ESCAPE TO OREGON

The motel off I-70 stinks of piss and cleaner, but Bellamy curls up on the hard mattress anyway, mud-caked boots laced tight on her feet. 

600 miles sit between here and home. It doesn’t feel like enough. Not when she can still taste the smoke of her father’s Lucky Strikes. She wants to clamber back into Marlowe’s truck and go farther. To watch the tree-filled Appalachian Mountains turn into flat, endless plains. 

To forget the east coast exists. 

“Take off your boots,” Marlowe says, slumped on the second twin bed, her jacket and sneakers piled on the desk chair. The blue glow of her phone illuminates her face. “Stay a while.”

“Don’t want to.” 

“Stay a couple hours, then.” 

Bellamy traces the red and blue squares on the scratchy quilt underneath her, ignoring the burns scattered across the fabric. It’s like the one her grandmother made when she was little. She remembers watching her sit at her massive sewing machine, back hunched, feeding the squares through the needle. She wishes she would’ve brought it, but she left home so quickly that it slipped her mind. 

That’s what Marlowe doesn’t understand. 

They’ve been friends for nine—almost ten, now—years, but Marlowe has never left home on a whim, has never kept a bag packed with the necessities under her bed, has never known what it’s like to run away and mean it.

“I don’t like this place,” Bellamy says, and it sounds too petulant, like a child throwing a tantrum. “It smells.”

“It’s cheap.” 

“Could’ve slept in the truck.” 

“I’m not sleeping in the truck.” Marlowe sets her phone on the nightstand, then reaches for her backpack. It’s overstuffed. Toiletries, clothes, non-perishable snacks. A curling iron. “Hungry?”

A thin strip of moonlight shines through the blinds. It’s late, almost one, but a couple of men linger outside, laughing too loud in the dark, drunk from the bar across the street. She watches the shadows of them through the window. They’re big—tall, broad-shouldered. They don’t sound mean, just dumb, but Bellamy knows better. She wants to reach for the switchblade she keeps tucked inside her left boot. She wants to bolt like a terrified rabbit, and it revolts her.

“It’s not safe,” she says.

“I’m scared” sits at the back of her throat. Chokes her. She swallows it back down like chunks of rogue vomit. 

“Bellamy.” 

She hates it when Marlowe says her name like that, all breathy and sad, like Bellamy disappointed her, somehow. It makes her want to shred the quilt to pieces. 

This has always been their problem. 

At nineteen, Marlowe’s two years older than Bellamy, and the gap gives her an inflated sense of authority. She told her which clubs to sign up for, which classes to take, which colleges to apply for. She even stormed into her house while Bellamy’s father was at the bar to cook healthy dinners for her. “Stand-in mom,” their other friends called her, and Marlowe always took it as a compliment. Bellamy let it slide—kind of enjoyed it, some days—but that authority was going to get them hurt out here.

“Let me drive,” Bellamy says. “You can sleep in the back or something.” 

Marlowe leans back against the pillows, tearing at the wrapper of a granola bar. Crumbs scatter along the quilt. “You don’t have your license.” 

“Who gives a shit?”

“I do, all right? It’s my truck, and you’re basically a missing person. If we get caught, I’ll get into a crap ton of trouble for helping you. You get that, right?” 

It doesn’t work like that, Bellamy wants to say, but she presses her face into the pillow instead. It smells clean. 

They’ve only been gone ten hours. Her father probably hasn’t even noticed yet, too busy getting drunk at the bar down the street. Bellamy never spent much time at home anyway. She stayed with Marlowe or Eliza or Ben. Anyone whose parents hadn’t gotten too annoyed with her presence. When she was at home, she tucked herself away in her bedroom, door locked, headphones over her ears. The sound never drowned out the slam of the cupboards or the shatter of the plates or his voice, slurred, as he screamed about the neighbors. 

“I’ll be eighteen in October,” Bellamy says, words muffled against the fabric. 

“And it’s March, Bel. You don’t think the school’s going to start suspecting something when you aren’t there after spring break? Hell, they’ll call your dad Monday morning. Then what? The whole town will be out looking for you and you don’t even care.”

“I didn’t ask you to come with me.” 

“What would you have done if I hadn’t?”

“I would’ve figured something out.” 

This isn’t the first time Bellamy’s tried to run away.

When she was six, she hid underneath the neighbor’s porch until a hoard of carpenter ants started to crawl across her bare legs. She didn’t have a reason, then. Her father still had a job, and he only drank on the weekends. Her grandmother was still alive. She just needed to be alone, sometimes. To pretend like she could do something on her own.

When she was eleven, she climbed into the back of Aunt Briar’s car after her grandmother’s funeral. They made it to the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border before one of her cousins tattled. Her father hugged her too tight when she got back. He might’ve cried, but the memory is too foggy to be sure. 

When she was thirteen, she camped out in the woods for a week until a hunter found her chasing a squirrel up a tree, too hungry to care what she ate. Her father had just lost his job, then. “Laid-off,” he said. “Just temporary,” he said. “We’ll be fine,” he said. 

When she was sixteen, she convinced a stranger to drive her to Ohio, but they couldn’t take her any further than Columbus, and she didn’t have money for a bus. She had to call Uncle Nick to come pick her up. The drive home was quiet and awkward, and he hadn’t bothered to ask her why she was there. (“My sister— Well, your mom, I guess, did the same thing when we were little. Drove Mom nuts.”) When he dropped her off at the house, her father sat at the kitchen table, beer cans scattered across the counter. He hadn’t noticed she was gone. Uncle Nick hadn’t told him. (“Our secret, kiddo.”)

She thought she could wait one more year. Suffer through the last few months of senior year. Apply for colleges she couldn’t afford in states all along the west coast. Watch her father waste away, more like a stranger than family. 

And then he hit her. 

Not hard. Not a punch. Just his palm against her cheek with a sound that left them both reeling in the dark of the kitchen. He didn’t apologize. Didn’t cry. Didn’t beg for forgiveness. 

He pulled another beer from the fridge, and the crack of the tab made her flinch harder than the slap. 

“It’s one night, Bel. I’m tired, you're tired.” Marlowe crushes the wrapper in her fist. Lobs it into the trash can beside the desk. It misses. She sighs. “Look, Oregon isn’t going anywhere soon. We don’t have to rush.” 

On the nightstand, Marlowe’s phone lights up. 

600 miles feels like a concession. It’s the farthest she’s ever gone, but it’s not enough. Every tick of the clock gives the world a chance to force her backward. 

“How about this: if I get sleepy tomorrow, I’ll let you drive if you go the speed limit and only pass semi-trucks. No stunts. No shenanigans. No NASCAR Bellamy. Deal?”

Bellamy flips over to her back. The mattress squeaks. “I guess.”

She gives it another minute before she swings her legs off the bed and marches toward the door. The men have disappeared, but the silence they’ve behind is almost worse. She checks the lock. Tries to resist the urge to check it again, then does it anyway. When she turns away from the peephole, Marlowe is tucking herself under the quilt, hand under her chin. She looks comfortable. 

“How long do you need?”

“Full eight, baby.” Before Bellamy can protest, she continues. “I’ll buy us breakfast in the morning. Anything you want. IHOP. Waffle House. Taco Bell. Mix-and-match, even.” 

“And you promise I can drive?” 

“Only if I’m sleepy.” 

Bellamy sucks in a breath, then lets it whoosh out. There are two locks on the door. She has her knife. Marlowe has her pepper spray. They’ll be fine. “I’m setting an alarm for seven.” 

“Eight.” 

“Seven.”

“All right, all right.” Marlowe snuggles deeper under the covers, half her face hidden in the darkness of the room. “You win. Seven it is.” 

Despite the remote strangeness of an unknown place, Marlowe drops off to sleep as quickly as she does in her own bedroom. Soft snores escape the cave she’s made from the blankets. It’s familiar enough to lull Bellamy into relaxing on the bed, boots on, fingers curled around the handle of her switchblade. 

 ***

Bellamy wakes with a flinch. 

On the other side of the room, Marlowe fidgets under the covers, one leg dangling off the edge of the mattress. Her phone sits on the nightstand. Its cracked screen lights up with another text message, the buzz rattling against dark wood. The clock beside it reads 6:27.

She reaches for it, clumsy and bleary-eyed with sleep.

It takes her three tries to get the pattern password right.

Another text—almost there!—pops up, then collapses. It doesn’t have a name attached, but the area code is familiar, and Bellamy sits up, too aware of her heart as it thuds in her chest. It takes her too long to click on the notification. To scroll through the thread.

It’s Uncle Nick.

For a moment, she thought that maybe, maybe, her father had shaken himself out of his fog. That he felt bad. That he’d drive all this way to tell her he’d change. That he loved her enough to try, at least. But it’s just Uncle Nick, always so eager to clean up his precious brother-in-law’s mess. 

I’ll let you drive as long as you want.

Bellamy sets the phone down too hard against the nightstand. It rattles the alarm clock, the truck keys. Sloshes the water in Marlowe’s water bottle. 

She told Uncle Nick where they were. She drove this way because she knew he lived close by. She never had any intention of taking Bellamy to Oregon with her.

I want to keep her safe, Marlowe told Uncle Nick.

Time ticks by too slowly in the dark motel room. She sits at the edge of the bed, frozen, switchblade abandoned at her side. She can’t go back home. She can’t stay with Uncle Nick. Aunt Briar might’ve been an option a year ago, but she gave birth to twins last month—no way she has the room or the money to pay for another mouth.

Her eyes slide to Marlowe.

There’s an explanation buried somewhere in her head, but Bellamy can’t get past the sharp sting of betrayal. It burrows holes in her heart. Tells her to get away. To run before Marlowe wakes, before Uncle Nick shows up. 

The bed’s springs creak as she gets up.

Unlike Marlowe, most of Bellamy’s things are still in the truck. All she has to do is unplug her charger and pluck her backpack from underneath the desk. The noise doesn’t bother Marlowe. It would take an earthquake. It would take Bellamy shoving at her until a sleep-fogged eye cracked open. 

She stands in the middle of the room. Looks at Marlowe. Looks at the phone on the nightstand. Looks at the keys right beside it. 

It’s easier to take them than it should’ve been.

No one’s outside when she eases the door open, grimacing at the squeaky hinges. Her switchblade hangs heavy in the pocket of her hoodie. The keys slip in her sweaty hands. She’s never used either, before, as confident as she pretends to be. It makes her feel small. Like she’s six years old again, ants on her legs, her arms, her face.

She unlocks the truck. Climbs inside. Starts it. 

With her hands on the wheel, Bellamy hesitates. 

Everything is so much bigger and quieter now that she’s by herself. Hamilton doesn’t blare from the speakers. The cup holders sit empty. Even the duck hanging from the mirror doesn’t spin with its usual enthusiasm. But Marlowe didn’t want her. Their trip was always going to get cut short. 

She puts the truck in reverse. 

 

Sam Burnette graduated with a BA in Creative and Professional Writing from the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. Their short stories have been previously published in Pendulum Literary Magazine and Ignatian Literary Magazine.

 

POUCHES

Another driver would’ve left the trailer door open, let the spring air wash over the pallets full of pouches, folded oranges and whites sealed tight as new shoes. My eyes couldn’t leave them alone. They’d never seen that many before.

When Craig the lumper finished and I roared the door down, echoes sheltering in my bones, he said, “You’re the last one,” and I tried not to worry if it’d be enough. It was the longest week of April, the longest of 2020, and I felt gorged with guilt, a feeling that I should be doing more than hammer down I-95’s bare lanes to Elmhurst Hospital, then to the forty-five mobile morgues beneath the Empire State Building. I was grateful to drive a dry van – God knew what awaited the reefers, the pouches filled, lumpy and cold. I’d heard they might take them to Hart Island. Potter’s Field.

The warehouse pulsed with the final chirp of a forklift before it caved in with silence. I can still hear it now, sometimes. That old quiet filling me up.

I’d gotten lost in a memory of my late grandfather telling me about his mother, how I had her eyebrows, steep arches like baseball stitching. He liked to remember her, he said, and I carried part of her with me, and part of him too, and my parents and teachers and friends and all the tedious commercial jingles that interrupted morning cartoons. I’d been wondering how there could be enough room inside of me for anything more than the pieces of others when Craig poked my shoulder, the latched trailer filled with bags inside bags. I felt like I was shrinking.

His eyes brimmed over like he’d been waiting for me all month, like he couldn’t wait to say it. “We fill them with emptiness,” he said, and I could tell he was holding back. After a soundless double shift, he had so much more he could say.

I grinned behind my mask, wanting to give him something in return, something he’d remember. One use only, I thought, then, We carry them and they carry us, but it’d only trivialize his hours, this truck and warehouse, the job we were doing. Our bodies went one way, the memories another. There was no other way to say it. “I hope they don’t need more,” I said, the words just tumbling out, and he stared above my eyes. I kept picturing my own eyebrows, thinking about the memories of my grandfather that only I had.

Craig handed me the box of ankle bands. “It’s just enough. We just keep on going.”

And the road was a balm, and the trill was a turn, and the tunnel was my great grandmother’s eye. That whole hallowed drive, I wondered if she could see me.

Joseph Celizic teaches writing at Bowling Green State University. His work has been published in Indiana Review, Third Coast, North American Review, Redivider, Ilanot Review, and CutBank, and has been shortlisted in Best American Mystery Stories.

 

WIDOWMAKER

Bailey rarely thought about it – the incident – but when she did, it felt like something heavy had crashed down on her from the sky. She hadn’t seen her grandfather since then, and good riddance. Her mother had known that something wasn’t right as soon as she picked her up from the cabin after what was supposed to be a fun weekend with grandpa when Bailey was six. She’d never said a word about it, never spoken the truth out loud, but after that she was never brought back to the cabin again.

Twenty-five years later when she learned that he had died, she was taken aback to find that she felt nothing. Nothing, that is, besides a vague sense of surprise that he had left the cabin in the mountains to her and her alone.

The sky was thick with clouds as Bailey drove up the winding mountain road with her phone GPS propped on the dashboard. It was autumn, moving into winter, and the weather at this elevation was much colder than she’d expected. She’d picked up the key from the estate lawyer, packed a weekend bag, and stopped at Walmart to fill her trunk with cleaning supplies. She knew this was her ticket out, and she wasn’t going to let something as ephemeral and stupid as childhood trauma stop her from taking it.

Just one weekend. That’s all it was. She would shove everything in trash bags, clear the place out, and be gone by Sunday morning. It would suck, most likely, but then it would be over. She would find a realtor on Monday, sell the place to whoever wanted it for whatever they were willing to pay, and use the money to start a new life in a new city someplace where nobody knew her.

A certain song came on over the Bluetooth and Bailey felt her body tense. She needed to stop putting the damn thing on shuffle; it never ended well. She quickly switched it over to something that wouldn’t make her think of her very-recently-ex wife Jess, and focused on the road.

As she approached the turnoff to the village, a prickling sensation crept across her skin, and she fought a visceral urge to turn the car around. She knew this place. She’d hoped she wouldn’t remember it this vividly, but she did. The crisp air, the towering pine trees. All of it. Just one weekend. She repeated it to herself like a mantra and continued driving.

And then there it was: 1414 Conifer Drive. Her grandfather’s house. It looked worse than she remembered. The faded green shutters hung lopsided off the windows. The yard was overgrown and littered with old tires and trash. A rusty, dinged-up rowboat with holes in the bow sat on cinderblocks in the driveway. Bailey’s jaw clenched and she felt a rare stab of anger as she put the car in park. She pushed it down and swallowed it like a pill. She had no time for that type of thing; if she let herself start, she might never stop.

The front door creaked in a way that was both pitiful and violent, which made sense considering who it had belonged to. Bailey dropped her weekend bag on the floor and let her eyes adjust to the dusty, stagnant living room. It was like she’d stepped through a portal to her own nightmares; the house was exactly as it always had been. The dirty jute rug, the carved wooden mallards on the fireplace mantel, the camo print curtains that hung limp across the windows. Bailey left the front door open and drifted through the space. The smell of must and cobwebs and everything elderly clung to the fabric of the house, overpowering her. Down the hall from the living room, she pushed open the door to the tiny guest room, barely more than a closet, where she’d slept as a child. Same furniture. Same quilt on the bed.

Bailey felt her throat constrict and backed out of the room as the walls of it seemed to swell, threatening to consume her. She stumbled to the living room and out the open door. On the weed-choked walkway she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, letting the sharp resin scent of the pine trees wash over her.

Just one weekend.

With her emotions carefully tucked back into their usual storage compartment, Bailey opened her eyes and strode to the trunk of her car where the trash bags and cleaning supplies were waiting.

#

Bailey had always liked cleaning. It was one of the few things, possibly the only thing, that had made her a good wife. Sure, she had attachment issues out the ass and a chronic distrust of monogamy, but at least Jess had always come home to a clean house. 

It had been difficult at first, stuffing her grandfather’s life into trash bags, but now that she’d been doing it for several hours she was in the groove. The living room was nearly empty; the wooden mallards on the fireplace were all that remained. She shoved them in a full bag and dragged it to the curb to join the dozens of others. The sun was setting, and the sky was an abstract painting swirled with pinks and purples. The sight of it, combined with the crispness of the autumn mountain air, fortified her ever so slightly. She still needed to clear out the guest room and the master suite, but she’d made good progress today and deserved a reward for all her efforts. And if she was being honest, she deserved a break from being in that house.

She stuffed her keys in her pocket, shut the front door, and headed down the driveway to make her way into town on foot. As she passed her car parked on the street, she froze. Smack in the middle of the hood was a dent so deep it could have served as a birdbath. Bailey groaned and looked around the car for the culprit. And there it was, just beside the front wheel: an enormous pinecone, nearly two feet tall and with giant, painful-looking spikes.

Widowmakers, her grandfather had called them. It came back to her suddenly and without warning: the image of her six-year-old self proudly lugging a pinecone half the size of her body into the house, and her grandfather telling about her how in the old mining days they used to fall off trees and kill the miners. She hadn’t known what a widow was then, but she knew that these pinecones could make one. Later, after the incident, she would imagine a pinecone falling from the sky and killing her grandfather before he could come near her. She’d felt guilty about how badly she’d wished for it.

Bailey kicked the giant pinecone away from her car, feeling sick.

#

The Grizzly Paw was your basic mountain dive bar: pool table, cheap whiskey, lots of guys in flannel. Bailey chose a seat at the bar and watched the bartender as she chatted with some regulars at the other end. She was a tall, tattooed, no-nonsense kind of woman – exactly Bailey’s type. She’d met Jess at a place like this too. Crazy how you can go from a bar booth to the altar to divorce court all in the span of three years.

But she didn’t want to think about Jess right now, so she pushed all that into the storage compartment.

Bailey caught the bartender’s eye and the woman made her way over.

“What’s the vibe tonight, babe?” the bartender asked. Bailey loved women who called everyone “babe.” It was so silly and endearing.

“Whiskey’s always the vibe,” she said, and added a little tilt of her head and the briefest flicker of a look towards the bartender’s lips, then back to her eyes again. All the usual tried and true moves. The bartender smiled in a way that let Bailey know she wasn’t new to this.

“Rocks?”

“Neat.”

“You got it.”

The bartender poured a glass and slid it over to Bailey.

“What’s your name?” Bailey asked.

“Marina,” she said, and leaned both elbows on the bar, bringing herself closer to Bailey.

“What’s fun to do around here, Marina?”

“Depends what you’re into. What brings you up the mountain…?”

“Bailey. And I’m just here for the weekend.”

“That’s lucky. It’s a life sentence for me.”

“You might need to check in with your parole officer later tonight,” Bailey said, and took a sip of her whiskey.

“Maybe so. What do you do for a living?”
“Parole officer,” Bailey teased in a low, seductive voice.

Marina smiled.

Sometimes it really was that easy.

#

They walked up the hill together after Marina’s shift. Bailey loved this part, the preamble of it all, the period of time where it was all just games and didn’t mean anything, where you had no idea if the sex would be good or if the girl would wind up breaking your soul into pieces. The part where it was all for fun.

Marina was taller than her, but Bailey wrapped an arm around her waist as they walked, both of them tipsy and flirtatious.

“You always hit on bartenders when you’re in a new town?” Marina asked.

“Only when they look like you.”
Bailey stopped in the street and grinned at Marina. She moved in until they were a fraction of an inch apart. Marina gave a little teasing smirk as if to say I dare you, and Bailey never could resist a dare. She kissed her. Marina’s lip gloss tasted like watermelon; her lips were soft, and her cheek felt smooth under Bailey’s thumb. She wondered what Jess was doing right now – no.

Just one weekend.

No thoughts, just this.

“You’re a good kisser,” Marina whispered in her ear, and Bailey chose to believe that it was true.

Bailey took Marina’s hand and led her the rest of the way up the hill. But as they approached the house with its dilapidated yard and rusted rowboat, something almost imperceptible shifted in the way Marina’s presence felt beside her. As Bailey moved to head up the walkway to the house, Marina suddenly froze. She turned to look and found her staring at Bailey with an expression of alarm.

“You’re staying here?” Marina asked.

“Just for the weekend.”

“You know whose house that is?”

“It was my grandfather’s,” Bailey said, hoping her voice sounded as level as she was desperately trying to make it.

Marina stared at her. All traces of fun and flirtation had evaporated.

Without a word or warning, Marina turned on her heel and hurried away back down the hill, her tall form disappearing quickly in the darkness. Bailey didn’t call after her.

#

The living room couch was like a torture device, but Bailey would’ve rather slept in the woods, or on a bed of nails for that matter, than in the guest room. She laid awake and stared up at the nicotine-stained ceiling, waiting for her heartrate to slow.

It didn’t.

Somewhere around midnight, she dragged herself up from the couch and walked in a near-dream state down the hall to the guest room.

The moonlight fell gently through the dirty widow and onto the quilt that she remembered from her childhood. Bailey took a dried-up Bic pen from the cup on the desk and dug the tip into the fabric of the quilt, tearing a small hole. She pulled at the hole, trying to rip the thing apart –

But a sudden pounding at the front door made her freeze.

For a single, insane second, Bailey spun around expecting to see her grandfather standing over her in the doorway. She shook the thought from her head and made her way back to the living room, where the pounding on the front door continued.

“Who is it?”

“Marina.”

Bailey opened the door and sure enough, there was Marina, looking just as tall and beautiful as she had earlier, but now infinitely more distressed.

“Do you know who your grandfather was?” Marina said. She seemed feral with rage. Her fists were clenched at her sides and her eyes were blazing.

Bailey felt the floor loosening beneath her, threatening to send her falling into an abyss, but she fought it back and kept her voice even.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said quietly.

“He was an evil man,” Marina said. “Did you know that?”

“It’s late. A pinecone fell and hit my car. I’m just here for the weekend.” Bailey heard herself listing out these unrelated facts and knew on some level that they were irrelevant to the conversation at hand, but they were also things that she knew to be true, and that felt safe to her.“He was evil,” Marina repeated, and Bailey was mortified to see tears forming in her eyes.

For a fraction of an instant, a possible path for the immediate future flashed before Bailey. She could tell Marina that yes, she knew her grandfather was evil, that she had seen it for herself. She could say she was sorry for whatever he had done to her, and confide that he had done it to her too. She could reach out to this stranger in front of her who it seemed had lived a version of the exact same painful life, and maybe they could do something for each other that nobody else could do. Maybe they could fix something in each other that he had broken.

But that would require a lot of her.

That would require speaking it out loud.

And Bailey had never spoken it out loud.

“It’s late,” she repeated, her voice hollow and superficial.

Marina’s face clenched up in rage. For a moment Bailey wondered if she might hit her, or scream, or try to burn the house down. But then she turned on her heel and once again disappeared into the darkness.

Bailey shut the door and stood stock still in the musty, silent living room. Her body knew before her mind did that she was not staying for the weekend. She had already grabbed her keys and her weekend bag and was moving towards the door when her brain began to register this.

#

The mountain road was pitch black and treacherous with only the light of the moon and her headlights to guide her. Bailey drove too fast and left the windows down. Her eyes watered and tears streaked her face, but she told herself it was only the cold air from the open window.

She plugged in her phone, swerving a little on the narrow road, and prayed for the stereo to drown out her thoughts. Dammit – that song again; the one that reminded her of Jess. She felt like she might vomit. When would she get to stop remembering things? When would she get to just be silent? When –

A heavy mass catapulted down onto the windshield. Bailey screamed. The glass shattered in front of her and she swerved violently to the side of the road, just barely missing the edge of oblivion and a sheer two-hundred-foot cliff.

She sat breathing heavily for a long moment. Her knuckles were white on the wheel. The moonlight danced through the pine trees overhead and glimmered across the shattered windshield.

Bailey clambered out of the car and looked back towards the scene of the incident. In the middle of the road, a widowmaker sat on its side, its sharp spikes taunting her in the darkness.

#

Amy Monaghan is a queer Los Angeles-based writer with an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Witness Magazine, Chaotic Merge, Cagibi Lit, Mulberry Literary, and others. In her free time she enjoys road trips to towns with one gas station, reading books about tragedy, and collecting pinecones in the park. Learn more at www.amymonaghanwrites.com.

 

THE STANDOFF

It had been football for too long. Chester Belknap was tired of it, so he thumbed off the TV. Trina laid up with the shingles. Bad sick since Friday. There’d been no work’s-over beer and bull session. Saturday, no whiskey extra frisky. There’d been yet another report about how all the computers weren’t going to work right once the new year started. And then there’d been football. There’d been football too long. He looked at the remote control. He set it down. He got up for maybe a drink or something to settle himself. Shingles. The mess was a fright. She couldn’t stand anything touching her. He thought he should see if she was ready for soup. Earlier, he’d been to the store and gotten more chicken noodle. Trina wanted popsicles, and he picked up a varied assortment. Her fever was still high, and she was back there in the bed suffering. She could have whatever kind of popsicle she wanted.

Chester missed his sweet baby.

A gunshot rang out across the road from Clayvon Groth’s place. Then another. Now, a man hollered out as if in celebration, and several more shots followed in rapid succession.

Chester approached the windows. A big man, his steps made the trailer creak. Not as stealthy as he once was when guns were firing close. The thought became a memory, an image of his right hand, dirty from wet foliage, holding a Zippo lighter while grenades were going off near his patrol. They’d had an element of surprise to exploit. The trailer’s cheap windowpanes were frosted, it’d been sleeting off and on, and it was dark, but he could see clearly the house the new people lived in was all lit up. The woman’s name was Rosalind – Roz – and she was a looker Chester had sure enough watched moving about over there. She liked short shorts even in cool weather, but now it was cold and Trina’d said she didn’t want to be with the man anymore. Nelson Mills. Trina’d said she could see it plain. Roz’s truck sat by the propane tank. Nelson’s shiny new Wrangler across the way. They had kids over there but they’d been gone since maybe Wednesday. All the time cussing and yelling at each other, those two. Nothing but trouble over there. Nelson a big talker about his time in Desert Storm. That summer he’d gotten in trouble for flashing a knife at an umpire working his oldest daughter’s softball game. Was the woman in danger? Rosalind?

Chester stood back from the trailer’s window. Trina said the problem for Nelson’s woman was that she feared to leave. That house all lit up, but lonely. Normally full of kids, it hadn’t been for days now. All those gunshots.

“Trina,” he called to the bedroom. “Baby. Something’s bad wrong out there. Better call the sheriff and tell them to come quick. That Nelson Mills is up to no good.”

Chester kept his long guns locked up but for a 12-gauge on foam hooks over the door. Trina’s chicken coop meant dealing with possums and coons and foxes and what all. He had a pistol, but it was in the bedroom, where Trina was laid up.

“Chester,” she called. “What the hell is going on?”

The Remington was a pump action similar to the one he sometimes carried on patrol in Nam. Wingmaster, this one.

“Trina,” he called, holding that cannon. “Baby, now you stay put back here. There’s trouble out there.”

“Chester!” she called.

The gun was loaded. He fingered off its safety. He felt the stirrings of long ago. The guilt of bloodshed but also the elation. Couldn’t deny either. He felt unsettled.

It’s like his body didn’t feel his steps. Trina called after him as he readied to open the door. She called his name again. She sounded bad afraid. There’d been that afternoon not long after they moved in over there. Nelson had said something to Trina, she’d told him. “There’s an ass a man can sure enough grab ahold of,” Nelson had said to her. He’d said it, she’d said, with his hands in his back pockets, like a real Mr. Hotshot. A gym rat, and proud of himself that way. Chester had hated that man then, and he sure God loathed him now.

Front door usually stuck, so he eased it open. Sneaked down the concrete block steps. The old ways coming back.

The air smelled like ice. Across the road he saw that Clayvon Groth lay crumpled on mossy pavement patchy with sleet. Most likely dead. Must’ve been. Wasn’t moving in that way of being dead. Nelson Mills was crossing Clayvon’s yard with a tactical rifle. It was like Chester saw Nelson first – he was the one with a gun – but his mind had gone to Clayvon – the dead one of his own. Clayvon a work friend who’d turned him on to this property he meant to build a dream home for Trina. For them to go ahead and get old in now that the kids were grown.

Chester worked the pump to chamber a round and send that classic signal of hands up.

Nelson Mills drew still.

“That’s right,” Chester said. “You best drop that fancy rifle, boy.”

Nelson started to turn.

“I’ll kill you deader than Hell,” Chester said.

Nelson kept still. Halfway turned before the barrel of the shotgun, he’d have looked damned vulnerable but for the rifle he continued to hold.

“Chester,” he said. “You ought to let me be, now. God ain’t got no trouble with you.”

Chester looked down the shotgun. “You keep still now,” he said. “You lift that rifle, you’re dead.”

The neighborhood was a scattering of little houses and trailers along a two-lane in the woods. Chester’s work shed had a security light and it cast long weird shadows. In its blurry glow the men stood on either side of the road, maybe twenty yards between them. Nelson with a rifle pointed at the ground, Chester with a shotgun aimed at Nelson. The gunmetal he looked down like a river under a moon. The side of Nelson’s face looked blue like gray blue. Chester licked his lips. When he’d killed before it had been at night. He remembered the smell of warm hay and manure and that the other man looked the more certain warrior. On that night, Chester had carried a rifle like Nelson’s. He’d also been lucky. They’d had the element of surprise. Then the other man surprised him anyway, but his rifle jammed. That look in his face as Chester pulled the trigger stuck with him all this time, festering like those Goddamn shingles, and it had been devasting for him to contemplate. That look had done real hard damage to him.

He’d forgotten a coat. Nelson wore a camouflage down one. Twenty yards at least. The shotgun heavy.

Clayvon had said come warm weather he’d help with some of the carpentry on what would become Chester’s dream home with Trina. They hadn’t talked as much after his wife’s misfortune. Clayvon had been defensive about her. He drank more than Chester liked to anymore. Now he lay dead on the ground.

“Nelson,” Chester said. “You drop that rifle. You stop all this.”

Nelson grinned. Even at this distance and in this spooky light he could see it. Malignant was the word. “God ain’t telling me to kill you,” he said. “Or wasn’t.” He shook his head, like he found all this humorous. “Got the wrath of God in me,” he said. “Mine is a righteous anger.”

“That what you think?” Chester said.

“I reckon,” he said. “Just said so.”

“God wouldn’t’ve told you to kill Clayvon,” Chester said. “Clayvon Groth was a damn good man.”

“Clayvon Groth carried off my woman,” Nelson Mills said. “Don’t that make it right? She done left me, and he’s the one took her away.”

Chester absorbed the intelligence. The harsh logic meant to defend his actions. The realization Rosalind wasn’t even over there. She wasn’t in danger.

Chester swallowed hard. He gripped the walnut pump. The stock warm in his palm. The finger cold in this cold. A man with a gun willing to talk was at least a fighting chance. But Nelson didn’t seem willing to drop it. Chester should fire.

“You know that ain’t right,” Chester said.

“Do I?” Nelson said. “Do you?”

“I don’t reckon I care one way or the other what you think,” Chester said. “You’ve killed a good man here, Nelson.”

“Took my woman away,” Nelson said. He nudged the rifle up a little. “Took her from me off to who knows where?”

Chester gripped the shotgun. “You drop that rifle,” he said. What if he fired right then? Why shouldn’t he? Hadn’t he learned at least that much?

“So, if I’s to take Miss Trina in there from you?” Nelson said. “You wouldn’t hear from God on the subject of killing me?”

“How much you had to drink today?” Chester said. “Here I was worried you could aim.”

“You better not assume anything about me,” Nelson said. “You know what’s good for you, old man, you’ll worry about this rifle I got here cradled in my loving arms.”

Chester longed for the trailer. He hadn’t thought this through. Plain hadn’t. Didn’t realize he’d be so conflicted. Should’ve. Now what?

“Nelson,” he said. “Listen.” His mind swam around lost. “You shoot a man in a state of passion over a domestic situation, yes, that’s one thing. Shooting up the neighborhood is whole different thing. Just saying. You’re going to get arrested one way or the other. Might as well make it easier on yourself.”

“Don’t have to get arrested,” Nelson said.

“Nelson,” Chester said. He felt his legs trembling now. Then this harsh cascade of cold rippled up from his waist through his shoulders and down his arms holding the shotgun. He was trembling out here from fear and cold. He couldn’t think of what to do to get out of this situation. The 12-gauge heavier than he remembered. His triceps and lats felt the strain.

“Chester,” Nelson said. He shook his head, like to get focused. Like something bothering him Chester couldn’t hear. Now that moment was gone. Nelson was staring at him, his face craned around on his neck. He looked agitated. The rifle rose a peg.

“God talking to me hard over here, Chester,” Nelson said. “Thing is, God wasn’t telling me to kill you. I wasn’t after you until you came out here and pointed that firebreather at me. What do you think about that? I got better people to kill than you. You ought to let me go.”

Chester gripped the heavy gun. Why wouldn’t he just pull the trigger? Who would miss this punk bastard? Chester had killed in Nam, but he’d dealt with all of that, and got past it with therapy. Now here he was in this situation, and he didn’t have the stuff.

Chester lowered the shotgun to his waist. He kept it dead on Nelson from down at his waist. Maybe he’d look tougher, but he did it for the lats. He wasn’t that buff kid that got drafted anymore. He was that middle-aged bastard that felt called to this misguided mission. And now this here.

“Nelson,” Chester said. “I ain’t letting you kill anyone else, but I could see us standing here until the sheriff comes. You could go quietly. Maybe they could help you. Counselors they got nowadays are real good at this kind of thing.”

“Now ain’t that sweet?” Nelson said. “Here you are trying to help me.”

The trailer’s door rasped opened.

“Trina!” Chester said. He glanced over to see she’d come out barefoot in her nightgown, sweating with fever. She held the revolver with outstretched arms and slipped on the concrete block steps so that she stumbled into the drive, waving the gun. He called to her again as two shots rang out and his right shoulder blossomed with pain and the Wingmaster fell from him. He gasped, swaying like he would fall. Something in his chest. There were more shots and he dropped to his knees reaching with the one arm for the shotgun, but then Trina fell. Trina. On the ground just to the side and back a few paces. Dead. She’d been shot repeatedly in the chest, and she’d fallen crumpled on her side but mostly on her back with an arm flung out. The pistol had flown up spinning and come to rest by the concrete blocks she’d stepped down to this miserable end.

Nelson Mills crossed the two-lane with the rifle aimed at him. “Goddamn you,” he said. He’d already said it two or three times. “Goddamn you, you miserable backwoods hick.”

Chester sat back on the icy ground. He felt too awful to think. Across the way, Nelson’s picture window had been shot out. Trina must’ve done it. Chester smiled at the idea. She’d’ve laughed.

“Look at you,” Nelson said.

Far away came the sound of a siren. Another joined in. It was a big county, spread out and mostly woods after a day of intermittent sleet. No one out. Woodsmoke in the air. She’d been shot so many times.

Nelson sank down on his heels and took the shotgun. He got up quick and ran over to his property, a long gun in each hand. He had the shiny new Wrangler over there. This vehicle he put the guns in. Then he climbed in after them. The big machine lurched around in the dirt drive. Now Nelson eased onto the icy pavement in the opposite direction of those sirens still too far away to mean anything.

Chester took a breath. He exhaled into the sky and saw that it was clearing. The plume of his breath faded and there were stars. He’d never been a praying man but for Nam, yet it bothered him that Nelson would talk that way. Nelson running around killing people. God would’ve tried to say something to talk him out of it. God wouldn’t have wanted Trina all shot up like that. But it was more than that. Who gave a care what Nelson thought about anything? It was that the man in Nam wasn’t like this punk ass here. No. He was fighting for a reason. Chester had killed a man with purpose in his heart but spared one with malice in his.

Oh, dear God. Trina. Oh, dear God.

It wasn’t just his shoulder. His chest ached with something like a burning spear of iron thrust through it. Chester Belknap was dying and nothing hardly made sense to him. He was fixing to die. His mind flickered in and out seeing Clayvon on the ground and Trina bloody in her nightgown. He must’ve heard the sirens, but he wasn’t sure anymore.

Her body sprawled on the ground like that, unmoving in that way of being dead. Her thighs shimmering in the security light. The blood like something brown and black. Her face hidden from him, for her head was back and chin up, and he couldn’t move closer. This partner to him all these years. She’d looked so grim, coming out with the pistol. She’d come out to try and help. He should have stayed inside. They would’ve had each other.

“Oh, Trina,” he said. “Oh, my sweet baby.”

Chuck Plunkett directs the journalism capstone CU News Corps at the University of Colorado Boulder. His stories have appeared in The Whisky Blot, Cimarron Review, and The Texas Review.

 

BEFORE SHE KNOWS

 “Her mother stopped picking and said, ‘Now, Sal, you run along and pick your own berries. Mother wants to take her berries home and can them for next winter.’” — from Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

This is ok, right? Bob says we will be fine. The hill isn’t too steep, the weather isn’t too hot. She loves it, right?

Kuplink.

She loved practicing yesterday. Bob got the marbles down from the cupboard.

I couldn’t watch. I was so afraid some uncontrollable, magnetic force — I know, marbles are glass — but that knowledge doesn’t stop me from thinking that when her mouth opened to laugh or to say thank you for the marbles, something like an invisible fairy, as ridiculous as that sounds, was going to pluck the marbles out of Bob’s outstretched palm and toss them into her gaped mouth.

Choking. That’s all I could think about. She was going to choke on these practice marbles, and I would have to do something about it.

I turned away from them and gripped my mug of tea. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t remember, was it a back slap first or a chest thrust?

Then the rushing sound – like a wave caught inside a shell, that I sometimes get inside my head when I need to decide something, but I don’t quite know what yet – made me open my eyes. But the rushing sound was not inside my head.

I turned and looked back at the magnetic field that had no metal, the invisible fairy-tossing, choking scene. But she wasn’t choking. Bob was looking at me, smiling, his palm open. Sally had placed all three marbles ever so quietly into the bottom of her little tin pail. She was sitting cross-legged on the tile, swirling her bucket.

Kuplank.

Oh, good. She’s following along behind me, like we talked about yesterday, picking the shiny blue ones, delicately, between her thumb and finger.

She still has the pudgy baby skin around her wrist.

She cried this morning when I told her she couldn’t wear the dress. Bob said it would be alright, there hadn’t been a deer on blueberry hill in ages, but he couldn’t be here to pick berries with us, and he is the expert at spotting ticks in skin folds, so I’m glad I found that pair of coveralls that the cat kept hidden behind the yellow chair. I’d washed them, of course, but I didn’t have time to replace the missing button.

She insisted on wearing her red leather shoes though, the ones with the fuzzy straps on the underside, fuzzy like a kitten’s chin. She didn’t like that I wanted her to wear socks. I even said that she could wear the frilly ones that she likes, but she crossed her arms and stuck out her lower lip and tears leaked out of her eyes. Bob must have known she wouldn’t want to wear the socks without the dress. He said not wearing socks would be fine. How am I going to look for ticks under those pant legs without taking the coveralls off? I’ll have to strip her naked next to the car before we leave, just in case.

Kuplunk.

Fall is coming. And then winter. And then the long nights when the bay freezes at its edges and we can’t get a boat in, and we eat tinned peaches and tuna fish and evaporated milk over canned blueberries. So many blueberries. Do you remember? Sally ate so many last year she pooped straight blueberry skins for a week! Ha.

Sally?

Kuplink.

Oh. There she is, her curls shining between the dark ridges of the blueberry branches, like blinding bits of light on the water, right before the sun sets, a perfect time to walk on the shore.

I used to love walking the seashore. I would look for a half clam shell with a tiny hole in it perfect to string on a necklace, or a grey tufted feather wider at the tip stuck under the ridge of shells and pebbles lining the edge of the flat, wetter sand where it was pushed up by the waves the night before.

Or I would look for a creamy white sand dollar under that same ridge of pebbles. The way to find one is by noticing its long, thin petals stamped into the center, more oblong than anything else on the beach, an odd, out-of-place-looking thing, but when noticed together, all five petals make the perfect sea flower.

A sand dollar was the only thing better than the unbroken orange scallop shell my brother found just by walking into a wave – he wasn’t even looking for it! – but my mother praised the shell as perfect and my father nodded and crossed his arms behind his back and said, good job, Davie.

But you’ll see. I’ll find something better.

And I raced down the beach, feet slapping over the packed sand, saltwater spray up my ankles and behind my knees…the water goes out, and I think I see something, a black something between the rocks at the edge, where the last wave pushes the sand to the shore and the rocks stay behind.

But it is just algae on a smooth, white pebble. I race the water back in, back out, then toss the pebble along the surface of the water, like flashes of light on a windowpane.

I run on. Around the beach break, to the cove on the other side, never having been this far down the beach before, but knowing this must be the place.

There, in a pool of still, translucent water, a ring of urchin spines pricks the salt air. The ones on the edge don’t have enough room to get under the water completely – the tips of their spines are dull and flaky – they must wait, and be patient, and hope the tide changes soon enough.

There, in the bottom of the pool between the clumps of thin, black points. I reach into the still water – little circles go out from my arm – and I touch its rough white surface. I slip my fingers underneath the disk and remove it from the waters. It is light, it is empty. I rub my thumb over the dimples on the front. I hold it up, a perfect sand dollar.

I turn around.

See?

But they aren’t there.

A lady with bushy hair and a red, white, and blue sweatband jogs past. Her white sneakers have sand on the toes, her white tube socks have brown sand marks on the inside of her calves. A man and a woman walk by holding hands, both naked from the waist up. Then a kid. Then another woman, a girl, a boy, an aunt, an uncle, cousins, surfers, stoners, more joggers, a scientist, a lady with flowers in her hair, a grocery store clerk, four pimply high schoolers with foam boards under their arms, long hair, short hair, green hair. But no Davie, or mom, or dad.

I grip the white disk and run back the way I think I should go. My feet sink into the sand, sucking into the wet. I cannot find a lifeguard. I cannot find our red and white and blue striped beach umbrella. I search everywhere, for anyone.

A grandmother sees me.

She has hair the color of the bay on a stormy day, although I would not know what the bay looks like then.

She clutched the skirt of her black swimsuit dress. The water dripped down her wrinkled thighs.

Perhaps she too would have seen a fairy that tosses marbles in front of open mouths, that snatches them back before they are swallowed by toddlers. If I knew her now, I would ask her that.

She looked down at me. She knew.

She took my hand, the one clutching the sand dollar.

We walked back past the seawall. We started walking up the dune.

My father jogged out from behind the lifeguard tower. My mother followed.

And for a moment, her eyes stayed wide. Her mouth hung open. She knew.

The lady let go of my hand and waved.

My mother ran down the dune.

And it was like a mouth opened in the sand; my knees buckled. Buzzing surrounded my head; I could not hear.

My mother pulled me into her chest – salt, heaving, warmth – and the buzzing stopped.

Pain sliced my palm.

My mother released me, held my shoulders, and looked into my face.

My palm throbbed instead of my chest. Warmth trickled down my palm instead of my cheeks.

I swallowed.

I dropped my arms to my sides; I made my mouth make a smile.

And my mother’s eyes crinkled, and that little dimple showed in the lower part of her left cheek.

She thanked the lady, swung her arm around my shoulders, and walked next to me up the dune.

But before we reached the top, I opened my hand.

Red seeped into the edge of the sand dollar. I could not show this to my mother. I tipped my hand over, and…Sal…She really needs to stop getting blueberries out of my pail. I don’t want to have to remind her again.

“Now, Sal…”

Bear.

Not Sally.

Bear.

Birds stop. The wind stops. The bear stops.

I step away; my feet do not make a sound.

The sky is blue, the clouds white.

And if I squint, I remember. Light danced on the blue shimmering water. I plucked the sand dollar from the water and all the colors, yellows and oranges and reds sprinkled up into the sky. And they swirled and danced, shimmering like a fairy wing. They were the sky; they were the water. And I pointed to the water, knowing my mother would think they were lovely too, and I looked behind me…

Kuplink.

…marbles and fairies and the hum of the ocean inside a shell…a funny sound…

Kuplank.

I have known that sound my whole life, but that is impossible.

Kuplunk.

I have only known Sally the length of her life, not mine.

“Sal?”

Have I made it here in time?

“Mama!”


Krista Puttler has fiction writing and medical degrees, served in the US Navy as a general surgeon, and is working on a memoir of the Mount Pinatubo eruption and evacuation. Her writing has appeared in As You Were: The Military Review, Collateral, and Intima. She lives in Norfolk, VA with her husband and three daughters.

 

Evan Who Saw Shapeshifters

 “Shit,” Evan’s coffee overflowed. It pooled around his cup and dribbled to the floor. With one hand, he placed the pot back on the coffeemaker. He unrolled a length of paper towels with the other and sopped up the coffee. Wildlife distracted him – a fox pawing at a rabbit hole. “Ah,” Evan hissed. The spilled coffee was still very hot. It seeped through the paper towels and burned his fingers. When he wiped his countertop clean, Evan tossed the mass of paper towels in the kitchen’s trash can. He left the coffee cup on the counter. He bent over to take cautious sips and looked back out the window.

His kitchen window overlooked several blocks in the neighborhood. He lived on the fourth story of a five-story building. From his window, he saw neighbors’ houses, trees changing colors, commuters on their way to work, and a garbage truck that stopped every few feet to collect the trash his neighbors set outside. The fox disappeared.

He carefully brought his coffee to the home office. He set the cup on his desk and turned on the computer. The screen flashed. He took a seat in the swivel chair. The computer loaded video editing software. Evan clicked on his project. It was a commercial for a local karaoke bar called The Foxhole. Evan wondered what a fox would sing if it could. He heard somewhere that foxes yelped. Evan doubted that they crooned. He hummed a line from a song he knew.

Evan clicked through a few frames of the commercial until he recognized an actor. The shaggy hair, the wet eyes, the stubble on his chin, the broad shoulders, that grin – he looked familiar. Impossible, Evan thought. He swiveled in his chair. He had a framed family photos on the other end of his office. The actor looked like his brother. Evan swiveled back. No, he thought, not quite. The actor was leaner than his brother. He had no gray hair sticking out at odd ends. Evan clicked through more frames. The actor had straight teeth. His brother’s teeth were slightly crooked. Evan got back to work.

He finished in the evening. In his dark kitchen, he retrieved three Tupperware containers from the refrigerator – vegetables in vinegar, rice, and cold chicken. Evan showered, microwaved the rice, and warmed the chicken and the vegetables in his oven. He ate at the window and checked the time. Local filmmakers organized an industry night at a neighborhood bar called Bookender’s. Between bites of rice and chicken, Evan decided to go. He left his dishes in the sink, locked his apartment, and trudged down the stairs.  

On the way out, he stopped at a tree by his apartment building. He noticed a small opening among the roots. He thought about the fox. Evan crouched low to the ground and looked inside. “Psst, psst, psst,” he made a sound. He invited the fox with an outstretched hand. “Psst, psst, psst.”

He saw nothing. He looked up at the branches. They creaked and swayed with the wind. He thought about a branch snapping off and falling through the fox. The thought made him shiver. The wind blew, and the branches shook. He got up and walked towards the bar.

Bookender’s was a little watering hole near Evan’s apartment. The first thing anyone noticed about Bookender’s was the smell. It smelled like something. No one agreed what it smelled like, but everyone agreed that it smelled – an in-house cleaning solution, spilled drinks, stale books, and something else. Purple lights lined the ceiling, and a disco ball threw light around the barroom. Evan’s shoes squeaked on the floor as he walked to the bar.

His crowd huddled on the other end. Evan knew the filmmakers by name. He waved at Kevin who wanted to break into narrative features and nodded at Josh the documentarian. An editor named Andy talked with someone whom Evan did not know. Maybe he was an actor. Evan knew fewer actors than filmmakers. He ordered a beer at the bar and waved at Andy. Andy came rushing up.

“Evan, how are you?” he asked. Evan did not have time to respond. Andy took Evan by the arm and pulled him through the crowd towards the stranger. Evan’s friends and associates shook his hands, patted him on the back and shoulders. The stranger was dressed in black. He looked familiar. He had tufts of gray hair. He smiled and flashed his slightly crooked teeth. He had big brown eyes. They looked expecting.

“Evan, this is,” Andy started. “I’m sorry, but I forgot your name,” he said.

“That’s not important,” the stranger replied. He smiled.

Andy insisted. The stranger demurred. He refused to give his name. “I’m no one, really,” was all he said. Someone pulled Andy away. The stranger looked intently at Evan.

“I feel like I’ve met you before,” Evan said.

“You have known me,” the stranger said.

“Where did we meet?” Evan asked.

“At your apartment, remember?” the stranger asked.

Evan tried to remember the stranger. He failed to place him at his apartment. To his surprise, the stranger knew him well. He described the apartment – the stained couch, the records in the living room, the tumbleweed decoration in the corner – in detail.

 “What were you doing in my apartment?” Evan asked.

“We watched a movie,” the stranger said. “Buffalo ’66.”

“That’s my favorite,” Evan murmured.

“I know,” the stranger nodded.

Evan’s ears reddened. “I don’t remember you,” he said. “I should remember you, but I don’t. Who let you into my apartment?”

The stranger looked at Evan cooly.

“What did you do there?” Evan raised his voice. The crowd quieted. The color drained from Evan’s face. Evan did not know the stranger, but he recognized him. The stranger looked like his brother only older, larger, squarer. He was cleanshaven too. Evan’s brother hated shaving.

 “This is a stupid joke,” Evan muttered. “I’m leaving.”

“Yes, you are.” the stranger said. He pointed towards the door. Evan looked. He glimpsed a brunet man with gray hairs sticking out, brown eyes, slightly crooked teeth, nearly identical to Evan but taller and slightly older.

“That’s not me,” Evan said. “That’s my brother. My brother’s here.” The other man slipped out of the door before Evan got a closer look. Evan crossed the bar.

He followed this second stranger who thudded ahead, across a main street, down a side street, up an alley, and around a corner. It occurred to Evan that he was leading him back to his own apartment. Evan shouted, “Stop.” The second stranger did not respond. He turned the corner to Evan’s apartment building. When Evan rounded the corner, he did not see the stranger. He stopped, and peered into the dark.

Some rustling startled him. A fox dashed out of the bushes along the sidewalk. Evan jumped. The fox slowed to a stop with one paw in the air. Evan took a slow step forward. The fox’ ears turned. Evan covered his mouth and took another step. The fox spun in a circle. It laid down and licked its haunches.

Evan crept closer, close enough to touch. He squatted down and reached. The fox turned its head to look at him. Evan’s breath caught in his throat. The fox seemed to have a knowing look. “Who are you?” Evan whispered. It looked at him again. Evan recognized that look. He felt cold, then he felt hot. “Who are you?” Evan asked in a trembling voice. A wind blew. “Who are you?” Evan asked again. The branches in the tree cracked overhead. The fox dashed away. A bough plummeted down and cut Evan across the cheek. “Ah,” he hissed. His body recoiled, and he fell. Evan looked around for the fox. It disappeared.

Evan sat there for a moment. Looking. More moments passed. When the wind died, he heard something rising in the air. It sounded like a low moan. Then he heard rattling. Then he heard a roar. A light shone from over the hill – headlights. The garbage truck from that morning crawled slowly up the road. The garbage man hanging on the back was singing. The garbage truck rolled to a stop. Evan and the garbage man looked at each other.

“Can I help you, sir?” the garbage man asked. Brown and gray hairs poked out from under a ballcap. Streetlamps made his brown eyes glow.

“You look familiar,” Evan said.

“I don’t know you,” the garbage man replied. Evan sat for a moment.

“You remind me of someone who does,” he said.

“What’s it to you?” the garbage man asked.

Evan opened and closed his mouth. “He’s gone,” Evan said. “He’s been gone. I miss him.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” the garbage man said. “Piss or get off the pot, why don’t you?” He slapped the garbage truck. It rolled on.

Evan watched the taillights recede in the distance. He stayed sitting, staring, hardly breathing. His hands gripped the grass at his sides and pulled. Some dry blades gave. Suddenly and all at once, he sobbed. He sobbed for the first time since his brother died. It came like lightning, and it rose like steam from his body. He quieted just as suddenly. When he finished, Evan calmly pushed himself to his feet. He wiped his nose and went to bed.

The next morning, he made his coffee in the kitchen with the blinds pulled down. He did not look out the window at the trees or the houses or the garbage bins or the cars on their morning commutes. The fox from the night before may have been on the lawn across the street singing songs like the garbage man hanging on his truck. Evan did not care. He thought about his brother and other shapeshifters in between the radiating pain from the cut across his cheek.

Taylor Thornburg is an author and essayist based in Omaha, Nebraska. His fiction explores strange yet humane ways of being. This short story, "Evan Who Saw Shapeshifters" is a brief work of speculative fiction on grief. He has other fiction published in the Garfield Lake Review and Thirteenth Story Magazine. Fiction is forthcoming in L'Espirit Magazine and Valley Voices.

 

TREADING WATER

The afternoon sun hangs heavy over Juneau, Alaska. The streets are loud with bird calls and car engines. The sky is warm, or at least not cold anymore. It’s one of the days that more people are out walking around than actually live here.

Further down the shore, the only noise comes from the water. The bay is green, dimpled with waves. They splash against the rocky shore and mist up into the blond hairs on Carter’s arm. He takes off his shirt and drapes it over his shoulder. He unties the rope around the dock post and drops it into the canoe. Ezra watches him untie the other end with a curious silence. Carter steps in and grabs the wooden oars. Ezra follows, steadying himself on the dock. They push off, paddling on opposite sides into the emptiness. A breeze trickles through Carter’s curly hair. Behind him, he feels the memory of a girl who was so pretty he almost let her get to know him.

 

He brought her on the boat last year. They had met at a concert in June, for a band of three guys whose voices sounded younger than Carter's but whose faces looked much older than his. He was standing in the grass, trying to hear their lyrics.

“Who are you with?” she asked him. Her dark hair kissed her bare shoulders, and the sun painted her face amber. He thought about how her lips would taste before he could say his answer.

“I just heard the music from down the street and decided to watch.”

“You’re here alone?”

“Yeah. I didn’t have to pay or anything, right?”

“You think these guys should put up a fee?” She gestured at the stage, clearly proud of herself. He felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to tell her how pretty she was, she already knew it.

He took her on the canoe and they paddled to Douglas Island, and he told her about his work, where he was from, the music he liked. She was from Fairbanks. She gave wildlife tours in the mountains. She liked Fiona Apple. They walked along a trail to an overlook, where the scent of pine filled their silences. They kissed under an evergreen tree, and he played with the fabric of her shirt between his fingertips until it was dark. He felt okay about her. On the boat ride back, she asked why he had moved to Alaska.

“It’s nice here.”

“No one moves here because it’s nice. It’s nice in a lot of places, people come here to get away.”

He stared at the reflection of the stars, swinging in the water. He tried to think of something funny to say.

“You know, you haven’t asked me anything about me all day,” she said.

“Sorry, hmm…” he said. “What’s your name again?”

When they got to the shore she left the boat and asked if he wanted her to go home. He said he didn’t care. She sighed, and they never talked again. He still doesn’t know if she told him her name.

 

Before Junea, Carter lived in the panhandle of Florida. He grew up playing street games with the neighbor boys, until he learned what the names they called him meant, and then he only hung out with the boy that didn’t say names. He was Ezra.

Carter and Ezra biked to the river and collected rocks. Trees curled out from the mud and hid the river from the sun, but when it was still too hot they kicked off their shoes and stepped through the current. They filled their pockets with the cheapest snacks at Winn-Dixie and ate them by the river bank, and their pockets were heavy with rocks on the way home. They could only fit a few each time, so they kept coming back.

In high school, they ate lunch under the bleachers with Madison. She went there alone to smoke, at first, crouching at the other end of the shade, but she joined in on their conversations and soon became their friend. She liked complaining about her parents, and Ezra liked helping her with her homework. Carter liked listening to both of them. The boys never took her to the river, though.

In the last summer of high school, Madison pulled up to Carter’s place in a ‘92 Ford F-150 and told him her daddy was on death row. It was some of the best news of her life—she had got his truck, and one less person could scream at her for not being more like her Valedictorian brother. Carter fell into the passenger seat and the thick scent of Marlboros reminded him of his uncle’s house.

Cicadas hummed over the engine. Madison was wearing short shorts and a black crop top, a hoodie tied around her waist. They drove to the gas station and grabbed Hot Cheetos and filled up a blue raspberry Slurpee. She told him she forgot her wallet, so he paid.

“You know, I would’ve hid the snacks in my jacket and walked out if I was with anybody else,” she told him.

He laughed, and couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. Either way, he figured he was someone special to her.

After not shoplifting they drove to the beach. She swerved off the road, flew through the dunes, and stopped just before the sand was stiff and muddy. Carter felt what he imagined whiplash was. They lay in the back of the truck, Carter’s head on her hoodie, her head on his chest, and watched the constellations. She said she never got how people could get animals or gods out of the white dots, then she pointed to what made a cross, the best shape she could find.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” he asked.

She hugged his torso. “I only believe in boys that wear jeans. ”

Carter had jeans on. He slowed his breaths in time with the waves, so her head rose and fell as naturally as he could make it, so she wouldn’t even notice he breathed. He would have done anything to control his heartbeat, but still it drummed right against her ear. Faster and faster.

“Can I tell you something?” he said. “I like you.”

“I like you too.”

“I like you, like, I wanna kiss you,” he said, quietly.

“What?” She lifted her head, and Carter felt the stream of breath break between them. She stared at him while he lay like a corpse on the truck bed.

“I mean, I’ll kiss you, but you won’t like it. Are you joking?”

“What?” he said. His face got hot.

“You like Ezra. It’s really obvious that you’re not into girls.”

Heat rose in his chest, and in his stomach. He jumped out of the truck and ran to the water, his knees hit the shallows and he vomited blue raspberry Slurpee and Hot Cheeto chunks into the ocean. She came over to him and held him. She ran her hands through his hair and kissed his sweaty forehead while he coughed until he was empty. Spicy red bits shined in the liquid like bloody constellations under the moonlight. He wanted to wish on them, but he could only think how, with the bright blue and red puke under the white moon, he had made this sea American.

 

After graduation, Madison picked up a full-time shift at a diner, and Ezra went to the fancy state college in Pensacola. Carter went to the community college in Pensacola, close enough that he could commute from home. Carter thought the teachers were friendlier in college, they treated him more like an equal. They smiled at him when he saw them outside of class. It was weird to not recognize any students he walked past in between classes. He went swimming in the mornings at the student pool. Campus was right next to the airport, and when he saw the planes so close he wondered if anyone was ever looking through their window directly at him. It felt weird that he could be anyone, and he still ended up the same.

He met Sarah in his second year, a friend of his brother. She thought Carter was funny, and he thought the gap in her front teeth was cute. They watched romantic comedies together, and he hid his tears from her in the theater. On the third one, she caught him, and before he dropped her off at her dorm she kissed him. They started dating. He thought it was a strange thing to become someone who kisses someone, but when he said that to her she didn’t look at him weird. Talking wasn’t a game. When he found out she couldn’t swim, he offered to teach her. She went with him to the pool, and he held her body up to show her different strokes.

“I feel like those turnstiles at baseball games,” she told him, practicing breaststroke. He laughed and said he had never been to a baseball game.

They slept together in his childhood bedroom. He loved showing her things from when he grew up, the rock collection from the river and the medals he won in swim and the shirts that used to fit him but now fit her. She could get to know him without him saying a word.

They dreamed of moving to Juneau, Alaska. They wanted to breathe in cold air and see what the mountains saw from the top of the world.

“All I want is a fireplace,” he said. “That’s how I’ll know I’ve made it. They’re useless but look so nice.”

“My dream is to have a spiral staircase,” Sarah said. She pointed to a framed picture on his bookshelf. “Who is that?”

“That’s me.”

“Well, duh. I mean the Hispanic kid, with his arm around you.”

“Oh, that’s Ezra. The guy I used to be on swim team with.”

“Do you still hang out with him?”

“Yeah, he helps me with homework. He’s really smart. You should meet him sometime.”

She never did meet him. Carter came home early the next day and found her in bed with his brother. He couldn’t say anything to them, he just got into his car.

It was two weeks before graduation, and he drove his ‘99 Corolla to Dallas. Dallas To Albuquerque. Albuquerque to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City to Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach to Quesnel. Quesnel to Jade City. Jade City to Juneau. He drove with the headlights off at night. He went on websites and found free places to sleep in exchange for sharing a bed with men that wanted him. In the morning, the taste of them lingered in his mouth, so he went through a pack of gum each day. As he drove over the cliffs along the coast, he spit the gum into wrappers and flicked them into the sea.

In Juneau he found a job and an apartment. He liked the few blocks of grid streets, and would walk down each one when his head got too stuck in the past. The mountains and the cold air made it okay that he felt nothing. The sea birds still sang, whether he was happy or sad. The snow didn’t ask his permission to pile up on the rooftops. He had to tell himself everything else was only in his head.

Ezra called one day and told him he wanted to visit, but Carter said to wait until winter was over. He picked him up from the airport in late June, and they explored downtown Juneau and got lunch at a café next to the water. Ezra asked if he remembered the days they would spend in Carter’s pool. Carter offered to take him on the boat.

 

One day, 12-year-old Ezra and Carter biked back from the river, chasing a hot air balloon with the design of an American flag above them. It was 2002, and he was noticing the red, white, and blue more and more. Carter wondered if he could reach the basket by chucking one of the rocks he had picked up along the river—not to do any damage, just to get the patriotic flyer’s attention.

They got to Carter’s house, and he said they should go swimming.

“I don’t have my swimsuit,” Ezra said. “And my parents aren’t home, the house is locked.”

“You can borrow one of mine,” Carter said. He grabbed his only pair of swim trunks out of the drawer and tossed them to him. While Ezra went to change, he snuck into his older brother's room and pulled out a Hawaiian print swimsuit, careful not to leave any signs he had been in there. He stepped into them and they were a few sizes too big, so he tied them tight and triple-knotted them. They poofed out around his thighs, but at least they stayed up when he tugged on them.

They raced through the heat from the back door to the water. “High and Dry” by Radiohead was playing from his parents’ speaker. The boys attempted flips off the diving board into the leaf-covered pool, sending water stains across the deck. They argued about who would survive longest if they were sent off to Afghanistan, like Carter’s uncle.

“I’m totally stronger than you.” Ezra flexed his bicep.

Carter slapped water into his friend’s face. “But I’m taller than you.”

“So what? That just makes you a bigger target.”

Carter pushed Ezra’s head underwater and Ezra lunged back up at him and yelled, his voice cracking. Carter fell and they both crashed through white bubbles. They threw their limbs at each other in the bright water. Skin glided over skin, dancing through gravity. Muffled guitars and drums echoed under the surface of the pool. Carter opened his eyes for half a second and looked at this boy in a way he couldn’t above water. Through the stinging chlorine, he watched Ezra’s soft body fall upwards to the light. He was in seventh grade, and he didn’t know how to drive a car or do algebra, but he knew he could only look at this boy in this way underwater.

 

They’re in the canoe. Ezra is looking at him like he’s waiting for him to say something, but Carter doesn’t know what.

Ezra’s upper arms are wider, the inside of his thighs paler. Carter knew his body, but he had never been so long without it, never seen it change so much. Like he had never really known him, like all the memories of him had been dreams.

“I thought you would like it out here,” Carter says.

“I do,” Ezra says. “I’m happy that you live somewhere so beautiful. But I didn’t come for that, I wanna know what’s up.”

Carter looks at his reflection next to the boat. He’s changed too, the sandy hair on his face and the freckles on his shoulders. “I’m thinking of joining the Army.”

“What?”

“Kidding.”

Ezra exhales and drops his oar between his legs. “I knew you so well. I knew what you would order from the school cafeteria. I still notice rocks that you’d pick up if we were by that river together. I know things ended bad with Sarah, but you didn’t even tell me. I had to find out from your mom. I had to get your phone number from Madison. And even before then, something was crushing you and I didn’t know what. I missed you. I missed how we used to be. I thought we could always be like kids, until one day I woke up and I was 20-something, and I had to shave and go to meetings, and you weren’t there.”

“You don’t have to be so sensitive.”

“Why should I be alive if I’m not gonna feel things?” Ezra says, so loud it takes up the whole valley.

Carter leans back, his hip bone slipping out over his shorts. It would be so much easier if this were another boy he could just take his clothes off for.

“Do you want me?” Ezra asks.

“I want a lot of things.”

“Do you want me, Carter?” Ezra’s eyes don’t move off him.

“Do you want me, Ezra?” he says, in the same inflection.

“Why do you think I’m here?”

Carter steps out of the boat, slipping into the water. Icy shock slices through his nerves. Ezra grabs his arm, but he resists.

“Go away,” he says. He lies on his back, shivering, seeing white. The red sun covers his face and chest, the deep blue below him.

“I’m not—”

“If you love me, go away.”

Carter only hears his own blood rushing through him. His muscles stiffen. He’s falling up, keeps falling up with each wave.

He whispers. It’s only in your head.

The sky is heavy and he’s floating in dead glaciers. It’s so cold it burns. He’s in the middle of the world, in a coffin on fire, and he can’t get out. He can’t get out. He can’t get out.

Lucas Zuehl is a musician studying Vocal Performance at BYU.