Mother's Bible

Mother’s Bible

“Hmmm. It’s time to go through Mother’s stuff,” I whispered into the silence of the basement.

Silence broken by the sound of my heavy breathing and the boxes rasping along the dirty basement floor as I dragged them to the stairs. I lugged the three boxes upstairs and placed them on the floor next to the kitchen table. It was exactly one year since Mother died. The kitchen table and the boxes were all that remained of her life. Rather than wallow in sadness, I decided to look through the boxes and remember her life.

I saved the table because of the memories it held for me. Breakfasts at the table, sitting in a chair, my feet swinging wildly back and forth as I fought to stay still while Mother braided my hair. Card games with Father while he smoked a cigarette and drank from his ever-present can of Pabst. Dinners with both of them, and my sister Ella. It was where we talked about our day and shared our hopes and dreams. My parents sat at the table and spoke in hushed whispers after Ella and I had gone to bed. Whispers that weren’t quite soft enough though to prevent me from overhearing their expressions of love and affection for each other. Those words were what helped me feel safe and secure in the warmth of our family. The kitchen table was where our family was one.

The three boxes represented what was left from Mother that I thought worth saving. Everything else was gone. The furniture. The house. Her clothes. All sold. Given away. Thrown away. In the boxes were the family photo albums. The framed picture of Mother and Father on their wedding day that had held a place of honor on a table in the front room. A binder full of Mother’s recipes that she had collected. Most of them never tried, but many of them representing meals that I could still recall. Meals at the kitchen table in the glow of a winter evening, with snow falling outside but my family comfortable and warm inside.
The boxes also contained short stories and poems she had written, not to be published but because sometimes she just felt like writing something. Mother would sit at the kitchen table with a stubby pencil in her hand and a pad of paper in front of her. She would stare off into space and then write a few lines. Then go back to staring, only to write a few more lines a couple of minutes later.

Sitting at the table, I began pulling the contents out and going through them. At the bottom of the second box was Mother’s Bible. I had never known her to be religious, but after her death, I found the Bible at the bottom of one of her drawers, buried beneath a pile of sweaters. Without a thought, the Bible had gone into the box of memories that I kept.

Now, having looked through all the family pictures and having read a couple of the stories, I reached for the Bible. I ran my fingers over the soft leather cover and opened it to the first page. The pages were yellowed with age and on the inside was a handwritten note in Mother’s graceful cursive indicating that the Bible was a gift from her grandmother to her mother. I was the fourth generation of the family to hold the Bible in my hands.

I began to thumb through the pages, enjoying the sound of the pages crinkling as I did so. Noticing a gap forming between two pages, I turned to it and found an envelope. In the upper left corner was a P.O. Box address in some town in Michigan I had never heard of. The envelope was addressed to Mother.

For the second time, I found myself whispering, “hmmm,” breaking the silence that had crept into the kitchen. “I wonder what this is.”

Opening the flap of the envelope, I slid out the single sheet of paper that the envelope contained and unfolded it gently.

“Dearest Sandra,” it began in a masculine scrawl.

I find this letter to be the most difficult thing I have ever written. I want nothing more than to be able to write something else. But, write it I must. I cannot go on like this. The distance that lies between us is simply too great while the memories I have of you bring you so near. I can feel you in my arms right now as I write this but I fear that I will never actually experience that feeling again.

I understand why you made the choice you did. However, I must also make a choice. As much as it pains me to say this, I need to move on. I can wait no longer. I love you deeply and profoundly and will always remember the short time that we had together as the one time I experienced true and real love.

Yours always,
John

“What the hell . . .” I thought. Going back to the top of the letter, I read it again. Was this a boyfriend Mother had before she got married? Was it something else? I looked again and for the first time saw a date in the upper right corner of the letter -- “Feb. 5, 1968.” Four years after I was born. One year before little Ella was born. And six years after my parents were married.

“My God,” I muttered as I let the paper fall to the table. I looked out the kitchen window and saw the sun shining brightly off the snow that had fallen the night before. I looked back at the letter on the table and thought back to my childhood. In my mind, I could see Ella sitting across from me, making faces at me and trying to make Father laugh. Father to my left, trying not to laugh as he hid his face behind his hands. And Mother, of course, sitting to my right. She would not, could not, repress her laughter. Her face would glow and her eyes sparkle as she would laugh at Ella’s antics.

Was it just my imagination that she would turn at some point to Father and share that glow with him in a look that only two people in love could share? I had always felt secure in the idea that my parents had loved each other. Were my memories a far cry from reality?

I went to the desk in my bedroom and typed the name of the town in Michigan into the search bar of my computer. Would it even be possible to track “John” down with nothing more than a P.O. Box address from thirty-five years ago? Probably not. I exited from the search page, turned off the computer and went back to the kitchen table. Mother was there, to the right. Ella was giggling. Father was looking at Mother with love in his eyes. A look that Mother returned.

I put everything back into the boxes, with the Bible at the bottom of one and lugged them back downstairs. I preferred my memories. Reality could stay down in the cold, dark basement. Forever, as far as I was concerned.

Tentacles

Tentacles

In Pigwell, time is not measured by days or weeks but by the number of eighteen wheelers that drive past my house. It’s been that way for years, ever since I moved in on a cold blustery day in April. I learned of its unofficial name, Pigwell, when I was ushered past the door and into my room.

“Welcome to Pigwell,” the woman lying on the upper bunk said. She didn’t move and didn’t bother to look at me. She just stared up at the ceiling, her left hand picking at the peeling white paint on the wall above the bunk.

“Pigwell?”

“You’ll figure it out,” she mumbled, turning over so her back was to me. I put my things on the floor and sat down on the lower bunk, hearing and feeling the bed springs creak under my weight. In the corner was a toilet and sink. Along the opposite wall was a small table with one chair and on the wall above the table was a shelf. A handful of books were scattered haphazardly on the shelf and two pictures were taped to the wall below the shelf. One appeared to be a standard school picture of a blond girl, probably about six or seven. The girl was trying not to smile too widely, probably to keep from opening her mouth and revealing the gap caused by missing teeth.

Looking at that picture, I thought of Jane, my own little blond girl. There was a school picture of her somewhere, too. Taken five or six years before I entered the confines of Pigwell, she had been the same age, trying to hide the same gap. Only in her case, the missing teeth were caused by her father’s fist, not by the normal progress of childhood.

The other picture was of the same girl, a year or two older, standing next to a woman sitting in a chair. Although I had only briefly seen the woman on the bunk above me, I could tell they were one and the same, and that it had been a long time since the picture had been taken. The black and white of the picture had begun to fade and the edges were tattered by years of handling.
Alone in the room but for the stranger a couple of feet above me, who had fallen asleep, my reality sank in and I began to quietly cry. I had built a wall around me, hiding the physical and emotional pain I had endured for years. Now, for the first time in a long time, I chipped away at that wall. I lay down on the bed and curled up into a ball, the tears silently streaming down my face and dampening the thin pillow. I cried myself to sleep, waking up an hour later to the sound of the door to the room opening. Before I could get up, two feet, followed by legs and a body appeared from above me, as my roommate slid off the bunk and ambled towards the door. Quickly, I got up and followed her, knowing that, although she had said barely a word, this stranger was a lifeline I might need.

* * *

My house? I live in Carrollton, North Carolina, a small town tucked away in an out-of-the-way corner on the western edge of the state. During much of the early part of the century, from 1908 to 1942, the town was run by Charles Sidwell, the local sheriff. In 1942, Sheriff Sidwell, good ol’ boy that he was, got himself killed at the hands of his enraged mistress after he slapped her around a bit. Up until that point, nothing happened during his reign without his stamp of approval and when he died the respected citizens of the town thought it would be a good idea to name everything they could after him. In the tradition of the South, they managed to ignore the circumstances of his death.

There was Sidwell Park, Charles Sidwell Elementary School, and, after obtaining state approval, the Sidwell Women’s Correctional Institution. I still wonder how they managed to keep from renaming the town, too. In an effort to establish just the right environment of gentility and class--Sidwell was built in the 1940’s when people still cared about such things--each building was named after a famous woman writer. Hence, my home, my house. The Dickinson House at the Sidwell Women’s Correctional Institution.

A couple of months after arriving, I found out why the residents called it Pigwell. Once the warmth and the humidity of summer arrived, the aroma from the area’s pig farms, one of which was nestled comfortably in the countryside directly across from Sidwell, permeated the facility. Windows closed, doors closed, it didn’t matter. Pigs may, in fact, be one of the cleanest animals, but what thousands leave behind on a daily basis sure the hell doesn’t smell clean particularly during a sweltering North Carolina summer.

It’s been so long since I stopped counting days and started counting eighteen wheelers I truthfully don’t know how long it’s been since I arrived. I know that I arrived sometime in April of 1978, but I have no idea of the year or month now. Days and weeks and months and years don’t mean anything. All that matters is that twenty-three trucks move past my window and I can close my eyes and begin counting again when I open them the following morning.

My room, on the northwest corner of the third floor, allows me to look out on Sidwell Street, a two lane road that leads to the interstate. The first morning of my stay at Pigwell, I woke before dawn and, after tossing and turning for what seemed hours, couldn’t get back to sleep. I rose and walked to the window. The sun was just beginning to make its approach over the horizon, creating the first glow of the early morning.

To the south, I saw the headlights of a vehicle coming down Sidwell Street. I followed the lights as they approached and then passed by my window. It was an eighteen-wheeler, the first of my Pigwell life. There were no markings on it. Just a cab pulling two white trailers behind. I thought nothing of it and five minutes later another went by. Five minutes later, another. And so on. An hour later, twelve trucks had passed by my window, heading north towards the interstate. I looked and waited, but no more came.

“That window is hell, aint it?” the woman on the upper bunk said, interrupting my new-found obsession with eighteen-wheel trucks.

“Why?”

“It lets you see the real world. A world you aint going to ever touch again.”
Her words stung because they were the truth. They spoke of a harsh reality. The rest of my life would most likely be spent in that room, or somewhere else behind the fences, locked doors, and barred windows of the Sidwell Woman’s Correctional Institution. But, somehow that first day I thought the window wasn’t so bad. Having a view of the world would allow me an escape from the confines of Pigwell.

“My name is Betty,” she said.

“Ellen,” I responded.

“Whatcha in for?” she asked.


Mustering the strength to say the word, I whispered, “Murder.”

“Yeah? Me, too.”

Instantly, I was scared. I was sharing a cell with a murderer. Somehow, I didn’t equate what I had done with being a murderer. I had killed because I had to. It wasn’t my fault that the jury hadn’t seen things my way. “Who’d ya kill?” Betty asked.

“Phillip,” I sighed. By this point, I had turned from the window and was sitting in the room’s lone chair. I was facing the bunks and Betty was still lying in her bed, but with her head perched
on her hands as she looked down at me.

“Phillip?” she asked with a quizzical look on her face.

“My husband.”

“Oh. Me, too.”

“Huh?”

“Killed my husband.” Some small amount of relief spread through me. Maybe she wasn’t the horrible monster I thought she might be when she first said she was in for murder. “Stabbed the bastard. Twelve times. He got what he deserved.” We were two of a kind.

“I shot Phillip,” I said. My voice had returned to a whisper. I had never spoken those words, not even to my attorney or at trial. I didn’t get to testify. Back in those days, people didn’t yet care about battered women. Particularly, in the old South, and my attorney thought it best that I not testify. My attorney thought it best that he not know what really happened. “I shot Phillip,” I repeated, warming to the words.

And, suddenly, the wall came tumbling down and words came out in a torrent, “In the head. I’d had it. The years of hitting me, kicking me, calling me a bitch, locking me in our room for days, raping me, and thinking that buying me flowers and saying he was sorry were enough to make up for it.” I stopped and took a breath.

“He had a shot gun in the garage, fully loaded. ‘Just in case,’ he would tell me with a threatening twinkle in his eye. Sometimes, he would remind me about the gun after beating me. I don’t even remember anymore why he would beat me. It got to the point where he just did it because he could. One time, he kicked me and hit me and then dragged me out back. He went back inside and came out with a watermelon under one arm and the shotgun in the other. He put the watermelon against the fence and stalked back towards me. He said, ‘Look at this,’ and then turned and shot the watermelon, obliterating it. Turning back to me, he said, ‘Just in case.’”

“My only regret at that moment wasn’t that he had beat me black and blue--again--but that little Jimmy had seen the whole thing. His high chair was in the kitchen and he was eating Cheerios as fast as he could shovel them in his mouth while Phillip threw me around the kitchen and family room. After Phillip destroyed the watermelon and stomped back into the house, I looked up and saw Jimmy, still in his high chair, looking out the kitchen window. Watching it all.”

“Well, ‘just in case,’ finally came. Only it didn’t come the way he thought it might. I got the shot gun and crept into our room where he was asleep in his crappy Fruit of the Looms that were more yellow and brown than white. No amount of bleach could save those things. His gut sticking up in the air, quivering while he snored that way that he did. Hell, that snore could have woke the dead three counties over. Just didn’t wake him.

“I didn’t give myself time to think about what I was doing. I’d done enough thinking about it over the years. I jammed the shot gun up under his chin. Hard. His eyes shot open and he looked at me. I waited long enough for him to realize what I held in my hands. I wanted to see terror in his eyes. I did, so I pulled the trigger. He ended up looking a lot like the watermelon did.”

That was all I could tell her. I was arrested a couple of days later when Phillip didn’t show up at work and his boss called the police. His body was still in our bed. I was arrested and convicted of murder. Sent away for life.

“Good for you,” Betty said quietly.

We spent the rest of the day in uncomfortable silence, both knowing too much and not enough about each other. The only other exchange we had that day was when I mustered up the nerve to ask her how long she’d been there. “Twenty-three years, seven months, and sixteen days,” came the answer

That evening, after dinner, I stood at the window again, looking out as the day turned to dusk and the sun went down behind Pigwell. The lights of a vehicle approached from the north. A cab pulling two white trailers approached and blew past. Every five minutes, another followed, until eleven had made the journey past my window.

The next morning I woke before dawn again. I got up and looked out the window. As the sun rose, twelve eighteen-wheelers began to make their way to the interstate. I counted them again. And, after dinner, as the sun went down and the lights of Pigwell were slowly extinguished, I stood before the window and counted eleven coming back from the interstate. The headlights announcing their approach, the roar of their engines announcing their arrival, and the gush of air stirring the trees and grass on the roadside signaling their departure from my world.

The window became my escape. The trucks, my puzzle. I have spent the days ever since wondering about them. What’s at the end of the road? Where do they come from? What are they delivering? Where do they go? And, most importantly, what happens to that twelfth truck? How is it that every day, twelve leave in the morning and only eleven return in the evening? How is it that over all these years, there’s never been any change to the schedule? Progress apparently never made it to whatever is connected with those trucks.

I probably could have asked somebody at Pigwell about the trucks. I could have got answers to the questions, but pondering the answers gave me something to occupy my mind. Every twenty-three trucks was a cycle of my life, to be repeated again the following morning.

* * *

The days and weeks and months have rolled by. I’ve lost track of those, I’ve never been able to count the days the way Betty has. The number is too big. Too much to handle.
Somewhere along the way I learned that Jimmy, at the ripe age of fourteen, was sent to an institution for juvenile delinquents. While playing one day, in a fit of anger, he managed to fire a gun and kill a friend. “Just in case,” came way too early for Jimmy. He probably wouldn’t have got in too much trouble if he had owned up to the shooting and claimed it was an accident. But, instead of seeking help, he dragged the boy’s body into some bushes and then went about his business, ignoring the search that went on around him and initially denying any knowledge
about how his friend’s body ended up where it did.

And Jane, whose front teeth were knocked out by her father in a fit of rage over a glass of spilt milk or something of equal insignificance? As she entered adulthood, she wrote me letters that described her life. A succession of battering, abusive men of her own. The letters were filled with tears and anguish over the pain of her life and her inability to escape the violence that had begun when she was so young. Although I want only to throw out her letters when they arrive, I force myself to read them. It is part of my penance. I allowed a man into my life who was brutal and abusive.

The tentacles of that abuse have spread out and affected others. Too many others, including the family of an innocent boy gunned down by my son. And, most likely, the children Jane brings into this world as she bounces from abusive boyfriend to battering husband. I am powerless to
stop it.

I still count the trucks that go by. Twenty-three. Twelve, one way. Eleven, the other. As those stupid trucks go by, I have needed them more and more. The mysteries they offer me have provided me with a haven from the disaster of my life.

Lost And Found

This is a story I wrote for a contest in which it had to involve a supernatural element and "souvenirs of war." This story and The Smokers' Club are probably the two short stories that I'm proudest of. Unfortunately, when I submitted this story, I sent it to the wrong email address and it wasn't considered.

LOST AND FOUND

She was cold. It was a cold that couldn’t be explained by the winter storm that was lashing the Oregon coast, where she lived just a few hundred feet from the ocean. Wind and rain had battered the coast for days. The power had gone out the night before and without heat, there was a chill in the air. But this was a different kind of cold. This cold permeated her skin and seeped into her bones. It enveloped her like a shroud. No matter how much she burrowed into the covers, she couldn’t escape it. She’d felt this way for three months. Ever since her father died.

Two years before, her father moved into the spare bedroom. He didn’t do it because he wanted to. She didn’t accept him because she wanted to. The mere act of her father moving in acknowledged the inevitability of the future. Doug Lundstrom had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live. Upon receiving the news, he had sold his house in Sacramento and moved up to Becky’s Oregon home so that she could take care of him as he died.

Becky’s mother walked out on her family years earlier when Becky was only seven. From that point on, the remaining members of the family formed a team of two. They were always there for each other. Even during the troubled high school years, Becky had always been able to rely on her father to help and support her. She had never rebelled against his firm and caring guidance and as she eased into adulthood, he provided her with the freedom to find her way. Where that took her was to the windswept and rainy Oregon coast and a teaching job in a preschool.

The job didn’t pay great, but it was what she wanted to do and, with some help from her father, Becky had been able to purchase a small two bedroom home that overlooked the ocean. One hundred feet in front of her home, Highway 1 etched its way along the coast and three hundred feet beyond the ribbon of gray, the fringes of the Pacific Ocean crashed on the beach and rocks that she could see from the windows and deck of her home. Not a day went by without Becky stopping at some point, looking at the view, and thanking her god for the opportunity to live in her own paradise.

There really wasn’t any doubt that Doug would move in with her once he received his diagnosis. The bond that they had developed was strong. Becky would take care of him and help him die. There was nobody else who would and she couldn’t imagine him dying alone. What the two of them didn’t realize was that he would defy the prognosis he was given. Those few months stretched into two years. That time gave them both the opportunity to share with each other things they had never discussed. By the time he died, Becky loved her father without regret. What she didn’t realize was that there was one secret that he hadn’t been able to tell her.

* * *

“What the hell,” she mumbled to herself as she threw the covers off and pushed them down to the foot of the bed. If she was going to be cold, she was going to be cold. Becky got up and looked out the window admiring the view for the first time that day. It looked as though the storm was finally petering out. She could see clear sky at the edges of the horizon. Clouds still filled the sky over her home and a fine mist was falling. The wind blew hard enough to bend the trees that dotted the coastline in front of her. The dynamic environment of the Oregon Coast had yet to bore her.

The power came on as Becky shrugged into her robe and went out to the kitchen. She started a pot of coffee, realizing as she did so that she was making it the way her dad had liked it--black and thick. He had developed a taste for bad coffee while he was fighting the communists in Vietnam. When he moved in, it only took a day or two for her to realize that he wasn’t going to drink her weak imitation of coffee. Without argument, she began to make it the way he liked, and found herself getting used to it. Now, with him gone, she had continued making it the same. She was unwilling to change back to the way things were before he had arrived. To do so, would be to accept his passing.

Absentmindedly reaching for a coffee cup on the counter, Becky’s hand brushed against a piece of paper leaning against the cup. She looked down and saw the face of a little girl staring back at her. To Becky, the girl looked as though she was of Asian descent. Her hair was black, as black as the darkest sky at midnight. She had eyes that matched. They were deep, deep circles of darkness looking out from a face that was lit up with a smile. The kind of smile an infant may have after being tickled. Two lonely front teeth poked out.

“Huh?” she found herself muttering out loud. “Where’d that come from?” The picture hadn’t been there the night before, and she hadn’t noticed it when she first entered the kitchen. Becky picked up the picture and looked at it, trying to figure out how it could have got there. She had never seen it before. A chill went down her back. Had somebody been in her house while she slept?

Becky turned the picture over to see if there was any clue on the back. There, in her dad’s almost illegible scrawl, was written, “Becky, find her.”

In the back of Becky’s mind an itch began to form. It was a lot like an itch she felt sometimes when she was out in public. Every once in awhile, while sitting in a crowded movie theater or walking through a shopping mall, a paranoid thought would enter her mind and she would become convinced that, at any minute, a madman would enter with a gun and begin shooting. The back corner of her head would start to itch, right where she imagined the bullet would enter her brain and snuff out her life.

This time, though, it wasn’t the itch of a bullet she felt. Instead, a different itch arose and suddenly she saw images, quickly one after another. The first was of a young man, who she realized was her father. He was lying on the ground in a jungle, shooting a gun at some unseen target, and screaming as he did so. She could see that he was frightened and that tears were running down his cheeks. The second image was of the same man, hugging a Vietnamese woman, and smiling at the camera. The woman was beautiful. Her oval face, framed by long black hair that reached down beyond her hips, was lit up with a smile and luminous eyes that seemed to reach deep into Becky’s soul. That image was quickly replaced by the sight of the same woman, holding a baby who looked like the one in the picture Becky now held. The woman was screaming and crying, and holding one arm out between the poles of a wrought iron fence, while the baby wrapped her arms around the woman’s neck. The woman no longer looked quite so beautiful. Instead, she looked scared. No, not scared. She looked terrified. The image quickly switched to one of Becky’s dad boarding a helicopter on the roof of a building. He looked back briefly, feebly waved, and then disappeared into the bowels of the chopper.

“You’re my sister,” Becky whispered, looking at the picture. The idea had itched and scratched its way from the farthest corner of her mind. It wasn’t a bullet from a gun, but it exploded into her consciousness nonetheless. She had a sister she never knew existed. The question of how the picture got there no longer mattered. She knew though that there was something she had to do. Somehow, somewhere her dad was still there with her and asking Becky to do something. She turned the picture back over and looked again. The words remained. “Becky, find her.” How?

Over the next few days, Becky found herself staring at that picture over and over again, trying to figure out how to find the girl in it. How could she possibly find somebody who had been born thirty years ago in a country halfway around the world with nothing more than a baby picture? She would sit for hours and stare at the picture, absentmindedly scratching the spot on her head where the itch had started when she first found the picture.

Three days later, while she was drinking her morning coffee, black and thick, the itch returned. It caught her by surprise again, but there were no images this time. Instead, there was just a thought, a formation of words on the movie screen of her mind. She thought it was her own, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if the same power that had given her the images also gave her the thought. It was simply this, “Talk to Joe.”

“Of course,” she muttered to herself. Joe was her dad’s only true friend. He had come up to Oregon from southern California every few months during the last couple of years. Joe and her father would sit out on her deck for hours, drinking beer and reliving the past, talking about old friends and telling stories. Joe had served in Vietnam with her father and saved his life at one point, killing a North Vietnamese soldier who had wounded him and was about to fire the killing shot. If anybody knew about the baby in the picture, it would be Joe.

“Joe,” she said, after she reached him by phone, “there’s something I need to talk to you about. Can you come up here?”

“I’d love to,” he replied. “But, I don’t think I can get up there for a couple of months. What’s going on?”

“It’s about dad. I’d rather not tell you over the phone. There’s something I need to show you. It’s important.”

“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can do, but . . .”

“I’ll pay your way, Joe. Please,” she pleaded.

When he arrived at her front door three days later, delayed by a winter storm that closed the Portland airport, Becky sat him down at her kitchen table and poured him a cup of coffee, black and thick. “Here it is,” Becky said to him, reaching over to the space between the napkin holder and the wall where she had left the picture. Her fingers reached in between and found nothing. She moved the napkins away and looked. There was no picture. Becky was sure she had left the picture in that spot just a couple of hours before Joe got there. She turned the kitchen upside down and couldn’t find it. Just as quickly as the picture had appeared, it had now disappeared.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Joe, you aren’t going to believe this without the picture.”

“What’s going on, Becky? Just tell me. You’d be surprised at what I believe these days.”

“The other day I found a picture, here on the counter. It was a picture of a little Vietnamese girl. I’d never seen it before. On the back, in my dad’s handwriting, it said ‘Becky, find her.’ I’m sure that little girl is my sister, that my dad fathered her while in Vietnam. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. Then I realized you must know about her,” Becky said, looking at Joe. She felt as though she was about to cry. She was convinced that Joe would think she had gone batty. That the death of her father had pushed her over the edge.

Joe was silent for a moment, pondering Becky’s words. “Your dad had a child in Vietnam,” he said slowly, not sure how to proceed. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No. He never talked about Vietnam. Never. I tried to talk to him about it, but he would never talk about it. He just wouldn’t. It was the only thing he couldn’t talk to me about.”

“This is going to sound heartless,” Joe said, “but you have to understand what war does to a man. It can take your heart and your soul and rip them to shreds. You become bitter and cynical. Attachment becomes dangerous and you say things, think things, do things, to create distance. Do you understand? Don’t judge your dad by what I’m about to tell you, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied, now wondering if she wanted this conversation to continue.

“O-o-o-o-h,” Joe sighed. “He loved that woman, her name was Anh. He hated the war. Hated it. But he loved Anh. She was the only good thing about that fuckin’ war that he had. God, she was beautiful and wonderful. And then with the evacuation, he lost her. Over the years, he began to refer to the little girl as his ‘souvenir of war.’ Only it wasn’t a souvenir that he had been able to keep. It was one that he had to leave behind. It tore him up to have to leave them both behind when we evacuated from Saigon in ’75. But he had no choice.”

“That’s awful.”

“Oh, it was. It took years for him to get over it. Every once in awhile, when we were drunk enough and had used up all of our other memories, he’d stop and wonder if she had survived and what her life must be like. A few years ago, he mentioned going back and trying to find her, but then he got the diagnosis and lost his opportunity.”

There was silence for a moment or two. Becky wasn’t alarmed by what Joe had told her. Her father’s silence about the war had told her everything she needed to know. It had scarred him. Although he had been an attentive father and did everything to care for her and make sure she made the right choices, there were times when he was so removed from her that she wanted to reach out and shake him and bring him back to her. She had little doubt now, looking back with the wisdom of maturity and the past couple of years of close contact with her father, that he had struggled with the demons brought on by his war experience. It did sound cruel that he referred to that beautiful little girl in the picture as a souvenir, but she understood. Just as he occasionally pushed Becky away, he needed to push the little girl away, as far away as he could. Otherwise, the wounds that he had sewn shut might re-open. From his grave, he appeared to be trying to draw the little girl back.

“Do you believe me?” she found herself asking Joe.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You can’t understand this because you’ve never had to fight for your life. You’ve never gone through a war. But war does something to a person. After you’ve seen the guy next to you die for an incredibly stupid reason, you have to believe there’s something else. Otherwise you give into the futility of war. I walked into Vietnam not believing in God. But you know what? That saying about there being no atheists in foxholes. It’s true.

“I walked out believing in the whole thing,” continued Joe. “There’s a God. We have souls. There’s an afterlife. And, sometimes when you die, if you have unfinished business? Your soul isn’t at rest and you haven’t found peace. Some people, when they die, that anguish lives on. That’s what a ghost is. It’s an anguished soul. A soul that needs to find peace.

“To answer your question, hell yeah, I believe you. I knew your dad had a void. I’m just surprised it took this long for him to reveal it to you.”

“What do I do now?”

“Find her. Just like it said.”

“Will you help me? I don’t know where to start.”

“Yeah, I can help. I’ve got some contacts in the Defense Department and there are old vets going back to Vietnam all the time to find their lost kids, the ones they fathered while they were there. Hell, a lot of those kids ended up over here eventually. For all we know, she could be living in the next town over. If she’s alive, I’ll find her.”

“Thanks, Joe,” she said, getting up to give him a hug.

“No problem. I’m doing it for your dad,” he said. “Can I have another cup of that coffee? It’s the best coffee I’ve had in years.”

In the next few weeks, Joe’s contacts paid off, in spades. Just over a month after Becky shared her story with him, she received an envelope from him via Federal Express. At first she couldn’t open it, convinced that enclosed was the evidence of the early death of the sister she never knew she had. The coldness she still felt intensified as she looked at the envelope. Stalling, Becky got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. She sat back down and picked up the envelope, turning it over and over in her hands.

Finally, she undid the clasp on the back and slid her finger under the flap, tearing it open. She looked inside and saw a piece of paper and a picture. Excitedly, Becky dumped the contents out on the table. Staring up at her was a Vietnamese woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She had long, straight hair that was blacker than the darkest midnight, much like the hair of the woman who had flashed across Becky’s memory a few weeks prior. Her eyes stared out of the picture and pierced Becky’s soul. The woman was breathtaking in her simple beauty.
Becky picked up the page that had also fallen out of the envelope. On it was a handwritten note from Joe.

Becky,
Enclosed is a picture of your sister. Her name is Hanh Phuc Nguyen (Hanh Phuc means ‘blessing from above’). Her mother, Anh Nguyen, died shortly after we left Vietnam. Hanh Phuc became a refugee and was adopted by a family in Minnesota who renamed her Vicki. She does not know about you or your father. Below, I have written down her address and phone number if you decide you want to contact her. Good luck!
Joe

“My God!” Becky exclaimed, dropping the note to the table. She placed the picture in front of her and stared at it. She looked to the letter and read it again. She glanced at the picture again and then re-read the letter. “What do I do?” she found herself asking out loud. Hours later, after walking out to her deck and watching the ocean waves crash on the beach for what seemed like an eternity, she had her answer, but first she needed to make a call.

“Is Joe there?” Becky asked after a woman, whose voice she didn’t recognize, answered the phone.

“No, who’s this?”

“Becky Lundstrom. Who’s this?”

“I’m his sister. How do you know Joe?”

“My father served with him in Vietnam. What’s going on?”

“Joe died last night.”

“No!” Becky screamed into the phone. “How? When?”

“He died in his sleep, peacefully, thank God.”

“I’m so sorry, I . . . I . . .” Becky began crying as she slid down to the floor. That itch in the back corner of her head had returned, and it was showing her something she didn’t want to see. In her mind, a series of images flashed by. First, came the picture of the little girl, followed by an image of Joe sitting at her kitchen table and her searching frantically for the picture. Then, her mind was filled with the picture of Hanh Phuc as an adult, followed by an image of Joe, lying in bed, peacefully. Each link in the chain leading her to the sister she never knew she had disappeared as soon as the next link appeared. Was it really possible? Had Joe died because he helped her? Becky shook her head until the itch went away, unwilling to seriously consider the possibility.

“Is there anything I can do for you,” she heard the woman on the other end of the phone ask.

“No. No. I’ll be fine. Is there anything that I can do for you,” Becky asked.

“Pray for Joe and his family. That’s all we can do now,” the woman said, her voice beginning to tremble.

“I’ll do that. Thank you for letting me know,” Becky said as she hung up the phone.

That night, Becky left the picture and letter on the kitchen counter next to her coffee cup. When she got up the next morning and reached for the cup to fill with coffee, black and thick, she discovered that both documents were gone. Another link in the chain had disappeared. She gasped and glanced up. There sitting at the kitchen table was her father. Before she could say or do anything, he raised his own cup to her as if in toast and nodded his head to her, ever so slightly. And disappeared. When Becky looked down, where she had left the picture, there was a single red rose and a small piece of paper. On the paper, in her father’s almost illegible scrawl, was written, “Sleep peacefully.”

Twenty four hours later, the cold that had seeped into her bones was finally gone, and Becky Lundstrom found herself on an airplane headed east towards Minnesota, hoping that she wasn’t the next link in the chain.

The Smoker's Club

What follows is the first short story I got published ... and got paid for ... all of $20. But, now I can say I'm a paid author. It was published by The First Line last year.

The Smoker's Club

When my brother, Andy, went away to college, he left me his fishing pole, a well-read copy of The Wind in the Willows, and a stack of Playboys. “Tyler,” he said, in his eighteen-year-old voice that still cracked occasionally, “these are all you need to understand life.”

“Thanks, Andy.” I wiped the tears from my eyes, brought on by the knowledge that he would be leaving the next day. My big brother, my idol and protector, the guy who had taught me how to make armpit farts, burp the alphabet, and eat a chocolate-dipped soft-serve cone without getting a brain freeze, was leaving me.

Unlike other big brothers, Andy had rarely used the six years that lay between us to his advantage. He didn’t make fun of me for the things I didn’t know and he didn’t care if I tagged along with him and his friends no matter how much they complained that his snot-nosed little brother was slowing them down – or worse – was going to tell on them. Andy knew I’d never tell on him.

Andy and I had formed a brotherly bond when I was eight. Our parents weren’t home and Andy was supposed to be watching me. He wasn’t. He was in his room. Growing tired of watching the television, I walked up the stairs towards his room hoping to talk Andy into playing catch. “Andy,” I said as I turned the corner and walked into his room. My thoughts of a game of catch were immediately washed away when I saw him hunched over in a chair next to his half open window. He had a cigarette in his right hand and he was blowing smoke out the window.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” he replied, snuffing the cigarette out on the ledge and flicking the butt out the window. I could tell by the arc of its flight that it would land comfortably on the other side of the fence we shared with the Swansons. For a brief second, an image of an ever-expanding pile of butts on the Swansons’ side yard flashed across the movie screen of my mind. I wondered when Mr. Swanson would realize those butts weren’t his and come talk to our dad.

“I’m telling,” I said and began to back out of Andy’s room.

“Oh, no, you aren’t.” He was on me before I knew it, grabbing my arm and squeezing so hard it hurt.

“Ouch!” I yelled and tried to pull away.

“You can’t tell mom and dad.”

“Let go of me.”

“Not until you promise not to tell.”

“Let go of me,” I said again, regretting the whine of my voice but not able to sound stronger. Andy’s fingers were digging into my arm and he was starting to shake me back and forth.

“Promise.”

I shook my head. I was afraid I was going to cry. Andy had never hurt me before and the anger that I could feel in his fingertips and hear in his voice was a new experience for me. “Lemme try one,” I said.

The suggestion shocked Andy into easing his grip enough for me to wriggle my arm free. I stood there, rubbing my arm where his hand had left red marks in the shape of his fingers, waiting for his response.

“No.”

“Then I tell,” I said, backing one more step towards his door. I knew I was another step from being able to turn and flee. One step from turning and dashing down the stairs and out of the door, where I could roam the neighborhood until mom and dad got home. Andy ruined my escape plans.

“Okay.”

“Huh?” I turned back to Andy. “You’ll lemme try one?”

Andy didn’t say a word. He just went back to the chair and leaned over his desk. Moving a couple of books out of the row that lined the back of the desk he pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. Andy motioned for me to sit down in his chair – what we would refer to as his “smoking chair” in the years to come. Andy stood before me, shaking a cigarette out of the pack, and then removing a match.

“Ya sure?”

Unable to speak, I nodded my head and then watched the match strike the sulphur strip and flare brightly. Andy put the cigarette in his mouth and touched the tip with the match’s flame, sucking in as he did so. He blew a small puff of smoke out the window and then looked back at me. “Last chance,” he said, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and offering it to me.

I took the cigarette between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand and guided it, shakily, to my lips. When the filter end touched my bottom lip, I encircled it and sucked in. The immediate hit of the nicotine on my mouth and lungs brought tears to my eyes and a coughing fit so severe I thought a lung was going to come sliding out of my mouth. “Easy, easy,” Andy said, patting me on the back. “You ever want to do that again?” he chuckled.

“N-o-o-o-o.”

“Here’s the deal, Tyler. You can’t tell mom or dad about this.”

“I won’t. But, you can’t keep throwing your butts outta the window. Mr. Swanson’s gonna figure it out.”

“Aw, hell, ol’ Mr. Swanson smokes like a chimney, and Mrs. Swanson does, too. They’ll never figure out those are mine.” And Andy was right, either they never figured it out or they never let on that they did. As far as Andy and I knew, mom and dad never found out about our little smoking club. Until Andy left, I’m sure he smoked whenever he had a chance. Occasionally, I would, too, just to make sure Andy knew I was still on his side.

Before I left his room, Andy turned back to his desk and rummaged around in one of the drawers. “Here it is,” he mumbled to himself. Turning to face me, he commanded, “Hold out your hand.”

I did and he put his closed hand over mine. “This is a gift from me to you, Tyler. We are brothers forever. We must be loyal to each other above all else. I will never hurt you again as long as we remain brothers. This is a promise I make to you. In exchange, you must promise to always be true to me. To trust me and defend me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. I was awed by his words. In my young eight-year-old mind, this was serious stuff. Andy opened his hand and released what he held inside. It was a small pocketknife. As it dropped and I reflexively closed my hand around the knife, I knew that we had a bond that couldn’t be broken.

From that point on, Andy taught me about the ways of the world. He taught me to smoke and not cough up a lung while doing so. He told me that Pabst Blue Ribbon was the best beer there was. When I asked him how he knew, he just looked at me and said with a sly smile, “You’ll have to wait a couple of years for that.” Andy took me on day-long adventures in the woods that surrounded our town, telling me things about the wildlife that I’m sure he made up as he went along. I’m still not sure if it’s safe to drink water from a mountain stream or if it can make you go blind if you do so.

When I was in the sixth grade, I developed my first crush. Her name was Olivia. She had dancing blue eyes and the most beautiful cascading blonde curls. I couldn’t approach my dad to seek his advice. He was an impenetrable wall of silence, sitting in his chair, drinking a martini and watching the news, talking only when he needed to tell me to be quiet. But Andy was imminently approachable and helpful. He told me how to treat a girl right. How I should act interested, but not so interested that I looked desperate. When we talked about Olivia, I learned the meaning of the word “aloof” for the first time. That was what Andy said I should be.

* * *

I’d like to say that the first thing I did the day Andy left for college was crack open The Wind in the Willows and read it cover to cover. I didn’t. I started reading it, but after reading a few pages about Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad, I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve never liked stories that give animals human qualities. Even all of the Disney movies that have been made over the years turn me off. There’s something about those stories that disturbs my sense of logic. Animals are animals, not humans, and they can’t have human qualities. They can’t talk and don’t have the same range of emotions that we do. Stories that try to suggest otherwise are just ridiculous.

Similarly, I leafed through a few pages of one or two of the Playboys, but the titillation I felt looking at the pictures was unsettling and something I wasn’t ready for. I was fascinated by the breasts and curves of the women pictured on those pages, but not knowing what to do about the stirring I felt in my groin, I shoved the magazines into a box and hid them in the back corner of my closet. Soon The Wind in the Willows found its way into the same box.

Two things Andy gave to me I didn’t hide -- the pocketknife and his fishing pole. The pocketknife was always right where it belonged, in the right front pocket of whatever jeans or shorts I was wearing at the time. Since the day Andy gave it to me I kept that knife near me. It was a talisman. It would ward off evil and protect me from harm. As I grew into adulthood, I was able to leave it behind occasionally, but never too far. It sits now, more than thirty years later, in my bag of toiletries on my bathroom counter and goes with me in that bag whenever I leave town.

The fishing pole was what really captivated me. Andy caught his first fish with it, a three pound spotted bass. It wasn’t much of a fish, but he had caught it all by himself. He beamed for a week afterward telling anybody who would listen about his catch. And as with any fish story, by the time Andy left for college, that fish he caught so many years before fought him for over an hour before he was able to haul it out of the water, had grown to twelve pounds, and was the “largest bass caught in these parts.” That’s how Andy would always describe it. The fact that Andy had given his fishing pole to me meant more than anything else he had ever done.

Once Andy left, I initially took every opportunity to go fishing. I knew where Andy had caught his first fish and was convinced that if I kept going back to that spot, I would catch a fish, too. Much like the pocketknife was a talisman that kept me from harm, the fishing pole was a charm that would bring me good fortune. Soon, though, as with most things for a twelve-year-old, I grew tired of fishing, which didn’t have the same lure for me as it had for Andy. After a few weeks of regular trips to the creek behind our house, I gave up the pursuit for a fish.

* * *

It was August 1968 when Andy went away to college. He went to the state university in Charlotte without much of a plan, only the vague notion that he wanted to do something more than work at the mill where our dad worked, along with virtually every other able-bodied man in Stewartsville, our little town on the eastern edge of North Carolina. My protector was gone, temporarily he claimed. He promised to come back every holiday and during summer breaks. And, then he’d see what happened once he finished college. But he promised me he’d never really leave me. The fishing pole, the book, and the magazines were one way that he’d always be nearby.

It was the spring of 1969 when Andy flunked out of college and returned home. After a month or two of aimlessness, Andy took a job at the mill. Nobody ever really knew what happened. In high school, Andy had been a top student. Once he got to college, though, he lost interest in his studies and was gone after that first year. Years later when I really became aware of what was going in the late ‘60’s, I came up with my own theory. Andy’s smoking in his room, puffing the smoke out the window, and flicking the butts across the fence into the Swanson’s yard, had turned into something more potent. He had found something more interesting than sticking his nose in a book and he had succumbed.

It was October 1969 when Andy got his draft notice, calling him to serve his country in Vietnam. At the ripe old age of thirteen, I knew that there was a war going on, that it was growing increasingly unpopular, and, most of all, that U.S. soldiers were dying in a country far, far away. Once again, Andy was leaving me. This time he had nothing to give me other than a ruffle of my hair and a “take it easy, little dude,” before he got in my dad’s car for the ride to the train station.

It was May 1970 -- a week after my fourteenth birthday -- when Andy’s remains came home in a body bag. He had stepped on a booby trap somewhere in the jungles along the Laotian border. There wasn’t much left of him to put in the bag. To this day, not having had the opportunity to actually see that it was Andy that we buried in a closed coffin on a muggy Thursday afternoon in the little hillside cemetery that overlooked Stewartsville, I wonder if Andy is really dead.

* * *

Thirty-five years later, I rediscovered my box of Andy’s things. It was a sweltering August afternoon and my eleven-year-old son and I were cleaning out the garage. At the bottom of a stack of boxes in the corner, was a box that had gone through several generations of packing tape to hold it together. “What’s in this?” my son, Andrew, asked, picking it up from the floor.

As soon as I saw the box, I thought of his namesake and the journey the box had taken from my parents’ home, to college, to an apartment I shared with a girlfriend, to the first home I bought with my wife, and to its current resting place.

Andy started to open the box, trying to rip the layers of tape off of it. “Don’t open it,” I ordered him, immediately remembering the stack of Playboys that resided inside. He was only eleven, not quite as old as I was when Andy first gave me the magazines. I wasn’t ready for him to discover their contents. I knew something else I could give to him.

“Hold on a sec. My brother gave me what’s in that box years ago. I haven’t looked in there for years. I have something else for you, though.” I climbed the ladder up to the rafters and pulled out Andy’s old fishing pole. When I got back to ground level, I handed it to my son. “Here, this was your Uncle Andy’s.” I remembered then what the fishing pole taught me about life.

After Andy’s death and days of listening to my mother’s grieving wails and observing the wall of silence my father surrounded himself which got thicker than ever, I pulled the fishing pole out of the corner of our garage and went to the creek. I learned that day that the point of fishing wasn’t actually to catch a fish. Instead, I discovered that the solitude of the endeavor is all that is important. That first day back at the creek, I sat by the rushing water, paying little attention to the pole and the line that led off of it. I listened to the leaves rustling in a slight breeze and watched the sunlight dancing through the canopy of trees. I allowed the gentle peacefulness of the woods to envelop me and came to terms with my brother’s death. With the fishing pole by my side, Andy was there with me. His death was something that couldn’t be reversed. I accepted his presence in whatever form it would take.

When I got home, I gave my dad a hug and accepted his silence. It was the last time I would ever hug him, but I no longer would be troubled by his mood. It wasn’t my fault and I knew that. It was a silence that he needed. I gave my mom a hug, too, and gradually her grief lessened and she came back to me. Two or three times a week until I left for college, I would find a way to get back to the creek. I would cast my line into the creek’s waters and then sit quietly, paying no attention to the pole. I couldn’t tell you now whether a fish ever even nibbled on the hook, but I can tell you that whenever I was there on that creek I felt my brother.

* * *

I think I’ll give my son the box when he turns twelve. I’ll tell him the same thing my brother told me, that the contents of the box will provide him with all he needs to understand life. I will tell him what the fishing pole taught me, but I hope that my son does what I wasn’t able to do – read The Wind in the Willows and discover its secrets. Maybe one day I’ll be able to sit down with Andrew and tell him about his uncle Andy and he, in turn, can tell me about that book and what it meant for my brother.

As for the Playboys, I have a few ideas about what Andy meant but I’ll leave those for my son to learn as well. Those secrets are ones that every boy needs to figure out on his own as he becomes a man. Maybe he’ll learn something different from the pages of those magazines than what I did when I finally cracked them open a few years after Andy gave them to me.

What If and I Wish



There once was a little boy named What If
With each day he asked …
What if a bird landed on my head?
What if elephants slept in my bed?
What if I could eat with my ear?
What if a martian were to land right here?
What If had a brother named I Wish
With each day he always said …
I wish I could fly to the moon.
I wish my birthday would come soon.
I wish I lived at the park
I wished that it never got dark.
What If and I Wish had a mom and a dad
Who tried to keep the boys from being sad.
They gave to them what they wished.



And explained the answers to their questions
But What If and I Wish never stopped asking and wishing
What if grass grew on trees?
I wish I didn’t have to eat peas.
I wish everyday was Saturday.
What if my hair grew from here …. to there?
What if my teacher had three eyes?
I wish I could have three blueberry pies.
I wish I could play games all night.
What if I could fly like a kite?
The wishes and questions went on and on
Some days all the way until dawn. The mom and dad began wishing to find a way
For all these wishes and questions to fade away.
Then one night, while mom read a story to I Wish,
He said to her, “I wish I could live with you forever,” and gave her a kiss.
And, that very same night, while dad read to What If,
What If said “What if we stay just like this.”
From that day forward, the mom and the dad
Never thought the wishes and questions were so bad.
Hey Mom! What if this hamburger was made from cow poop?
Hey Dad! I wish we could eat turtle toenail soup!

Terror in a Small Town

What follows is the first few pages of my NaNo (and, no, that isn't a dirty word)... Curious to know if this grabs your attention.

Monday, January 9, 2006

In the small town of Oxford Junction, Iowa, a white van pulls up to a post office located just off Main Street. The post office isn’t much more than a counter along one wall of the corner market. There are still towns in America where the postal clerk doubles as the grocery clerk, triples as the weekend librarian, and quadruples as the emergency dispatcher when needed. Oxford Junction is such a town. The security of a big city post office doesn’t exist in small towns.

A man steps out of the van. Not having showered or shaved for most of the previous week, he looks horrible and smells worse. The dank stink of an addict in desperate search of a fix oozes from his every pore. When he makes his way to the counter in back, Sylvia Griffith, the postal clerk-grocery clerk-sometimes librarian-emergency dispatcher, crinkled her nose and, not for the first time, regretted that she wore so many hats.

The man, whose name is Jesse Garfield, waits at the counter for Sylvia to finish with a customer. His hands shake slightly so he stuffs them in his pocket. She’s taking too damn long. He looks out the door. It is cold out there, warm in the store. The sun is out, reflecting brightly off the snow that has accumulated over the past few days. It’s a beautiful day outside, but he doesn’t care. The brightness of the sun hurts, it penetrates his brain and makes him want to scream. All he wants is a dark room and a needle in his arm. The man who approached him that morning made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. $500 in cash and the hit he needs. There is a motel room with his name on it. All he has to do is complete his errand.

In front of Jesse are eight envelopes bearing no return address. Each envelope contains one videotape and nothing more. “I need to mail these out by overnight,” he says, sniffling and trying to keep his hands from shaking, when Sylvia finally comes over to help him. If she could, she would have a nose plug and handkerchief over her mouth and nose in an effort to keep the stench from her. Just as the sun penetrates Jesse’s brain, his stink penetrates her brain. She’s afraid she will smell this stranger for days or weeks the stink is so powerful.

And he is a stranger. Sylvia knows every resident of Oxford Junction. What self-respecting postal clerk-grocery clerk-part-time librarian-emergency dispatcher wouldn’t make sure to know everybody in town? Normally, she might stop and ponder why a strange man is dropping off eight plain brown envelopes with no return address. But Sylvia wants nothing more than to take his packages, his payment, and then see him walk out the door. So, she does her thing, quickly, without thought. She weighs the packages and slaps the postage on the envelopes. “That’ll be $64.56,” she says, handing the receipt to Jesse.

He hands four $20 bills to Sylvia and accepts his change. “Thanks,” he mumbles, turning to leave. Sylvia has already stepped back from the postal counter, placing the envelopes in a box that will be handed to the courier service that picks up the town’s mail every afternoon at 4:00, give or take fifteen minutes.

His job done and his shakes barely under control, Jesse gets back in the van and drives it two blocks down the street, turns right, and parks in front of a small, two bedroom house. While Jesse makes the short drive, Sylvia makes a quick trip to the store’s restroom and washes her hands and splashes water on her face in a desperate effort to rid herself of the stranger’s smell. The truth of the matter, though, is that she will be stuck with a ‘memory smell,’ one that will bring her back to that afternoon on a cold, sunlit day in January, when she accepted eight plain brown envelopes from a man who seemed to smell of death.

As he was instructed, Jesse leaves the keys in the van and approaches the front door. Later that day, the van will be driven to a lake several miles outside of town and pushed in to sink to the lake’s depths, never to be found.

Jesse knocks three times on the door, pauses, and knocks two more times. The door opens and a hand reaches out holding an envelope. Jesse can see nothing more than that hand reaching around the edge of the door. The interior of the house is dark except for the sliver of light the slightly opened door allows in. But Jesse doesn’t care about what’s in the house. What he cares about is what’s in the envelope. He grabs it and rips it open. Inside are twenty $20 bills and a small packet containing the most potent heroin he’ll ever experience. For the second time in a matter of minutes, Jesse mumbles, “Thanks,” as he turns to go.

By the end of the day, Jesse Garfield will find himself in Room 112 of the Blue Moon Motel, a seedy place at the edge of town where you can get a room with “Cable TV for just $29.99 per night.” For Jesse what the room and the heroin, the purest heroin he’s ever had, will get him is dead. As dead as can be before the calendar loses a day and January 10, 2006, dawns.

Jesse will die not realizing that his need for a fix, for another hit to soothe his inner demons, for one more night of bliss floating on the waves of drug-induced euphoria, will land him in the center of an incredible event. Sylvia will go to sleep that night, confident that she did her job that day, not realizing that her desire to rid herself of Jesse’s presence prevented her from remembering her training--a stranger comes in, eight envelopes with no return address, obviously in some state of stress, and she does nothing to try to identify him, to stop him, to find out what he was doing.

Who Is Maureen Nesbitt

This is a story I wrote for a contest in which we were provided with the theme and then given 48 hours to write the story. The required theme was that the story had to include "Rock, Paper, Scissors" in it -- either the game or the objects.


Who is Maureen Nesbitt? A thought passed through my mind in the early morning hours, bringing me awake in a flash. I awoke wondering where the thought came from. Maureen Nesbitt? I’d never heard of the person. After ten or fifteen minutes of tossing and turning, trying to void my mind of her name, I gave up and walked out to the kitchen.

There was only one way to find peace. I went to ask Cal. At such an early hour, I was sure I’d have him to myself.

* * *

Through an odd quirk of quarks, neutrinos, artificial intelligence, and pure blind luck, a leap forward had occurred two years prior, pushing the Internet Age dramatically forward. Computers with internet connections, Google searches, and wi-fi hot spots had given away to Information Zones, or izzies. The technology, although still in its infancy, had revolutionized how people acquired information. Every building had an izzie--homes, offices, restaurants, schools.

To learn something, all one had to do was enter an izzie and ask a question. “How do I get to the pizza place at the corner of Clover and Griffin streets?” The izzie would provide the answer. “What is the capital of California?” “Sacramento,” the izzie would spit out.

The odd thing was that nobody really knew how izzie’s came to be. One day, a man by the name of Malcolm McPhee, standing in the lobby of a hotel, muttered aloud, “Where the hell’s the damn bellhop when you need him?”

“At the moment, he’s on the john, trying to push one out,” said a disembodied voice. “And you don’t have to have such an attitude.” Mr. McPhee was so startled by the response that he fell to his knees and suffered a fatal coronary event. Before he breathed his last, he was able to pass on what he had heard. Initially, people thought he was crazy as a loon even though the bellhop had, in fact, been trying to push one out at that very moment. Soon, reports of similar incidents from all over the world began to accumulate and izzies were everywhere, every single building had them. They would suddenly just be there.

The benefit izzies brought to businesses was incalculable. Stores no longer needed clerks. Customers could simply ask a store’s izzie questions about where merchandise was located and how much it cost. Servers were no longer needed at restaurants as orders could be placed with the izzie.

Some izzies developed personalities. The izzie that serves a friend’s apartment is a twenty-four-year-old woman named Elsa. Before answering any question posed by a man, she insists that he describe a sexual act he would like to perform on her.

The izzie at my apartment claimed to be thirty two years old and named Cal. Before he answered a question, he insisted that the questioner play something with him first. The other day, when I asked for a sloppy joe recipe, Cal insisted on playing “I Spy With My Little Eye” before he would provide me the recipe. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later when I finally figured out that the green object he spied was a fern in the northeast corner of the courtyard that I got what I wanted. Oh, how I wished I had Elsa for an izzie.

* * *

Now, sitting on the bench in the building’s courtyard, I popped the question. “Who is Maureen Nesbitt?”

“Rock, paper, scissors. Beat me, two out of three, or I don’t answer.”

“Fine,” I muttered. We began the game. The first round, Cal and I both said “paper.” The second round, Cal’s “rock” beat my “scissors.”

“You lose,” Cal said. For a brief second, I thought about what I was doing, playing “Rock, paper, scissors,” with an artificially intelligent, inanimate . . . aw, hell, there was no real way to even think of what Cal actually was.

“Let’s go again. You said two out of three,” I replied.

Again we tied, and began again. My “paper” covered his “rock.” Immediately, I began the third round, growing impatient at not getting an answer to my question. I stuck with “paper,” knowing Cal would expect me to change to “scissors” and he could defeat me with “rock.” Cal fell into my trap, repeating “rock” and I was victorious.

“Three out of five,” Cal whined.

“No way.”

“Then I don’t answer.”

“Fine.” Nobody could make an izzie answer a question unless the izzie wanted to.

I won again. As Cal whined for more rounds, I won the next five in succession. When Cal begged for one more, I had had enough. “No,” I yelled. “Answer my question now. I’ve played enough. You know I can just go to another izzie.”

“Actually, you can’t, young man. You’ll need an izzie that can tell the future. Like me.”

“Huh?”

“Some izzies can see the future. Don’t ask me how. I won’t tell you. Your Maureen Nesbitt is somebody in your future. You’ll have to find an izzie that can see the future to find out who she is. There aren’t many of us. One more game. You win, I tell.”

I began to pound my fist on my hand. On the third pound, I blurted out scissors as my fingers made the familiar shape. I sensed a second’s hesitation in Cal as he said, “rock,” and immediately began making the sound of a rock smashing scissors.

“You cheated!” I screamed, rising from the bench and shaking my fists at . . . well, there was nothing to shake my fists at, so I just shook them.

“Did not.”

“Did, too.”

“You mother . . .”

“Hey, no swearing at me. The user agreement you signed, paragraph 13, clearly states any information inquiry is voided by the use of abusive language.”

Cal was right. I was defeated. Maureen Nesbitt would remain a mystery until she entered my life at some unknown point in the future.

Forever

FOREVER

1

I don’t wanna go through this life
Without you by my side
And I got it all worked out
In my head here’s how it’s got to be

-- “Trees” by Marty Casey & Lovehammers

I stood in the rain and watched the sky. I was looking for answers that weren’t in the blackness that engulfed me. Neither were there any answers in the warm rain that washed over me. If there were no answers, I hoped the water would cleanse my soul of the depression I felt, but the longer I stood there, the more I spun out of control. The answers I was looking for weren’t coming. I felt like they were getting further away.

A week ago, I asked Erica to leave with me. Permanently. To throw everything else away. So I could be with her. We could be together. Forever. It was an odd feeling to have. We had only known each for a little more than six months. We’d spent virtually no time together, alone. We had barely touched. Yet, I knew that if we gave each other the opportunity we could be together. Forever.

I asked her to leave her husband. To be with me. To choose love over ease. To opt for passion over comfort. To decide that a life of unmitigated happiness, passion and love was better than anything else. To recognize that one could be happy. Forever.

2

Why are we overcome with fear?
What if I told you that fear isn’t real

What if I told you my friends your doubt
You could live without!

-- “Broken” by Scott Stapp

We met while I was in the hospital recovering from an emergency appendectomy. The nurse assigned to monitor me was on a break and it was time for my vital signs to be checked. Erica came in to perform the required tasks. Blood pressure. Pulse. Temperature. “And, have you had a bowel movement yet, Mr. Ross?”

“No,” I replied, uncomfortable with the subject given my thoughts at that moment. From the second she walked in, I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off her. She had brown hair--the color of cinnamon--that weaved its way down to her shoulders. Small, but perfect breasts. A narrow waist that widened to full hips and the most incredible ass I’d ever seen. Confined to my hospital bed, all I could do was imagine what it would feel like to put my hands on those hips. To wrap my arms around her and feel her pressed against me. To feel the fullness of her ass.

“Everything looks okay. Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked. She was writing something down on my chart so she wasn’t looking at me when she asked her question. A standard, garden variety question for a nurse making her rounds. If she had glanced my way, I would have turned away, embarrassed by the intentness of my stare. Instead, I was able to look at her face. She had pale skin, not quite porcelain white, just a hint of color to her. And her eyes were riveting. The curve of her lips and mouth as she spoke--I wanted nothing more than to be able to feel her lips with my own.

She was wearing the standard green scrubs, but I could see the skin of her neck and could imagine the arc to her shoulders and the smoothness of the skin there. “Is there anything else?” she repeated, turning now to look at me.

Quickly I turned my gaze to a spot on the wall just behind her. “No. Thanks.”

“Well, if you need anything my name is Erica.” She lingered for a moment, looking at me, before she turned and walked from the room.


3

There is a question I want to understand
Why can’t everyone tell the truth and learn to love again
-- “Broken” by Scott Stapp


At least that’s how I remember it. Who the hell really knows when I started looking at her that way. For all I know, when Erica was in my room that day I was so doped up that I was probably drooling and couldn’t have put two words together or formed a coherent thought. Hell, she was wearing nurse’s scrubs, the most formless, shapeless clothes there are. How could I have seen what her ass looked like or how perfect her breasts were? What I know for sure was that when she walked out of my room, I knew that I needed to see her again. Somewhere along the way, I discovered the wonders her body.

A week passed before I had the nerve to try to track her down. I called the hospital. When the receptionist answered the phone, I said, “I need to find somebody who works there. Her name is Erica.”

“There are two Erica’s here, sir. Can you be a little more specific?”

“She’s a nurse.”

“They’re both nurses. We’re a hospital. We have a lot of nurses here.” The receptionist was losing patience with me.

“I don’t know her last name. All I know is that I was recovering from surgery and she …”

“That makes it easier. Unless you’re a lot younger than you sound, your Erica is Erica Miller. Erica Santos works in Pediatrics. You’re not really twelve years old, are you, Romeo?” I was momentarily silenced by her assumption--correct assumption--of what lay behind my call.

“Uh … no … no,” I stammered. “I’m not twelve years old. Can you connect me with her?”

“I can transfer you to her station. But you probably won’t be able to talk to her.”

“Thanks.”

There was a short silence and then she said, “Good luck,” before moving me on to the next receptionist.

The phone rang three times before being picked up. “Med Station 4. How can I help you?” the harried voice said.

“I’m looking for Erica Miller.”

“She’s not working today. Is there something I can help you with?”

It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be working. Now, confronted with the unexpected, I didn’t know what to do.

“Sir, would you like to leave Erica a message?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s what I want to do.” I grasped at the lifeline thrown by the disembodied voice on the other end of the line. “My name is Benjamin Ross. My phone number is 555-7583.”

“Will she know what this is about?”

That was a good question. There was that moment when she looked at me before leaving my room. For the past week, I wondered if she had felt what I had in that room that day, but such good fortune was unlikely. Would she have a reason to remember me among all the patients she had seen in the past week? “No, probably not. Just ask her to call me when she has a chance.”

“I’ll leave her the message.”

“Thanks,” I said, hanging up the phone. I made sure I was never far from the phone the rest of the day. When I needed to use the bathroom, I stretched out the cord so the phone was as close to me as possible. I kept checking the phone to make sure it was on. That it was plugged in. That there was a dial tone and it was properly working.

Two days later, I was still doing everything I could to stay close to the phone and it had yet to ring. Losing patience, I called again. Old pro that I was, I got past the hospital receptionist easily. “I’d like to speak with Erica Miller.”

“Please hold while I transfer you, sir.”

“Med Station 4, how can I help you?” the same harried voice asked.

“I’m trying to reach Erica Miller.”

“She’s with a patient at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

“Yes, please tell her that Benjamin Ross called again. Please … please tell her to meet me at the McInerney’s Sports Bar & Grill on the corner of 7th and J at . . . What time does she get off?”

“Ms. Miller is scheduled to work until 5:30 today.”

“Tell her I’d like to meet her at McInerney’s at 6:00.”

“I’ll give her the message.”

The line went dead and I hung up the phone realizing what I had just done. My palms began to sweat and I had a sudden need to visit the bathroom. On the one hand, I was amazed at my courage. On the other hand, I was terrified that she might actually show up.

I got to the bar at 5:30 and had a beer to calm my nerves before she got there. If she got there. At 5:50 I ordered a second beer and nursed it for the next twenty-five minutes. As I drained the bottle and got up to leave, the door to the bar opened and in Erica walked, looking around for somebody she might recognize. When her head turned in my direction and she spotted me, she stopped for a moment and I thought I saw the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly. Again, who really knows? But, given the events of the next few months, I’d like to think it was so.

Erica walked over to the stool next to me and sat down. Putting her purse on the bar, she turned and looked at me. “Sorry, I’m late. Busy day at the hospital.”

“That’s okay,” I began. I was willing to forgive her for everything she had ever done just because she had shown up. But before I could get any further, she interrupted me.

“You know, there are so many questions I’d like to ask you right now. Why me? Why here? Why now? What do you want from me? Are you a whacko? Should I be scared? Why did I come here to have a beer with a complete stranger?” she began in a rush. “You are going to buy me a beer, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Sure,” I said, turning to get the bartender’s attention. “Can you ask me one question at a time?”

“I don’t know if I want to. Maybe I don’t even want to know the answers to any of my questions. I don’t know.”

The bartender placed a beer in front of Erica. Once his back was turned and he began walking to the other end of the bar, I looked at her. She was no longer wearing her scrubs and was instead in a sleeveless top and a pair of jeans with little rips in the left front pocket. I could see the curve of her shoulders and the smoothness of the skin there. I saw her eyes again. Her gentle hands as she picked up her beer. Her lips. I desperately wanted to kiss those lips, to caress them with my own. To place my hands on her shoulders and pull her to me. I wanted her to want me to do it. Until I knew she did, I couldn’t act.

“How about we start over?” I suggested.

We talked for an hour, about everything and nothing. When Erica rose to go, I asked her to stay longer. She held up her left hand and in the darkness of the bar, the ring didn’t glitter. It was dull and lifeless. “I can’t. I have a husband to get back to.”

I had forgotten the first rule of dating--check the left hand for a wedding ring. I wanted to pound my head on the bar, to bury myself alive. “Ooh. Right,” I mumbled instead. I had already fallen in love with this woman and she was married.

“You didn’t realize I was married?” she asked, sitting back down next to me.

“No. I don’t know why, it never occurred to me.”

“Well, I am,” Erica said. She got back up and walked out of the bar. When I looked after her as she went, I needed her and wanted her. I didn’t care that she was married.

I waited a week and called the hospital again. “Please tell Erica to meet me at McInerney’s at 6:00,” I told the harried voice and then went to the bar to wait. She showed up again, this time a little later. She sat down next to me. I ordered a beer for her. And we spent the next hour talking about everything and nothing. Just before she stood up to go, she asked me one of those questions she had rattled off when she had sat down at the bar the week before, “Why me?”

I thought about it for a moment and couldn’t think of an answer. “I don’t know.” I decided that I would be totally honest with her about my feelings. That I wouldn’t hide anything. “There’s something about you that fascinates and amazes me. I look at you sitting here and think I’m the luckiest man alive just to be able to sit and talk with you. I … I …,” I paused for a moment and then remembered my decision to be honest and then continued, “I want to touch every inch of your body with my hands. I want to …”

“Stop,” she said and placed her hand on my arm. It was the first time we had touched other than when she had taken my blood pressure a couple of weeks ago. I looked down at her hand, the white of her skin contrasting with the tan of my arm. I didn’t want her to ever lift her hand from that spot. “I’m married. That will never happen.”

“I know that.” No, wait a minute. I didn’t know that. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not,” she exclaimed. Erica removed her hand from my arm, got up and walked out. The spot on my arm where her hand had rested tingled with the memory of her touch. My memory burned with the look she gave me as she left the bar. Walking out the door, she paused for a second and turned to glance back at me. The look in her eyes? I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed to be one filled with sorrow and longing.

I called the hospital again a week later and left another message. This time she was at the bar before I was. I sat down next to her, pulling the chair a little closer to her. “Why now?” she asked.

“Because you came into my life.”

We spent another hour talking about everything and nothing. She began to reveal that she wasn’t happily married. As she told me more over the next few months, what it came down to was that her husband ignored her. She was an extra paycheck in the house, somebody to clean, and somebody to please him when he wanted it. But he never asked her how she was, how her life was, what troubled her or pleased her.

When Erica got up to leave after our hour was up, she leaned over and kissed me on my cheek. I can still feel her lips there--warm and slightly moist, brushing against my skin. Before I could turn to return the kiss, she was gone, halfway to the exit.

We continued on that way for a few months. Meeting once a week for a beer and an hour of conversation. My initial physical attraction turned into a much more complex combination of feelings. I was convinced that Erica and I were meant for each other. There was only one thing in our way. Her marriage. There was only so far she was willing to go. Occasionally, she would allow me to hug her in the parking lot behind the bar. Words can’t describe the feeling of her in my arms. She fit perfectly. Her head on my shoulder. My arms wrapped around her.

Twice, I talked her into stepping into my car with me. We kissed. We caressed. There was an electric charge that went through both of us when we touched. When our skin made contact, all was right with the world.

And, a week ago, I asked her to leave her husband.


4

You set me free!
To live my life!
You became my reason to survive …

-- “The Great Divide” by Scott Stapp




I stood there in the rain and watched the sky. I was soaked through and ready to return to my car when I felt two arms wrap around me from behind. I knew immediately who it was. How could I not know her touch? I remained still, waiting to see what she would do. I felt her head rest against my back.

“I’m sorry,” she said. I said nothing and did nothing. I needed more. It had been a week since I had asked. I felt like she owed me something more than a simple apology. I waited. The rain continued to fall. If possible, the sky grew even darker.

“Say something,” she pleaded, while squeezing me a little tighter. I could feel her heart beating against my back and the heat of her seep through my rain-soaked shirt.

Try as I might to think of something else to say, there was really only one question for me to ask. “Did you?” I whispered, hoping that she had finally chosen to speak the truth and accept a life better than the one she had.

Erica released me and turned me around so that we were facing each other. I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her to me. She leaned into me, catching her breath as she did so. It was something she did every time we touched--a little hitch in her breath that told me that she felt the same way about me as I did about her. As long as she kept catching her breath when we touched she would never have to tell me that she loved me. That split second when she couldn’t control herself was all that I needed.

There was something magical in the way we touched. Something she felt that she had never experienced before--something as simple as the touch of somebody who truly loved her. From the first time I held her in my arms I had felt the same magic. There was something comforting and good about having her in my arms. To be able to kiss her and feel her skin under my fingertips. It was a feeling I had never had before and one that I wasn’t sure I would ever experience again. When I touched her, everything that followed came naturally. There was no effort or thought involved.

After a moment, she turned her face to mine and standing on her toes, kissed me lightly. “Yes,” she replied.

I squeezed her more tightly, lifted her off her feet and spun her around. “Are you okay?” I asked, suddenly concerned about how he might have taken it.

“Yes. But, I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, pulling back from me so she could look me in the eye. “Ever.”


5

In your eyes
I see what’s on my mind
You got me wild
Turned around inside
-- “Say Goodbye” by Dave Matthews

We got in my car and began driving. About two hours down the road, we pulled over to the side of the road. We had no idea where we were going and decided we couldn’t wait any longer. I put the rear seats down and spread a blanket out. Erica and I got in the back and, in a little turnout in the middle of nowhere, with the hum of rain hitting the roof of the car, made love for the first time. I felt something I had never felt before. A woman who truly wanted me as much as I wanted her.

I sang to her that night as I kissed her and worshipped her. An old song. A standard. It begins “You are so beautiful… To me…Can’t you see…You’re everything I hoped for…You’re everything I need.” My voice cracked as I sang quietly to her. When I was done, tears of happiness streamed down my cheeks and Erica gripped me tightly. We would be together forever, this I know.


I have run to the ocean
Through the horizon
Chased the sun
I’ve waited for the light to come,
And at times I would give up

Wrapped your loving arms ‘round me,
And with your love I’ll overcome.
You have
Loved me when I was weak,
You have given unselfishly,
Kept me from falling … falling
Everywhere but my knees!

-- “The Great Divide” by Scott Stapp

Promises Made

I wrote the following story for a contest run by www.thefirstline.com. They publish a quarterly journal in which every story starts with the same "first line." The story was what I came up with, they didn't think it worthy of publication. Feel free to write them and tell them they screwed up. :)

PROMISES MADE

Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the dress Mama had bought for her in exchange for a promise not to marry Al. The prayer was nothing more than a hurried muttering of “Please God.” It was really all she could muster given that she didn’t really believe in the power of prayer and was ambivalent about the existence of God.

Sure, she went to church every Sunday. Third pew from the front, on the inside aisle, sandwiched between Mama and Aunt Emma. Both dressed in their Sunday best and their fake pearls, their hose sagging around their ankles. Tessa spent her time in church doing everything but paying attention to the preacher. When he would preach, Tessa’s eyes would glaze over and her mind would wander. The only part of church she liked was when the choir would sing.
Tessa went to church because of another promise she had made to Mama. As long as she lived under Mama’s roof, she would go to church with her every Sunday. In exchange, Mama wouldn’t preach to her about the evils facing her on a daily basis and that God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ was all she needed. Two hours every Sunday morning was a small price to pay.

In Mama’s eyes, Al’s biggest sin was that he wasn’t a churchgoer. It didn’t matter that he had a job and took care of his own mama. It didn’t matter that Al always treated Tessa with respect and had never done anything more than politely kiss her at the end of a date, always asking if it was okay before he did so. To Mama, anybody who didn’t visit regularly with the Lord had a one-way ticket to hell and wasn’t good enough for her daughter. When Mama got wind of Tessa’s time with Al, she had ordered her not to see him anymore. When that didn’t work, she resorted to bribery. All it took was the simple black dress Tessa slid on now.
If Mama had only known that it wasn’t Al she needed to worry about.

It was Pepper Jones, the silky smooth baritone in the choir, who stole Tessa’s attention whenever he would rise, step forward, and burst forth about the glory of God’s kingdom. When Pepper had a solo, Tessa’s knees would quiver. Mama, sitting close enough she could feel her daughter shake, was convinced that the music was touching her soul. It was, just not the way Mama thought.

When Tessa and Pepper were alone, usually after they had made love, Pepper would quietly, almost in a whisper, sing to her. When Pepper rose to sing in church, full of people shouting “Amen!” and “Hallelujah,” all Tessa heard were his words. Pepper Jones was singing to her, only to her. Just like his whispered songs while they lay entwined on a bed in a motel in the next town over.

At twenty-five, Pepper was eight years older than Tessa. In just a couple more months, she’d be eighteen and able to leave Mama. And she wouldn’t have to make any empty promises to her again. They would be able to leave Walliston, the little pit stop of a town in which they lived, in the deepest corner of Georgia. Tessa had no doubt that they would leave. There was no way they would be able to stay once Mama and the town found out about them.

For years, Mama had been telling Tessa about what kind of man was right for her. God-fearing and hard-working. A man who took care of his family first, second, and third. In other words, Al, who fit the description in every way except that he didn’t go to church. But there was one other characteristic that Mama never ceased to tell Tessa was important. Only white men were good enough for her. Mama grew up in Walliston at a time when black people were divided into two groups--good niggers and bad niggers. And Mama never stopped telling her, “Even a good nigger isn’t good enough for you, because a good nigger is still a nigger. Do you hear me, Tessa?”

When Tessa was just a little girl, barely able to walk, Mama would scare her, “Tessa, niggers eat their babies. Sometimes they steal little white children and eat them, too.”

As Tessa got older and she no longer was scared by that fable, Mama came up with new ones. When she was about thirteen, Mama began telling her, “Nigger men like to rape white girls, Tessa. You just keep your eyes and ears open. You hear me, Tessa? Even good niggers are still niggers.”

Tessa hated how much Mama used that word. There were times when Mama used it so often, Tessa felt like she must need to say it like most people need air to breathe. She wanted to scream every time Mama said it, but she didn’t. She held her peace, hoping she could get through the next few months. That’s all she wanted. If she had to promise not to marry Al, so be it. That was a promise she could keep. If she had to sit between Mama and Aunt Emma every Sunday, she could do that. If she had to listen to Mama’s venom and hate, she could pretend to hear her. She just didn’t have to agree with her. And, she couldn’t do without Pepper Jones.

* * *

Tessa slid the dress on and smoothed out the folds that clung to her, muttering her quick prayer. She loved the feel of the dress on her slender body. Particularly, after just making love to Pepper. The cool feel of the material made her shiver as it came into contact with the heat of her body, heat generated by their passion. “Please God,” she mumbled. Tessa leaned over and kissed Pepper, brushing her hand down his chest, still damp with perspiration from his efforts. “See you at church,” she said, with a giggle, wishing she could stay, but knowing that she couldn’t.

If she didn’t get home soon, Mama would begin to wonder. Tessa hated it when Mama would ask her, “Where you been all this time, girl?” There was always a hint of accusation, a suggestion that she was up to no good. And Tessa, knowing that she was up to something Mama wouldn’t approve of, found it difficult to respond.

Tessa slipped into her shoes and walked to the door, pulling it open and stepping outside. The afternoon sun blinded her briefly. She looked down, blinked her eyes, and put on her sunglasses. When she could see again, she looked up. “Oh, shit!” she exclaimed.

“Come with me, Tessa!” Mama said. She was standing on the fringe of the asphalt parking lot, right where it hit the cement of the walkway that ran along the building of the cheap motel. It was as though the crease between asphalt and cement represented a boundary that Mama would not cross. Briefly, Tessa thought that if she stayed on her side of the line, she’d be safe. She could turn around, go back into the motel room, close the door, lay down next to Pepper, and Mama would leave. But Mama was looking at her with a look that could have killed small children and flattened trees. Tessa realized Mama wasn’t going to leave without her.

“Mama,” Tessa began. But she could go no further.

“You think I don’t know who’s in there?” Mama asked, her voice and eyebrows rising in accusation. "You think you and that nigger . . .”

“He aint a nigger, Mama. Don’t call him that.”

“. . . can hide in this rundown motel,” Mama continued, ignoring Tessa’s interruption. “That I wouldn’t find out? You may not be in Walliston, but you’re still in the same county and I got family all over. You know that. I never thought you were that stupid, Tessa. I can’t believe you been in that room, huffing and puffing, with a nigger.”

“Don’t call him that!”

“Tessa, you’re still my child. I’ll call that boy whatever I want and you’ll shut your nigger-loving mouth about it,” Mama said, her voice was steady now and her eyes had narrowed. “Now, come with me,” Mama repeated, lifting her hand and gesturing with her index finger for Tessa to follow her.

Tessa, as much as she didn’t want to, found herself moving towards Mama’s car. She crossed the boundary that lay between her and Mama and slid into the passenger side of the front seat. As Mama settled in behind the wheel and glanced over at her, something told Tessa that there were no promises she would be able to make to get out of this one.