girl drop?  Perran hopes not.  He can’t bear to share such a shameful, sordid thing with anyone.  But of course people saw.  He thinks of the chubby boy with his video camera.  He’ll have more than seen, and he’ll carry his terrible souvenir home to the girl’s family.  Perran never even asked her name.  He thinks of his father.  He remembers how nervous he was telling Baba about his job as a paraglider pilot.  He’d braced himself for that disappointed frown, the one he used to get when he’d dropped a grade at school or kicked a football through a neighbour’s window.  The other boys got the belt but Baba never did that.  Just frowned and smoothed his big moustache, and shook his head.  Sometimes Perran thought he’d have preferred a beating.  But when he broke the news that he wouldn’t need the second-hand taxi Baba had saved up for because he’d got a job flying tourists off the mountain Baba didn’t frown; he threw his arms around his son and gave him a hug that squeezed the air out of his lungs.  Then he kissed his cheeks and said he was so proud. “My son, flying like a bird… who would think? Who would think.”  Perran knows he can never again hold his father’s gaze. He looks out to the horizon. There’s no trace of the morning’s cloud and it’s impossible to tell where the sky stops and the water begins.  He leans to the left, curling his glider around to face the ocean, and starts flying out to sea. 

****

A year to the day later, a taxi rounds a bend and the young couple in the back get their first view of the bay.  The water is every bit as blue as the brochure and out of the perfect, cloudless sky bright paraglider wings zigzag their way to the beach. 

“Oh my god Jules, we gotta have a go at that.  It’s gotta be so awesome to see the world like a bird!” 

“You know my favourite bird?” says the driver.

“I’m sorry?” 

“Albatross.”  

“Uh-huh,” says the girl, crossing her eyes at her boyfriend, who whistles softly and taps his temple.

“Albatross can fly forever. Never comes to land.”

“Um… I’m not sure…”  The girl catches sight of the driver’s face in the rear-view mirror, and reads such sorrow in it that the smile is wiped from her own.  

“Albatross flies for joy and finds all he needs up there. He sees the world below and knows he cannot be happy down here.  Albatross flies forever.  My son,” the taxi driver says, laying his hand on his chest, “flies like albatross.” 

Hannah Hoare is a television producer specialising in natural history filmmaking.  She began writing fiction her mid-forties and her short stories have been published online by Molotov Cocktail, FlashBack Fiction and The Cabinet of Heed. She lives in the chalk downs of Wiltshire, in southern England

by Conor Lynch

The new washing machine had arrived two weeks earlier. Mary still marvelled at how handy it was compared to the old manual one. She was the talk of the women’s guild and only Rosie O’ Shaughnessy had “an automatic” before any of them. The prize bonds had yielded Mary a small windfall, nothing too big mind, but enough for a “few luxuries” was how Mary put it to Mrs. Reilly in the Post office.

“Mam, Tex keeps chewing on his lead”.

“Not now Tommy. I’m talking”.

Tommy, her only child, was eight years old. He too was delighted with the news. He got the dog he had been pining after for the past year.

As they strolled back up the main street, the late September sun glistened on the roof of Pat’s new Cortina. Mary smiled as she looked at her husband, one arm resting on the door as he spoke to two of the men from the bar he had parked outside.

“And you push this one in here and you can light your cigarette,” he boasted as the two looked on in awe.

“Lads,” Mary said as she opened the back door and ushered Tommy in with the dog. The two men back pedalled hurriedly in case they should break the momentum.

“Well Mary, you’ll go up to Dublin in style on Saturday now. The pope mobile will be in the h’apenny place when he sees this,” guffawed one of the pair.

“Do you think I’m bringing this up to Dublin with all those crowds?” Pat said, starting up the engine. “Although he might be interested in the sun roof!”

With a parp of the horn, the family pulled away and made their way out the road to their house in Inishaven.

“What time does the bus leave on Saturday?” Pat asked his wife.

“We have to be outside the church at six, so you’ll be in bed early, mister, on Friday night”. Mary gave a motherly look to Tommy as she fixed her make up in the mirror of her sun visor. “Oh look! It has lights on the sides too, Pat. They think of everything these days don’t they?”

Pat smiled proudly.

“Why aren’t you coming to see the Pope, Dad?”

“Someone has to mind Tex, sure you can’t bring him with you.”

“Aw Dad, I will keep him on the lead…”

“Don’t be silly Tommy!” Mary interjected. “Your first time to Dublin, and you going to see His Holiness and you want to bring that little mutt!”

She turned to her husband.

“Now you needn’t be making any plans either, I have plenty of things for you to be doing on Saturday. We need…”

“But Mam, Tex is good…”

“Tommy, don’t interrupt me again. I told you earlier. Pat, you need to start doing a bit more exercise too. If you keep driving around everywhere like Lord Muck, you will end up like Rosie’s husband. Fat and fifty!”

Pat pursed his lips. He already had plans for Saturday. Half the village was going to Dublin to see the pope but he was off to Lough Cregagh to do some fishing in peace, now that there would be a mass exodus. This was the only exercise he had in mind.

They arrived back to the house and had only entered into the kitchen when Mary started to issue instructions to Pat as to how the new washing machine operated.

“So you put everything in, not too much now. Then you put this dial to ‘H’…’J’ if it’s only cottons, and ‘I’ if you are doing the quick cycle.”

“Jaysus Mary, it’s very new-fangled.” Pat argued, scratching his ear. “Could you not do it on Friday?”

“No, Pat, I need to do all these sheets when we are all out of the house, we’ll get more done. I haven’t even shown you where to put the washing powder yet. Now you push this button for the energy saving and then…”

“Mam, will I be able to bring Tex back something from Dublin?”

“Not now, Tommy, I’m talking.”

Pat rubbed Tommy’s hair. He gave his son a knowing wink: don’t worry, Tex will be fine.

Tommy smiled as he tickled his pet under the chin, and laughed as the puppy licked his master’s cheeks.

“Pat, are you listening?” Mary stood with her hands on her hips, an incredulous look on her face.

“I’ll work it out, love. Sure if all else fails I can go up to the drapery and buy more sheets.” He took his paper and made his way to the sitting room laughing quietly to himself.

Mary was up early on Saturday morning. She needed to make sandwiches and tea for the bus, and she had promised to do a flan for the guild for when they got to the Phoenix Park. How she was going to carry it for the next six hours was beyond her, but she hadn’t time to worry about that now,  as she sprinkled chocolate flake over the peaches and cream decorating the flan base.

She looked at the basket of washing on the floor. Reluctantly, she gave in, sighing to herself. Careful not to crease her woollen grey skirt she had bought in McElhinnys sale (Rosie always shopped there), she loaded the sheets into the washing machine. She put the washing powder into the drawer, set all of the buttons and left the door ajar. She would leave Pat a note. All he would have to do would be to shut the door and hit button “A”.

When she had finished in the kitchen, she stepped up the hallway, careful not to wake her sleeping husband. She entered Tommy’s room and carried him back down the hall to the kitchen where she had neatly left out his Sunday clothes. As he woke groggily, she smiled and kissed his forehead.

“We will have a great day, today, love. And we can have a grand chat on the bus.”

“What about Tex? I’ll miss Tex.”

“Don’t be silly, we’ll be home tonight, you can see him then.” She patted his bum and handed him his shirt. “Now, you put this on and I will get you some porridge. We have a long day ahead of us.”

Within the hour, they were standing outside the church along with forty others. Tommy held the flan in front of him, petrified in case his freezing fingers would drop it.

Mary was livid. Even in the darkness of the early morning, she could see Rosie walking up and down, greeting everyone in her new grey woollen skirt. Straight out of the McElhinneys sale. Mary knew Rosie had seen it on her at mass on Sunday and was sure she did it to spite her.

“My hands are cold, Mam.”

“Not now, Tommy, not now love.”

Tommy winced, but smiled to himself when he thought of Tex and how Pat would do that thing that Mary didn’t know about.

“Here’s the coach!” someone cried as the bright lights on the front of the bus lit up the main street and a buzz of excitement whittled through the assembled crowd. People chatted and whispered, all respectful of anyone who might still be in bed in the nearby houses of the village. Although as far as Mary was concerned, Pat was the only one left.

“Now Tommy, leave that with me, young man,” said Father O’ Malley, as he took the cake from Tommy and left it high on one of the shelves behind his seat.

Mary thanked him and sat down at a window seat. Tommy slipped into the seat behind her with a boy from his class, leaving the aisle seat beside Mary free.

It was inevitable, she supposed, that Rosie came and sat beside her.

“Mary! How are you? It’s great you’re looking. Isn’t it all very exciting?”

Mary tried not to look at the skirt on Rosie but her expression gave her away.

“Look at us, Mary,” said Rosie, rubbing Mary’s thigh. “Wouldn’t you think there was only one type of skirt in the country?” She howled with laughter, much to Mary’s annoyance. and Mary reflected on how it would be a very long day indeed.

* * *  

“Come on Tex. Time for your run.” Pat laughed to himself as he tucked into a rasher sandwich. “You’ll be the fittest dog in the town, and sure we don’t even have to leave the house!” Pat got up from the table and went to the washing machine. 

“Ah sorry soldier…not today. Look what’s she’s done.”

* * *

“But Mary, you couldn’t live without the hostess trolley. It’s absolutely amazing for parties; they are all the rage in England”.

Mary was being outdone and bored to tears as Rosie laboured on about her latest appliance. Mary had foolishly mentioned the new washing machine and was now living to regret it.

“Sure I might even have John Paul and the bishop back later for dinner!” Rosie laughed.

The bus stopped after two hours driving and when everyone re-boarded after a toilet break, Mary motioned for Tommy to sit beside her. Anything to rid her of the boredom of Rosie.

“So do you like the bus?” she asked her son as she looked in the mirror of her compact to apply lipstick.

“It’s not as nice as the one we had for our school tour. That one had music.”

“You couldn’t have music today, Tom. It’s too holy a day for that.”

“I hope Tex is ok.”

Mary threw her eyes to heaven.

“He’ll be fine, your dad will look after him,” she said as she inspected a blemish on her nose. “He better get my washing done.”

Tommy was sniggering.

Mary looked at him and back into her mirror, to see was the blemish that noticeable.

She looked back at Tommy. “What’s so funny?”

“Sometimes when you are out, Dad does something funny with Tex.”

Mary looked bemused. “What does he do?”

Tommy sniggered again.

“Tommy?”

“It’s to do with the washing machine.”

With the mention of her beloved new appliance, Mary sat sideways in her seat facing her son.

“What do you mean, Tommy? My washing machine.”

Tommy looked nervous now and was starting to regret what he had started.

“Tommy?”

Tommy shuffled in his seat.

“Well you know the way you keep going on about Dad going for a walk with the dog and exercising?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Dad lets Tex into that drum thing and Tex runs around it like a hamster. It’s really funny.”

Mary wasn’t laughing.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” It was loud enough for Rosie to hear from the seat behind.

“No Mary, I don’t think they’ll be here today…it’s just the pope I believe.” She fell back into her place in kinks of laughter.

Mary was in shock. Her new washing machine. What the hell was he thinking? However, the nightmare was only beginning as Tommy finished his tale.

“What Dad doesn’t know though is this.” Tommy continued, inspired now with his story telling. “Tex gets tired and when you leave the clothes in the drum, Tex jumps in and falls asleep. He looks so cosy!”

“Tex, Tex…Where the hell is he?” Pat was in a hurry to get out. He picked up the note from the table.  Holding the page at arm’s length, with his fishing rod in one hand, he read the note Mary had left.

“Sufferin’ Jesus! Stop the bus!”

Father O’Malley jumped up in disgust. “Mary please! Today of all days!”

“Stop the Jaysus bus!”

* * *

Pat crumpled the note and threw it in the bin.

“Where is that stupid dog? Ah to hell with him!” He shook his head, picked up his fishing basket and before leaving, he slammed shut the door of the washing machine and pushed button ‘A’. 

Just as Mary had instructed him to do.

Conor Lynch is an Irish writer living in Dublin. He has been published in the Irish Independent, Woman’s Way and Irelands Own. He has also self-published five novels. However, his love for the short story will always win through. www.conorlynch.weebly.com

by Amanda M Grant

I do not know why I have such a fancy for this little café. I have never been there, of course, and shall never visit in person unless my present circumstances take a dramatic and unexpected turn. But still I dream. The librarian here let me have a copy of its menu, which she downloaded off their website. I was so taken with it that, on my next allocated library slot, I persuaded her to print copies of their photo gallery too. Alas, prison resources do not stretch to a colour printer, but I can flesh out the details in my imagination. I spend many an hour poring over these pages, limited as they are, wondering which cake or pastry I would choose first and whether I might plump for a pot of their Earl Grey or be more adventurous from their Italian coffee options.

It was in a similar café that I met my first husband, the dull but affluent Roger. After some considerable research, I’d discovered the quaint Café Du Coin on a leafy side-street in the town of Harrogate. My practice, in those days, was to visit the café on a daily basis alternating between mid-morning and early afternoon. It soon became apparent that the morning crowd was generally of a more promising nature, new retirees with time on their hands and money in their pockets. The afternoon visitors were less prepossessing: harassed businessmen; nouveau riche housewives; precocious school students. I switched to mornings only, ingratiating myself with the café owner, Nazim, who took to reserving the window-seat table for me, the one which gave the best views onto the small park opposite. And it was from that very table I spied Roger, lumbering across the grass, his large, black umbrella inverted in the wind. He twice attempted to rectify the situation but to no avail. And thus, he entered the café sopping wet and in desperate need of a table. As luck would have it, Café Du Coin was exceptionally busy, it being a Friday before the Bank Holiday Weekend. I flashed a warm and welcoming smile in Roger’s direction, ostentatiously removed my handbag and other belongings from the empty seat opposite me and beckoned him over. How easy it all was. I knew Roger’s type, of course, I’d taken out various subscriptions to golfing magazines, the Financial Times, The Lady. Over the course of the next few weeks, I slowly and skilfully reeled him in until, shortly before Roger’s seventieth birthday, the grand proposal was made. And, oh, how happy he was at my eager acceptance, how jubilant to think he’d landed the perfect catch. I allowed him that fantasy at least.

Life with Roger was as tedious as one would expect, but he was a man of impeccable manners, good taste and an open wallet so I had little to complain about. We lasted a good six months before I began to hatch my plans for his demise. He’d altered his will in my favour almost upon our return from honeymoon, a tiresome week in St Andrews, and I calculated that an unfortunate incident in the second half of the year would be unlikely to draw much attention. And thus it was that ‘Operation Stair Carpet’ was unleashed on my unsuspecting soon-to-be former husband.

Over a period of weeks, I’d loosened the stair rod on the top of the landing to such a degree that the carpet provided the perfect trip hazard. On the day of Roger’s decease, I’d prepped the kitchen for my alibi and arranged several books and files of Roger’s on the top few stairs to further impede his descent. A slight nudge from behind sent him clattering down the Axminster, leaving him in an unceremonious heap at the bottom. Timing was the key to the next step of the plan. I stepped over my dying husband and headed to the kitchen where I proceeded to bake the two batches of drop scones I’d prepared earlier. Once they were out of the oven and on the cooling racks, I checked that Roger had breathed his last then called for an ambulance. How awful I felt, I told the nice ambulance driver, and to think I was busy baking in the kitchen and didn’t hear the accident. He passed me more of the sickeningly sweetened tea he’d made, and I finished off my warm scone, rich with melted butter.

My second husband was even easier to trick. I’d studied the obituary columns for a few months before settling on the recently widowed Gianni Mancini, owner of Mancini’s hotel and restaurant chain. Gianni resided at his main hotel in Richmond-upon-Thames. I discovered he breakfasted in the hotel’s tearoom between nine and ten each morning. By now, I had the money to look at ease and dress the part for such a prestigious venue, and I was soon inveigling myself into Gianni’s affections. We honeymooned in Venice, enjoying the delights of afternoon tea at Caffè Florian each day before taking a gondola back to our hotel. Dinners were always splendid affairs – Gianni was a brilliant food and wine expert – and I truly believe we could have been happy together had it not been for his annoying snoring and roving eye.

On our return to Richmond, I began to put my next plan into action. ‘Operation Freezer’ was a simple affair with minimum advanced planning. Three weeks before his departure date, I persuaded Gianni to host a party to celebrate our first anniversary. The guest list was considerable and the menu ambitious. Would it be a good idea to store our food in the unused walk-in freezer in the basement, I’d pondered aloud. Keep the contents a secret lest light-fingered members of staff helped themselves from our supplies. And so it went, until the fateful night I’d marked on my calendar. Gianni and I dined late in his suite, finishing our meal with copious glasses of a particularly good port. I suggested, apropos of nothing, that I would like nothing more than to show him the latest item I’d purchased for the party. The frozen centrepiece, a pair of ice swans, had arrived earlier and I so wanted him to see it. How easily the lies came then. The delivery had been made to the rear doors when the staff were in their daily briefing. I hadn’t even unwrapped it. How romantic to share this moment together. 

Gianni entered the freezer first, eager to get the unveiling over so he could go to his bed. I lingered by the door, ostensibly ensuring it didn’t close accidentally, and urged him to go to the large box at the very back. 

Breakfast in bed arrived at ten the next morning. The girl who brought it asked if I knew where Gianni was as he hadn’t shown up at his usual table. I suggested we check in his room where, unsurprisingly, the detritus from last night’s meal still lay and there was no sign of Gianni. A thorough search of the hotel threw up no clues until the assistant manager suggested we check the basement freezer as it had been turned on in recent weeks. How grateful I was for his intervention. And there we found poor frozen Gianni, curled up in a ball like a baby. I almost felt sorry for him.

The police asked the usual questions of me and the hotel staff, but it was plain to all that my drunken husband had simply locked himself in the freezer. A terrible accident. I was inconsolable and retreated to our house in Berkshire. 

Life was comfortable and I really didn’t intend to marry again for fortune’s sake. Until Francis accosted me in the small, waterside tea-room I often frequented. I looked sad, he said, no-one should eat alone on a beautiful day. Francis was dashing, I admit, with the loveliest of lilting Irish accents. He owned a large family pile by the coast in Galway. We could go there after the wedding, he’d promised. 

But there was no stately home, no Irish fortune. I’d been duped. Hoist with my own petard, so to speak. I’m of the firm opinion that murder is best done in cold blood. No element of passion, no heat of revenge should spoil the cool calculation, or mar the detailed plotting. And that was my undoing. In haste, I sought a fitting end to my mendacious husband. How grateful I was that my nemesis had his own Achilles’ heel: a nut allergy. He barely tasted the almonds in the cake I’d made as the thick, cloying icing he liked hid the flavour so well. How red his face went, how large his eyes. I turned away in the last minutes, unable to bear the weight of his accusatory stare. I phoned the ambulance almost immediately, as any wife would. 

The ambulance was accompanied by a police car, which was, they assured me, common practice. I feigned the usual shock and disbelief, but something in the young sergeant’s eye alerted me to potential trouble. The post-mortem was conclusive: anaphylactic shock. Again, I showed my incredulity that such an event could occur under my roof. I was required to attend at the police station to answer a few questions. My mobile phone and computer were taken for analysis.

Apparently, we all leave a vast digital footprint behind us as we go. And mine was, to say the least, revelatory. I’d researched how long it took for a body to freeze to death, the incidences of fatalities by falling down the stairs … nut allergies. My fate was sealed.

So here you find me, sharing my cell with the bovine Sandra, who talks of nothing much of worth. I’ve learnt about her Gary and his psoriasis, how her Cheryl has another one on the way, what’s happening in her favourite soap operas. She sits opposite me at our little table for two, slurping her instant noodles from their plastic pot. The room is suffused with the smells of rank curry sauce and Sandra’s cheap deodorant. And I imagine myself back at Florian’s with an Aperol spritz listening to the orchestra play Verdi and Puccini, or I look again at the photos of the little café, picturing an encounter between myself and an unsuspecting prey. Ah, but it can never be.

Sandra found religion recently, which makes her presence in our shared cell an intolerable burden on me. It is not so much the hymn singing, though she is as tuneless as one would predict, but more the relentless talk of repentance and guilt. Sometimes, at night, she lies on the bunk below muttering prayers for her family and, though she assumes I can’t hear her, for me. I wonder if I’d miss Sandra’s company. The days would drag, perhaps, if I were sharing with one of the surlier types, and I would certainly not wish to be paired with someone of an aggressive bent. At least I have my library days, my books, my little café dreams.

But then Sandra kneels by her bunk, rolls of fat spilling out over her prison-issue sweatpants, and I feel the bile rising. She pulls her greasy hair into a ponytail, fastening it with a cheap elastic band. Then she reaches for the rosary she stows in a sock under her pillow, clutches it in her grubby little hands, and turns to me imploringly.

‘Is it all right if I pray aloud, Mary?’

She begins, ‘Our Father,’ and I watch her rolling the beads between her fingers as if her life depended on it. Then she clasps her hands in prayer, fingers pointed to the heavens. Stumpy fingers for one so large in girth. They remind me somehow, disgustingly, of mushrooms.

Nottinghamshire-based Amanda M Grant has been writing short stories for competitions since completing her MA in Creative Writing in 2019. She should be working on her novel, but the challenge of writing to tight deadlines with imposed genres is what motivates her. Her interests include WW1, the Victorians and psychopathy, all of which find their way into her writing.

by Bruce McDougall

Jack stopped his tractor at the end of a runway to watch a salvage crew pulling an airplane from Lake Ontario. Working at the Island Airport in Toronto, he’d been driving up and down the dry fields that grew between the runways, pulling a gang of rotary mowers over the grass. He’d stopped on the seawall when he’d seen the nose of the plane emerging from the calm water.

It was the third week of August, Friday morning. The weather had been sunny and warm for three days. Planes had landed all day on Thursday, most of them flown by doctors who had come to Toronto from the United States to attend a weekend convention. They called themselves The Flying Doctors. Cynical and convinced of his own righteousness, Jack thought the name captured the essence of the medical profession and pilots alike: all training, no imagination.

The first ones to arrive had parked their planes in two parallel rows on the patch of pavement in front of the terminal building. By the afternoon, the rows of Cessnas, Pipers, Mooneys and Beechcrafts extended off the paved apron and into the fields, tied down with ropes attached to steel anchor bolts in the ground. When Jack arrived for work this morning, the airport looked like the crowded parking lot of an exotic shopping mall. Most of the shiny planes were painted red and white or blue and white. A few were green and white. Three or four adventurous medical pilots had painted their aircraft a solid shade of yellow or red. One had no paint at all on its polished aluminum surface. It belonged to a dermatologist from Cincinnati who specialized in facelifts, and it stood out among the crowd like Elton John at a Mennonite funeral.

Late yesterday afternoon, after Jack had gone home at the end of his shift, a twin-engined Beechcraft, with a pilot and two passengers aboard, had circled over the lake to make its approach for a landing. As the plane banked, its wingtip had clipped the surface of the lake. The plane had cartwheeled a couple of times until it settled, upside down, about fifty yards off the end of the runway, then sank, leaving a shimmering puddle of gasoline on the water. The plane had been leased from a company in Ohio. The authorities hadn’t yet released the names of the pilot and his passengers.

A detachment of rescuers from the Harbour Police had arrived within minutes. As darkness fell, they’d shone spotlights across the surface of the water. Finally, finding no survivors, they’d gone home. This morning, two scuba divers from the Harbour Commission had located the wreckage in the murky water that surrounded the airport. They’d attached an iron hook to the wheel assembly under the nose of the plane, and a crane on a barge was pulling it up from the mud.

With the nose above the surface, two Harbour Policemen in a power boat edged up beside it and signaled to the operator to stop the crane while they draped a tarpaulin over the cockpit. When they pulled away, the operator turned on the engine. Out of the water, the plane dangled like a gigantic trinket on a keychain, swaying gently as water gushed through jagged holes in its crumpled fuselage. When the torrent slowed to a trickle, the diesel engine growled, and the crane pulled the battered Beechcraft toward the waiting arms of a worker named Bob. Wearing drab coveralls and thick leather gloves to protect his hands from the sharp edges of the torn metal, Bob guided the plane toward the barge until it came to rest with its wingtip extending over the gunwale. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of junk, Jack thought.

 “You can’t stay there, buddy.”

Jack turned in his seat to see a short man in a brown suit and sunglasses walking toward him across the grass. He had white skin with freckles, the kind that burns easily in sunlight, and his limp reddish hair draped his scalp like coloured cellophane on an Easter egg. Jack wondered why the man hadn’t worn a hat. He moved deliberately without urgency, keeping his eyes focused on the barge, hardly glancing at Jack. Jack relaxed. The guy wasn’t giving him an order, just passing along some information. Behind him, a pickup truck had pulled a flatbed trailer onto the edge of the grass and was turning so it could back the trailer up to the seawall. Jack looked back at the barge. It was chugging slowly toward shore, pushing a ripple of water ahead of it as it ploughed over the flat surface of the lake. It would take a couple of minutes to position itself so the crane could transfer the wreckage to the trailer. Jack waited until the guy in the suit stood beside him.

“You need a hand?” he said.

“Nah,” said the man.

Jack pulled a pack of Pall Malls from the breast pocket of his coveralls and reached down to offer one to the guy in the suit. “No filters,” the guy said. But he took one anyway, lit it, then held his lighter up for Jack. They both looked back at the barge.

“Any idea what happened?” Jack said.

“Must have lost the horizon,” the man said.

“How do you lose the horizon?” Jack said.

He’d never flown a small airplane, never even sat inside a cockpit. Flying seemed like a lot of effort for not much reward. The birds that chased him across the fields did it with a lot more grace and a lot less noise.

Airplanes didn’t interest him, but the lake did. He’d felt drawn to it for most of his life. Returning for vacations from Boston, where he’d gone to school for four years, he’d felt his spirit stirring as the highway took him along the lakeshore and into the city, as if he were revisiting an old friend.

He knew that his attachment to the lake had something to do with his father. When Jack was a boy, his father and mother had separated. About a year later, in late October, his father’s body was found floating in the lake. His mother, wanting to save her son from pain, had discouraged Jack from grieving. She’d told him one morning that “your father is dead”, then sent him off to school as if nothing untoward had happened. After that, his she’d said nothing more about his father’s death, and Jack figured it was no big deal. Nor did he think much about the way he felt when he made occasional visits to the waterfront. He’d found several places that were as quiet and peaceful as a cemetery, where he could sit on a bench and look across the water to the horizon. He felt calm when he did this, relieved momentarily of his anxiety, which had become the background music of his life.

Jack had begun working at the airport after he’d graduated from Harvard. He intended to make some money before he went to law school in the fall. But now he’d abandoned law school, twice, and walked away from several steady jobs returning each time to his job at the airport. He’d now worked there, off and on, for six years, and he’d begun to wonder if he’d ever leave. He was almost thirty, and his future didn’t look so promising as it had when he’d barely entered his twenties.

He knew that his chronic anxiety and crippling self-doubt had something to do with growing up without a father, but he figured he’d just have to accommodate those conditions like a man with a withered leg or a chronic disease and try to avoid situations and people that might aggravate them or cause him to suffer. Spending his days alone on a tractor, singing songs to the birds as he looked out at the slate-grey lake, had so far become his best option.    

To get to work every morning, Jack rode his bike through the city streets and under an elevated expressway, teeming with rush-hour traffic, to a ferry dock by the lakeshore. From there, Jack could have thrown a baseball across the channel to the airport. Just before seven, with the sun rising over the harbour, he and a few other passengers boarded a four-car ferryboat called the Maple City. The crossing took less than a minute, but once he reached the other side, Jack felt as if he’d entered another world.

In a small white house beside the ferry dock, the lighthouse keeper named Orville lived with his wife, whom Jack had never seen. Three times a day, Orville rode his bicycle along the concrete seawall to the lighthouse at the far end of the island, where he puttered around with a clipboard and took readings from the instruments inside. On Saturdays, he took his bike on the ferry and rode into the city to buy groceries at the Ukrainian vegetable shops and Hungarian delicatessens on Queen Street. Sometimes he returned to the island with a cylinder of kilbassa sausage wrapped in brown paper, walked over to the coffee room and cut slices off the sausage with his pocketknife to give to the airport workers who gathered there during their breaks.

Workers at the airport wore shapeless coveralls made of drab khaki twill, with the yellow and black insignia of the city’s Harbour Commission stitched across the breast pocket. In his coveralls, Jack felt anonymous and inaccessible, especially when he drove on his tractor to the far reaches of the airport near the chain link fence that kept visitors away. But even slouching around the airport with a lawn mower or a can of paint in his hand, he drew little attention. He was a humdrum maintenance man, paid to do a humdrum job.

Jack spent most days on the tractor, pulling a team of bush mowers through the acres of long grass that grew between the runways. Away from the world and its confusion, singing songs under the incessant din of the tractor’s engine, followed by a flock of swallows that dived after bugs roused by the mower from the grass, he felt as safe as he would ever feel in his life.

“Clear day. Not much wind,” said the guy in the suit. “Twin engines.” He shrugged. “Pilot must have lost the horizon. Can’t think of any other reason to drop her in the water.”

Jack looked across the open water to the line that distinguished the metallic blue of the lake from the robin’s egg blue of the sky. The line seemed pretty obvious to him. “How do you lose the horizon?” he said again.

“You don’t fly a plane?” the guy said. He looked up at Jack.

 “I put gas in them,” said Jack.  “That’s about it.”

The guy gestured with his right hand, palm down, toward the lake. The burning tip of his cigarette stuck up between his first and second fingers. He drew a small arc through the air. Jack noticed the freckles and fine hairs on the back of the guy’s hand, the Timex watch on a cheap gold bracelet around his wrist, short fingers, nails trimmed or bitten down to opaque stubs.

“To a pilot banking over a lake,” the guy said, “the colour of the sky can look the same as the colour of the water. He has to use his instruments to judge his altitude. Sometimes a pilot doesn’t trust his altimeter or forgets to adjust it.”

He turned his hand to the left until the tip of his cigarette was pointing back at him. “He looks through the windshield. Lets the wing drop. Flies too close to the water.”

He rotated his hand and snapped it upward. Then he shrugged. He took a final puff of his cigarette and flipped the butt toward the seawall. “I’m not saying that’s what happened here,” the guy said. “But it happens.”

“You fly?” Jack said.

“Used to,” the guy said.

“You with the police?” Jack said.

“MOT,” said the guy. He nodded toward the green pickup truck. The words Ministry of Transport were painted in red on the door. The barge had reached the seawall and was bobbing gently in its own wake. “Thanks for the cigarette,” he said.

Jack started the engine of the tractor. He turned and pulled the mowers slowly away from the seawall, then looked behind him. The guy in the suit was turning his right arm in a small circle at his hip, signaling to the crane operator to start unloading his cargo.

The steel cable attached to the airplane went taut. The worker on the barge stood beside the fuselage with one gloved hand on the plane’s remaining wing. The cable jerked slightly. The tarpaulin slid from the cockpit, landing in a heap on the floor of the barge. Before the worker could pull up the tarp again, the plane rose awkwardly into the air. Inside the plane, Jack could see two men and a woman staring through the windscreen like tourists on a carnival ride. He turned his attention back to the expanse of grass in front of him, reluctant to intrude on their privacy, rested his forehead on the steering wheel and drove blindly forward, drowning in a torrent of sadness and grief over people he’d never met in his life.

Bruce McDougall has worked in Toronto as an airport attendant, bouncer, taxi driver, social worker, newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He’s published two collections of short stories (Porcupine’s Quill), a novel (Owl Canyon Press), a non-fiction novel about pro hockey (Goose Lane Editions) that was a finalist for a Toronto Book Award, several biographies and a dozen business books.

By Beth Yoakam

Both feet firmly planted, my right arm crept forward so slowly the muscles in my shoulder cramped. The skin on the horse’s neck twitched and rippled with nervous energy. The heat from her coat reached the palm of my hand even though it was still six inches away. I blocked out the sounds of my brothers in the field and Pa spitting tobacco a mere ten feet away, and listened for the filly’s cadenced panting and matched my breath to hers. Pa said horses could smell fear, and he’d taught all of us to never show hesitation around any animal. I can’t remember a time in my life when horses did not surround me. At seventeen I’d broken six already. It’s called breaking, and it starts this way: training the horse to abide human companionship until they gain your trust. Pa brought this filly back from the auction last week and already she was letting me touch her without running off.

Out of the corner of my eye, Pa lifted his bulk off his lawn chair and limped his way over.

“That’s enough for today, son. Tomorrow let’s see if she’ll tolerate a blanket.” At the sound of his voice, the horse trotted off toward the far end of the corral. “She’s a fine horse. Still needs a name. How about Maple?”

Knowing full well this filly’s name wasn’t up for discussion, I nodded in agreement. Pa had named all thirty-five of our horses. I’d even heard him persuade a few of our boarders to change the name of their own while convincing them it was their idea.

As I headed toward the barn a slight breeze danced through the corral. When the filly stopped, the cool air lifted her forelock slightly. The wind carried with it the scent of barn, body odor and decay. Even though the doctors warned Pa that the open wound on his leg would never heal unless he got his sugar under control, he didn’t change his habits. Each night after dinner, he silently followed Momma into the bathroom where she would slather his leg with a thick salve and replace the dressing.

That summer, my body went through the motions of helping Pa run the farm, my mind preoccupied with my future. Next month I’d turn eighteen and in September I’d start my senior year in high school. While all the other kids my age were growing their hair long and looking for ways to drop out, I wanted to settle down, marry Sherri and get a job at one of the Big Three. I longed for a life in which work and home were separate and where I didn’t need anyone’s permission to make decisions. And as long as my draft number eluded the lottery, that’s exactly what I intended to do. The war in Vietnam was ramping up and Momma prayed long and hard that it would end before it took any of her sons. As the oldest, I’d be the first to go.

As I went about the business of cleaning up the tack room, Pa announced he was taking Momma South to visit family. When I asked who would tend the horses, he tilted his head to the right and wrinkled his nose at me.

“Why, you will, Marcus,” he said. He always swallowed the end of my name so that it came out in one syllable. “We’ll bring the girls. But it’s you, your brothers and Russell. You’ll be in charge, not Russ. He’s not family.”  

Everyone knew Pa still held a grudge after Russ disobeyed him and called a vet about a colicky colt. The fact that the vet said the phone call saved the horse’s life made no difference.

I gazed out toward the back of the barn, trying to rearrange the look on my face. I could feel his eyes on me.

“We’ll leave Wednesday. Be back Monday,” he said.

That night I lay awake, practically bursting with excitement. None of us had ever been alone on the farm overnight without Pa and Momma. Now we’d be alone for six full days and five nights. My skin tingled and twitched like the green horses I worked with. A list of tasks tumbled through my mind. Keeping the horses fed and exercised, mucking the stalls, repairing equipment – my brothers and I already managed all that day-to-day stuff. The calendar, money and people were Pa’s job. But I’d watched and heard enough to know what to do.

The Saturday before they left, I told Pa that Midnight looked like she was ready for new shoes. I let him know so he could call up Johnson, our farrier, to come in that week. As soon as the words dropped out of my mouth, it hit me that I would be the one dealing with Johnson, a task Pa always managed.

“You’ll have to deal with Johnson.” It was as if Pa was reading my mind. “Be sure you watch him closely and mark down what time he gets here and all that he does so he don’t overcharge us. That man would steal from his own momma if he thought he’d get away with it. And send one of the boys to get whatever tools he forgets in the truck. Don’t let him go himself. He keeps a bottle in the glove compartment.”  

That Johnson drank or had tried to rip us off was news to me. I didn’t bother asking why Pa would play poker every Saturday night with a man he couldn’t trust.

Wednesday morning, I woke before six to see them off. The sky teetered on the edge of night and day. All the stars had burnt off, but the outline of the moon remained while the sun peeked out from the horizon. Stepping out onto the yard between the front porch and the driveway, my feet slipped on the dewy grass. It was early summer, but the air already felt thick with humidity.

“You know what to do. You got Uncle Jay’s number, call if you need us,” Pa said. “We’ll call when we get there.”

He climbed into the driver’s seat, lifting his bad leg with both hands, sliding it into position to the left of the brake pedal. The car groaned slightly under his weight.

“We’ll be there by suppertime.” Momma kissed my cheek and squeezed my shoulder. “Be careful.”

Waving goodbye, I stood in the stillness of the yard long after their taillights were visible. The yard felt bigger than before, and when I turned around, the barn cast a long shadow over the corral. The robins ran through their morning song exercises, barely pausing before they began again. After their third chorus I broke away and woke the house up.

That day felt like any other. After breakfast, we cleaned out the stalls then took care of a few boarders. The only difference was instead of turning to Pa in his seat at the barn entrance for questions, everyone turned to me. Before answering, I’d tip my hat back slightly and lean against a stall door, trying to look older.

When my brothers began sword fighting with pitchforks after finishing their barn work, I sent them out to weed Momma’s garden.

“You gotta help too. Stop acting like Pa,” said Stanley.

“I’m in charge and if he was here, he wouldn’t be in the garden, he’d be sitting here keeping watch in case somebody stopped by.”

In the background Russell murmured agreement. I turned to him, and he caught my eye and nodded.

When Johnson arrived, I had to yell for Clark three times before he bolted across the yard from the back of the property. When he ran past me, he stuck out his tongue and then stood ramrod straight in front of Johnson waiting for his assignment.

Johnson’s visit lasted a little over three hours. He replaced Midnight’s shoe and worked on two other horses. I recorded everything carefully in the ledger, trying hard to imitate Pa’s confident handwriting. I slanted my letters like his hoping that when he read it later, he wouldn’t be able to tell this was the week he left me in charge.

That night after closing the barn and locking up the house, the weight of the day fell away as I sat with my brothers watching Bonanza. The buzz of cicadas hummed through the open window. I knew if I stepped outside and away from the porch, small pinpricks of light from fireflies would greet me. If Patsy were here, she would collect them in mason jars for homemade lanterns, then cry the next morning when their lifeless bodies lie among the grass and twigs of their makeshift home. Even though she was the youngest of the family, we were close, calling ourselves the bookends of the family. I knew I’d miss her the most when I finally moved out.

The next morning, heading toward the barn with my brothers, I forced myself to think about the day ahead. My distracted mood stemmed from Pa’s call last night. When I told him everything was running smoothly, he sounded disappointed. His reaction had kept me awake. Tossing and turning, I flipped through my memories, unable to recall the last time he acted proud of anything I’d ever done. The realization made me sad and angry all at once. The distance of a few hours of sleep hadn’t changed my mind.

I unlocked the heavy chain that secured the barn door and unwrapped it from the door handles while Clark, Stanley and Robert slid open the doors. The familiar scent of sweet hay and earthy manure welcomed us. But underneath there was a slightly rank scent and the horses sounded restless. Stanley flipped on the lights.

“Where’s Queenie?”

Queenie was the oldest mare we owned. She was a gift to Momma from Pa on their one-year wedding anniversary. Every Sunday after church, Momma would take Queenie out and ride the perimeter of our forty acres.

Walking the length of the barn, I could see horses lined up in every stall except Queenie’s. I leaned forward slightly over her stall. Queenie lay on her side, the hay on the floor beside her untouched. Flies gathered around her closed eyes. I reached my hands behind me to shoo my brothers away, but it was too late.

“Is she dead?” Stan said.

“Yes, she’s gone.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, even though the word was echoing in my head.

Dead.

“Okay, listen, we still need to feed and water the others. Russell will be here soon to help.” I turned to Robert, who at  sixteen  was next in line. “You’re in charge. I have to go back up to the house.”

My mind raced. I knew I needed to call Pa but thought I should wait for Russell. He’d been working for us for years; he would know what to do. Or I could call Johnson. The knot in my gut loosened while I entertained those ideas. But only for a moment. I knew it was Pa I had to deal with.

I opened the book that listed scheduled riders and the boarders expected that day, then glanced at the cuckoo clock perched above the couch. It was seven forty-five. Having no idea how long it would take to dispose of Queenie’s body, I wasn’t sure if I should cancel the two rides scheduled for one o’clock.

I heard the screen door open. Before it slammed shut Robert was sitting in the chair opposite me.

“Did you call him? What did he say? Was he mad?” He slapped his legs, kicking up dust. Bits of hay had settled in the brim of his hat.

“No, not yet. I’m getting ready to.”

Uncle Jay answered on the second ring. I listened to him wax on about the heat and laugh about how his brother’s blood was getting too thick for Southern summers. When his laughter shifted from wheezing to coughing, I interrupted politely to ask if Pa was there.

The phone shook slightly in my hand, and I struggled to control my voice. If I didn’t panic, he’d have no choice but to react calmly. But when I heard Pa’s voice my throat tightened. I was glad he couldn’t see my face.

“Pa. It’s Queenie.” I still couldn’t say the word. Dead.

There was a lightness in his voice I didn’t expect.

“Queenie? What’s about Queenie, son?”

“She’s, she’s gone. Lying in her stall this morning. She was fine yesterday, Pa, I swear.”

“Marcus. Queenie was old. Now listen to me carefully.”

Two hours later, I watched Queenie’s body hoisted into a sling and dropped carefully onto a trailer. The driver apologized to me and my brothers before driving off, as if we had lost a family member. Across the corral Russell looked up from the fence post he was mending and tipped his hat at me.

The rest of the day my mind felt split in two: one half resting in the present, managing my brothers, the horses and customers, the other half tormented by Pa’s reaction when he returned. The whole thing wore me down. It was like a tight fist that had ahold of something inside of me and wouldn’t let up.

Early Friday morning, I woke to the sound of Momma humming in the kitchen. They must have driven all night. Pa sat with his leg elevated on the living room coffee table, the foot swollen and bruised from the drive home. When I walked by, he didn’t lift his head from the newspaper spread out on his lap. My sisters chattered away, filling us in on the latest family news. While I poured a cup of coffee, Patsy ran up and hugged me from behind. After my brothers woke and we finished eating, we headed out to the barn to work. Pa came out later and silently took his rightful spot in the seat by the entrance to the barn. It was as if nothing had changed.

Summer ended and my senior year started. Sherri and I dreamed about life after high school while Momma prayed the war would end. All the while, Pa practiced an economy of words.

The month after graduation, Sherri and I married. While we were up north on our honeymoon, they rushed Pa to the hospital. He died on the operating table having his leg amputated.

At his funeral I kept thinking about that time he left me to tend the farm. After Queenie died, I carried a heaviness around for months, waiting for him to sling the incident back in my face. Sometimes I could feel him staring at me, like he wanted to say something. But he never did.

It wasn’t until I announced I was marrying Sherri did I initiate a conversation with him. His worn face stared back at me, his head nodding. By then he was using a cane. With one hand on the cane, he swayed slightly and reached out to me for balance, and I stood still. He squeezed my shoulder and released it, then turned, and walked away. Without speaking a word, that touch released the immense weight I had carried around for months.

And now, at his funeral, I lifted my hand and touched my shoulder.

“You okay?” Sherri whispered to me.

I looked at the woman I had taken as my wife a few weeks earlier. When we took our vows, part of me still felt like a child, unprepared for what lie ahead. Like we were both kids playing house. Dropping my hand from my shoulder, I reached over and grabbed hers, responding with confidence, “I’ll be okay.”

Beth Yoakum is an avid reader known to devour nearly anything set in front of her. Recently, she set aside her reading glasses for a pen, and began writing. She has published creative non-fiction and fiction in Valiant Scribe, Epistemic Literary and Vita and the Woolf Literary Journal and has completed her first novel. Beth lives in Michigan with her husband, her four daughters and a large collection of unread books.

by Eric Diekhans

At night, the wind rose to a high-pitched whistle and thrust, hot and dry, through the cracks at the edges of my window.

“It’s the Devil trying to get in,” Bobby would tease when I was little. He’d been gone five years, working construction in Oklahoma City. But the Devil still lurked, rattling my windowpane. By tomorrow, I’d be gone too.

The morning light filtered through dust-coated glass. The wind had quieted. Our rooster crowed as I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt. The smell of bacon frying told me Mom was already in the kitchen. I padded down the hallway, slipped on my ragged Adidas, and stepped out the front door. The sweltering Texas heat backhanded me. My shoes imprinted the thin layer of rich soil blown onto our cracked wooden steps. One of my chores was sweeping the porch every morning, but I would leave it for Lacy. It would be her chore soon, anyway.

Our barn—my refuge from expectations—cast a long shadow across the withered front yard. Dad stood in the gravel driveway, the rising sun silhouetting his narrow frame. He gazed at the cornfield that stretched from our house to the highway, half a mile away. The stalks, stunted like preemies, stood three feet shorter than they should have been in August.

I crossed the parched soil and stood beside Dad. “Gonna rain today?”

He turned his sunburnt face to the cloudless sky. “Could be. We’ll see.” His skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “Packed yet?”

I nodded. I’d packed and repacked my suitcase a dozen times, but my Walmart wardrobe never got nicer. Ms. Tremont said the first thing she’d do when we got to Florida was take me shopping. For the trip, I’d chosen the baby-blue sundress I usually saved for church. I imagined myself crossing the tarmac, the wind catching the hem. I’d board Mr. Blair’s private plane and watch my hometown recede in the distance. I would be a woman, not a girl, when I returned. My heart thumped faster at the thought of crossing that threshold, but it was too late to back out. My family was counting on me.

The screen door banged closed. “Dad, Matteson, breakfast’s ready!” Lacy pirouetted on the steps in her once pink leotard faded to a dull off-white. Mom promised my sister she’d use some of the money Mr. Blair would give us to put Lacy back in dance school. My sister couldn’t be happier to see me leave.

Dad gently tugged Lacy’s blonde ponytail as we followed her into the house. She grabbed Dad’s hand. “Can I dance for Mr. Blair when he comes?”

I cringed. “He’s not coming, just Ms. Tremont.”

Dad scraped his work boots on the mat. “Mr. Blair’s a busy man, the sixty-fourth-richest man in the world, I read.” He took a last look at the struggling crops. “I could’ve gotten into the oil business. I spent the money on an engagement ring instead.” He put an arm around Lacy and me and gave us a squeeze. “It was worth the sacrifice.”

After washing up, I headed to the kitchen. Dad was already at the table, sipping from his big mug of black coffee. Mom poured herself a smaller cup and sat across from him. I took Bobby’s empty chair. Lacy dumped half a ketchup bottle on her scrambled eggs and lifted a forkful to her mouth.

Mom frowned. “Lacy, you can say grace this morning.”

Lacy pouted and put down her fork. We joined hands and bowed our heads.

“Dear God, thank you for this food, for our family, and for Mr. Blair. Be with Bobby and Matteson while they’re away.” She peeked at me and smirked. “And thank you for letting me have Matteson’s room. Amen.”

I flashed Lacy the stink eye as we passed bacon and biscuits around the table. When I reached for the butter, Lacy snagged it first, so I leaned close to her ear and sang the Olivia Rodrigo song that bore her name.

Lacy erupted. “My skin is alabaster!”

“Stop it, both of you.” Dad didn’t need to raise his voice.

Mom sighed. “Matteson, you need to set an example for your sister.”

Lacy and I turned to our plates. Everybody said I was lucky to be chosen for Mr. Blair’s mentorship program. But sometimes I wanted to be twelve again like Lacy, without the weight of responsibility to help my family.

I used to love the attention grownups gave me. “You’re so pretty,” they would say. Now, Lacy was the pretty one, and I was the smart one. Ms. Tremont assured me that with Mr. Blair’s connections, I was destined for an Ivy League school and a bright future. I would live in one of his twelve homes and receive a top-quality education while my parents were paid a stipend.

Still, my mom hadn’t wanted me to apply. She’d read about parties on Mr. Blair’s yacht. But Ms. Tremont assured her that his only focus was business and helping young people. Besides, I would have a tutor, housekeeper, and cook to keep an eye on me.

After Mom and I washed the dishes, I showered and went to my bedroom to put on clean underwear and my dress. I snapped the silver cross around my neck—the one Dad gave me when I was baptized—and turned to the mirror on my closet door, willing it to reflect a poised young woman ready to go out into the world.

I went down the hall to Mom and Dad’s bedroom and knocked softly. “Come in,” Mom called.

The air conditioner hummed in the window. Mom stood in front of her full-length mirror, her back to me, wearing ugly cotton underwear. She held up two dresses. “Which do you like best?”

A long, faded scar ran down the side of Mom’s belly. Last year, Lacy and I spent two nights eating frozen pizza and watching Disney movies while Dad took Mom to a distant hospital. They never told us why she had to have her kidney removed, but they came home with boxes of fudge and thick steaks wrapped in white paper that wafted my fears away when they sizzled on the grill.

“You okay, Matteson?”

I nodded toward the pale green dress. “That one always looks good on you.”

I waited at the front window for Ms. Tremont’s arrival. The Judsons’ abandoned house sat halfway down our road, a ghost of lives once lived. A For Sale sign hung limply in the still air. Dad mowed their lawn now and then to keep down the weeds.

La Traviata played on Lacy’s Bluetooth speaker as she carried it into the living room. She set it on the glass coffee table and twirled around the sofa and armchair, angelic in a white dress.Spinning at my side, she rose on her toes, matchstick arms waving like willows. “I want to go too.”

I returned my focus to the driveway. “Maybe when you’re older.”

Lacy’s feet settled. “I’ll miss you.”

I shrugged. “I won’t miss you.”

Lacy scowled and offered me her middle finger. I would miss teasing her.

At the far end of the driveway, dust rose. My heart raced. “She’s here!”

Dad stepped out of the bedroom, adjusting his tie. Mom hurried in from the kitchen. A big black SUV appeared. Lacy pressed her palm to the window. “Oh my god, is that a limousine?”

“Lacy,” Mom snapped, “don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”

I punched the off button on Lacy’s speaker. The vehicle stopped in front of our house, and the dust settled. The passenger door opened, and a tall, bony, middle-aged woman emerged. Her black high-heels stirred up miniature dust clouds as they touched the earth. She gripped a Gucci bag and a paper shopping tote. Her gold earrings glittered in the morning sun.

A man stepped out of the driver’s side. He was young and slick as a Ken doll. He wore a dark suit and sunglasses and carried a black briefcase.  Sweat was already beading on his forehead.

Dad opened the door. “Come on in. Mind the step.”

“Sorry, we don’t have air conditioning in the front room.” Mom held out a work-hardened hand. “I’m Matteson’s mother.”

The woman offered Mom long, manicured fingers. “I’m Linda Tremont, Mr. Blair’s assistant.” She turned to me. “And you must be Matteson.”

I nodded, fighting the desire to hide behind my mother, but Lacy had already taken that position. I shook Ms. Tremont’s hand, my palm sweating. “Nice to meet you.”

“Call me Linda.” She gestured to the man. “This is Mr. Everett, Mr. Blair’s attorney.”

Lacy popped out from behind Mom. “I’m Lacy. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She tried to sound older than she was because adults ate it up.

“Matteson wrote about you in her essay.” Ms. Tremont took in the two of us. “You’re the two most beautiful young women I’ve ever met.”

Lacy curtsied, but I only nodded, a wave of discomfort rising in me. I couldn’t compete with my sister in the looks department, but this mentorship was supposed to be about my mind, wasn’t it?

Dad coughed. “Matteson’s got her bag all packed.”

“Good. Mr. Everett has some papers for you to sign.”

Dad’s forehead wrinkled. “I thought we did that already.”

“This is just a non-disclosure agreement.” Ms. Tremont’s laugh sounded forced. “In my world, the paperwork never ends.”

“Please, sit down.” Mom gestured toward our worn brown sofa. Mr. Everett glanced around the room for a more suitable place to sit but finally sank into the springs and set his briefcase on our coffee table. Mom sat beside him while Dad took his TV-watching armchair.

Ms. Tremont pulled an iPad from her bag. “Mr. Blair will join us by Zoom as soon as he’s out of his meeting.”

Mr. Everett popped the latches on his briefcase and cracked it open, revealing neat stacks of bills—more money than I’d ever seen. Ms. Tremont scowled, and Mr. Everett quickly shut the case. Her smile returned. “Mr. Blair wants to ensure your family is cared for while Matteson’s gone.” She turned to me. “Why don’t we let them take care of the boring part? I’d love to see your room.”

My stomach tightened. My room was filled with my childhood. I didn’t want to share it with Ms. Tremont. She caught my sour expression, but her smile didn’t waver.

I mustered my beauty pageant beam. “Sure.”

Lacy grinned and plopped down in a chair. Ms. Tremont picked up the shopping bag, her high heels clicking on the scuffed wooden floor as she followed me to the back of the house.

In the quiet of my room, the wind whistled a greeting through my window. I flipped on the light. K-pop posters, a Squishmellow my old boyfriend gave me, the row of YA romance novels—they all seemed juvenile.

But Ms. Tremont focused on me, not on my room. The fabric of my Walmart dress suddenly itched. She handed me the shopping bag. “Mr. Blair picked this out especially for you. You can wear it on the plane.”

I peeked into the bag, and a burst of yellow leaped out. I pulled out a stunning, low-cut dress. The fabric was soft, and I imagined how good it would feel against my skin.

“Try it on.” Ms. Tremont sounded like a pushy salesperson.

A tight smile froze on my face. The dress wasn’t me, but Ms. Tremont would be offended if I refused to wear it.

“Go ahead,” Ms. Tremont encouraged. “Mr. Blair will be calling any minute, and I know he’d love to see you in it.”

The way Ms. Tremont looked at me made me feel like I was already undressed. I glanced at the door, wishing I could escape, but I didn’t want to make a fuss. My hands shook as I unbuttoned my dress. I’d entered and won beauty contests because we needed the prize money. I hated the way men looked at me when I went out on stage. But this was different. I was here because I earned straight A’s and wrote an amazing essay, right?

La Traviata started up again in the living room.Oh God, please don’t let Lacy be dancing for Mr. Everett.

Ms. Tremont’s smile faded. “Go on, Matteson. You’re a sophisticated young woman now, not a girl from the sticks.”

I quickly removed my dress and put on Mr. Blair’s gift, smoothing the hem and checking the mirror. A young lady I didn’t recognize looked back at me.

Ms. Tremont assessed me and gave a satisfied nod. “Mr. Everett and your parents should be done with business. Let’s go show everyone.”

She ushered me out with a wave as if I was stepping onto a stage. My stomach faltered at the scene that greeted me. Lacy danced gracefully next to the coffee table, jumping and gyrating, her face a mask of concentration and pleasure. She was a star who landed in the middle of my debut.

Ms. Tremont’s iPad was propped up against my math books. Mr. Blair’s face filled the screen. He was older than he looked in his pictures, but handsome, with wavy gray hair. His eyes followed Lacy’s every move, a slight smile on his face that made my skin crawl.

Mom and Dad sat frozen, arms by their sides, like passengers in a car about to drive off a bridge. A hand touched my back and urged me forward. My feet planted like I was fighting a stiff wind.

Panic howled through me. I couldn’t do this. I bolted, lurching to the door and out of the house. The screen banged behind me. La Traviata pursued me as I flew across the yard and ducked into the shadowy safety of the barn. I dove into the wooden box that used to hold grain to feed our pigs and pulled the cover over my head. Stillness descended around me.

The scent of stale corn coated my nostrils. I stifled a sneeze. Light stole through cracks in the wooden box. Mom and Dad would come out and find me. I needed to go back. I had to make this sacrifice for my family.

But nobody came. Minutes passed—I wasn’t sure how many. I lifted the cover slightly, intending to push it aside, but my hand fell back.

Car doors slammed. My heart stopped. An engine started up. Tires crunched on the gravel, slowly receding. I was safe, but at what cost? The corn would still wither. Our lives would dry up and blow away.

I crawled out of the box. Dirt and dust clung to the yellow dress. I stepped out of the barn into the blinding sun. The wind had picked up, rustling the cornstalks in a flaxen symphony. I opened the screen door and stepped into the living room, knees shaking. Dad was gone, but Mom was a statue perched on the sofa. The closed black briefcase rested beside her on the rug. Mom lifted her head, her face blotchy.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

Her gaze slipped past me as if I was a ghost and fixed on the screen door. The hot breeze rustled the curtains. I sensed a black hole, like when Bobby left. Lacy’s faded pink leotard was shed skin draped over the back of the sofa.

“Lacy,” I whispered, “oh, Lacy.”

The Devil caught my words and whisked them away.

At night, the wind rose to a high-pitched whistle and thrust, hot and dry, through the cracks at the edges of my window.

Eric Diekhans’ fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, the short story collection Unforgettable, and the forthcoming anthology Uncensored Ink. He is the recipient of a local Emmy for Children’s Television and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in screenwriting. Diekhans received a BA in Comparative Literature from Indiana University and an MA in Film from Northwestern.