Issue 5: Spring 2018

Fiction

Sisters of the Snow

Ronald Jackson

On a chill mid-November evening, Sister Anastasia curled into the alcove of her closet-sized room and took in the West Virginia landscape outside the window. The sun dipped below the surrounding Alleghenies, gilded the trees that crowned the nearby ridge, and sank into the Earth. A roof of leaden clouds rolled in, hastening the darkness. Anastasia cracked the window, sniffed for any scent of change in the air.

After the bright-lit corridors and atriums at Johns Hopkins, the sunless hallways of the cloister disheartened Anastasia. The scatter of books on the parlor shelves stood in contrast to the lacquered, high-walled library where she’d read modern poetry and prepared lessons as one of the junior faculty. When she needed to breathe, she slipped out to the woods, fields, and trails around the convent. They offered a sheltering solitude, away from cloistered life and worlds away from the rattle of downtown Baltimore.

The band of outcasts she’d joined kept apart from the mountain people around them. Business, health, and errands were the only reasons they left their surroundings. Only the mailman stopped by. The day Anastasia accompanied Sister Brigid to the hardware in Marlinton, clerks and customers stared shamelessly, even though the two women wore work clothes. People knew. When they left the store, Brigid said, “They think we’re witches.” Anastasia smiled under her hand.

Mother Egidia reached out to her last December: a recruitment letter, an interview at Anastasia’s Baltimore apartment, a visit to the cemetery. Egidia’s story moved her. At Saint Anthony’s parish, her pastor, Father Fagan, drove his black Grand Marquis around town, bedecked in the round-rimmed fedora he’d left in her bedroom on his last night visit. Her child was sent somewhere she’d never know.

At first, Anastasia thought Egidia might be unbalanced, but she’d kept in contact and changed her mind. When she accepted, Egidia told her not to bring anything unnecessary. She packed her poetry—Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, anthologies to cover the rest. She understood her scholarship was a reason she’d been chosen. That and her history.

On settling in, it was the vigil and the comfort of remembering together in silence that sustained her. The Sisters of the Snow began their formal watch in early autumn. Anastasia couldn’t wait till then and began a routine soon after she arrived, right after spring thaw. It didn’t matter that the snow would not come soon. She sat as if each evening by itself might bridge the distance from spring till snow.

To pass the days, she took the lead from the others. After breakfast, she helped put up the preserves and the bake the quick breads, muffins, and pies that stocked the cafés in Snowshoe and other towns. For the cold season to come, Egidia assigned her to fill the pantry and freezer with the flawed and unsold fruits of their labors. She composed new meditations, as requested by Egidia. She cut wood in the afternoon, another welcome time outdoors, although it took weeks to discover the release of swinging the axe vigorously. After dinner, she sat with the others in the front parlor and joined in the mending by the light of the pom-pom lamps. There was no radio or television, and one computer, business only. The only human interactions were their seeking eyes and murmurs floating in the semi-dark.

On this Saturday night, as blue-black clouds billowed over the mountains, Anastasia slipped under her quilt, rested her head on the pillow. She thought of one thing, one spirit, as she’d done every night for three years. Lyra. The wobble-kneed ice skating at the Pandora rink along the Inner Harbor. Six birthday parties, a seventh they’d been looking forward to. Her daughter’s four-year progress at the Montessori near Fels Point. New memories rose to the surface like bubbles in Lyra’s baths. She fell asleep in mid-fantasy.

In the still-dark of early Sunday, she awoke and resumed her reverie. At bedtime, Lyra—mother and father trailing—had marched onto the piano mat in her bedroom and toed the button that sequenced through the pre-set tunes. She always stopped at “Hot Dog Man.” They knew the words by heart, and now Anastasia sang under her breath about the woman who loved the man who ran the hot dog stand, and how she planned to be his wife.

As her voice began to quiver, a soft knock sounded on her door, and Sister Hedwig hurried into the room. Anastasia’s face stiffened as the nun knelt and whispered:

“It’s come.”

She sat up on the edge of the bed and peered into the sister’s face, as if the snow might fall straight from Hedwig’s eyes. She rushed to the window, parted the curtains, and took in the soft-falling flakes until Hedwig spoke.

“We have to go.”

“What told you?”

“It kissed the ground outside my window.”

Anastasia dressed quickly, paused at the book resting on her nightstand. It was open to the page she visited every day. Words were crossed out and written over, and the margins were crammed with scribbles. She placed the bookmark in it, the one with Lyra written on it, then picked it up and walked out. She started down the long hallway to join the other six waiting at the front door, sped up when she saw how restless they were. Egidia nodded and they moved out. A veil of snow fell before them in the darkness, and the soft hiss of snowflakes gave backdrop to the silent air. Anastasia took her place at the rear of the column.

Seven women in flowing black vestments and sturdy black shoes with block heels moved past the small pond behind the convent and toward the deep wood that lay at the bottom of the downslope. They moved by the bottled moonlight in the cloud cover and a few flashlights casting beams here and there. When the light hit just right, wet snow jeweled the folds of their habits. They stepped carefully through a stretch of criss-crossing roots, and Anastasia almost tripped. She righted herself, hurried to catch up, clenching her book tightly. When they reached the path leading in, Egidia turned and inspected them. Her eyes met Anastasia’s and she smiled grimly before resuming the procession. Sister Brigid, from East Boston, walked behind Egidia. Sister Hedwig, from Atlantic City, and Sister Lucy, from Philadelphia, walked in tandem in the middle of the file, each gripping a side handle of a small oaken crate. From the back of the line, Anastasia caught glimpses of one or the other as the line twisted and turned. They seemed like parents holding the hands of their toddler between them. Sister Ursula, from the Washington Highlands projects, walked behind them. Sister Yasmin, from San Juan, walked just ahead. Anastasia thought that the procession might look from above like a cross moving slowly through the trees.

Once in the wood, the line of nuns stepped more briskly. The snow was sparse under the canopy, and pine straw softened their footfall through the winding up-and-down trail. Then the snowfall stopped, and fragments of moonlight brightened their way intermittently until the full moon shone steadily. They vaulted a narrow runnel, water flowing fast. They slowed as a circular clearing loomed into view, covered by a silvery whiteness reflecting moonlight from above. Egidia stepped aside, and her followers positioned themselves around the circle’s edge, careful not to taint the scene prematurely. When Anastasia reached her assigned place, she breathed again and took in the moist, iron smell of the snow. She felt like a wide-eyed innocent in a fairy tale.

Egidia nodded and Brigid tinkled her little bell, the one she used to call the sisters to devotions. Hedwig and Lucy carried the crate in a straight line to the center of the clearing and placed it on the small mound they’d built there. They walked back along the same tracks to the fringe of the circle and took their places.

Brigid sounded her bell again, and each of them withdrew a single-edge razor blade from the sleeve of her habit, unwrapped it, and took a step forward into the clearing. Anastasia observed the others, then cut an L into the first layer of flesh on her forearm as she moved forward. She winced at the sting, began to swoon as the incision pulsed, but caught herself. The air filled with a thick milk of pleasure. As Anastasia moved toward the center with the others, her blood dripped, staining the snow. A wheel of dotted red spokes extended from the crate.

The blood incited a memory, the last moments of her family. Three years ago, she’d rushed out the kitchen door into the deep snow of the back yard, Lyra in hand. Her husband caught up and wrenched her around by the shoulders. She read the cold click in his face, suffered his slaps and punches, their child kicking at his legs. Lyra’s father shoved his daughter hard, and she landed facedown in the snow and cried out. The steel rake had been covered by the snow, tines up. The approaching sirens wailed, drowning Anastasia’s sobs.

She watched as each of the nuns shed her habit and undergarments. Brigid’s and Ursula’s nakedness revealed scars suffered in defense of their children. Anastasia was the last to disrobe. The cold air invigorated her, and she felt warmed as she embraced the others in turn. Egidia opened the lock on the crate and lifted the hinged lid. Resting inside were remnants of their children: a tiny hospital wristband, a yellow cotton blanket, a teal 1948 Ford model pickup, a purple velvet bag of ashes, a sparkly plastic horse, a blue satin hair ribbon, and a rainbow-shaded piano mat. Into that sepulchre, each nun dripped her blood and spoke the soft name of her innocent: Clement … Fiona … Daniel … Zoe … Claire … Gabriel … Lyra. After much silence, Egidia nodded and Brigid tinkled the bell. Yasmin retrieved antiseptic pads and large bandages from her habit and treated her own wound, then attended to the others. As Hedwig and Lucy lowered the lid, Anastasia stepped forward and stopped them. She reached into the crate and pressed the button on the mat a few times until “Hot Dog Man” began playing. The nuns stood naked and still around the crate and listened as Anastasia sang along in a barely audible voice. When it ended, Anastasia had the moment she’d been seeking. She drew back and Egidia locked the crate.

All the nuns except one focused on the top of the crate, where seven short phrases were emblazoned in smoky black. Each had taken a turn with the wood-burning tool, etching a few words from the poem their new sister had chosen. Anastasia’s eyes fixed on the open page of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. She’d revisited her paraphrase of Stevens so many times, that she navigated easily through the markups. She read the stanza slowly, with careful emphasis, the way she’d read to Lyra at bedtime. As light from the climbing sun filtered through the trees and the moon above the clearing faded into the coloring sky, the others took in each word, as if the images were carving into their oaken souls on this Sunday morning:

Somber and resolute, a ring of women
Shall chant in anguish on a wintry morn
Their ardent devotion to the snow,
Not as a goddess, but as a goddess might be,
Naked among them, with a savage strength.
Their chant shall be a chant of communion,
Out of their blood, returning to the earth;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The icy lake wherein their spirits sink,
The trees, afflicted, the echoing hills,
That keen among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the sorrowed fellowship
Of children taken early and unremitting grief.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The snow upon their feet shall manifest.

Ronald Jackson writes stories, poems, and non-fiction from his home in Durham, NC. His work has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, Firewords Quarterly, Kentucky Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Prime Number Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and other venues. Recognitions include honorable mention in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition in 2012, third prize in Prime Number Magazine’s 2014 flash fiction competition, and honorable mention in the 2014 New Millennium Writings short-short fiction competition.

The Bells

Markus Eckstein

Every time the bells ring, I know she is trying to speak to me. Jaime. How she does it, I haven’t been able to figure out yet. Maybe it’s her ghost. Maybe it’s a supernatural breeze she sends down from heaven – or wherever the hell she is. For all I know she’s in her own corporeal flesh, running through the garden and ringing the bells. It’s not as if my blind old eyes would be able to tell. However she does it, I know it is Jaime.

“What is it, Sweetheart?” I call into the darkness that doesn’t go away with the sunrise anymore. “I know you’re there.”

I smile and wait for her to speak. I listen, but all I hear is an owl hooting in the trees and my own heart lub dub-ing irregularly in my chest. 

Don’t think I don’t know what I’m listening for either. I remember her voice well, like a voicemail in my mind that I never deleted. It was like a lullaby, the faint remnant of an accent cropping up with the occasional word as an homage to her Irish heritage. 

Jaime stays quiet, so I continue making my way to the garden. I hold the line of fencing wire in my left hand, shaking it gently with every step. The bells on the line jingle as I go along, a path of sound illuminating my way. 

Jaime came up with the idea.

“We’ll buy a bunch of little bells,” she said. I still had some sight left at that time, but the macular degeneration was getting worse, and my stubborn insistence to continue smoking my daily half-pack of Marlboros wasn’t helping. “We’ll string them all around the property, and you’ll be able to get around by ringing the bells.” She smiled as she said it, and it was beautiful. I remember it clearly, because it was one of the last smiles I remember before the world became a permanent shadow. 

“And it’s not just for you,” my wife said, protecting the pride I didn’t even know I had. “I’ll need to use them, too, so I don’t trip when I’m walking in at night.” Except with Jaime it sounded like “walkin’ in at noight” and I fell in love all over again.

I let go of the line and the ringing stops. I know I’ve made it to the garden because we hung smaller bells around the perimeter – the higher pitch tells me to stop and turn to the right. I reach out and feel my tomatoes. Almost ripe. They fit nicely in the palm of my hand and have just the right amount of give when I squeeze. Jaime always said I had a green thumb. But it was never as green as her eyes. 

It’s not like God took her too early – she was seventy-nine and we had been married for fifty-six years – but I still hated Him for a while. I still do sometimes. She has been gone three years this week. Who would be surprised that I’m angry today? I need to direct these emotions at someone. 

I pick two tomatoes and place them in my bag. One would probably be enough to satisfy an old man’s appetite, but I guess I just got used to cooking for two. 

As I fiddle with the veggies – and I swear on my life that I did not touch that line of fencing wire! – the bells rang again. Just a soft jingle in the night. I perked my head up like a deer that hears a twig snap.

“Jaime? It’s okay, I can hear you. Go on, talk to me, Honey.”

She doesn’t. I’m not sure what she is worried about. She gets my attentions with the bells, but then she is too shy to speak. But shy isn’t the right word – it never was with Jaime. 

“It’s the wind, Mr. Walker,” said Tom the check-out boy at the grocery store in town. I had to tell someone. It was like I was a tomato and a worm was burrowing inside me. I had to get it out, and Tom seemed like a nice kid. “Just the wind.” I couldn’t see them, but I know his eyes were full of pity. 

I stand in my garden, straining to hear that sweet lilting voice whispering to me. The seconds turn into minutes. Silence.

After about an hour or so, I shiver and realize how chilly the night had become. I grab the line and follow the bells back into the house.

The evening proceeds as usual – usual meaning the same as every evening for the last three years. I eat the dinner I made for two, listen to an audiobook for a couple hours (right now I’m listening to Walden, and I struggle to relate to what this guy finds so fabulous about being alone), then call it a night.

My joints creak as I climb into the queen bed I once shared with my wife. I still keep to the left side, hoping that maybe this is all a dream and she will crawl in next to me like the old days – the young days, I think they should be called.

I always sleep with my window open, even in the winter, so that I can listen to the bells. So I can listen to Jaime, whatever she is trying to tell me.

Maybe it’s a warning, her trying to pass on some supernatural knowledge of a terrible fate to come, but I don’t think so. Jaime was more of an ignorance-is-bliss type. Perhaps it’s just her telling me that she loves me one last time. I like to think that’s it.

The bells start again just as I’m about to drift to sleep. I try to pick up on any pattern to the ringing – Morse code, perhaps? – but there doesn’t seem to be any particular rhythm. The jingling is as random as the breeze. 

But I can’t believe that. What would be the point of getting out of bed every morning? It’s Jaime. She is trying to speak to me, and I am going to spend every day from now until we meet again trying to figure out what she is saying.

I close my eyes. What I see doesn’t change. I listen to the bells. Like a lullaby, they sing me to sleep.

Markus Eckstein lives in Albuquerque, NM, where he is studying medicine. He enjoys drinking coffee and playing board games with his wife. His previous work has appeared in Schlock! and Liquid Imagination. 

Thirty Days

Richard Childers

“It was on my finger when I went to sleep. Swear to Christ.” I tell her.

 “Then where the hell has it walked off too?” She’s started to tear up a little and her voice cracks towards the end of her question. I can only shake my head. Even I’m tired of hearing my bullshit.

We’ve spent the entire morning searching the house for my wedding band. 14 karat gold. Had it since we recited our vows 11 years ago. Pawn Man only gave me forty bucks for it. Just about enough to get a pill. Told her it must have fell off in my sleep, must have. Didn’t sleep real good last night anyways. Tossing and turning with my back hurting, legs and hips getting knotted up too.

“Maybe it slipped off in the car. It’s got to be there. I know I had it.” I don’t think she’s listening to me. Just looks to be up and gave out. I know I got to stop. Know I got to get help. Might start going to the suboxone clinic. Might help calm the Gorilla. I hate to wait in line with those junkies though.

“I ain’t looking no more.” She says.

I wish she’d look for just a little longer. Even though I know we ain’t gonna find no ring; ain’t no ring to find. Done give it to the Pawn Man and done snorted it up. I’ll get it back though. Pawn Man give me thirty days. Thirty days and just got to pay a little interest. I’ll find something to work at by then. Maybe even good work. If I could get off these oxys I could find some real good work. Job outside doing construction, stretch my legs and walk the ache out of ‘em. Gotta find something though. Gotta do something. Hard work is a whole a lot harder when you get pill sick. Never been so thirsty in my life. Never had to shit so bad neither.

“I’m fixin’ to head out and look in the car. I just about know I’ll find it out there.” I zip my jacket up and wait for a response, but she don’t say nothing. Christmas is next week.

“You and me both know that ring ain’t in that car.” She says. She’s flipping through the channels on the TV when I shut the door behind me.

It’s cold and gray outside. The trees look like skeletons reaching up. It hasn’t snowed yet this winter, but everything’s still frozen. I open the driver door to the Honda. Its paint is peeling and I wonder how many more miles it has in it. I half sit in the doorway of the car, one leg in and one kicked out in the driveway. The car’s belly is rusted out. If the ring had fallen off while I was driving it would’ve fell straight through to the passing road. Then what would make the difference. Pawn Man or the road, we still ain’t got it.

Richard Childers is from Estill County, Kentucky and works at Berea College as the Appalachian Male Advocate and Mentor. He has had short fiction appear in Limestone Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, as well as Still: The Journal.